The Tower of Tattle

"What were you thinking, Al? Did you not stop to think for two seconds?"

Looks like my mom won't be satisfied without dressing Al down even more. Though at this point, apologetic as he is, he seems a bit bored of it and like he's just nodding along. Actually, more than anything he looks tired. It's easy to forget he really is an old man.

"Sorry... thought it was a magic show," he mumbles, and the nodding along is starting to turn into nodding off.

Meanwhile, Shiori's fallen completely asleep with her head on Al's shoulder. She actually sleeps pretty quietly, listening to her now. But every so often she lets out a small whimper, and I can't help but feel sorry.

"I just don't know what to do, Al," my mom mutters, though by now even she knows she's just talking to herself. "Can I even trust you with the kids anymore?"

"Maybe if you'd been paying attention to us, you would've stopped us from going yourself," I say a bit icily. I can't help myself.

"Maybe you're right."

She says it in such a straightforward tone that I didn't really expect. And after that, besides the sound of the car rolling over cobblestone, everything's silent. It actually hurts a little more that she just agreed with me. But I'm not bothered by it.

Muto Pagetta, the sheriff, just keeps driving along silent as ever. Surprisingly, we're driving away from Rumeuri Hill, but we're still driving into the woods. I must not have gone here much before, because I'm surprised that we start passing by trailer homes. I guess even Sussurokawa's got its "other half."

My mom did say we "have to stop somewhere first" but I didn't expect it to be the sheriff's house. We pull into a gravel driveway, and the automatic light above the trailer's front door pops on just as we park. Unexpectedly, as Muto steps out of the car, so does my mom.

"Just wait here a moment M... Mu," my mom says.

"No. I want to come in." This is as good a place to start practicing my new strategy of proactiveness. My mom raises an eyebrow and pauses for a good long while, but...

"Suit yourself."

Weird that she didn't even stop to ask Muto. I get that there's no way he'd say no, but isn't that a little rude?

Honestly? Muto doesn't exactly look crazy about being home. Yeah, he looks stoic all the time, but now his steps have that extra 'trudge' to them. Maybe it'd be more accurate to say he doesn't sound crazy to be home, the way his feet drag ever so slightly against gravel, the way he has to lug himself up every step of the unvarnished deck

Muto unlocks the front door, and I almost sneeze from the smell of incense.

I don't know what I expected from a sheriff's home, except that it would probably be at least tasteful, and, for the most part, that's true for Muto's place. It's clean and restrained. For the most part.

I can't help but notice lately that wood really does tell the tale. Most of the furniture looks like pine to me. A bit scratched up and used... maybe even secondhand. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the floor is pine, too. Normally you'd expect carpet or linoleum, or at least fake wood, but I step onto it and the way the sound rings out I just know.

There's oak too, just like my house, but it's reserved for a couple of important pieces of furniture. The first is a desk, probably Muto's, in the corner of the trailer right by the entrance to a small hallway -- which definitely leads to bedrooms. And the second is a huge bookshelf right across from where we came in.

And that's the big sore thumb. The bookshelf takes about as much of the long wall as it can. And it's filled to the brim with occult crap. There's a whole shelf with nothing but crystals on it. A vaguely alchemical looking chalice with obtuse symbols lords over the top shelf, centered on an altar cloth which is hanging off a bit. Books with tarot trumps on the spine, or astrological signs, or evil malicious looking eyes all compete for shelf space.

It's like all the eccentric got quarantined to one shelf. I get the vibe that this home is one bad day away from pentagrams finally taking over the whole place and just ruining the interior decorating. Plus, I hate to say it, it's pretty clear whose bad day would tip the trailer home's balance into complete occultism.

She's sitting right at the dining table engrossed in a book right now. I guess from here I can't really see what she's reading, but the fixation on her face and creepy smile doesn't exactly scream med student to me. She hardly looks up at her husband and nods, pointing to some cold dinner sitting on the counter.

It's Prima Pagetta. The woman who disappeared before the murders... and came back after Sussurokawa Cove was already wispier than a myth -- a town entirely and unceremoniously forgotten.

"Sorry. I would've made more if I knew people were coming."

She doesn't even look at us.

"Prima."

