Yours to Hold (An OHSHC fanfic) [Completed]

Epilogue

A/N: Just a warning. If you're not planning on reading the sequel, a HoneyxOC book, don't read this. It's an open ended chapter that unravels the nice little sweet ending established in the last chapter, because it's purpose is to start a plotline for the next book and get people interested in it. Just an FYI to save you guys some heartache!

A few weeks later...

 

“Have you taken a look in the locket yet?”

I paused, one hand on my bedroom the door, the other lightly clasped over the strap holding my bag in place. A surprised feeling swept over me as I shook my head, turning my body towards where Uncle stood. He’d been rather quiet since the tournament and Ren’s departure. If the sentence itself wasn’t surprising enough, the fact he had spoke was.

“No, not yet,” I replied honestly. “I thought it might be an invasion of her privacy. Okaa-san really treasured this locket and whatever it held.”

He pursed his lips, running a hand through his hair. The expression on his face was one that I could easily read, much to my surprise. He wasn’t typically this obvious when it came to his emotions. It was as if he was torn about what to say. When he dropped his hand from his hair, he sighed, averting his eyes as well.

“Your mother… well, she wanted you to have that,” he muttered after a moment. “She’d told me that a long time ago… said there was something important inside that you deserved to know about. I…”

When he trailed off I tensed. This wasn’t like him. No matter what was going on, my uncle was always self-assured. He always seemed to know what he was doing, even if it might have been the wrong thing.

“I have an idea of it all…” he continued after a moment. “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have given it to you.”

“You didn’t,” I couldn’t help but comment. “It was a year before you did.”

He nodded, still averting his eyes.

“Take a look. That’s all I have to say.”

He turned on heel, then, and left. Confused, I continued into my room and dropped my bag on my bed before climbing up beside it. It only took a second’s thought for me to decide to take the locket off. Once I had it in my hands, I studied it.

Why was he so worried about what I’d find inside? It wasn’t like I didn’t already know our family’s dirty little secret. I’d known about the engagement, the break-up, and the wedding for years and I’d made no secret of that. So why…

It took a few moments, but I managed to fix my fingernail in between the two sides of the locket and get it open. Instantly, a small piece of paper fell into my lap. Sitting the locket to the side, I picked it up and unfolded it, highly aware of how small it was- it couldn’t have said much. My suspicions were confirmed when instead of a message, there was a url. I faintly recognized it as what would have had to been a page on a document hosting website my mother had encouraged me to use for school.

Picking the locket back up, I looked over the images. On the right was what was obviously my mother when she was only a few years older than me. As I’d been told a dozen times over, she looked almost exactly like me if you ignored her dark blue eyes. We could have been twins instead of mother and daughter.

On the left was a man that looked similar to my father. The only difference was that he was wearing classes, my father had perfect vision his entire life. At the same time, he wore a bright smile on his face similar to the one I’d always seen on my father’s. Perhaps he’d had reading glasses or something when he was younger? It seemed strange, but not impossible.

My attention went back to the url. It had to be what Uncle was concerned about. Without any hesitation, I crossed my room to my closet, digging around until I located the laptop I didn’t touch unless I needed something for class. It only took me a few moments to get it on and logged into the house’s wifi. It wasn’t until I had the url fully typed out that I began to hesitate.

If Uncle was so agitated over the idea of me reading it, perhaps I was better off not knowing.

Then again, could it really be that bad?

Shaking my head, I hit enter.

It couldn’t be that bad. Besides, I was finished running away from things.

When the page finished loading, I bit my lip.

‘Dear Nao,’

A digital letter, of course that’s what it was. You couldn’t exactly fit- I searched for the page count- three pages in a single locket. What better to do then to link to it? With these sort of sites you could only read it if you had the link or you owned the document anyways.

As I began to read, I could slowly feel the hesitation turn to numbness. The words were obviously my mother’s, but the contents weren’t something I could wrap my mind around.

Not that bad?I wondered to myself. This, not that bad?

I began to shake.

‘I’m so sorry, sweetie. I never meant to hurt you.’