C02

My sister and I------------------------------- Chapter Two ---------------------------- Hidden emotions.
CHAPTER TWO: HIDDEN EMOTIONS.

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Tuesday, June 23rd, 12:05 PM.
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S
eated beneath the wide branches of an ancient gingko tree and atop the grassy ground of the
Ototachibana campus, Himemiya Kotoha didn’t notice her boyfriend calling until he tapped
on her shoulder and interrupted her trance, bringing her back to reality. It was only then were
her senses of hearing and sight and smell restored, allowing her eyes to take in the lush green
of the school yard, her ears to drink in the chattering of the students nearby, and her nose to
breath in the mouthwatering aroma of the lunchbox Himeko had prepared for her before classes.
“You’ve been spacing out since coming here, Kotoha,” Oogami Mikoto observed. “If you don’t
intend to eat your food, give me your obentou. I feel bad for my mom, but yours is a way better cook.”
Although his mom and dad favored short hair, Mikoto boasted a long and wide stream of darkness
all the way to his waist that reminded Kotoha of the High Priest of the Oogami Shrine, whom her boyfriend
considered his mentor. His countenance was that of an androgyny, bearing both feminine and masculine
traits, which made his face that of an extremely handsome boy or a very pretty girl depending on the angle
in which one would look. He often joked that it was because both genes he inherited from Souma and
Makoto were dominant, and since neither could suppress the other, they both showed on him.
Thanks to the androgen in him, he was as popular as her onee-chan was on this campus even
without taking his talents at tennis into account. There were girls who envied Kotoha to the point they put
hate-mails in her shoe locker. While their contents were very disturbing, she accepted them for the price
she must pay for being the love interest of the most famous boy of Ototachibana Academy.
Nevertheless, she was tired of the pointed attention she received from other girls on campus. She
often wished they would not look at her the same way they would someone who massacred their families.
“Sorry, I was thinking about something.” she told Mikoto in a rueful tone. “And no, you can’t
have my food.” She stuck her tongue out at him. He laughed.
“So, what’s on your mind?” he asked curiously, the shiny emerald eyes he inherited from his mom
glancing playfully at the crab croquettes in her lunchbox.
“You know what happened between me and onee-chan since a while ago, right?” She took a small
tamagoyaki roll out from her obentou and lifted it to her boyfriend’s mouth. He gave her a wry look, but he
let her feed it to him and chew on it quietly before nodding. “Yesterday I managed to talk to her a little bit.
I asked her to be the model for a... drawing so that I had an excuse to be close to her again.” She did intend
to include the word “nude,” yet somehow it was stuck midway up her throat and ended up being swallowed
down. She had an inkling that the boy wasn’t going to sit well with the idea that she was going to draw her
onee-chan without a stitch covering her body. As to why she assumed so, she had no clue.
“Did she refuse you?” he asked, sounding as though he had already anticipated the answer.
“Actually,” she hesitated, “she agreed.”
He blinked. “That’s interesting,” he assessed. “I didn’t think she would.” Light of comprehension
dawned on his androgynous face. “Was that why you’ve been spacing out? Because you were so surprised
that she granted your request?”
She shook her head. “It’s because of something she said afterwards.”
“What might that be?” he inquired, interested.
“Ah... well,” she cleared her throat, “we had a chat and I sorta... became agitated at how she kept
avoiding me. I told her she must not like me anymore. One thing led to another and... she ended up saying
that she loved me.” The memories brought forth a wonderfully pleasant flame that raged on her cheeks. Her
onee-chan’s words, all musical notes produced from the finest instruments, rang melodiously in her ears.
Gods, but she couldn’t believe that she had spent hours blushing last night because her elder sister told her
something she should have taken for granted.
Mikoto gave her a puzzled look. “And how is that disturbing?”
“It’s the way she said it.” Face aflame, she lowered her gaze to the boxed lunch sitting on her lap.
She thumbed an earlobe. “She... reminded me of you when you confessed to me, Mii-chan.”
The only difference was that at the time of Mikoto’s confession, she was perfectly calm albeit
slightly taken aback – she always assumed he would eventually ask Shizuka out – while she blushed harder
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and became tipsier with every syllable her beloved onee-chan dripped into her ear. Gods, but it did sound
like a confession, especially when the elder Himemiya’s words were coated in honey and containing the
heat of a thousand flames. Until this moment, she had yet to figure out the reason why she couldn’t she get
the image of her sweet onee-chan, who was glorious in her bikini, out of her head.
“I see,” her boyfriend murmured noncommittally. His face was as readable as a rock. “So that’s
what disturbed you.” His emerald eyes were shining with a strange light.
She shook her head again. “Not disturbed, I think,” she murmured. “I was just... puzzled as to why
onee-chan’s been avoiding me lately although she,” heat flared stronger than ever in her cheeks seemingly
without reason, “loves me as much as she used to.” The same fear, intangible and vague as it was, forced
her to omit how overjoyed she had become after realizing how honest Shizuka had sounded while
reiterating those affectionate words. She never imagined how someone professing their love to her could
have produced such an effect.
“We all have things we can’t share with even our family members, Kotoha,” he pointed out in a
gentle voice. “It’s best to leave her alone until she is comfortable enough to disclose what lies in her heart.”
She blinked at her boyfriend. I thought he’d give the same advice as Hi-kaa-chan. Why?
“Anyways,” he cleared his throat, “do you want to go to a movie with me on Thursday evening?
My classmates recommended one to me earlier. They said it was really good.” It sounded a blatant attempt
to change the topic. An uncomfortable one at that.
“Sure,” she agreed. “I’ll ask onee-chan if she wants to go with us. The more the merrier, ne?”
“Ah....” Mikoto nodded slowly. “Of course.” It might have been but a figment of her imagination,
but she thought there was a hint of reluctance in his words.
“You haven’t been going home with Shizuka lately, right?” her boyfriend asked suddenly.
“No,” she confirmed. “She has a late practice session with the music club every evening. Otoha-
san picked me up and drove me home first.”
“I see,” the boy murmured.
Silence haunted the remaining of the lunch break. It didn’t bother Kotoha too much because soon
after her boyfriend’s half-hearted reply, she drifted back into her reverie while tastelessly chewing on her
food. Neither did she hear the bell signifying the second half of class nor did she realize that she had
finished her lunchbox, leaving only a few grains of rice untouched.
The rest of the day flew by quickly. Partly it was because there wasn’t much to do during the
World History and Classic Literature class, the teachers of which put up their lectures online beforehand
and read monotonously from the PowerPoint slides during class. Partly... it was because she devoted almost
all three periods to daydreaming. She grinned to herself at how she would be able to spend time with her
beloved onee-chan later in the evening. She pondered as to what posture she should ask Shizuka to assume
so that she could make the perfect drawing of her. She tried to come up with topics to converse with the
elder Himemiya about while staying in her room.
Before she knew it, the school bells had rung and set off the students’ exodus toward the school
gates. One instant, she was sitting on the backseat of a sleek silver Mercedes, driven by her beloved Chi-
kaa-chan herself, as it cruised along a bustle highway of Mahoroba. In the next, she was in her room and
slipping off her Ototachibana uniform. She could have sworn that not even a heartbeat had passed when she
found herself at the dining table and chatting merrily with her moms over food. Her memories, which was
very good normally, didn’t retain much of the rest of the evening... until the clock hanging on a wall in her
room struck seven and the door next to hers opened and locked into place, announcing that the azure-haired
girl had returned from practice.
The human mind worked in mysterious ways. While her afternoon had passed so quickly it could
have been a rocket being launched into space, the hands of time had ticked on so slowly during the next one
hour that it could have been a snail trying to overcome a distance of a thousand feet. Seated on her bed with
a Chemistry textbook spread across her knees but not really paying attention to it, she tried not to squirm in
frustration, unable to stop herself from staring at the clock on the wall and begging it to hurry so that she
could knock on her onee-chan’s door and try to cultivate their relationship back to how it used to be.
She tossed and turned on her bed. She tried to convince herself that maybe Shizuka wouldn’t mind
if she came over forty-five minutes early. She was so agitated she threw the Chemistry text onto the floor
and devoted her restless time to stroking her new sketchbook. She more than once caught herself uttering
the word “onee-chan” in a tone so caressing it didn’t seem like she was calling her elder sister at all.
The entire experience was similar to a visit to a dentist office in that anticipation, empowered by
the heartwarming memories of their conversation by the pool the previous night, was boring mercilessly
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into her heart the same way a sanitized drill would into an already aching tooth. It was torturous. It was
unbearable. It was... inexplicable. Her face rapidly heated up. It was like a... desperate longing one might
experience when separated from her sweetheart.
She suddenly became aware of how embarrassed she was at the strange comparison.
