A Delicate Heart, Rain-Soaked Light

Words like dazzling, intoxicated, awash in lights and luxury are still not enough to describe the liveliness of Tsukimi Hall, the grandest dance hall in Osaka. The main floor and the private rooms were all full. People talked in low voices and loud ones, but none of it distracted them from the stage. That was why Miyazaki Mio felt nervous.

She was wearing heavy makeup, a cumbersome string of pearls, and absurd feathers stuck into her hair. Altogether she felt like a clown. On top of that, her sleeveless dance dress was so short it seemed as though one careless step would expose everything. She regretted bitterly that she had ever applied to be a backup dancer instead of a backstage cleaner or something equally invisible.

But by then there was no retreat.

The music began.

The floor manager urged the young women onto the stage, spinning as though they were dancing ballet. It was a lush, sensual rendition of "Carmen," sung by Tsukimi Hall's brightest star, Kurosawa Reika. She stood in the center while the lights wrapped around her from every side, and the applause thundered up at once, joined by the shrill whistles of playboys in the crowd.

Love is nothing but a pastime. What's so remarkable about it?

Those wanton, arrogant lyrics fell from Kurosawa Reika's lips with soul-stirring seduction. The whistles rose again. Then suddenly the whole audience froze in shock.

One of the backup dancers had fallen flat on her back with a loud crack.

After several seconds of stunned stillness, laughter exploded through the room.

Kurosawa Reika went green with fury. She turned and glared at the dancer who had humiliated herself in front of everyone, her eyes sharp enough to devour flesh. Red-faced with shame, the dancer forgot all about decorum and fled backstage. Then she heard someone calling her name from the dressing room.

"Miyazaki Mio, are you all right?"

She lifted her head helplessly, her cheeks still burning. It went without saying that a vicious scolding from Kurosawa Reika and the floor manager would follow.

Only Anzai Yoru felt sorry for her.

Anzai Yoru was the person who had called out to her just now in the dressing room. She too was a hugely popular singer at Tsukimi Hall, adored almost as much as Kurosawa Reika. But her temper was dozens of times better. Where Kurosawa was sharp-tongued and aggressive, Yoru was gentle and modest. She handed Miyazaki Mio a bottle of medicinal liniment and told her to rub it on the sprain. The dressing room quickly filled with its sharp smell. Everyone else glared at Mio, but Anzai Yoru kept smiling and patted her shoulder.

"It's all right. You're new. Of course there'll be a few stumbles."

At that, Miyazaki Mio abruptly felt a sting in her chest.

She remembered why she had come to Tsukimi Hall in the first place. She remembered the vision from her dream: Anzai Yoru lying in the dressing room with her eyes wide open, her face bloodless and breathless, her features twisted by pain. Such a kind person. Who would want to kill her? Miyazaki Mio had come to save her, so that two days later Yoru would not truly die that violent death. Mio had a peculiar gift. In sleep she could see dangers that had not yet happened, tragic and sorrowful scenes that left her feeling as if she had been born with a duty to stop calamity before it fell and rescue helpless lives.

This time, the one she had seen was Anzai Yoru.

By the time Miyazaki Mio took off her makeup, changed back into plain clothes, and left Tsukimi Hall, it was close to midnight. Out of nowhere a large man in a black suit approached, arms hanging stiffly at his sides, and lowered his head.

"Miss Miyazaki, Boss Todo would like to see you."

Todo Teisei?

Startled, Miyazaki Mio glanced at the black sedan parked nearby. Uneasy, she walked over, leaned toward the window, and said in the most respectful little-employee tone she could manage, "Boss Todo."

The man inside leaned out.

He was smiling.

There was no denying it was a mature, handsome face, finely cut, strikingly featured, with two grape-like dimples hanging at the corners of his smile. More importantly, this man, Todo Teisei, was also the owner of Tsukimi Hall, rich enough to glitter like a bar of gold. Miyazaki Mio assumed that after her humiliation onstage, the boss had come to scold her in person, perhaps even dismiss her, and she was trying to think how to respond when he said in a teasing voice:

"So you're clever enough to know I would come tonight. Looks like you've done a very good job attracting my attention. Get in. I'll take you wherever it is you want to go."

