“What’s wrong with you...?” Kai wondered.
“What do you think was going through my head?”
“That’s my line...”
“I thought, ‘I want to surprise Kai.’ I also had a feeling that it’d feel nice to walk around in a swimsuit,” she added. “Plus, I was curious as to how people would look at me if I did it. Of course, the desire to vent my frustration over missing the pool trip was probably mixed in there, too. All of these ideas were contained in the human we know as ‘Shiraseki Misako.’”
“I have a feeling that can all be summed up as your brain boiling over,” Kai said dryly.
“Kai, I’m sure that Hifumi Tetsuya person lit a fire within you,” Misako went on, ignoring his statement. “The same goes for that Kongouin Mirei girl. You got heated... and frustrated. There’s nothing wrong with that. The anxiety you noticed over Nanaka-chan is probably true, too. But that’s not the only thing. Kai, you have a habit of belittling yourself.”
—Do not submit yourself to inadequacy. Kai heard a certain voice in his head.
“You just like social games,” she told him. “That’s more than enough. Bring that with you to the ends of the world. Kai, reckless confidence and hope for the future are the privileges of youth. I try my best not to forget them, but it’s harder than you’d think... One day, they’ll slip my mind. That’s why they’re special,” Misako cautioned herself with a delicate voice.
Nee-san, Kai was about to open his mouth when she suddenly shifted gears.
“But all that aside, aren’t you turning away from another important emotion of yours?”
“Huh?” Another one?
“I mean, this is basically all because you wanted to show off your cool side to Nanaka-chan, right?”
“............Huh?” No. No way. As the words spun around Kai’s mind, he recognized that his face was getting hotter by the second. His embarrassment was about to exceed its boiling point.
The fact that he was embarrassed meant... Misako was spot on. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.
In that moment, Kai vaguely perceived a flash of brightness, which was Misako snapping a photo of him with her digital camera. “Ahahahahaha!” she laughed.
“There’s no helping it, Kai,” she told him next. “The maze of youth is like a labyrinth, and there’s no one a person understands less than themselves. Leave it to Ace Detective Misako to deduce all this from a stray lamb’s testimony!” Mustering every ounce of smugness into her smile, Misako chortled.
Kai wanted to say something, but he was still too busy cooling down his face.
“And the other thing,” Misako went on, lifting a second finger to create a V. Now that she mentioned it, Kai recalled her saying she had two suggestions, but he was so flustered that he wanted to run away before even hearing the other one.
“Our paths may differ, but this is my advice as a professional. When you’re so lost that you question foundational ideas like ‘Why do I create?’ it means you’re tunnel-visioned to the point of blindness. It’s impossible to create something good in that state. For times like these,” Misako said, shoving Kai’s back and causing him to stumble in the direction of the front door. He turned to catch his phone and wallet that his sister had tossed his way. “You should take a walk until your mind is nice and empty. Go, get going!” Misako kept pushing him along, and he was at the door in seconds.
It was a fact that Kai wanted to cool off. At any rate, he sincerely wanted to put his heart in order after all the embarrassment he’d just experienced.
There was something fleeting about Misako’s gentle smile as she watched over him and said, “I only know how to live by creating things on my own. I don’t know the hardships of creating a single world with someone else. He fights his own battles in a foreign land; that’s why I respect the human we know as Shiraseki Kai. So, hold your head high,” she concluded.
If only she hadn’t been in a bikini as she said it, Kai knew he would have been proud of his awesome older sister.