Not that she knew what that longing was like aside from often seeing it dramatically portrayed in
the run-of-the-mill shoujo manga. Despite having dated Mikoto for months, she never experienced such a
thing. Not even when he had to leave town for a week for an athletic meet somewhere in Tokyo and could
only talk to her on the phone at night. She did miss and look forward to seeing him back, but she hadn’t
been once struck by something so intense, so raw, and so compelling. Were her emotions during the days in
which Mikoto was out of her sight to be described as a candle flame, what burned in her heart right now
was a wildfire spreading through a dry forest.
She noted it was odd how she could feel so strongly toward her blood sister.
The clock struck eight.
Bounding to her feet with the sketchbook in her arms, Kotoha hurried out of her room. She had
been so eager to see her precious onee-chan and so desperate to admire the beauty of the azure-haired girl,
and yet she froze like a statue in breathlessness the moment the elder Himemiya opened the door and
greeted her in a usual indigo nightgown and unbuttoned long-sleeved coat. Her onee-chan’s hair and skin
were still moist from the bath, her entire body radiating an overwhelming fragrance that was a pleasant mix
of the herbal shampoo and her natural scent. No cologne smelled better than that.
“Come in,” the taller girl invited, her voice taut with emotions Kotoha couldn’t identify.
Dazed, she followed her onee-chan inside, noting to herself in wonderment what four months of
being estranged from the latter could have changed her image. Right now, she saw Himemiya Shizuka as
someone very dear to her heart yet at the same time so... unfamiliar in more than one way.
“Have a seat wherever you like,” said Shizuka. “I will need to finish this homework first.” Giving
Kotoha a look that could have meant anything, she sat down at her desk and began to let her mechanical
pencil dance – there was no better word to describe that elegant flowing motion – atop a notebook. Her face
was tense, the corners of her mouth tight, and her sapphire pupils so intent on not glancing in Kotoha’s
direction the girl could have just stared.
Idly pondering why her presence was having such a strange effect on Shizuka, Kotoha sat down
on one of the couches and surveyed the room’s interior, feeling a sense of nostalgia rummaging through her
heart. She lived here when she was a kid. She used to share the same bed with her beloved onee-chan when
she was still too young to take care of herself. When the time came for her to go to bed, she used to lay
cuddled in Shizuka’s arms, so warm and soft and loving she had never experienced trouble falling asleep.
It was what she regretted leaving behind the most upon being granted a room all to herself. The
freedom she acquired couldn’t compensate the sleepless nights, the nightmares, and the solitude she faced
every waking moment atop her bed. She grew accustomed to it in time, but sometimes she couldn’t help
wishing she could share a bed once more with the cute girl she cherished. Childishness was what it was, she
always thought.
“Are you... done, onee-chan?” she asked in hesitation upon seeing the elder Himemiya put down
her pencil and closed her notebook.
“Ah... yes.” Shizuka stiffly rose to her feet, her gorgeous face clouded by a screen of what seemed
apprehension. “Let us get it over with, then.”
During the last sixteen years of her life, Himemiya Kotoha never once imagined that she could be
mesmerized by the sight of another girl slipping out of her clothes. Or how furiously her face could burn.
Once the blue-haired beauty had taken off her long-sleeved coat and folded it neatly atop a couch,
she gently pushed the straps of her indigo nightgown off of her shoulders, allowing the clothing article to
fall onto the carpeted floor. When she stepped out of it, the only thing left on her was a pair of lacy white
panties that tightly snuggled the region between her lithesome thighs. The rest of her magnificent body was
without a stitch.
Kotoha’s heart made a loud thump in her chest. Has she always been this beautiful?
Despite being a girl who was blessed with more or less the same voluptuous figure, she couldn’t
stop herself from marveling at the statuesque wonder standing before her now. Most prominent on her
onee-chan’s breathtaking body stood twinned nipples light coral-pink in shade and already stiffened by the
cool air of the completely sealed chamber. These cherries – there existed no more apt a metaphor – looked
ripe and delicious. They seemed to invite a pair of lips to engulf them and a tongue to weigh them, taste
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them, and tease them for all they were worth. Their very sight pumped blood to Kotoha’s face and ignited a
flame incinerating the pit of her stomach.
Crowned by the succulently erected nipples, a wonder unto themselves, were areolas much darker
in color that stood proudly atop a pair of sensuous breasts not many men, or maybe even women, might be
able to resist. They were no larger than hers, but her amethyst eyes assured her that they were much
rounder and perkier. She wanted to reach out and cup those oh so firm orbs of perfection. She wouldn’t
mind caressing them with the tips of her fingers, discovering how round or firm they actually were with the
palms of her hands, and maybe even worshipping them with her lips.
Nestled between Shizuka’s gorgeous breasts was a deep valley running along her sternum and
eventually giving way to a flat heavenly field that was her abdomen. It looked smooth like silk. It was so
even that there was no hiding place for any extra fat. Its slightly muscled surface, the result of countless
hours of swimming in the pool, gave the currently bare midriff of the elder of the Himemiya siblings an
extremely attractive and enthralling tautness that elegantly tapered as it traveled down south, along the
sensuous bikini lines, and eventually disappeared beneath the lacy white panties.
Horror seized her and repeatedly stabbed her in the gut. For goodness’s sake, what am I thinking?
a voice screamed at the back of her head the moment she realized what thoughts had passed through her
mind while she was busy appreciating the pristine splendor of her onee-chan. She thought she had just been
dumped with a bucketful of chilled water.
Her shock was short-lived. Flames raged beneath her skin once more as the regal being in front of
her removed the last of her undergarment. Graceful even in disrobing, Shizuka slipped her thumbs beneath
the waistband of the thin piece of cloth and slowly bent down as she pushed her panties along her toned
legs. The sound of cotton sliding on skin was so sensual, so arousing, and so audible in this quiet chamber
Kotoha inadvertently hugged her sketchbook closer to her body and bringing her knees together as close as
she could to stop the series of tingles being produced within her depth. She thought she was going insane
the instant the pair of panties slipped off her princely onee-chan’s body and revealed her most private part.
Neither “gorgeous” nor “beautiful” was sufficient to describe what she managed to glimpse
briefly before those thighs closed firmly and concealed her elder sister’s most precious treasure. In that split
second, her amethyst eyes had taken in the full glorious view of a blossom yet to bloom but already more
stunning than any in the garden of the roses. The flower’s petals seemed so soft and fluffy they could
probably melt inside a yearning mouth. The gentle cleft separating them were more than just inviting to the
tip of a tongue. Its crown jewel, cute and possessing the light pink shade of a Maiden’s Blush, begged to be
taken between a pair of loving lips, where it could be kissed, caressed, and suckled until it grew to its
fullest and summoned the lightning singing in its every nerves.
Kotoha was amazed.
“What...” her onee-chan inquired, her voice barely a whisper, “what should I do?” A slender arm
of hers draped across her captivating bosom. A hand decently covered the treasure between her taut thighs.
Her cheeks were suffused with blood. Her lucent sapphire gems were avoiding Kotoha’s amethyst ones in
such an assiduous manner it hurt. The long and narrow tail of her hair was very still.
“Um....” Kotoha’s throat was dry, her face so hot she wanted to dip it into a bucket of iced water.
“Lie down on one side on the bed, please, onee-chan?” The word tasted very strange on her tongue.
A gloriously nude Himemiya Shizuka did as suggested. If she was arrestingly beautiful when on
her feet, she was irresistibly so atop the bed with a side of her gorgeous face rested on a soft pillow, with a
complexion stained by the crimson shade of shyness, with most of her breasts blocked by the curves of her
arms, and with her most private place hidden between her toned legs.
A fit of raging jealousy seized Kotoha. It would have to be an extremely blessed person to be able
to marry her beautiful onee-chan, claim her as their own, kiss her whenever they wanted, make love to her
every night, and receive the happiness Kotoha was sure only the azure-haired girl could bring to whomever
she wed. The thought and its boldness startled her anew.
“Kotoha?” Shizuka whispered softly. “Is it okay if I close my eyes?” It was more of a plea than a
request. Without her clothes shielding her from other people’s eyes, she seemed so fragile, so diffident, and
so weak one couldn’t help but want to protect her, love her, and shelter her for all eternity.
“Yes, onee-chan,” she heard herself answer.
“Thank you....” Eyelids closed over sapphire gems. Full and curvaceous chest rose and fell in an
erratic rhythm beneath folded arms. Thighs rubbed together as though trying to conceal even more of her
precious region. She was arousing beyond words.
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Kotoha stared at the unblemished form of the elder Himemiya for another five minutes until she
realized she must do what she had come in here for. Hastily, she opened her sketchbook, took out the pencil
nested within, and began a process that had come to her as naturally as breathing, which, for reasons she
couldn’t grasp, all of a sudden became no less difficult than lifting a mountain with her bare hands.