Attract his attention? Go where she wanted?

Miyazaki Mio stared at him, baffled.

Then, all at once, between his expression, his body language, and the rumors she had heard, she understood. A fire flared in her stomach so fiercely that it even smothered the pain from her fall. She grabbed the car door, leaned in, and glared at him.

"Listen to me. Don't think too highly of yourself, Boss Todo. If you want pleasure, go buy it in a brothel."

Then she turned and walked away, leaving behind only a stare so contemptuous it admitted no argument.

Miyazaki Mio knew very clearly that the time Anzai Yoru would be killed was around eight o'clock on the night of September sixth. Now, there were exactly twenty-four hours left.

And she had no leads at all.

She had quietly asked around about Anzai Yoru, and what people most liked to talk about was the open hostility between Yoru and Kurosawa Reika. They competed with each other openly and in secret. They had quarreled, even come to blows. Everyone also knew that Anzai Yoru was in love with Todo Teisei, while Todo, blessed with a shamelessly flirtatious nature, had far too many little starlets eager to please him. Kurosawa Reika herself was certainly not shy about throwing herself into his arms. Beyond that, there was very little to criticize about Anzai Yoru: respectable background, good reputation, plenty of friends.

Miyazaki Mio grew more anxious by the minute.

Later, as she wiped off her garish makeup bit by bit with a handkerchief, song still floated faintly in from the front hall. The enormous dressing room was otherwise empty. Then a young man in a white shirt hurried in with a hesitant look, saw her, and came over awkwardly.

"Boss Todo asked me to deliver theater tickets to Miss Anzai Yoru and Miss Kurosawa Reika. Which dressing tables are theirs?"

Miyazaki Mio pointed toward the two largest vanities. "The one on the left is Miss Anzai's. The one on the right is Miss Kurosawa's."

"Thank you," the man said.

Mio did not think much of it then. It was not until the next evening, after dusk had fallen, when she saw Anzai Yoru and Kurosawa Reika both standing beside Todo Teisei's car, that understanding dawned. Todo had tried to enjoy both women at once and had deliberately invited them both to the theater. Kurosawa Reika found it amusing and cast Yoru a provocative glance. But Anzai Yoru looked humiliated and wronged, her beautiful eyes brimming as though she might cry.

The closer it got to eight, the more nervous Miyazaki Mio became. She had shadowed Anzai Yoru for half the day already, and now, seeing how hurt and miserable she looked, Mio's heart ached for her. As for Todo Teisei, she felt nothing but disgust.

Later, Todo left with Kurosawa Reika. Anzai Yoru went back to the dressing room. It was already a quarter to eight. Miyazaki Mio followed after her uneasily and found Yoru sitting at her vanity, crying, her exquisitely painted face ruined.

People were still coming and going through the dressing room, all of them busy, and the atmosphere was calm. There was no sign of danger at all. Mio bit her lip and watched the second hand crawl around the clock in a relentless circle. She went up behind Yoru, patted her lightly on the shoulder, and said, "Please don't be so upset."

Anzai Yoru's sobbing subsided. She looked up, saw her own smeared face in the mirror, forced a wan smile, and took out a handkerchief.

"Look at me. What a mess. Everyone must be laughing at me."

As she spoke, she uncapped the glass bottle on the table, poured some of the clear liquid inside onto the cloth, and began gently wiping away her makeup. The liquid looked like water, but in truth it was an imported French beauty cleanser said to have skin-cleaning effects. Miyazaki Mio, of course, did not know that.

Then all at once Anzai Yoru collapsed like someone struck by paralysis. Her body convulsed violently. The chair she overturned crashed to the floor, drawing shocked looks from everyone nearby. Miyazaki Mio was closest. She watched Yoru claw at her own throat, fighting for breath, sweat bursting over her face and hands, while her eyes stared wide in terror and her pupils shrank to two tiny black dots of unequal size.

