The rain hadn't let up by the time the deep-red limousine pulled up in front of the Mori estate. The storm had grown angrier, sheets of water slashing sideways across the narrow street, drumming against the car's roof like impatient fingers. The headlights carved pale tunnels through the darkness, illuminating high stone walls that had stood for generations—walls that carried the weight of old samurai pride and newer, quieter grief.
It wasn't a modern mansion with glass and steel. It was a traditional Japanese compound that seemed to grow straight out of the earth: dark cedar beams, gently sloping tiled roofs, a modest but perfectly maintained garden barely visible behind the heavy wooden gate. The gate itself was massive, reinforced with iron bands, more fortress than front door. It stood as a silent declaration: the chaos of Tokyo's neon jungle stopped here.
Hiroki stepped out first. He immediately shrugged off his damp jacket and draped it over Saki's narrow shoulders. The girl was still trembling, her soaked clothes clinging to her like a second, miserable skin. She clutched the jacket around herself as if it were armor. Ayumu followed close behind, her sharp eyes sweeping the perimeter out of pure habit—left, right, shadows, rooftops—like a bodyguard who never truly relaxed. Only then did Jessica Rabbit emerge.
Even in the downpour, even with her iconic purple dress plastered dark against her skin and her red hair hanging in heavy, wet ropes, her presence seemed to shove the gloom backward. Raindrops slid off her like they were afraid to stay too long. She straightened to her full height—182 cm in those signature heels—and for a moment the storm itself appeared to hesitate.
"This is where you live?" Saki whispered, her voice so small it almost drowned in the rain. She stared up at the sprawling rooflines, the paper-screened windows glowing faintly gold from within. To her, after years of shouting, locked doors, and bruises hidden under long sleeves, it looked like a temple of safety. A place where monsters weren't allowed to follow.
"It's my mother's house," Hiroki answered quietly. His tone softened the way it always did when he spoke about this place. "You'll be safe here. No one gets past these gates without permission."
The heavy doors creaked open with a low, ancient groan, as though the house itself were waking up to inspect the newcomers. They were met by a figure that made even Jessica Rabbit pause for half a heartbeat.
Kaede Mori stood framed in the genkan, backlit by warm lantern light. At 187 cm she was a tower of quiet authority. Her brown hair was pulled into a severe, flawless ponytail that reached the small of her back. The modest but clearly expensive kimono she wore did nothing to hide the powerful lines of her body or the G-cup swell of her chest; instead it seemed to emphasize her dignity, turning curves into something regal rather than sexual. She stood with the posture of a general inspecting troops before a battle she already knew she would win.
"Hiroki. Ayumu," Kaede's voice rolled like distant thunder—deep, resonant, impossible to ignore. Her dark eyes flicked first to the shivering girl half-hidden behind her son, then lifted to the striking American woman who somehow made the courtyard feel smaller. "And who have you brought to my door in the middle of a typhoon?"
Hiroki bowed his head slightly, the gesture automatic and respectful. "Mother, this is Saki. She was in trouble. And this is Miss Rabbit… she saved her."
Kaede's gaze sharpened. She didn't linger on Jessica's famous hourglass silhouette the way most people did. She looked straight into the emerald eyes framed by lavender shadow and saw the steel beneath the glamour—and beneath the steel, the bone-deep weariness. Two women who had both spent too many years being looked at instead of seen.
"An American superstar in a judo student's courtyard," Kaede said dryly. "Strange times." She stepped gracefully aside, gesturing toward the warm, cedar-scented interior. "Inside. Before the girl catches pneumonia."
They removed their shoes in the genkan and stepped up into the house proper. The air changed immediately—warm, fragrant with incense and polished wood, a quiet sanctuary against the howling storm outside. They settled into the wide living room where tatami mats gave softly underfoot. Low tables and cushions were arranged with careful simplicity. A shoji screen diffused the lantern light into gentle gold.
A sliding door banged open with adolescent lack of subtlety.
Kanoko Mori sauntered in mid-yawn, one hand scratching lazily at her messy orange-and-black hair. At 185 cm she was nearly as tall as her mother, and her flashy gyaru style—brightly colored loungewear that strained heroically against her F-cup bust—stood in loud opposition to the house's traditional restraint. She froze mid-step when her green eyes landed on Jessica Rabbit.
"No way… Jessica Rabbit? In our house?" Her voice rose an octave. "Is this a dream? Am I dead?"
"Kanoko, show some respect," Kaede warned, though a faint thread of maternal exhaustion softened the edge of her words.
