Chapter 18

It was a Sunday evening in late February.

Yoko had gone to visit a neighbor — the first social engagement she had accepted in longer than any of them could remember, which was its own quiet milestone. The house belonged to the three girls.

Komiko was at her desk. Working, or trying to — her attention kept drifting in the way it did when something unresolved was running underneath the surface of the day. The search at Kennedy High had not yet borne fruit. Reese had made her calls and was waiting on responses and had told Komiko to be patient and Komiko was being patient but patience had a different texture when the person you were being patient for was sleeping in your bed every other night and touching her bare throat in the dark and waiting.

She heard the knock at Yuki’s door down the hall. Katie’s voice, quiet. Yuki’s voice answering.

Then quiet.

She turned back to her work.

In Yuki’s room Katie sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her sister.

Yuki was cross-legged on the bed facing her, hands in her lap, dark hair loose around her face. She looked — different than she had in September, different than she had even a month ago. Still quiet. Still careful. But the quality of the quiet had changed. It was no longer the sealed silence of someone who had decided the world was not safe. It was the quiet of someone choosing their words because they mattered, not because speaking was dangerous.

She looked at Katie steadily.

Katie looked back.

“You know why I’m here,” Katie said.

It wasn’t a question.

Yuki’s hands tightened slightly in her lap. Then released. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

A breath. “I want to ask you something. Before I ask her.” Her eyes were steady. Completely certain. “I know what the rules are. I know she is your Master. I will not take something that is yours without asking first.”

Katie felt the words land with their full weight. She knew what Yuki was asking. Had known it was coming — had felt it building for weeks, had made her decision on the walk home from school, had been waiting for Yuki to find her way to this moment in her own time.

“Ask me,” she said.

Yuki looked at her. “Will you let me be her slave? Your sister slave?” A pause. “I know what I’m asking. I know what it means. I am asking with full knowledge.”

The room was very quiet.

Katie looked at her sister — this girl who had been sealed away for two years, who had been pimped and violated and made to feel worthless by the man who was supposed to protect her, who had climbed into Komiko’s lap on a bedroom floor and asked for help in the smallest most courageous voice — and felt the full weight of what was being offered and what was being asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Simply. Completely. Without hesitation.

Yuki exhaled. Something in her face loosened — a tension that had been there since she knocked on this door, maybe longer.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” Katie said. “Just know that I see you. And I want this for you.” She paused. “She needs to hear it from you. All of it. Don’t hold anything back.”

Yuki nodded. Her eyes were bright.

“I know,” she said. “I’m ready.”

Katie stood. Held out her hand.

Yuki took it.

They walked down the hall together.

Komiko heard them coming. Two sets of footsteps, which was unusual at this hour. She turned in her chair as the door opened.

Katie came in first. Then Yuki, behind her, still holding Katie’s hand.

Komiko looked at them. At their faces — Katie’s expression calm and certain and carrying something deliberate in it, Yuki’s face open in a way Komiko had never seen it. Not the carefully managed openness of recent weeks. Something rawer than that. Something that had stopped managing itself entirely.

She understood immediately that something significant was happening. She simply didn’t know yet what shape it would take.

She waited.

Katie led Yuki to the center of the room. Then she turned to face Komiko and said, clearly and with complete steadiness: