Chapter 32: Chapter 7
28th of August (Friday)
"I messed up…"
How long has it been since I overslept like that? When I woke up, it was already long past noon, and I had even slept through the start of summer classes. Knowing that my old man had gone out of his way to pay the fees for these classes, skipping them like this made me feel like I had betrayed his trust, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
I couldn't sleep at all last night. Although Ayase-san and I ate dinner together at the dining table yesterday, it was rather awkward, and there was a lot of silence between the bits of our conversation. Even after I slipped into my bed, the events of today and memories of Ayase-san kept flickering up in my mind and behind my eyelids, making me restless. Seriously, just what am I doing?
My throat felt dry, so I decided to get something to drink. I tried to fix my pathetic bed hair with one hand, feeling too bothered to even wash my face. I made my way to the living room where I heard a cheerful woman's 'Oh' voice.
"Yuuta-kun, good morning."
"Eh, Akiko-san? …And Dad as well?"
"Yo, sleepyhead."
My old man seemed to be reading some newspapers on his tablet. He raised his head to greet me with a slight wave of his hand. He and Akiko-san were sitting at the dining table facing each other, cups of iced coffee in front of them. The TV was turned on, playing a popular drama from overseas. It was a peaceful scene that I hadn't expected.
"Yuuta-kun?"
"Ah… I'm sorry. Good morning." Akiko-san gave me a concerned look as I spaced out for a moment, so I hurriedly returned a greeting.
Like I was trying to run away from the situation, I entered the kitchen and took out some cold barley tea from the fridge. I poured it into a cup and gulped it down like someone who had found a drop of water in the desert. The cool air inside the room and the cold beverage filling my body caused me to start to calm down a bit. My head started feeling a bit more clear.
"Why are you two at home?"
"I talked about it with Akiko-san, and we both decided to take a small vacation on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday."
"Ahh, I see. I didn't hear anything about that."
"If I take too much time off, my superiors will get angry at me, and normally I wouldn't have taken any this time around, but I had no other choice."
"Sorry for being so selfish like that, Taichi-san. I felt like we could spend some time together with the four of us today."
"The four of us…"
"I heard it from Saki. You didn't have work yesterday, and not today either, right?"
That's correct. The day after our trip to the pool, today, had originally been a day when neither of us worked. Fridays are the most busy days for a bookstore, so trying to challenge that in an exhausted state would be close to suicide. Myself aside, I really didn't want Ayase-san to exhaust herself any more after she already used up all of her energy enjoying the pool.
"At this time of day, you're probably skipping your summer classes, huh? Haha."
"Did you realize that and not wake me up on purpose?"
"You're way too diligent with your own studies, so skipping a few classes won't hurt anybody, right?"
"Well, I'll give you that…"
"Fufu. I'm glad you're fine with a bit of selfishness on our end."
Not only did my old man seem to not care, but even Akiko-san made a nonchalant remark.
"I'll make some breakfast for you." Akiko-san said and headed into the kitchen.
I heard the sound of oil sizzling in the frying pan, and Akiko-san suddenly turned towards me.
"Thank you, Yuuta-kun."
"Eh?"
"You took Saki to the pool, right?"
"Ahh… No, the one who invited her was her friend."
"But if you hadn't convinced her, she probably wouldn't have gone, right?"
"…Possibly."
"That's why I wanted to thank you. I can rest assured to have you as her Onii-chan."
I froze up upon hearing that. I'm sure Akiko-san didn't intend to come across this way, but the single line 'As her Onii-chan' sounded almost like she was reproaching me for these wrong feelings of mine.
"You don't even have two years until your graduation, after all… Barely two years until she will move out. When I think that we won't have that many more chances to really be a family together, I start feeling sad and lonely." Akiko-san gave a vague smile, which made me swallow my breath.
'Be a family together', she said. It was such a trivial desire if you thought about it, but I knew just how crucial and important it is to Akiko-san. And the same is probably true for my old man. Both of them lived through a hellish married life and didn't get a chance to be very happy. Now that they've found another marriage to hold onto, even normal days like this are like a treasure to them.
