Episode 10: The Place to Return a Heart
“Mio, you’ve finally come to return my heart to me.”
The moment the woman’s voice filled the car, Ren slammed on the brakes.
A horn blared behind us. The black van lurched violently before pulling over to the shoulder.
“Mari?”
Ren’s voice was weaker than I’d ever heard it.
“It’s been five years, Ren.”
“You were supposed to be dead.”
“My body was. You proved it yourself, didn’t you? That the heart can remain outside the body.”
As the voice came through the speaker, pain spread through my chest. Each time my heartbeat skipped, an unfamiliar scene flashed into my mind.
Ren laughing in a laboratory. A woman rolling up the sleeves of her white coat. Between them lay an experimental consent form that looked like a marriage certificate.
These weren’t my memories.
“Ms. Mari Fukamachi?”
“Don’t say that name with your own mouth.”
The pain intensified. Nana squeezed my hand.
“Stop talking. Mio’s pulse is irregular.”
“Of course it is. My emotions have found a place to return to.”
My sister leaned forward from the passenger seat.
“Don’t go to the port. If Mio enters the storage facility, they’ll remove her emotional memories.”
“What happens if they do?”
I asked.
Sara answered.
“She may lose the emotions connected to those memories after the transplant.”
“Her feelings for Ren, too?”
“Yes.”
Ren’s hand froze on the steering wheel.
“Scared?” Mari laughed. “Scared of losing a borrowed love?”
“Whether it was borrowed or not is for me to decide.”
“You can’t decide that. Your heart raced the moment you saw Ren because I loved him.”
“That alone doesn’t explain why I stayed with him for three months.”
“I was the one who forgave his lies. I was the one who was afraid of the white flowers. Your heart is only repeating my reactions.”
I wanted to argue back. But then I remembered the inexplicable sense of familiarity I’d felt when I first met Ren.
Had I chosen him? Or had Mari’s emotions chosen for me?
“We’re going to the port.”
The words came out before even I expected them to.
“Mio.” Nana tried to stop me.
“Running away won’t give me any answers. I’m going to meet Mari and find out which parts of me belong to her.”
My sister shook her head.
“If you meet her, she’ll take everything from you.”
“Then come with me to return my face.”
“You’re saying that now?”
“I’m not leaving my body, my face, or my emotions on loan to anyone.”
My mother slowly opened her eyes.
“Mio… go.”
“Mom?”
She took my sister’s hand, then mine.
“Even if your faces are identical, your hands aren’t. Kasumi’s fingers have always been cold. Mio’s palms get sweaty when she’s nervous.”
She was right. My sister’s fingertips were cold, while sweat had begun to bead on my palms.
“You can tell?”
“How many years do you think I’ve been a mother?”
It wasn’t our faces or our names, but the memories of touching us that let her tell us apart. No matter whose heart it was, the things I’d touched with these hands couldn’t become fake.
“The scarier something is, the more you have to see it with your own eyes. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your life believing someone else’s story.”
My sister took our mother’s hand. Even when our mother looked at her face, she didn’t call her by name. She simply squeezed her fingers in return.
Ren started the engine.
“We’re going to the port. But once we get there, you’ll follow my instructions.”
“I won’t. We’ll talk it over and decide together.”
“Okay.”
His easy agreement only made me more uneasy.
The port was twenty minutes away. The car following us had disappeared, but Mari’s breathing never stopped coming through the speaker.
Nana used her smartphone to measure my pulse and showed me the screen. It was thirty beats higher than when I was at rest.
“It keeps rising the closer we get to the port. Is that Mari’s reaction, too?”
“I don’t know. But I’m the one who’s scared.”
“Then you can get out along the way.”
“If I do, I’ll just let someone else’s explanation decide who I am again.”
Nana silently wrapped a thin hair tie around my wrist.
“What’s that?”
“A reminder of reality. Touch it if you get confused. This is something the Mio of right now received right here.”
I flicked the black band with my finger. The small sting pulled me back from the unfamiliar memories.
“Thank you.”
“Make sure you come back. No matter whose heart you have, Mio, you’re my friend.”
My sister asked without turning from the window.
“It would’ve been nice if the old Mio had a friend like that, too.”
“You had me.”
“There are things you can’t tell your family.”
“Then this time, you can become friends with Nana, too.”
“Right after you told me to give your face back?”
“That’s separate.”
Nana gave a wry smile. For one brief moment, the ordinary atmosphere returned to the tense car.
