“I know you two think I’m crazy. That I need therapy.” Her voice turned cold. “You think I’m making this all up. I’m not. She’s alive.”
We stepped back into the dining room, and Akiko saw for herself—no customers. Not a single one.
“Don’t you see? This is her plan,” Akiko said. “She wants me to fail. She only showed up when it was clear my restaurant was becoming successful. She wants to destroy what I’ve built. None of this is my doing.”
“Akiko, you fired Koji in the middle of service,” Jiro said.
“He wasn’t up to par.”
“Neither are you lately,” I said. The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. Akiko turned on me, eyes narrowed to slits.
“How dare you accuse me of not doing a good job.”
“She didn’t mean it that way,” Jiro said quickly.
“Yes, she did.” Akiko pulled away from him. “Keep going, Miki. Say what’s really on your mind. Don’t hold back. I’d love to hear how this is all my fault.”
“Okay, I will. You’re spiraling. And you’re taking this restaurant and us down with you.”
Akiko sneered, ready to pounce.
“Akiko, it’s true,” Jiro said gently. “The business is suffering. Sales are down. Reservations have dried up. I can show you the ledger.”
He wrapped an arm around her, but she shrugged it off.
“It’s because of Reina! This is exactly what she wants. I ended the Sakamoto dynasty, and now she wants revenge!”
I loved that girl, but I wanted to shake some sense into her. What scared me most, what made me question my own sanity, was how certain she sounded.
2
Jiro Tachibana
I thought we’d never get out of that restaurant. Forty-five minutes of Akiko and Miki going at it felt like a lifetime. It drained us both, pushed my patience further than I thought possible. But I knew this wasn’t the real Akiko. Not the woman I loved.
The apprenticeship had left deeper scars than I’d let myself believe. I’d thought those first few months after escaping the Sakamoto compound were bad. That was nothing compared to where she was now.
How quickly she spiraled, even after everything good that followed. Pulling herself out of that dark hole had taken everything she had. But once she opened the restaurant, it was like a switch flipped. The Akiko I knew bloomed—confident and radiant.
Everyone loved her. She was a media darling. Even her competitors admired her. The support was overwhelming.
Until that damn Reina incident.
We all believed it at first. But when no one showed for the reservation, I wrote it off as a prank. Akiko couldn’t let it go. She kept asking the same question: “What if Reina’s not dead?”
“All I’m saying is we don’t have proof, do we?” Akiko said as we walked into our apartment. “They found bodies, sure, but they were charred scraps. No DNA. It’s all just assumption.”
“But we know they were in the basement. We know how the fire started. Reina tried to stop us from escaping. We barely made it out.”
I collapsed onto the sofa while Akiko disappeared into the shower. I didn’t know what else to say. I tried to stay positive, to be strong for her. I hadn’t come through the ordeal clean. I had my own nightmares, but I was better at compartmentalizing. Therapy also helped.
Akiko never took therapy seriously. She believed if she got the restaurant off the ground, the rest would fall into place. And for a while, it did. The restaurant flourished, and Akiko thrived.
I walked into the bedroom and found her sitting on the edge of the bed, a towel wrapped around her, damp hair clinging to her shoulders. She was staring at her hands, lost in thought.
“Does it still hurt?” I asked, easing down beside her.
“It stings a little.”
