Gone was my objection to that. I should probably have just left it at that. But I couldn't stop tiny little doubts joining me on my shoulder - about Mayu. What was she trying to say?
"Tell me," she began after a while, after we had started eating and she had said several times how much she had enjoyed it, "you mentioned earlier that you were treated specially. What is your current relationship with your parents like?" she asked, much more cautiously than before.
So now she wanted to know more about my parents? I noticed that the doubting spirits were tugging warningly at my white shirt.
Where was this immense interest in me coming from?
"My relationship with them is and remains difficult. We hear each other from time to time, see each other even less, but I don't want to have anything more to do with them," I revealed meaninglessly, 'that may sound harsh-' "No. It's not. It doesn't," she was the one who interrupted me nonchalantly, "you don't have to justify it. What you said about her earlier is enough. I can understand that."
"Understand?" I asked brightly and grabbed another piece of sushi.
Was it finally her turn to talk about where she had left off in training?
"Yes, that's right. I said earlier that my relationship with my parents is difficult because I'm the only one who can see curses."
"Yes, you did. Did I actually offend you earlier?"
"Because I stumbled for a moment?" she guessed, to which I nodded, "No. Not at all. Why should I make a secret of it? I hadn't expected this question at all and had to think for a moment myself about why I'm actually different as the only one in the family. So you can ask me anything about that. I was just unprepared for it."
Forget about Sukuna...
So she hadn't been looking for an excuse, as I had partly suspected.
"But you should know that my parents are strictly religious. Not Buddhist or Shinto, for example. They are devout Catholics. They believe in nothing other than God," she continued, which astonished me, "for them, this world and my peculiarity of seeing curses doesn't exist. They close their eyes to it. They also don't believe that the supernatural exists. And then I came along. I don't have the same status as you," she giggled, "but I was treated just as special as you. So actually rather odd."
What a contradiction, I smiled to myself. How could you believe in something you couldn't see, whereas you could still see curse spirits, depending on your rank? I already suspected where this was going.
Still... Christianity, then? It only played a very minor role here in Japan. I thought I had read that only about one percent of Japanese citizens living here professed this denomination. Furthermore, in the Edu period, the spread of Christianity was forbidden under the strictest penalties. And her parents professed this? That promised to be an exciting story about her family.
"Strange?" I repeated brightly, "... Sounds like you're the one of us who wasn't allowed to enjoy a typical childhood, doesn't it?"
"I guess it's in the eye of the beholder, but yes, I didn't have the typical childhood of carefree play and wasn't allowed to pursue my own hobbies. I had strict rules to follow every day, just like you, but they started with my choice of clothes, followed a timed schedule set by my parents and ended with an early bedtime. My everyday life consisted mainly of school and learning, learning and more learning. And what I just forgot to mention was studying. When I didn't have to study, I was put on household chores. This included everything my mother did. So cooking, cleaning, tidying up and the all too familiar rest. When that was finally done and there was still a little time before bedtime, I was allowed to play games or watch TV, although they told me what I was allowed to do. But that was a real rarity, as I'm sure you can hear."
I nodded silently, actually rather speechless - which I rarely was. But my vocabulary had just evaporated along with my good mood.
"Were you allowed to do anything at all?" I simply had to ask, as I had been discreetly shocked at how you could take your child under your wing like that.
She hadn't even had the slightest chance to develop in any direction. At least that's how it seemed to me.
"Almost not at all. Going out alone wasn't an issue between us until I got my first cell phone, which was in fifth grade, and they checked it every day. If I was allowed to play games, they checked them beforehand to see if they were for me, just like they did with TV. In that sense, they had to check and approve everything before I was allowed to do anything. The only thing I actually enjoyed was being allowed to learn to play the violin. But apart from that, my childhood was more like a prison sentence that I had to serve."
"... Why?" I blurted out.