Removed – Chapter 23

“Sanaa, I’m about to give you all the truth, and I hope it somehow makes up for the past few months of keeping everything from you.”

Sitting down in the theater in Ku 1, Sakai recites this as if he memorized his speech months, even years, ago.

“It’s safe to say only me, Koichi and Mariko, Kimie, and Coen know this secret, though I suspect Minamoto is sure he has the right information, and he got it from Matsuda.”

He turns to the terminal, and when he has what he’s looking for, he throws the information on the big screen for me. Immediately, I recognize my own family tree. Finally.

In a little box at the bottom is my name, all alone. The only offspring of Charlotte Griffin. Wait, who is this?

“What is this? I really don’t understand. What is this?” I shout, hysteria making my voice rise and my vision blur.

According to this family tree, I’m the only offspring of an aunt I didn’t know I had. Next to my father on the family tree are two sisters: Sharon and Charlotte Griffin. Neither married. Under Charlotte Griffin is my name, Sanaa Griffin.

On the other side is Max Griffin connected to Junko Itami with only one offspring, Hanako Itami.

“Hanako.”

Sakai reaches over and grabs my hand, but I am so shocked, my grip is completely limp.

“That’s your real name, Sanaa. Hanako.”

All three boxes that contain Hanako, Junko, and Max are grayed-out indicating they are deceased.

“Little flower,” I whisper. Hanako means little flower, and it’s what Aunt Kimie called me until I was about ten years old. “Would you hurry up, little flower?” I told her to stop calling me that one day, and she reluctantly agreed with tears in her eyes. I never understood. To me, it was a silly nickname.

“Sanaa, breathe! You’re turning white.”

I suck in an unsteady breath, and the desk in front of me tilts.

“If I’m Hanako, who is Sanaa Griffin? And Charlotte Griffin? Why is there an aunt I never knew I had? Three children? My father’s mother had three children?” You need a permit in Nishikyō to have more than one child. Two is a luxury. Three is insanity.

Oh. Wait.

“Twins. They were twins,” I say. Charlotte and Sharon. With names like those, of course they were twins.

“Your Aunt Sharon had a twin sister named Charlotte. A beautiful, red-headed firecracker of a woman…” Sakai’s voice trails off, and my eyes widen with shock.

“You loved her too, didn’t you?” The laugh that escapes my mouth is incredulous. “Mark Sakai, are you serious?”

Sakai becomes absolutely stoney with me again, and I know I’ve hurt his feelings. Well, good.

“Don’t you become high and mighty with me. I lost two women I loved in one day. Not to mention my own child.” His voice rises. I’m afraid he’s going to yell at me now, and tears well up in my eyes before I can stop them. “I loved your mother, but she rejected me. I loved Charlotte, and we had a baby together, but I wouldn’t marry her. Now, I regret it. I regret it all.”

“The real Sanaa Griffin was your daughter?”

“She was.”

I often thought about what a great father Sakai would be, and he was a father for a brief time.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

Regrets. So many regrets.

I reach over and hold his hand steady, when in fact, I want to climb into his lap like a little kid and have him hold me, but we’re both adults.

“Why am I switched with her? There must be some reason why you did this?” I ask.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “You and the real Sanaa were born less than a month apart. Your real birthday is December twenty-third, not January first. Your mother and Charlotte were pregnant at the same time, and had you both lived, probably would have been the best of friends besides being cousins. All of us were very close, even your Aunt Sharon at the time, though I know she is quite distant now. I’m sorry.”

I nod and try not to think about it. Her betrayal is still fresh to me.

“It was a complete fluke that the night your parents died, you stayed home with Kimie and Lomo. You were running a fever, and they didn’t want to bring you. It was a family birthday party, but Sharon couldn’t attend either because of work. So your mother and father, Charlotte and Sanaa, and several other family members were in the building when it exploded and killed them all.”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“No,” he says sadly, his shoulders falling. “Whoever engineered the explosion, and I believe it was Matsuda, wanted to kill off your entire family. I’m not sure if he was acting alone or at the behest of someone else. The day after, I faked the records and made it look like you died and switched your identity with the cousin who did die. It was easy enough because no one ever questioned it. Only a few of us actually knew Sanaa was my child so they never suspected anything.”

“But…” I’m so confused by all of this. “If you were trying to pass me off as Charlotte’s, who would believe Aunt Kimie and Lomo would adopt their sister-in-law’s child when Aunt Sharon should have done it?”

Sakai stares hard at me. “Your Aunt Sharon committed herself to Ku 2 and claimed she was unfit to take care of you. Your aunts volunteered. No one said a word.”

“Yet Aunt Kimie and Lomo raised me as Junko and Max’s child.”

Sakai nods. “Because you are their child, Sanaa, and that was the bargain I entered into. Kimie and Lomo would raise you as Sanaa Griffin in name only because Kimie could never pretend you weren’t Junko’s. She just couldn’t bring herself to call you Charlotte’s. So she offered to raise you only if she could tell you the truth about your parents. The only way to do that was to raise you outside of Ku 6. They couldn’t have you going around and telling people you were Junko Itami and Max Griffin’s daughter. The truth would have ruined everything.”

He’s right. I’ve told my friends, never believing it was different. To me now, only the name is different.

“I offered to stay away,” he continues. “No one outside of immediate family knew the real Sanaa, the one who died in the explosion, was my child, so I could stay away. I didn’t want to draw suspicion on you by being around you all the time, and it’s a good thing I did. You grew up to be just like your mother in almost every way. No one now will look at you and think you’re Charlotte’s child.”

“This is why Matsuda is so certain about who my parents are.”

“Indeed.”

Process this, Sanaa. It’s a lie. Most of my life has been a lie. How did this happen to me?