If they found out that I had romantic feelings for Ayase-san, and saw her as a woman, what would they think? After everything they went through, after all the suffering they experienced, they had finally reached a small place of happiness. Can I really disrupt this peace with my own selfish, abnormal feelings?
—Yeah, there's no way I can do that.
The face of my real mother came to mind. While my old man worked day and night to earn the money necessary for us to live, she would constantly bombard him with her own selfish desires, and she eventually found another man to run away with. Back in the past, I scorned that woman as an ape who didn't know what reason and common sense was.
It's not that I have an endless amount of love and respect for my old man, but he never deserved any of that treatment. He's done nothing that would warrant him constantly being shoved to the side for the sake of someone else's desires.
If you asked me if I could immediately put a lid on these growing feelings inside of me, then saying that I could would be a lie. However, if I lock away this emotion deep inside of me and let it rest for a long time, it'll go away... Will that really be possible? Can I really give up on her? Someone who's so charming of a woman, and such a wonderful human being?
"Oh yeah, where's Ayase-san? Is she still in her room?"
"I think she should be back soon."
"She went out? That's unexpected."
"Indeed. How many months has it been, I wonder…? Ah, speak of the devil."
I heard the sound of the front door opening, along with footsteps approaching.
"How many months? What are you…"
Talking about—is what I wanted to ask, but I stopped mid-sentence. After all, the answer appeared right in front of me without having to ask about it.
"I'm back, Mom, Father." A voice as translucent as water passed through the living room.
This voice of course belonged to none other than Ayase Saki—or it should have been. The reason I couldn't say so with confidence was because this wasn't the Ayase Saki I was used to.
"Welcome back, Saki. Oh my, what a fresh look you have there~"
"Saki-chan! Ohh, now that's an atmosphere changer alright."
Our parents both complemented Ayase-san in unison. And indeed, she had changed for certain.
The symbol of Ayase Saki's armament, her long golden hair shining like a wheat field, had been shortened with a haircut. Where before it reached down her back, it now stopped at her shoulders. It was something like a medium-length haircut.
Now that her hair stopped hiding her piercings, they stood out even more than before, resembling a snake baring its dangerous but equally alluring fangs. I was reminded that we had known each other for barely three months. When you're living a normal life, it would make sense that you would get a haircut eventually, or even go through other changes like physique or usage of make-up. However, someone like me, who had only seen one type of appearance, was unable to deal with this change.
In all the stories I had read, such a big decision or change of appearance was usually the result of a huge event in the person's life, which was why I couldn't help but feel 'Why now?' when I saw this. I'm sure there isn't any particular meaning behind this decision at all, and yet even so, I felt like something was off, and I was overwhelmed in the process. And at the end of all my hesitating and thinking, the best I could come up with was a normal line that I had always used.
"Welcome… back, Ayase-san."
"I'm home, Nii-san."
With no hesitation whatsoever, she called me 'Nii-san' in front of our parents.
"Saki… did you just…?"
"Saki-chan…!"
My parents' delighted voices overlapped, but they sounded distant and not related to me at all. They were worried about us staying at a consistent distance, keeping a dry relationship with each other and not relying on one another, so this single word from Ayase-san probably made them feel like we had all moved a step forward.
Why did she suddenly cut her hair? Why is she suddenly calling me 'Nii-san'? With no words to work with, I can only make my own deductions and assumptions about this sudden change in behavior. If I had to guess, she's warning me, saying that we're siblings, and that we can never become anything else.
It's such an ironic story. When there's a problem like this, it would be so convenient if we could just show each other our hand, and adjust to the other person like we always would. And yet I found myself relieved to realize that I could just deal with this entire situation by simply not revealing what I feel, and instead keep it a secret.
Right then I just needed time to think about how I could come to terms with my feelings. I wanted to put a nail in the coffin of these romantic feelings, which would allow us to maintain a healthy relationship where we would just be siblings. While Ayase-san doesn't know how I feel, I need to find ways to erase these emotions.
While I suppressed my awareness that I was very entranced by her new hairstyle, I silently steeled my resolve.
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