Page 62 of Kotori

Paige

The evening starts like any other. Homework spread across the low table, Aya's tongue poking out in concentration as she practices kanji, Kohana reading quietly with a book I recommended. The domestic tranquility that's become as natural as breathing.

But tonight feels different. Tension hums through the compound like electricity. Kaito's been in meetings all day, his study doors closed to everyone. I've caught glimpses of men in dark suits moving with focused purpose through the corridors.

"Paige-mama?" Aya's small voice pulls me back to the present. "Will you always be here? Like Mama was supposed to be?"

The question hits harder than it should. Before I can answer, Kohana looks up from her book. "Aya-chan, don't ask questions like that."

"But I just want to know if families stay together always."

I pull her onto my lap, smoothing her dark hair. "Good families try very hard to stay together. Sometimes things happen that no one can control, but the love stays forever."

"Like how we still love Mama even though we can't see her?"

"Exactly like that."

After putting the girls to bed, Aya reluctant to let me leave, I find myself wandering the compound. The ancient house feels different at night, corridors lined with ancestral portraits whose eyes seem to follow my movement.

I'm drawn toward the eastern wing, following hallways I rarely explore. The family shrine room sits at the end, warm golden light spilling from the slightly open door. Through the gap, I hear someone crying.

I push the door open and step into sacred space.

The room takes my breath away. High ceilings, carved beams, a golden altar dominated by Akira's portrait.

She's breathtaking in formal black kimono, dark hair elaborately arranged, eyes luminous with intelligence and strength.

The face of a woman who could have been anything but chose to be a yakuza wife and mother.

But it's not the shrine that stops me cold. It's Mizuki kneeling before it in perfect seiza, tears streaming down her face as she stares up at her mother's photograph.

"Mizuki?" I approach carefully. "Are you alright?"

She doesn't turn around for a long moment.

"I can feel it starting again." She finally speaks.

I settle beside her on the tatami. "Feel what?"

"The danger. The way the house gets when Papa's enemies are planning something." She finally looks at me, fear stark in her dark eyes. "It felt like this four years ago. Right before she died."

"You were so young when it happened. Only fourteen."

"Old enough to be brave," she says bitterly. "Old enough to protect my family when they needed me."

"Mizuki."

"I failed her." The words burst out like a dam breaking. "She told me to be brave, to protect Aya, and I just froze."

My heart breaks for this girl carrying such devastating burden. "What happened that night?"

She stares at the shrine, at her mother's gentle face smiling with warmth I've seen in all her daughters.

"They came after midnight. Papa was in Osaka on business.

The security wasn't like it is now. He didn't expect anyone to attack his home directly.

" She takes a shaky breath. "Men in dark clothes, moving through the house like shadows. Mama heard them first."

I wait, letting her tell the story at her own pace.

"She woke me up, told me to get Kohana and baby Aya.

Made us hide in the alcove behind the bookshelf.

Kohana was only nine, so confused. Aya was crying.

Mama kissed us all and said 'Be brave, my strong girls.

Protect each other.'" Silent tears track down her cheeks.

"I thought I could do it. I thought I was strong enough to protect them both.

But when the shooting started, I just crouched there holding my sisters, too terrified to move, while Mama stepped into the hallway to face them alone.

They were looking for information about Papa's business.

Mama told them she didn't know anything, that she was just a wife and mother.

But they didn't believe her." Mizuki's voice becomes mechanical.

"So they threatened us. Said they knew exactly where the three little girls were hiding. "

The horrible picture becomes clear. A mother faced with an impossible choice.

"She stepped in front of our hiding place. Told them to take her instead, to leave her children alone." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I could hear everything through the wall. Kohana had her hand over Aya's mouth, and I was holding them both, shaking so hard I thought the killers would hear us."

"You don't have to say it."

"Yes, I do." She turns to face me fully, tears streaming but voice gaining strength. "She died because I was too weak to help her. Because instead of being the brave older sister they needed, I was just a terrified child who let her mother face killers alone."

"Mizuki, no."

"Her last words were 'Take care of your sisters.

All of them.' She was dying and she was still trying to make sure we'd be okay.

" The sobs come harder. "And I've tried.

I've tried so hard to be what they need, to be strong enough for Kohana and Aya both.

But I'm still just the girl who hid while her mother died protecting us. "

I pull her into my arms, this fierce, brave, broken girl who's been trying to mother her sisters while still being a child herself.

"You were fourteen years old facing trained killers, trying to protect a nine-year-old and a two-year-old," I say fiercely.

"Surviving wasn't cowardice. It was what your mother died to ensure. "

"But if I had been braver, it would have been different."

