You get five minutes to cry. Then get ready to make an omelet for breakfast.
The day after her father's funeral,
Mitsuki heard a voice exactly like the voice of her father, who was supposed to be dead.
In her father's study, where no one was supposed to be.
From a featureless cylindrical device on the desk.
Without meaning to, she thought back to the day of the funeral.
Yes. Her father had planned all of it, from that moment on.
From the moment Aoi handed her that envelope.
The sound of the cremation chamber door closing was more businesslike than she had expected.
Mitsuki heard it as if from somewhere far away, and checked the number on the ticket the attendant had given her twice. Seventeen. She repeated it under her breath.
The waiting room was a private space divided off by thin curtains, and on the wall-mounted monitor several small windows for remote mourners were lined up. Across the top of the screen, in a thin typeface, it read: Funeral Service for the Late Kenichiro Sakura, September 2, 2026. Researchers from overseas, her father's colleagues, she had been told, sat silently in the corners of the screen.
"Mitsuki."
It was Riko, her best friend from high school. Mitsuki felt a tug on the sleeve of her mourning dress and turned, and Riko held out a paper cup of tea.
"Drink it. It'll get cold."
Mitsuki took it but didn't bring it to her lips. Riko sat down right beside her and for a while said nothing.
"It's okay to cry."
Riko said it suddenly. She said it the way you let something slip to no one in particular.
"I know."
Mitsuki answered, but she shook her head. Riko said nothing more. Instead, she wrapped both hands around her own paper cup and let out a long breath, as if warming something.
Her aunt, sitting across from her, asked in a low voice about the arrangements for the return gifts for the condolence offerings. Mitsuki took out her phone, opened the relevant page of the funeral notes her father had left before he died, and showed it to her. Her father had neatly organized the questions he expected, and their answers, into bullet points.
"Mitsuki."
Another voice. She looked up to find a woman she didn't recognize, bowing to her. Mid-twenties, perhaps. A mourning dress buttoned neatly at the collar, silver-rimmed glasses. Faint blue shadows lay beneath her eyes, and her makeup hadn't quite hidden them.
"My name is Aoi Murota. I was in Professor Sakura's conversational AI lab."
Oh, Mitsuki said, with a vague nod. She thought she remembered her father mentioning the name a few times. Someone who had stayed on in the lab even after finishing her doctorate, carrying on his work up close.
"The professor left something in my keeping."
Aoi Murota took an envelope from an inside pocket. There was nothing written on the front. The flap was sealed tight.
"I don't know what's inside. He said the things in his study were to go directly to you."
Aoi offered no further explanation, bowed deeply, and returned to her seat. Mitsuki laid the envelope on her lap. It weighed almost nothing.
An announcement called number seventeen for the gathering of the bones.
The bones were whiter than she had expected. She had somehow thought her father would turn into something a little browner, but the bones the attendant pointed out with the long chopsticks were all pale, as if they were made. When she was shown the shape of the throat bone, Mitsuki nodded. To the very end, her father had always called it by that name in hiragana. That's so like him, she thought, and her blinks grew slower.
A driver from the funeral hall sat at the wheel of the hearse, and another staff member rode in the passenger seat. As they set off, a low voice from the front told them, "We'll head straight back. We should arrive in about twelve minutes."
Mitsuki pressed her forehead to the window. The urn sat on her lap, covered in a white cloth. Riko sat beside her and kept quiet for her, but Mitsuki couldn't look at Riko's face. She felt that if she did, something would collapse, so she kept her eyes on the view outside the window. Aoi hadn't ridden in the same car. She had said she would follow behind in another one.
The envelope on her lap, beside the urn, was still sealed.