I was so frozen, I felt like my body temp dropped another degree every second. Minato-san would be here in just a few minutes. My shadow stretched out long in the late afternoon sun as I waited in my favorite park for the girl my sister had punched.
Seira-san wasn’t with me. She said earlier, “I don’t wanna stick around” and peaced out. That left only me.
This was bold. Really bold. I mean, meeting the person my sister punched and asking her, “So, what’d she punch you for?” took guts. If the big sis of someone I was fighting with showed up and asked me, like. Bruh. I don’t even know what I’d do. It implied that getting punched made sense in context. Having Haruna’s back made me Minato’s enemy.
“Choosing something’s the same as ruling out all other options,” I reminded myself. That was the conclusion I came to during the interclass competition. It made me tremble. I still didn’t feel strong enough, like mentally, to pull this off.
Even so…no matter how weak I was…I was still Haruna’s big sister. I wanted to believe in her. After all, hadn’t she been here for me all along?
“Yeah,” I said, trying to hype myself up. “Now it’s my turn to put in the effort.”
The image of six-year-old Haruna crying and waiting for me to come back for her flashed through my mind. That’s what kept me standing there.
I was torn. One part of me wanted Minato to show up, while the other hoped she no-showed. Once I heard footsteps approaching, I knew the first part got its way. I turned, my anxiety dialed to max. Yup, there was no mistaking it. This was the same girl who’d been at my house during summer break.
She was just a hair taller than Haruna. Her bob gave her a fresh, clean look, as did her overall slim figure. The mark on her face was gone but not the internal scars. According to Seira-san, she was still ditching school.
Minato-san came up to me with a neutral, somewhat uncertain expression, like I was an unfamiliar teacher who’d suddenly stopped her to talk.
My nerves went haywire. “Um. Uh. Hi,” I said.
Okay, so we met. Now what? What was I supposed to say? Getting words out of me was like trying to squeeze the last of the ketchup out of the bottle.
Minato-san spoke up first. “So I hear you want to talk about Haruna?”
“Uh.” I put my hands together in front of my chest and nodded. “Y-yeah, that’s correct. Sorry for making you come all this way. But I appreciate it. I just, um.”
What with the way I kept stopping and starting, I could have been communicating in Morse code.
Minato-san said, straight out, “You’re her sister, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. We, um, met over summer break. Although I guess I never really introduced myself.”
What was the right facial expression to make? The right tone of voice? The right body language? I didn’t have the slightest of clues, so I had to fumble my way through the conversation. I couldn’t back out. Not now.
“My name’s Amaori Renako,” I said. “Thank you, um, for being Haruna’s friend.”
I would be okay. I could do it. I was the big sis, after all.
“…I’m not really. Not anymore,” Minato-san said. She looked away.
Argh. Well, yeah. That probably sounded sarcastic, since they had their fight and all. Look at me. Messing up right off the bat. But still! No matter how many times I messed up, I could always try again.
Minato-san put a hand on her cheek and introduced herself in turn. And that, my friend, was when the biggest bombshell of all dropped.
Because she said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Nashiji Minato.”
Suddenly, everything sounded like it was a million kilometers away. I felt dizzy, like that bomb had pulverized the ground beneath my feet. Sorry? She was who Minato?
“Wha—?” I said. She was WHO? “Nashiji…san?”
“Yeah?” she said.
I felt like I was groping around in a box, trying to find the knife inside. I could cut myself on its edge at any moment, but I had no choice but to stick my hand in.
“Minato-san, do you by any chance…have an older sister?” I ventured.
Now that I looked at her head-on, I could totally see it. There was a familial resemblance.
“Um, yes?” She was clearly baffled by my odd behavior. Then, to dispel the awkwardness, she admitted, “Her name’s Nashiji Komachi. She’s in her first year of high school.”
And then that very next instant, everything from junior high came flooding back. Words too powerful to repeat, words too painful to think about.
Next thing I knew, I was running for my life. My throat tightened up, and I could barely breathe. In the back of my mind, a voice whispered, Hey, you know why Haruna punched Minato-san? What if…it was all because of you?