After he was done cleaning himself, Tsushima looked at the scene in the living room and regretted his own stupidity.
In the living room, the old man and Lupus were clinking glasses that contained the same brown liquid. Tsushima had half expected this would happen.
However, he couldn’t just say nothing at the sight of Lupus—a minor and a princess—downing cheap liquor.
With his head in his hands, Tsushima walked up to the old man.
“Hey, Gramps, what are you letting her drink?”
“Huh? It’s just alcohol,” the old man replied with a wide grin, showing no sign of remorse. His gentle smile, like that of a grandfather looking at his grandchild, was directed at Lupus, who was happily swirling her glass on the sofa, her face already flushed.
“This drink is pretty tasty. Why don’chu try some?” It didn’t seem to just be his imagination—she was slurring her words slightly. As Lupus spoke, she offered her glass to Tsushima with a dreamy, melty smile. She didn’t seem to be aware she was drinking alcohol.
“If you keep sipping this cheap booze, you’ll end up like this old guy. We have an early morning tomorrow. Hurry and get to bed.”
“Oh, c’mon! I’ll shleep after I hear more about ya past. Right, Grandfather?” Lupus said loudly, smiling at the old man. An awkward look came to the old man’s face for a moment, but the beautiful girl in front of him won him over, and he broke into a smile.
“If it’s stories you want, I’ll tell them myself. So go to bed!” Tsushima said. “We can sleep in the attic, right?”
“Ah, yeah. See that hidden staircase up there? That leads to the attic,” the old man replied hesitantly. He had given an inarticulate answer because he was under Tsushima’s scrutinizing gaze, which was silently asking, What the heck did you tell her? In response to Tsushima’s unvoiced question, the old man reluctantly pointed toward an old black-and-white photograph framed on the wall.
Tsushima looked at the photo, and his eyes went wide. It was extremely nostalgic.
The photo showed a row of comrades standing side by side just before the War to Recapture Jabar. In a corner of the photo was a girl who now existed only in his memories. Next to her was a small boy—Tsushima when he was younger.
The wound in Tsushima’s heart throbbed, and he squinted from the pain. The girl in the photo evoked both nostalgia and anguish as she smiled brightly with a cigarette between her lips. Her exact smile from those days was right there, perfectly preserved.
Unable to bear the feelings of desolation, Tsushima turned away from the photo.
“You also have some flying to do tomorrow, don’t you? Don’t get too plastered,” he said to Lupus.
“Yeah, we geddit. We’re jus’ drinkin’ a little bit before we go to bed.”
Tsushima put the drunkenly mumbling girl over his shoulder and went up to the attic room.
The space at the top of the simple pull-down stairs turned out to be surprisingly well furnished for an attic. The ceiling was so low that Tsushima had to crouch, but everything else was perfect.
When he turned on the small incandescent lamp—their only source of light—he got a full view of the room, which had several mattresses laid out on the floor. Tsushima laid Lupus down on one of them.
“Oh, c’mon! I can still drink.”
“Don’t. It’s a hassle.”
Looking discontented lying on the mattress, Lupus pouted with her cheeks puffed out, but the warmth of the bedding won out, and she wrapped herself in a blanket.
Still feeling warm after his bath, Tsushima pulled a chair from the corner and sat down to cool off in the pleasant briskness of the attic. Then he turned off the light to encourage Lupus to fall asleep.
In the darkened room, moonlight streamed in through a window in the roof. Lit by the pale blue light, the space became dead quiet.
Tsushima gazed up at the moonlight to calm his mind. He listened closely to the sound of Lupus’s breathing; it had a different quality than it did when she was genuinely asleep. He glanced at her.
Lupus had poked her face out from under the blanket and was staring at him with sleepy eyes. She looked like she wanted to talk about something. When Tsushima tilted his head questioningly, she parted her small lips.
“Earlier, I heard about your elder sister. About the War to Recapture Jabar and other things.” In a departure from her previous drunken boldness, Lupus now spoke cautiously, as if she were handling something she ought not to touch. She raised her eyebrows and gazed at Tsushima, observing him.
“I didn’t mean to dig into your past or anything,” she continued. “But, well, things just kind of turned out that way.”
“Gramps probably just felt like reminiscing after so long. Don’t worry about it. I’m not trying to hide it or anything.”
Tsushima leaned against the back of the chair and looked out the window. Bathed in the pale light of the waxing moon, he slowly began to speak.
“Her name was Shion. She was only about sixteen or seventeen. She was an Informationist, too. Did you see the picture in the living room?”
“Yeah. She had a lovely smile. The boy next to her is you, right?”
“That’s unnecessary commentary.”
“Heh-heh. You used to be cute back then.”
Lupus poked her head out of the blanket and looked at the current Tsushima.
The man sitting in the chair had become a mysterious adult with a dark side, completely removed from his former youth—in both good ways and bad.
“I lived with Shion for three, maybe four years. She looked after me quite a lot. We weren’t related by blood, but I thought of her as my real sister. She was strong-willed, kind, and a good person.”
“I see. Was she your first love, by any chance?”
Tsushima smiled wryly at Lupus’s question.