Off With Your Head!

"Want to see fireflies?"

Kitagawa Ryo said this to Sakayanagi Arisu, taking his phone out of his pocket and gently waving it at her.

"Good."

Sakayanagi Arisu blinked her deep purple pupils; the child's eyes were round like a cat's.

So the two of them squatted there together and watched the video sent from Kitagawa Ryo's house. It was something they could have done sitting indoors, but they only realized it after their legs went numb.

I'll have a sweet dream tonight.

Kitagawa Ryo turned off his phone, making this confident declaration.

What's so good about sweet dreams?

Sakayanagi Arisu whispered.

"Am I going to have nightmares?"

"You'll wake up if you have a nightmare."

Sakayanagi Arisu said:

"It's better than having a beautiful dream about escaping a nightmare, only to wake up in the morning."

"This is the first time I've heard this claim."

Kitagawa Ryo shook his head and said:

"In that case, those fairies who send sweet dreams to good children are the bad guys."

Sakayanagi Arisu lowered her head:

"That was my father comforting me when I had nightmares, Liang, don't worry about it too much."

"After all, no one would wish someone nightmares."

Kitagawa Ryo said softly.

Is dreaming about a deceased person a nightmare or a good dream?

"It depends on whether that's the person you want to see."

"The person you want to see is always the one you can't dream of."

"That's because you don't dare to think about him too much, so you don't dream about him."

"Why?"

"Because it's a beautiful dream when you sleep, but a nightmare that makes you want to cry when you wake up."

Sakayanagi Arisu seemed satisfied with Kitagawa Ryo's answer, and she turned around and smiled:

"Then I wish Liang a nightmare tonight."

"A good boy like me would have a fairy princess who lets me only dream sweet dreams."

Sakayanagi Arisu smiled again, her eyebrows curving like a crescent moon appearing and disappearing in the sky.

"A child who would say something like that is not a good child."

"The kid next door?"

The father paused slightly, then smiled:

"It seems Arisu has indeed made some friends."

"He is the child of a good friend of mine. His Fate is rather bizarre, like something out of a novel. For various reasons, he was abandoned at birth and was only recently found and returned home."

"What a pity."

Sakayanagi Arisu her father's meaning. After all, the other party was suffering from a disease for which there was still no reliable cure. Compared to this terminal illness, also known as ALS, her own congenital heart disease seemed insignificant.

Kitagawa Ryo seems to be doing well for two reasons: firstly, the availability of excellent medical facilities, and secondly, the symptoms are only in their early stages, with only his right hand currently affected.

Just like the name of the illness, as the symptoms worsen, Kitagawa Ryo is gradually "frozen," from his hands to his body, from the outside to the inside, until finally.

Sakayanagi Arisu searched for this condition and found a picture of a man with his head tilted to the side, drooling. He had lost almost all control over his body and could not even swallow or smile normally.

"This is for you."

The father seemed to want to skip the topic, and he took out an elegant walking stick and a white sun hat from the bag he had brought.

"I heard that Arisu has been spending more time outdoors lately, so this should come in handy."

A walking stick can support the body, and a hat can shield you from the sun; both are highly practical gifts.

And it's very beautiful.

However, when Sakayanagi Arisu went to see Kitagawa Ryo the next day with her cane, Kitagawa Ryo didn't seem to like it.

"Walk on three legs."

Kitagawa Ryo glanced at it and commented as follows.

"Like an old lady."

As a result, Sakayanagi Arisu chased Kitagawa Ryo with her cane for a full twenty minutes.

Perhaps this can be considered a form of rehabilitation training.

Perhaps.

Chapter Seventy: I'll cut off your head!

It rained all day today. Unlike the usual summer showers, the rain poured down for almost eight hours before finally stopping near dusk.

The sky was gloomy when it rained, and the twilight after the rain stopped was also dark. The light of the sky and the shadows of the clouds, along with the entire day, seemed to be swallowed by a black hole, rapidly falling into the depths of darkness. Kitagawa Ryo looked out through the closed window, and the shadows of the nearby trees began to blur. In the eerie silence, there was the occasional sound of water droplets sliding down.

