“Did you go shoe shopping? Alone?”
“What’s the big deal? They’re just shoes. Even I can buy shoes on my own.”
My sister gave me a look of withering scorn. “I smell a rat.”
“H-how so? There’s nothing strange about this. Shopping is easy! You just take the merchandise to the register and give them the legal tender as issued by the Bank of Japan!”
“No, it’s sus because of the brand. They’re really nice for the price, so anyone who’s anyone is buying them. Not to mention they go with every outfit. There’s no way you could have walked in and randomly landed on them out of every shoe in the store.”
The Kaho-chan in my head whipped out a placard that said, “That’s ’cause I told her what to buy” but I shooed her away with a wave of my hand.
“L-look, I know a thing or two about brands!” I said.
“Mm-hmm. You tell yourself that. Oh, whatever. It’s none of my business.”
Phew. Another close shave. Good thing I showed off my senior sister superiority. But how come I felt so empty inside? Ah, because it was a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Meanwhile, my sister went back to swinging. Her face gave away no emotion.
“I guess this means you can do your shopping alone from here on out,” she said. “One less load on my shoulders. Your whole glow-up, you made me pick out everything for you: your makeup, your hair styles, your clothes. And it’s not like I’m getting paid for this. So, good luck figuring it all out on your own.”
“You’re so mean! There’s no freaking way I could do my shopping alone! (No ‘unless’!) My friend told me where to shop, okay?”
“Then you should’ve ’fessed up to that from the start instead of acting all smug.” She gave me a disappointed look. Whatever happened to that sweet, sweet senior sister superiority? Grr, I’d get her for this! She was supposed to be the kid sister here…
“You may think you’re cool,” I said. “But I was already walking when you were still just an egg cell. So there.”
“I hate that you have to go that far back to one-up me,” Haruna said. “That’s just pathetic.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. It was pathetic. I slumped forward, dejected. Oh, it’s a hard knock life… I lamented. If only I could be reborn as Ajisai-san’s little sister and bask in her love and affection.
“Ugh,” my sister said. “You’re such a pain. I’m sorry, okay? I know I went too far.”
She jumped off the swing and came over to ruffle my hair like mad.
“Now you’re just making fun of me,” I protested.
“So-rry. I was wa-a-ay out of line. You’re working sooo hard. If you’d come to me last year and said you went shopping with a friend, I wouldn’t have believed you. But look at you now, Miss Socialite. Big cheese hot-shot smarty-pants.”
She was treating me like a toddler. Not like I minded, exactly…
I looked up and met my little sister’s eyes. She put her hands on her unfairly slim hips and gave me an inquisitive look.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“Nothing. My automatic defenses just, like, kicked in when you complimented me.”
“Ew. You’re so weird.”
“Hey!”
“Whatever, let’s just go home. I’m getting cold.”
She marched away without waiting for my input. She really thought she was free to do whatever she wanted, huh? What was she, a pirate queen?
I scurried after her, and when I caught up, she asked me, “Hey, mind if we pop by the convenience store? I want to get some ice cream.”
“I thought you said you were cold.”
“Yeah, but ice cream’s another story. Especially if you’re buying.”
“I literally just bought myself new shoes!”
“Whatever happened to senior sister superiority?”
“Fine!” I snapped back. “Fine, I’ll pay for your ice cream! Being an older sister is the worst!”
I stomped forward to walk next to my taller little sister. She giggled. Her dour mood from before had vanished entirely. This girl, I’m telling you. She’d been too cheeky and smart for her own good since day one. She won every argument and constantly had the upper hand against me. She was the dagger pointed at my back in my family. There was no need for me to worry about her. She could handle herself. Anyway, I wasn’t worried to begin with. So there!
Out of nowhere, my sister stopped short. “Oh hey, you know what?”
I walked a few more steps before I stopped too. “Hmm?”
I turned to look back at her, standing bathed in the late afternoon sun. To my big sisterly eye, nothing about her seemed off exactly. But she clearly had something on her mind.
She remained quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Hey, did you know your hair’s getting long? You should get it cut soon.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I guess.”
That was weird. It was like a ball going straight before suddenly veering off in a different trajectory. It’d seemed like she was about to say something else entirely. Although, if pressed, I couldn’t explain why I thought that. It was just the vibes, as my friends said.
“Yeah, I should get it cut,” I said. “Wait. Like at a salon?”
“Yeah. You said you could go alone now, remember?” she sneered.
My heart made a painful twinge. “Didn’t I take that back? Come on, Haruna. Come with me.”
“Aww, do I have to? I’m growing mine out right now.”
“I’ll buy you two things of ice cream!”
“Hmm, I dunno. Decisions, decisions.”
She walked ahead of me, laughing, and I jogged after her to keep up.
At the time, I thought Haruna and I would be like this forever—you know, trading insults and so on. Turning over a new leaf for high school didn’t change anything in our relationship, so why would it change now?
But things didn’t turn out that way. It’s just like how hair never stops growing. Or how you can’t turn back time and undo a bad haircut. The unavoidable law of the universe says that things change. It applies to everybody, even sisters.
And that was a fact I would become keenly aware of before long.