Summary

At the start of Chapter 13, "Traitor's Requiem," Ayame gives Nori a box of her mother's diaries, and Nori soon begins to read them. The first diary begins when Seiko was eighteen in Paris studying the piano, falling in love with a Frenchmen, and feuding with her mother. "This Seiko was passionate and defiant, silly but clever. This was a woman with a desperate need to walk her own path," (238) and Nori finds herself liking this woman, in spite of knowing what will happen to her.

Nori's reading is interrupted when Akira comes back from Paris a day early. To Nori's surprise, he has brought two friends with him, cousins William and Alice Stafford. Both are beautiful and English, and Nori is initially uncomfortable in their presence. She discovers that Will is a talented pianist and that Alice has left England for unexplained reasons. Despite...