Chapter Text
At the beginning, Bibi is Mouse.
She screams and tries to scrape the metal off her skin. Too small to do more than make a dent in it even with her strength, she strains and forces herself away from the table. Her breath is trapped within her lungs—she doesn’t know if she has to hold her breath this time.
Her heart is going to burst for real this time, she’s sure of it. It always feels like it will, but this time feels different. She sucks in a breath and tries again to claw at the metal, not hitting it because that only makes it tighter when it dents inwards, painful against the pinched skin inside. Her bones might break, and she can’t risk that.
She needs to get out. She needs to get out. She needs to she needs to she needs to—
Rabbit needs her! Rabbit needs her every time, but this time she’s been left alone, so she can help her! The other children are crying and screaming just like usual, and Bibi feels sick, like the instant she escapes they’ll reach for her in a dizzying cacophony.
She can’t save all of them, and that’s the worst part of it.
Summoning all her strength, she rips the metal off the table, bending it as easily as she can snap a tree branch. She scrambles to her feet before Horadori can come back, feeling the bruises already aching painfully on her arm.
The children cry, echoing in her ears.
There are those who are older than her, but most of the ones here in this metal box are younger—Rabbit is the youngest, and there’s a sick twisting in Bibi’s gut that tells her that Horadori wants them together always.
That’s why they’ll go home to the same place, holding hands with scarred fingers.
That’s why Horadori tells Bibi to protect her sister. One day she was sat down in his office, a dull white room that felt like needles pricking her skin with discomfort, told that family was everything. And since she didn’t have any family other than her clone, she had to protect the other Mizuki.
His smile stretched wide. “You can’t sacrifice that child, do you hear me?” Horadori said, and didn’t hurt her that day, just examined Mizuki for imperfections, finding none.
She’s perfect, Horadori should have said. Unlike you.
It’s fine that it went unspoken; Bibi already knows. She knows because he keeps checking to see if her vision has returned, and keeps pressing her for more—more strength, more abilities. He’s even happy with her if she disobeys, as long as it shows her strength.
But if she goes too far and breaks the experiment, then it’s Mizuki on the line. Mizuki is held carefully by Horadori, always hurt more when Bibi doesn’t do as she’s told.
Bibi isn’t allowed to sacrifice her sister.
She still tries to run. That’s all she can do, fighting to become herself, crawling towards an exit from this horrible life. Even if she feels her bones snap and crack under Horadori’s hands—what else can she do?
She runs to Rabbit, rodent to lagomorph, so different and yet built from the same genes.
Right now she doesn’t understand all that; she’s only a child, and she doesn’t understand the building blocks of her own pain. She only knows that she and Rabbit are sisters, children who share a common fate. Even their names, bestowed by Horadori himself, are similar.
She rips the metal from Rabbit’s arms. The screws tear, and her body aches with the effort. She’s bruised already, mottled red against her wrists.
A large hand grasps one of the red marks, and Bibi freezes.
Chikara looms above her. As a child he is larger than life, the shape of nightmares—there’s nothing worse than his fingers, pressing into fresh bruises and sending stabbing pains down her arms.
“Get back here,” he hisses. “Don’t touch Rabbit—you don’t want to let her get hurt.” He bites out the last word like a promise.
Bibi—Mouse, just a rodent in an experiment—struggles against the hold he has on her, feeling his eyes on her, feeling her entire world crashing around her. She can’t do a single thing—she’s doomed her sister to a world of pain, all because Mouse is imperfect while Rabbit (Mizuki, her clone) is the perfect version. If Mouse was a good lab rat, if she could see with her left eye—maybe, just maybe Rabbit would be okay.
But that’s a dream she can’t reach. She feels cold metal against her back as she’s forced back down on the table, and screams when the pain starts again.
Bibi is only a child. Her childhood is made of pain.
Mizuki is covered in scars that she doesn’t know the origin of.
They’re faded the way baby scars often are—a product of time and growth, skin warping around old wounds until Mizuki can’t tell what caused them. Sometimes it scares her, that there’s a past she can’t remember, hidden within her mom’s words.
Though she doesn’t know the origin, she doesn’t think too hard about it. It’s her body, bright white lines and all.
