"That's what you thought, and so you decided to draw out the nature of the promise from Shirayuki.

"Hiroko passed away last year. So you summoned Sayo, Hiroko's granddaughter and the next Shirayuki, to the house where the incident occurred eighty years ago."

Uotani looked at Maki, her face blanching.

Maki listened to Tohko's story with a haughty look that no longer registered Uotani's presence.

"Everything was devised to flush Shirayuki out.

"You built your set and arrayed it with a butler, a cook, a housekeeper, a gardener, a maid, a dog-and even a young lady, a student, and a goblin, exactly like eighty years ago. And to top it off, you acted like you were going to demolish the house and manipulated Shirayuki into appearing."

Tohko went on.

Shirayuki had appeared exactly as Maki had planned. Uotani had been the one who sent the threatening letter and dumped water with fish blood in it off the roof. Overjoyed by the signs of movement, Maki had caused an uproar herself in order to draw Shirayuki out even further.

"The fish scattered around the book room and making Shirayuki appear was a performance, wasn't it? It was impossible for Sayo to manage all of that. But you could have done it, Maki.

"You inflicted it on the other actors-the butler and all the others. The Shirayuki that night was a projection you set up in the room ahead of time and made lifelike.

"The arms reaching through the window were real, but that could be done by someone pretending to run out of the room, then hurrying around outside and breaking the window and sticking their hands through."

I recalled the terrified faces of the butler and all the others.

And then the whispered conversation I'd heard through the door.

"But we've kept the promise!"

The promise had been a contract between Maki and them.

Had they known that eighty years ago their relatives had been the aggressors rather than the victims? Or had they simply been employed by Maki without knowing anything? Could their cowardly eyes filled with fear have been...? No, whatever the case, they were actors who had behaved in complete accordance with Maki's script.

"Sayo was confounded by the appearance of a Shirayuki other than herself and got frightened. In such a situation, she couldn't keep her promise to her grandmother. She could hear the rhyme her grandmother had taught her playing on a loop in her mind, and it haunted her to the point that she couldn't sleep that night."

"The promise...it's...," Uotani had murmured as she turned pale and trembled. Uotani had been utterly filled with terror at that moment.

"And then to top it all off you called Konoha away with a fake letter and made it look like he'd gone back to Tokyo. When I went to look for Konoha, that figured into your calculations, too, right?"

Maki's face turned a little bit sour.

"I didn't plan on Ryuto Sakurai coming. Because of him, I had to accelerate my plans."

Takamizawa had said the same thing. That he had intended to go and get me, but the plan had changed slightly. He had been playing the role of the one who "comes to get" me from Tokyo the whole time.

Tohko made her eyes stern and asked, "You were also the one who fed poison to Baron, aren't you, Maki?"

A smile cold enough to make me shudder came over Maki's face.

"Yes, he devoured his food without question. That was the guard dog's failing-for the Baron of eighty years ago and the Baron of today."

She couldn't mean it-was she saying that dog had been set up in order to kill it? In order to make her prey, Uotani, think of Akira being fed poison and dying? For that reason only without the slightest hesitation?

"Ah...augh...!"

The gun fell from Uotani's hands. She put both hands to her mouth as her face twisted in fear, and she trembled.

She had inherited her grandmother's drive and had protected the house with everything she had, but it had all been a ploy.

Plus, the opponent she had been trying to fight had been an even more ruthless Shirayuki than she herself.

Witnessing that coldness-that mercilessness-Uotani lacked the energy to resist her anymore.

I felt Uotani's despair and my spine trembled, too. Maki, who had calmly orchestrated this cruel play, was so terrifying it made it hard to breathe in her presence.

"The curtain is falling...and it was an unbelievable farce."

A creature murmuring as her eyes glinted coldly, mocking people-she was Shirayuki.

"What a sad excuse for a trump card...It truly is unspeakably ridiculous to be bound by immaterial things like family or bloodlines or promises."

The coldness of her look, the frigid tone of her voice, the waves of crazed rage that radiated from her entire body seemed to freeze us as we watched her. Like the fish in Demon Pond who can only quail at Shirayuki's rage.

"Whatever becomes of a human life, it is no concern of mine!"

"Ancestors are ancestors, and parents are parents; they toyed with promises and vows as it suited them. When a human grows aged and slights the promise, what is there to fear in my breaking that vow one moment sooner?"

"But these are Himekuras," Maki went on muttering distantly. "They imprisoned their daughter in the heart of the mountains and had her lover murdered for the sake of the family's honor. And the girl managed to slaughter people for the sake of revenge... Even now, this house, this land, is shackled by fear... Hardly a noble family. We're a cursed clan washed in blood."

Out of nowhere, flames leaped into her eyes and she shouted an assault.

"I wish the world would end and destroy everything!"

The sadness inside her ferocity made my chest burn.

Outright loathing. Unending frustration.

It would go on as long as Maki was a Himekura.

She was a Shirayuki who had lost her Yuri in Hotaru.

The dragon princess who lost her source of consolation raged and caused floods and didn't stop until she had swallowed up the world.

The moon cracked and flowers fell.

Beautiful illusions transformed into nightmares.

When it seemed that we were about to be swallowed up by an inky nightmare, a voice rang out like light cutting through the darkness.

"No. The curtain hasn't fallen yet."

Tohko looked at Maki with noble eyes.

We gasped as the book girl shed her raincoat and walked toward the dragon princess before our eyes.

