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“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because… I forgot about mom…”
“She’s never existed, so it doesn’t count as you forgetting. You don’t need to apologize for this,” Shingo said calmly.
‘I’m the one who should be apologizing,’ he thought to himself. However, he was unable to bring himself to say it out loud.
“No… I believe that mom really existed.” Chiaki looked directly at him. “Dad, your memories are no hallucinations. They were real.”
The famous artist frowned upon hearing this.
“I told you, that was nothing but a dream. Don’t treat it as reality,” he spoke in a cold tone.
Shingo didn’t want to see his daughter also being confused by these “memories”. It was more than enough that he was the only “abnormal” one.
Yet, a tiny part within him was actually happy that his daughter said so. This caused him to feel self-loathing, which was why his tone was so icy.
“Dad…” Chiaki took a deep glance at her father, feeling like she could now understand better why her father acted the way he did.
He still remembered some vague memories of his wife, but nobody else even remembered her existence, nor was there any evidence that she had once existed. This was as if the entire world was denying her very existence!
And so, he could only deny his wife’s existence as well.
Just how painful would it be to deny your own memories?
Just how much pressure would he be under to bear all of this by himself?
He didn’t ask for recognition, because he didn’t even believe in himself. What few memories he still had of his wife, he could only treat as hallucinations… that was truly so pitiful.
After thinking deeper on this, Chiaki felt her eyes heating up as if she wanted to cry.
But, she had to withstand the urge.
She couldn’t allow herself to cry because of this, because she knew her father wouldn’t want to see it.
She felt that someone like herself who had forgotten about her mother had no right to cry about it in front of her father who had been dealing with his memories all by himself.
“Right now, it’s still unknown whether these memories are real or not,” Seiji spoke up. “Wakaba-san, your memories regarding your wife might indeed be an illusion. However, it’s also quite possible that such memories really reflect events that happened, just like what Chiaki says. The evidence for this is that Chiaki dreamed about her mother… Although she can’t remember her dream anymore, I clearly heard her saying ‘mommy’ while she was dreaming. There’s no mistaking what she said. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence for such a thing to happen while she’s being targeted by something mystical—”
“Wait a moment.” A fierce glint suddenly appeared in Shingo’s eyes as he stopped Seiji from continuing. “You heard Chiaki talking in her sleep while she was dreaming… the two of you were sleeping together?”
Seiji: “…”
Seiji’s cheeks twitched as he suddenly felt a powerful aura coming from Chiaki’s father.
“Um, we weren’t… it was just that I had Chiaki sleep in the study of my apartment in order to better protect her… Uh, I just happened to hear her talking in her sleep while I was checking on her…”
Seiji did his best to explain things clearly when faced with this pressure from his girlfriend’s father. Still, he felt a little lacking in confidence here.
That was because he knew he was a scumbag who had started a harem.
Shingo adjusted his eyeglasses and judged the youth before him with an even sharper gaze than earlier.
Although Shingo was a mature adult who was somewhat mentally prepared that his daughter would eventually enter a sexual relationship with a boyfriend one day, it was impossible for him to remain calm once he truly learned such a thing.
Seeing how fidgety and lacking in confidence Seigo was behaving right now, Shingo felt that something had definitely happened between his daughter and Seigo.
“I won’t allow such a relationship while the both of you are still in high school. But if things are already at that level, you must remember to use protection.” Shingo looked directly at Chiaki while saying this.
Chiaki, who had just wanted to cry, now wanted to laugh out loud.
Her father’s misunderstanding and serious attitude and Seiji’s sudden lack of confidence… this scene made her feel happy for some reason.
She lowered her head in order to hide the fact that she was almost about to laugh.
This action caused Shingo to misunderstand even further. His gaze became even fiercer.
“Listen to me, you absolutely have to use protection! Otherwise… there will be a serious problem!”
“We haven’t had such a relationship yet… We haven’t reached that level,” Seiji hurriedly mentioned.
This was the truth. Although Chiaki had given him several blowjobs, and he had serviced her as well, they indeed hadn’t crossed the final line and had sex yet.
However, Shingo didn’t believe this. And even if they still hadn’t had sex yet, they were probably almost at that point in their relationship.
Young people were quite lacking in self-restraint. Even if they could temporarily restrain themselves, there was no telling when they would no longer be able to withstand the urge.
“Since you call yourself Chiaki’s boyfriend, and you say that you have responsibilities as her boyfriend, then you also need to protect her. You need to realize the possible consequences of not using protection. You need to take this seriously!”
“I said that we haven’t…” Seiji felt rather helpless. “But, you’re right. I’ll remember this.”
“You have to remember it.” Shingo glared at Seiji for a while before turning to Chiaki. “That goes for you as well. You need to protect yourself. If he doesn’t care about using protection, you need to break up with him as fast as possible.”
Chiaki really was almost about to laugh out loud now. She made a great effort in order not to.
“I will, Dad.” Chiaki finally replied after holding in her urge to laugh. “Actually… even if we aren’t careful… it’ll be fine, because Seigo is really rich. He can afford to…”
‘This isn’t an issue that can be resolved by money!’ Shingo wanted to say this, but suddenly felt like he had no right to say something like this.
That was because he had remained distant from his daughter all this time. Apart from giving his daughter lots and lots of money since he was really rich, he knew that he hadn’t done anything a father should have for his daughter at all.
Since Shingo realized this, he felt like he no longer had the right to lecture them.
“At any rate, you must be careful.” He ended on that note.
Seiji and Chiaki both nodded obediently.
Everyone fell silent once again.
What had they been talking about originally again?
“Cough… let’s get back onto the original topic,” Seiji coughed to put the topic back on track. “Chiaki’s dream is probably no coincidence. It was likely brought about by something mystical. Let us hypothesize that your memories are actually real, Wakaba-san. This means that Chiaki’s dream might be the sign that her memories are beginning to recover. While this may seem like a good thing, if that’s what’s really going on, this is actually a very serious matter. Your wife, Chiaki’s mother, was someone who definitely existed for real. Yet, she completely disappeared from the entire world as if she had never existed at all… Only a highly powerful demon or spiritual ability user could be behind this.
“I think that it’s more likely a demon is behind this, because if a human was behind this, that person shouldn’t have eliminated everyone’s memories of your wife but leave your memories only half-erased. And if a demon caused all of this, just how powerful could this demon be… it’s difficult for me to calculate. It’s possible that this demon has recently started targeting Chiaki. And, the worst possible outcome may be that Chiaki will vanish from the world and everyone’s memories, just like her mother did.” Seiji said all this with a serious expression.
Disappear… Chiaki couldn’t help but imagine herself being captured… or being kidnapped by some unknown demon, god, or human. After that, she would completely disappear from the world, as if she never existed. Just imagining it made Chiaki feel afraid.
Wait a moment, being taken away by a demon or a god? Wasn’t that the same as the so-called being “spirited away?”
Being spirited away, as in being hidden from the world by some sort of spirit, demon, or god, was quite a famous mystical phenomenon in literature.
The most famous legend of being spirited away in Sakura Island was the story of Urashima Taro, the fisherman who had been taken to a dragon’s palace after he’d saved a turtle. This was a fairy tale that everybody in Sakura Island knew 1.
In modern society of today, being spirited away was treated as a superstitious way to explain someone’s sudden and mysterious disappearance. That was what Chiaki knew of being spirited away.
But now, it would seem that the concept of being spirited away was actually true to its roots, that the person would be erased from the world by a demon or a god… was that it?
Had her missing mother actually been spirited away?