Tetsu no Sosuke took a deep breath. Goosebumps prickled all over him.
In the end, he turned away without another word.
On his way out, he spotted the three little girls and told them, "Don't fight over his photograph."
The three looked baffled, then broke into delighted smiles. "Are you leaving?"
Tetsu no Sosuke's face darkened. When had he become so unwelcome at the Butterfly Estate?
He nodded and set off once more.
This time, he still had to return to Tokyo.
He had pieced together what had happened. Though the truth was almost too much for even Tetsu no Sosuke to believe, it seemed to be real.
Nakime had once had a happy family: a husband and a son.
The night that changed her fate must have been the night on that hillside.
Her husband was gone. She became a demon, but lost her only son.
Ever since, on a certain day each month, Nakime returned to that hillside, searching again and again for the child she had lost—even after becoming a demon.
That longing had not faded in the slightest, even after she became a demon.
What she did not know was that the shock of that night had left her son wandering in a daze.
No one knew how he had lived all these years. But when mother and son finally met again on that hillside one night, what had gone through their minds?
"They probably didn't recognize each other at all."
On the train, Tetsu no Sosuke watched the scenery slide past his window. "Becoming a demon changes a person so much. And after ten or twenty years of growing up, the face she held in her memory would have been unrecognizable. Not even becoming a demon could erase that regret."
He had thought this was