Something in Misaki was dead after that day. She no longer saw her husband or Mamoru as they passed through the house around her. Every night, Takeru clinically opened her kimono, pushed her down, and lay with her. He put another baby in her, and she lost that one too. After the second miscarriage, she began to think that she really was a doll—stiff, unfeeling, incapable of producing life because she was not really alive. There were horror stories of Tsusano puppet masters, manipulating the blood in the bodies of others—dead and living—making them dance like dolls. Sometimes Misaki wondered if
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