She constantly lost focus, found her pencil-wielding hand going still as her eyes locked dead upon
the curves of her sister’s body, or made horrifying mistakes that ruined the entire sketch and forced her to
flip to a new page. The process was repeated so many times and to no avail that in the end she became
frustrated at her own incompetence and decided to stop and apologize to Shizuka for having wasted her
time. As soon as she closed her sketchbook and looked up once again at the dazzling girl, glorious in her
nakedness, lying atop the bed, she realized in astonishment that the latter was already immersed in a deep
slumber. The color on her cheeks had faded, the motions of her chest lost their erratic rhythm and gained
peacefully even rises and falls in its stead, and her pretty lips opened to let out long and deep breaths.
Smiling in overflowing fondness, Kotoha rose from the couch and settled down on her knees at the
edge of the bed, where her elder sister was lying on her side. With her elbows propped atop the mattress
and her chin rested on her interlaced hand, she watched Shizuka sleep.
She looks so cute when asleep, she mused, chuckling softly. In front of pretty much everybody
outside of the family, Shizuka wore a mask of ice and serenity so frequently others often mistook it for her
true façade and ended up growing nervous in front of her no matter how much they admired her good
looks. Right now, she was every inch a sleeping angel. The Ototachibana boys would go mad with desires
should they ever see her like this.
“Ko... ha,” her onee-chan mumbled in a voice too adorable for words. “Kotoha....”
She blushed hotly at her sister’s caressing tone. For the last four months now, the elder Himemiya
had been calling her name with a tone at best cool and somewhat emotionless. Now, she sounded warm,
she sounded fond, she sounded affectionate, and she sounded like she was addressing someone she loved.
Why is she calling my name in her sleep anyway? Her heart picked up its pace. She blushed. Is she
dreaming of me?
As if possessed, she watched herself climb onto the bed. Carefully lest she woke the person who
yesterday just told her that she loved her and cared for her more than anybody else in the world, Kotoha
eased herself into lying opposite her precious sister. On her side now with her head resting on one of
Shizuka’s arms and her waist encircled by the other, she found herself in a tight embrace of the most good-
looking girl in the world and blushing within an inch of her life. Being so close to the elder Himemiya, she
could feel her gushing warmth, her overpowering scent, and the amazing firmness of her breasts, pressing
and rising and falling against hers in a most seductive manner.
Still dazed, Kotoha decided to keep her hands to herself. If she put them on the svelte body of
Shizuka, she wouldn’t be able to stop them from wandering and tracing these captivating curves. Calm
down, Kotoha! she reprimanded herself and tried to relax within the arms of the girl she cherished. It was
much more difficult than she thought.
“Kotoha,” her onee-chan whispered again, more drowsily this time but no less clear or caressing.
“I love you, Kotoha....” Honesty was one of the many things she perceived in those words.
Her heart went still. Her eyes misted. Her frame shivered.
“If you love me so much you see me in your dreams, onee-chan,” she murmured tearfully as her
right hand rose and gently touched the blue-haired girl’s slightly opened mouth, “why have you been
shunning me?” Her fingers caressed the elder Himemiya’s lips. They were like velvet, although there could
be no velvet so warm and soft and moist. “How long has it been since you last kissed me with those lips?”
Her hand quietly departed from the lovely cherry petals... but instead of falling back to her side, it
moved toward her face. Next she knew, she was lightly and attentively kissing the tips of the fingers that
had outlined the blue-haired beauty’s mouth as though she wanted to taste the sweetness and moistness
they had absorbed. Upon realizing what she was doing, she gave a small start and colored so rapidly she
thought her face was going to explode. Her fingers remained on her lips.
What am I doing? she asked herself ruefully, awfully aware of the gushes of hot, short breaths her
nose was issuing into the small gap separating their lips. There’s no rule forbidding me from kissing onee-
chan... on the mouth, is there? Of course not, it was just that not many girls did such a thing regardless of
how close they could be to their sisters. Besides, her mind wandered the realm of her fondest memories, not
that I haven’t done it before, right...?
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April 23rd, 8:59 PM, eleven years ago.
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Himemiya Kotoha, who turned five a couple of days ago, always considered herself a lucky child. Her
parents, two wonderful mothers whose devotion toward her was more than enough to make her forget
the taunts of other kids her age, adored her and taught her the wonders of the world. Although she could
make no friends in the neighborhood, not one that wouldn’t stop pointing out in jealousy that she lacked
a father in her life anyway, she lived in the same room with someone in whose presence she was
guaranteed protection, friendship, and love. She was sitting with her back leaning against that person’s
front and having her arms encircling her waist at the moment, all four eyes locked on the huge television
hanging on the wall opposite the bed. The pretty and kind girl with azure flowing hair like Chi-kaa-
chan’s, only a year older than Kotoha, was her onee-chan, her best friend, and someone to whom she had
pledged her eternal love.
Kotoha loved being cuddled by her onee-chan in bed. She liked to have the elder Himemiya’s
arms around her and hugging her tight. Wherever her Shii-chan was, her sanctuary was, and even the
darkness she was ever afraid of would seem to be much less frightful. She often felt guilty toward her
mothers because she loved onee-chan even more than she loved them.
“What do you want to watch next, Ko-chan?” Shii-chan murmured next to her ear, the former’s
hand gesturing at their favorite show on TV, which had just ended.
She thumbed an earlobe and tried to think of a program both she and onee-chan would like to
watch.
“Channel sixty-eight?” she suggested.
“The Anime Network?” Shii-chan asked, sounding puzzled. “What does it have at this time?”
“Um...” she tapped her lips, trying to catch a name that had been eluding her, “that one show
about the two miko-san and the robots?”
“Ah, right.” Her onee-chan grabbed the remote control on the mattress and punched the buttons
with her tiny fingertips.
What flashed into the big screen of the TV wasn’t the familiar Anime Network. What she was
seeing was the interior of a.... Her mind paused. What was that really difficult word for the place people
liked to get inside and pray to some scary God again? Right, a church. Yes, a church, where a tall man in
black and a tiny woman in white were standing face to face in front of a very old man in a bulky white
robe, which she assumed was very hot and uncomfortable during Mahoroba’s scorching summers.
Kotoha knew enough of the world to realize that the young man and the woman, groom and
bride they called them, were getting married. He was leaning down toward her, his hands lifting her see-
through veil. In the end, he kissed her on the lips. The other people in the... um... church stood up and
clapped really hard the instant before the TV flashed again and the logo of the Anime Network flickered
into life on its flat screen.
“Sorry,” apologized onee-chan. “I pressed number nine instead of eight.”
“Ne, Shii-chan?” She turned her head and tugged at the other girl’s sleeves. They both wore
pajamas. Hers was crimson red, Shii-chan’s indigo blue. “Why didn’t you ever kiss me on the mouth?”
she asked wonderingly. Her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, and even her chin all received
her onee-chan’s lips at least once on an hourly basis. Never her mouth.
The other girl tilted her head and stared at the TV. “I am not allowed to, right?” she said after a
moment of silence. “I thought people only did that after they got married. Like Himeko-kaa-san and
Chikane-kaa-san.”
“Really?” She pouted dejectedly. “I guess I’ll have to wait for thirteen more years then.”
“What do you mean, Ko-chan?” The elder Himemiya blinked at her, confused.
“Do you forget what you told me on your sixth birthday already, Shii-chan?” she asked. “You
know, when I gave you the present?” She liked to draw, and her mothers told her she was very good at it,
so she had sketched a picture of her onee-chan and presented it to her the night she turned six.
“I said I was going to be your bride when we grew up.” The elder Himemiya smiled at her and
hugged her more tightly. Kotoha had been so overjoyed by the honest declaration she burst into tears.
“I want to be yours too,” she said emphatically. “But Chi-kaa-chan said I couldn’t get married
until I was eighteen. That’s thirteen years from now. That’s a long time to wait just for a kiss.”
The blue-haired girl gazed at her for a while. “Can I be honest with you, Ko-chan?”
She nodded, eager to hear what her onee-chan had to say.
“I do not think I can wait that long either,” she confessed. “I really want to kiss you here.” Her
tiny forefinger rubbed affectionately on Kotoha’s lips. “Our mothers said a kiss on the lips was the best
way to show someone that you loved them.” She swallowed audibly, her sapphire eyes shining like the
stars on high. “I love you very much, Ko-chan.”
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Slowly, Kotoha turned around and settled on her knees between her beloved onee-chan’s legs.
“I love you too, Shii-chan,” she confessed. “Can’t we just ignore that silly rule?”
“I think just once is okay,” her onee-chan said with a smile. “Will you be willing to wait until
we get married after that?”
She nodded her head so vehemently she thought it’d fall off her neck.