Surprisingly, it's not Muto who speaks to her first, but my mom. I can swear I see Muto's eyes narrow a bit, and he tactfully puts a hand on my back to direct me around to his desk, while he starts looking through it.

"Yes, Lessie?"

"Don't call me, Lessie. I don't like when you act too familiar with me."

There's a lot of weird energy in the air right now, and it's not from the moon, quicksilver, or Satan. I hear Muto's tongue click -- for him, a dramatic expression of emotion -- and I suddenly remember that my mom does not usually care what people call her, because I know I've heard random workers around the house call her Lessie.

"Lessie," the woman looks up slowly, and completely ignores the imperative. "How was the meeting of the Order of Light? Did you learn anything about magecraft today?"

Huh? Magecraft?

"Prima," my mom says, a hand rising to her forehead and a vein throbbing in her temple. "This cult is getting dangerous. The town feels like it's going to be swept by it any day now. I need to crack down on it. Do you understand?"

"Sure," Prima says amiably. "Why not?"

Prima is a really creepy woman. Though, maybe even more jarring than Prima herself is the way she seems to get under my mom's skin. I can't help but think there's something a little... childish about the way my mom seems to need control of this conversation.

"That's why I can't have the wife of the town's sheriff participating as a member of that cult. None of us have the time to deal with you harassing us. Muto doesn't have the time to deal with you harassing him."

"I'd say you're the one harassing me right now."

"Are you kidding me, Prima? You're really going to pretend a few candid words are as bad as you killing small animals and hanging them around town? Putting disgusting fluids in people's meals?"

I tug at Muto's sleeve. "Um... I probably shouldn't be saying this. But is it really fine for you to just stand by while my mom yells at your wife?"

Muto just stays silent. He pulls out the desk's pencil drawer, feeling around for a while before finally grasping something. From what I can tell, he had something taped to the top of the drawer, and sure enough, he pulls out a key. Then he crouches down and with a bit of a groan reaches toward the back of the desk, again feeling for something. And yet again, he pulls out a key.

Prima's stare never breaks, nor her smile. "Lessie, right now you're in mine and Muto's home. You should calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm you crazy bitch!" my mom snaps, and I flinch instinctively. She tries to take a few soothing breaths and continues: "...What I'm trying to say nicely, Prima, is that you can do all your occult bullshit as much as you'd like after we deal with this. I need a way to arrest the cult leader without the town rioting."

Prima just shrugs, and I'm pretty sure I can see It's effortless psychological attrition. If I ever thought I wanted to see my mom thoroughly helpless and on the back foot, I was wrong. This is deeply, primally unpleasant.

Though her voice quiets a shade, my mom's eyes only get darker, and I see the slightest tremor in her lips. "Prima, do you not understand that you're putting your husband in danger? Do you realize we have four measily officers to protect a town of 1000 people?"

Prima giggles scornfully. "Are you really calling it protecting us?"

This is getting really bad.

Meanwhile, my mom's voice is getting louder and louder, and Prima's voice is getting more derisive.

But Muto just again takes me tactfully and walks me over to the hallway, and into one of the bedrooms. The door stays open, and so the yelling doesn't get quieter. So I'm not sure how much better this really is. But I guess in here we can try our best to pretend.

Now here's a room that looks it's been left untouched for ages. That doesn't mean it's not striking, though. Looking around, I'm shocked how much a simple change of color can almost bring you into a different world.

Almost.

With walls somewhere around cerulean, even this small cramped space can look like the open sky. The touch of an amateur hand is there, the slightly uneven paint, the noticeable but not wild drips and streaks. It looks like the work of someone who did a good job -- for a first job. Someone who worked painstakingly even if they didn't have a perfect handle on it. Someone who really cared.

It makes me think that someone lived in this room, in this trailer, some long time ago, and wished they could escape. So they tried to will their small little slice of the world into a sanctuary. Dreaming of somewhere else, they painted their walls as blue as the sky. But they could never fully escape, because those very same walls were thin like the air.

"Who's... room is this, Officer Pagetta?"

"Just call me Muto," he says. Not quite the gruff voice I was expecting. It comes out sounding deep, clear, and surprisingly thoughtful. "Or Mr. Pagetta's fine if you're uncomfortable."

