Rika smiled without warmth. “My finest lie. But lies rot faster than silk. I need you to restore it—not to its fake glory, but to nothing . Erase it. Give the world an honest absence.”
She picked up her brush.
Outside, the rain softened to mist. Rika stood motionless. Then, for the first time, she knelt beside the worktable. Tsubaki Rika Kitaoka Karin
“It’s real,” Rika said. “And it’s dying. Look.”
Rika stood in the gallery, hands in her coat pockets. Karin stood beside her. Rika smiled without warmth
It was a Tsubaki—no, her Tsubaki. The missing center panel of the very byobu Karin was restoring. The one believed destroyed in the 1973 fire. The one that would complete the camellias’ original violence.
“Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t,” Rika said, “my old buyer will find out I’m the forger. And he won’t call the museum. He’ll call a cleaner.”