“Then close your eyes, Ko-chan,” her future bride whispered softly.
She did and even lifted her face a little bit so that she could better receive what she wanted the
most. Not too long afterward, something very soft descended on her lips. Something as hot as a fire
welled uncontrollably in her and spread across her body all the way to her fingers and toes. Moisture
stung in her nostrils. Unshed tears marred her darkened vision. Honey invaded her sense of taste.
She never imagined how wonderful it would feel to be kissed on the mouth by the one she loved.
She could never have fathomed the panic that gripped her the moment her precious Shii-chan pulled
away. She never understood the meaning of the word “blush” prior to the meeting of their lips. Now, she
did. To blush meant the same thing as to set her face on fire.
“I kinda liked that,” the older girl murmured afterwards. “How about you, Ko-chan?”
She was so speechless all she could do was nod. As a child, she didn’t have many words at her
disposal, and none of them would have sufficed to describe the wonderful sensation she was blessed with.
“They are airing the anime right now, so why don’t you turn around and watch it with me?”
suggested her soon-to-be bride. She sounded a bit breathless and flustered. And a little shy.
Kotoha obeyed her onee-chan, but she couldn’t put her mind to watching the show they both
loved. Her minds refused to register the words the characters spoke in the anime. Her eyes retained no
image. Her memories of the miko-san were blank. Her lips were still very hot.
Unable to keep quiet any longer, she turned her head and begged, “Just one more time, Shii-
chan, please? I promise I won’t ask for a third....”
A second kiss formed even before she finished her sentence. It lasted twice as long as the first.
When it ended, she thought she would cry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Kotoha blushed harder than ever at the memories, which, incredibly enough, had managed to stay
intact in defiance of the passage of time.
It was childish of them to have wanted to become one another’s bride. It was silly of her to have
believed that they could only kiss on the lips after they got married. But nevertheless, it was a fond piece of
memories that usually made her smile upon recollection.
But then, it also made her question herself numerous times for the last few months. Why was it
that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mikoto that she loved him while she seemed to have no problem
saying it to her blood sister? Why did she always flinch away when he tried to kiss her on the lips? She had
no answers. And worse, what transpired by the pool last night had added one more question to the pile.
Why do you unsettle me so, onee-chan? a voice whispered in her head as she trembled within the
embrace of the sleeping beauty. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t want that answered anytime soon.
Mind bustling with thoughts, she slipped out of the embrace of her gorgeous model, put a blanket
over her nude form to shield her against the coolness of a night in June, turned off the light at the door, and
gave her a fleeting look before Kotoha left.
More than once did she consider going back to her onee-chan’s room and asked her for a kiss on
the lips that night. Every time, she would bury her face in the pillow and try to sleep.
She stayed awake until the morning. Not once did Mikoto’s androgynous face popped up in her
head. Her vision contained the afterimage of one person and one alone. Himemiya Shizuka. The onee-chan
she wanted to marry when she was a kid. The girl she had yielded her first kiss to. The most important
person in her world.
**************************************************************************************
Wednesday, June 24th, 11:58 AM.
**************************************************************************************
Oogami Mikoto had just left his classroom and was about to walk down to Kotoha’s classroom on the
second floor – his was on the fourth – like he did every lunch break when he spotted the girl with the
7
golden braid approaching from the east end of the fairly crowded hallway. Like him, she was holding a
carefully cloth-wrapped obentou in her hands. It was fairly unusual to say the least. Much as he loved his
adorable girlfriend, he had to admit that she completely loathed physical exertion and totally relied on her
super-high metabolism to keep herself from gaining weight. The fact that the girl took the time and effort
climbing two flights of stairs – the elevators were under maintenance since the morning – to see him was in
itself something to marvel at. He swelled with happiness where he stood.
His joy increased ten-fold the instant he saw brimming eagerness and unsuppressed anticipation
written across her lovely face. Has she finally warmed up to me? he mused. Have my efforts finally paid
off? The younger of the Himemiya siblings hadn’t acted any different toward him since his confession a
few months aside from the fact that she ate lunch with him exclusively, went out with him anytime he
asked her, and allowed him to call her cell phone at nights and talk as much as he wished. Heck, she never
once told him she loved him even though he had reiterated the three-word phrase quite a few times. Nor did
she ever let him kiss her on any place other than her cheeks. He had assumed that her innate shyness was
what keeping her from showing her affections to him. Or so he hoped.
“Hey, Kotoha,” he greeted her with a smile on his lips. Somewhere in the background he heard
some girl he did not know let out a shrill cry of excitement and subsequently fall onto the floor in a loud
thud – whether because of him or not he didn’t really want to know, or care – but he shoved everything
except from his pretty girlfriend out of his mind. The girl, sweating a little now, had just pulled into a stop
in front of him. Her breathing was ragged, her knees trembling. She was definitely out of shape.
“Now isn’t this a rare sight?” he teased her, barely aware of the pointed attention blatantly thrown
at him by the other boys in his class. Kotoha might not be aware, but it was well-known that her popularity
with upperclassmen was on the same level as that of her elder sister. Not many bode well with the fact that
Mikoto had her all to himself now, and he suspected that a number of them would have tried to pick fights
with him had it not been for the knowledge that he could beat them to a pulp. He certainly didn’t look it,
being blade-slender and androgynous and all, but he learned how to fight from his father. Oogami Souma
could defeat ten armed men with his bare hands.
“Why climb up here when I have to go down anyway?” he added.
She blinked at him and kept silent for at least thirty seconds, looking awfully reluctant to say
anything, before she decided to speak up, “Is onee-chan inside, Mii-chan?” Guilt racked her voice.
Oh dear, he thought ruefully. I should have guessed. Even though he was an only child and didn’t
really know how siblings would act toward one another, he could tell that the adoration that his girlfriend
harbored toward the older Himemiya – despite the latter’s sudden and seemingly inexplicable withdrawal –
was way more intense than what he ever saw or heard. Sometimes the girl spoke of Shizuka the same way a
girl would her.... He harshly pushed the thought out of his head.
“She left with another girl in my class already,” he allowed. His stomach gave a slight lurch at the
various emotions unfolding into life on Kotoha’s countenance. He could name all of them, being a boy
whose peculiar hobby entailed trying to figure what another person was thinking through what they showed
on their face. On his girlfriend’s now he saw a thorough mix of apprehension, surprise, and something the
existence of which he refused to acknowledge. She unsettled him. Very much.
“Is this... a one time thing or a...?” She lifted a hand to thumb an earlobe, an unconscious gesture
signifying that something was weighing on her mind. Interestingly enough, she sounded as though she was
puzzled by the strange notes in her tone. She seemed to be questioning why they were there, or how they
coalesced in her voice without her knowledge. More unsettling. Quite disturbing.
He peered at her for a full minute, carefully choosing his words and pondering his best course of
action, and gave her a smile. “It’s been like that for the last three weeks.”
His casual tone did a whole lot of damage, he noted mentally. Kotoha’s face went a trifle pale.
Very interesting, he thought. Of all the subjects that he ever tested his emotion-reading skill on, the girl
with the golden braid was the best target to practice with. Wearing her heart on her sleeve all the times, she
was often surprised because he could pinpoint exactly what was going on in her innocent heart.
“Ah, I see,” she muttered in the end. She sounded uneasy. “Anyways,” she shook her pretty head
probably in an attempt to dispel her thoughts, “shall we go?” She smelled of disappointment. He was
willing to bet his lunch that the girl had come up here because she wanted to invite Shizuka along.
Sometimes he thought his calm personality bordered on preternaturalness. Kazuki-ji-san often
praised him for his wonderful temperament, a quality often compared to his father’s hotheadedness, but this
was too much. He should feel threatened, providing that he was aware of Shizuka’s secret. He should be
boiling inside, seeing how his girlfriend was acting so strangely. But no, he was perfectly unperturbed.
8
“Sure.” He smiled gently at her, took her hand, and led her toward the stairs.
A five-minute walk brought them to the school yard. Kotoha was surprised they were traveling in
the opposite direction of the spot where they always had lunch together, but she held her peace and walked
by his side in silence.
His wristwatch read twelve fifteen upon their arrival at the school’s backyard, where they found
two girls sitting on a stone bench with their backs in his direction. Although they sometimes turned their
heads toward one another and talked in what suggested a pleasant conversation, neither was aware that they
were no longer alone. The one on the left was a pretty girl in glasses whose dark, glossy hair was tied into a
long pony tail hanging on a side of her head. The girl she was chatting merrily over lunch with was none
other than Himemiya Shizuka, the older sister to his sweetheart.
Mikoto knew he was being very mean to Kotoha but Gods above, he needed to make sure that he
wasn’t just imagining things in his head. He had to know whether he still stood a chance in this whole
ordeal. His opponent, whether they meant to compete with him or not, was formidable in that the love they
harbored toward his girlfriend was no less intense than his very own. For now, though, he intended to
watch the events unfold and ponder carefully before he decided on what course of action he should take.