"...Officer Pagetta."

"It's a room that used to belong to my daughter. My daughter who went missing. Now it's... a place to store certain things."

"...Missing with... all the other children?" I ask.

He actually looks me in the eye now.

I'd pegged him as just the stoic type, but thinking about it, he's almost actively avoidant of eye contact. So, now that he's looking at me straight on, it makes his gaze more meaningful. It seems like he's about to say something before he just looks away and moves purposefully to the far corner of the room. Seems like Muto's stuff always gets pushed to one corner or another.

There's basically only three things in this room. There's a bed with a plain white pillow, and plain white sheets. As nondescript and anonymous as it gets. Then there's a short bookshelf of pine that looks really hand-me-down, almost like it's gonna fall apart, and even though it barely comes to my waist the shelves are low occupancy.

Then there's a gun safe.

Muto's opening that up instead of answering me. I can't help but politely look away when he puts in his combination -- not that I'd ever steal a frickin' police officer's gun -- and by the time I look back, he's already unlocking it with the two keys he got from his desk earlier. Then, amazingly, he pulls out his wallet, and from it another key.

"You... really don't trust your wife, do you?"

"Not with a gun, I don't. Would you?"

"Nuh uh. No way. Never."

At that, he just nods. And now he's examining the gun he pulled from it, reflexively checking to make sure it's not loaded. He stares at it a while, mulling something over, before placing it back. Instead, he brings out a taser. And a can of mace.

I don't think he minds, but the longer I look at an old guy handling lethal weapons, the more I feel like it's weird for me to look. And barely, just barely, I pick up on something with my ears from the bookshelf anyway. So, I tip toe there nonchalantly.

There's only enough books to halfway fill the top shelf. A book on bushcraft. A book on saving money. A psychology book. A book on electronics. These are the kinds of worn down books sitting there. Muto's daughter, imagined or not, must have been extremely practical.

'The Design of Everyday Things'

'Bullfinch's Mythology'

'What's What? A Physical Glossary of the Real World'

It's from the very last one there that I hear the rustling. And when I surreptitiously open the book, the snitch inside flips its small paper bird head toward me, absolutely shocked, like I caught it sleeping. This one's small. Real small. With thin wings miraculously vibrating more than just flapping, I realize this one's a hummingbird. And it's zipping around the room, then out, away from me, because apparently the last thing it wants is to be caught.

Wait. That's bad.

"Um! I'm gonna check on my mom!" I blurt out, trying to rush into the trailer's den as unsuspiciously as possible.

Zip. Zip. Zip. My eyes flutter around trying to catch fluttering wings, and the snitch zips around trying in futility to zip completely out of sight. There's nowhere for it to go in this small trailer, and it keeps banging into things. Into the cream colored wallpaper, into a gaudy glowing heavy slab of quartz on the shelf, into the closed-shut front door over and over and over hoping to escape into the cold night air. I'd feel sorry for it, except that the stupid, anxious thing's frenetic flight also happens to be pulling me into its turbulence.

Because almost the second I walk out, I watch the book Prima was reading fly right across the trailer, crashing into a cupboard and clattering, maybe breaking the dishes within. Even the creepy, obnoxious, unflappable Prima looks shocked.

Somehow Muto, walking into the den as quiet as ever, is the only one not shocked. My mom's shocked at herself. Prima's trembling. My eyes are darting just about everywhere.

"That's enough, Lessia." Muto's voice doesn't sound any harsher than usual. But it comes out as clear as normal -- and that's its own kind of poise.

"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for," my mom says, with a shaking voice... but a cold voice. "But I want to hear it right from your mouth Prima. Say you're not going to participate in any more of these stupid games."

"...sure. Whatever you say little miss tyrant. I won't participate." Prima spits the words out with more than a little disgust.

She sounds extraordinarily tired as she says it. And for a moment, she really does just look like an old woman way past her prime, tired of being threatened and harried by someone younger. I desperately don't want to notice it, but I can see it in the twitchy way she sneers. Prima's afraid.

Right then my mom wasn't just mean, or domineering, or strict. She looked vicious. She was scary.

She scared me.

