YOBANASHI DECEIVE 4

The pale-orange light from the ceiling shone dolefully on the room and its tidily organized contents.

Which sounds like a good thing, but that cleanliness happened mainly because the room was almost devoid of possessions.

There was a small flat-screen TV, a low table with a checker pattern, a few pillow seats around it, and several children’s books on a shelf.

Otherwise, it was flat and inorganic, decorated with little else but a couple of plain shelving units with our clothes and so on.

Room 107, the far end of the dormitory rooms on the ground floor.

On top of my dingy bed, the bottom bunk of one of the room’s two bunk beds, we were engaged in yet another uncomfortable postmortem session.

The theme of today’s meeting: how to deal with our reputation around the facility as “monsters.”

Of course, yesterday’s theme was on the same topic, and if you wanted to press the issue, it was the same thing the day before that, too.

Today, as well, I didn’t get any particular feedback from the other two participants. There was no answer when I asked them what they were thinking about, and we had already spent the past two minutes under the dim light in silence.

Unable to withstand the silence any longer, I spoke up again.

“Yeah, uh…Heh-heh-heh. What should we do, huh? Really.”

I made every intention of inserting the nuance of “We’re screwed” into that. Seto, in response, clutched the pillow in his hands even harder, looking ready to bawl at any moment.

“This is really all my fault. I’m so sorry…”

Kido immediately stepped up to cut off the mealy-mouthed Seto.

“No, no, it’s not just your fault, Seto. We’re not here to assign blame on people. Also, stop apologizing.”

Seto shuddered for a moment, then buried his face into the pillow like he wanted to disappear, muttering “I’m sor…I mean, I’m not” into it.

Seto was always like that. Always ready to cry. Kind of like a cross between a small animal and a baby.

He cried when he tripped and fell, he cried when he was hungry, he cried when the sun set, and he cried even when nothing in particular happened to him.

That was the main identifying characteristic of Kousuke Seto, also known in my own mind as New Friend Number Two.

One would think it best to approach Seto with kid gloves when talking to him, but Kido never had any time for that. “Huh,” she gruffly replied as she started constructing a miniature Tokyo Tower string figure in her hands.

It felt a little cruel to just leave it at that, so I hurriedly tried to intervene.

“Listen, it’s fine. Really. Seto, I know you’re trying to seriously think about us and everything, so…”

“…Um, I’m sorry, but I’m really not thinking that much.”

His muttered response through the pillow put an end to my noble attempt at comforting him.

“What did I just tell you?” Kido said, adding to the pressure. This made Kido twitch once again and fall into silence. Back to square one we went.

I sighed deeply and leaned back into the comforter I had propped against the wall.

We wouldn’t make much progress today, either. I could already tell that this conference would end with all of us falling asleep sooner or later.

It had already been several months since I came here.

The days were, shall we say, quite a lot more eventful than the two months or so I spent at my aunt’s place.

I wasn’t sure how things would work out on that first day, when I acquired a nice crimson-red bruise on my cheek. But, thankfully, I’ve managed to keep a roof above my head here so far.

I was pretty surprised when I learned that Kido, the girl responsible for that bruise, was an orphan brought here for pretty much the same reason as myself.

What’s more, we wound up being assigned to the same room, which was a further shock to me.

Room assignments usually weren’t coed like that, but since the other rooms were full and we were among the youngest residents, they made an exception for us.

I’d heard stories about how some people were just destined to meet each other, but this was the first time I’d actually felt it.

The name “Kido,” by the way, also dates back to that first day, where she only got her last name out before I grabbed her and made her think I was some kind of weird predator. For a time afterward, she didn’t even speak to me.

I kept hounding her after that, not wanting to lose Friend Number One so soon after making it. When she finally told me, “Stop breathing down my neck all day,” I thought I was going to break into tears of joy. It took another month before she finally told me her first name, so I stuck to calling her Kido.

Lying in wait for the two of us in this room was Seto, the original occupant.

Seto was a quiet child—in a more literal way, not like Kido and her eternally crabby moods. But, perhaps in order to cheer me up while Kido continued to ignore me, he began to open up after a little while, and we started to chat about all kinds of things.

As he put it, he had been in this facility since right after he was born.

He had no friends, to the point where he was bullied by his previous roommates.

His only real companion, a dog named Hanako, died last year…and so on. All these tales, usually told through tears, didn’t exactly cheer me up much.

But, as I attempted to calm him down with repeated assurances of “It’s all right, it’s all right,” I suppose Seto and I managed to establish what you could call a “bond” with each other.

I guess that made our relationship much more friendshiplike than what I had with Friend Number One, who never even spoke to me.

That was about when Seto officially became Friend Number Two in my mind.

It wasn’t because of the way that, when he asked me, “I guess we’re friends now, right?” his eyes were giving me the message, “If you say no, I’m gonna die.”

It purely came down to the fact that I found the time I spent with him to be…fun.

And as more time passed and Kido gradually began joining the conversation as well, the three of us began to get along like old friends. A few awkward patches here and there, but…

…Okay, a lot of awkward patches.

In fact, more hitches than nonhitches, really.

If this bed we lay on were a boat, it’d be one with the sails torn apart, the mast smashed to splinters, and a massive tidal wave menacing fifty feet in the air behind it.

Which is why we were having this postmortem.

To be frank, having residents in the other rooms—the facility staff, too—call us monsters and freaks all day was really starting to wear thin on us.

I was sick of going to Room 107 and seeing a Post-it with MONSTER HOUSE written on it stuck to the door. We had to do something to improve our image, the sooner the better.

M-monsters…Freaks…

“Hey, uh, I really wish you’d stop that…Wait, huh?”

I didn’t say monster or freak out loud just now. All I did was think the words in my mind.

Why did he react to that? How was he able to?

I sat up and looked toward Seto. He, in turn, lifted his face from the pillow and returned the gaze with a teary-eyed one of his own.

Both of them were tinted a bright, mesmerizing shade of crimson.

After a pause, I said, “Oh,” and closed my eyes, thinking a little.

(…Can you hear what I’m thinking again?)

I focused on the question in my mind.

“S-sorry. Yeah.”

He sounded remorseful about it, burying his face once more into the pillow—just low enough so his eyes popped out above it.

So that’s what it was.

(That hasn’t happened so much lately,) I thought. (Crazy how that always just happens to you out of the blue, Seto.)

He lifted his head up slightly, mouth still covered. “I think it’ll go away in a little bit,” he said apologetically.

* * *

As I grinned at his reply, I felt Kido shifting positions on the bed. Fearing the worst, I gingerly turned toward her. She was staring at Seto like she couldn’t stand another moment of breathing the same air as him.