Heart inhumanly calm despite the maelstrom of thoughts raging in his head, Oogami Mikoto
studied his girlfriend out of the corners of his eyes. Her reactions... were going to offer him the information
he needed.
**************************************************************************************
**************************************************************************************
Himemiya Kotoha was having the shock of her life. Onee-chan...? she thought distantly, her mind blank, as
her amethyst eyes took in what was going on atop that bench. The dark-haired second-year, pretty in spite
of the glasses, were smiling very sweetly toward her stunning classmate as the former picked up something
that looked like a piece of tonkatsu in her lunchbox with her chopsticks and lifted it to the latter’s delicate
mouth. Shizuka’s visage was cool and unsmiling, her sapphire eyes gazing straight ahead at the other girl’s
face, but she accepted what was given her without protest and ate it in silence. Then, astonishingly enough,
she would offer in return a roll of tamagoyaki from her own obentou, prepared to her by Himemiya Himeko
earlier this the morning, in the same intimate manner.
“Who... is that person?” she asked. Against her will, her right hand rose to place atop her heart. It
was only then did she realize she had let go of her obentou from the Gods knew when. It lay atop the grassy
ground now, in it all of the wonderful things that her beloved mother had cooked for her. Strangely enough,
the thought of bending down and picking it up was most distant in her mind. All she wanted to do at this
specific moment was to rip out that organ slowly beating in her chest and see why it was aching so much.
“Aizawa Nanami?” her boyfriend said in a most casual manner, his emerald eyes regarding her
calmly. “She’s my class representative. A bookworm, but a very worldly one. She only lost to your sister in
terms of popularity. You won’t believe how many love letters she received a day.”
“And you said she had been eating lunch with onee-chan for the last three weeks?” Why was her
voice so distant? Why was it so monotonous and without a sign of life? Why did she feel so cold she could
have been standing naked in the heart of winter? Her heart went still.
Mikoto nodded. Quietly, he settled himself comfortably on the grassy ground and put his boxed
lunch atop his lap. He took the one she dropped, too, and carefully brushed off the dirt on the wrap cloth.
Kotoha remained standing. Somehow, it was so difficult to move a muscle. Or even to breathe. Did dust get
into my eyes? she wondered absentmindedly. Why are they stinging? Why are they... so moist?
“Don’t you think they look nice together?” her boyfriend asked, smiling at the two girls sitting on
the stone bench. “I heard from my other classmates that the class rep really admired Shizuka.” He paused
and chuckled. “No, ‘admire’ might be too weak a word.”
More than two dozen feet away, Aizawa Nanami had just laid a hand on the long and tidy tail that
was Shizuka’s hair and stroked it in such a way it yanked Kotoha’s heart into her stomach. She used to do
that when she and her onee-chan were still the best of friends. She liked to touch the elder Himemiya’s hair,
silky strands as fine as a thread of gold could be, when they were lying in bed and talked to one another
about whatever topic that popped up in their minds.
Gods, what is happening to me? Her fingertips dug into the breast of her Ototachibana jacket. The
jolt of pain that she caused herself was nothing compared to the crushing agony she felt beneath.
9
“But...” she said, very much frustrated at the lump of something stuck in her throat and smothering
her words. “But she... she never mentioned Aizawa-san to me.” Was that a needle she felt running in her
arteries? Her fingertips dug harder into her chest. It hurts. She wished that bespectacled second-year would
stop touching her onee-chan’s hair. It hurts so much. She wished the third-year girl Mikoto classified as a
bookworm would sit a little further away from Shizuka. She wished his class rep would stop smiling so
affectionately toward the girl Kotoha cherished. The hand hanging at her side curled into a tight fist, its
fingernails threatening to break the skin of her palm.
“I’m not surprised,” stated Mikoto. “Shizuka’s always been the type who keeps everything to
herself.” He glanced at her. “So, don’t be mad, ne?” The smile on his pretty face, which on more than once
occasion had made a girl faint, did nothing to alleviate her inexplicably sour mood.
He was wrong about it, though. She knew she wasn’t mad because her onee-chan hadn’t told her
that she was dating another girl. As to why her stomach was doing somersaults and moisture was gathering
in her eyes, she didn’t know and didn’t dare speculate. She was only aware that the true reason to her woes
involved something dark, something complicated, and something that had been lurking in the deepest
layers of her heart. She had a feeling that if she kept thinking about it, she might just open Pandora’s Box
and unleashed a pain far worse than what she was experiencing right now.
“Now that’s bold.” Her boyfriend’s amused voice brought her back to the present just in time for
her to witness a sight that struck her like a slap on her cheek.
Aizawa Nanami took off her glasses and gently put it aside. Under the cool shade of the gingko
trees flanking their stone bench, she brushed back a few strands of stray hair and tucked them behind her
ears with a grace Kotoha didn’t possess. Against her will, her hands rose to grab her throat, within which a
fireball seemed to be burning as it fed on the emotions roaring from the pit of her stomach. Her vision
blurred by tears and her nerves snapping one after another, she watched as the pony-tailed second-year
turned her head and drew her face toward that of Shizuka, who didn’t put up any resistance at all.
Kotoha thought the pain was going to kill her at the instant her onee-chan closed her sapphire eyes
and opened her mouth to receive the kiss. She shook her head vehemently, trying to deny with all her heart
the event transpiring in front of her eyes. Soundless gasps escaped her lips and burned their way up her
cartilages. The world exploded in her ears as a terrible heat flared into life in her throat and rushed upward.
Her self-control unraveled.
“No!” she shouted with all the strength she possessed, her loud and anxious voice imbued with the
force of a desert storm. “Let go of her! Don’t touch her!” Her existence was quivering. She had to release
the mind-numbing pressure building rapidly in her heart. “Onee-chan is.... Onee-chan is...!”
The last word died at the tip of her tongue as she finally realized the gravity of what she would
have said had she not held herself back in time. Depths of horror swallowed her and liquefied her muscles.
She sank to her knees. Moisture spilled down her enflamed cheeks. Gods, what was I thinking?! She nearly
choked at the memories. Her hands clutched at her mouth. Her lips were dry like sands, her breaths searing
into her palms, and her tears slipped through her fingers’ cracks.
“Kotoha?” The statuesque seventeen-year-old rose from the stone bench and turned around, her
face aghast, her voice soaked with incredulity. She never noticed that her sudden upward movement had
knocked her obentou off her lap and hurled its content onto the ground. “What are you doing here?”
Aizawa, who had put her glasses back on, was squinting at Kotoha as though a creature extinct.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mikoto commented quietly, his emerald eyes boring inexorably
at her. His face was unreadable, his gentle smile sending chills down her back. “Without practice, how can
they perform onstage?”
“Onstage?” she repeated blandly.
Shizuka and her classmate were approaching. Soon, they were going to arrive where she knelt. She
considered running away. She would have too, if she could just pull herself to her feet.
“But of course,” her boyfriend said in the same eerily calm voice. “They were assigned the leading
roles of a school play, you know, for the upcoming Culture Festival. I would have liked them to adapt from
a historical novel, but the class consensus ruled in favor of a romance manga instead.”
“Manga?” Kotoha’s voice was trembling.
“Yes. A manga involving a relationship between girls.” He chuckled at that. “That was why they
forced the role down Shizuka’s throat. She protested, but against the will of the overwhelming majority of
the class, she couldn’t get out of it. She had to spend the last three weeks eating lunch with Aizawa because
she was having trouble with her acting.”
10
“You... you mean everything I saw was just... practice for the play?” Blood rushed up to her face
and warmed it to near melting. Dizziness slapped her.
Her boyfriend nodded casually. “The script did contain such a scene.” His amused tone implied he
knew something but wouldn’t say what. “I must say that the class rep’s performance, were it one, was quite
realistic. I would have thought she had a crush on Shizuka.”
“Why...” she swallowed audibly, “why didn’t you tell me?” It would have made a huge difference.
Had she known... had she known, she wouldn’t have blurted out such embarrassing words.
Mikoto gave her a level look. “It slipped my mind. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d have a problem with
it.” Toward the end, his voice adopted a coolness bordering on what one could feel in the middle of winter.
“Kotoha?” called her onee-chan, who stood no more than an arm away from her now. So many
emotions were warring on her lovely face. Kotoha only identified one of them. It was curiosity.
“Hey there, Kotoha-chan,” Aizawa Nanami greeted her warmly and extended a hand to her. She
took it and let herself be pulled to her feet. She thought she was going to fall back down. “Nice to see you.”