---

---

On the way out of Muto's place, I discreetly caught the snitch between the pages of The Codex the way you squish a mosquito with a clap. The snitch must have lost all its energy listening to that fight too, because it hardly even tried to buzz away.

I'll look at it tomorrow.

The cruiser's still warm and running when we get in, which is enough to keep Al and Shiori dozing away even when the cabin light briefly pops on. A few bleary blinks from Shiori maybe, and a few groans, but the second they're off she's back to sleep again, and we're rolling back out of the gravel driveway.

As for me, the stress and nervous energy's keeping me going. I've been exhausted all day. I'm still exhausted. But you could throw me into a cozy bed right now and I doubt I'd get any sleep. And it's one unpleasant feeling after another, because as we keep cruising deeper through dark, rural roads, I realize we're headed to Monika to drop Shiori off.

...Actually, this might be really bad. What happens if we get separated? No. No... that's not the issue right now. Even if Monika's some kind of robot right now, she's an evil robot. I don't want to leave Shiori with her. Ever. But for some reason those stupid kid emotions start coming in. The kind where you can't bring yourself to ask something because you know they'll say no.

"M-mom. Do we have to drop Shi-"

"We do."

"Why?!"

"It's not like I feel good about it," my mom says looking back with that half-apologetic face I hate. "But... we can't just kidnap her."

"B-but you know it's the right thing to do!"

"It's not the legal thing to do.

"Mom!"

When I hear Shiori stirring beside me, I instantly regret how I'm so stupidly incapable of not getting pulled into the pace of mother and daughter. She must have basically gotten the picture, because she doesn't do much but keep blinking, with eyes barely open. Just a look that says she's used to it. Which means she's back in it -- that mental and emotional space she was when she was really this age. Just... your typical, everyday despair.

That's when I resolve myself.

"Shiori," I really really try to whisper softly, and this time I'm literally right in her ear no matter how stupid it looks when my mom can just watch us conspire through the rearview mirror. "Let's run away tonight."

"H-huh? That's crazy M... Mu," Shiori says in sleepy, sad tones. "I'll find you tomorrow. It's okay."

I can almost hear my mom's eyebrows raising.

Shiori gives me a pretty, fake smile. The first smile all night, and it's a despairing one. My head starts running through the scenarios to sneak out at night, and go get her, but I don't know if I could walk this far, um, maybe if I rode my bike? We have a car we never use, but I don't know where my mom hides the keys... wait, that's a really stupid idea.

What happens if I die in here?

We arrive, before I can work out any more details of what was definitely going to be a bad plan. Muto pulls the cruiser up to the curb of a small house that looks quaint and peaceful in the cold and cricketing night. And...

"Monika's car isnt here," my mom with a cold, quiet voice.

"A lot of nights she's not home," Shiori says, still with her fake smile. "T-thank you for dropping me off."

Shiori says that but she freezes up there for a moment, just silently hugging Yorick. I hear her take in a ragged breath, and let out a ragged sigh, and in the quiet moments that follow, just when it seems like she's emotionally prepared herself to go in, my mom speaks up.

"We can't just leave you alone in an empty house, Shiori. Go get some clothes."

Shiori immediately perks up.

"Okay! I'll be right back!" She yells it so loud Al momentarily wakes up in a fluster and whips his head around like he's in a fight.

She basically jumps across me to open up the car door, and flies out in a rush, probably afraid that Monika's gonna come back any moment and my mom's gonna lose her excuse.

For a second, every single negative feeling I had about my mom just vanishes. But true to form, she finds a way to sabotage it immediately.

"...Mu. Tonight. About that ritual. Tell me you won't participate in these stupid games anymore."

Huh? Huh??? Did I hear her right? Is she finding a way to somehow blame me for this?

"What?" I can barely believe it. So, I don't even respond properly.

"Tell me you won't participate in these stupid games anymore," she says sternly.

"What makes you think I WANTED this to happen?" I snap. Why does she always say things in the most absolute antagonistic way? I know this doesn't matter, but there's been so much negative emotion building in me I should be applauded for holding it in this much. "Why are you always, always like this?!"

But she just keps at it. "Give me your word that you won't."

"Of course I won't!"

"Say it."

