"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. She was the one who helped me escape Japan in the first place. Sold everything she owned to buy my admission lottery ticket and the paperwork to change my identity. She died knowing I was free, which is more than most people get."
The casual way she delivered that information hit harder than tears would have. This was a girl who had processed her grief years ago and carried it now like scar tissue, painful only when pressed.
"Your father?"
"Head of the Tanaka clan. One of the major hunter families in Osaka. Traditional. Powerful. Absolutely certain that his only child should be a son." Hikaru's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "When I was born, he told my mother that she had failed him. When I awakened with Phantom Edge at twelve, he decided I was too valuable to abandon but too shameful to acknowledge. So he came up with a solution."
I could see where this was going. The pieces clicked together with sickening clarity.