I then shifted my gaze to Seto. He looked like a mouse caught in the sights of a cobra.

He waved his hands wildly in the air. “Ahhh!” he said, presumably in reply to her own internal voice. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to apologize like…Huh? N-no! No, I’m not doing it on purpose!”

That habit couldn’t have been more deep-rooted within him.

Kido, in response, unwound the cat’s cradle she was working on. “How many times do I have to tell you,” she said as she got on her knees, made a fist with her right hand, and began drawing near Seto.

The terror was too much for him to bear. He began sobbing on the spot, pathetically whining “Ahhh…! Ahhh…!” as he did.

It was probably time for me to do something.

I cut in between Seto and Kido, arms outstretched toward the latter.

“Whoa! Stop, stop, stop! Kido, you’re getting a little too angry, all right?”

I tried giving her as natural a smile as I could (if a little strained) as I said it, but Kido glared at me instead, as if to say, “I’ll kill you, too, if you don’t move.”

The way this girl stares at you…It really gets to you. If she had a role in a kids’ action-rangers-style show, she’d definitely play a villain.

“Ha-ha,” Seto said behind me. “Yeah, a villain.”

(What’re you laughing about?! I’m literally putting my body on the line against Kido for you!)

“I-I’m sorry!” Seto yelped.

Seto could be so careless like that. Now was absolutely not the time to start apologizing again. The aura of rage surrounding Kido grew noticeably more intense before my eyes.

“Not again…And you said something to him just now, didn’t you, Kano?”

Her voice was soft, but every syllable had a dagger looming behind it.

“H-huh?! What do you mean? I didn’t say anything! Did I, Seto?”

“N-no! No! He didn’t call you a villain or anything!”

At the next instant, Kido landed a well-aimed body blow to my solar plexus.

“Gennhh!”

I was slammed down into the bedsheets. It was a perfectly clean knockout. I could hear a bell ringing somewhere.

“Hyaahh!” Seto pathetically shouted.

Withstanding the pain from my stomach, I groggily looked up toward Kido…only to find her sobbing, too. She must’ve crashed down from the apex of her anger.

As if reacting to it, Seto, naturally, began crying, too.

Now, as I stayed down for the count, I was surrounded by a stereo symphony of wailing.

…What is with us tonight?

Shouldn’t I be the one who’s crying here?

Amid my conflicting feelings, the sobbing that surrounded me began to ratchet up in volume.

“Oh, crap, if I don’t…”

Suddenly realizing something, I turned to Kido. Just as I thought, her eyes gradually reddened as she began to disappear into nothingness before me.

For whatever reason, whenever Kido was angry, crying, lonely, or otherwise stressed, she would literally vanish…or, as she put it, other people would stop picking up on her presence. Assuming you don’t actually touch her, though—otherwise, you’d see her again. That condition didn’t make much sense to me, but there you go.

It was one thing if you could grab her hand or feel around in the air for her in time, but if she left the room in that invisible state, that was serious trouble.

She did that more than once in the past—so taken by whatever mood made her invisible that she just had to flee somewhere else. Seto and I had to spend hours searching for her during one episode, and as shameful as it was, I cried so hard then that I made Seto look like an amateur.

In the end, we searched until morning to no avail, only to return to our room and find Kido sleeping like a baby in her bed. So it worked out, but it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat anytime soon.

If I didn’t step up to put an end to this crying jag, I could have some serious clean-up work to do afterward.

So I conjured up an image in my mind. Another weapon in my arsenal, one I hadn’t shown either of them yet. The shape, the voice, the scent…

The moment I opened my eyes, both of them cried out loud in unison. Just the reaction I was hoping for. I felt oddly proud of myself as I jumped down to the floor and waved at them.

They were both shocked at first, but as I beckoned, their tear-stained faces instantly transformed into bubbly smiles.

“You can do a cat?”

I could. Just for such an occasion, I had been spending my free time observing the strays around the facility in an attempt to memorize everything I could about them.

In the several months we knew each other, I discovered that Seto liked animals and Kido enjoyed cute things in general. Thus, I concluded that a black cat would be the perfect thing to distract both of them at once.

And it worked. Immediately, all their attention was focused on me.

Kido sat up out of bed, her breathing a bit ragged as she clapped her hands at me. “C’mere!” she said. “Come on, kitty, come ’ere!” Seto joined her, motioning at me with both hands.

The crimson quickly drained from their eyes as I watched. Kido finally, blessedly came back into full view.

Hee-hee-hee. Cute of her.

I bet she’d just love for me to jump into her lap. But let’s string this out a little more.

I gingerly began to approach her, then suddenly reared back and kept my distance. I then repeated this a few times. Revenge was mine.

The mood of my audience swung from one extreme to the other every time I went through the cycle. They began attempting more and more flamboyant ways to curry my favor.

This was glorious. I was having so much fun, I could barely keep myself from rolling on my side and laughing. There was no stopping me now.

So, what next? How about a little dance? Yeah, that sounded nice.

Stepping up the intensity a bit, I hopped up on the table and began to bop around on two legs a bit. My audience grabbed their stomachs and howled in laughter.

So much fun. This is the most fun night I’ve had in ages.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this good, actually. So this is what being a cat was like. I dug it. It might become a bad habit of mine.

As I continued doing a jig on the table, I heard an unexpected whump from nearby the door.

I didn’t appreciate this interruption very much, but since the blood was quickly draining from the faces of my audience, I finally turned around for a look.

All the laughter made me fail to notice, but somewhere along the line, the door had been opened.

Right at the frame between our room and the hallway, one of the staffers—out on night patrol, probably—was lying on the floor.

I had trouble parsing the situation at first. What was this guy doing, all crumpled up on our doorstep? After another moment, though, it was clear as day.

Putting a halt to my performance, I felt my blood chill to freezing from head to claw.

“Uh…Hey, cat, what’re we…?”

Even Kido was being uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Meow,” I replied. That was the question I wanted to ask her, really. I sure as hell didn’t have any bright ideas.

…The story, as I heard it later, was that as the staffer was doing his night rounds, he heard loud noises coming from Room 107, opened the door to warn the occupants, then claimed he saw a black cat hip-hop dancing on the table. The experience caused him to have a nervous breakdown, and he wound up being transferred to another facility.

This did nothing to improve our reputation, of course. In fact, it pretty much solidified Room 107’s alternate name of Monster House for all time. Oh well.

So here we were once more, Room 107 at the far end of the first-floor dormitory hall.