He suddenly remembered that Sakura Airi used to be afraid of the curtains being blown by the wind on such dark nights, but from this angle, the shadows of the trees were more terrifying. With their branches and leaves knocked off by the rain, they looked like hard skeletons, standing there straight and menacing.

About two hours later, the moon appeared through the thick clouds, and Kitagawa Ryo opened the window to let the moonlight in.

A gentle knock came into the room along with the moonlight.

It is Sakayanagi Arisu.

Even for good kids, eight o'clock is too early to go to bed. In addition, both of them had already slept soundly for several hours in their respective hospital rooms during the day, so they were surprisingly energetic in the evening.

"I had imagined this scenario in books before."

Kitagawa Ryo brought Sakayanagi Arisu warm milk. There were no dangerous items like hot water bottles in their hospital room, so they couldn't make tea or coffee, and cold drinks were out of the question. The only things they could offer were warm water or milk.

Does "cool" refer to sleeping in the rain?

Sakayanagi Arisu took the milk, but instead of drinking it, she asked a question first.

Because of the rain, her rehabilitation training today was temporarily canceled. She had originally planned to talk to Kitagawa Ryo, but unexpectedly, he insisted that now was the perfect time to sleep and wouldn't even open the door for her.

"Because I've imagined for a long time sleeping soundly on a rainy afternoon, waking up at an unknown time, without even turning on the lights, just leaning against the bed listening to the rain outside and thinking about all sorts of random things. Just thinking about it makes me feel like it's a very enjoyable thing."

Kitagawa Ryo then added:

"I heard this from another elementary school student when I was hospitalized before. He had bone cancer, and the first thing he said on his first night in the hospital was, 'I don't need to go to school anymore!'"

Therefore, being able to sleep without worries is itself a happy thing.

"The price is that I really can't sleep now."

Kitagawa Ryo scratched his head. His hospital room was much quieter than Sakayanagi Arisu's. There were no bookshelves or desks as big as Sakayanagi Arisu's. In fact, in Sakayanagi Arisu's memory, since Kitagawa moved in, no one who looked like her parents had ever come to visit.

Even though Sakayanagi Arisu's own father had reduced the frequency of his visits due to his busy work schedule, he still came three times that week.

"Actually, sometimes I feel sorry for that child."

When my father came yesterday, Sakayanagi Arisu couldn't help but bring up the topic of Kitagawa Ryo again, and my father nodded with a complicated expression.

Why?

"After all, if he hadn't gotten sick, his future would have been infinitely brighter."

"No family would choose a child destined to die young as their heir. The fact that he's receiving the best medical care is already compensation from his parents for their past abandonment. It's unrealistic to expect them to truly treat this child as their own and raise him with care."

"It may sound harsh, but no one would bet all their money on a stock that's predicted to hit its daily limit down and be delisted."

Sakayanagi Arisu couldn't quite grasp the deeper meaning; she simply disliked this far-fetched story and then tightly held her father's broad hand.

As if in response, Sakayanagi Arisu's father also held his daughter's small hand in his palm.

A father's love for his daughter, a mother's love for her daughter, and a father's love for his mother.

Enveloped in three acts of love Sakayanagi Arisu looked across the wall to the other side. Compared to herself, Kitagawa Ryo had never received any love from his parents.

What Sakayanagi Arisu was that she immediately felt a faint sense of superiority, like children comparing themselves to each other. She had heard before that not only parents would openly or secretly compare their children's merits, but children would also freely display their parents' love, perhaps with a new piece of clothing, a new pair of sneakers, or a trip.

This should have been a normal feeling, but Sakayanagi Arisu still felt a little embarrassed and annoyed. She didn't think her competitive spirit should be satisfied in this way.

Moreover, this shouldn't even be something to talk about in the first place.

Being able to openly express one's feelings to family is a remarkable ability in itself, because most of the elite students her age that Sakayanagi Arisu the years have not been able to learn it, and she feels that these people probably will never have time to learn it in the future. It seems that expressing feelings is an extremely shameful thing for them, even when facing their closest family members.