Miyazaki Mio froze.

The time was eight-oh-five.

By the time everyone crowded around, Anzai Yoru had drawn her final breath.

The police arrived before long and questioned everyone in the room. Miyazaki Mio said the most, forcing down her guilt and numb grief as she described everything she had seen and said. She knew that Yoru's symptoms were the signs of organophosphate poisoning. She had seen such a case before. Certain highly toxic organophosphate pesticides could be absorbed through the skin, and once they entered the nervous system they could shut down the lungs and cause immediate suffocation. The cause might very well lie in the beauty liquid Yoru had been using. So Mio handed the bottle to the police and said, "You might want to check whether there was something wrong with this."

The police sealed the glass bottle in a plastic evidence bag. Then they loitered about the scene a while longer and only near dawn finally let everyone leave. The death of a beautiful young singer from Tsukimi Hall became the newspaper headline the next day.

Todo Teisei summoned Miyazaki Mio to his office.

He sat in a large reclining chair by the window, his expression playful and faintly provocative. "Looks like Li Detective Agency hasn't gone out of business yet. I suppose Miss Miyazaki took up backup dancing to supplement the household income?"

"You investigated me?"

Miyazaki Mio frowned, offended.

Todo stood up and let the teasing fall away. "I don't care what brought you to Tsukimi Hall. But I will not permit anyone to stir up trouble on my turf."

Now it was Mio's turn to smile mockingly. "And what exactly do you think my purpose is, Boss Todo? If you're really that uneasy, I'll go resign to the floor manager this instant."

She flung open the door and left.

She had come to Tsukimi Hall only because of Anzai Yoru. Now Yoru was dead and nothing could be undone. Staying on as a deeply uncomfortable backup dancer would be nothing but torment. Better to go back to the detective agency. And thinking of the agency meant thinking of Li Zhaoxi, her employer, and the man she loved most. He too had died in the course of an investigation, swept up in a vendetta and killed just as their feelings had begun at last to show. That loss had driven her into despair. Only the forewarning of Anzai Yoru's death had gradually roused her fighting spirit again. But now, having failed to stop the tragedy, she felt herself sinking once more into dejection and aimlessness.

She walked slowly back to the dressing room and began gathering up her few little belongings.

Not long after, one of the gossip-loving cleaning women ran in shouting, "My nephew does odd jobs at the police station. Guess what? I heard Miss Anzai's report came back. Poisoning by pesticide. And the poison was mixed right into her toner."

The rest of her words no longer reached Miyazaki Mio. Lost in thought, she walked to Anzai Yoru's vanity and let her fingers trail over the wood grain of the table and the clear mirror above it.

And then her heart skipped.

Because among the cosmetics laid out on Anzai Yoru's table, she saw a bottle exactly like the one she had handed over to the police. But if the one sitting here belonged to Anzai Yoru, then...

She shifted her gaze to the vanity on the right. Kurosawa Reika's things were much the same as Yoru's, except for one detail.

That glass bottle was missing.

Had Anzai Yoru accidentally used Kurosawa Reika's beauty liquid?

Miyazaki Mio sucked in a breath.

Could it be that the real target had been Kurosawa Reika?

The matter was quickly confirmed.

The beauty liquid left in the dressing room did indeed belong to Anzai Yoru, and rumors spread just as quickly that she had died in Kurosawa Reika's place.

Miyazaki Mio gave up any thought of resigning.

If the murderer had failed to kill the intended victim, then he might strike again at any moment. She had to dig up something useful before another death occurred. She had to stop the tragedy from repeating itself.

Even though she truly did not like Kurosawa Reika.

When Miyazaki Mio appeared onstage again at Tsukimi Hall, Todo Teisei looked genuinely startled through his sarcasm. Later he deliberately waited for her and said with a sneer, "Weren't you leaving?"

"Yes," Mio said coolly. "And right now I'm going home."

He stepped in front of her. "You know that's not what I mean."

Mio raised her brows. "Those women are all your cash cows. Don't tell me you care so little."

