There’s this memory I have from back before I could even crawl properly. I was competing with Aisha, I think. I’m not sure why. Mother was at the finish line, and naturally, Aisha beat me. She made it to Mother with incredible speed. Mother picked her up and told her what a good girl she was and how well she’d done. When I saw that, I started crying. My mother was so far away. I felt like Aisha had taken her from me and I wouldn’t be praised, so I cried.
When I did, Mother said, “Come on, Norn. I’m here.” She waited until I reached her, then she made sure to praise me.
Big Brother was the same way. No matter how slow or stupid I was, he always waited. He was patient, and although he was sometimes flustered, he never gave up on me. It was his way of filling Mother’s shoes.
The wedding preparations, too. Big Brother had taken care of everything for me. If Father were still alive, I’m sure he would have handled it all. There might have been a bit of a row if he hadn’t liked Ruijerd, though.
Still, I’m sure that when the time came for me to get married he would have said, “Leave it to me.” That’s probably what it was like when Father and Mother got married.
Lost in my thoughts, I finished packing up my room in no time. There had never been very many things in it in the first place. Without my belongings, it looked truly empty. Lucie or one of the others would have this room next. I thought it was tidy enough, so now all that was left was to move my things to Ruijerd’s house in the Superd village.
Honestly, it felt like a dream. After admiring Ruijerd forever, I was going to marry him. I was full of jitters. It was like how Sylphie said it had been for her—before you start living together with a man, you feel a mix of nerves and anticipation. Ruijerd was much, much older than me, but after we got married, I assumed we would do what Big Brother and Sylphie and the others did. I’d learned how to do it in theory, but I’d never put it into practice. Would he be gentle? Would I be able to do it right? My anticipation outweighed my nerves. I was full of excitement.
I was so glad that I’d told Big Brother to go ahead with the betrothal.
There was a knock at the door, then a voice. “Hey, Norn? Got a moment?” I’d have known that voice anywhere—it was Aisha.
“Yes, what’s the matter?”
“Um… Can I talk to you?” Aisha came into my room, an uncomfortable expression on her face, and shut the door behind herself. That was unusual. It might have been the first time Aisha had behaved like this toward me.
“Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested.
“Mm.” Aisha took a seat on the bed. I pushed aside the luggage I’d packed up to take to Ruijerd’s house and sat down on the chair.
“So, um…congratulations on your marriage, Norn… Wait, no. Your engagement?”
“Thank you.”
Now that I thought about it, when Big Brother announced my marriage, lots of people congratulated me. But not Aisha.
“It feels, I dunno, strange that you’re getting married.”
“You came here to say that?”
“No, um… Norn, what’s it like? Getting married?” Aisha wouldn’t look at me. She kept her eyes averted, as though she was asking something she wasn’t supposed to.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you going through with it?”
Ah. That’s right. Now I remembered. Had it been Aisha who’d said it to me?
Why do you bother when you know you’ve got no talent?
My little sister never changed. I’d come to realize that her words that had seemed cruel when we were little were actually something else. She was good at everything, so she didn’t understand how it felt.
No, actually, I was being too generous. When we were little, there probably was some cruelty behind it; that was why I couldn’t stand her back then. But lately, I’d gotten over it.
When had Aisha stopped being unkind to me…? Was it when I’d become student council president? No, maybe it had been earlier… I wasn’t sure exactly when, but she’d changed a lot since Lucie was born.
“I’m not sure what to say… For one thing, this marriage serves a purpose. And I love Ruijerd.”
“What do you mean by ‘love?’”
“It’s like…I just find myself wanting to be with him, and when I see him, I want to hold him. That sort of thing.”
“I love Big Brother. Is that a different love?”
“I… I’m not you, Aisha, so I can’t say.”
“I guess not…” Aisha stretched her legs out, then flopped down on the bed. “I just don’t get it… Linia and Pursena keep going on and on about marriage lately. Saying I missed my chance, or how now I’ve waited this long, I can’t just settle. Is marriage worth getting that worked up about? I’m not sure. I mean, logically, I know I should want it, but it’s not like everyone thinks that deeply about it, right?”
“Aisha, do you not want to get married?”
“I don’t know.”
“There isn’t anyone you have feelings for?”
“No. When I was little, I thought I’d marry Big Brother, but that’s different, somehow. But I can’t even imagine leaving this house…”
Aisha had been glued to Big Brother ever since she was little. I first met her in Millis a little while after our father got back on his feet and started a respectable job. I hadn’t been able to think of her as my little sister back then. I heard about people getting remarried to a partner who already had children from my friend in the dormitory, and I think it felt sort of like that. It didn’t help that Lilia had treated her less like my little sister and more like a sort of junior maid. When did I begin to see her as my sister? Maybe it was when we went to school together in Millis or during our journey to Sharia with Ruijerd and Ginger. Either way, by the time we began living here in Sharia, she was my little sister.
“How do you feel right now?” Aisha asked.
“…Happy.”
“Happy? How so?”
“It’s hard to put into words. I guess it feels like I’m not worried about anything. I know that it won’t be perfect, but without question, there will be good things.”
As I finished speaking, Aisha sat up and stared intently at me. “That’s happiness?”
“Hm…?”
“I mean, I feel like that pretty much all the time.”
“That means you’re happy all the time then, doesn’t it?”