009

Most people knew that Kasuga Kaneko didn't live in a small house like most children from normal families like us—like them, I mean—but rather in a luxurious mansion on the edge of town.

Her father worked for a large corporation and had been successful his entire life. Her mother, too, was a good and responsible homemaker. A beloved mother who could manage the Kasuga family estate perfectly. They had a successful and happy life. That environment had also shaped Kasuga Kaneko's development, ultimately turning her into what we saw in the past.

Nine years as class president, never missing a single day of school, always surrounded by top-tier achievements. She was raised in a respectable family environment, where honor brought goodness. A good place to live.

At least, until a tragedy finally occurred.

That day, Kasuga's father had just received a promotion after winning a negotiation for a project from a large American company. With the promotion, he became busier and often left town for work.

For the first few months, everything was fine. Nothing changed. Her father still smiled and remained engaged with the family, despite being busy and tired from work. The Kasuga family was still harmonious—even if her father wasn't home as often.

But it didn't last long.

The following month, something strange appeared in her father's behavior.

Nothing looked the same anymore.

Something was different about him. He still smiled and seemed cheerful. But not toward his family—toward his phone.

Kasuga's father no longer interacted much with the family. He spent more time on his phone, laughing to himself, and seemed very restless when at home. He left early every morning and didn't return until late at night, even when he wasn't working.

Kasuga's mother grew suspicious and tried to peek at her father's phone screen, but she never succeeded because he kept it carefully guarded, not letting anyone see. It was as if he were hiding a secret in there. The phone that used to be left lying around on tables or ignored—except for important matters—was now carried everywhere. He no longer went to bed early as usual. Not because of work, but because he was playing with something on his phone.

Until finally, it all came to light.

There was no mistake. It was a chat.

An online conversation.

A conversation he was having with a woman. His new executive assistant.

Kasuga's mother was a technology graduate. She knew the internet world well. Tracking someone's location and hacking their online ID wasn't difficult for her. She hacked her own husband's account—the one that had seemed strange for a month. She knew he was hiding something. But she didn't have strong evidence to accuse him. So she couldn't make baseless accusations. However, once she had that evidence, she finally understood why her husband had stopped behaving normally toward her.

The executive assistant, it turned out, was her husband's high school ex-girlfriend. They had still loved each other when they were forced to part after graduation. Those feelings were still strong in the assistant's heart. Kasuga's father remembered her well, too. He also harbored feelings for his ex. In reality, he had married Kasuga's mother without any love at all. Even so, he had tried to live as a good husband and father. And he had succeeded.

Unfortunately, all of that collapsed when he saw his old love again. The woman he had truly loved all along. That made him lose his principles and become trapped in the past, refusing to accept the reality that he had his own family now, instead violating a husband's code of ethics by cheating on his wife.

Kasuga's mother, upon discovering this, was furious. She had never made any mistake as a wife, yet she was treated this way. Her heart was wounded.

Kasuga's father, who had never raised his voice either, lost his temper, lost his mind, and became angry as well. He ignored the fact that he was cheating and made excuses that he was just doing his job. He was also angry that his account had been hacked. That was a violation of privacy.

A heated argument broke out, and they came to the conclusion that a cold war had been declared.

The atmosphere in the house became tense.

No one smiled anymore. Worse, her father and mother had become like strangers in their own home. Kasuga's father was busy going out every day and coming home late. Sometimes he didn't come home at all. Her mother stopped cooking from that point on. She spent more time drinking beer and getting drunk. At first, she did it only at home. But as time passed, she followed her husband's habit, leaving the house for long periods and only returning after nightfall. The Kasuga house had become as quiet as a graveyard.

Kasuga was present when her parents started fighting. But she never knew what caused the fights. Her parents had never fought before, about anything. Her family had always gotten along and never used harsh words. But lately, when they began keeping their distance, they always ended up fighting, cursing, and swearing at each other. They were no longer harmonious like before.

Ironic.....

The Kasuga family had cracked.