On top of my dingy bed, the bottom bunk of one of the room’s two bunk bed setups, we were engaged in yet another mind-achingly uncomfortable postmortem session.

The theme of today’s meeting: “We’re now officially ‘monsters’ in the eyes of this facility…and if this keeps up, we’re screwed.”

It was frightening, actually, this string of bad luck we were dealing with.

In fact, our reputation was getting worse and worse every day. From every corner of the building, all sorts of rumors were beginning to fly around about us.

One example:

“Every night, at the stall farthest away from the door in the first-floor girls’ room, you can hear a ghostly voice sobbing to itself. No matter how hard you look, you’ll never find anyone…but the voice is still there.”

Apparently, this ghost made frequent visits to our room, as the prevailing theory went. I have no idea how the story got started. I mean, frequent visits? She lives here, dude.

I tried broaching the subject delicately with Kido. “I’m gonna punch whoever started that,” came the aggravated reply. Guess it rang a bell with her. I refrained from further questioning.

Here’s another one:

“One of the kids from Room 107 whispered something to a staffer, and then the guy disappeared the next day. Maybe it’s the son of the Devil!”

I had no clue what could’ve been the seed for that tall tale. At first.

“Actually,” Seto then said, “there was this one guy who was going around wearing girls’ underwear under his uniform, and I told him, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ and then I never saw him again.”

Well, chalk that one up to us as well, I suppose.

Why was the staffer doing something like that? Why did he stop coming to the facility afterward? How could we have known? We were all still too young for all that.

How about one more to make it a solid trio?:

There was another story about “some guy who hangs out behind the dorms and keeps sniffing at stray cats.” Yes, that was me. I wanted to die when I heard that one.

These dark rumors about us seemed to inflate and exaggerate themselves on a daily basis. It was like a never-ending merry-go-round for me.

Not for the other two. They never cared very much about the rest of society, anyway, it seemed like. Just me.

Now I was in the middle of relaying a few of these latest rumors about us to them, ending each one with, “So what do you guys think?”

“I think you’re a freak, Kano.”

Kido’s eyes unwaveringly bore down on me.

“Huh? Uhhh…Huh?”

The answer was merciless as it was to the point. It came so suddenly that I thought she was making some kind of metaphor at first.

“I said you’re a freak.”

All right. Not a metaphor, then. I tried my best to withstand the barrage, driving the topic back toward our traction session.

“No, I…I wasn’t asking you what you thought about me picking up cats and sniffing at them. I’m talking about what we should do about…this…”

“Hraa-a-a-aahh…”

Kido, breathlessly disinterested in my attempt, yawned.

I could feel the tears coming.

Why do I have to sit here and have people call me a freak on my own bed? I’m trying to make things better for us.

“You aren’t a freak at all,” Seto whispered into my ear, perhaps picking up on my despair. “I do it a lot, too.”

…I’m sorry if this sounds mean, Seto, but at least I had a half-decent reason.

“Hey, so how long’re we gonna do this, anyway?”

Kido rubbed her eyes, her voice betraying her intense fatigue.

“I mean, is there any point to it?”

“Um…Well, uh, you know…”

I didn’t exactly have a good reply to that question. I invited the two of them over here virtually every night for these “postmortems,” but up to now, there wasn’t even a whiff of an idea, much less an ace in the hole that would completely turn our reputations around and make life more decent for us.

“…I mean, if things keep going like this around here, they might, like, seriously kick us out of here, wouldn’t they?”

“Th-they’re gonna kick us out?!”

My observation made Seto almost leap out of his position on the bed. I began to wonder what kind of mutant tear ducts he had in order to mass produce so much of the stuff on a moment’s notice.

“Ugh, no crying, okay? No crying.”

“I’m sorry…”

He nodded and wiped them away as I rubbed his back. He had a knack for turning off the waterworks at a moment’s notice—one of his saving graces. Still cries too much, though.

“I mean, I don’t think they’re gonna boot us out to the street tomorrow or anything. But I think some of the staff’s starting to get scared of us, so if we don’t make an effort to be more likable pretty soon…”

“Likable…?”

Not that there was any plan of action I could think of. Was it even possible, really, to raise our likability level from the bottomless pit it was hurtling down right now?

I didn’t think there was much way we could be branded anything worse than “monsters.” But now that we were this far down, how were we ever gonna claw our way back up to “humans”?

“…Pfft. She’s sleeping.”

As I worried away to myself, Kido began lightly snoring, still sitting primly on her side of my bed. Aha. That would explain why she didn’t lunge at Seto for apologizing earlier.

Not much purpose waking her up. That’d just rile her up again. I placed a hand on Kido’s back and carefully laid her down on my bed.

“She’s really not that freaky a girl, though,” I said, giving her a light tap on the cheek. “Not as much as people think.”

“If she doesn’t get angry,” Seto added, giggling to himself.

“Nhh,” Kido said in her sleep.

“Eeeee!!” Seto shouted, tumbling backward.

If I could show these two people right now to the rest of the kids, they’d probably feel pretty stupid, freaking out so much over just a bunch of dumb children. But I didn’t have it in me to assert this in front of them strongly enough. Unless I interacted with people more—unless I talked to them more—they’d never learn the truth. They needed to if we were gonna get anywhere, but that was hard for us. It was hard, but if we could get them on our side, maybe we could all get along, then.

The problem, though…

“It’s these ‘eyes,’ aren’t they? Our problem.”

Seto sat back up from his sprawled position on the bed. His eyes had morphed into blood red somewhere back there.

“I’m sorry, I kind of heard you a little again.”

I chuckled a little. (This is better anyway,) I thought. (Now we won’t wake up Kido.)

“If you like,” Seto replied with a contented smile.

(What is with these powers, though? I mean, for real. Are they some kind of occult superpowers, like on TV shows and stuff?)

“Ugh. That…? I dunno, I think we should probably ask someone…”

Tears began to well into Seto’s eyes.

(Ha-ha-ha! Never mind, never mind. But we can’t really go blabbing about this to everyone, you know?)

“I—I guess not…I’m too scared.”

We had gone over this topic in previous postmortems—people thought we were “monsters” because, quite frankly, we had some pretty inhuman powers.

All we knew about our own abilities came from our attempts to harness them. We certainly weren’t experts, and while I couldn’t speak about myself, I knew that Seto and Kido still had trouble fully controlling their powers.

If we all could, that’d probably cut the bad rumors by at least half or so.

We had also considered speaking with a grown-up, of course. But a drama on TV we happened to be watching quashed that idea pretty quickly.

