Chapter 73 KIOKO

Chapter 73 KIOKO

Mei POV

I am standing in a darkened hall.

For a moment I remain motionless, my eyes slowly taking in my surroundings, which no longer include my bed at the Koku Inn. The floor beneath my bare feet is cold hard wood, the kind that holds the chill of a building that has been breathing all night without any warmth to keep it.

I know before I fully register anything else.

I am dreaming.

I take a step forward and shiver. Ahead of me, dark and shadowy in a way it never is during the day, is a long and vaguely familiar hall lined with pictures. I draw in a small breath of recognition.

I have been in this hall before.

This is the Miyuki Theater.

Another shiver passes over me as I gaze into the blackness beyond. There is no flashlight this time. There is no Declan. But the absence that sits heaviest is the one I am almost afraid to name, the absence of the person who has been in every dream that mattered on this case, the shape at the edges of things that orients me.

Ethan is not here.

He was not in the dining room dream either, and I filed that then and I am filing this now, and I do not know yet what it means that he is twice absent from exactly the dreams where I need orientation most, but it sits in me with the specific weight of something that will need to be addressed.

Later.

Right now there is a theater around me and a darkness ahead and something that summoned me here while I slept.

Fighting the urge to close my eyes against the dark, I take a brave step forward. The oil lamps that normally light this hall are not lit. The only illumination comes from the high windows, the moon pressing thin silver light through them in long rectangles across the floor.

I am not alone, though. I know this the way I know things in these dreams, not from evidence but from the specific quality of the air when someone else is occupying it.

Mr. Miyuki is kind. He needs my help. There is no reason to fear seeing him.

I keep moving forward, a fistful of my nightgown in one hand, passing rooms bathed in moonlight where ordinary objects look sinister in the shadows. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, refusing to let my imagination run ahead of me.

This is just the theater. It only seems frightening because of the dark.

I begin paying attention to the walls of the hall instead. Many frames hang here, photographs new and old. Dark faces smile down at me in the silver light. I observe the pictures collected on the wall and try to understand why I have been summoned here again.

As if in answer, the old man materializes a few feet away.

I halt, but I am not startled. Despite his abrupt appearance, despite the darkness, despite the dream quality of everything around me, there is only sadness in his face. Not threat. Not malice. The same solemness I have seen before, the tiredness of someone who has been trying to communicate something for a very long time.

"Mr. Miyuki," I say, and my voice sounds loud in the silence.

He brings a grave finger to his lips, and then purposefully looks to the section of wall he stands beside. I furrow my brow in concentration.

"Is there something you want me to see?" I ask, dropping my voice to a whisper this time.

He manages to point a finger at the wall, drawing me forward with the gesture. Curious but hesitant, I come toward him. As I draw very near, he moves back, but keeps his gaze on that part of the wall with dark and helpless eyes. I struggle against a wave of sadness that does not entirely belong to me.

I swallow and examine the pictures hanging before me.

"It's you," I begin, finding myself gazing into those same eyes, only happier.

Proudly taking up much of the wall is the triangular arrangement of the Miyuki family frames. His own portrait, younger and rosier than the version I have come to know, holds the central position. I look at his painted self, at the vitality in it, at the man who built something from nothing because he loved it enough to build it.

Then his ghostly form points again, drawing my attention from his living self to the blank frame below and to the right of it.

The empty frame where Toki Miyuki should be.

When Declan and I saw it first in the archive hall, we were shocked but not surprised. The heiress, removed from her family's wall by a theater that cannot forgive what she intends to do to it. I blink and look sympathetically toward the old man, whose stare is burning into the empty place where his daughter's picture should hang.

"She wants to tear this place down," I explain softly.

He looks at me and shakes his head, pointing once again to Toki's frame. Desperately trying to follow, I take another step forward and peer closely at the vacant spot.

"What is it? What do you want me to see?" I ask, looking up at him uncertainly.

He sets his mouth in a line of determination and reaches for the nameplate beneath the empty frame. I move back, watching in confusion as he begins pulling at the gold plate. For a moment he struggles with it and I recall how much energy it cost him to speak a single word the last time. I am just about to offer a hand when there is a scraping sound and the nameplate falls from the wall with a clatter.

The old man straightens up, appearing a bit weaker than before.

For a moment concern for him holds me still, but with an encouraging look from him I glance back at the place where the nameplate was.

And find one still remaining.

Not the one that fell. A second one, beneath the first, older, tarnished, the letters worn but legible.

I lean closer.

"Kioko Miyuki?" I breathe, staring at the tarnished plate in stunned silence.

The old man's form shimmers slightly at the edges, the way things lose their definition in a dream when the dream has said what it came to say.

"Kioko," he whispers, and his voice is aching. It is the voice of someone saying the truest thing they know and knowing it costs them something to say it.

The sound of his voice saying that name lands in my chest and stays there.

"Kioko," I repeat.

And then the theater is gone.

Something white and blaring presses against my eyes and with a moan of protest I roll over in bed. I open my eyes into the pillow. My heart is racing and my cheeks are wet, the specific wet of someone who has been crying in their sleep without knowing it until they wake.

Slowly, a dull pounding starting in my head, I sit up. Sunlight streams in through the window, replacing the moonlight of the night before.

It was a dream. One of my real ones. Not a maybe, not a possibly, not a could have been just my imagination. The kind that comes from somewhere outside my own subconscious and leaves evidence behind in the form of wet cheeks and a pounding head and a name that sits on my lips like something that was placed there deliberately.

"Kioko," I say aloud, my voice weak and cracking from sleep.

A flash in my mind. A vision, sharp and specific: the nameplate falling to the hall floor. The second one beneath it, older, worn. The ghost's voice saying her name the way you say the name of someone you have loved and lost and cannot stop trying to reach.

What does it mean?

The pounding in my head grows and I fall back into my pillow with a groan.

Was this supposed to give me answers? I have more questions now than I did before.

I lie there, my head spilling over with thoughts, and something else slowly rises through all of it.

Two dreams. No Ethan.

I think about that.

I think about what it would mean if the guide who has been orienting me in these dreams is absent specifically when the subject of the dream is the ghost I have been protecting. I think about what it would mean if Ethan is keeping his distance deliberately. I think about what it would mean if what is happening between me and Takuya Miyuki is something that needs to happen without a guide, something I am meant to navigate on my own.

I do not know yet.

I close my eyes and breathe.

And then a door slams down the hall, followed immediately by a shout.

"Hachi, I ask for your hand!"

I sit up so fast the fresh wave of pounding breaks over my skull.

A memory as alarming as my dream surges in and pushes out everything except one urgent thought.

The festival.

The union morning. First come, first serve. The person who gets to you first is the person you spend the day with.

Cal.

I throw off my blankets and stand, the suddenness of it causing another wave of pounding to crash through my head, but panic is governing me now, and with a sudden vision of Xiao Shen already knocking on his door, I reach for my nearest bag of clothes.

"Where is that skirt?" I demand of my suitcase, digging to the bottom, cursing the mess I have let it become.

Growing frustrated, I turn over the bag and dump the entire contents onto my unmade bed. Miraculously the skirt appears after some thorough shaking. I grab the nearest shirt, throw my outfit on as the sunlight through the window grows brighter with every passing second, snatch up my brush, run it through my hair approximately four times, and give up.

With a quick glance in the mirror I race for my door and stumble out into chaos.