Todo clicked his tongue. "Even if I do care, why must I trouble Miss Miyazaki over it? I hear you were only a clerk at the detective agency before this. I certainly wouldn't hire you to investigate a murder as serious as this one."

His half-joking, half-roguish tone made Miyazaki Mio want to laugh. "What I choose to do is none of your business, Boss Todo. If you dislike it that much, tell the floor manager to fire me."

Unable to defeat her sharp tongue, Todo could only throw up his hands. Still he could not help asking, "Do you talk to everyone like this, or do you reserve a special dislike for me?"

Mio borrowed his usual teasing expression, raised a brow, said nothing at all, and walked off with her head high.

Todo Teisei stood where he was, watching her back for a long time. At last, unexpectedly, he let out a sigh.

A few days later, Miyazaki Mio and the other young dancers were rehearsing backstage. Mio was the last to leave, and just then Kurosawa Reika called after her.

"Hey, you there. Wait."

Mio looked left and right, then pointed at herself.

Reika nodded arrogantly. "Yes, you. Go to Tsurumi Teahouse and pass a message to Boss Todo. Tell him I'm not feeling well tonight and will accompany him to dinner another day."

Mio was deeply unwilling, but the teahouse happened to lie on the way back to her home. It was not worth making an enemy of Kurosawa Reika over something so small, so she agreed.

Todo Teisei had already been waiting at the teahouse a long while. The appointed time with Kurosawa had passed, and she still had not appeared. His impatience was beginning to show by the time Miyazaki Mio walked in and found herself meeting the full force of his dark expression.

"Miss Miyazaki now investigates cases inside tea houses too?"

"No." She gave him a mocking little smile. "I'm here on Miss Kurosawa's behalf. She isn't feeling well and won't be coming." Her tone carried a trace of malicious satisfaction at his being made to wait for nothing.

Yet rather than getting angry, Todo smiled, stood, and pulled out a chair for her. "That's wonderful. If she isn't coming, then I have a chance to get a little closer to Miss Miyazaki instead."

Mio had originally meant to refuse. But she thought of how she had repeatedly antagonized him already. If he truly became angry and she could no longer stay at Tsukimi Hall, it would be far harder to keep investigating. Besides, perhaps she might extract something useful from him. So she sat down and, making no effort to hide her purpose, began asking him directly about Anzai Yoru and Kurosawa Reika.

Todo spoke with his usual smiling face, but his eyes remained fixed on her with unnerving attention, and Miyazaki Mio began to feel awkward under it. She lowered her head and lifted the teacup in front of her as cover, hoping to relieve the tension. But one of the passing servers was careless and bumped into her. The cup had only just touched her lips when it fell, spilling all over her.

Her moon-white dance dress darkened at once with great spreading patches of water.

Miyazaki Mio sprang up and unleashed a furious stream of abuse on the server without reserve. Todo Teisei had heard her answer him with cold mockery before, but never seen her truly angry. The pale skin of her face flushed lightly with emotion like a band of evening cloud, and for a moment he could only stare.

Almost no one in the world, perhaps, could have known what that moon-white dress meant to her. She treasured it just as she treasured the person who still lived in her heart. The dress had been a gift from Li Zhaoxi. The last time she had spilled tea on herself, he had dragged her into a dress shop and chosen this one for her with his own hand, even the color. He was gone now, but everything he had once given her, no matter how small, had become her most precious possessions. Sometimes she still thought that because she had never seen his body with her own eyes, perhaps he wasn't truly dead. Perhaps the river had only carried him away. Perhaps some kind fisherman had found him. Perhaps a miracle-working doctor had healed his wounds. Perhaps one day he would return to her alive, and all her waiting would be fulfilled.

Miyazaki Mio fled the teahouse in a panic.

And Todo Teisei, left behind in utter confusion, could not recover his wits for a long while.

Perhaps because she was too tense and had walked too fast, it was not long before Miyazaki Mio was struck by a dizzy spell. Her chest felt as if a stone had been pressed down on it, and something seemed to rise relentlessly in her throat. She staggered, caught herself against a utility pole, and slowly slid down it until she was kneeling on the ground.

