They left the baths when the sun had finally hidden behind the land in the west. They were, to Hisako's surprise, the first ones out, so they sat at the benches by the ice cream vending machines.
Kohaku took the time to window-shop.
"They've got the matcha soft serve your friends want so badly. I like the look of that strawberry cone…" They eyed Hisako critically. "And they've got vanilla soft serve in a pouch."
"Ooh, I like that type." Hisako perked up.
"Ah, I think I'll wait until after dinner. It smells so good…"
Hisako chuckled and glanced back toward the dining area. She sat up suddenly when she saw a person standing, watching them, in the hall nearby.
Or, she thought. She blinked, and they were gone—just an afterimage on her retina. She squinted, searching for the hunched, lithe figure she'd seen in a pale yukata.
"Hisako?"
She snapped back to attention, and then even the phantom was gone. "Hm?"
Kohaku motioned back toward the baths, where Eiji and Nanae had emerged.
They were welcomed into the dining area and seated immediately. They were one of the few parties already there, but there was at least still twice the number of Doorkeepers as she knew. Hisako used the leisurely walk to their table to get a glimpse of them.
All the Doorkeepers she'd seen were active and confident in their work. These people had the same confidence, but she saw a weathered weariness to them; they were blades that needed a little TLC before getting back in the game. Most looked perfectly healthy save for some exhaustion in their eyes, but some had bruises and bandages around fresh wounds.
She wondered if any of them were Kimura.
Kohaku shadowed her to the buffet. Hisako let them go before her and picked a bit more carefully—things she knew they both liked and a few things she knew she'd like.
It was all very carefully done—plated up cuts of raw fish, prepared bowls of seaweed and bread to ladle miso soup into, and large pots of rice to add things to or to use for curry. Hisako took a little of everything, and a few fancy sweets she'd only seen in fancy cases at the department store. The juice and tea array was perhaps the most alluring thing; Hisako didn't recognize half the names, so she went for the safer route with tomato juice, though she'd try the other later.
Kohaku had gotten a similar plate to hers, but they'd also gone for one of the whole grilled fish and had gotten far more than Hisako. Eiji had gone for a simple meal of curry and miso soup, along with a mini-plate stacked with slices of cake and pastries. Nanae's meal was even simpler—a bowl of rice with minimal additions, the whole grilled fish, and some pickled vegetables.
"So, how were the baths?" Hisako asked as they started to dig in.
Eiji sighed longingly. "I know where I'm spending my free time. The breeze and the water? I think I got twenty years back from my ex-job."
Kohaku cackled, nearly snorting out some of their apple juice. "What in the world did you do before all this?"
"Ahh, it's a long story," Eiji replied sheepishly.
Nanae and Hisako exchanged a quizical look.
"What do you mean by 'a long story'? You were a salaryman," Nanae said. "Right?"
They spent the rest of the meal learning about Eiji—how his brilliance in primary school had him pulled down a path of higher education via the desires of others, all the way to joining a cutting-edge company, but ending up with a horrible work-life balance and no direction in life.
Halfway through the story, Hisako and Kohaku swapped plates. Hisako ended up with most of Kohaku's whole fish, as well as enough to fill her stomach. Kohaku finished off the last of Hisako's gently garnished rice and a few pieces of nigiri.
Hisako found herself a little lost in her own thoughts as Eiji continued his story, musing on how different they'd been yet ended up at the same table together.
The walk afterwards was equally reflective, it seemed; everyone was quiet, happy, and surprisingly too full for ice cream. When they reached their rooms, they parted with a simple "see you tomorrow," but Hisako hung back to speak with Nanae.
Nanae met Hisako's concerned gaze. "Want to see the ocean?" She opened her door for Hisako.
Hisako snorted amusedly and nodded.
Nanae's room was identical to hers, save for the ocean view outside. Nanae hadn't pulled out her futon, but she had carefully unpacked her bag and laid everything out methodically.
Nanae led her to the outdoor walkway, where they sat on the hardwood. The chill with the warm air to their backs was surprisingly comfortable.
"Sorry to keep you up," Hisako said.
"It's fine."
"It's been a long day of travel," Hisako protested.
"Really, it's fine. How are you?"
"Good. You?"
