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There's something off about this room.
It's a teenage boy's room. Chikage never really expects it to be neat, or clean, even if Kaito does his best to keep it presentable when he remembers to.
The problem with the room isn't the mess. It's the lack of mess.
Kaito picks up after himself well enough most days, and doesn't spend all his time up in his room, anyway. The lack of mess shouldn't bother Chikage this much. Yet just a glance around causes warning bells to ring in her mind.
Chikage is observant. It's not innate, it's a learned skill. Even after all these years, she can study her surroundings and notice all the ill-fitting pieces with ease. This isn't a mess, or even a lack of mess. It's just a lack.
Kaito isn't home. He's supposed to be home, but Chikage didn't do anything when she heard the window open early this evening. She gets it.
She's scared, because she gets it.
Chikage still has most of the skills she's learned as a phantom thief, and everything she sees tells her that Kaito is planning to run.
Not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this month--but he's planning to.
She walks into the room, steps soundless against the wooden floor.
There's a shelf next to the window, made of a raw wood Chikage can't identify. It's been there since Kaito was young and needed space for his learning-to-read books. It's nearly empty now.
There's a snow globe on one end. It's frozen in a still image. It hasn't been stirred in a long time. Chikage remembers this trinket, given to Kaito a long time ago. Seeing it makes her smile. She loves giving gifts, and Kaito makes it a point to keep even the most pointless trinkets as long as possible before his room gets too crowded.
There's a fine layer of dust settled on the glass. Just enough to show the shelf hasn't been touched in a few weeks.
Chikage thinks there used to be other things on this shelf, too, but she couldn't say what. The only things on there now are that snow globe and a haphazard pile of school books.
Her eyes search the room, and catch on the desk. It looks so barren. She can't find the card deck she knows Kaito adores, the one that's always sitting in plain sight when he isn't idly playing with it. On his desktop, or on a shelf, or on the coffee table downstairs.
His phone is screen-up on the desk, dead to the world. He didn't take it with him. He never takes it with him, wherever he goes, nowadays.
She knows the desk had a photo on it last year. She hadn't paid enough attention to notice it being taken away, but the emptier the room, the easier it is to notice missing items. She wonders when it vanished.
There's nothing wrong with the room. The room is still the same; there's just less in it.
Chikage wracks her memory, searching for the last time she really paid attention to what Kaito's room looked like. It was several trips ago at least. It's hard to remember, but she's sure there was so much more. Why can't she remember?
Some things are easy. The bed has looked the same for years, and it hasn't changed now. The perches Kaito put up for his flock are still sturdy against the walls, and the aviary doesn't seem to be touched. It's the emptiest place in Kaito's bedroom, with plenty of space for the doves to move around in.
When she looks at it like this, nothing big has changed. Chikage knows that isn't true, either.
It feels familiar.
She can't truly begrudge Kaito the empty spaces in his room, because she understands, deeply, the need to leave this place. She loves this home, and hates it. She chose to be here and she can never stay long.
Her son, though, has always been here and he hasn't gotten the chance to leave.
He'll be eighteen soon. (How soon? She forgets.) He'll graduate, become his own person.
Chikage left her childhood home only a little older. She never looked back.
Her eyes trail over the dresser. It still has a worn down bag tied to the side. Chikage can't remember what that bag was used for when it had less holes. Even in her memory, it's always been a staple of Kaito's room.
It feels so very wrong to look at now. Everything that makes Kaito's room his room is still there, but it's nothing he ever uses. Lifeless objects that have been left behind.
He used to love running around outside until the sun set. It's always temporary. He always comes back home.
Chikage can't help but check her son's closet.
Of course he didn't leave for good, but it's nice to have some more confirmation in the myriad of outfits still in his wardrobe. All the things he usually wears, she assumes. She doesn't really see Kaito often enough to say. The thought makes something in her chest tighten.
From the bottom of the closet, below the hangers, eyes gleam back at her from the dark. Chikage can't help the smile that twitches at her lips again.
Kaito hates stuffed animals. She remembers that. He said that their eyes are creepy and dead. He's still kept the raccoon Nakamori Aoko entrusted to him after they met, even if it's in the bottom of the closet where it can't stare at him. It's been there for... more than a decade, Chikage supposes.