“He... hello,” she said in a strangled voice and panicked. Intent and piercing as it was, onee-chan’s
sapphire gaze was most unsettling. “Um... I... I had forgotten something back...” she stammered, awfully
aware of the hot trails of tears on her face, “back... in the classroom. I’ll... see you later.” Gathering all the
strength left in her, she spun on her heels and ran away as fast as she could, sensing once again the moisture
misting her eyes. She didn’t care if she was going to fall down and hurt herself the way she didn’t pay
attention to where she was going. She only needed to get out of that place. The last thing she wanted to do
right now was to explain why she had said what she did.
Gods, what is happening to me? she thought amidst the streaking tears, ignoring the wide-eyed
students on campus.
**************************************************************************************
**************************************************************************************
Oogami Mikoto knew that his countenance was very calm, inhumanly so, right now despite the bitterness
trouncing his stomach. He was glad that he was never someone who showed his emotions on his face or
even let them seize control over his actions. Idly, he stood up and brushed off the dirt on his pants. He
pondered running after his girlfriend and returned her obentou, but decided against after a second thought.
In such an agitated state, she might not appreciate his presence. He didn’t want to trouble her more than she
already was. He eyed his wristwatch. Ten minutes left until class resumed. Sighing, he sat back down and
unwrapped his own lunchbox. He didn’t want to suffer an empty stomach for the next few hours.
“Your little sister is rather amusing, don’t you think, Himemiya?” Aizawa Nanami turned to the
blue-haired girl, who seemed to be torn between staying and running after the girl with the golden braid.
“She’s so possessive of you. A thousand yen says that what she meant to say was ‘Onee-chan is mine!’”
The class rep laughed softly. “How cute!” Her facial expression turned thoughtful. “Although that wasn’t
how I remembered her from the rare occasions she visited our class. She seemed like such a kind, timid,
and sweet girl. Who could have imagined she could sound so... fierce?”
Shizuka blushed hotly. Mikoto didn’t know his childhood friend could do that.
“Really, Aizawa?” he said with a smile and lifted a fried crab croquette to his mouth.
“Of course!” his classmate exclaimed. “My baby sisters,” the girl had a pair, “were like that too.
They always said that they were going to give my romantic interest a hard time as soon as I got one.” She
glanced at the other girl, who was too busy blushing at the ground to notice.
All of a sudden, Shizuka’s scarlet color faded and her sapphire eyes swiveled to his face. They
were very sharp. Another boy in his place would have flinched and dropped the croquette. He smiled. The
thing never trembled even once between the tips of his chopsticks.
“Did you bring her here, Mikoto?” she demanded. He nodded while chewing on his food. “Why?”
“She wanted to eat lunch with you,” he explained. Plain truth. It was simply not the answer to her
question. He winced at the fried shrimp he just put inside his mouth. His mother put too much salt.
“I see,” Shizuka muttered.
“Should we get back to practice, Himemiya?” the class rep suggested hopefully. “We did have a
few minutes left.” He was willing to wager that the girl hadn’t been very pleased to have her well-planned
kiss interrupted. Not that she showed such signs on her face. Like him, she was deft at hiding her emotions.
Like him, she was more dangerous than she looked.
11
“I am sorry.” His childhood friend shook her head. “I am not feeling too well. I am heading back
to class first.” Not even waiting for an assent, she strode forward.
“Tough luck, class rep,” Mikoto teased her once the older Himemiya had gotten out of earshot. “I
bet you must have spent a great deal of effort adding that lovey-dovey scene into the script.”
“Well,” she cleared her throat loudly, “I did promise to accidentally skip Rikugou when it came to
cleaning duties. Twice. Plus a threat to expose his hiding those dirty manga in his shoe locker. Worked
really well.”
He laughed.
“And how are you going to compensate to me, Oogami-kun?” She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Without you, I would have had my kiss already.” She put her hands on her hips.
He laughed harder at the girl’s straightforwardness. Unlike Kotoha, Aizawa Nanami knew what
her heart desired. Like Kotoha, she was infatuated with a certain beautiful girl. Romantically.
Strangely enough, he couldn’t stop laughing although his relationship was in jeopardy. Could it be
the competitive blood running in his veins? Could it be the fact that he thought a strong challenge would
bring a little more fun to this battle in love?
He would believe so.
**************************************************************************************
Wednesday, June 24th, 10:43 PM.
**************************************************************************************
Himemiya Shizuka decided to go to sleep after spending an hour staring at her relatively blank Physics
homework. They were easy enough, yet somehow she didn’t have the strength or the conviction to sit still
at her desk and actually work them out. She often would put down her pencil and lean her back against her
chair just so she could stare at the ceiling and wonder what could her younger sister have meant when she
spoke those heated words this afternoon. And then she would blush hotly at the words echoing in her ears
and became so embarrassed by them she took up her pencil again and started scribbling on the pages. The
same process repeated many more times until she was so fed up with it she slammed her notebook shut.
Sighing, she folded her arms on the desk and laid a side of her head over them. Was it really
nothing more than sibling’s jealousy at work like Aizawa claimed? she wondered. Of course she wanted
the answer to that question to be a “No,” seeing how much she was in love with Kotoha. Of course she
wanted to be assured that her precious golden-haired angel harbored toward her something more than
sisterly affection. But that was merely wishful thinking. Kotoha had a boyfriend, and Mikoto was a nice
and caring guy despite his eccentric tendencies as well as a twisted sense of humor. There was no reason
why she would abandon such a normal relationship for something impure and horrifying like what Shizuka
had been hiding in her heart.
I want to see her so much. Like usual, the girl was already in her room upon Shizuka’s return
from practice. The ones who waited for her at the dining table were her loving mothers, who already ate
with her sister but still wanted to sit with her and talk. Chikane-kaa-san revealed that Kotoha did not have
much of an appetite. Himeko-kaa-san elaborated that she detected something heavy on her youngest
daughter’s mind. The two women sometimes would glance at each other and exchange mysterious smiles
Shizuka could not read. Sometimes she believed that her parents could communicate solely through eye
contact. They knew each other that well. She wished she could do the same with the girl she cherished.
Someone knocked on the door. Her heart leapt into her throat.
“Onee-chan?” called her sister’s hesitant voice. “Can I... can I come in?”
“Go ahead,” she heard herself answer and winced at the note of excitement she failed to hide.
“The door is not locked.”
The door swung open, admitting a gorgeous Kotoha clad in a crimson pajama with her hair down.
The color of her complexion easily matched that of her clothes. Standing with her hands folded behind her
back, her head slightly turned, and her eyes taking up a serious study of the gray carpet, she was at her most
adorable. Shizuka wanted to run to where the girl was, hug her, kiss her, and carry her to bed.
“Why... are you still awake?” she asked, feeling light-headed in the presence of her sweetheart. “It
is past your bed time already, is it not?” Realizing that the sixteen-year-old was still standing stiffly, she
added, “Have a seat anywhere you like.”
Kotoha closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed. There, she stayed very still with her
right hand thumbing an earlobe for a couple of minutes before she gazed toward Shizuka’s chair in such a
12
longing manner her heart hurt. Face hot as an oven, she watched her little sister fidget and squirm atop the
bed. So cute! she marveled in her head.
“Onee-chan,” Kotoha called finally, her voice nearly a whisper. “Would... would you come over
here for a little bit?” She patted on the spot right next to hers on the mattress.
Normally Shizuka would have found an excuse to avoid getting so close to the girl she loved. Not
today. Not after having her resolve completely melted by what she had seen and heard in the afternoon.
Gods, but she felt weak in both mind and body. Gods, but she did not think she had the willpower to try to
shun her first and last love away anymore.
Feeling light enough to float, she rose from her chair and settled down next to her precious sibling.
Only half a hand separated their shoulders.
“I’m not bothering you, am I, onee-chan?” Kotoha asked quietly.
“Not really.” Shizuka shook her head. “I am about to go to sleep anyway. Is there... something you
want to talk to me about?” Her left hand and Kotoha’s right were right next to each other atop the mattress,
their edges maybe only a fraction of an inch apart. She shivered as if goosed. She wanted to hold that petite
and pretty hand. She wanted to caress its back with her fingers. She wanted to take each of these delicate
fingertips into her mouth, kiss them, and suck on them as lovingly as she could. Her cheeks went aflame.
“About that, um...” her little sister hesitated, “I want to apologize for... um... interrupting you and
Aizawa-san during lunch break.”
Shizuka blushed harder at the startling memories of her little sister’s fierce outburst. Luckily, the
girl she loved was too busy staring at the floor to notice. Even the tips of her ears were red.
“You should not worry too much about it,” Shizuka said. She also wanted to add that she would
have backed out of the kiss at the last second – the very thought of kissing anyone except Kotoha on the
mouth was reviling – but something inside her was advising against it. She dropped the idea.