"W-what?"

"Say, 'I won't participate in these stupid games.'"

"I alread-"

"SAY it." Her voices hitches up for a sec, and I just gape and feel my eyes blinking really fast again.

"I... won't participate in these stupid games."

"Okay. Thank you."

"...What's wrong with you?"

I'm not exactly proud of the way I say it with so much disgust. But I can't help it. Sometimes you just want your words to sting. And you don't really regret it until you wait, and wait, and they don't say a word back. Which my mom doesn't. She just lets the silence sit, and wordlessly rests her head against the window of the passenger seat. And the way her shoulders slump, I find myself wishing we'd just never said anything at all.

---

---

Shiori's been all smiles and all humming ever since she got her stuff from Monika's house. Where's Yorick? He's in a big 'ole paper bag -- the kind you'd get from a department store -- and rolling around her clothes toothbrush happily, taking in her mood.

Cotton Eyed Joe. That's right. The only sounds in the car are the wheels on road, Al's snoring, and Shiori humming Cotton Eyed Joe. There's almost more silence in the car than there is sound. There's the strained silence between me and my mother. There's Muto being...mute-o. And there's the general air of tired silence that permeates a long day. The only reason Shiori's an exception is because she just recovered from a fitful bout of her own silence.

I guess we're taking shifts.

From there to my bed is a blur with just a few highlights of wakefulness for me. I think I remember Al making old man sputtering noises when we woke him up to drop him off at The Creepy Peach. Seeing him lean against Hannah as he tiredly walked and waved goodbye was a sweet moment in an otherwise awful night. I don't remember drifting off... But before I know it, I wake up in a fright, Shiori slumbering away right next to me as we share my bed.

It's strange how people work. For a moment, I'm in a reverie, dreaming my first dream. I dream about a time I spent a week away from home because my mom made me some outdoorsy summer camp. Now that I think about it, isn't it weird how fixated I used to be about 'knowing how to survive?' I hated it, actually, and I hated being away from home, and I didn't make any friends.

I'd only been there a week, but somehow by the end of it, it felt like I'd been there my whole life. It was like only my lonely life at camp pretending I liked learning to pitch tents was the real one, and everything I'd lived up to that point had been some kind of passing dream. I was so miserable when I was there it felt like I'd never be happy again. But when I finally went home, just a few days was all it took for my horrible experience at camp to be the bad dream.

Right now, it's the same thing. Just more intense. More profound. More painful. I'd spent so long as some kind of half-spirit that couldn't even sleep that I can't begin to guess how long it's been since I'd been in a bed. But I just woke up in one, startled, because I'd been too tired to even remember how I got there. It's just funny I guess. I'd been craving a bed "all day." I've been craving having any slice of humanity all "my life." And here I come, to Sussurokawa, and remember I had my whole other life. My real life. And in so many ways, in any sane kind of existence, my time wasting away in the Tower of Tattle should be considered the 'fake life.'

So, here I am now, staring at the ceiling of my room. I didn't even get to 'go to' bed. I just woke up in one all of a sudden -- at least from my perspective. And I realize what I'm wishing for desperately is that everything else, every tragedy in my life that I don't even remember the details of, every tragedy in my life that, from my "relived" perspective is actually about to happen... I hope with all this stupid futility that they're just dumb nightmares that lasted way, way, way too long. I look at Shiori's sleeping face, and I get to live out that little fantasy of denial, imagining how I'll tell her in the morning about the my awful nightmare.

But then I see Yorick asleep right next to her and I know. I'm forced to know. All my past is real, and the only future I can see ahead of me is so fake you can't even call it a future. It's just the same old VHS tape, now on rewind.

---

"She carried me to bed?" I ask, incredulously. I mean, that's the only explanation that makes any sense of course, but... imagining my mom doing anything that tender seeming just throws me for a loop. "Did she hit my head against any walls on purpose? Pinch me anywhere to vent her frustration?"

Shiori just shakes her head earnestly at my dumb joke. "Nope. She even kissed your forehead goodnight."

I feel myself blanching at the thought. Is it embarrassing? Not even. I literally can't believe it happened. At least not emotionally. "You should've filmed it then. Got a camcorder? Maybe we'll get a shot of Big Foot, too?"

