Chapter 74: Flowers and Secrets

Nana

Ivory was spitting on paper when Nana woke up.

Small, careful spits. Fingertip-sized. She’d press the wet patch onto a torn edge, hold it, blow on it, then stick the next piece into place. The spit dried clear and hard.

“What are you doing?”

Ivory flinched. Two pieces fell apart.

“Reconstructing.” Her voice was thin. “That creature shredded my—they’re my notes, Nana-chan, and that little menace cut them into—”

“Use tape.”

“What is tape.”

Nana found it in the desk drawer and tossed it. It hit Ivory in the face.

“Ow.”

“You’re two hundred and fifty-six. Catch better.”

Ivory peeled the tape off her cheek and pressed a strip over two fragments. The writing on them wasn’t Japanese. Not English either. Characters that curved where Japanese cut straight, with dots above certain clusters.

“What language is that?”

“Hm? Old language. Dead now.”

“Dead how?”

“The people who spoke it fell out of the sky.” She said it the way someone talks about a canceled show. “There, mostly legible.”

Nana leaned over her shoulder. Thirty lines of cramped handwriting that tilted left. She couldn’t read any of it.

But she saw her own name.

Three times in fact.

“Why’s my name on there?”

Ivory covered the page with both hands. “It’s not.”

“I can see it. Right there, and there.”

“Those are similar characters that resemble your name in a superficial—”

“You’re lying and you’re bad at it.”

Ivory’s violet eyes darted to the door, the window. “They’re observations. About the Marrow. The Key. How the bond between a vestige and its host manifests in proximity to…”

“To me.”

Ivory said nothing.

Nana looked at the page a second longer, then sat back.

“I’m hungry. Is there rice?”

“You ate it all,” Nana said, already knowing the answer.

“I did not eat it all. The cheddar puffs I hid behind the—”

“Those were hidden?”

Her stomach growled. Actually, both stomachs growled. They’d been up all morning without breakfast.

Nana grabbed the phone. Bureau quarters had a direct line to the cafeteria—OG told her last time.

Dial six, someone brings food.

The cord hung in four neat pieces. Cut ends clean as paper.

“Jii.”

Gone with Mio since dawn, still ruining Nana’s morning from across the city. She’d gotten the TV cable too. Ivory had missed the confession scene in episode forty-three. Mirae was going to tell Junho about the baby.

Ivory had not recovered from this.

No food. No phone. No TV. Only the gray government walls, couches as old as Ivory probably, and two starving girls.

Nana pulled her knees up.

“Ivory.”

“Yes Nana-chan.” Ivory was trying to line up her notes now. Well, what was left of them.

“When you write about me in your notes. What do you say?”

Ivory’s hands stopped at the creases.

“I told you. Observations about the bonds between you and the vessel.”

“I’m not stupid.”

Ivory looked up, met the little girl’s brown, determined eyes. Failed to maintain it.

“I know,” Ivory said, quieter than she meant to.

Nana picked at a thread on her pajama sleeve.

“My aunt killed three hundred and forty-five thousand people,” Nana said.

Ivory didn’t flinch.

“Pontos’s champion.”

“You knew.”

“Gaian-sama told me. Before I came through. That the tides are stable. That Pontos’s champion did something terrible for someone small.” Ivory set down her papers. “She didn’t say who.” She met Nana’s eyes again.

“You were there too, in the Marrow. Have you met your auntie?”

Nana blinked hard, nodding once, twice. “I met her. She’s in this building. Downstairs.” She had to push the next part out. “She has green eyes like my sister. She called me Nana-chan.”

Ivory opened her mouth.

Three knocks on the door interrupted her.

“Nana-saaan! Now that your sister’s out, I thought I’d drop off more snacks for you! You love cheddar puffs, don’t you?”

They both screamed.

Ivory’s presence snuffed out like a candle. Then flickered back. Then snuffed again—but not all the way. Nana could still feel her in the room. Like standing next to someone in the dark.

“Hide,” Nana hissed.

“I’m trying—”

“Bathroom. Go.”

Ivory scrambled on all fours. Nana grabbed fistfuls of purple hair off the pillow, the floor, the chair. How did one person shed

this much?

“Nana-san? You awake?”

“ONE SECOND!”

She swept Ivory’s notes into the desk drawer. Spit-glued pages with her name in a dead language, all in the drawer. Cut phone cord behind the nightstand.

The bathroom door clicked shut. Ivory’s stomach growled through it.

Nana grabbed the last cheddar puff crumb from between the couch cushions and cracked the bathroom door.

“Eat this.”

“That’s not—”

“Eat it.”