Mizuki hides them behind jackets and gloves. Covered in layers, there’s nothing to show to the world—only her caged heart, and the world that swirls around her in a confusing mess of colors that she’ll never understand.
When Date sees the scars, he gets that stupid look on his face—the one he gets when she holds back tears, his lips pressed together into a thin line and his eyebrows stitching together with concern. Mizuki hates that more than anything, more than Daddy’s blank stares and Mom’s looks of disappointment.
So she ignores it. She brushes it off—they’re baby scars. They’re nothing.
Date’s gaze lingers on her bare skin, her short sleeves revealing far too much. Mizuki’s skin remembers what her mind doesn’t, and it makes her tense, like Date’s going to say something that will ruin everything.
“Just shut up,” she snaps, almost-nine years old and bristling. “Stop staring.”
Date’s eyes jump away and into an eye roll. “I'm not staring. There’s such a thing as too much outdoor activity, and clearly you’ve reached your limit. Don’t fall out of trees.”
“That’s not—!” Mizuki scowls at him, her face scrunching up into something like disgust. “I can climb all the trees I want! Just because you don’t want me to doesn’t mean I can’t do it! I’ll be fine!” She stomps a foot.
Secretly, she’s relieved that he isn’t pushing her.
She doesn’t think she can take it—digging up the memories will turn her inside out in a way she doesn’t understand. Fear crawls under her skin at the reminder, even as she gets older and the scars fade away into the rest of her skin. Everything disappears eventually.
If her mom hurt her like that, Mizuki won’t mention it. She doesn’t remember anything as bad as that anyways.
At Aioen, Bibi wonders if Mizuki hates her.
Conflicting emotions scream in Bibi’s chest—she still doesn’t know where Mizuki went, but she always remembers her. She will always remember holding her tiny hand in hers, swinging it together as little sis and big sis, two children who mirror each other.
She remembers her everywhere.
There are scrapes on the floor where Mizuki and Bibi ran. There’s patches on the doors where they had to fix them. The swingsets where Bibi pushed Mizuki’s tiny body as high as she could safely go. Mizuki laughed and screamed with delight.
Bibi wanted Mizuki to fly away.
Some nights Mizuki trembled with pain, shivered in Bibi’s arms. Sometimes, she was the perfect experiment Horadori wanted—other times, she was just Mizuki, a little girl who needed help.
She was always better than Bibi. She could see with both eyes, run further, punch through solid walls. Bibi watched her crush metal with baby hands, and was taught how to look after her and herself in tandem. Bibi isn’t complete without her perfect version.
And Mizuki is gone.
There’s places Bibi finds empty—there should be a little girl there, six years younger than Bibi. It’s better that she’s away from Aioen, Bibi knows that, but she can’t help but wish sometimes that she could steal Mizuki back, to cradle her in her arms and hold her. Mizuki is a wish made from memories of childhood and pain, but Bibi still needs her.
The horrible truth is that sometimes Bibi hates Mizuki.
Bibi is a bitter creature, a defective girl who spends her time scuffing her feet and staying away from the other kids—they’re too loud and she hates playing with them because she knows she might just hurt them.
Mizuki would be different. Mizuki was always different. Bibi would do anything for that. Or for a family at all, to not be a defective product.
She wishes that she could be like Mizuki.
Mizuki’s family must be nice—they must care for her, since they asked for her specifically. The mother had seemed so much like Mizuki, the same hair color and everything—when she met Bibi’s eyes she’d seemed so far away, something Bibi could never reach.
Bibi can never reach happiness. No matter how far she reaches, all she’s left with are the tatters of a family she can’t hold onto anymore.
She wonders if Mizuki still remembers her. She doesn’t know if Mizuki looks anything like her anymore, shaped by a home and a family far away from the orphanage, far from who she was as a baby cradled in Bibi’s arms.
Now Bibi is the only Mizuki left here, but she still hates the name. Hates how it compares her to her sister.
She wants to stop being defective. She wants to take Mizuki’s place as someone loved.
Even if she wishes as hard as she can, she’ll never achieve what she wants. Protecting her sister is impossible from this far, and being loved is even harder. No matter how hard she clings to the happiness in her life, the pain always bleeds in at the edges. Maybe if she could stop being Mouse she’d start being human.