"I've tried... But he's really shy," Shiori says matter-of-factly. "But um, all that said. What exactly are we doing right now? Why are we spying on your mom?"

"We're not. Why would you say that?"

"We're looking at her through binoculars..."

"I'm not spying on her. I'm just looking at her. And um, all the other people who live on Rumeuri Hill. When else are we gonna get a chance to see them all together?" I ask.

"When you put it like that, it does make sense!" Shiori tilts her head in thought.

Three days before the first murder, everyone who lived on Rumeuri Hill got together. This morning, my mom unceremoniously banged on my door saying we both were supposed to be up by now getting ready.

My eyes shot open. I suddenly remembered. Everyone was at this party.

Every murder victim. Alphonse Krabb, Hannah Crecer, Nick Otkropenko, and Kyrie and Clarie Stodakis.

A lot of memories have been coming to me like a humid climate seems to get inside your clothes. You can just feel it percolating and sticking to you, and you can't tell the moisture in the air from your own sweat. So a lot of times I don't even have a 'flash' of memory. It's like I'll be in the some place or conversation, and the blanks just fill themselves in moment-to-moment, sometimes so seamlessly I don't even realize I 'unforgot.'

But this one absolutely flashed into my brain, like someone decided to put the memory in a special place and leave a note I'd never miss.

Carefully, thoughtfully, and highly logically I thought it over.

That sudden and intense act of remembering can't simply be because this party had some big emotional event. Otherwise, the evil, awful, terrible seance we were at last night should have struck

There's something important about this party. And something in this Tower wants me to remember it's important. We just have to suss it out. The nature of the party itself is a big hint.

It's a celebration of the founding families of Rumeuri Hill. The Crecer Family, who cultivated the land. The Otkropenko family, who built the town's basic infrastructure. And the Stodakis family, who built the town's backbone, its economy of mining and fishing.

Al... Al's just sort of a groundskeeper I guess? Everytime I ever asked as a kid, I'd always just hear "he's like everybody's grandpa." He used to take care of the lighthouse too, before a lot of its maintenance got automated, and before my mom took over the job.

...Oh yeah. That's the last family. Mine. But I can't remember our family name. Our family discovered the land or something. My mom always sound so disinterested talking about it that I never cared either.

Speaking of old history, Shiori and I looked through the snitch we got from Muto's house yesterday. It's... something.

Unless it's all some huge coincidence, we've got a story that's starting to manifest here, because all these codex entries we're reading match too well to ignore.

Even if you just compare the entries one-to-one, you can hear it all as the notes start playing together. It doesn't take a genius to see that Girl X here is talking about whoever writes the 'Musings from a Certain Heiress.' The Heiress's Sister has the Keijo Soku. And here Girl X mentions that the 'loud-mouth sister' has the Keijo Cho. And The Heiress talks about the Netabare name. Which means if she's an heir to something, it's the Netabare lineage.

The Netabares way back when were already trying to reach The Root or Sophia, or whatever by finding a bunch of kids with super senses. Girl X was taken from her family. A bunch of children from Sussurokawa disappeared maybe. Or maybe they never existed in the first place. Then this whole Tower is made for getting to The Root.

I'm not saying I get every part of it, but the throughline is pretty clear. Sussurokawa was some kind of hunting ground for them. Oh yeah. And also they had a secret recipe for a potion to make people forget things. Wouldn't that be a convenient way to make a whole town forget the children you stole?

"So? What do you think?" I ask, having detailed the theory out to Shiori while scanning the party. I'm pretty good at multitasking actually. My mom's laughing a lot...

I peek out one side of the binoculars to look at Shiori just stretching Yorick out like spaghetti, and he seems pretty relaxed about it. I really do want to play with Yorick too... but you know what? She's been really really bad about sharing since she's become a kid again.

"It makes sense," she says thoughtfully. "Being able to do all this in secret would enhance the amplification effect you get from a reversed mana flow... And the Netabares specialized in secrets. Ironically, it's the only reason anybody ever kept up with their existence is because they were a fixture in the mache... machines... "

"Machinations." What's Hannah talking about with Nick?