“I should!” her little angel insisted. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusion so quickly.” Amethyst
eyes regarded her in depths of shyness. “Did you... did you resume it... afterwards, onee-chan?”
She shook her head. Her little puppy’s crimson face was a sight to look at the way it became a
battlefield between guilt and something she could only name relief. Her heart slammed against the ribcage
in her chest. Guilt I can understand... but relief? Fire flared into life from deep within her body, rippled
outwardly in a hundred directions, and rushed out of her nose in the form of searing-hot gushes of breaths.
It was like a furnace was roaring inside her. Gods above, does it mean what I think it does?
“Why not?” Kotoha whispered, her eyes back to being glued at the carpeted floor.
“I was just... not in the mood anymore,” Shizuka explained. It was true. Who would be able to kiss
another person when the love of her life had just shouted at her in what she assumed to be jealousy and run
off in obvious embarrassment anyway?
“I’m so sorry,” her sister apologized again in guilt and relief, the latter overpowering the former.
“I made you lose a chance to practice for your play.”
She gazed speechlessly at the golden-haired girl for a few seconds. “Well, there is one thing you
can do to make up for it,” she opined.
She had been mooning over Kotoha too long to not know that when the latter thought she was at
fault, she had to find a way to compensate or she would never be free of the guilt. Plus, it had been a long
while since Shizuka tasted her little angel’s handmade food. She would kill to be able to eat it again.
The statement actually added a great deal more color to her sweetheart’s cheek.
“Well...” the sixteen-year-old mumbled breathlessly, “if you want, I can be... your practice partner.
I mean... if you don’t mind, that is....”
Shizuka was at a loss for words. It took her five minutes to regain her voice. “You mean the kiss?”
A shy and slow yet determined nod answered her. She thought she was seeing steam rise from her
little sister’s ears. “You need practice... don’t you?” A pause. A ragged intake of breath. A shiver rippled
across her trim body. A rise of a few degrees of temperature in the room. A small hand landed gently on the
back of hers, its delicate fingers threading with hers. Shizuka thought she was becoming drunk just from
the air she breathed.
“But it is on the lips!” she exclaimed. Inside, she was cursing herself for voicing such a protest.
“I... wouldn’t mind,” her little puppy announced in a voice almost too soft to be heard. “We’re
sisters after all.... I don’t think there’s any rule that says we can’t kiss one another on the lips.... Besides,
we’ve done it before, haven’t we?”
Kotoha lifted Shizuka’s hand from the mattress and deposited it atop the former’s lap, which was
soft and seemed to be gathering insane amounts of heat beneath the silk pajama. There, the hand received
13
the tenderest treatment in the world. It was massaged lovingly by the angel’s hands, it was caressed by her
delicate fingers, and it was eventually brought to her mouth to receive a kiss on its back. Dimly, Shizuka
decided that she was not going to wash that part of her hand for the next two or three weeks.
“Say, koneko-chan,” the younger Himemiya called affectionately, allowing Shizuka’s palm to rub
against her burning cheek. Had it not been for her holding onto her strength and willpower, she would have
melted into a puddle on the bed. “Do you remember our first kiss?” The girl turned her magnificent head
toward Shizuka, the former’s amethyst eyes shining with longing... and what she suspected to be love.
Gods, is she talking to her elder sister or a lover? she thought, intoxicated.
“I do,” she heard herself answer. It was something forever etched in her mind. Not even time was
going to erase it from her memories. “I do.” The last words she uttered were fervent enough to be a prayer
to the Gods. She hoped they were going to preserve her sanity. This conversation, saturated with love as it
was, was wearing down her resolve like a river eating at its banks. In a flood.
“Can you... recall what you said afterwards?”
She gave a nod for an answer. “I kinda liked that,” she had whispered to her blood sibling eleven
years in the shadows of the past. It was an understatement. The six-year-old Shizuka had not been familiar
with the words enough to express her thoughts more clearly. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she
would have surrendered anything she owned for that one single kiss.
“Then... you would not have any problem kissing me again, right?” Kotoha asked. “And... it’s just
for practice. It’s not like we’re doing anything out of line.” She sounded like she was trying to convince
herself, Shizuka noted. She sounded like she was looking for an excuse to justify the kiss.
Now that has to be my imagination, Shizuka snarled at herself mentally. Or my overly wishful
imagination at work. Kotoha was not like her. The golden-haired sixteen-year-old was an angel with a
spotless mind and untainted innocence. There was no way she could have been so twisted that she would
want to make out with someone with her own blood. She was just trying to help her sister; that was all. But
if that were the case, a discordant thought stirred her mind, I need not be too concerned, right?
Since that fateful evening, she had always wanted to taste her little sister’s lips once more. And
now, the chance was handed to her with no strings attached.
“No, I would not have any problem with that,” she whispered.
“Then kiss me, onee-chan.” Her wingless angel reduced the distance between their face to no more
than an inch. “Let me compensate to you, please.” The plea, desperate and drop-dead serious, laid all of
Shizuka’s doubts and reservations to rest.
She tremblingly rubbed her nose lovingly on her sweetheart’s forehead, where she recognized the
scent of perspiration, thin but noticeable like a rose blossom hidden out of sight. As it slid downward and
nuzzled its tip with that of the younger girl, she deeply inhaled overwhelmingly fragrant breaths, which
bore the essence of an orchid flower and were warm enough to sear. As she continued to take in that which
smelled better perfume and revel in the sensual contact between their noses’ tips, she sensed the sixteen-
year-old’s shivers, heard her euphoric gasps, and felt her body heat soaking into Shizuka’s own clothes.
Her little sister was enjoying it. She knew... she was doing it right.
Her nose slipped downward and pressed gently upon Kotoha’s slightly opened lips. Here, she
smelled something sweet that she could not quite put her fingers on. Here, she was pleasantly surprised
upon having the tip of her nose receive butterfly pecks and occasional playful bites that should have been
reserved to a pair of lovers before or during making love. Yet she did not care too much about that at the
moment. Eyes closed, she cupped Kotoha’s heart-shaped face with both hands and relished the sweet scent
she was breathing in from her lips.
“I don’t recall you teasing Aizawa-san like this, onee-chan,” stated her first love.
Her eyes sprang open to take in the sight of a furiously blushing Kotoha, in whose amethyst irises
shyness and unspeakable joy could be glimpsed.
“I am sorry,” she apologized. “I... am a tad nervous.”
“Do you... need a moment to calm down?” the little puppy offered.
I can never stay calm in your presence, she thought ruefully and gave a shake of her head. You
take my breath away.
“Then kiss me,” Kotoha said, her tone that of half a command and half a plea. She closed her eyes
and slightly opened her delicate cherry petal lips. “Hurry, onee-chan.”
Spurred by her sweetheart’s sincerity, Shizuka shed her restraints. Once she had slipped her arms
around her little sister’s waist, the measurement of which never grew in defiance of all the sweets she
14
consumed, Shizuka drew her most important person into a light kiss. She expected one pure like a stream in
spring. She thought she was going to receive what siblings would be comfortable offering each other.
She did not.
The desires she had spent months suppressing and imprisoning in a dark corner of her soul erupted
all at once the instant their lips met. It was by no means deep or passionate, for their mouths simply stayed
pressed together and did nothing more. However, flames were blossoming fiercely one after another where
their flesh touched and rushed into her body shortly before it got blown into a firestorm and drowned her in
an ocean of scorching heat. Fear seized her at the first sign indicating that the kiss was going out of control,
that it was growing fierier, and that something inside her was urging her to devour her sister’s lips.
Her innards ravaged by the claws and fangs of horror, she broke the kiss and pulled away. Her
eyes shooting open, she witnessed the shade of disappointment rippling on the younger Himemiya’s
gorgeous face. It was gone the following instant, replaced by a crimson color that dyed her complexion into
that of a sunset. She was cuter than ever. Her sheer willpower was the only thing that kept Shizuka from
leaning in again and reclaiming these sensuous lips.
“It is rather late, Kotoha,” she muttered, a little crossed with herself. “You should go back to bed.”
Sensing the danger of sitting so close to the girl she loved, she rose to her feet and walked away.
There was no second step. A pair of arms flew around her at the same time a soft bosom pressed
against her back and a pair of moist lips descended on her left shoulder, bare except for the string that kept
her indigo nightgown from slipping down her frame. A gasp clawed its way out of her lips.
“Let me stay with you tonight, onee-chan,” Kotoha mumbled against her naked skin. The sixteen-
year-old’s body was quivering, her voice threatening to break. Her arms tightened around Shizuka’s waist.
“Don’t make me go back.”
“But why?”
Silence answered her. Searing breaths tickled the nape of her neck. Small, delicate hands clutched
the front of her nightgown.