"You would have died too. And Kohana and Aya would have watched their mother and big sister murdered." I hold her tighter. "Your mother didn't die because you were weak. She died because all three of you were precious enough to die for."

"I don't know how to stop feeling like I failed her."

"By understanding that she succeeded. She saved you. She gave you life so you could grow into the extraordinary woman you're becoming." I pull back to look at her tear-stained face. "And by letting someone else help carry the burden you've been shouldering alone."

"I've been trying to be their mother," she admits in the smallest voice. "All this time, trying to fill the space she left behind. But I don't know how. I'm still just their big sister who couldn't save anyone."

"Then let me be their mother," I say quietly. "Let me be what you've been trying to be all by yourself. And let you be what you actually are. An extraordinary daughter with her own value."

She stares at me for a long moment, something shifting in her expression. "You really want to be? Even knowing what this family costs?"

I look around the moonlit shrine, at the portrait of a woman who died protecting her children, at this compound that's become more home than anywhere I've ever lived.

The realization hits with startling clarity: if killers came for my family tonight, and yes, they are my family now, I would do exactly what Akira did.

"I understand now," I whisper. "I understand what love makes us capable of."

Mizuki is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is very small, very young. "I need a mother too. I've been trying to be so strong for everyone else, but I've needed one this whole time."

"Then that's what I'll be. For all of you. For as long as you'll have me." We sit together in the shrine room, holding each other while candles flicker and cast dancing shadows. The incense smoke curls upward, carrying our whispered confessions into sacred space where Akira's memory lives.

"I heard Otou-san's men talking outside my window earlier," Mizuki whispers against my shoulder. "Something about coordinated strikes, about enemies who've been planning for months. They kept saying 'when it comes' like it's not if anymore, but when."

I hold her tighter, feeling something fundamental shift inside me.

The fear is still there, but underneath it burns something fiercer: the protective instinct of a mother who's found her children.

"Then we protect each other," I say, surprised by the steel in my own voice. "All of us. That's what mothers do."

Mizuki pulls back to look at me, and in the golden candlelight I see something new in her expression. Not just gratitude, but respect. Recognition of an equal. Finally earning my place in my heart. "You're not afraid?" she asks.

"I'm terrified," I admit. "But not of dying. I'm afraid of failing you."

"You won't," she says. "I can see it in your eyes. You're not going anywhere."

She's right. Looking around this sacred space, at the shrine to a woman who died protecting her children, at this girl who's been carrying impossible burdens alone, I know with absolute clarity that this is where I belong.

"Never," I promise. "Whatever comes, we face it together."

Mizuki nods, and when she speaks again, her voice carries new strength. "Then I'll stop trying to be everything to everyone. I'll just try to be the best daughter and sister I can be."

"And I'll be the mother you all deserve."

She stands slowly, smoothing down her yukata with movements that echo her mother's grace. For a moment, she looks so much like Akira that my breath catches. "Thank you," she says simply. "For understanding. For wanting us enough to stay."

She bows to her mother's portrait, whispers something too soft to hear, then walks quietly from the shrine room. Her footsteps fade down the corridor, leaving me alone with the goddess watching from her golden altar.

I look up at that breathtaking portrait, at the woman who was everything I could never be.

Born to this world, beautiful beyond comprehension, the perfect yakuza wife and mother.

"I know what you're thinking," I whisper to her image.

"This foreign woman who thinks she can fill the space you left behind. "

The candles flicker, but her eyes remain steady, watching.

"You're right. I can't be you. I'll never have your grace, your beauty, your natural understanding of what it means to be a Matsumoto woman." Tears blur my vision. "I'm just an American teacher who got in over her head."

The shrine room holds my confession.

"But I love them. God help me, I love your daughters like they're my own blood.

Mizuki with all her strength and pain. Kohana with her gentle wisdom.

Little Aya who just wants someone to stay.

" I lean forward, speaking directly to those luminous dark eyes.

"I can't replace you. I won't try. But I can protect them.

I can love them. I can be the mother who stays when everything falls apart, who fights for them when the world gets dangerous, who never leaves them to face the darkness alone. "

The candlelight wavers, and for just a moment, I swear I see understanding in Akira's painted smile. Woman to woman, mother to mother.

"I would die for them," I whisper, my voice carrying fierce determination. "Just like you did." I bow deeply to her portrait, pressing my forehead to the tatami. When I straighten, something has changed. Not in the room, but in me.

Standing slowly, I take one last look at the goddess in the golden frame. "Thank you for raising such extraordinary daughters. I'll do everything I can to be worthy of the trust you're placing in me."

Walking back through the moonlit corridors, I carry Akira's blessing with me like armor. I'm no longer the woman who arrived here months ago, lost and looking for purpose.

I'm a mother now. Their mother. And I'm ready for war.