“Mark, this doesn’t explain why. Why would anyone want to kill my parents? Why did you do all of this shuffling around, hiding and protecting me?”

Sakai takes a deep breath and sighs.

“There’s another big secret here I haven’t told you yet. Let’s look at the tree.”

What now?

He zooms in on my parents’ portion of the tree. There I am, Hanako Itami, the only offspring of Junko Itami and Max Griffin. Only the line drawn between my two parents, linking them together forever, is dotted indicating they never married. I follow the chain back some fifteen generations with all the same linkages along the way. Whenever the only offspring was female that woman had never married. When the offspring were two females, the first born female had also never married. Only male offspring had ever married. This is the most confusing family tree I have ever seen.

“Why is it none of the women in my family have ever married? Well, none of the first-born women.”

“If you follow your family tree back…” He picks up his tablet and scrolls the screen so I can trace back the branches. “You’ll find the answer.”

I watch him scroll further and further until, “There! There, I see it.”

On the screen is a name I recognize from my history books, Emperor Naruhito, the Emperor of Japan. The emperor who only had one daughter, Aiko. Other names on the tree I’m familiar with, but that time in history was turbulent and almost all of the royal lines were decimated by war and disease before the Environmental Decline.

“There still exists a law that in order for the royal family line to be preserved, female offspring may not marry unless it’s to other royalty. If she marries a commoner, she loses all claim to the throne. History has been cruel to the Kiku line —”

“Kiku? What is that? This is not the first time I’m hearing it.” My voice is faint, disconnected.

“Kiku is a flower, the chrysanthemum, which is the royal seal of Japan.”

Now I know why kiku had no prior meaning. Who in Nishikyō sees many fresh flowers or knows their names? Only a few.

“The Kiku line all but completely died out right before the Environmental Decline, and most of the noble clans associated with the throne were barren as well. But, as you can see here…” He scrolls down a little on the tree. “Eventually a male line is established that lasts five generations. The line trended female again afterward, and they stopped marrying, just worked on producing heirs.”

“This makes no sense to me. What does marriage have to do with anything if they were having babies with anyone they wanted?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not meant to make sense, and let’s face it, imperial lineage was the last thing on anyone’s mind when the entire human race was dying out. But the law’s the law. All of these women in your line chose not to marry so they could keep the tradition alive. So no one could ever deny they were the true heir to the Chrysanthemum throne.”

Silence simmers between us for a solid minute as I replay Sakai’s entire explanation in my head, and my eyes search the family tree hoping a mistake appears to get me out of this mess.

“Huh.”

Sakai raises his eyebrows at me. “Is that all you can say? Huh?”

“What the hell do you want me to say? You just told me that my real name is not Sanaa, it’s Hanako (and don’t ever call me that, by the way), that my parents were murdered, that I can never legally marry, and that I’m royalty. I’m genuinely shocked.”

I stare blankly at the screen, at the two little boxes that are supposed to be me. Sanaa Griffin and Hanako Itami. Who the hell am I?

“I don’t feel the least bit royal. In fact, I feel pretty damn common.”

He smiles though his eyes are heartbroken for me. “Regardless, you are what you are, and that is, quite frankly, a problem. We’re about to leave Nishikyō, leave Earth, and settle on Yūsei. If the powers-that-be have their way, a New Japan will flourish there, and you will be called upon by Sakai clan to lead. If your mother had been alive instead of you, she would have done it. She prepared her whole life for her role as empress, but that’s not the case now. Our main problem is the other clans. If you’re eliminated, they will be able to fight until someone can rule. It’ll be the shōgunate all over again.”

My mother was prepared to give her life away to this madness, but I feel nothing. Nothing. When we get to Yūsei, I’ll pack up and go away. Let them have it.

“My clan has always served the Kiku line. We will continue to serve and protect you and your line until the end of time. I’ve done everything in my power to keep you safe. I will do it until the day I die, and Jiro will take the duties after me.”

I get up from my chair, break contact with him, and start pacing the room. I cannot sit and listen to this.

“Does Jiro even know? He doesn’t, does he? If he knew any of this, he would have told me.” I’ve lost faith in everything except Jiro right now.

“No,” Sakai says, his mouth twisting. “The secret has been kept from Jiro as well.”

“Mark, I’m numb. Never in a million years did I expect to hear this today.”

He gets up and stops me with a hug — a silent, strong hug — and I immediately feel guilty. If he knew of the treasonous thoughts going through my head, he’d probably kill me himself and save us all the problems.

“No, I don’t suspect you did. I’ve been meaning to tell you this for months, and each time I had the chance, I avoided the truth because I knew what it would do to you. I’m sorry.”

Stay or run?

“So now what? Aunt Kimie, my mother, everyone in my family has known this secret?”

He grabs my hand and holds it. “Go to Kimie. She can tell you more, I promise. Sanaa, you do realize you will never be able to marry? There are no more royal lines for you to marry into. This is the last branch on the tree.”

My head nods of its own accord. Sakai is making a big deal out of the smallest possible thing. Marriage? Who cares about that? My real name is not even Sanaa. My heart is so low, it’s practically in my stomach.

“But you can have a consort. Many, if you choose. I know you’re thinking of Jiro…”

What is Jiro going to say when he finds out all of this? Will something like this kill our relationship forever before it’s even started? He’s supposed to take over for Sakai one day, and this will come between us. Forget about any of my stupid insecurities. Being an empress is far more complicated than my own issues.

“All that matters is the line now,” Sakai says.

Taking a deep breath, I lift my eyes to the screen and my family tree with my little grayed-out box, my place in history. I should feel grand and unstoppable as the next ruler of New Japan, but instead I am small and insignificant.

Where is my confidence now?