"It's fine," Jessica said. She lowered herself gracefully onto a cushion, folding her long legs beneath her with the practiced elegance of someone who had spent decades turning every movement into performance. She glanced at Kanoko, then at Kaede. The sheer height of these two women was staggering. For once, Jessica didn't feel like the tallest person in the room—and strangely, the realization was almost comforting.
Kanoko bounced forward, energy crackling around her like static. "Wow, you're even more 'stacked' in person! And who's the kitten?" she asked, nodding toward Saki, who was now being carefully wrapped in a thick, heated blanket by Ayumu.
"Saki," Hiroki answered, voice low. "Her parents… they aren't good people, Kanoko."
The playful light in Kanoko's eyes flickered out like someone had flipped a switch. Growing up in the Mori house, "family" was a sacred word—even when it was complicated, even when it hurt. She looked at her half-brother, then at the fragile girl curled against Ayumu's side.
"Well, they'll have to deal with us now," she said. Her voice dropped an octave, suddenly carrying the same dangerous calm her mother sometimes used. She met Hiroki's eyes with fierce protectiveness. "Good job, Hiro-chan. You finally did something useful."
While the women spoke in low tones, Hiroki excused himself and slipped into the kitchen. The familiar motions of preparing tea—filling the kettle, measuring leaves, waiting for the water to reach the perfect temperature—settled something inside him. For the first time in months the suffocating pressure he usually carried around Nao was absent. She was in Osaka for a photo shoot this weekend; her sharp voice wouldn't crackle through his phone to belittle his randori technique or remind him how "rigid" and "limited" he was until Sunday night at the earliest.
He exhaled slowly, watching steam rise.
As he arranged the cups on a tray, he caught his mother's reflection in the dark window glass. Kaede was watching Jessica Rabbit with an expression that went far beyond simple curiosity. It was recognition—quiet, painful, woman-to-woman. Not celebrity worship. Something older. Deeper.
Kaede's mind had already drifted back to Koichi.
To the husband who had died at twenty-five.
To the man who had been the love of her life and—through no fault of his own—her greatest victim.
She looked at Hiroki again—the only true son of Koichi, the boy who carried his father's gentle blue eyes and stubborn kindness—and then at Kanoko, whose existence had been built on a lie Kaede still hadn't found the courage to unravel. The weight of that decades-old deception pressed against her ribs like a second skeleton.
"Miss Rabbit," Kaede said suddenly, breaking the low murmur of conversation. "Why are you really in Japan? Women like you don't just 'vacation' in the rain."
Jessica tilted her head. A single heavy red lock slid forward and fell across one eye. She didn't brush it away.
"For the same reason anyone goes anywhere, Mrs. Mori," she answered softly. "I'm looking for something that doesn't want to be found."
The atmosphere thickened, words hanging between them like smoke.
Then a soft electronic chime cut through the quiet.
It came from far away—Makayla's laptop in the penthouse suite of the Grand Imperial Hotel—but the ripple was already spreading.
Aiysha stood motionless by the rain-lashed window, a glass of dark wine forgotten in her hand. Her silk robe clung to the legendary K-cup curves that had once made headlines from Cape Town to Paris. She stared at the screen Makayla had just turned toward her.
"The Mori family," Aiysha whispered. Her chest rose sharply beneath the silk. "The blonde boy… the son of Koichi."
"Is there a problem, Mother?" Imani asked, straightening to her full height in her tailored pencil skirt.
"A ghost from the past," Aiysha replied. Her eyes narrowed to slits of polished obsidian. "A debt that hasn't been paid. And if the Shadow finds them before we do… this city will burn."
Back in the Mori living room, Saki had finally surrendered to exhaustion. Her head rested against Ayumu's shoulder, small breaths steady at last. Ayumu didn't move, didn't dare disturb her. She simply sat there like a sentinel, one arm protectively curled around the sleeping girl.
Hiroki had returned with the tea tray. He set it down carefully, then moved to sit by the window. He watched the rain streak the glass in silver rivers, listened to the low voices of the women behind him—Kaede's measured calm, Jessica's velvet murmur, Kanoko's occasional bright laugh, Ayumu's quiet reassurances.
He didn't know.
He didn't know that the fragile girl he had pulled from the street, the goddess who had walked into his home like a myth made flesh, and the mother he loved more than his own heartbeat were all connected by threads of old pain and older secrets.
He didn't know that the sweetness they all secretly craved—the end of bitterness, the taste of something brighter than lemons—was still a long, dangerous way off.
And somewhere out in the rain-soaked night, something older than any of them was already turning its attention toward the fortress of the Mori.