By sheer coincidence, the show starred a guy called a “psychometrer” who could read people’s minds. We laughed about it at first—“Hey, Seto, they did a biopic of you!”—but then he was captured by some terror group, subjected to hideous experiments, and ultimately died.

Our expressions then, especially Seto’s, made us look like someone had stashed us in the freezer for a few hours: “People with powers like ours get experimented upon and killed.” It said so on TV, so it had to be true.

Several minutes later, Seto began shaking, crept into his bunk, and didn’t come out again for another twenty-four hours.

The word “psychometrer” was forbidden around Seto from that point forward. Kido had taken the habit of using it like a magic word, whispering it into Seto’s ear now and again to see how he’d react.

So, for now at least, our three powers were still a secret that never ventured beyond this room.

(I’m sure you are, but…I mean, we have no idea where these powers came from. We don’t know what they mean. I think that’s a lot scarier.)

“That’s true, yeah. Mine and Kido’s just kind of come out at random, so…”

Seto sighed. His power to read what people were thinking seemed to vary in length and strength from instance to instance. When it came in strong enough, he claimed, he could even read people’s feelings and past memories.

On the other hand, during sudden little jags like this one, the best he could hope for was to pick up on words his target consciously thought of in his brain.

Seto explained all of that to us in simple terms once. But unless you’re the one experiencing it, a lot of the logic behind it didn’t make much sense to us.

(Yeah, that’s really a drag. With Kido in particular, you can spot her right out when it’s happening.)

She had it more under control than what she had to deal with a while ago, but Kido still wasn’t in full grasp of her “invisibility” powers.

The way she put it, it happened whenever something “ticked her off.” That didn’t sound very scientific, but we had nothing else to go on.

Fortunately, it hadn’t resulted in any serious disasters…or I’d like to believe it hadn’t, at least. She really needed to learn how to harness it before things got even worse for us, though.

There had to be some kind of trick, right?

“It’d be nice if I could at least, like, keep it from triggering…”

(Keep it from triggering, huh? I think we need to keep you from crying all the time first, Seto.)

I grinned at Seto. He blushed. “Yeah.”

(But all joking aside, that might actually be related. You and Kido, your powers never come out much when you aren’t crying, right?)

“B-but I don’t how much I can do about—I mean, I’m trying to change, but it’s kind of hard to…”

Seto shrugged at me, crestfallen.

(And you keep apologizing, too.)

“Ngh…Yeah. Sorry.”

Then he looked even more crestfallen. Clearly, he wasn’t doing that on purpose. I’m sure Kido knew that, too, but she never let up on him on that score.

It was strange. Something about the general lack of control they had over their powers—their emotions, really—made me feel really well put together by comparison.

Though, really, that extended to every other kid in this building. They all seemed kind of awkward, blundering their way through life, and they always had to me. I felt like my powers gave me an insider’s view of how people grow and mature as human beings, and I hated myself a lot for it.

“But I gotta admit, Kano, I really look up to you. You can use your ability at will like it’s nothing. You’re always trying to help us out, too.”

Seto smiled as he said it, but something about the glowing review failed to cheer me up.

(Huh? Oh, I do not! I’m exactly the same as you guys. There’s a ton I don’t get about this, and everything’s just as scary for me, so…)

“…Oh?”

I’m presuming the words I pictured came through to him loud and clear, but they seemed to throw Seto off a bit. He tilted his head at me, and as I looked up to meet his gaze, I found that his eyes were back to normal, not a hint of red to them.

“…Oh! I think it’s died down! Whew…Sorry I keep putting you through this.”

He bowed his head at me a few times in apology. I formed a smile on my face.

“Mm? Ahh, don’t worry about it! It’s really not a big deal at all.”

“But that last thing you thought right then, Kano…I, I don’t think I got it fully…”

“…Oh! Is that it? Guess you lost your power too fast to catch it all, huh? Maybe that mixed up a few wires in your brain.”

“M-maybe,” Seto said, shoulders drooping down. “Oof…It just comes and goes as it pleases, you know? It’s really mean to me.”

“Yeah…Well, it’s cool. Besides, it’s kind of fun, Seto…Watching your power mess around with you like that.”

I was only half-joking.

“Oh, stop picking on me like that,” he replied, cheeks puffed out. “I really need to work on changing that! It’s hard for me to keep causing trouble for all of you like this, so…”

His limp-wristedness was gone now. In its place was what seemed to be genuine resolve, something I hoped I could count on someday.

“Hee-hee! Well, no need to rush it. Take your time. You don’t have to try and force yourself to—”

“Yes, he does.”

Kido interrupted me midsentence.

That innocent cuteness she demonstrated while asleep was gone. Now her face was back to her usual sharp, be-fanged self as she glared at Seto.

“Are you ever gonna stop apologizing?” she whispered.

“Eep,” Seto replied weakly. I should have been used to this exchange by now, but this time, it really annoyed me for some reason. I couldn’t help but speak up.

“…Hey, you don’t have to be like that, okay?”

Kido, not bothering to move, shifted her eyes from Seto to me. “Like what?” she said as she began to sit up.

Normally, at a time like this, I’d try to defuse the situation with a laugh. Right now, I couldn’t. This was getting too frustrating.

“Well, didn’t you hear Seto? He’s trying to change, you know.”

“Yeah,” she spat out, “but he isn’t. I tell him over and over again…”

Not willing to bend an inch, was she?

“Umm…”

Seto attempted to interject. But there was no stopping me now.

“…You know, you’re really pissing me off.”

I should have just shut up, but I couldn’t. I had to give her the truth. And I was gaining momentum.

“You never think about other people’s feelings. All you think about every day is yourself. Like, who do you think you are? ’Cause I’m seriously having trouble putting up with that act any longer. Besides, Kido, you’re—”

Once I reached that point, I felt a violent shock to the right side of my face, my vision blurring.

It came so suddenly that my brain shut off for a moment. But, hearing Seto’s silent scream next to me, I finally realized that Kido just gave me a full-palm slap.

“Ow…”

I glared at Kido. Something dark and ugly within me welled up from parts unknown, filling my heart to the brim.

Kido must have been the same way. A snarl of hostility erupted across her face.

“Who’s the one not thinking about other people’s feelings here, huh? You have no idea what I’m going through at all.”

Kido’s eyes were glowing redder and redder by the moment. As if on cue, the right hand she used to brutally slap me began to fade into the background. I’d seen that unfold dozens of times before, but tonight I was out of words to comfort her with.

“Ha! How should I know? You’re too busy beating the crap out of me all the time to say. I’m not Seto, you know. And, what, you’re disappearing on me again? Man, good thing you got that get-out-of-jail-free card whenever someone actually calls you out on your crap, huh?”