It doesn't feel like ten years or longer. She didn't think she could lose him this soon.
Chikage wonders if it's in her blood, or if she raised Kaito to be restless here. She hasn't been a great role model in that regard.
Maybe she didn't raise Kaito to be restless. Maybe that just happened while she wasn't around.
Her socks ghost over the hardwood planks when she backs up.
It's never actually silent in this room. The cooing and chirping from the never-empty aviary is a constant companion, saying hello, what are you doing here, have you found what you're looking for?
Chikage shakes her head to get those thoughts out. She's projecting onto the doves. She doesn't know how Kaito can stand the constant sounds, even if they are gentle, no louder than a murmur.
She moves into the hallway and closes the door behind her. The noise on the other side dies down.
Her hand drifts to her pocket, hovering over her mobile.
What makes Kaito who he is? Chikage thinks that maybe, maybe it wasn't anything she did. Maybe running is simply in her blood, and in Kaito's.
She hasn't called her family in...
Something awful-tasting rises in her throat.
Her mother's number isn't in her phone anymore.
Chikage is sure she has it around here somewhere, though. Toichi likes to keep old notebooks, and at some point they sat down together and wrote a notebook full of contact information.
That was a long time ago, right after they married. Chikage barely remembers what it looks like. It'll be around here somewhere.
Toichi is off on one of his tours, but the bedroom still smells like his cologne. She walks far more confidently here than she did in her son's room.
There's some boxes on top of the sleek wardrobe, carefully dusted but not opened in years.
She hasn't told Toichi about her suspicions, not directly. She thinks Toichi sees it anyway. It's not hard to see, when Kaito doesn't come home at night.
That week last month in which Kaito didn't come home at all, Chikage and Toichi had an argument, if you can call it that. Toichi never raises his voice, and Chikage is perfectly reasonable, and it could've been a pleasant conversation if not for the fact that their son was missing.
Chikage doesn't like Kaito disappearing either, but calling the police won't fix him disappearing. Kaito is sneaky, and skilled with tricks, and could probably break out of jail if he was ever arrested. Chikage would never try him.
Plus, it's the police. She doesn't know why Toichi thinks they're even an option when he's been married to her for eighteen years.
(Toichi argued: "-but you never want the police involved, no matter how serious it might be. Remember when I thought I heard a burglar and you went to take care of it by yourself? You're lucky it was just a raccoon in the end."
It was most definitely not a raccoon.)
Chikage rifles through papers, letters, dented binders. She's elbow deep in the second box before she finds what she's looking for.
Right under a photo album with a full moon on the cover is a spiral notebook. She recognizes it, and she almost knocks another box off her bed in her impatience to open it.
She flips through the notebook. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Little notes like from work or new number. She doesn't recognize most of them, they don't look familiar at all.
She finds Tokino on the third page, two neatly written pairs of names and phone numbers. All the same address. Chikage is sure that isn't true anymore, might not even have been true at the time Toichi and her wrote this down, but she doesn't know for sure if her sister moved out.
No, that's not right. She didn't bother to check if her sister moved out.
Her hand brushes the papers she'd tossed to the side. She wants to look those over sometime, see if there's anything else she's forgotten about.
Not right now.
Chikage doesn't hesitate to dial her mom's number. She's many things, but a coward has never been one of them.
It's disconnected.
Chikage shuts down the automated voice before it's finished talking.
She should've figured. There's no reason to have let Chikage know if her mom changed numbers. She's never called.
It doesn't matter. She's set her mind, and she's not about to give up.
The ancient information is thrown back in its boxes haphazardly. Chikage doesn't bother to smoothen the sheets. She takes her tablet off her nightstand and leaves the room.
Chikage doesn't bother to turn on a light when she sits down in the living room. Blue-white light glares up, and the glow is the single focal point in the dark.
This feels familiar. She likes sitting in the dark when she's working on something, with nothing to distract her. She's unintentionally jumpscared Toichi many times this way.
A smile ghosts over her face before she looks up her mother's name. Social media, a mention in the news, anything will work.
