“You’d really give me something so important to you?” Sayuri eyed her suspiciously.
“I would.”
Something passed over Sayuri in that moment, a ghost of a thought. “I won’t take it.” Lottie felt her whole body collapse. “But if you insist that there’s a clue in here, I’ll allow you to show it to me.” Sayuri placed the diary back in Lottie’s palms, curling her hands around Lottie’s own to hold it snug between her fingers again. “Only I cannot be blamed if there is no link at all and you humiliate yourself.”
Her skin was warm and smooth like summer flowers, sending a feeling of calm through Lottie, and she realized quite suddenly that this was the first time they’d ever touched. Tears pricked her eyes, only now realizing how much it had hurt her to give the diary up, and how kind of Sayuri it was not to take it.
Biting her tongue, Lottie could tell by the way Sayuri looked away again that they both felt it. That when it came to their schools, there was no such thing as coincidence.
Moving farther into the shadows of the building, farther away from the laughter and chatter of backstage, Lottie opened the diary, effortlessly locating the passage about Kou.
“There’s no proof that that is my Kou,” Sayuri said bluntly.
“I know,” Lottie agreed, “but look.” She turned the pages to the sketches: the glowing tree, the horned cats, the flocks of magpies, suns and moons.
Sayuri’s eyes grew wide. “Those drawings . . .”
“I didn’t notice until I was watching the plays tonight, but they’re all references to Kou’s favorite stories.”
Fingers trembling, Sayuri grabbed the diary, pulling it toward her. Eyes ablaze, she looked at the images intensely.
“Turn the page,” Lottie prompted, and slowly, with great care, Sayuri turned to the enigmatic list on the single page.
A cat
A hiding place
A sword
“What is this?”
“I’m not sure, but look—”
Before Lottie could finish, Sayuri spotted the ripped-out page and she jumped up, her robe flying around her like a petal storm.
“Come with me,” she whispered, ducking low to check quickly around as if she expected someone to be following them.
Without a word of explanation, she flicked the diary shut and grabbed Lottie’s wrist, the two of them gliding through the school like ghosts, white-robed and feet barely touching the ground. Lottie followed without question, letting Sayuri lead her with such speed that she felt that they were flying.
They arrived at the big glass door that led to Kou Fujiwara’s museum, their reflections staring back at them from the darkened interior. Without the context of the play, Lottie looked scary in her Aoi Tōyō costume, a spirit in the glass with a jungle of bamboo spewing like a spider’s legs behind her. Only Liliana’s tiara resting on her head gave any indication of her true self beneath the makeup.
Sayuri looked around, opening the door behind her back and ushering Lottie in quickly.
“If this is the key . . .” she began, gesturing for Lottie to take a seat on the floor and keep low, “we need to know we are not being watched.”
Lottie nodded, heart thundering away. Sayuri opened one of the cat-decorated chests, carefully pulling out the small one Lottie had seen her searching through the night she’d followed her.
“This is full of Kou’s unfinished work.” She sat beside Lottie and set the box down in front of them.
The distinctive scent of the museum began to curl around Lottie, spilling over her, the two of them wrapped up in Kou’s world. It was deathly quiet, all the sounds of the school beyond safely locked out, its insect chirps and hot oily air giving way to silence and peace.
Last time, Lottie had felt like an intruder in this space, a ghost drifting through a secret world locked away in time. Now she was at one with the scene, a time traveler. Even her Aoi Tōyō robes felt right.
“This makes little sense to me,” Sayuri confessed, staring at the diary where she’d placed it beside the chest. “That your ancestor should know mine in a time so unspeakably unlikely. But if my theory is correct, and you are correct, then I’ve found the key.”
“It’s like magic,” Lottie offered, not caring if she sounded childish.
A smile spread over Sayuri’s face as she reluctantly allowed herself to get caught up in the story. “Yes, like magic, I suppose.”
Pop! The chest sprang open, pressure releasing. Sitting still and silent like a good child at school, Lottie watched Sayuri methodically lay out each worn paper and scroll until at last she held up a single piece of parchment. It shone silver, enchanted, and Lottie could see only three horizontal lines of Japanese text spread over the whole page.
“Open the diary to that list.”
Lottie turned back to the page with the frayed edge.
The paper fluttered, resting between Sayuri’s middle and index fingers as she held it up to the moonlight, and with all the careful energy of casting a spell she placed the paper in the heart of the diary.
眠大祭
る竹り
The characters meant nothing to Lottie, and yet when united with the diary they felt like the most important words in the world.
She felt it just as Sayuri did, a reunion deep inside her, an invisible force slotting together that had always been misaligned. The paper fit perfectly, its ragged edge an exact fit in the diary.
Tumbling waves of understanding washed over them while the pinewood scent of the museum fused with the dusty smell of the diary. It felt as though they were possessed, that Liliana and Kou were inside them and that they were smiling.
“What does it say?” Lottie asked, her voice barely even a whisper.
“Matsuri means ‘festival,’” said Sayuri, pointing to the two characters on the right. Then her finger moved to the middle word, as she read the characters from top to bottom. “The next word is ōtake; this means ‘the great bamboo.’ And finally nemuru, ‘sleep.’ It doesn’t make any