I probably could have phrased it more eloquently, but I meant what I said. I wanted to knock her down a peg, and my emotions were running at full capacity.

Kido was awestruck for a moment. Then her face reddened like a tomato. Then she grabbed me.

“You goddamn…!”

I fell back, unable to bear the full brunt of her weight. Struggling, I tried to push her off, but I failed to turn the tables on her. Pathetic, I know, but Kido had me completely outclassed physically.

Now fully on top of me, Kido laid another full-force slap on my head. The sharpness of it made Seto eject a powerless whimper.

“Oww…What’s with you? You’re just trying to—”

“Shut up! Stop talking!”

Kido covered my mouth with both hands. Unable to speak, I began kicking my legs into the air as I moaned and groaned at her. The tears from her eyes dropped down onto my own reddened cheeks.

“I…I hate you, Kano!”

The statement made my heart writhe in pain. I couldn’t even summon the energy to whip my legs around anymore.

Now I was experiencing a dull, cold pain, different from the burning I felt when she slapped me. It was like someone forced me to swallow an ice cube. That pain, engineered by Kido’s words, bound my heart tighter and tighter the more I comprehended what they meant.

The emotion from both of us was to the point that, once I finally brushed Kido’s hands off my head, she brought them up to her own face and started to sob.

I had no words for her as Kido broke down in front of me.

What should I say? Now that she said she hated me, what else would she want from me? As my brain scrambled for a killer comeback, a pair of unexpected words wandered out from my lips.

“…Yeah, great.”

The statement left me intensely bewildered. I had no intention of saying anything like that. Why did that come out?

I looked at Kido. Her expression showed her dismay, telling me that I just did something I could never take back.

To be honest, I would’ve preferred it if she just slapped me again, as per usual.

If that helped her settle down—if that kept her from hating me—I wouldn’t mind being scarred from head to toe as a result.

But Kido made no move. Wiping the tears with her right hand, she got up off of me and moved away from my bed.

“W-wait a sec, Kido! I’m s—”

“…It’s fine. Don’t talk to me.”

She didn’t even turn around as she replied. I was still in shock over the coldness of it all when Seto joined her off the bed, shouting, “I’m sorry! This is all my fault!” as he did. He then covered his mouth in a panic. Oops. Did it again. His constant clumsiness was even starting to get on my nerves.

But Kido didn’t bother to reproach him for it this time. “It’s fine, Seto,” she quietly replied. “Also, I’m leaving.”

Seto and I froze.

“Wh-what are you—?”

“I had a meeting with the superintendent. He said there’s someone willing to take me in…I was thinking I’d say no, but I think I’ll go after all.”

It was all so sudden, it left me feeling faint. It made too much sense to be a joke, and Kido never told jokes, anyway. Plus, I knew Seto would pinch-hit for me in a moment.

“Y-you’re kidding, right?! I’m sorry…”

There we go. At least it was enough to make Kido turn toward us again.

“I’m not. Also, you have to…ahh, never mind.”

She looked a tad repentant for a moment, but quickly turned her heels and burrowed herself into her bunk. “The next time you talk to me,” she said, “I’ll hit you for real.” Then she fell silent.

Those weren’t “for real” just now?

…Silence reigned for a while.

Seto and I stared at Kido’s bed, not even bothering to exchange glances with each other. In an extremely rare showing for Seto, he wasn’t crying. It didn’t seem like he was bottling anything up, either. The shock of it all must have fried his brain circuits.

I wasn’t one to talk, either. My own brain felt like a bowl full of mush.

Being told that she hated me and to not talk to her left me with pretty much nothing to work with.

Kido must have known that. That was why she took that strategy. If you wanted someone you “hate” out of your life, that was a pretty effective way to do it.

“What’s gonna happen to us now…?”

“…I dunno.”

There was little else I could give to Seto’s sudden question. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. If I didn’t, I felt like I’d wind up taking my anger out on Seto instead.

Seto attempted a few “ums…” and “heys” after that. But, realizing I was done for the night, he gave a final “I’m really sorry about this” and climbed up to the top bunk.

I heard sobs from above me a little while later, but it wasn’t too long before the room was silent again.

My mind ran over a few theories, a few possibilities in the quiet. A few memories, too. But I wasn’t about to discover a miracle method that’d bring back the fun times we had up to yesterday, and sooner or later, I fell asleep.

Kido’s adoptive parents came over exactly a week later. For the whole seven days, she never spoke to us.

“Wow, this weather’s really great! It makes me wanna go out on a picnic or something!”

A jovial voice popped up from the driver’s seat, attempting to break through the oppressive environment inside the car.

Seated directly behind the driver, I just responded with a light sigh.

It wasn’t that I was setting out to be rude.

The people walking up and the down the sidewalks we drove past all had heavy coats on. Things looked brutal out there. If we really wanted to load up the picnic basket and head to the park right now, both our food and ourselves would freeze to death within the hour.

But I didn’t want to act all contrarian, either. The kid who didn’t know how to act around others. That’d make things seriously rough for me.

So, corking all of those thoughts up, I just sighed.

Seto, unable to take the silence in the front passenger seat, chuckled a little.

“But…but don’t you think it’s a little cold for a picnic?”

I was afraid he was reading my mind again, but the color of his eyes indicated otherwise.

“Oh, no way! You guys’re all kids—you can deal with a little bit of nippiness to the air. Right? We can get everything packed up once we’re home!”

The driver sounded as blissfully carefree as always.

“Ah-ha-hah…”

Seto must’ve not had any better response at the ready.

Despite his personality, Seto liked to spend a surprisingly large amount of time outdoors.

He’d regularly go out by himself, only to come back with his clothes all dirty after chasing forest animals around or whatever.

Even a month ago, he spent the entire winter’s day outdoors while I was curled into a ball in my room, attempting to keep icicles from forming on me.

So his take just now didn’t make sense.

Having him suggest that it was too cold to go outside was absolutely unnatural for him. But I couldn’t blame him for his little white lie, either. After all, we couldn’t have been in a worse social situation right now.

I took a quick glance to my left. My eyes met with Kido’s as she sat there. She immediately grumped at me and turned her eyes away, toward the window. I was hoping for a little more when we locked eyes, but I shrugged in resignation (and more than a bit of anger) and turned toward my own window.

The two of us had been like this since our fight at last week’s postmortem.

Living in the same room, we couldn’t help but look at each other now and again. But despite how hard it was to keep a grudge going in our circumstances, we still adamantly refused to talk to each other.