But Bibi has never been human; she’s more than human, and she hates it.
If Mizuki was able to escape, then Bibi will try to be happy for her. Her bitterness, her jealousy, her love for Mizuki even after years—it all gets locked in her chest, growing older and older with no chance of leaving.
The night sky is clear. It twinkles like the dreams Bibi will never be able to hold onto.
The swingsets creak loudly as Bibi shifts and swings gently. Beside her, the Aioen owner’s girl kicks out her feet, staring at her like she’s hung the stars in the sky. There’s an uncomfortable twist in Bibi’s chest; she doesn’t know Kizuna well enough for that.
Bibi glares at her, puffing out her cheeks. “I’m not a hero.”
“You are to me!”
Kizuna is wearing white on the playground, wrapped up in a coat that goes down to her knees, overgrown in a cute way that Bibi can never match. Bibi is endlessly jealous of her every time she sees her from across Aioen’s long grassy play area, laughing with the other kids.
Tugging her blue hoodie around herself, she stops glaring. It’s not worth it.
“You’re being adopted by Father, are you not?” Kizuna asks in the lull of conversation. “We should get along! So you should accept my compliment, Big Sis.”
It’s not as though being called Big Sis is strange for Bibi, but the way Kizuna instantly adopted her into her family feels off. “Mr. Chieda—Riichi,” she corrects when she remembers that she’s going to be Mizuki Chieda soon, “he just wants to take me in because nobody will adopt me.”
Kizuna looks at her with wide brown eyes. “What? Why would that be?”
Bibi lives in the shadow of those who call her worthless. She kicks the grass beneath her feet. “My left eye. It can’t see anything.” She’s a defective model, hardly what Horadori wants from her.
She hasn’t seen Horadori in a long time, but his fingers still feel wrapped around her wrists.
Kizuna keeps staring. Maybe Bibi should have explained it some other way, or told Kizuna to leave her alone. She’s not exactly happy to tell her, but Kizuna is friendly and so curious, and Bibi is so jealous of the way she carries herself.
She’d saved her from a stray dog today, and Kizuna had clung to her back with scraped knees, calling her a hero.
It reminded her, in some twisted way, of going home after Horadori’s experiments. Two children with so much life to live, going back to Aioen, Bibi carrying someone she had to protect. Mizuki had stars in her eyes like that too, when Bibi showed off her strength—or maybe not. It’s been years now, and she can’t quite remember.
If she wasn’t adopted by Riichi then Bibi would end up adrift and alone all over again. So she’s grateful to him, despite everything about Aioen’s relationship with Horadori, things she doesn’t know how to understand.
“Oh,” Kizuna says. “But you are still a hero! Being able to do all that—!”
Bibi turns away, but it’s too late—in the world Horadori created, Bibi is the strongest person here. She’s admired and feared for reasons she didn’t ask for, and her new sister loves her even when Bibi doesn’t want her to love her.
But she’ll protect her. No matter what, she’ll still protect her, because family is everything.
Bibi lives that kind of life—not being able to let go of a protective streak, not being able to look Kizuna in the eye when she admires her. But she likes being called Big Sis, and her heart warms when it comes to Kizuna, little by little.
They play on these swings many more times, and somehow it scares her less to be strong when she’s with her sister.
Bibi becomes just Mizuki. No longer Mouse—when Riichi took her in and Kizuna showed her love, all that was left was Mizuki and Big Sis.
Bibi regards the woman who came to talk to her with suspicion from the very first moment they meet. They shake hands, a child’s hand in an adult’s, and the woman in red sits across from the child who doesn’t know how to be anything but an experiment. She may have shed the moniker of Mouse, but being Mizuki still doesn’t feel right.
Mizuki Okiura is deserving of that name in a different way from Mizuki Chieda.
Bibi—the big sister of two girls who she adores—stares at the woman. Someone who might adopt her, apparently. Bibi doesn’t understand it. It makes her feel trapped, like she’s going to be ripped away from things familiar.
She’s not exactly someone people ask for.
“My name is Shizue Kuranushi, but you can call me Boss if you want. Everyone else does,” the woman says with a smile that turns her eyes narrow and sly.
