"That was with my grandfather-Mitsukuni Himekura?"

"That's right! With your grandfather! And with Yuri's father, too! Fifty years ago and eighty years ago-both of the leaders of the Himekura family made promises to Shirayuki!"

Maki spoke derisively.

"I don't believe you. Why would they make a meaningless promise like that? You're lying, aren't you? There's no benefit whatsoever to the Himekuras in keeping a promise like that."

Her words were surely impossible for Uotani to forgive. Her cheeks flared with rage and frustration.

"The Himekura masters made the promise in order to hide their own sins! Because it was the Himekuras who killed Akira!"

I could hear Tohko gasp behind me.

I, too, felt as if a flaming arrow had pierced my heart.

The Himekuras had killed Akira?

What was she talking about?! I thought Akira had tossed Yuri aside and left the estate. I thought he'd studied abroad in Germany.

Uotani spat her answer out in an unbroken stream, as if she was freeing the emotions she'd kept restrained. Maki glared at her with a harsh expression, as if she refused to let a single word slip by unheard.

"Mr. Akira was an obstacle to the Himekuras! They were afraid he would take Miss Yuri away with him. So in order to keep her, all of the servants conspired to kill Mr. Akira. They had orders from the Himekuras to do it. They put poison into his food, then tried to hide it by throwing his body in the pond!

"Grandma realized what had happened so she killed the butler with a sickle!

"But the gardener, the cook, the housekeeper-they all attacked her with kitchen knives and hatchets, so then it was my grandma's turn to nearly be killed. Then Miss Yuri got a gun and came to save her.

"The two of them got the gardener and the cook and the housekeeper."

Was she saying that an eight-year-old girl had killed four people with the help of a girl in her teens?!

That Hiroko was not in fact the one who discovered the bodies, but instead was there the whole time and had assisted in the murders?!

My spine trembled at the incredible nature of her raving.

And then the idea that the servants who'd been the victims had conspired to kill Akira!

"My grandma told me how Miss Yuri was drenched in water and cried the whole time she was shooting them. She had tried to pull Mr. Akira out of the pond, but the weeds tangled around him, and even though she tried to cut them away with a sickle, the water was too murky and it didn't go well and she wound up cutting up Mr. Akira's body, and it was so sad and painful that she went crazy.

"And after they'd taken revenge for Mr. Akira, when my grandma and Miss Yuri finally pulled Mr. Akira up together, she hugged Mister Akira's armless body and cried, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' Mr. Akira still lies beneath the shrine!"

A crazed woman covered in blood, crawling up from the pond. A white arm clutched in her hands.

The ancient scene floated through my mind as goose bumps rose on my skin.

And after that, the garden dyed in the crimson sunset.

A tiny girl pressing her hands together at an old stone shrine. It hadn't been Yuri's grave-it was Akira's!

"This house is where Miss Yuri and Mr. Akira met-the precious place where Mr. Akira rests.

"Eighty years ago, in exchange for keeping the incident a secret, the Himekuras promised not to lay a finger on either Mr. Akira's grave or the house. Grandma always protected the house after that.

"Pretended to be Shirayuki and kept the villagers from getting close the whole time.

"The same when the next Himekura master came to the estate fifty years ago-"

Maki leaned forward.

In the roar of the wind blowing through the window and the sound of the rain, Uotani told us the next part in a hard voice.

"Mitsukuni Himekura broke the promise and set fire to the house, trying to burn it down. Like you, he tried to tear down Miss Yuri and Mr. Akira's house and eradicate it.

"Grandma had been watching the Himekuras the whole time. And she damaged one eye of the Himekura who set the fire and made him renew the promise in exchange for saving his life.

"That as long as Shirayuki existed, he would never again touch the mansion.

"I've heard stories about Miss Yuri from Grandma ever since I was little. After Grandma died, I inherited Shirayuki from her."

What could she mean?

Thinking of the long years that had passed, my head spun.

"As long as Shirayuki exists, you will neither demolish the house nor destroy the pond."

What thoughts had gone through Uotani's grandmother's mind while she protected the estate as Shirayuki?

Putting on a white wig on moonlit nights, haunting the house and pond, and making the villagers think that Shirayuki was still present in the land.

When someone threatened to develop the mountain or destroy the house, she caused accidents and spread rumors that it was Shirayuki's curse.

And after she died, her granddaughter, Uotani, had done it.

Thus, each time plans were brought forth for development, Shirayuki appeared, and when he heard of it, the Himekura master knew the promise lived on and put a stop to the development.

It had happened time after time through eighty whole years!

Maki's grandfather had sent her here knowing all of this.

In order to test how much his successor could do in this place where the power of the Himekuras didn't reach?

Or underestimating her, assuming that she would be unable to do anything or to discover his secret?

Whichever it was, Maki had been in the palm of his hand.

Her jaw taut, Maki asked, "You were the one who threw the threatening letter in at me and the one who dumped blood and fish guts on me, too."

"That's right! I'll protect this house in Grandma's place!"

A powerful spark came into Uotani's eyes, and she pushed the muzzle of the gun into Maki's neck until it dug in.

"Now, you promise! Then I'll spare you."

Her voice and expression were heavy with intent that said this was no threat-she meant it.