Seto acted like he was in a panic the whole time, but—maybe because he realized anything he’d do would just make it worse—he didn’t comment about it much.

Not that I didn’t want to talk to Kido. In fact, I tried to make peace with her in my own way, in an effort to mend things as soon as possible. But whenever I made any kind of move toward her, she’d glare at me and refuse any of my advances.

She told me not to talk to her, so there wasn’t much else I could do. The days of agonizing over it in my mind continued.

“But hey, um, sorry about the suddenness and all, you know? I guess maybe the superintendent didn’t tell you we were adopting all three of you?”

That was the thing about it. The sudden and completely unexpected thing.

It turns out that the Tateyamas, the family that agreed to take Kido, had actually meant to adopt all three of us from the start.

Seto and I hadn’t heard anything about that, of course. We were completely in the dark about it until the superintendent called us in two days ago.

I didn’t think this could happen—not meeting the family beforehand, not being brought into the loop at all, just, “Okay, your new family’s coming over in a couple days.” Whether they saw us more as monsters than children by now or not, that was just cruel.

They must have appreciated the chance to get rid of all three of us menaces at once, but the complete lack of compassion behind it honestly peeved me.

But we couldn’t refuse them, of course. Seto and I had to jump on the opportunity before there was any chance we’d miss it.

We sure didn’t have any lingering affection for the facility, anyway. It was nothing but grudges, from start to finish.

For both of us, depressed over the fact that Kido was off someplace far away without so much as another word, this was an opportunity beyond our wildest dreams.

“No, but, uh…Hey, this is great! Getting to join you as a family and all…We couldn’t be any happier!”

Seto turned to the backseat.

“R-right, guys?”

Why’re you turning toward us, you dumbass, I thought to myself. Sadly, Seto’s eyes weren’t red, and “Please, just say yes” was written across his face. “Yeah, it’s really great,” I reluctantly agreed.

“Yehh…” was the vague response from the peeved-looking Kido.

Seto began to quiver a little, the awkward smile still on his face, which all but screamed to me, “If you could just act a little nicer…”

It wasn’t that Seto had finally gained control over his ability. It was just that his facial expressions were too easy to read.

But while Kido was still clearly peeved, she didn’t act particularly unhappy upon learning we were coming along for the ride.

I was sweating it out for a while, wondering if she’d refuse to go once she found out we were joining her. I suppose we had nothing to worry about on that front, but judging by her demeanor, she sure hadn’t forgiven me yet. That unnerved me.

Are we ever going to patch things up, where we’re going?

“Okay, here we are! Hop on out, kids!”

The car stopped inside the lot, and as we filed out, we were greeted by a small red brick house. Seto and I stood there for a bit, examining its unfamiliar contours. For a residential neighborhood, it stuck out. I bet Seto was wondering if this kind of thing was normal in this town.

“…Cute.”

Kido blurted out the appraisal.

I turned around. Kido, noticing this, blushed and glared at me with her best “What are you looking at, you pile of garbage?” leer. I thought about saying something in self-defense, but “The next time you talk to me, I’ll hit you for real” ran across my mind just in the nick of time. I opted to stay mum.

But…Ah. Right. Kido did like cute things. A house like this probably ranked as “cute” in the eyes of most young girls.

And as I recalled this, an idea began to take shape.

Maybe Kido would like it if I turned into a cat again.

The last time I did, she was enthralled, completely forgetting that it was still “me” inside. I wonder why I never thought about that. Well, perfect, then. One more time around, and…

“Okay, kids, c’mon in!”

I walked in through the open door to find that, despite the unusual exterior, the inside was no different from the kind of typical family residence you’d see on TV all the time.

All the smells, nothing like what I had back when living in my own room, made me realize all the more that I was starting a new life.

“Hee-hee! What do you think of your new home? Feel free to use whatever you see lying around, okay? …Oh, but I guess I better formally introduce myself. My name is Ayaka Tateyama. You can think of me as your mother, or as whatever else—anything’s fine. But hopefully you’ll be seeing all of us as family soon!”

Ayaka’s smile as she said this cleanly washed away any concerns that remained in my heart.

“Th-thank you very much.”

“Sure thing!” Ayaka replied, patting my head.

I looked toward Seto and Kido, a little embarrassed. They looked back at me, a little jealous.

“And you guys, too!” Ayaka said, quickly picking up on this and patting both of their heads. Her palms must have the power to calm people down or something. They both looked remarkably serene as they accepted the attention.

“Okay, then. Do you kids mind playing in your room until your big sister comes home?”

That made the two of them freeze in place. I followed their guide.

“S-sister…?” Seto anxiously asked.

“Hmm?” replied Ayaka. “Well, you’ll have a sister who’s a year older than you all, but…didn’t the superintendent mention that?” She stopped, a confused look on her face.

I almost blurted out, “I’m sorry, that superintendent guy pretty much told me nothing,” but Seto spoke up first.

“…Ohhh! Oh! Maybe so, yeah!”

I nodded silently. We’d been greeted with nothing but warmth and kindness so far. There was no point throwing stones at it or asking too many needless questions. If this sister person was Ayaka’s daughter, I was sure she’d be just as kind and gentle to us.

Seto and I nodded our agreement to each other, confirming that we both shared the same opinion. It reminded me all over again how much of a bond we’d built over the past two months, on a constant vigil to keep Kido on our good side. I didn’t exactly look back on it with fondness, but…

Kido, unaware of our thoughts, turned pale and began to shake a little.

“Hmm? Is something wrong? You all right?”

“N-no, I’m fine,” Kido weakly replied. Clearly, she wasn’t, something Ayaka spotted. “Are you worried about your sister, maybe?” she said, patting her head.

Surprisingly, this was enough to immediately soften Kido’s expression as she let out a soft “no” in response. There must really be some kind of magic force hidden in her palm.

We were all still huddled just beyond the front door. It was time to explore the house a little more.

Going down the hall, we found a door just before the stairs with a sign reading KIDS’ ROOM printed on it.

“This is just for the time being, but I was thinking we’d use this for your room, starting today.”

Ayaka opened the door, revealing a room far larger, and far more well lit by the sun, than the oppressive Room 107 we used to call home.

“Wow…”

Seto couldn’t hide his amazement. His eyes began to sparkle as he imagined the future childhood he’d spend here.

We all swarmed into the room, each of us examining whatever took our interest. There was a closet packed with toys, a shelf lined with an oddly extensive line of superhero comics…Everything we discovered made us more and more excited.

“Well! Glad you guys seem to like it, I guess! Now play nice until your sister comes home, all right?”

