Side Story 2: My Sister Mio
“MIO’S been acting strange lately…” I murmured to myself.
My sister has always been the most beautiful girl in the world, as far back as I can remember. When she was younger, she was as cute as a button. As she grew older, that cuteness blossomed into pure beauty. By the time she reached middle school, her looks were so striking that she regularly turned the heads of passersby.
When I got sick, however, that stopped being the case.
Since I’ve been in the hospital, Mio doesn’t dress up anymore. Her hair doesn’t shine like it used to, and her skin doesn’t glow. I knew it was because she started working part-time to help pay for my hospital bills.
She worked so hard for me, but she never admitted it. Whenever I asked, she’d brush it off saying, “I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing this because I want to,” or something like that.
Those words always stung. They felt like a wall, saying, “Don’t tell me how you really feel because I don’t want to hear it.” So, while I was grateful to her, I also felt guilty.
A few years later, several big things happened all at once. I was told I had three years to live, I was suddenly moved to a super expensive private hospital, and there was talk of an experimental cure that might save me. I didn’t really understand all of it, but I knew one thing: Mio was once again working hard for me, even more than before.
Despite that, Mio started looking prettier. She started to look the way I imagined she’d be if she hadn’t been working herself so hard for me. She had once again become the most beautiful girl in the world, and that made me happy.
Happy, but at the same time, Why? I couldn’t help but wonder.
And not just why, but how?
It didn’t make sense. Mio loved me so much; I felt it every day. She always said she was doing all this for me, giving up so much of her own life because she wanted to. So where did she find the energy and money to make herself look so pretty?
That question stayed with me until one day, I found out she had become a model for a fashion magazine. Okay, I thought. Maybe that’s how she’s making money. But then I looked up how much magazine models earn and realized it didn’t add up. Sure, models earned a decent hourly rate, but with only one or two jobs a week, it didn’t seem like enough.
I mean, to buy me a brand-new laptop? And not just for me, but one for herself too? The price on the receipt looked suspiciously low, so I checked it, and sure enough, the real price was in the six-figure range. Mio’s part-time job was clearly not ordinary, and when I thought about what kind of job could pay a high school girl so much money while also requiring her to dress up…a shiver ran down my spine.
I tried doing reverse image searches of her modeling photos, I searched for “Mio Sato” in every way I could think of, hoping to find some clue about what she was really doing, but nothing.
It was only later when I searched for “Shizuki Sakurazaka” and “Mio Sato” together did I get a hit. It was a forum post about a girl called Mio Sakurazaka. Immediately, my heart made a disconcerting thump. But despite the bad feeling in my chest, I clicked on the link. The thread was titled, “The Modern Sakurazaka Cinderella Story.” The body of the original post read, “Y’all hear the news? A Sakurazaka branch family, the one as powerful as the main family, the one led by Lady Shizuki adopted themselves a new daughter.”
There was an hour-long gap between the original post and the first reply asking for more details. The thread quickly picked up from there.
Her name’s Mio. Used to be a commoner. Quite the hometown heroine from what I heard.
You mean she was the cutest girl in the neighborhood type heroine or what?
No, not quite. Wait, hold on. Someone’s at my door.
The original poster left the conversation, but after that, others who knew about the adoption started chiming in and filling in the details. They said that this girl, Mio Sakurazaka, had been adopted into the Sakurazaka family. And not just that—her grandfather was a Sakurazaka who had eloped and been disowned, making Mio an actual Sakurazaka descendant.
“This has to be her…right?” I muttered to myself.
The original poster mentioned that this girl was a hometown hero, and by that definition, so was Mio. Almost everyone in town knew about Mio, her sickly younger sister, and how hard she worked to take care of her. This thread had to be talking about my sister. There just wasn’t any other explanation.
There wasn’t any other explanation, but…
“She let herself get adopted…?”
Mio didn’t just love me; she loved our whole family. There was no way she’d abandon them for some personal whim, which meant…
“For my sake…?”
It all clicked. The transfer to the new hospital, the expensive laptops, the experimental treatment that had seemed out of reach but was suddenly possible—it was all because Mio had sacrificed her own life once again…to help me.
I wanted to cry, but the tears stopped just short. The thought popped into my mind that if Mio was doing well enough to buy two expensive laptops, what were the chances that she was actually doing better than she had been before?
Pretty high, I thought. Don’t get me wrong, I never believed for a second that Mio was living it up while throwing me under the bus, but maybe, just maybe, she was able to help me and still live a good life herself.
That hopeful thought made me feel a little better, and I was about to close the thread when I noticed the original poster had made another post. Quickly, I scrolled down to it.
I’m back…
Welcome back. So? You were saying this girl was some kind of hometown hero or something? Some other folks talked about the adoption, but no one else knew about her life before it.
Yeah, about that… Lady Mio of the Sakurazaka family is an upstanding citizen with absolutely no mysterious past to speak of.
Uhh…lol? you okay dude?
And that was the last post the original poster ever made.
Well, that was weird. If I didn’t know any better, it almost seemed like some men in black suits showed up at that person’s doorstep and forced them to retract their words. But that couldn’t be…right? In that one-hour gap between the original post and when they suddenly excused themselves, could someone from the Sakurazaka Group have tracked them down and silenced them?
It sounded like something out of a manga, not real life. But then I looked around—this fancy hospital, this expensive laptop—everything felt surreal, so maybe that theory of being doxxed and gagged wasn’t as far-fetched as I first thought.
“But to cut them off right when they were about to reveal that Mio worked part-time jobs for my sake…they must really want to keep that a secret. But why?”
Muttering that aloud didn’t bring me any closer to an answer. But Mio always went to great lengths to hide the fact that she was doing something for me—sometimes way too much. Now, it was clear that not only was she in on it, but the entire Sakurazaka family was dedicated to covering it up.
I clenched a fist in front of my chest. Just what could be so bad that it needs all this secrecy?