In the light of her flashlight, the water droplets glinted golden and fell away.

The unsullied coolness reached Uotani's face, and her eyes widened in surprise.

Tohko's posture as she stood swathed in her white dress was wispy and gentle, filled with the peace and purity of a priestess who drives away evil.

"Maki, you haven't heard the other story. The tale of Yuri and Akira isn't a revenge story. Even if it seems that way on the surface, underneath that I, as a book girl, imagine a different story."

Once she'd fixed her strong, unwavering eyes on Maki, she put on a warm smile and turned to Uotani.

"Sayo? I want you to hear the story I'm going to tell now. Listen all the way to the end without getting scared or losing hope."

At some point the rain had lessened to a drizzle.

Turning back to the ferocious dragon princess, the book girl wove her tale in a gentle voice.

"The story of Yuri and Akira begins with a book.

"It was Kyka Izumi's Demon Pond, which Akira's mother had lovingly transcribed word by word and embroidered the cover of with brilliant thread. It was the only one of its kind in the whole world.

"The story features a couple named Akira Hagiwara and Yuri and a dragon princess named Shirayuki. Shirayuki is a cruel and capricious creature who causes droughts and floods, but she watched over Akira and Yuri tenderly.

"There was a Shirayuki at the real Yuri's side, too.

"Yuri feared Shirayuki's devilish nature and Shirayuki was aggravated by Yuri's timidity, but for some reason the two stayed together.

"It was impossible for them to be apart-after all, Yuri herself was Shirayuki."

I'd thought that might be the case. Because Shirayuki appeared on the water's surface at night, through windows-always somewhere that would reflect Yuri's face.

Maki had probably confirmed that at least. And Uotani had known because she'd heard it from her grandmother.

"Why did Yuri need to live in a villa deep in the mountains? In her diary, Yuri writes that it's because she's an oracle and she'd made a promise to her father.

"The Himekura family tree began with an oracle, too.

"In the heyday of the imperial court, there was an oracle with the blood of a dragon in her veins, and they say that she protected the country through her use of a ghoul who glowed white. She was granted noble rank for her good results, and the Himekuras secured their success in the import business by being a clan that presided over the waterways and achieved remarkable wealth. Isn't that true, Maki?"

Maki remained silent, her eyes still frigid.

Tohko went on, unconcerned.

"From time to time, an oracle would be born in the Himekura family. The oracle was always accompanied by a ghoul, and a legend was passed down saying that they brought the family prosperity. But at this point I start to imagine something.

"Why did the oracles and the ghouls only ever appear at the same time?

"What were the ghouls really?

"In the mid-1800s when the borders opened and foreigners began to come and go freely in Japan, they were feared as ogres or long-nosed goblins because their hair color, eye color, and body types were different. People speculate that the goblins that appear in old fairy tales might have been people from other countries."

Tohko broke off for a moment. Her intelligent black eyes were looking straight at Maki.

"Perhaps the Himekura oracles were people born with white hair due to some mutation. Since they worked in imports, the Himekuras had many opportunities to come into contact with foreigners, and it's entirely plausible that the blood of other countries could have gotten mixed in. The first oracle with the blood of dragons might have been a foreigner herself. And then through the generations, people with appearances different from Japanese people began to be born in the Himekura family. But that appearance would be seen by others as demonic, and that's probably why they created the story of the oracle who seals in the ghoul.

"And Yuri Himekura, a 'lily' child as her name suggests, was born with hair as shining white as that same flower.

"That was why she was said to be a product of her mother's infidelity. I imagine her father feared a scandal and made her live in this villa where there was no one to see her."

Tohko said that perhaps Yuri dyed her hair black or wore a black wig most of the time.

She wrote in her diary that the pond was pretty during the day, but it was scary at night because there was a goblin in it. Perhaps, Tohko said, she feared seeing her black hair reflected in the lake, looking silvery in the moonlight.

"Yuri was forbidden from leaving the house. From her earliest memories, she had been inculcated by her father to live in hiding without letting people's eyes fall on her. He would tell her, 'You are the Himekura oracle so you must continue to keep the ghoul contained.' That was their promise."

Yuri prayed to go home.

She longed for her family living in Tokyo.

But because she believed her father's words-because it was her promise to her beloved father-she persevered despite her loneliness. Tohko told us this with a sad look, her eyes filled with tears.

The books her father sent her.

The words To my daughter written inside their covers.

Yuri had known that she was rumored to be the product of her mother's infidelity.

She always worried that she didn't resemble anyone else in her family.

Perhaps I am the child of sin like everyone says.

Perhaps my late mother did couple with a monster to have me.

Perhaps the Shirayuki inside me is the real me.

"Certainly every time Yuri felt unhappy about or irritated at or loathing for her restricted position, she felt as if there were an evil ghoul within her and she got terribly frightened. And so she wrote about Shirayuki in her diary as if it was a different person.

"The Yuri who strove to keep her promise and the Shirayuki who screamed for it to be broken-they were both how Yuri truly felt.

"Yuri thought the very act of being dissatisfied and having doubts was forbidden. And so she tried desperately to cling to the affection that her father showed her."

I am not a ghoul. I am my father's daughter. He calls me, "My daughter."

A young girl who told herself that again and again as she read his books and drove back her loneliness and tried to keep her promise.

Like the dragon god of Demon Pond, who asked that the temple bell be rung three times a day to remind him of his promise, her father's words written in the books were, for Yuri, the proof of his love and of their promise to each other.