With a final smile, Ayaka closed the door. The three of us were left alone in the children’s room.

That, of course, left us to ponder over what this “sister” was really like.

The thought never occurred to us while Ayaka was around, but now that our first encounter was looming at any moment, it made us anxious.

I turned toward my two companions. They must’ve had the same concern. Each of them was seated, looking at the floor and fidgeting. Our tacit agreement meant that they couldn’t just say “What next?” or whatever to each other. Not with Kido around, who publicly promised to hit the next person who spoke to her. Neither of us was willing to take that risk.

An awkward silence unfolded. Do we really have what it takes to survive in this family?

Seto began to steal glances at me. Probably counting on me to do something. Damn it. The silence and anxiety was making me restless.

“…I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”

So I decided to leave the room. Seto flashed me a seething “Don’t leave me alone with her!” glare as I shut the door. It broke my heart to, but I closed it anyway. “Hang in there, Seto!” I shouted in my mind. I didn’t want to wait around for a reply, so I headed off in search of the john.

Heading down the hall a little ways, I spotted a door with W/C written on it in English letters. I didn’t know any of the language back then, but even I knew what that sign meant.

I headed inside and heaved a sigh. I don’t know why, but being in a bathroom alone always had a calming effect on me. Maybe, since I didn’t have my own room, it was because bathrooms were the only place I could really be by myself.

The thought depressed me a little, but I decided not to dwell on it.

But what am I going to do now?

I wasn’t about to stroll on back to the house of horrors I just left. But barricading myself in the bathroom for too long could make my new family worry about me.

What should I do?

“Hey, I’m home!”

Suddenly, a loud voice made itself easily heard through the bathroom door.

My heart thudded loudly in my ears.

Right after that, there was a clattering of footsteps and the unlatching of a door before things fell silent again.

It was easy to picture our “sister” at the front door from where I was standing.

Whoever it was sounded like a bright, energetic woman. Not the type to wheedle or backstab people.

Although—Oh man, what if she is…?

…Wait. What am I thinking? Haven’t I just spent my entire life being judged and hated as a bad influence without any chance to defend myself? And here I was, trying to guess someone’s personality from their voice alone. I’m awful.

There’s no telling until I meet her myself. That’s how relationships work.

“Right,” I said to myself, and then I left the bathroom.

Judging by the noise I heard, our “sister” went right into the children’s room after arriving home. That meant Kido and Seto already knew who their sister was going to be. I felt a bit nervous about that, but I knew them well enough—they might be too scared to say anything, but they weren’t going to spout off nonsense or immediately shun her or anything.

In fact, maybe they were hitting it off great right now. You never know, I thought, as I approached the door.

With a deep breath, I brought a hand to the doorknob.

But just as I was about to push it open, I heard a mumbled “Gehh!” from the other side.

…Wait a second.

I’ve heard that before.

A pretty long time ago…at the park…

Once my mind reached that point, I finally realized the devastating truth and threw the door open.

Just as I thought, I was greeted by a girl curled into a ball on the floor, moaning to herself painfully.

“Ooooh…”

Kido, standing next to her, shifted her eyes from the fallen girl to me, muttering to herself. “H-how come you didn’t turn back after I punched you…? How come there’re two of you, Kano…?”

I immediately stampeded my way back to the bathroom, locked the door, and knelt on the floor.

“C’mon, God, that’s not even fair…”

In fact, it was awful.

I knew there wasn’t much point bitching at a God who I didn’t know was around to listen or not, but I felt like I had a decent claim here.

Who could have predicted anything like this?

My “sister” was that girl I ran into at the park.

It was a preposterous coincidence. I was astonished things like this happened in the world. I wish I could meet whoever arranged this new torment for me. I’d definitely have a word or two for him.

If that was all there was to it, then all right. Hey, it’s a small world, yeah?

But it wasn’t. That girl definitely looked like she took one of Kido’s full-strength body blows. Voice of experience talking here.

I imagined the girl practically flying into the room, beaming, going on like, “Here I am, guys! Your new sister!” That would be wholly expected behavior toward your new siblings, I supposed. In fact, it probably would’ve made me happy to see.

But, from Kido’s perspective, that heartfelt welcome probably looked like a cruel joke on my part.

She was already waiting for her “sister” with bated breath, only to find the guy she was actively quarreling with busting open the door, transformed into that girl I always liked turning into, and spouting nonsense about how I was her sister.

Yeahhh…

“…I’d probably punch her, too.”

My muttering to myself was drowned out by loud knocking on the door, followed by someone roughly jiggling the doorknob.

“Agghhh!”

I instinctively screamed.

“I know you’re in there. Get out. Now.”

The emotionless Kido’s words sounded like “I’ll kill you” repeated several times to me.

The first time she speaks to me in a week, and this is what I get. This world is so cruel.

“W-wait a sec! I got a stomachache…”

“Yeah, sure. Get out here and I’ll make it all better, okay?”

“Ahhh…! P-please! Cut me some slack! How was I supposed to know this was gonna happen…?!”

I was pleading for my life. I couldn’t have sounded any more pathetic.

Wham! The door shuddered, almost breaking at the impact of Kido’s force.

Well, I thought, no escaping from this. One punch like that, and I’m a goner. Time to pay the piper. I gave up all hope and opened the door.

It went without saying that Kido was now the living personification of unharnessed, uncontrollable rage.

“Any last words?”

“…Okay, just let me say one mor—ooof!!”

Before she even gave me a chance to finish, she jackhammered her fist into my stomach. I instantly crumpled down to the bathroom floor.

…Why’d she even ask, then?

Ahh, my consciousness is fading away from me.

Once I’m gone, Seto, you’ll need to stay strong. You can’t let her get the best of you. Please!

“Hmm? Are you…?”

From far away, I could hear someone talking. I wondered who it was.

“Oh, it is! The kid I ran into at the park! Wow, small world, huh?!”

My near-extinguished consciousness was quickly whisked back to reality.

Fighting off the pain as I zoomed to my feet, I saw the girl on the ground earlier, looking down at me with a smile.

Her hair, medium in length, was as deeply black as her eyes. She was completely unchanged from when I last saw her.

“Good to see you again. Do you remember me at all?”

That form, that voice, that scent…Not a day passed by when I didn’t recall it.

I promised we’d talk again tomorrow, and then I walked away, figuring that was the last of it. Now we were together again, in the last place I ever expected.

…And in the bathroom, no less. Insult to injury.

Kido brought a tentative hand to the girl’s stomach, likely concerned about any permanent damage she did.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m fine! A-OK here! I got some muscle down there, so…”

She cleared her throat and jutted her chest forward for effect.

