From the very beginning, I, Kyouko Azamume, and Yuna Oota were enemies. It all started before either of us were born when Yuna's mother, who was also a member of the Azamume Family, turned her back on the family to marry some guy named Oota, a complete nobody with no powers. She pretty much turned her back on the Azamume Family, thus becoming a hateful traitor.
Naturally, as a member of the Azamume Family, I inherited their animosity against the Ootas. So when I realized that the daughter of the traitor was going to the same school as me, back when we were elementary school kids, I decided to confront her over her family's arrogance against mine. But the cheeky girl didn't know anything about the Azamume Family. She even told me to my face that she had never heard of the Azamume Family before, and that really ground my nerves. I ended up challenging her to a contest to prove the Azamume Family's superiority to her.
It was a ridiculous and childish thing to do, but I was just a kid back then. We all were. And it happened so long ago that I barely remember it anymore. But that childish antic of mine became a starting point for me and Yuna. From then on, whatever it was, be it a sport or a board game, or even just comparing test scores and grades, I challenged Yuna to them all. And I kept at it all the way to our middle school years.
But that all changed around the summer before this one.
That summer, I challenged Yuna to another contest. It was another ridiculous one so I won't go into any details about it. We made plans to meet at a certain place, at a certain time, on a certain day. But when that day came, she never showed up. And I waited hours and hours for her, like an idiot. It wasn't until the sun had set that I finally gave up and went home.
I didn't know why she didn't show up. Did she forget? Maybe she got the time or place wrong? These questions plagued me all of summer vacation.
I tried calling her, messaging her, and emailing her, but never got an answer. And I tried for days and days, and days. But all my efforts were fruitless. She either could not answer, or would not.
And then, when summer vacation ended and we were back to school, our homeroom teacher announced that Yuna had moved away. We, me an the entire class, were totally unprepared for the news and were shocked by it. Well, of course we were. She never told anyone she was going to move. Not even me.
For better or worse, my antics had made me and Yuna famous in the school. Thanks to that, when news spread of Yuna's abrupt departure, rumors started swirling around.
Many of those rumors were ridiculous and not worth mentioning. But there was one rumor that was incredibly plausible to me and hit very close to home, cropping up on the same day as the announcement.
During lunchtime, stunned by the news that morning, I was numbly walking down the hall when I happened to overhear a group of girls gossiping.
"Hey, did you hear about that girl, Yuna?" one said.
"Yeah. She moved away. Her whole class was in an uproar because of how sudden it was. There was no notice or anything."
"Nothing? Really? Why? Did something happen?"
"Who knows? Maybe she finally got fed up with Azamume's childish antics. I know I would."
"Actually, I think I overheard a classmate of mine say that he saw Azamume waiting for someone by the forest. He said that she just stood around doing nothing for a really long time. What're the chances she was waiting for Yuna?"
"It wouldn't surprise me. Sounds like she got stood up though."
"Yeah. I always figured something like that would happen eventually."
The girls laughed, unaware that I was standing right next to them hearing their every word.
I was angry. Really angry. I was angry at those girls for talking about me behind my back, laughing at me behind my back. And I was angry at Yuna, because what they said made sense to me. I believed what those girls gossiped could be true. And the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that Yuna had stood me up, that she had upped and left me behind because she couldn't stand me anymore.
With the way she dropped off the face of the earth (phone service canceled, social media inactive, no email response), there was no way for me, or anyone else, to get in touch with her or find her. I had no choice but to give up trying to find her and confront her for what she did, and give her a piece of my mind. I put Yuna behind me, and moved on with my life.
Or I tried to at least. Because just when I thought I was over her, there she was, appearing right in front of me as abruptly as she had disappeared a year earlier. It happened at a cemetery I had come with my dad to pay respect to one of his relatives. We were on our way out when she came walking towards us, down a road of graves. She was paler and thinner than when I last saw her, but there was no mistaking her. Dad knew about the rivalry between me and Yuna, but never paid much attention to it, so he didn't recognize Yuna as they walked past each other.
I decided to stick around, making up some excuse to my dad like I was going to see a friend, and watched Yuna as she stopped to pray at a grave with a group of people I didn't see before. And you know what happened after that.
**********
I was, again, at said cemetery, retracing the steps that Yuna and the Ootas took several weeks ago. I was unable to stop thinking about everything that I had learned the last few days, the revelation that Yuna's mom had passed away, and decided to come back to verify the truth of the matter. Oota told me the previous day that I should talk to Yuna about it, but there was just no way I could have a face-to-face with her. At least not yet.
Thus the trip to the field of graves. I left first thing in the morning, making up some excuse to the housekeepers that I would be hanging out with friends. Last time I came, I was driven by my dad. But this time, in order to keep my destination a secret, I took the bus. Both my house and the cemetery were at really inconvenient locations, so it took me two hours to get there, compared to forty-five minutes by my dad's car.
I should have done this a long time ago, but I was never able to find the time to, is what I told myself as I made my way to a certain grave marker among many, many others.
The sky was clear and vividly blue with a few white clouds drifting about like lazy fish. I could hear birds singing afar over the rustling of tree leaves. To my right, I could detect faint chatter. There was a couple on their way out. The man had a baby in his arms. Perhaps they were here to introduce the newest member of their family to someone who had departed.
