"I'm not a child anymore," I said, and if anyone heard the tiny echo of childish defiance underneath, I didn't care. I folded my voice into Kairi's—soft, a little too hesitant for someone who'd once been trained to lie through a smile—and I leveled my eyes at Ayaka.
"Can I go alone?" I asked, as Kairi. "Just for a little while. I need to see something."
Her face folded like origami. There was the habitual mother's worry, the careful weighing of risk, and then something else—relief that I was asking for permission at all. She clenched the teacup for a second, then nodded once, resigned and terrified in the same breath.
"Take your phone. Call if you—if you think of anything," she said.
I promised her the thing she really wanted: the illusion of control. Then I left the cup cooling on the table and climbed the stairs to Kairi's room to get ready.