Her mom still doesn't have social media. Figures. You shouldn't tell the world that much about yourself, Chikage.
She looks up her parents' address.
The building is still standing, and occupied, at least. It's out of the way, pointedly apart from any big cities.
The photos look different from what Chikage remembers, but she can't pin down what changed. Maybe she's just looking at it with new eyes.
She looks for a record of residence attached to it, but that's not easily found through a search engine. She'll have to call in a favor.
Luckily, she has plenty of favors to call in. It only takes her a minute to shoot off a message that should tell her contact everything they need.
While she waits for a response, Chikage ambles into the kitchen to get a drink.
She's no bartender, but she's picked up a few tricks. She opens the secret cupboard that Kaito absolutely knows about, and grabs two different bottles.
Too bad they don't have citrus fruit lying around. Just the drink itself will have to do.
She doesn't turn the light on for this either. Chikage may not be home all the time, but this has been home for the past fifteen years, and she's familiar with every part of it.
Glass clinks in the shadows. It's a sweet melody she's heard a dozen times before.
Kaito hasn't been ill since he was little.
It's a sudden thought, shoved to the forefront of her mind while Chikage is thinking about the friend she's calling in a favor from.
She must've been thinking about it for a while, on some level of her subconscious. The worry doesn't feel new.
Kaito hasn't been ill since he was a small child. Chikage clearly remembers the last time she saw him sick, and it was a barely-there flu he got from the kids at school. Every time she's seen him since, he's looked absolutely fine.
Until the last few days.
Kaito always looked fine, until he didn't. He's gotten this feverish sort of look to him recently. It's not hard to see the exhaustion in his movements, and that leaves Chikage reeling.
Kaito has always been fine.
It's still not obvious. It would barely register to Chikage if it was a stranger she was looking at. This is her son, though. He doesn't get tired.
She can't deny what she sees, though. The lack. Kaito has stopped gesturing while he's talking, stopped bouncing on his toes when he's excited. He's not making any unnecessary movements anymore.
She can't remember the last time she saw him excited at all.
Toichi brought something else up, and the more she looks, the more Chikage sees it. Kaito doesn't do magic tricks anymore.
She downs half of her cocktail in one go. It prickles on her tongue and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste.
Her tablet pings with a notification then, and Chikage takes the excuse to leave that train of thought behind.
It takes a whole night's manhunt to find her mom's most likely cell numbers.
Chikage needs that number, though. She needs this.
It's almost dawn. In summer that means four, maybe five in the morning. It's late enough over in France that her mother might not be awake.
The third number she tries connects.
"Hello?" her mother asks. It's softened with age, but her tone is guarded. She speaks English. She must've recognized the number as international.
"Hey, maman," Chikage says sheepishly.
There is a very pointed pause before her mother responds, "Chikage?"
Oh, that stings. Chikage winces. Her mother had never called her by her full Japanese name growing up. It's her dad who chose her name, and her mom had always quietly disagreed.
"Yeah," she acknowledges, slipping into French with some humor to her tone. "I guess I deserve that."
Her mom's voice softens in response. "It's good to hear your voice."
As Chikage stares across the living room, her eyes drift onto a framed picture. It's too dark to see it clearly, but she knows by heart that the tall shapes are Toichi and Ginzo, grinning at the camera. In front of them are Kaito and Aoko, smiling at each other.
"I'm sorry for not keeping in contact," she says abruptly.
Her mom laughs at her. Laughs.
"No, you aren't," she says fondly. And she's right.
Chikage has never felt the need to keep in contact with her parents. Now that she's on the other side of the equation, she suddenly desperately wishes she had wanted to.
"Why are you really calling?" her mom asks. "I can put you on the phone with your father, if you'd like."
That sentence reassures some part of her she didn't know was there. She realizes with a start that she'd never considered that either of her parents could've died in all the time in between.
Chikage shakes her head. "No, mama, that's okay. I just wanted to talk."
Her mother hums. Chikage isn't sure if it's interest or simply acknowledgement.
She hesitates. All this time, and she hasn't figured out what exactly she wants to ask. Her previous determination is now fogged up with tiredness and uncertainty.