Her father taught Sakayanagi Arisu to love, but so far, apart from her father, she has not found anyone worthy of her love.

When he heard his seven-year-old daughter solemnly utter the word "love," Chairman Sakayanagi couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. However, he still seriously told his daughter some stories from back then.

At the end of the story, the father said this to his daughter:

"Love is inherently difficult because it requires opening one's soul to another, which can even be considered dangerous."

"Others may be your hell, a place where the scars of the heart form armor, defensive gazes forge swords, a labyrinth of language, and traps hidden behind smiles. And behind it all, of course, there is still a lonely heart trembling, and an undying thirst for communication."

Even though his mother had passed away several years ago, his still relatively young father had no intention of remarrying. In terms of status, he was already the Chairman of Tokyo Advanced Nurturing High School and had many connections with other important figures in the political and business world.

Last night, Sakayanagi Arisu left her feeling refreshed upon waking, but she couldn't remember what she dreamt about.

The two children, unable to sleep, didn't choose Gomoku or Chess because Sakayanagi Arisu said she wanted to practice until she was confident before challenging them. So, their entertainment for the evening turned into a game of cards, which was more like a game of chance.

"I'll cut off your head!"

With Kitagawa Ryo elegantly playing his last Queen of Hearts, Sakayanagi Arisu suffered her third consecutive defeat in the poker game.

However, the advantage of a game of chance is that people can always attribute everything to ethereal luck, just like gamblers always feel that they can turn the tables in the next round. Sakayanagi Arisu obviously didn't care about this result. She began to gather the scattered playing cards on the table and started to shuffle the cards with difficulty.

The main issue was that the playing cards were too big for the two seven-year-olds to hold, and Kitagawa Ryo's right hand was also quite inconvenient, so Sakayanagi Arisu the cards for each round.

After drawing cards Sakayanagi Arisu would meticulously categorize them, arranging them in front of her like soldiers in battle formation. Kitagawa Ryo could tell which pile contained single cards and which contained pairs with just a glance, making it much easier for him to play his cards.

However, for Kitagawa Ryo, who possesses the talent of [Eidetic Memory], he only needs to glance at the cards in his hand to easily memorize them all. He simply stacks the cards he draws into a single pile, and his speed in playing cards is even three points faster than Sakayanagi Arisu.

After three rounds, Sakayanagi Arisu finally noticed this tactical mistake. She changed the order in which she drew the cards and, as expected, won a round back.

"I'll cut off your head!"

Whether intentionally or not, Sakayanagi Arisu also played the Queen of Hearts as her last card.

She and Kitagawa Ryo were just shouting the classic line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, spoken by the Queen of Hearts. This grumpy queen would yell at her guards to cut off the head of anyone who didn't like her.

However, since it's a fairy tale, the Queen of Hearts never actually beheaded anyone until the end of the story, and the Cheshire Cat, the only one who was brought to the execution platform, easily escaped.

"Cats are truly amazing animals."

Kitagawa Ryo sighed unconsciously, and Sakayanagi Arisu quickly understood what he meant and said:

"The Cheshire Cat in the story has long claws and sharp teeth. If a cat like that smiled at you, it would be straight out of a horror movie."

"I think Alice should learn to add a filter to fairy tales."

"But fairy tales don't really have any filters, do they?"

Sakayanagi Arisu toyed with the Q of Hearts in her hand and said:

"The original character was supposed to be a heroine like Judith, but in the story she became the Furious Queen who only knew how to behead people, and then in Disney movies she became a villain with a huge head."

"Just to make a comparison, they even had to create a character in the movie who doesn't even exist in the original story— the White Queen."

At this point, Sakayanagi Arisu shrugged, looking rather bored:

"However, it does provide interesting material for various dark fairy tales."

"Stop, stop, stop, stop!"

Kitagawa Ryo quickly reached out his left hand, took the Queen of Hearts, and put it into the deck.

"I don't want to hear dark fairy tales."