Even so, she was actually scared. She probably also had questions and hesitated. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she held the gun.

If we tried to stop her clumsily, the finger on the trigger would shift and the bullets seemed likely to rip through Maki's throat. I couldn't move.

I was sure Tohko was in the same frame of mind, swallowing a lump in her throat and watching this exchange closely behind me.

"Go on! Make your decision! If you refuse, I'll shoot you to death right here!"

The heat drained from Maki's face rapidly. She dropped her eyes in apparent boredom, and in a horribly cold voice she whispered, "...Ridiculous."

Uotani's eyes widened in shock.

I couldn't believe what I'd heard, either. What was Maki saying, especially now, with the barrel of a gun pressed against her throat?!

"Is that what the promise was? My grandfather wanted to hide something so trivial? He avoided demolishing this one tiny house over the fact that the young Himekura lady was the one who committed the ruthless murders eighty years ago? That's all?"

Uotani's arms and shoulders shook even harder and more obviously than before.

At the same time that hatred showed on her young face, confusion and uneasiness and fear did, too, as if she was looking upon something incomprehensible.

Maki lifted her gaze. She was like the dragon princess imprisoned in the pond-her eyes glinting with repressed bitterness, her beautifully sculpted eyebrows bristling, and in a voice filled with irritation, she asked, "Despite the fact that the Himekuras have always been a family painted in blood?

"Are you telling me that there hasn't been a single murderer or criminal among the Himekuras before now?

"While sitting majestically on high, without sullying their own hands, they look down calmly upon people being murdered like pigs for the feast without raising an eyebrow. That kind of shameless arrogance has been rank in the Himekuras, now and in the past. It would make you sick to know how often.

"I'm sure Grandpa himself has used thoroughly questionable methods to get where he is and crushed the people who got in his way. And yet he couldn't allow something like this? Are appearances that important to him? Are the Himekuras supposed to be some pure and just noble family that nobody points the finger at behind their backs?

"It doesn't shock me to hear that Yuri killed everyone.

"This promise is a farce. I would die of embarrassment if it weren't so pathetic."

"Maki!" Tohko shouted, as if to say, "Don't say another word."

Uotani bit down on her lip and pulled the trigger.

My brain went all white with pain, as if my beating heart had been shot out.

There was no more avoiding the nightmare laid out before me- But no bullet was released from the gun.

Uotani jerked her finger again and again in a panic. There was only the clicking of the trigger and nothing happened.

Watching Uotani do this with cold eyes, Maki informed her, "That gun only holds five shots. You wasted too many."

The sweat that had broken out on my body chilled all at once.

Maki roughly slapped away the gun that was shoved into her neck with one hand.

Uotani was flabbergasted and she stiffened.

Then a look of fear came suddenly over her face and she began quaking. A true monster stood before her, leaping with pale flames of rage and trying to bring judgment down on a foolish human.

Just as Uotani's legs seemed ready to crumple beneath her, a white hand touched her from behind.

Uotani looked up over her shoulder in surprise and found that the book girl with the long braids, who was still dripping water from her raincoat, was the one gently supporting her arms.

Her clear gaze, which seemed to purify the dark and stagnant air, looked straight at Maki.

The light of her flashlight made the water droplets on her raincoat glisten, making it seem as if Tohko were wreathed in stars.

"You realized from the start that Sayo was Shirayuki, didn't you?"

Maki looked back at Tohko with a tightly grim expression.

Maki had known Shirayuki's true identity? Uotani looked flabbergasted again.

I gasped, too, as if the very core of my brain had been struck.

The cold sound of rain filled the room, which had fallen into silence.

Tohko's voice flowed smoothly into it.

"The name Chiro comes up a lot in Yuri's diary. 'I went for a walk with Chiro,' 'Chiro got bitten by Baron'-from reading that, you might think that Chiro is a cherished pet, but on the night of the slaughter eighty years ago, Chiro's body wasn't in the house.

"That's because Chiro was the girl who was the sole survivor-Hiroko, Sayo's grandmother. Chiro was her nickname."

Chiro- Hiro- The two names rose up in my mind. The puppy Chiro and the human girl Hiro. The two of them melded together to form a girl of eight who resembled Uotani.

Uotani's grandmother had been Yuri's companion the whole time!

"Toward the end of the diary, it says that Chiro got bitten by Baron and was badly hurt. Around the same time, Hiroko went back to her family in the country. Couldn't that have been in order to recover from her injuries? And then when she came back, she discovered that Yuri's lover Akira had been killed and Hiroko took revenge."

Uotani hung her head, tears in her eyes. I guess Tohko's "imagination" was accurate.

"Maki, you read the diary before we did. And you had this same 'imagination.'"

Maki answered frigidly, "I didn't imagine it, I logically deduced it. A mass murder happens in a house and only one person survives. It's obvious to suspect the one who survives as the perpetrator. Plus, Hiroko happened to be on the scene at the fire fifty years ago. No way that's a coincidence."

"Hiroko had a secret-you concluded that. And you imagined-I mean, deduced that Hiroko was Shirayuki."

But why would Hiroko pretend to be Shirayuki? And why were the Himekuras afraid of her? I didn't understand it.

"Shirayuki and the Himekuras-was there not a hidden promise between each of them? Did that not relate to the incident eighty years ago?