It was both a touching thought and a sorrowful one, but that's just the kind of place cemeteries are. No matter how bright and sunny it was here (and it was really bright and sunny), you just can't shake off this feeling of melancholy in a cemetery. At least that was my personal opinion.
"Oh! Here it is!"
I had finally found the grave stone I was looking for. It had the name of Yuna's mom carved into it as clear as day.
If this were a comic book you were reading, you would probably expect me to go like, "Huh? No way! This can't be real!" But too bad. Nothing that dramatic happened.
I just stared at it and thought, "So she was dead after all."
Well, I already knew she was dead. I heard as much from that conversation I eavesdropped. And Oota confirmed the fact just yesterday. But I just couldn't help but need some kind of concrete verification to dispel whatever shallow doubts I still had.
Still, now that I know for sure that Yuna's mom had passed away, now what? Just visiting her grave's not going to teach me anything.
I decided to linger for just a few more seconds to pay my respects to Yuna's parents and apologize for visiting them out of sheer curiosity. When I was done praying, I turned around to leave but then stopped when I saw my grandmother, the head of the Azamume family, standing right in front of me.
My mind went blank for a second and my jaw dropped.
I had to be dreaming I thought. There was no way that she'd be here, standing in front of me, right in the middle of a cemetery.
My grandmother scowled at me. "What are you doing, gaping at me like an idiot? Have you forgotten how to give a greeting? I thought you were raised better than that, as an Azamume."
I flinched.
Nope, this wasn't a dream, I thought. That's definitely my grandmother, Karin, in the flesh. As always, she was a towering figure to me, always looking down with hawkish eyes while cloaked in an intimidating aura. Just one look is enough for everyone to know that she was the undisputed leader of the Azamume Family. She was basically really, really scary.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Since she's the elderly leader of the big and powerful Azamume Family, you all probably expected her to appear wearing something traditional like a kimono. Well, too bad. She always wore pantsuits, like the black one she wore right now.
None of my family ever wore a kimono except for really special occasions. Our mansion's all Western-style too.
I snapped back to my senses from her outburst and quickly put two and two together to realize what her presence meant and mustered enough courage to confront her about it.
"You knew," I said. "You knew that Yuna's mom . . ."
"Died?" said my family's matriarch. "Of course I knew. Regardless of her crimes, she was still my daughter."
"Does Mom know?" I asked.
"She does not," Karin said.
"Why? Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell her? And why didn't you tell me?"
Karin replied, "There was no need to. When Nanami eloped with that man, she became a stranger to the Azamume Family. It is needless to concern ourselves with a stranger's death."
I looked at her in disbelief. "A stranger?" I said. "But you just admitted that she was your daughter."
She coldly responded, "I merely stated a fact. We had become strangers, but it's a fact we share the same blood. That's why it was unavoidable that I would hear of her fate, and the fate of her daughter."
"Just what the hell happened to her?" I asked. "What happened to Yuna?"
"It's really none of your business," Karin said. "But it would be better to tell you myself rather than let you scurry around like some rat causing chaos."
She slowly approached me and then brushed past my shoulder before stopping in front of the grave stone to stare at it.
"You've heard of the tunnel that collapsed last year, haven't you?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said. "It was all the news would talk about last summer. I think there was a special TV show on it for the anniversary just a few weeks ago too."
"Nanami and Yuna took that tunnel while on a short trip to a nearby city," Karin said. "They were right in the middle of it when it collapsed and became trapped. It took several days for rescuers to dig them out, but by then, Nanami had already passed away. Yuna was the only one to survive. From what I was told, between witnessing her mother's death and being without food or water in total darkness for several days really took its toll on her both physically and mentally. Honestly, it was a miracle she's still alive after all that.
"She was considered clinically insane for a short while, to the point she needed to take special medicine. But thanks to the dedication of the doctors who looked after her, Yuna was able to recover enough to be taken in by distant relatives of her father. She still has an extreme fear of dark places to the point of having panic attacks and the medicine may have affected her memories a little, but otherwise, she is able to function in society again. All's well that ends well."
I listened without making a sound, giving my grandmother my undivided attention. And when she was done, it took several minutes for me to let her story sink in. And then I spoke.
"Just how the hell is that a good ending?" I said. "Her mom's dead. She's mute. She has panic attacks in dark places. And you just mentioned that her memory's like Swiss cheese because of some medicine!"
"I didn't say that much about her memories," Karin said. "Though I suppose comparing Yuna's memories to porous cheese is appropriate."
"Whatever!" I shouted. I was just so angry that I even snapped at my grandmother. Normally, I'd be too scared to even correct any of her small mistakes.
The frustration got to my head and I could feel tears welling in my eyes as a result. Before my grandmother could see them, I turned my face away. That was when she finally spoke again.
"What will you do now?" she asked. "What is the plan now that you know what happened? Personally, I think you should finally cut ties with her. Us and the Ootas were never meant to cross paths again. We live in different worlds and it should stay that way."
I didn't say anything.
Honestly, I didn't know what I was going to do from now on. I didn't even know what I wanted to do.
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