Then someone ran up from behind in a panic and asked urgently, "Miss, what's wrong?"

"I... I..."

Mio only managed two words before her vision went black and she fainted. The person behind her caught her, then took off through the street with her in his arms.

Her mind remained vague, and she never understood exactly what happened after that. When she woke, she found herself lying in a strange room, simple and tidy. A man was sitting by the bed, frowning down at her.

She jumped in fright and sat bolt upright. "Who are you?"

The man scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. "You fainted by the roadside. I took you to a doctor. This is my home, because I didn't know where you lived. Please don't worry. I'm not a bad person. My name is Takahashi Hayato."

After hearing his explanation, Miyazaki Mio finally relaxed a little and asked, "Did the doctor say why I fainted?"

Hayato nodded. "He said your blood and energy are depleted. You must be working too hard."

Mio frowned and got out of bed at once, ready to leave. Takahashi Hayato did not try to stop her. He only said he would take her to the door and hail a rickshaw. Then Mio suddenly sharpened her gaze and stared at him.

"Have I seen you somewhere before?"

Hayato smiled awkwardly again. "I work at Tsurumi Teahouse. It was me who accidentally bumped into you during the day. You yelled at me."

Mio's expression cleared. She seemed to feel a little guilty about how harsh she had been and said, "I have a bad temper. Don't mind it."

He shook his head at once. "Not at all."

By then the rickshaw had arrived.

The next time Todo Teisei appeared, Miyazaki Mio felt as though an entire age had passed.

He had bought her a new dance dress.

The color, the style, the fabric, even the pattern, everything was exactly the same as the moon-white dress ruined by tea. It came in an exquisite box tied with ribbon and was delivered to the dressing room backstage. But Miyazaki Mio felt no joy, only sadness. Some things cannot be restored. Some things cannot be replaced.

She sent the dress back unopened to Todo Teisei's office.

Todo looked genuinely stunned and disappointed. "What? You don't like it?"

His tone was not teasing as it had been before. There was something low and wounded in it. Miyazaki Mio's heart stirred despite herself, yet she deliberately put on her usual defiant expression.

"You're not the one who spilled the tea, Boss Todo. Why go to all this trouble?"

But Todo Teisei was proud by nature. After being contradicted to his face so many times, he could not very well keep swallowing it. His face darkened again. "Do you know how many women in Osaka would beg for this sort of treatment? Do you think that because you've been given three shades of color, you can open a dye house?"

That line made Miyazaki Mio think of dead Anzai Yoru. She lowered her eyes lightly. A gust of wind stirred her bangs, and the fine strands cut through the damp air.

A few days later, Miyazaki Mio was sitting alone in Tsurumi Teahouse. The lazy afternoon sunlight warmed her into drowsiness. From time to time Takahashi Hayato came by to greet her, and once he even slipped her a plate of water-chestnut cakes, saying mysteriously, "A private gift. Don't let the boss find out."

Mio nearly laughed. She looked up, only to find his eyes on her, gentle and full of something limitless, like rain and spring wind spread over her all at once. She grew shy and only murmured a very soft thank-you before looking away.

Not long after, Todo Teisei arrived with Kurosawa Reika.

They were talking and laughing together as usual. Todo ordered Reika a special French rose tea, a pale clear red with tender rosebuds floating inside it. It was very pretty. Kurosawa Reika beamed. Then Todo rose slightly and personally set the cup before her.

"This tea is said to have beautifying effects. Drink more and you'll charm a few more admirers into collapsing at your feet."

But Kurosawa Reika froze instead of reaching for it. With a teasing pout she said, "I've told you often enough, but you never take it in. All that flirtation I show in public means nothing to me. Only what I feel for you is real."

Todo nodded at once. "Of course, of course. I remember every word Miss Kurosawa says."

He had barely finished speaking when the ring on his finger somehow slipped off.

It fell straight into the rose tea.