"Mm…" She looked out at the stars, bright and beautiful, reflected in the ocean like a mirror. It painted her pale and cold.
"Being away right now… it can't be easy," Hisako said. "It's okay to be stressed. That's what the resort is for—what we're here for."
Nanae sighed and looked down at her lap. She fiddled with the delicate hems of her yukata, a pointedly pale blue.
"It's confirmed, right? The chain of succession… It's all yours?"
"I spoke with my grandmother. Before." She sighed. "The ink on everything—it hasn't even dried by now. When I get back—when I get my Door back—it'll all be mine."
"Is it… Will it be that bad? Becoming a leader is a skill you can learn. You're already in a good position—you've heard voices on each side of your family, and you're close to both beloved and despised Sasakis."
She shook her head. "The clan—I can become good enough for them. It's… What's bothering me is what she said."
"Your grandmother?"
"Yes. She told me…" Nanae sighed again.
Hisako slid her hand so that their pinkies touched on the wooden platform. "You don't have to say anything you don't want to say. I can understand you no matter what."
"No, no. It's fine. It just annoys me."
***
Her grandmother ground the ink and poured the water into the pot, readying her brush to sign the paperwork. Nanae sat stone-faced across from her in the quiet office. It was deadly still—it made Nanae's skin crawl.
Her grandmother's chuckle didn't help as she finally dipped the brush.
"What is it?" Nanae bit out.
"You're just like him," she said as she began to sign line after line.
"What?"
"Your father. So much like him…"
"I'm not like him."
"It was long before you were born," she began.
"I don't want a story. I don't want the clan, I don't want the politics, I don't want—"
"To be a Doorkeeper anymore?"
Nanae paused. Did she? Sure, there was no reason to continue, but there was no reason not to. Ever since the "escort," nothing felt purposeful anymore. She continued because two came after three—the back foot went in front of the other.
Being a Doorkeeper was all she knew.
"Not that," she replied. "I just don't want this."
"Someone else felt the same, you know."
"My father?" she asked dryly.
She smiled again. "Him too, but I meant me."
Nanae blinked. "You?"
"I wasn't always meant to be clan head. I was meant to marry young and produce heirs, not become one," she laughed heartily. "But my husband—I married for love. What a mistake.
"He was a soft fool. He would've run the clan into the ground—put us on the same level as all the other dinosaurs running the other clans. My father—you would've hated him—he told me that he'd find an heir elsewhere since I'd chosen such a weak man.
"I didn't want it either. I wanted to work in the division, doing as young Doorkeepers like yourself do, but a branch member would be no better than your grandfather. He was soft, and they were spiteful."
"So you chose to be the heir."
"I was chosen. To save the clan from a lesser leader. The right leader doesn't seek power; they earn it."
"I don't recall earning it," Nanae grumbled.
"Defeating your father earned you his seat. It earned Captaincy in the old days, too. Being better than him earned it."
Nanae scoffed. "And if I pass on being clan head?"
"Your father is ineligible, of course, and neither Masashi nor Shouhei desire it." She chuckled to herself. "What a rotten group of kids I raised. Spoiled and happy. Ah, but what else can a mother ask for?"
"What happens?" Nanae hissed.
She clicked her tongue like one might sigh. "The clan dissolves. There's no use in it anyway anymore, is there? The vote has gone through. Unanimous."
Nanae balked. "Unanimous?"
"I never thought I'd see it happen. Like being told the sun is dying." She smiled sweetly, baring her crooked, old teeth. "But I'm still too alive to watch my clan disperse across Japan any more than it already has. May I continue my story, this time about your father?"
Nanae blinked, then sighed. "Can I even stop you at this point?"
"Spare an old woman a few more minutes."
Nanae scoffed and looked away, at an ancient woodblock print of an old courtyard long renovated and renovated again. She wondered where it had been and what had happened there. Maybe she'd walked those grounds and never known it.
"Hideki was originally with us in Kanto, but then Masashi became a Doorkeeper, and he decided to leave. Maybe he thought Masashi would fill his shoes… He did, eventually, but Hideki used him to justify joining the Enforcement Division. Masashi never forgave him—always chasing after his older brother, only for him to quit the game. And then Hideki took a year off to become a lawyer, and he fell in love with your mother."