"Can you tell me about the farm?" Chikage asks in the end, to get rid of the silence that is growing uncomfortable. "How's dad doing? Laila?"
Her mother huffs, but there's something indulgent to it. "Your sister isn't home much anymore," she says, the unspoken hanging between them. "She has a job as a hairdresser now, I believe, and she's still with her roommates from college. I truly don't think she'll ever need anyone else."
A smile pulls at Chikage's mouth. "No wife?" she asks, half-joking. Laila was always so insistent that she'd get married the instant it was legal.
"Laila isn't quite as charming as you were, mon ange," her mother responds without pause. "I think she's happy where she is, though."
"That's good," Chikage's says automatically, not feeling much of anything.
She never knew Laila as well as she'd have liked, being the annoying younger sister that Laila wanted nothing to do with. There were just one or two years too many between them to be able to relate to each other.
It's nice to hear that she's happy, if nothing else.
"Your father is as cheery as ever," her mom continues when Chikage says nothing more.
It's a testament to how long it's been that Chikage needs a few moments to work out that her mother's being ironic. 'As ever' is hard to remember two decades later.
"He's working himself to the bone, though he really shouldn't be, with his ankles in that state." Chikage's mother sounds miffed. He refuses to give in to human limits. You have his stubbornness, you know?"
"Yes, I know," Chikage sighs, although she'd forgotten. It feels like something she was told a lot when she was young.
Chikage's usually easy words stall when she next speaks.
"I haven't... made contact... in a long time," she ventures, unsure if it would be appropriate to apologize.
Her mom just hums in acknowledgement. It gives Chikage the will to continue.
"I have a son," she says, and with as start she realizes that she doesn't know if she ever told her family about Kaito. "I told you that, right? When he was born? I must have."
There's a smile in her mother's tone. "Yes, you did. It's one of the few times I heard you that happy."
There's that constant underlying reminder that Chikage didn't really give her mother a chance to hear her happy. Chikage shrugs it off before it can start to dig.
"He'll be eighteen soon," she says. "Maman... He might want to leave like I did."
Chikage learned plenty from Toichi, but her Pokerface was never as good as his. The lost feeling curling around her mind is reflected back in her words far too clearly for her mom not to notice.
"Oh, mon ange," her mom sighs in response, not quite a reprimand. "We're all hypocrites at some point in our lives."
Chikage stares into the still darkness of the living room, her gaze drifting from shadow to shadow.
"How did you deal with it?" she asks. It's uncomfortable to admit her own part in causing a grief like this, but she pushes on. "Knowing I would leave?"
"We were worried, of course," her mom says. "Even your sister, though she wouldn't admit it, since she'd want to leave eventually, too. Your father and I talked at length. Did we do something wrong? Did we raise you to want to flee this house?"
The words curl around Chikage's heart and ring familiar. They're hers, too.
Her mother gives a dry laugh. "And then when we got over ourselves, we still worried. Would you ever send letters? Would you be okay out there in the wild world, with nothing to tie you down?"
Chikage realizes with a start that she hadn't once thought that Kaito would be incapable of caring for himself. If it was Toichi, maybe she would've. Not Kaito.
She's seen Toichi at his worst, where she didn't dare leave him alone, where he wouldn't bother with making sure he ate or slept or survived. Kaito has always been okay, no matter what. Kaito adapts.
"In the end," her mom says, "the choice wasn't mine, and it wasn't your father's, and it wasn't your sister's. We could worry and worry and hope, but we could never keep you. It wasn't right to keep you."
Chikage stays quiet. For the first time in years, she doesn't have the right response on her tongue.
"You were capable of making your own choices, and this is the path you chose, and we could do nothing more but accept it."
Her mother sounds wistful, but not sad. She's reminiscing, but she's long moved past the grief Chikage left behind.
Chikage finally asks, "What's the moral of this story?"
She knows, she does, but she keeps hoping her mother will tell her they were wrong, or that they could've done something, or that she knows better now.
"It's just an old woman's tale." Her mom is amused. "Do with it what you like."
Chikage sighs. This conversation has only made her feel worse. "Okay, maman."
It has a finality to it. Chikage is surprised then, that before they can exchange goodbyes, her mom stops her in her tracks. "Now that that's out of the way, won't you tell me about Kaito?"
