Eventually, my rather heated bonding moment with Sakura and Aoi came to an end and the three of us climbed into bed. I slept in the middle, with the two of them on either side of me, each clinging to one of my arms.
Could there possibly be a happier place on earth than this? I really don’t think so! It’s so perfect, it almost feels like I’ve wandered straight into heaven! The two of them must be the wings that carried me up there, I guess...
Certain things had dragged on for long enough that it was now well and truly bedtime, but I no longer felt even the slightest bit sleepy. That wasn’t much of a surprise—of course I’d be wide awake after spending that long with my heart pounding and my blood pumping away.
“Oh, right! There’s something I wanted to ask the two of you,” I said.
“Hm? What?” replied Sakura.
“You two know all about Shooting Star, right?”
It seemed pretty likely that people our age who didn’t know much about Shooting Star were actually in the minority, really. Sakura and Aoi were firmly in the majority in that sense. They’d both been devastated when Makina’s hiatus from show business was announced, and they’d also both freaked out in a big way when Makina stopped by for a visit the other day.
“Is this about Maki...I mean, about Makina?” Sakura asked, pausing to quickly correct herself.
“No, not this time, actually... It’s about another member named Mio Kuruma,” I explained.
“Oh. Does that mean that Mio’s your next target, Yotsuba?” Aoi prodded.
“Target for what?!” I yelped. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what she was implying, really...I just wanted to make it super clear that I had never been the one to initiate any of the things she was alluding to. But I was also afraid that if I did say it, the two of them would pick the argument to pieces in all sorts of ways I never could have anticipated. So I decided to keep it to myself instead. “N-No, I’m just a little curious, that’s all! Just thought it’d be fun to find out a little about the people in her group—you know, her coworkers!”
“Hmm...” Sakura shot me a very pointed glance, then added a skeptical sigh for good measure, almost making me cry then and there. “Mio’s Shoo-Star’s subleader. She’s the same age as Makina, and...I think they get along, right?”
“Yeah,” Aoi chimed in. “They’re always placed first and second as far as popularity goes, and they end up getting paired together as a set an awful lot.”
“Oh...?” They get along, huh? There was always the chance that this was the sort of situation Akksy had described where they were only acting like they got along, and there was no way of knowing how they felt about each other behind the scenes...but it was still a little reassuring to know that they seemed friendly from a fan’s perspective.
“I’m a fan of Mio’s too,” said Sakura. “Makina comes across as a prodigy and is always the one rushing ahead and pushing the group forward, but Mio’s the one who looks out for everyone and pulls them along with her, if that makes sense.”
“A lot of people say that Mio’s more of a leader than Maki sometimes,” Aoi added.
“Oh, really?” I said.
“Some people think that Maki’s only the leader because it’s been that way since the group was founded, yeah. Honestly, she doesn’t really feel like the leader type in a lot of ways,” said Aoi.
“And Mio had a leg up on her in terms of skills at first too. Makina just kept getting better and better as time went on, of course...but it’s not like Mio ever stopped putting in the effort or anything,” said Sakura. “The fact that Shoo-Star still works as a group even now that Makina’s on hiatus is mostly thanks to Mio, in my book. It’s hard to look good when everyone’s always comparing you with Makina, but Mio really is incredible in her own right too.”
Whoooa... I knew that the two of them were fans of Shooting Star on the whole, but even taking that into consideration, their opinions of Mio were remarkably high. They were so enthusiastic about her, in fact, that I was starting to feel I might take a liking to her as well. She was pushy, sure, and she was a sort of person who I had a kind of hard time dealing with on a personal level...but then again, it was also possible that she was trying to get Makina to cancel her hiatus and get back to her idol work for Makina’s sake rather than her own.
There was just one thing that caught my attention about Sakura’s description—the part about how it was hard to look good when everyone compared you with Makina. It struck me that by that same logic, it would be easier for her to look good if Makina wasn’t around. This was a human relationship, of course, and I knew it couldn’t be that black-and-white, but, well... It just seemed complicated, basically.
“Yotsuba...?” said Sakura.
“Hm? What is it?” I asked.
“That’s what I want to know. Were you thinking about something again?”
“Are you sure you were ‘just curious’?” Aoi added.
“O-Of course!” I yelped.
“You know it’s never safe to believe you about this sort of thing. Right, Sakura?”
“Right. Don’t even think about it, Yotsuba. You already have Yuna and Rinka—not to mention me and Aoi!”
I felt my sisters’ grips on my arms grow distinctly tighter as they clung to me more firmly than ever. It felt like they were trying to claim me as their own, which was really cute, even though it was also a sign that they definitely thought I was a total degenerate with no sense of ethics whatsoever. So that was kind of conflicting...though considering that my whole goal was to break the school rules and sneak Mio onto our campus, I couldn’t deny that I was doing some real scheming at the moment.
“Well, if you ever decide you want to do something really bad, be sure to tell us first,” said Aoi. “We’re your sisters, so you can tell us anything—even things you couldn’t tell your girlfriends! We’ll satisfy all your desires!”
“Something really bad?! My desires?!”
“Right, Sakura?”
Sakura hesitated. “Right,” she finally said. “I’ll do my best...!”
I-Is it just me, or are my little sisters taking some pretty major steps forward...? I know they say that kids grow up fast these days, but this seems like a little much!
Even I could tell that when Aoi said “something really bad,” she wasn’t exactly talking about secretly opening up a bag of potato chips to snack on after bedtime. Dragging my little sisters into anything worse than that would disqualify me from big-sisterhood so thoroughly and immediately that I absolutely had to restrain myself, no matter what...even if I was a little—juuust a little—curious about what exactly she’d meant with the whole “satisfying desires” part.