Well what?she thought bitterly.If I can’t find a way to get him out, I’ll just stay? Live my life with him? Grow old together?
Even if that were a viable possibility, she hadn’t made it a full month in the book before one of the characters had gone absolutely insane. How long could she last before she was stuck in the house, afraid to leave or even open a window for fear of staving off yet another misguided declaration of true love?
She couldn’t go back.
Her breath hitched again. The gauze loosened and slipped off her heart. Her lungs burned like she was trying to breathe broken glass.
She couldn’t abandon her family, live her life in a literal fantasy world. Not even for true love.
He wasn’t coming to her.
She couldn’t go back to him.
The first sob broke free as she fumbled for her phone, and the book tumbled to the floor once more. She tapped May’s name in her contacts.
May picked up on the second ring. “Hey, you. What’s up?”
The sound of her voice made Emmy nearly dizzy with grief and love and relief. She pressed the phone to her ear, willed herself to respond. Her voice croaked on the single word she managed to get out. “Onechan.”
Big sister.
It was an endearment she hadn’t used since she’d been a child. She didn’t need to say anything else.
“I’ll be there in ten,” May said, and hung up.
Emmy let her arms fall limply into her lap. She put all of her energy into breathing in and out. Slowly. In and out. No thinking. No feeling.
Not yet.
Twenty-Eight
Time passed in a haze. May didn’t knock. She used her spare key to let herself in and found Emmy still sitting on the bed. When May sat beside her, pulled her into a tight embrace, Emmy felt herself begin to crumble.
“May… I can’t…”
“Shhh…” May stroked Emmy’s hair. “It’s okay.”
Emmy let the sobs break free. She keened like a wounded animal while her sister continued to stroke, to rock her, to make reassuring noises.
It took a long time for the tears to run their course. When they had, May gently led a hiccupping Emmy to the couch in her little sitting area. Emmy lay down on her side, feeling numb. She welcomed it after so much pain. May went into the kitchen. Emmy heard her clinking around, muttering to herself in a mixture of English and Japanese.
“Why is your tea never in the same place?” May grumbled, more to herself than to Emmy, but Emmy smiled a little anyway. Will would be equally frustrated if he sawher lack of kitchen organization. And that thought brought on a fresh tremor of pain.
“Emmy,ocha wa doko?” May called.
Trying to remember which random cabinet she’d shoved her tea into was a good use for her brain. It kept her thoughts off other things for the moment.
“Uh… try the cabinet to the right of the fridge.”
“That’s where I’m looking.”
“Oh.” She paused, tried to remember. It had been weeks, technically. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had tea in this apartment. Which cabinet would be her next go-to? “Corner cabinet by the stove.”
She heard May rifling around, then a kind of baffled, “What the…”
At that moment, Emmy remembered what else she’d stuck in the corner cabinet by the stove. She sat up on the couch in time to see May walking toward her with the Daruma cupped in her hand.
“Emmy…kore wa nandesuka?”