It was another side to the same story she'd heard before, just with more revealing, ugly details. It was easier to view it as a love story—the last hurrah of freedom her father had before falling into line with duty.
"He was always a good boy. I never once imagined he might leave his responsibility. I still don't think he meant it."
"Meant what?"
"His threats to leave. He spent only one year in Enforcement as a lawyer before you were born, then everything changed again. He wanted to leave, to be a noncombatant keeper and live in the city with you and your mother. He said he'd leave it all to Masashi."
"But you convinced him otherwise."
"I didn't have to try hard. He saw his brothers finally—really sat down and saw them. Saw little Shouhei and knew he couldn't just leave him, and saw Masashi and how he'd become."
"Rebellious?"
"Hateful."
"Hateful? Uncle?"
"Everything Hideki had, he had to have too." Grandmother laughed as if it were children bickering and not entire lives fighting and changing. "He needed a wife, needed a child, needed responsibilities, and achievements, and the whole clan's love. He inherited the division from me and celebrated Yasuko's birth in the span of only a few days. Always so messy. A never-ending cycle that only made him more bitter."
"What about Auntie?"
She almost didn't want to know. She remembered only a fierce face and a loud, strong voice cheering her on.
"Oh, he did love her, and they were something together, but they were both wild in their own ways. She liked his ambition—she just couldn't handle her own."
"What… what did happen to her?"
"She died in a Door. She shouldn't have, but she promoted faster than she ought to have, and Masashi was too permissive about it."
Nanae fell silent.
"Masashi hadn't even begun to grieve. He was raising a baby, running a division, and chasing his brother again…"
"Father… It was him or Uncle, or Uncle Shouhei."
"Maybe, as a child, Masashi thought it was what he wanted, but then he found himself outside of the family." Her expression hardened. "He couldn't have both, but he tried.
"He had the clan, but he gave up the division. He had his wife, but he gave up his freedom. He had you, but… did he ever really have you?"
Nanae stared at her grandmother. She remembered every moment she'd had with her father—breakfasts at his office, long days waiting for him in the courtyard with her mother, and being tucked in long after bedtime.
As she grew, it was more business, less hand-holding. She became old enough to understand he was busy and stop complaining and begging, but she also became old enough to know it wasn't fair. She saw the attention Yasuko got from Masashi and, from how the adults spoke, knew that her uncle should've been the busier of the two.
"I don't care about that anymore. It's done."
Done but never over. Done in her mind, not her heart.
"He didn't understand he couldn't have both. He didn't understand what I warned him about," she said gently. "He didn't know what to do."
"I don't know what to do!"
"Believe. Believe like I did, and he did."
"Believe in myself?"
"Believe that the sun will rise tomorrow."
"It's not that easy," Nanae hissed.
"It's not," she whispered.
She smiled again, but Nanae saw the fractures. The inadequacy—the holes in an impenetrable wall, an infallible monument. Human failure even in a woman she'd always known as perfect.
Nanae clenched her jaw, holding back the bubbling, burning feelings threatening to grow names. "How can you ask this of someone else?"
She let her eyes stray, finally, lowering them to the table again, rolling the brush in her fingers absently. "Because I cannot serve this family anymore, and someone must hold the sky up for those who can't even imagine being crushed by it."
She slid the brush and papers to Nanae.
"With each change in hands, the sky gets lighter. Maybe something astounding will happen in your lifetime, like it has in mine, and the sky will begin to hold itself up, and one can have both family and clan."
Nanae lifted the brush. "Do you really believe that?" she asked, voice hollow.
"I don't have any regrets."
Nanae knew she believed that.
***
"So you're sacrificing yourself?" Hisako asked quietly.
"It runs in the family, it seems."
Hisako intertwined her fingers with Nanae's. "You don't have to be alone."
"Don't I?"
"Your uncles are still around. They may not be clan head, but they're not gone."
Nanae shifted with a sigh, lying back to stare at the stars and untangling their hands to clasp them over her forehead. "I don't want to think about any of that right now."
Hisako nodded after a moment and stared down at the water lapping at the sky's reflection. She couldn't tell if the real thing or the unfathomable, never-static parody was more enthralling; the picture or the painting.
She kept her lips sealed.
It was better to put off thinking about difficult things, she knew, but it was a trap best meant to be disarmed before stepping into.