“It’s gonna take a lot more than that to kill me, lemme tell ya! …But, boy, what a surprise! Punching me at first sight like that! That’s a pretty killer secret move you got!”

She smiled and patted Kido’s head.

“I’m sorry…It’s all Kano’s fault.”

Kido looked a little ashamed as she stepped up and assigned me all the blame. The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah, you said that before. What’s up with that?”

Squirming under the guilt, I felt obliged to state my case.

“N-no! No, she’s lying to you! We can explain all of this…”

“You can? Ooh, I’d be interested to hear it!”

Uh-oh. Maybe I piqued her interest a little too much for my own good.

The girl peered into my eyes, a curious smile on her face.

Greeting her form, her voice, her scent with my five senses once again reminded me that this was the same girl who had lived in my mind all these years.

Come to think of it, why did this girl stay so vividly alive in my head after just a single encounter? It took me days before I finally got the hang of the whole cat thing.

I melted on the spot, machine-gunning out “uhs” and “ums” around the room.

But the girl didn’t wait. “…But, uh, maybe later, then!” she said and gave me a gregarious smile.

“We should get to know each other’s names first, anyway! How’s that sound?”

The girl turned around and jogged back to our room.

Kido gave me a glance. “I haven’t forgiven you, by the way,” she spat at me as she followed the girl out. “You better explain this to me later.”

So much for hoping these events softened her up a bit.

I waited for them to fully enter the room before I took a long, deep breath and followed them.

Once inside, I did what I could to assuage Seto.

“I thought she was going to kill me,” he said through teary eyes. Luck was probably the only thing that saved him.

If anything had turned out differently, he might’ve been a dead man.

Following the girl’s instructions, the three of us lined up in a row, facing her directly as she knelt on the ground.

“Okay, you ready?”

The girl was excited, as if waiting her whole life for this moment.

“My name’s Ayano. Ayano Tateyama! But you can call me ‘Big Sis,’ all right?”

Ayaka made it clear earlier that we were free to call her whatever we wanted. By comparison, this girl, Ayano, wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Kido followed.

“Um, my name’s Tsubomi Kido. Good to meet you.”

Next to her, Seto gave a look that resembled a pigeon shot with a BB gun. Not only was Kido being politely friendly in a way she had never been with us—she freely gave out her first name, something we practically had to extract from her like it was her appendix. I couldn’t blame him for being surprised.

I looked on, a bit miffed, trying my best to keep from commenting on this newfound tractability.

Seto continued on.

“Um, Kousuke Seto…”

He kept it short. I liked that.

At least he managed to get his entire name out in one go. From him, that’s a stellar effort. The first time I met him, it took Seto a few hours to venture out from under his bedsheets, much less tell me his name. Compared to that, he was honestly making impressive progress.

Now I was up.

“My name’s Shuuya Kano. Thanks a lot.”

The girl nodded at each of us in order.

“Great! Now we all know each other’s names.”

“Y-yeah,” I replied, facing downward to keep from showing her my blushing face.

The moment we finished with the self-intros, the girl began fidgeting to herself once again.

“All right, then! With that out of the way, it’s about time you, uh…”

About time we do what?

Judging by the way she put it, it must’ve been something she planned in advance. But we had nothing to go on. We patiently awaited the resolution, only to have the wind taken right out of our sails.

“Could you maybe start calling me ‘Big Sis’ now?”

The girl glanced at me first.

“Or, on the other hand, regular old ‘Sister’ is fine, too…?”

Then she winked at me.

On the other hand: What…?

Right. So that’s what she meant. She just wanted her newly minted younger brothers and sisters to make it official in her eyes.

Sneaking a look over, I found Seto staring blankly into space. Kido, meanwhile, appeared to be deeply pondering some question or another.

“All right,” she said after a moment, “…Big Sis.”

This seemed to instantly elate the girl. “Oooh, Tsubomi!” she said. “That’s so cuuuute!” She gave Kido a loving pat on the shoulder, then whisked herself straight over to Seto and me.

Her twinkling eyes had “Okay, your turn next” written all over them. I could feel the waves of pressure pounding upon us.

“Wh-what’s up? I’m your big sis, right? Come on…”

Her face, as it sidled ever closer to our own, was crisscrossed with sheer determination.

“B-Big Sis!”

Seto shouted it without hesitation.

I could tell he just wanted this over with, but the girl didn’t seem to care. “All right!” she said as she patted his head. “That’s the way to do it, Kousuke!”

It made Seto look remarkably happy.

That left me last.

The girl’s eyes turned to mine, once again drawing dangerously close.

It would’ve been easy to just say it, of course. But it felt a little weird, the “big sis” stuff. I honestly thought this girl was either my age or maybe a year younger.

“Come onnn,” she said, eyes locked with mine, wholly unaware of my hesitation. “What am I to you, hmm?”

All right. I give up, If that’s what she wants, fine. It might feel weird, but once I get in the habit of saying it, it’ll be done.

“Uh, Sis…?”

The moment I uttered the single most important syllable in her life, I felt the word tuck itself straight into some forgotten corner of my heart.

Simply saying it made my brain begin to identify the girl in front of me as my family.

The girl blinked in apparent surprise. “‘Sis’…? Huh. I guess there was that, too, huh?”

I stared back at her. What was she talking about? But she once again paid me no mind.

“Well…okay! Sure! Great! Good to meet you, Shuuya,” she said as she patted my head.

From that moment on, the girl in front of me was Sis. And being patted by her had a sort of…irritating feel to it. Much different from Ayaka. I was so embarrassed by it that I edged away from her.

My “sister” puffed up her cheeks. “You’re trying to avoid me, aren’t you?” she pouted.

Well, yeah. Someone patting you on the head in front of other people is gonna make you want to run screaming, all right?

“One more time.”

For some reason—faced with the sight of her, hand in the air, face all scrunched up—I couldn’t say no to her.

If my sister was still just a “girl” to me, I would’ve had no problem leaving her blowing in the wind. But now I had a different perspective on her. And that wasn’t an option any longer.

I resigned myself to it, coming in closer. “Therrrre you go,” she said as she ran a hand through my hair.

My body was frozen in place by the shame. I could see Kido grinning at the sight.

…How much longer will this go on?

I felt like I wanted this moment to end as soon as possible…and, simultaneously, continue on forever.

Looking back, maybe I transferred some of the emotion I used to reserve for my mother over to my sister on that day.

After all, from that moment—until the very, very end—I was incapable of defying my sister in any way at all.