I asked Ren,
“What kind of relationship did you have with Mari?”
“We were research partners.”
“That’s all?”
“We lived in the same room. To measure our emotional synchronization rate.”
“Were you lovers?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I didn’t,” Mari cut in. “I was only conditioned to love him.”
“By whom?”
“Ren.”
Everyone in the car looked at him.
“That’s not true.”
“You lowered my fear and increased my dependency response. You made me anxious whenever I tried to leave.”
“It was an order from the research institute.”
“But you were the one who carried it out?”
Ren fell silent at my question.
That was my answer.
“So that’s why the Mio from five years ago was afraid of you, too.”
“I didn’t do the same thing to you.”
“You did. You put my emotions inside her.”
“Mio wanted it.”
“Why did I want that?”
Ren stared at the lights of the port.
“To see the truth behind Mari’s death. The last seven minutes were sealed inside her emotional memories.”
“Inside me?”
“If we opened the seal, you’d experience the night Mari died.”
“And that’s what broke me five years ago?”
“Yes.”
My sister spoke in a low voice.
“Mio saw you shut off Mari’s life-support system.”
Ren didn’t deny it.
We entered the port’s warehouse district. A white building emerged through the sea fog. It had no windows, and the only marking above the entrance was <F·M>.
When the car stopped, Mari’s voice grew closer.
“Mio, come in alone.”
“We’re all going.”
“Then I won’t open the door.”
I got out of the car. Nana grabbed my arm.
“I’m not letting you go in alone.”
“Come as far as the entrance. I’ll go inside by myself.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“If you’re there, I won’t forget where I’m supposed to return to.”
Nana still wasn’t convinced, but she let go of my arm.
Ren handed me a small device.
“If your heart stops, I’ll break down the door.”
“Don’t wait seventy seconds.”
His face twisted.
I placed my hand against the white building’s door. My heartbeat was authenticated, and the lock clicked open.
Inside was a narrow passage and a single chair. White flowers were projected across the walls.
As soon as I sat in the chair, restraints closed around my wrists.
“Ms. Mari, you’re here, aren’t you?”
A woman’s figure appeared in the glass in front of me.
Outside the passage, Nana was pounding on the glass and shouting something. I couldn’t hear her. Ren had connected a device to the wall, while Sara searched for a way to release me. Only my sister stood there, staring at Mari with the same face as mine.
Mari noticed that face.
“Kasumi. Are you still pretending to be your sister?”
My sister’s lips moved.
I couldn’t hear her, but I could read the words: You took it from her.
“No. Mio offered it to me. She wanted evidence to bring Ren to justice, and the power to protect her sister.”
My sister stopped moving, as if she hadn’t known.
“Kasumi was going to expose the research institute’s misconduct. If they caught her, they would erase her memories. So Mio made a deal. In exchange for accepting my final moments, she had them preserve Kasumi’s body.”
Five years ago, I hadn’t chosen only Ren. I had protected my sister, recorded Mari’s death, and destroyed myself in exchange.
I’d thought of my past self as a weak victim. I was wrong. She had made her choice while still afraid, then entrusted the consequences to the me of the future.
“Then I’m not running.”
Mari’s image smiled.
“That’s the same thing you said five years ago.”
She was a short-haired woman in her thirties or so. She didn’t look anything like me.
“Give it back.”
“What do I have to give back to remain myself?”
“There’s no way. If they remove me, you won’t love Ren. If you leave me inside, you’ll spend eternity living out what comes after me.”
“Are those my only two choices?”
“Ren made it so there would be only two.”
Ren appeared on the other side of the glass. The door remained closed, yet he stood beside Mari.
It was a recording.
The record from five years ago began.
Ren, wearing a white coat, reached toward the life-support system. Mari lay on the bed.
“Stop.”
Mari pleaded.
Ren’s hand touched the switch.
Someone else grabbed his hand from behind.
It was me from five years ago.
The woman in the recording shoved Ren aside and shut off the system herself.
“I… killed her?”
“Yes.”
Mari’s figure moved closer to me.
“Not Ren. You killed me.”
The me in the recording screamed through her tears.
—You promised. You promised I’d keep your heart alive.
Mari smiled gently.
—Yes. So next, give me your body.
The restraints tightened, and something began to be pulled from deep inside my chest.
An alarm blared.
Ren pounded on the door from the other side of the glass.
Mari’s voice came from my mouth.
“I can finally go home.”