Bibi stares at her. “That’s not funny.”
The woman who calls herself Boss raises an eyebrow. “What’s not? I didn’t tell a joke.” Her voice rings with sincerity, and Bibi feels herself swallow.
“...Boss makes it sound like you control me.”
Boss grins. “Maybe I can’t, then. You don’t need to call me anything you don’t want to. If you agree to a deal with me, I’ll be your boss eventually, but it’s not like I’ll take away your free will.” Boss leans closer over the desk, staring at Bibi.
Bibi sits up straighter. “A deal?”
“I adopt you,” Boss says, like she’s planned this all out—a deal Bibi won’t be able to refuse. “And when you turn eighteen, you join my organization. I’ll put you on the fast track—you’ll be independent and go to school like normal until then—and after that you can be my secret weapon.”
Something about that makes Bibi’s heart jump. “What do you mean, secret weapon? You know about…” She can’t say it. Not to a stranger. “Did Riichi tell you?”
Boss smiles. “No. But you’re strong, aren’t you?”
Bibi is so strong she can rip tree roots out of the ground. To ask the question seems ridiculous; Bibi is shocked into momentary silence, something burning inside of her. “I am,” she breathes. “But why do you need a secret weapon?”
(Why does she need someone like Bibi, someone always thrown away?)
“I need someone I can trust. It’s a secret organization, and the members are close but they always get into trouble—they all were thrown into it for one reason or another. This is your reason,” Boss’s eyes are sharp, but Bibi finds herself drawn in. “You don’t have to accept. But let me use your strength if you think you can take it.”
Bibi laughs, delighted and incredulous and shocked all at once. How can she believe something like this? How can she trust that? “What? I just told you not to control me.”
“And I won’t, not completely.” Boss smiles. “You’ll be able to be separate from my other subordinates, unknown to my enemies. You’ll be able to investigate things the others won’t. You’ll be close to the top, and use your strength for me, but I can’t force you.”
Bibi doesn’t know how to feel about that.
She lets Boss continue talking, but she feels uneasy about every word from Boss’s mouth—Bibi is independent, but stuck without a purpose to go towards. She doesn’t know what she wants out of life except to escape the clutches of the pain she’s been burdened with from the moment she was given to Horadori; and that’s not going to be through Boss, or through greater control.
And yet it’s tempting; she’ll have power to do her own investigations. She can practically taste the sweet victory of taking down Horadori for good.
“I can do what I want?” Bibi asks cautiously, straightening up. “Even if it’s dangerous?”
Boss watches her evenly, expression not changing from that same devious smile—like she knows more about Bibi than Bibi knows of herself. She’s still trying to find her place in the world, and Boss must know that—must know that this is the perfect time to snatch her up. “Even then. I’d be willing to give you help with it, if that’s what you want.”
Bibi lets out a breath.
Her memories are made of metal boxes and scalpels, and her childhood is dark and full of screaming. The cause of all that suffering is still out there, and the world outside Aioen is too wide and hard to navigate on her own.
“I’ll consider it,” she says. It’s weak of her to rely on Boss—she still doesn’t like the idea of it.
But Boss seems pleased. “I’ll give you more details later. You don’t need to decide for sure right now.” She folds her hands together, and Bibi wonders if Boss can read her intentions. Maybe she’s given up too much.
The idea of being part of this grows slowly in her mind, roots reaching down into the earth. She nods.
Boss is happy, and that makes Bibi almost hope that this could be different from the past; Boss wants to use her, but she’s someone who seems to actually know what she’s doing. If Bibi is able to look more into her organization, then maybe she can actually trust it, trust it in a way she never could Horadori.
She burns the name Shizue Kuranushi into her mind to be suspicious of later.
And then, right before Boss is about to leave, she speaks quieter. “Mizuki,” Boss’s lips thin, and her gaze hardens. “I have one more thing you should know.”
Bibi feels herself tense.
A catch. Of course there’s a catch—Boss doesn’t seem like the kind of woman to leave without one—even with being a secret weapon already being one of the pillars of this relationship.