"Yeah, yeah! The mecha-nations of so many secret societies."

"Secret societies? Like... you don't mean the Illuminati do you?" Huh. Al really does just work on crossword puzzles when he's bored.

"Uhuh. And the scary ones too. Lots of Gnostic cults. The Freemasons. And then the El Los Illuminados in Los Angeles. They're super scary. I remember this one time! They got these two guys from Brazil and just locked them up with masks and then -"

Shiori shudders and suddenly stops talking apparently having scared herself. She gets real quiet for a bit, but then she gives me a serious look -- always ill-fitting with her young body.

For some reason it makes me nervous to see it. So, I start looking through the binoculars again. My mom looks a little mad. What's new? Wait, is she looking for us?

"Y-you know. We don't have... a lot of time left. I think... um... maybe we should be doing something more useful," Shiory says, surprisingly bluntly.

"I already told you, this must be where everything starts. This party's got to be tied with the mu-"

"We're not trying to solve the murders though," Shiori says, firmer than usual. "W-we... that's not our job, you know? We just want to find your journals and get you out, remember?"

Doesn't my mom's outfit look kind of tacky today? That shade of red...

"We probably have to solve the murders to get my name and journal back," I shrug. I'm not even really looking at anything through the binoculars right now. But I can't bring myself to look at her straight.

Sometimes delivering a hard truth takes nonchalance, right? What are the chances we got warped back in time, through our memories, to the point right before a set of murders and the murders aren't involved? Shiori shouldn't have to relive anything. I shouldn't have to relive anything. But I doubt we have much of a choice.

I know it's really awkward but this is the only way I can think to deliver the bad news.

"You and I both know that's not what's going on M...Mu!" Shiori snaps. "Y-you're not spying on everyone right now because you think it's gonna help you solve some mystery! You know that!"

Shiori steps over and gently pulls the binoculars from my face. Maybe she's seen me looking longingly because she shoves Yorick in my hands to play with, while she looks at me with the utmost concern. I feel sort of vulnerable for some reason...

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," I stutter.

"These are toy binoculars," Shiori says sadly. "You miss everyone. I miss everyone. And we keep... getting pulled in. And it's almost all my fault. Whenever I'm near them, it's like I revert! But right now I can think clearly, a-and... I just... I don't think you're prepared for what comes next. Even if we can't, we h-have to try and get this done before the murders. A-and... we can't spend as much time around everyone anymore. Or we'll keep losing ourselves over and over."

The silence hangs between us for a while."

And I let go for just a moment, to hug Yorick to me just like a little kid would.

"You're... right."

I feel stupid all of a sudden for not even noticing. I need to be looking for snitches right now. The murder's a sideshow we don't want to be in. We couldn't even handle a scary seance. And everyone, and my mom... are just part of a happy dream we have to leave before it becomes a nightmare.

I'd even resolved myself yesterday to remove myself emotionally. All night, I thought about what made this place so tempting and so scary as if thinking about it enough would make me immune to it.

It would have been so much easier if I just hated Sussurokawa with all my heart...

But let's take an objective look. I'm hugging a big ball of slime like a teddy bear. I was just spying with toy binoculars, and last night I was basically excited by a sleepover. Every two seconds I seem to be having some sort of daughter-mother squabble, and right now Shiori and I even have ribbons in our hair because my mom wanted us to dress nice, and I'm not gonna lie some part of me wanted to throw a tantrum over it.

I guess the stupid binoculars were my way of begging the universe for compromise. If I couldn't be around them, then I could at least watch them from afar. See my mom a bit longer, for what might... be the last time.

But we can't afford to keep doing that. If there's any chance of finding a real future, I've gotta let go of the past.

"You're right, Shiori," I say again. "We need to figure out how to stay away from them. As much as it hurts."

"Y-yeah..."Shiori nods. She looks really antsy and I think she wants Yorick back. But she gave him to me so I'm gonna hug him like this for a while.

"Hi. Who are you two hiding from?" Clarie Stodakis asks.

"Just the adults," I say. "It's too hard to explai - ack! Where'd you come from?!"

Standing behind us listening for who knows how long is one of those adults herself: Claire Stodakis. Kyrie's twin sister and the fifth murder victim.