Chapter 5: The First Session
The car ride was fifteen minutes of pure static.
Satoru drove, his eyes on the road, the radio off. The only sounds were the wet swish of the wipers against a light drizzle and the occasional, too-loud click of the turn signal. In the backseat, Megumi sat stiffly by the window, her breath fogging the glass. Tsumiki was in the middle, her body angled toward her sister, a silent offer of contact that Megumi wasn’t taking.
They pulled into the lot of a small, brick-faced building. A discreet plaque by the door read “Psychological Wellness.” It looked like a dentist’s office. Safe. Neutral. Horrible.
“You want me to come in?” Satoru asked, killing the engine. His hands stayed on the wheel.
“No,” Megumi said, the word immediate and final. She pushed her door open, the damp air rushing in.
Tsumiki glanced at Satoru, her expression apologetic, then scrambled out after Megumi. He watched them walk to the door, Megumi’s steps short and furious, Tsumiki hovering just behind, like a shield trying to get in front of a bullet that had already been fired.
He waited until the glass door swallowed them before he let his head thump back against the rest.
Dr. Sato’s office was too warm. The kind of heat that made your clothes feel heavy. Megumi chose the stiff armchair, perching on the edge like she might bolt. Tsumiki sank into the softer one beside her, immediately curling in on herself.
The therapist was younger than Satoru, with kind eyes and a calm voice that made Megumi’s skin crawl. It was a professional calm. A practiced calm. She hated it.
“Thank you for coming,” Dr. Sato began. “This is a space for you. There’s no right or wrong way to use this time.”
Megumi snorted softly, examining a loose thread on the knee of her jeans.
They started with the easy stuff. Ages. Living situation. School and work. The air hummed with everything they weren’t saying. Tsumiki’s answers were soft, overly polite. Megumi’s were monosyllabic.
“Can you tell me,” Dr. Sato said, her pen still, “what prompted you to seek therapy now?”
The silence stretched. The lavender scent in the room was cloying.
“Our dad found out,” Megumi said flatly, not looking up from the thread. “About us.”
“About your romantic relationship?”
Megumi’s head snapped up, her eyes hard. “About us fucking. Yeah.”
“Megumi,” Tsumiki whispered, a pained flinch in her voice.
“It’s okay,” Dr. Sato said, unflappable. “Plain language is fine here. How did that discovery make you feel?”
“Cornered,” Megumi shot back.
Tsumiki’s hands were twisting in her lap. “Scared,” she breathed. “And… ashamed. I felt so ashamed.”
“Why ashamed?”
A tear tracked down Tsumiki’s cheek. She didn’t wipe it. “Because… it’s wrong. What we do. It’s sick. And I’m the older one. I’m supposed to… know better. Protect her.” Her voice fractured. “Not… not use her.”
The word use hung in the warm air, ugly and sharp.
Megumi went very still. “Don’t you say that,” she said, her voice low and dangerous.
“But I do!” Tsumiki’s composure broke, a quiet sob wrenching free. “I lay awake and I think… he used you. They used us. And now I’m inside you and you’re looking at me and what’s the difference, Megumi? What’s the actual difference?”
The raw pain in the question was a physical thing. Megumi uncoiled from her chair. She didn’t go to Tsumiki. Instead, she took two sharp steps toward the bookcase, her back to the room, her shoulders tight.
“The difference is I want you,” Megumi said to the books, each word a piece of gritted glass. “I never wanted them. The difference is you’re the only thing that ever felt like mine. The only thing that didn’t make me feel like a piece of meat left out in the sun.” She turned, her eyes blazing with furious tears. “You saved me. In that room, and after. You kept me here. So don’t you dare put yourself in the same sentence as those fucking sick bastards.”
The room was silent except for Tsumiki’s muffled crying.
Dr. Sato let the silence sit for a long moment. “That is a powerful distinction,” she said quietly. “Consent. Desire.” She leaned forward slightly. “Can we talk about what safety means inside that desire? And what consent looks like for you two, now, as adults?”
Megumi stared, her chest heaving. No one had ever asked them that. The men in the room hadn’t asked. The state-appointed therapist hadn’t asked. Satoru, in his fear, hadn’t known how to ask.
It was the question that finally unlocked something. Not a floodgate, but a slow, painful leak.
They didn’t tell the whole story. Not that first day. Megumi circled it, talking about the helplessness, the disgust that lived in her bones. Tsumiki talked about the guilt of being less injured, of feeling responsible for Megumi’s brokenness. They talked around the sex, speaking instead of the desperate, quiet nights after nightmares, the need for a heartbeat that wasn’t your own, for a proof of existence that was more than memory.
The hour ended too soon. Dr. Reyes gave them a simple, impossible task. “Before we meet again, I’d like you each to write down two things. One thing you want. One thing you’re afraid of. You don’t have to show each other. You don’t have to show me. But try to name it for yourselves.”
Outside, the drizzle had stopped. The world was wet and gleaming under a flat, gray sky.
Megumi pushed out the door first, sucking in the cold, unperfumed air like she was drowning. She stopped on the sidewalk, her energy spent.
Tsumiki followed, her eyes red-rimmed but clearer. She didn’t speak. She just stepped close, her arm brushing Megumi’s.
After a second, Megumi’s head tilted, coming to rest on Tsumiki’s shoulder. A weight. A surrender. They stood like that, two figures under the vast, indifferent sky, for a full minute before walking to the car.
Satoru saw them coming. He saw the exhaustion in their steps, the rare, unguarded way Megumi leaned into her sister. His heart, a clenched fist in his chest, loosened just a fraction. It wasn’t joy he felt. It was the fragile, terrifying lift of seeing two people step out of a trench, blinking in the light, alive.
He started the car as they got in. This time, Megumi didn’t move to the window. She stayed close to Tsumiki in the back, her temple resting against the glass, her eyes closed.
No one spoke on the drive home. The static was gone, replaced by a weary, resonant quiet, the kind that follows a storm that has reshaped the land. Satoru watched them in the mirror—his girls, shattered and strange and fighting to reassemble themselves in a pattern only they could understand—and for the first time since he’d opened that door, he thought maybe they wouldn’t disappear on him. Maybe they’d just change into something he’d have to learn to see.