“I know where the other Mizuki is. She’s one of the reasons I was able to find you—and if you come with me, I can help you look into her.” Boss keeps that serious, hardened look on her face. “If you want to meet her again—”
Bibi’s jaw clenches. “No.” She sucks in a breath. “I mean, yes. I want to know where she is—but she doesn’t remember me. She can’t remember me. So I can’t just… show up and change her life like that.” Bibi’s hands clench into fists—they shake with the strength in them, but Bibi doesn’t wield them. Not even if it hurts that she can’t—shouldn’t—see her baby sister again.
Mizuki shouldn’t remember Bibi—that would mean remembering being Rabbit. Bibi can’t let that happen.
“Alright.” Boss’s voice is even and calm. “But if you change your mind, tell me.”
The worst thing about it is that Bibi has been fully convinced by this—she raises her eyes to Boss and feels the desperation to see Mizuki again blooming like a horrible flower in her chest. She can’t let it win. She just has to protect Mizuki from afar.
And Boss is the way to do that.
“Where is she?” Bibi asks. “I can use your resources to look into the family that adopted her, right? Would your organization have the resources to make that happen?”
Boss smiles—she knows Bibi’s been caught. “I’m with the police. Of course we do.”
Bibi sucks in a cold breath—the police. “And you found Mizuki because… of your job? Did she get in trouble?” She’s only nine—Bibi is only fifteen, and looks at the police with a wary eye already. If Mizuki accidentally hurt someone with her strength and the police got involved, Bibi doesn’t know what she’ll do.
Boss shakes her head, and Bibi releases her held breath. Boss sighs. “I’ve never talked to her. I heard about her from a subordinate.”
“You looked into her enough to find me just because she was mentioned?” Bibi stares.
Boss’s grin widens, and she tilts her head back with the kind of confidence Bibi finds herself craving at that moment—she wants to be like Boss. She’d be fine giving herself up for this opportunity. Mizuki Kuranushi doesn’t have a bad ring to it, as long as Bibi can look after her sister.
“Well,” Boss says, “call me overprotective, but I look into things like that to take care of him.” Her gaze softens. “I could do the same for you.”
Bibi wants it desperately—she wants to be wanted.
Kizuna cries the day Bibi leaves, from the very moment Bibi wins their shoe toss battle.
She’s been talking to Boss for days now, making sure she knows what the deal is. She had a test done too, shook hands with a man in what she thought was a lab coat for a terrifying second—before he turned around and she saw he was in a skintight suit. She’d laughed at it, and the way his collar rose high into the air, and everything about him.
Overall, she didn’t mind it. She doesn’t even mind that they’ll have to remove one of her eyes; she has no vision there anyway, and getting it for the first time sounds exciting, even if the in between is scary.
She’s okay with this. More than okay, she’s excited for the change.
She agreed to it readily, but she’s still sad she’ll have to leave Kizuna and Aioen behind—few of the people who leave are heard back from again, for one reason or another, and Bibi doesn’t want to be like Mizuki, a loose end in Kizuna’s life.
“It’ll be fine,” Bibi insists. “I was supposed to be adopted out anyway.” She shrugs, packing more things into her suitcase. “This is… how it was always supposed to be.”
Bibi doesn’t believe in destiny. This is just how things played out.
“I know,” Kizuna says, fists bunching the end of her dress, staring at Bibi with a red face and tears in the corners of her eyes. “But it is not fair, and you should not go! You’re my big sis!”
Bibi sucks in a breath.
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Kizuna is her sister, but not for much longer, and it opens a hole in Bibi’s chest, her heart dropping at the idea that she shouldn’t leave just because of Kizuna’s wishes.
She loves her life here. She loves Kizuna, and Riichi, and the other kids. It’s difficult to decide this, but she thinks it’ll be better for her. She’ll have a different life, and maybe she’ll find that it suits her better—it’s the kind of thing she knows she’ll be able to get used to. Kizuna just doesn’t understand the life Bibi wants to have.
Another part of Boss’s deal; she can’t tell anyone about ABIS.
“I have to go,” Bibi says, and it comes out colder than she wants. She hates it, wants to throw out her heart at the thought that she could be hurting Kizuna. “I need this,” she tries again. “I need this more than you’ll ever understand!”
