Chapter 44: “Two Daughters”

The house felt smaller now. Not because walls had moved, but because the space Kei filled had expanded.

Everywhere Rurika looked, she saw Touko. She saw the precise way Touko placed her shoes, the careful alignment of school books on the shelf, the way she greeted Kei with effortless warmth every morning.

Kei treated them both kindly. Naturally. Gently. Always fair, always measured. He asked about their days, praised achievements, reminded them to eat properly. He laughed when Touko cracked a clever joke, smiled when Rurika timidly offered her opinion, and never, ever showed favoritism.

But kindness was a weapon Rurika did not know how to wield. Each smile from Kei carried weight, a reminder of how much he noticed, how much he cared, how much he had always protected. Rurika shrank beneath it. She spoke softly, measured her tone, and tried to become smaller, quieter, less present. She thought she could disappear into the margins and claim a fraction of the space Kei’s affection allowed.

Touko noticed immediately. Her gaze would settle on Rurika in class or at the dinner table, polite, perfectly composed, but always aware. She did not speak. She did not scold. She simply observed. Every hesitant glance, every tiny act of self-effacement was catalogued, weighed, and noted.

Rurika felt herself retreating further, yet every effort to fade into the background only drew Kei’s attention in different ways. He would ask her questions to include her, laugh at her timid jokes, brush her hair from her forehead when she looked flustered. Each act should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like exposure. Her vulnerability was on display. Her every attempt to survive in this house was visible.

And Touko was always there, watching. Not like a sister. Not like a friend. Watching like a guardian, like a cat assessing a new animal that had wandered too close.

Rurika began to notice how every interaction with Kei carried rules she could never quite understand. Some words could be said; others could not. Some gestures were permitted; others forbidden. Touko’s presence made each decision consequential.

One evening, while Kei and Yui prepared dinner, Rurika sat at the table quietly, trying not to be noticed. Kei glanced up at her with that soft, fatherly warmth.

“How was school today?” he asked.

“It… was fine,” she murmured. Her voice barely rose above the hum of the stove.

Touko, sitting across from her, smiled politely. “Rurika-san finished her homework first,” she said calmly, as if affirming a fact rather than issuing praise.

Kei nodded. “Good job,” he said, and the warmth in his tone wrapped around Rurika like sunlight—unavoidable, suffocating. She tried to smile back, but it faltered halfway, her lips trembling with the weight of expectation.

Later, Touko lingered beside her as Rurika carried dishes to the sink.

“You’re careful,” Touko observed. “Don’t break anything. Papa notices.”

Rurika flinched, then nodded. “Yes.”

Touko placed a hand lightly on her shoulder—not heavy, not threatening. The touch anchored her, reminded her, warned her. “Be mindful,” Touko said softly. “This house has rules. Some are spoken, others are not.”

Rurika swallowed, understanding perfectly. Touko’s calm was sharper than any scolding. Her composure carved boundaries Rurika dared not cross.

As days passed, Rurika’s attempts to blend in became instinctive. She mirrored Touko’s movements subtly, tried to anticipate Kei’s needs, avoided stepping into spaces Touko occupied. But she never succeeded fully. Touko’s perfection always outshone her, not in arrogance, but in the seamless way she existed.

Every time Kei laughed at Touko’s clever remarks, every time Yui praised her daughter’s small accomplishments, Rurika felt a tightening in her chest. It wasn’t jealousy in the childish sense. It was a deeper, colder recognition: Touko was the original. She was the measure. She was the one who belonged.

Rurika tried to remind herself of reality: Kei had adopted her. He had welcomed her into this home. He had chosen to protect her. She belonged, too.

Yet, in quiet moments, when Touko was near and Kei’s attention flicked between them, Rurika could not escape the truth. Belonging here was not simple. It was a contest without rules, where the winner was defined not by effort, but by instinct, by presence, by the subtle weight of inevitability.

One night, Rurika sat by her window, watching Touko and Kei in the living room. Kei was telling a story, leaning back comfortably, laughing. Touko’s head rested lightly on his shoulder as she listened, a small, perfect smile on her face. The picture could have been ordinary. It should have been.

Rurika shivered. She had learned in this house that nothing ordinary stayed ordinary for long. The love here was not casual. It was measured. Calculated. Inherited.

And she was not the inheritor.

She closed her eyes and whispered to herself, a mantra she barely recognized as words: “I have to be careful. I have to be good. I have to stay.”

When she opened them again, Touko was standing beside her door, eyes calm, watching.

“You’ve noticed,” Touko said softly, as if answering the question Rurika had not dared to speak.

Rurika nodded faintly. “Yes.”

Touko’s smile was flawless. “Good. That means you understand. This is not a house where love is shared. It is a house where love is inherited.”

The words settled like ice in Rurika’s chest. She wanted to speak, to argue, to claim a place. But she knew better. She only nodded again, smaller, quieter.

Touko stepped back into the hall. Her footsteps disappeared, leaving Rurika alone in her room. The shadows of the walls pressed close. The photographs on the shelves seemed to shimmer with their own approval.

Rurika curled into herself, aware that everything she had learned so far had led to this understanding: survival in this home was no longer enough. Now, the question was simple.

Who truly belonged?

And she understood, with a cold certainty, that in this house, love was not shared. It was inherited.