“Hey, Oneechan?” said my sister.
“What now?”
“Are you happy these days?”
It took me a minute to answer her. I knew what I’d said earlier, but…
“Yeah,” I finally answered. “Life’s on the upswing.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
I couldn’t see the look on her face as she said that, and I didn’t know what had prompted such a question.
“You know what, Haruna?” I said.
“Hm?”
“…You’ve sure grown up a lot.”
The conversation stopped for a minute. I don’t know what prompted it, but something about that moment reminded me of a time when we were little.
But just as I started to go down memory lane, I felt Haruna shake with laughter against me. “I dunno about that one, chief,” she said.
In another minute, we were home. I put disinfectant on my blister, slapped on a bandage, and took a bath.
Then, a day later, shit hit the fan.
After breakfast, I went back to my room to grab my backpack and bumped into my sister in the hallway.
“Oh, uh…hey,” I said.
“What’s up?”
“You know, about yesterday… Well, I just wanna say thanks.”
I felt embarrassed as heck, but thanking her was the least I could do. So I looked everywhere but at her face and made myself spit it out.
My sister tilted her head in confusion. For a minute, I thought she had no idea what I was talking about. Then she said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”
Um, rude? That took a lot of courage, okay? Don’t it’s nothing me, missy! Sure, outgoing people like her might have led such rich lives that they could shrug off such a favor, but I was an introvert to the core. This would stick with me for life. For a second, I contemplated telling her that to prove my point, but that’s when it hit me—oh yeah, ever since I turned over a new leaf, I was an extrovert too!
I decided to be the bigger person. I had things to do. Y’know. School. But just as I started walking away, something hit me. Haruna was still in her pajamas. My sister practiced the baffling custom known as morning training, so she always left the house before I did. So…what was up with the PJs?
“Wait, do you not have practice today?” I asked her.
My sister stopped dead.
I was her older sister, so I felt like I’d know if there was anything off about her. But there wasn’t. She was her ordinary self. My totally ordinary sister looked back over her shoulder at me and said, “Nah. That’s not it.” And then, in perfectly cheerful tones, she admitted:
“I’m not going to school anymore.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
My sister, on the other hand, walked away as casually as if she hadn’t just dropped a bombshell on me. Before I could freak out, she turned back for a second to say, “Now get going, you’re going to be late,” and shooed me out the door.
It took me a full three seconds to reboot before I could shout at the top of my lungs, “Wait, what? Hello?!”