Kizuna’s tears drip down her face. “You do not care at all, do you?” Kizuna cries.
“I do!” Her chest fills with pain at the accusation. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand! Shizue is giving me a lot of opportunities! But I still care about you.” She turns her face away. She doesn’t want to look at Kizuna right now. “You’re still my little sister.”
But she’s trapped here; she hates the way Aoien is connected to a horrible past Bibi can’t escape from. She hates feeling unwanted here.
“But—!”
“Kizuna,” Bibi turns back, and feels her heart beating unevenly, a drum to the tune of letting herself walk towards the future. “Please.”
“Sisters do not leave each other!”
It’s a stab right to the chest. Kizuna stares at Bibi as if she hasn’t realized what she just said—like this is just another fight of theirs that Bibi will resolve by caving to Kizuna’s demands, because Kizuna is just a girl with too much love in her heart. And she loves Bibi, and for a while that’s all Bibi wanted.
She wants more now. It’s not enough.
Bibi burns in shame for the world she’s leaving. “That’s not what I want,” she says, staring at the floor as if that can stop the burning in her chest. “You sound like you’re trying to take away my choice.”
“No! I want you to choose me!”
“Well—!” Bibi whirls around to face Kizuna, and the burning pain only increases, fueling her fury as she looks at her sister with tears in her own eyes. “I won’t. I’m choosing Shizue. We don’t have to be sisters anymore if that’s what this means to you.”
Bibi is about to burst. Kizuna stares at her in horror, and the world stands still.
Bibi breaks the silence by turning around and zipping up her suitcase. She doesn’t want to be here anymore—she doesn’t want Kizuna to watch her leave.
She’d wanted a goodbye she could be happy about; she wanted Kizuna to be proud of her freedom, of the world waiting for her. She’s not Mizuki Chieda anymore, and that’s a good thing—it doesn’t mean she has to cut herself away from them.
Except that if they’re not sisters then Bibi will be missing something forever.
“Big Sis…”
Bibi doesn’t respond. Her suitcase is as light as air, and her past won’t be a chain on her anymore; this isn’t a fairytale like Kizuna wants it to be, and Bibi is turning a new chapter in her life.
Bibi looks up Mizuki’s family as soon as she’s settled in.
She knows it would be a bad idea to get close to them—Renju and Shoko are people who probably wouldn’t appreciate a stranger dropping in on them and declaring herself Mizuki’s sister. In fact, she doubts Mizuki knows about being adopted at all.
That’s what Boss tells Bibi, at least, and Bibi has found herself trusting Boss, despite herself.
Mizuki’s pictures are beautiful, a long lost artifact of love. Her eyes are still the same as Bibi’s, but her expression is different from the child Bibi knows from her memories. She glares at the camera like she doesn’t want to be there at all, a child with a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth.
“How’d you get this?” Bibi breathes, and looks up at Boss before immediately looking back down at her sister, the first glimpse at her she’s gotten in so many years.
Boss shrugs. “I have my ways.”
Bibi feels something break inside herself—Boss won’t tell her anything, but she wishes she would. Bibi puts the photo down and forces her hands to stay in her lap—she doesn’t want to damage it.
Her nails dig into her palms, stinging with the pressure. She stares at Boss, not quite glowering.
Boss’s expression shifts slowly, melting into something like regret. Bibi hadn’t known Boss could look like that, but she finds the change welcome. Boss sighs, crossing her arms. “A friend of mine is looking after her,” Boss admits.
Bibi blinks. “What?”
Boss raises her eyebrows. “What? You want something better than that? I have connections, Mizuki.”
Bibi’s mind races with questions—why, and how is Mizuki not staying with her parents? The ones she had to fight to get, the family that’s supposed to cherish her.
(Cherish her more than Boss does for Bibi; she made it clear from the start that Bibi is a weapon, and Bibi doesn’t mind it, but some part of her wishes that Boss could be her mother and comfort her when she’s sad. Sometimes Bibi breaks, and she wants Boss to put the pieces back together in ways Riichi never could.)
Bibi swallows. “Who’s she with?”
“Kaname Date. One of my subordinates, the one who mentioned her the first time. And no, you can’t meet with him. I’m not going to introduce you.” Boss watches Bibi carefully.