Ivory ate it. The feeling in the room went quiet.

Nana smoothed her hair before opening the door. It went back up in tangles.

OG stood in the hallway with convenience store bags on her wrists and a melon bread between her teeth. She bit down, tore the wrapper, caught the bread in her free hand.

“Morning, sweetie.”

“OG!”

OG stepped sideways in the doorway and kicked her heels off. Her scent filled the room and lingered.

Same perfume from last time. Floral and too sweet.

“Cheddar puffs, melon bread, onigiri—salmon, because tuna is a lie.” OG set the bags on the desk and sat on the edge of the couch. It barely dipped. “Your sister’s at Ajinomoto Stadium. B-grade with two others. She’s fine.”

Nana’s mouth opened, but her question had already been answered.

OG patted the space next to her.

She sat.

OG looked at the TV. “Why’s it off? Aren’t you bored?”

“Erm, rats got to the wires. It’s all messed up.”

“Oh.” She dangled an onigiri to Nana’s face. “Want it?”

“Yes,” Nana said, already stuffing her face. The salmon in it was still warm.

“Don’t worry, rats find themselves all over the place. I’ll call in a maintenance slip for you.”

Then came a thud from the bathroom—elbow on tile.

OG’s eyes went to the bathroom door. She was ready to stand up, assess it like the Agent she was. Nana bit into the onigiri as loud as she could.

OG looked at her, then at the bathroom. She pulled out her phone instead. A photo—park, cherry blossoms, a woman on a bench with a toddler on her lap. Chubby cheeks, one shoe missing.

“My sister’s kid. Souta.” OG turned the screen toward her. “Three years old. Threw his shoe into the pond twice this week. Hates shoes but loves pudding. Cries when you say the word ’dentist.’”

She pocketed the phone.

“OG-san.”

“Hmm?”

Nana turned the onigiri over. Rice stuck to her fingers. “Last time you came. You told me where to go.”

OG’s face didn’t change.

“And I went.”

OG unwrapped her own onigiri and took a small bite.

“How was it?”

“She has green eyes. Like my sister.”

“I know.”

“She knew my name.”

“I know that too.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me who she was?”

OG wiped her fingers on her skirt. “Would you have believed me?”

An aunt she’d never heard of, locked in a basement, who’d killed hundreds of thousands and looked like her sister. From a woman she’d met once.

“No.”

“So I gave you directions.” OG shrugged. “You’re a Tamei. You were going to find your way down there. I just made sure you didn’t get caught.”

“Does my sister know?”

“She knows the name. Knows she’s here. Doesn’t know the rest.”

Nana did. Nami was her aunt. Father’s sister. Three hundred and forty-five thousand dead. Green eyes that matched Mio’s.

And Mio didn’t know any of it.

Only knew what Segawa told her. Back when Nana was still dripping bathwater down Kagami’s fist after walking through a magical water portal. When her sister lost her arm and her only friend Can became the replacement.

Back when she met her auntie and decided not to tell her sister.

“You should tell her,” OG said.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Because Mio would kick the door down and demand answers and someone with more authority than OG would make her pay for it. And probably kill everyone.

“Because she’ll do something stupid.”

OG laughed. Covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yeah, she would.”

They ate.

“Third floor,” OG said. “Second desk from the window. That’s me. If your sister’s out and you need anything, you come find me.”

“Okay.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

OG checked her phone. “Gotta go now. More paperwork for the old lady.”

“You’re not that old!”

OG smiled, gathered the bags. Left one on the couch. “Two more onigiri in there. And juice. Don’t let the pipes eat them.”

She winked, slipped back into her heels. Stepped into the hallway. Pulled the door behind her—leaving just the tiniest gap. The way Mio always left it.

Nana went to the gap.

Stared at OG walking down the corridor under dim lights. Humming a commercial jingle. Souta probably loved it.

The elevator at the end opened before she reached it. Someone stepped out. Nana couldn’t see the face—too far.

A shape, tall, moving without sound.

OG stopped humming.

She didn’t stop walking. Her shoulders shifted, just the tiniest.

They passed each other.

OG got in the elevator. The doors closed.

The shape kept walking toward the rooms.

Nana pulled back from the crack.

Behind her, Ivory stood in the bathroom doorway. Gasping. Her presence spilling back into the room in waves, unsteady.

“That woman.” Ivory’s eyes were wide. “She smelled like—”

“Flowers,” Nana said.

“No. Death’s champion. She smelled like Kharon.”

Nana looked through the crack.

The shape had stopped.

Three doors down.

Not theirs.

It was hunting somewhere else.

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