Episode Thirty
“It’s not weird… is it.”
I don’t know how many times I’ve muttered the same thing to myself by now, the words dropping into the small, sun-filled room.
A few days after we made up, on a Saturday. I’d been throwing myself into getting ready to go to the café that had opened near the station, together with Ao.
Not a date. Just an ordinary day off, going out somewhere.
“…Haah.”
My feelings and my actions didn’t seem to be lining up properly, and a sigh slipped out before I could catch it. The face looking back at me from the mirror was, by any measure, clearly restless.
“Onee-chan, I’m ready!”
“Got it. Wait downstairs.”
I answered the voice through the door, fixed my fringe one last time, and left the room.
Was this really not a date… I wonder.
Ao’s hair, usually worn straight, was loosely curled today, soft and full. Her casual wear is usually trousers, but today she had on a flared skirt that reached all the way to her ankles.
I couldn’t quite manage to look properly at the figure walking beside me — whether that was because of the strong sunlight, or because she herself was too dazzling to look at directly, I couldn’t say. However anyone looked at it, the two of us walking side by side, dressed like this, didn’t seem like it could pass for just an outing.
“Reviews are already good even though it just opened. I’m getting hungry.”
“Same. Wonder what to get.”
Idle conversation continued under the strong sun.
Maybe because time had passed, the awkwardness had eased a fair amount since that day. We hadn’t missed a single morning greeting, we’d studied together in her room again. Dad seemed to be in good spirits, seeing us talking normally with each other again — so I suppose this was for the best.
Whether we’d actually gone back to how things were before, I couldn’t say. Something unpleasant kept seeping up from somewhere deep in my chest.
She hadn’t called me cute. Not once. She’d said it even when I was wearing those ugly glasses, even in my ridiculous loungewear. Today, I thought, I’m probably cuter than usual. I don’t have much confidence in myself, but I’d done what I could. And yet Ao looked at me and said nothing at all.
When did I become such a difficult person. Maybe I really do have the makings of someone unstable. I don’t think that thought was wrong.
Perhaps because it was a weekend, we passed a fair number of people near the station and made our way into a quiet residential street. Finding something fashionable just because it’s tucked into a corner of a quiet neighbourhood — maybe that just makes me a child still.
“Should be around here somewhere…”
I looked around while the map app spun in circles.
“Nothing that looks like it. Let me see your phone a second.”
“Huh!? Oh— sure.”
Ao leaning her face in close to look at my phone nearly made me drop it.
“Ha ha. Isn’t it one street over? Onee-chan, do you have no sense of direction or something?”
“…Huh? I don’t think that’s true.”
Following where Ao pointed, I stepped out onto the next street over and spotted a house that looked like it might be the café. Thankfully no line yet.
“See? Guess I just learned another thing you’re bad at, Onee-chan.”
“Not bad at it… just a coincidence.”
I followed after Ao’s back as she walked ahead, practically bouncing. She would normally have taken my hand and led me. Left on my own, I might actually get lost.
We were shown to a table by the window by a warmly welcoming member of staff.
“Nice atmosphere. Stylish but still calm, somehow.”
“Really. City places usually have a good vibe but I’m not great with them. Actually, the other day with Fu—”
I forced the word back down before it could fully leave my throat. Bringing up the day I went out with Fuuka probably wasn’t a good idea.
“Ah— let’s just order first! Wh— what should I get…”
I turned the menu, which hadn’t been placed on the single table, toward Ao and scanned it from the edge.
Sandwiches, pancakes. Pasta too, and no shortage of drinks — too many choices to settle easily. The little illustrations scattered across the menu were deformed and cute.
“You can’t see it like that.”
Ao repositioned the menu so we could both see it.
“Thanks. What are you getting?”
“French toast sounds good too… but Onee-chan makes that at home. Maybe pasta. But then again…”
Watching her frown and hum to herself, unbothered by anyone around us, looked endearingly young. I wanted to reach out and touch her cheek.
“What about you, Onee-chan?”
“Hmm. Club sandwich? Can’t make that one properly at home.”
“Not being able to make it at home — you sound like an actual chef.”
“…True, I guess.”
I kept watching her, frowning and humming quietly to herself for a while. Leaning toward the sandwich, then drifting back to pasta. Her expression kept shifting restlessly, and I could have watched it forever.
“Are you two friends?”
The staff member, who carried something of Shiho-san’s atmosphere about her, asked casually as she took our order and turned to leave.
“…Um.”
Classmates. Friends. Sisters. So many words surfaced, and I couldn’t tell which one was the right answer.
“Sisters! I’m the younger one, she’s my Onee-chan.”
“I see! You two looked so cute I ended up watching from a distance. My apologies.”
“I’ll bring your drinks over shortly. Please take your time.”
She smiled elegantly with a hand to her mouth and disappeared toward the kitchen.
“She said we were cute. Good for you, Onee-chan.”
“…She meant you.”
I couldn’t manage a proper smile, gave a vague answer, and let my eyes escape out the window.
We kept talking, neither of us quite meeting the other’s eyes, while sipping the café au lait that arrived shortly after.
“You always order orange juice. Do you like it that much?”
“I really do. I don’t know if it’s, like, actual hundred-percent juice at places like this, but it’s always good.”
“Huh. Maybe I’ll try it next time.”
“You should, it’s really good here! Other than here, there’s this place—”
She used to say “here, have a sip.” I think she would have said it without fail, before.
Even the sight of her cheeks stuffed full of French toast, even her happily chattering about something that happened at school — it all looked like the same Ao as always. A smile still suits her best.
But the smile she was wearing right now looked, somehow, like it was carefully put on.
As we finished eating, the once-quiet café slowly filled with more people and noise. Twirling the half-melted ice in her glass with her straw, Ao murmured with her eyes lowered.
“So, um… I was wondering…”
“Yeah?”
Amid the noise, the sound of ice rattling against the glass stuck oddly in my ear.
“The festival at the end of the month… do you have plans to go?”
The festival. She probably meant the summer festival near school that Rin and the others had been talking about. I’d left them hanging on an answer, telling them I’d think about it.
“I was thinking of going, probably.”
“I see.”
“Is Ao going?”
“…I might want to.”
The unusually vague answer from her made my fingers tighten around the glass without meaning to.
Who with? A question I didn’t even want to ask surfaced anyway.
“If it’s all right with you…”
Ao’s finger, still turning her straw, went still.
“…Want to go to the summer festival together?”
“What?”
A foolish little sound slipped out of me. The coldness of the glass finally seemed to register against my fingertips.
“Is— is that okay?”
“Obviously it’s okay. I asked because I want to go with you.”
Well, of course. There’s no rule saying sisters have to go somewhere together out of obligation. You invite someone because you want to go with them. That’s just how it works.
So then — why did she want to go with me, specifically? Because right now, Ao is—
“…What do you think? If you’ve already got plans to go with someone else—”
“I’ll go.”
“Already had— huh?”
“Let’s go together. I want to go with Ao.”
I took Ao’s hand where it had been fidgeting on the table and answered clearly.
“Really…? You don’t have to force yourself.”
“Not forcing myself at all. I want to go with you.”
Why, I wonder. It felt like if I let this chance slip by, Ao would stay exactly as she was, forever. Her as the younger sister, me as the older one. Going on like that, stuck in such a boring relationship — I think I hate the idea.
Ao’s face had gone bright red, and mine was probably about the same shade. I don’t know how the two of us looked to that staff member’s eyes just now, but the next time we come back here, I want to be able to tell her we’re something different.