The question wanders, as if her mom is unsure of the name she said.
"Huh?" Chikage responds.
"A story for a story," her mother says. "I haven't heard your voice in years. You weren't planning on leaving just yet, I hope?"
Her tone is stern, and Chikage smiles despite herself. "Okay," she agrees.
It doesn't take her any time at all to come up with something her mother would like to hear. "Kaito is curious and stubborn, she says, and adds, "I suppose he got that from dad, like I did."
Her mother settles in to listen.
"When he was far younger, just a child, he got sick of me speaking French with Toichi, whenever we talked about something I didn't want him to hear."
Chikage spares only a moment to wonder if her mom knows the name Toichi, before she dismisses it and continues. "He taught himself French just to spite us, and only revealed himself because he shouted 'Ha!' when I told Toichi where I'd put Kaito's birthday gift."
Chikage giggles. Kaito's disappointed face when they immediately stopped using French for secrets has never stopped being funny.
Her mom's approval shines through her words. "A smart child, I see." She always was a patriot.
"Still just a child," Chikage says, not disagreeing with her mother. "Nowadays he would never give himself away like that. He's trying to become a magician and knows exactly how to trick an audience. We both learned that from Toichi."
Her mom hums, a low sound, but pleased. "Your Toichi is a magician, is he?"
Dawn breaks on the other side of the window. Chikage keeps talking until her voice gets hoarse.
For a long time after she hangs up, Chikage just sits on the couch and thinks about what her mother said.
Eventually, she gets up to grab breakfast. The living room is already bathed in daylight, and the empty space in her stomach is crying. There's such a thing as too much time spent thinking.
She wrenches open a can of mixed fruits, and looks for something to pair it with. Microwavable pancakes, maybe. Toichi buys those sometimes, for Kaito and her both.
The fruit is scooped into a bowl.
Chikage thinks, maybe, that what it comes down to is this: it's not up to her if she'll be hurt or not.
She turns the microwave on, and notes absently that it's still early enough that Toichi hasn't woken up, and there's been no noise to indicate Kaito coming back. Not yet.
Exhaustion drags her mind through slow circles.
The choice of Kaito's path in life isn't hers, and it isn't right to keep him. All she can do is prepare, and spend time with her son while she can. Just in case.
It won't matter just yet, though, right? Chikage has some time to figure it out.
Kaito isn't home yet.
After the microwave has long stopped its last round, the clink of the bowl meeting the counter makes her wince. It's so quiet, right after dawn.
Perhaps Chikage should call her parents more often. It couldn't hurt. She's already taken plenty of time out of her schedule to stay home and look after Kaito--she can make time for this, too.
A wry smile appears on her face. She's self aware enough that she knows this is a temporary impulse. She'll forget about it soon enough. Her parents aren't any more likely to hear from her now than they were ten years ago.
Chikage is almost done with breakfast when she hears the lightest tapping of feet outside of the house. She freezes to listen. They're not immediately recognizable as Kaito's footsteps, and she locates the nearest hidden knife in case she needs to use it.
They climb to Kaito's room, though, with the ease of practice.
Chikage walks upstairs soundlessly. Right outside Kaito's door, she pauses.
The doves perpetually in Kaito's room coo and chirp quiet greetings at the intruder.
It is Kaito, then. What Toichi calls her 'paranoia' must've made her forget what his footsteps sound like.
Chikage pretends not to be utterly relieved that he came back, and wanders back downstairs to finish her breakfast.
Being relieved would mean she didn't expect him to come home. She did. She does. He won't leave yet, he's not even eighteen.
She'll keep a closer eye, that's all. Spend more time with him, if she can. They have games in the house, right? She can't remember the last time she played a board game, but there must be some around here.
Chikage settles back at the kitchen counter, in front of the remains of breakfast, quiet.
Instead of finishing her food, she stares at the light shining through the living room window.
Somewhat begrudgingly, she resigns herself to staying home for the foreseeable future.
Kaito can make his own choices. He decides how long this peace will last.
Chikage will be here, lost in her own thoughts, waiting for the day Kaito doesn't come home.