In the days that followed the "Oni-Tsuki" incident, something changed.

  The two maids whose names I had mentioned... vanished. I never saw them again. No one asked about them, and no one spoke of them, as if they had never existed. I didn't understand why, but I felt a new coldness in the air, a silent fear creeping through the corridors of the orphanage.

  Then came the day Ikumi was absent.

  I didn't see her in the morning, nor in the afternoon. The courtyard was empty of her overwhelming presence. A small part of me felt relieved, but a larger part felt anxious. Her absence disrupted the routine of my small world. The fear of seeing her turned into a fear of not seeing her.

  Night fell. It was time for the "forging."

  Automatically, my feet led me to her office. I stood before the heavy wooden door. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. Silence.

  I didn't dare return to the common hall. A single thought, the thought of a tormented child, ran through my head: "If she comes back and doesn't find me here, she'll be even angrier. She'll look at me with disappointment." The fear of that look of disappointment was worse than the fear of the whip itself.

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  I sat on the cold stone floor in front of her door and decided to wait.

  I told myself, "I will not sleep. I will not disappoint her."

  I counted the stones in the wall. I whispered numbers. I did anything to stay awake.

  But my small body betrayed me. I dozed off without realizing it.

  I awoke to a shadow standing over me. It was morning. It was her.

  I jumped to my feet, fear and guilt washing over me. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to fall asleep! Please!"

  But I stopped. She was different. She was wearing formal clothes I had never seen before, and her hair, which was always pulled back tightly, was slightly disheveled.

  And her eyes... they were red and swollen.

  I knew those eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had spent the night crying.

  In my small mind, there was only one explanation for her sadness: me. I must have angered her so much by falling asleep in front of her door.

  I felt a pang of guilt, and a strange desire to comfort her.

  I said in a trembling voice, the word sounding strange and wrong on my tongue: "M... Mother... don't cry. I'm sorry. I know I'm useless. I'm sorry I fell asleep."

  She looked at me. But her gaze was empty, as if she were looking through me at a distant wall. There was no anger, no cruelty, nothing. Her voice was tired and quiet when she spoke.

  "Go," she said. "There is no 'forging' today."

  I turned and walked away, feeling more confused than ever. The routine had been broken. And that was more frightening than the routine itself.