“Thanks for the meal,” Ayai—I mean, Yume said curtly before stacking her dishes and utensils and bringing them to the kitchen.
Dammit. The timing could not have been worse. I had just finished eating, but I couldn’t keep sitting here to avoid her. That’d be weird.
“Thanks for the meal,” I said, grabbing my own dishes and bringing them to the kitchen as well. When I arrived, there was Yume. Between her borderline unhealthily thin body and her annoyingly long but well-kept jet-black hair, I thought that instead of washing dishes in the kitchen, she should be crawling out of a well after seven days.
As I walked in, Yume said nothing but gave me a quick glance, her long eyelashes barely moving from their closed position. The only sound coming from her was the clatter from the dishes being washed. I didn’t have anything to say to her either, so I silently stood next to her and began to wash mine too.
I really wanted to avoid a situation like this where I had to stand next to her in the kitchen, but blatantly avoiding her could lead to problems of their own. Especially since...
“Phew, I was worried about two young adults living together under one roof, but I’m so glad that they’re getting along so well,” my dad said cheerfully.
“Seriously! Did you know that Mizuto-kun and Yume went to the bookstore together today? I guess things are easier when they have a shared hobby,” added Yume’s mom.
“It’s such a relief. I was so worried about whether they’d get along.”
Our parents happily discussed our relationship at the dining table. After getting married, they’ve spent every day happy—the exact opposite of us two.
“You understand?” Yume asked in a low voice so that she couldn’t be heard from the dining room over the sound of the water.
“Understand what?” I asked.
“We can’t give them any reason to regret this.”
“Of course. I’m taking our secret to the grave.”
“Good.”
“When did you start getting so high-and-mighty over every last thing?”
“If I wasn’t like this in the past, it’s one hundred percent your fault I’m like this now.”
“Excuse me?!”
“What?”
“Hey, what are you two talking about?” We immediately reset our angry facial expressions as we heard dad call us from the dining room.
I quickly tried to explain. “We were just, like, talking about the book we, like, bought today.”
“Yes, that is right! We were discussing the book,” Yume said in a cheery voice while delivering a low kick to my leg at an angle that no one else could see.
“Ow!”
“What are you, a valley girl? You don’t need to use ‘like’ that much. Are your language arts grades all right?” she snapped in a whisper.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I placed in the top one hundred on the national mock exam,” I whispered back.
“I hate how past me would have praised you for that.”
“I hate how past me would have just accepted your praise.”
In front of everyone else, we played the parts of stepsiblings building a better relationship. This was due to the single shared opinion that we had: we didn’t want our parents to regret getting married. That was truly the one thing we agreed on.
I was in my room reading the book that I’d bought that day when I heard a knock on the door.
“Dad? Need something?” I called out.
There was no answer. I didn’t want to put down my book and stop reading, but I also didn’t want to put a damper on his newlywed life with a bad attitude. I bookmarked my spot and went to the door to open it, but the person standing before me wasn’t my dad, but the girl that I hated most in the world—none other than Yume Irido.
“What?” I asked her in a tone of voice that was a hundred or so degrees colder than the one I’d just used.
Yume raised her head and let out a short huff as if to laugh in my face and say that the coldness in my voice wasn’t even enough to make her flinch.
“I need to talk to you. Busy?” she asked.
“You know what I bought today. Of course I am.”
“I do know, and that’s why I’m here. I already finished reading it.”
I clicked my tongue in annoyance, realizing that she’d come here with the purpose of interfering with my reading.
Her reading speed had always been just a little faster than mine, which is something that never changed while we dated. We’d buy the same book at the same time and start reading at the same time too. But just around the time I would get into the climax, this girl would finish it first. It was an extremely nasty part of her—something I really hated. I’m glad that we broke up.
“Keep it short,” I demanded.
“Let me in. I don’t want our parents to hear.”
“Tsk.”
“Can you stop clicking your tongue every time I say something?”
“I’ll stop as soon as I don’t have to see your face anymore,” I retorted.
“Tsk.”
I cautiously peeked around the hall to make sure that neither dad nor Yuni-san were around before letting Yume inside.
“What a dirty room. Do you have anything besides books? I feel like I’m getting dirty just being here,” Yume quipped, watching her step as she walked inside my room.
“That’s not what you said when you came here while dad was away on that business trip. Your eyes glistened, and you were like, ‘Wow, it’s just like a library!’”
“Nothing is forever. Just seeing the complete Sherlock Holmes series neatly lined up makes me so annoyed I could die.”
“Just die then. I’ll push you off the same waterfall that Professor Moriarty was.” I sat down on my bed that was half-filled with books. “So, what do you want to talk about?”
Yume kept on standing and coldly stated, “I don’t think I can keep doing this. I can’t handle it anymore. How much longer do I have to endure you nonchalantly calling me by my first name?”
I knit my brow in annoyance. After all, there was no reason to hide my displeasure in front of her. “Yeah? I seem to remember you calling me by my first name though,” I shot back.
“Better than having you call me by mine. I can’t stand hearing my name come out of your mouth. I didn’t even let you use my first name when we were dat—when we were in middle school!”
Interesting. You can’t even stand mentioning our time together, huh? Oh, now I see.
“We have the same last name now. What do you want me to do?” I asked her.
“There’s got to be a good solution.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Call me ‘onee-chan.’” Come again? “We’re siblings now, so it only makes sense that you call me ‘onee-chan,’ right?”
“Nuh-uh. Hold up,” I said, cradling my head in my hands. “You think you’re the older sibling? Keep dreaming. You have that backwards.”
“Huh?”
“I’m the older brother and you’re the younger sister. You should be calling me ‘nii-san,’” I said in rebuttal, wondering what the heck she was babbling about.
“Oh no, how terrible. It seems all your brain cells are asleep right now, my little stepbrother.”
“Want me to put you to sleep? Forever?” I snapped back at her.
“Fine! Listen up: as someone who ranked in the top one hundred on the national arithmetic mock exam, I’ll be nice and explain this to you,” Yume said, sticking up her pointer finger as if she were a teacher.
Unforgivable! You don’t deserve to be an avid reader if you score better in math than language arts.
“One,” she continued. “In this world, the one who is born first is the older sibling. Two, I was born first. Therefore, we can conclude that since I was born first, I am the older sibling. Got it?” Yume said all this with a confident, smug look on her face while talking about logic—not math!—but that wasn’t the part I wanted to confront her on.
“If I remember right, we have the exact same birthday,” I pointed out.
This was just another one of the traps that fate had laid for us. We sure do share the same birthday. It might not have been the reason why we had hit it off so well, but it certainly did have a hand in us having that disgusting talk about celebrating each other’s birthdays together and going through the horrible ritual of exchanging presents. It’d be great if I could erase those memories from my head.
“That’s why, between us, there is no older sibling,” I concluded.
“Didn’t you just practically shout at me, declaring that I’m your younger sister?”
Yeah, but I had no ulterior motive saying that. You just feel more like a younger sister than an older one.
“Either way,” she continued. “Our birthdays may be the same, but it changes nothing. After all, our birth times are different.”
“Birth...time?”
“I’ve already looked into them,” she said, as though she were some kind of detective, while taking out her phone and shoving it in my face. “See?”
Displayed on the screen was a photograph of a baby with writing under it. It looked like it was part of a family album.
“You were born at eleven thirty-four in the morning.” She swiped to the next baby picture and pointed at the time written beneath. “And according to this picture, I was born at least thirty minutes prior. I was born first. Got it?”
Is this girl for real? Did she really dig up my family album just to look for this?
“Yikes, weirdo...”