Page 121 of Kotori
"The danger. The way the house gets when Papa's enemies are planning something." She finally looks at me, fear stark in her dark eyes. "It felt like this four years ago. Right before she died."
"You were so young when it happened. Only fourteen."
"Old enough to be brave," she says bitterly. "Old enough to protect my family when they needed me."
"Mizuki."
"I failed her." The words burst out like a dam breaking. "She told me to be brave, to protect Aya, and I just froze."
My heart breaks for this girl carrying such devastating burden. "What happened that night?"
She stares at the shrine, at her mother's gentle face smiling with warmth I've seen in all her daughters. "They came after midnight. Papa was in Osaka on business. The security wasn't like it is now. He didn't expect anyone to attack his home directly." She takes a shaky breath. "Men in dark clothes, moving through the house like shadows. Mama heard them first."
I wait, letting her tell the story at her own pace.
"She woke me up, told me to get Kohana and baby Aya. Made us hide in the alcove behind the bookshelf. Kohana was only nine, so confused. Aya was crying. Mama kissed us all and said 'Be brave, my strong girls. Protect each other.'" Silent tears track down her cheeks. "I thought I could do it. I thought I was strong enough to protect them both. But when the shooting started, I just crouched there holding my sisters, too terrified to move, while Mama stepped into the hallway to face them alone. They were looking for information about Papa's business. Mama told them she didn't know anything, that she was just a wife and mother. But they didn't believe her." Mizuki's voice becomes mechanical. "So they threatened us. Said they knew exactly where the three little girls were hiding."
The horrible picture becomes clear. A mother faced with an impossible choice.
"She stepped in front of our hiding place. Told them to take her instead, to leave her children alone." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I could hear everything through the wall. Kohana had her hand over Aya's mouth, and I was holding them both, shaking so hard I thought the killers would hear us."
"You don't have to say it."
"Yes, I do." She turns to face me fully, tears streaming but voice gaining strength. "She died because I was too weak to help her. Because instead of being the brave older sister they needed, I was just a terrified child who let her mother face killers alone."
"Mizuki, no."
"Her last words were 'Take care of your sisters. All of them.' She was dying and she was still trying to make sure we'd be okay." The sobs come harder. "And I've tried. I've tried so hard to be what they need, to be strong enough for Kohana and Aya both. But I'm still just the girl who hid while her mother died protecting us."
I pull her into my arms, this fierce, brave, broken girl who's been trying to mother her sisters while still being a child herself. "You were fourteen years old facing trained killers, trying to protect a nine-year-old and a two-year-old," I say fiercely. "Surviving wasn't cowardice. It was what your mother died to ensure."
"But if I had been braver, it would have been different."
"You would have died too. And Kohana and Aya would have watched their mother and big sister murdered." I hold her tighter. "Your mother didn't die because you were weak. She died because all three of you were precious enough to die for."
"I don't know how to stop feeling like I failed her."
"By understanding that she succeeded. She saved you. She gave you life so you could grow into the extraordinary woman you're becoming." I pull back to look at her tear-stained face. "And by letting someone else help carry the burden you've been shouldering alone."
"I've been trying to be their mother," she admits in the smallest voice. "All this time, trying to fill the space she left behind. But I don't know how. I'm still just their big sister who couldn't save anyone."
"Then let me be their mother," I say quietly. "Let me be what you've been trying to be all by yourself. And let you be what you actually are. An extraordinary daughter with her own value."
She stares at me for a long moment, something shifting in her expression. "You really want to be? Even knowing what this family costs?"
I look around the moonlit shrine, at the portrait of a woman who died protecting her children, at this compound that's become more home than anywhere I've ever lived. The realization hits with startling clarity: if killers came for my family tonight, and yes, they are my family now, I would do exactly what Akira did.
"I understand now," I whisper. "I understand what love makes us capable of."
Mizuki is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is very small, very young. "I need a mother too. I've been trying to be so strong for everyone else, but I've needed one this whole time."
"Then that's what I'll be. For all of you. For as long as you'll have me." We sit together in the shrine room, holding each other while candles flicker and cast dancing shadows. The incense smoke curls upward, carrying our whispered confessions into sacred space where Akira's memory lives.
"I heard Otou-san's men talking outside my window earlier," Mizuki whispers against my shoulder. "Something about coordinated strikes, about enemies who've been planning for months. They kept saying 'when it comes' like it's not if anymore, but when."
I hold her tighter, feeling something fundamental shift inside me. The fear is still there, but underneath it burns something fiercer: the protective instinct of a mother who's found her children. "Then we protect each other," I say, surprised by the steel in my own voice. "All of us. That's what mothers do."
Mizuki pulls back to look at me, and in the golden candlelight I see something new in her expression. Not just gratitude, but respect. Recognition of an equal. Finally earning my place in my heart. "You're not afraid?" she asks.
