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Umiko Kinju's memories of her family are fragmented, like faded photographs. Her father's face is blank in her mind-he had left long ago, abandoning Umiko, her older sister, and their mother. She only remembers that he was materialistic, chasing wealth and possessions instead of people.
Her mother and sister were different. They carried themselves like old-money nobility, wearing traditional Japanese clothing with occasional modern touches, graceful and refined. They looked like they belonged in another world. Umiko, however, often felt like the odd one out-drawn to pretty, fleeting things, more modern trinkets than heirlooms.
The last day she spent with her friends remains sharp in her memory. They gave her a handful of gifts: a flower-shaped lamp, a set of Kimmi perfumes, a cat-shaped plant holder (a small joke, since Umiko was infamous for killing every plant she touched), and a frog-shaped wind chime. Only her four closest friends had given her something, but to her, those gifts carried the weight of goodbye.
Her mother dismissed her attachment to them as materialism. Her sister echoed the same. But Umiko thought differently: If you truly care about someone, why wouldn't you spend on them? Why wouldn't you leave them with something to remember you by?
That belief stayed with her, shaping her into the person she became-someone who clings to keepsakes, and to people, desperate never to lose what little she has left.