The family that once lived in peace and took pride in their happiness had now completely transformed into a ruined family she didn't recognize. Kasuga no longer received greetings from her parents. Her good grades were no longer praised, she no longer had breakfast made for her or was asked what she wanted for dinner, her mother was always drunk, and her father was rarely home. That big house was no longer as grand as before. That luxurious mansion offered no comfort at all. Everything felt empty. She was alone. Without her parents' praise or laughter.

All that was there for Kasuga was Gao.

The cat that had faithfully stayed by her side since forever, in any situation.

Until one day—

It was just after she had returned from school, following her junior high graduation ceremony. Kasuga met a sorcerer on her way home. A sorcerer who said he could give her a solution.

Kasuga, who was very religious and didn't believe in any power other than God, wavered when she saw that figure. A magic-user. Someone who could see hidden things.

Trusting a sorcerer was a mistake for a religious person. But Kasuga's desire to find a solution to her problems and reunite her parents as they once were overpowered her beliefs.

She wanted her parents to go back to how they used to be. She wanted to know what was causing them to fight constantly and find the solution. As a devoted daughter, Kasuga didn't want to see her family fall apart before her eyes. Kasuga Kaneko didn't want that kind of family. She wanted her old family back. The family where she always saw her parents together, and where they always paid attention to her.

That desire consumed Kasuga.

She approached the sorcerer and asked for his advice.

That advice cost her all the savings she had actually intended to use for university in the future.

The sorcerer gave her a suggestion. If Kasuga wanted to know what her parents' problem was, she would need a psychic eye. To obtain that eye, she would have to kill a cat at the ruined shrine on the edge of town, where she could summon a bakeneko.

The sacrifice was a cat's life.

A black cat.

And that meant her Gao-chan.

The only black cat Kasuga owned.

Kasuga killed that cat to obtain the psychic eye.

And, sure enough, she summoned a cat monster after spilling Gao's blood on the ground. That cat gave her its eye. With that eye, Kasuga could see everything, hear everything people said inside their heads.

She was happy to have obtained that eye, thinking the solution to her problems was right in front of her.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as she had expected.

Kasuga could indeed read the minds of her mother and father. Only, she never fully believed any of it. Especially all the truths she had never known. Kasuga read everything.

The truth that her mother was cheating with another man at a bar downtown, the truth that her father had secretly remarried his old flame, the truth that her mother wanted an immediate divorce and to move to another city, the truth that her father didn't care about his family and wanted to build a new one, and the truth that Kasuga wasn't their biological child.

Kasuga heard it all.

Kasuga was actually an orphan they had adopted as a baby. Her mother couldn't give birth after a miscarriage that left her unable to carry another pregnancy. So they had chosen to adopt a child. And that child was Kasuga Kaneko.

All the kindness she had received as a child did not come from her parents' love. It came from their desire as people who couldn't have children. When their perspective began to change, they realized that loving someone who wasn't their biological child wouldn't yield anything.

Upon learning all of this, Kasuga began to lose faith.

She had thought her psychic eye would be the solution, but instead, it brought her pain. That eye showed her all the painful truths—things Kasuga Kaneko couldn't face. Her parents had lied to her. They had hurt her. The sorcerer had also taken all her money. He hadn't lied about the eye, but he had lied about the eye being able to solve her problems. In fact, nothing changed for the better. Everything got worse.

Kasuga's mother filed for divorce from her husband and left town, disappearing to who knows where.

Her father became increasingly busy with work, leaving no time for Kasuga, until he finally died in an accident—hit by a car while out of town with his new wife. Meanwhile, Kasuga's eyesight gradually faded.

Her left eye stopped working entirely after she lost her father. Their big house was now occupied by no one but her. Kasuga had no money to pay the property taxes, so she chose to leave and move to a small apartment on the outskirts of town, leaving everything behind.

She started a new, miserable life. Forced to go to school and work part-time just to survive, with one eye already blind.

Her life became chaotic and unstable.

She didn't continue her role as class president.

School took a backseat to work.

She ate poorly.

Her rent was always late.

And she no longer believed in anything.