Todo exclaimed dramatically, and even Miyazaki Mio had to cover her mouth to hide a smile. He waved a hand and called, "Waiter, this tea is spoiled. Bring me another cup."

Takahashi Hayato came at once. Just as he bent to remove the cup, Todo Teisei suddenly seized his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, and pinned him against the edge of the table. Then he searched him and pulled out a brown glass bottle.

The label on the bottle identified it as an extremely poisonous pesticide.

Todo lifted it with grim satisfaction and gave it a little shake for Miyazaki Mio to see.

Mio came over slowly and looked from the aghast Kurosawa Reika to the furious Takahashi Hayato, then sighed.

It had all been their scheme.

After the quarrel in his office days before, Miyazaki Mio had gone to Todo with her suspicions. On her wrist she wore an iron bracelet decorated with carved flowers. After that sudden fainting spell on the street, she noticed that the bracelet had developed signs of slight corrosion. At first she could not understand it. The bracelet was not even a month old and she had taken good care of it. Why should it have worn away so strangely? But then the image of the spilled tea at Tsurumi Teahouse came back to her. She had a friend at a chemical factory quietly examine the bracelet, and the result proved exactly what she had suspected. The corroded area showed traces both of ordinary tea and of organophosphate pesticide.

She had begun to suspect that even her own collapse on the street had been a case of pesticide poisoning. Only the tea had spilled before she truly drank it, so the poison touched only a little skin and did not kill her. If that was so, then why had Takahashi Hayato told her the doctor said she merely lacked blood and energy? He had been lying, to hide the poison in the tea.

And if the poison had come from the teahouse, who would have had the chance to put it there? Naturally, one of the teahouse staff. The most likely person had heard that Todo Teisei was expecting Kurosawa Reika and had mixed the pesticide into her cup in advance, waiting for her to arrive. But instead Miyazaki Mio had appeared and almost taken her place, just as Anzai Yoru had died in Reika's place by using the wrong bottle.

If the murderer was still waiting for another chance, then Kurosawa Reika was the perfect bait.

And Takahashi Hayato was the most suspicious of all.

Miyazaki Mio explained this bold theory to Todo. He asked, amused, "And why don't you suspect me? The tea had been prepared before you came. I was sitting right across from you. It would have been simple for me to poison it myself."

Mio smiled thinly. "If you wanted Kurosawa Reika dead, you would have had many chances. You would never choose a method so public and so obvious. Besides, a man like you could easily buy someone else's hands. Why trouble yourself personally and invite complications?"

Todo laughed out loud. "Good. Very good. Then how do you want me to work with you?"

Mio hesitated and asked in return, "Do you really believe me?"

Todo frowned, then said, "Now that you mention it, I remember something. Before Anzai Yoru died, I bought two theater tickets. I was at Tsurumi Teahouse, and I know Takahashi Hayato well. He's always the one serving me there. So I had him deliver the tickets to Tsukimi Hall, one for Yoru and one for Reika. If he wanted to mix pesticide into a cosmetic bottle, he might well have done it then."

Hearing this, Mio understood at last why Hayato had looked familiar. She had not first seen him at Tsurumi Teahouse, but earlier, backstage at Tsukimi Hall, when she had pointed him toward the dressing tables.

But everything was still only deduction. Without catching him in the act, it would be difficult to convict him. And the reason he wanted Kurosawa Reika dead still remained unknown.

So Todo Teisei and Miyazaki Mio devised the little performance now playing out before them. Todo deliberately handed Reika the tea himself, then deliberately let his ring fall into it. The ring had been specially made, coated in a thin, highly sensitive layer of iron that would react to pesticide even more quickly than ordinary metal. The moment Todo saw signs of corrosion on its surface, he kept his face smooth, called Hayato over, and seized him before he could react.

Now Takahashi Hayato was pinned in Todo's grip like meat on a chopping block. Fire blazed in his eyes, and it burned hottest of all when it turned on Kurosawa Reika. She shrank back in fright.

"Why did you want to kill Kurosawa Reika?" Todo demanded.