Bibi is a secret weapon—she’s not supposed to be connected to ABIS until she’s eighteen. For now, she curls her fingers together, a poor substitute for Mizuki and Kizuna and all the other people Bibi keeps losing.
Bibi huffs out a breath. Frustration and disappointment stick inside her chest, but she can’t do anything and she knows it. Boss put out the rules related to ABIS from the start, and Bibi should just be grateful for having this much. Her hands shake, but she pulls them apart. “Fine.”
Boss raises an eyebrow silently.
Bibi presses her lips together. “Just let me look into her parents. Please.”
She’s surprised when Boss agrees, but it gives her a mission—she can’t look after Mizuki directly, but she can at the very least look into the family that took her in and then—apparently—put her into the hands of someone else. It’s funny—they keep changing hands, over and over.
They can’t escape it. Neither of them can.
Something is wrong with Shoko Nadami.
The only thing that tips Bibi off that something is off about Mizuki’s mother is when Bibi looks into her company. At first it seems normal, and Bibi wants to tear her hair out with frustration whenever she hits a wall in her research, but that’s normal. She’s probably fine.
Except that her business keeps shutting places down.
Bibi keeps digging. Maybe this is why Shoko let Mizuki go—maybe this is why Mizuki is staying with Boss’s subordinate instead of someone who loves her as a mother should. Shoko must just be busy, and Bibi only has vague suspicions about it. Real estate sounds hard, after all—not that Bibi would know.
And then Bibi looks into the finances, able to find her way in after months and years of trying.
She shouldn’t be doing this, she knows that. She shouldn’t have access. But Bibi finds her way on her own, without relying on Boss’s connections, grabbing hold of any information she can. She definitely doesn’t know why Shoko’s business is how it is, but she can get some kind of hint if she just breaks into this information.
Bibi freezes when her eyes catch hold of Horadori Institute.
(Bibi is nine years old, screaming as her hand is crushed between pieces of metal. Bibi is eight, covering her mouth as her eyes tear up. Bibi is seven, pain coursing through her veins. Bibi is six, and Horadori is holding her eyelids open and testing her vision.
Defective, defective, defective. Her left eye doesn’t work. She’s not strong enough—she’s not what he wants, so she’ll keep being in pain.)
Horadori Institute and Shoko Nadami’s business exchanged funds at some point. It’s not as if Bibi hasn’t already seen what Riichi Chieda gave to Horadori, not knowing the horrors Bibi went through. But Riichi is different—he took care of Bibi. He loved Bibi for a few years.
Bibi checks the date of Shoko and Horadori’s transaction. Bibi was five that year. Mizuki hadn’t been born yet.
Maybe it’s better that way. Better that Mizuki doesn’t know about it, because then maybe she’ll be free from the memories of the torture—better that Bibi does the same, and stops searching.
She knows she won’t. Throughout her whole life, Bibi has always inserted herself into these things—she just can’t leave Horadori alone. She can’t stop reliving the past, stop having nightmares or stop feeling her skin crawl when she sees people in lab coats. So why should she stop now?
Bibi swallows. She’ll find a connection. She swears it—she’ll even use Boss’s connections. She’s not alone anymore—she has the backing of a high ranking member of the police. This defective girl is powerful, and more than just physically.
Bibi’s heart beats at a feverish pitch in her ears. She’s going to get burned by what she finds, but she can’t stop now.
Years ago, Shoko sat in Chikara Horadori’s office. Freshly eighteen years old and nervous, she laced her fingers together, then pulled them apart. Fixed her hair.
This is what’s expected of her—she didn’t have a partner yet, a husband she won’t want to rely on—but she knew even then that having a child was in the cards. Eventually, she’d follow the societal path and become a mother.
She needed her child to be perfect.
The moment the door opened, Shoko stood up, greeting the doctor with a practiced smile. He waved his hand, and she sat down again.
“Now,” Chikara said, sitting down in front of her with a sharp-toothed grin, leaning over his desk. He seemed so much more than a man at that moment. “Shoko Nadami, was it? Are you ready to help make history, with your genes and my brilliance together?”
Shoko was. She knew it from the bottom of her soul.