“Can you take me for a walk by the seaside?”
“Just the two of us.”
That gentle invitation, scattered by the wind beneath the setting sun, still seemed to echo in his ears.
But no matter how beautiful the dream, it would eventually come to an end.
3:15 AM.
Kaoru Hoshitani fell from that dream full of summer breezes and starlight back into reality, slowly opening his eyes.
The tears lingering in the corners of his eyes had already gone cold, trailing down his pale cheeks and vanishing into his temples.
The dark living room was deathly silent, save for the monotonous ticking of the wall clock.
He sat up blankly from the corner of the sofa.
The more beautiful and pure the dream, the more nauseating the swamp of reality became.
He remembered Rika’s suffocating predation in the Osaka office, remembered Chika’s subtle probing and control, and remembered his own broken body that would betray him with shameful reactions at the slightest touch.
I can’t keep going on like this.
I’m already… filthy to the core.
If he stayed here, this shell of his, rotting from the inside out, would eventually spread its foul juices onto Aina—ruining the new job she’d worked so hard to get, ruining the bright life she deserved.
It’s fine if I just rot alone in the mud.
If I just disappear quietly, Aina Onee-san will be safe.
Once that thought took root, it spread like weeds through his mind, consuming everything.
Kaoru stood up like a puppet without a soul.
He didn’t go to the bedroom for any belongings, didn’t take his wallet, didn’t even change out of his thin loungewear. He simply walked toward the foyer like a walking corpse.
The cold wooden floor numbed the soles of his feet.
He fumbled in the darkness to put on his shoes, slowly raising a hand whose knuckles had gone white from excessive tension.
Just as his ice-cold fingers were about to touch the metal handle of the security door—
“Click.”
The living room ceiling light flickered on without warning.
The harsh white light instantly pierced through the darkness, freezing Kaoru’s body in place.
“…Kaoru, where are you going?”
Aina’s voice came from behind him.
No drowsy laziness, no surprise—her voice was calm, gentle, yet carrying a barely perceptible tremor.
It felt like all the blood in Kaoru’s body was flowing in reverse at that moment.
He turned his head stiffly. Aina stood at the end of the corridor in her thin pajamas, barefoot, quietly watching him.
What Kaoru didn’t know was that Aina had woken up long ago.
Or rather, she hadn’t truly slept all night.
For the past hour, Aina had been hiding in the shadows of the corridor, biting down hard on the back of her hand, watching Kaoru silently cry at the withered sunflowers, watching him curl up on the sofa like an abandoned stray cat, watching him wake from his dreams with tears streaming, and watching him walk toward the door like a ghost.
He thinks he’s rotten. He wants to disappear alone, quietly, to pull me out of the mud.
The moment Aina saw through the boy’s intentions, her heart ached as if it were being ripped out alive.
She knew everything.
Knew about those unbearable unseen videos, knew what he’d faced when he flew to Osaka, and knew about that nauseating perfume scent on him that no amount of washing could hide.
If she could, she would rush forward and tear through that thin veil of pretense, shouting at him, “I know everything. None of this is your fault.”
But she couldn’t.
The tragedy in the videos started because they fought, and Kaoru ran away from home.
If I expose the truth now, Kaoru’s already shattered pride will crumble completely in an instant. He’ll feel he has no right to stay by my side anymore. He’ll run away from my world forever.
I absolutely cannot get angry.
I absolutely cannot expose him.
I have to pretend I know nothing!
Aina took a deep breath, pressing all the pain, struggle, and despair in her eyes deep into the core of her heart, letting only a smile of perfect, breathtaking gentleness surface on her face.
She walked toward the foyer step by step.
“I…”
With Aina approaching, Kaoru’s mind went completely blank, his fingers digging desperately into the door handle.
What do I do?
I’m going to be found out.
Aina Onee-san is going to see my filthy, disgusting true self…
Extreme panic made him stutter as he desperately cobbled together a pathetic lie:
“I… I’m just a little thirsty. I wanted to go down to the convenience store… to buy something to drink.”
3:30 in the morning…
No wallet, no phone, not even a jacket to ward off the night wind.
What kind of convenience store run was this?
The lie was so clumsy it wouldn’t fool a three-year-old.
Aina’s gaze swept over his empty hands, her heart wrenching, but the smile on her face didn’t diminish in the slightest.
“I see—”
She didn’t call him out.
Not only did she not call him out, she stepped forward instead, reaching out gently to wrap her arms around Kaoru’s waist from behind.
“…A-Aina?!”
Kaoru’s entire body convulsed violently. He instinctively tried to break free, but the girl behind him only held him tighter.
Aina pressed her cheek gently against the boy’s thin, stiff back, feeling the tremors running through his body through the thin fabric of his clothes.
Her voice carried a dependence that was impossible to refuse—almost pathologically clingy.
“It’s cold outside, Kaoru.”
Aina closed her eyes. Tears silently soaked through the fabric of his back, but her tone remained as sweet and coaxing as ever:
“If Kaoru wants something to drink, I’ll go buy it with you tomorrow, okay?”
“…Don’t leave me alone in the middle of the night. I’d be scared.”
Boom—
Something inside Kaoru’s mind collapsed completely.
No accusations. No suspicion.
Only this unreserved, one hundred percent trust and dependence.
If Aina had yelled at him, or called out his lie, Kaoru might have ridden that wave of reckless despair and pushed through the door into the night.
But Aina gave him the most lethal thing of all: “gentleness.”
Don’t be this kind to me…
Don’t show such a gentle expression to a piece of garbage who’s covered in mud and betrayed you…
Aina Saiten—
This “pure gentleness of one who knows nothing” had transformed into an invisible, cruel gallows, strangling Kaoru Hoshitani’s fleeing soul mid-air.
Overwhelming guilt and self-loathing, like highly corrosive acid, dissolved his organs completely.
“…I’m sorry.”
The fingers gripping the door handle finally loosened, one by one.
He turned around, like a drowning man grasping the last floating piece of driftwood, burying his face deep into Aina’s neck.
“I’m sorry… Aina… I’m not going anywhere…”
The boy wept in her arms like a dying child, scorching tears flowing freely, his shoulders convulsing violently.
“Yeah, I know.”
Aina gently stroked his soft hair, running her hand down his back again and again.
“Kaoru is such a good boy.”
“Kaoru would never leave me, right?”
She patted his back gently, but her gaze drifted over the boy’s shoulder, staring coldly at the closed security door.
Those eyes that had once been filled with sunflower starlight in dreams now churned with dark, mad obsession beneath the white light.
I’m sorry, Kaoru.
Even if I have to weave a net of lies, even if I have to watch you suffer through your disguises every single day…
I absolutely, absolutely will never let you leave my side.