Kasuga had abandoned her religion ever since she lost her parents. She hadn't practiced her faith since that time. Kasuga had completely stopped caring about anything except how to keep breathing. That was the reality.

All those realities were too terrible to look at. She pushed them all away from her eyes. Kasuga shut herself off because she no longer cared about anything. She had completely lost her feelings. Those realities had turned her into a human being without perspective.

That was the reason she had changed.

"Black cats, you know, have a strong connection to the world of magic. Their spirits can become an extraordinary source of mana. That bakeneko—no doubt about it—must have been a demon that had settled here long ago. He was used by the sorcerer that girl met back then for his own benefit."

The sorcerer who had deceived her.

"I think the reason that bakeneko wanted to give the girl a psychic eye was because of Gao-chan. Bakeneko, of course, are the embodied spirits of dead cats. They grow from hatred toward humans. But even though they're evil spirits, that doesn't mean they hate all creatures. Bakeneko can communicate with other cats, and with their spirits as well. They're like family. Gao-chan persuaded that bakeneko to help her. In exchange for giving her the eye, she offered her own spirit to become the bakeneko's mana."

A loyal cat devoted to its owner.

A pet she had cherished for so long. That cat alone had understood her.

"None of this would have happened if the cat you killed back then hadn't been Gao-chan. Because that cat loved you, she willingly gave her life, hoping you could solve your problems."

The cat had given its return. A much greater return.

"Be grateful that you had a creature who was thankful to you. Actually, you're not the one at fault here. Everything that happened to you is a game of fate, and fate asked you to follow it. That's just how it is."

But Kasuga had never accepted her fate.

She had denied every reality she saw. She had never accepted any of it.

That's why her left eye couldn't see. It couldn't see because she had closed off all her beliefs about every reality in front of her.

"You closed your own eye. You were never blind. You just never opened your eyes. That's your real problem."

It wasn't the cat monster that made Kasuga blind.

It wasn't the sorcerer.

It wasn't her father or her mother.

It wasn't even that bitter reality.

It was herself. She had closed one of her eyes and pushed aside every reality she saw, refusing to believe it, ignoring it. If Kasuga Kaneko had been willing to accept it all, perhaps she wouldn't have experienced that blindness.

Or perhaps, more accurately, she would never have walked around with one eye closed.

"I never considered that possibility before. I thought Kasuga's eye was taken."

"No. Her eye was never taken. What was taken was her money. All of this is simply because she didn't accept her life's fate."

"So from the beginning, this was just a matter of perspective, huh."

"Yeah," said Miss Renma, sheathing her katana again. "But of course, it's also because she used that eye. The psychic eye is one of the mystical eyes possessed by certain creatures. Cats are among them. You've heard that cats can see ghosts, right?"

I knew that.

"That eye affected her vision because she couldn't accept what she saw. Think of it like defusing a bomb. If you cut the wrong wire, you're destroyed. The core of this problem is herself."

Kasuga's feelings of rejecting her family's fate had made her blind.

"I learned a good lesson today," I said.

"Me too."

I turned to look at Kasuga, who was now standing where she had been kneeling. Her right eye hadn't changed color. Indeed, there was no change in that eye. But her left eye was different. That previously empty eye now showed a new color. A bright, dark brown. Kasuga's sight had returned.

"I finally understand that not everything one wants in this life should necessarily be achieved," Kasuga said, smiling faintly. "God truly has power over everything. And so does the best plan for a human's life."

A brief sermon.

"My fate may have destroyed my life. But it also gave me something precious."

She smiled wider at me.

"And what's that?" I asked.

"The chance to meet someone as good as you, Yamato."

That was the best line I'd ever heard from her.

"From now on, can we be friends?"

I have never hated myself. Nor my fate. Even though everything feels so heavy. You know, it's not easy living with a vampire.

But I have never hated this life. Because this life will not last forever. That's why I will accept everything that happens to me and live it as fully as possible. That is the fate of a human being.

"Yeah, I'd be very happy to accept."

This case ended with a surprisingly startling friendship proposal.