Hayato said nothing. He only struggled harder. He was remarkably strong. Todo was beginning to lose control. The shocked onlookers stood around in a ring as if this were just another spectacle to watch. At last Todo's grip loosened for an instant, and Hayato tore free, dashing out of the teahouse.

Todo and Mio had just started after him when they heard a razor-sharp screech of brakes.

They ran to the street and found Takahashi Hayato lying there in blood, convulsing like a dying fish. A blue sedan stood not far ahead, its driver staring in horror and wailing his innocence.

"He ran out right in front of me. He was moving like an arrow. I didn't have time to stop."

Miyazaki Mio went rigid as she approached Hayato. She stood over him, looking down with the kind of sorrowful gaze that seemed to ask why he had done this at all. Hayato smiled with terrible difficulty and whispered in a voice little stronger than breath:

"I only want you to know this. I tried to kill Kurosawa Reika to avenge my younger sister."

There was no time for more.

It was Todo Teisei's people who uncovered the full story afterward. Hayato had once had a little sister with a grave illness, one who urgently needed money for surgery. He could not gather such a sum, so he turned to gambling. Desperate to win enough, he cheated. But Kurosawa Reika exposed him. At the time she had been attached to a wealthy salt merchant, sitting beside him when she happened to see Hayato's trick. The casino confiscated all Hayato's money and had him badly beaten. His sister, unwilling to burden him any longer, gave up treatment and slit her wrists.

When Takahashi Hayato died, Miyazaki Mio did not cry.

But when Todo Teisei finished telling her the whole story, her eyes turned red all at once. She would never forget that it had been Takahashi Hayato who stopped her from drinking the poisoned tea, and Takahashi Hayato who saved her when she collapsed. Before dying he had taken her hand and said:

"Every time I looked at you... I felt as if I were seeing my little sister again."

So that tenderness at the corners of his eyes had not been desire at all.

It had been longing for family. It had been the gentleness of an older brother.

She had misunderstood him. He should have been a warm and decent man. Only misfortune had pushed him into despair.

Miyazaki Mio erected a headstone for Takahashi Hayato and placed his ashes beside those of his little sister. Wild chrysanthemums were planted before their graves. Mio stood there for a long time while fine rain drifted in the wind.

When she finally turned to leave, she saw Kurosawa Reika.

Dressed in plain mourning clothes, stripped of all the gaudy seduction she wore at Tsukimi Hall, Reika walked past Mio and laid a bouquet of lilies before Hayato's grave. Then she murmured, "I never imagined that one sentence from me would wound you so deeply. I'm sorry."

The low words slipped into Miyazaki Mio's ears.

And suddenly she no longer hated this woman. Her arrogance and sharpness might have been nothing more than another mask. Mio thought of the sincerity Reika had shown toward Todo Teisei. In a way, a woman like her and a man like him really were worthy opponents. It was difficult to say who stood higher.

Outside the cemetery gates, Todo Teisei was waiting.

"I came especially to pick you up," he said.

Mio smiled. "There's no need. I'd like to walk by myself."

"Then I'll walk with you."

Mio looked at him seriously. "The person you should be waiting for is not me."

Todo's irritation flared again. "I've lowered myself this much. Why won't you accept me?"

Why?

Miyazaki Mio lifted her eyes toward the gloomy sky, beyond the umbrella he held above her head. "I won't be going back to Tsukimi Hall tomorrow," she said. "Or ever again."

For someone as proud as Todo Teisei, it felt like pain.

But he was not the man she was waiting for.

That is the way love toys with people. There is no reason to follow, no logic to trace. She knew perfectly well that the one she was waiting for would never return, and still she trapped herself inside memory, unable to pull free, unable to save herself. And as for him, his right hand clenched hard while footsteps sounded behind him. He did not turn around.

He knew someone was there, someone waiting for him with a hopeful heart.

But not the one he wanted.

The light in his eyes went out.

There is an old saying: a fine rain soaks the flowing light, and year after year the fragrant grass grows long with grief.