“I-I can do it!” I promised. “I’ll work really, really hard. I’ll try my best!”
I wrenched my head up and looked my sister in the eyes. She was my only hope.
I could only imagine what I looked like to her. A desperate mess, maybe?
She heaved an enormous sigh before brandishing a finger in my direction. “First things first,” she said, “we gotta do something about that hair.”
“Huh?”
“We need to get you to a beauty salon so you can ditch the emo haircut. Then when you can finally see again, we’ll take the next step. Listen up: we’re not going to half-ass this. If you run out on me sobbing partway through, you’re dead to me. Got it?”
I jolted to attention and bowed to her as deep as I could go. “Thank you so, so much.”
And from then on, Haruna bailed me out of one scrape after another. The question was…what did I ever do for her in return?
✦ ✦ ✦
A couple of days after the bathing incident, my sister announced over a game in her room, “It’s just for two months.”
“What is?”
She ignored me and went on. “And can you get off my back? You’ve been bugging me nonstop ever since the other day. Honestly? It’s kinda obnoxious.”
“Excuse me?!” I whipped around to stare at her wearing the face of someone whose bungee cords snapped midjump. “I’m not obnoxious. I just…thought you might be bored being all by yourself.”
“But did I ask? Literally the second you get home, you’re at my door begging me to play something with you. This is, like, clingy girlfriend behavior.”
“Hello?” I was worried about my poor baby sister going through a mental health crisis! Clingy girlfriend? In what universe?
“Fine,” she said. “Clingy oneechan behavior.”
“Yeah? Because I’m your oneechan?!”
“If this keeps escalating, pretty soon you’ll bring in a pillow and ask to sleep with me.”
“I would never go that far, and you know it.”
“Wouldn’t you, though?” She recrossed her legs on her cushion and frowned at me. “There’s no telling what you might do. If a hot guy asked you out, you’d wait until he fell in love and moved in before kicking him to the curb.”
“Who the heck do you think I am?”
“I’m just repeating what Mom says.”
“Wh—no, you’re not!” I shouted. “What the hell, Mom?!”
My social standing (or lack thereof) in this darn household made me want to riot. I wasn’t going to. But like. You get it. (I was the eldest daughter, after all. Good, respectable members of society didn’t flip out like that.)
“Anyway,” I said, “what was that two months thing?”
“Oh. Just how long I’m going to be away from school,” she said, like it was no big deal at all.
Before I could think, I said, “Wait, what?”
My sister repeated, like she was dealing with a total cretin, “I literally just said, I’m only staying away from school for two months. Then I’ll go back.”
She said it with the exact same casual tone you’d use to say, “Oh yeah, I missed last week’s episode of that one TV show.”
“F-for real?” I said. “Huh? Hold on. I thought you were giving up on school forever. What about the…you know. The thing that started all this? Isn’t that still around? And why two months?”
“Jeez, since when were we playing Twenty Questions? One at a time.”
I stopped my barrage and, very carefully, managed to ask, “Why…now?” I was so shaken up, it was the first thing that came to mind.
My sister looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Because you’re annoying the hell out of me. You’re basically stuck to me like glue.”
“Oh. Um.” I put a hand on my chest. “Good thing I’m obnoxious…?”
“No, it’s not a good thing at all.”
That’s when it hit me. “Wait, if I get even more annoying, will that drive you out of the house faster?”
“Yeah, down to the hardware store. To get a lock for my bedroom door.”
“But you’d still have to come out of your room sometime, right? What about dinner? Or going to the bathroom and stuff?”
“Oh, no—for your door.”
“What?! Are you trying to lock me in?” Hello, police? I’m being held captive! I mentally pleaded. “Okay, next question,” I said. “Why two months?”
“No comment,” she said.
“All right. Then, what made you choose that particular length of time?”
“No comment.”
“You really aren’t going to answer anything, huh?”
“I just said to give me questions one at a time,” she pointed out. “I never said I’d answer them.”
Well, fair enough. That was technically playing by the rules. But this was too important for her to get away with such nonsense.
Yet before I could say anything, my sister pointed straight at me and told me, “On that note, I want you to stop acting like, ‘Oh my god, I need to do something about this!!!’ You’re driving me up the wall.”
I stared at her finger, just centimeters from my nose, and nodded woodenly. “O-okay.”
“Good. Glad we’ve come to an agreement. I’m going to study now, so leave me alone.”
“S-sure thing.”
She shooed me out of her room and slammed the door shut behind her. I stared back at it for a few moments.
“This has to be a good development,” I said aloud. “Gotta be. Right?”
As sudden and surprising as it was, I guess I’d technically achieved my goal. But for some reason, something about this just didn’t sit right with me.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the meantime, I texted the Quintet group chat that my sister planned to go back to school in two months. In turn, they informed me that my sister had already reached out privately and told all of them. They each got a message reading something to the effect of, “You’ll probably hear it from my sister sooner or later, but I’m planning to go back to school in two months. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m doing just fine!” (Except for Kaho-chan. My sister didn’t have her contact info.) When I later checked in with Mai one-on-one, she told me that my sister had given her the same spiel during their talk at the restaurant. Basically, this wasn’t Haruna trying to stall for time or anything. She actually meant it.
Which meant I’d lost my chance to do anything for my sister. …Or had I? In the end, I still didn’t know what caused this truancy. I felt like I’d been dropped into a mystery novel and didn’t have all the pieces to put the puzzle together.
Of course, that was because this was only the beginning of the ordeal. Understanding was to come later.