Riku’s grandmother really did kill herself. That was the official statent from the police.
Her body was found in the holding cell at dawn — cold, pale, a river of dried blood staining her left wrist. A small shard of tal had been hidden under her clothes; nobody knew where she got it from, but she used it well enough to end everything before anyone could stop her.
A suicide, they said.
Clean, simple… and extrely inconvenient.
According to the investigators, she might have grown desperate as the case dug too deep. Maybe she wanted to protect Riku — or rather Reina, her real granddaughter. Maybe she wanted to bury all the secrets, bury the truth, bury us along with it.
And now that she was gone, the only person who truly understood the mysterious body-switching phenonon had died without saying a single word.
With her gone… the trail went cold.
No more clues.
No more answers.
No more hope of learning the truth from her.
It was what it was.
The news hit Riku like a hamr.
We heard she cried endlessly, refused to eat, refused to sleep, and attempted to kill herself multiple tis inside juvenile detention. She kept shouting that she didn’t want to die, didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to follow her grandmother.
But the worst part wasn’t her grief.
It was her silence.
Riku — or Reina — completely shut down. She refused to answer anything about the body-switching case again. The investigators said she just curled up in the corner of her cell, trembling, whispering fragnts of nonsense.
“She knows everything… not …”
“I didn’t do anything… I didn’t want this…”
“She made … she made … she made …”
She claid she was only a victim, that her grandmother controlled everything. She said the old woman forced her to switch bodies, forced her to live soone else’s life, forced her to be soone she wasn’t.
Everything beca a chaotic ss again — a complicated puzzle with missing pieces.
No one knew what to believe.
And maybe no one ever would.
---
Three months passed.
The world moved on, even if we didn’t fully understand it.
My wounds healed. My strength ca back. And life — surprisingly — found a way to return to normal.
I was back working at the bar, though under strict supervision.
Correction: strict wife supervision.
Keiko had basically banned from working full shifts unless I hired a part-tir to help. So now I had an employee who greeted every day with:
“Boss, why do you look like you’re sneaking in late even though you’re…the boss?”
And I always answered with:
“Because there’s soone at ho scarier than any police officer.”
It was true. She could kill with a glare.
Beautifully, of course.
Work beca lighter, calr. Sotis even fun.
Anyway… in the middle of this slightly codic, slightly stressful, but mostly peaceful life, we heard the next piece of news about Riku.
The court decided she would be imprisoned for life.
Not because of the attack incident or body-switching case — that one had too many holes, too little proof.
But because the rumor Junpei once ntioned turned out to be true.
Riku had killed her own friend.
Not directly, not intentionally… but the event happened. Evidence was uncovered. Witness statents matched. The whole thing was horrible, twisted, tragic.
To think we were once entangled with soone like that…
A shiver crawled up my spine even now.
I tried not to think about her anymore.
---
Tonight, after closing the bar, I walked ho alone. Midnight air was cool against my cheeks, the streets quiet except for distant traffic and the hum of vending machines.
As I passed the familiar park — the one I used to visit years ago when my thoughts felt too heavy — I instinctively stopped walking.
The sakura trees stood silently along the path, branches swaying gently. Late spring had painted the ground pink, petals scattered everywhere like tiny soft mories of a season that refused to let go.
My feet moved on their own and I sat on the old wooden bench.
I just… breathed.
The warm breeze brushed my hair softly. A single petal floated down, landing on my knee — trembling slightly before falling off onto the ground like a final bow.
“This might be the last one to fall today,” I murmured, watching another drift by.
Funny, really.
After everything — the chaos, the pain, the confusion, the blood — I was still here.
Alive. Breathing.
Watching sakura fall like so dramatic ani protagonist.
Life was wild.
I let out a soft chuckle, the kind that escapes before you realize you’re smiling.
“If soone told years ago that I’d end up stuck in a woman’s body,” I said to nobody, “I would’ve thought they were either drunk or watching too much late-night TV.”
I sighed, shaking my head.
“But now… it doesn’t matter.”
I gazed at the sky, where the moon hung low and quiet. My voice fell into a gentle whisper.
“I protected Keiko. I protected Rin. And sohow… we fixed our family. That’s all I wanted.”
The poetic nonsense started flowing in my head on its own — maybe because it was past midnight, maybe because the moon was too pretty, or maybe because I felt dramatic today.
These past few months were heavy, like walking through a storm barefoot,
but the mont I reached the other side —
I found the two people waiting for ,
holding out umbrellas I didn’t know they had.
These past few years were chaotic, like a book written with ink stains and spilled tea,
but every page had their nas on it —
Keiko’s patient warmth,
Rin’s gentle laughter,
the quiet love I nearly lost and finally found again.
And this body —
borrowed, strange, unfamiliar —
had beco less of a curse
and more of a reminder.
A reminder that who I am
is not defined by shape, form, or voice,
but by the love I protect
and the people I choose to walk beside.
…And also a reminder that bras are still annoying and whoever invented them deserves mild inconvenience for life.
I chuckled quietly at my own stupid thought.
But the truth was still there, soft and simple.
Even if I remained like this forever,
even if my past never got fully solved —
I wasn’t alone anymore.
The tragedies of these past years, all the strange mysteries, all the blood and fear — they didn’t break .
They shaped .
And in return… I chose to keep walking forward.
For Keiko.
For Rin.
For myself.
The park felt healing tonight — silent, calm, holding like an old friend. I stayed there for about thirty minutes, just thinking, breathing, letting the night settle inside my chest.
Eventually, I stood up and stretched, feeling a slight ache in my shoulders.
“Alright,” I said softly. “Ti to go ho.”
The streets were colder now, the moonlight sharper, but my steps were light.
Clarity had a strange way of making the world feel new again.
When I reached our apartnt door, I paused for a mont — not because I was tired, but because I wanted to feel this mont properly.
Ho.
The word felt different lately.
Stronger. Warr.
Precious.
I turned the knob slowly, letting the familiar creak greet . The soft sll of Keiko’s shampoo lingered faintly in the air, mixed with Rin’s favorite fruit candy.
I stepped inside, smiled to myself, and whispered:
“I’m ho.”
The door closed behind with a quiet click.
And just like that —
the storm that once threatened everything
finally felt far, far away.
--- THE END ---
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