“I can’t explain,” her little puppy spoke up finally, “but I really don’t want to sleep alone tonight,
onee-chan. I tried. It didn’t work. So please? Just one night, I beg you! I promise I won’t bother you again.”
The girl’s desperate imploring tone hurt.
Shizuka detected utmost fear in her little sister’s voice, she recognized apprehension, and she
certainly had heard an insecure note. She knew if she insisted on shooing the love of her life away, the girl
was going to spend an entire night sitting in a corner of her room, trembling and sobbing until the sun came
up. She sighed in resignation. Although she was fully aware that letting Kotoha sleep over on the same bed
was a threat to her insanity, she did not have the heart to leave her most beloved person to her own devices.
Slowly, she turned around and hugged the younger Himemiya gently. “If you really want to,” she
soothingly stroked her sister’s back, “then it is okay with me. But just one night, okay?”
“Thank you, onee-chan,” Kotoha sobbed in her embrace. “Thank you so much.”
Never once did Shizuka expect that her moment of weakness had given the girl she cherished a
new problem almost twice as severe instead of solving the one that had chased her out of her own room.
**************************************************************************************
**************************************************************************************
Himemiya Kotoha left the sanctuary of her bedroom because she couldn’t force herself to fall asleep. She
came into her elder sister’s private chamber to seek the loving arms that held her every night when she was
young and kept sleeplessness or nightmares from bothering her sound slumber. She got what she wanted
when the blue-haired girl agreed to let her stay, when she kindly left a dim bed light on and climbed onto
bed, and when she gently pulled Kotoha into a protective hug. Lying on her side now, the lovely seventeen-
year-old had one arm beneath Kotoha’s head to provide a comfy cushion and the other draped over her
waist, holding her tight.
Given that she was in the company of her onee-chan, she should have been able to sleep.
She didn’t. Kotoha soon discovered that her eyes refused to close down for more than a few
seconds, that she was wide awake despite the fact that it was already past her bed time, and that perhaps
staying here probably wasn’t going to help.
Although she couldn’t explain it to the elder Himemiya, Kotoha knew full well the nature of what
had disturbed her so much back in her own room. It was the memories of the event that had transpired in
15
the afternoon, when she was forced to watch in heart-wrenching agony and blatant jealousy while Aizawa
Nanami made an advance on her sister. She didn’t know whether Mikoto’s class rep was only practicing for
the school play, but the second-year student had flung at her face a possibility Kotoha never thought of.
Her sister wasn’t going to stay without a romantic interest forever, seeing how popular she was
with both sexes. She was beauty incarnate, she was grace personified, and her music could touch the
stoniest heart. People would kneel at her feet and ask for her love. They would kill to receive it.
Himemiya Kotoha felt threatened by the fact. She was frightened by it. She hated to admit that it
was true. All her life she had taken Shizuka for granted. She thought the blue-haired girl was going to stay
by her side, be her friend, keep her safe, and love her until the day mortality took them apart. What she saw
in the afternoon was a rude awakening that disabused her of her naïve assumptions. It was a sight that
injected a massive dose of crippling fear and insecurity into her heart. It had her envision a bleak future
where Shizuka became the girlfriend of some boy or girl Kotoha never met before in her life, liked them
more than her, and eventually abandoned her to pursue personal happiness.
Tossing and turning atop her bed, she recalled the happy moments between her and her precious
onee-chan. The more she did, the more painful throbs lay siege on her already tender and aching heart. She
knew she was being unreasonably selfish as well as possessive... but she couldn’t deny she wanted Shizuka
all to herself. She despised the mere thought of sharing the picturesque seventeen-year-old with anybody
except perhaps her two mothers. She was ashamed of herself for it. She knew not why she was emotionally
attached to her blood sister to the point it tortured her to even imagine the latter romantically involved with
someone... else. The thought and the way it sounded in her head had made her blush and bury her face in
her pillow in deathly embarrassment.
I want to see her, a voice had raved in her mind as fear and apprehension and insecurity tortured
her in bed. I want to be held by her. I want her to tell me she’s not going to love anyone more than she
loves.... The fire that raged on her cheeks had spurred her out of her room.
And that was how she ended up on this bed, engulfed in the warm embrace of the onee-chan she
cherished. Different was the fact that her heart was no longer hurting. What remained the same was the fact
that she still couldn’t sleep. The good thing was that fear, apprehension, and insecurity had all departed.
The bad thing was that what had come to take their place – it was embarrassing, but she couldn’t figure out
what it could be – was no less intense. Worse, this time she couldn’t even move around to distract herself.
Locked in the arms of her soundly sleeping mermaid, whom she didn’t have the heart to wake, she suffered
again. This time, adrenalin flowed free in her blood.
Her entire body was brimming with heat as though it was trapped in a sauna and her skin tingling
heartbeat after heartbeat. Her breaths were so hot they reminded her of the time she was bedridden with a
serious fever, her eyes burning as they silently drank in the noble features on the face of the girl who was
sleeping with her arm tight around Kotoha’s waist. On her side she lay and stayed still, listening to her
heart pounding while admiring the dimples on her precious sister’s cheeks, the curves of her onee-chan’s
pretty lips, and the contours of her small chin. Sometimes, her gaze would trail down and linger beneath
Shizuka’s neck long enough for her to blush at the deep cleavage tightly nestled between a pair of round
and beautiful breasts, one of which was mostly exposed due to a stir of the elder Himemiya earlier, which
caused one of her nightgown straps to slide down her slim shoulder.
Sometimes she would lower her eyes far enough to see that the hem of the indigo nightgown had
ridden up to Shizuka’s hips, revealing a pair of smooth, toned thighs that shone like ivory under the bed
lamp’s pool of illumination. Kotoha never realized how long they were, how deliciously taut they were, or
how much she would like to run her hand over their flesh. She blushed. Nested between those lithesome
legs was the gorgeous rose she had had a chance to admire the previous night. It was decently and elegantly
embraced by a pair of white cotton panties with laces beneath the waistband and a small ribbon at the front.
The undergarment looked very cute on her sweetheart.
In bed with such a beautiful girl, she thought ruefully, how am I supposed to sleep?
She wasn’t. She ended up staying awake, half-voluntarily and half not, until the morning, having
spent every moment that passed gazing, sometimes unblinkingly, at the adorable sleeping face of her elder
sister. While Shizuka was already visually stunning even in the dim bed light, she grew even more so as the
light of the world slowly emerged from the distant horizon and visited the room through the glass pane on
the other side of the bed. Himemiya Kotoha felt her breaths taken away as daybreak lit up the princeling’s
gorgeous countenance, painting it with a radiant sheen one would see from silk or satin. It emphasized her
noble features. It bathed her glossy azure hair in golden light.
16
Kotoha’s cheeks, as they often were during the course of the night, were hot. Her breathing was
quick, her heart aflutter, her stomach doing somersaults under the influence of a powerful urge she couldn’t
recognize. She didn’t understand why simply watching a girl, her sister at that, had this kind of effect.
She burrowed more deeply into the mermaid’s embrace, putting her face a little closer to that of
the latter. This close, she could take in the older girl’s breaths. They were so warm and fragrant they were
reminiscent of a gust of wind in summer that happened to pass over a field of orchid flowers in full bloom.
They intoxicated her so greatly she grew tipsier with every intake of air.
Her eyes dawned on the seventeen-year-old’s lips. Her face burned as the recollection of last night
spun across her vision. The taste of the kiss, soft and searing and sweet, still lingered on her lips. The
joyous feelings granted to her the moment their mouths melded together the previous evening resurfaced in
her mind. Then came the disappointment. The kiss had been brief and by no means satisfying. She wasn’t
proud of her thoughts, but she did wish Shizuka had pinned her down on the bed and kissed her until they
fell asleep. For some reason, she had come to view that meeting of lips, delicious to both the body and the
soul, as an addicting drug one single taste of which had her on her knees and begging for more.
She wondered if Shizuka would mind if she stole just a little kiss.
The next few minutes were torturous as she couldn’t decide between claiming the lips of her onee-
chan and waiting for the latter to wake. More than once she tremblingly tried to close the distance between
their mouths just so she could once again indulge herself in last night’s sensation. For an equal number of
times she pulled back, berating herself that something as precious as a kiss on the mouth shouldn’t be taken
away without the beautiful mermaid’s permission.
Her struggle end the moment she noticed that a change was taking place upon Shizuka’s visage.
The seventeen-year-old’s cheeks were gaining in color and heat. Her lithe frame was trembling slightly.
And yet she remained lodged in the ocean of the dark, seemingly occupied by a gripping dream.
Himemiya Kotoha was wondering what was happening to her sweetheart – since when did I start
thinking of her in such a way? a voice whispered from the dark recesses of her mind – when the princeling
began to speak in a voice so soft she could have been talking to herself.
The hot and sultry words flowed from those cherry-petal lips fastened an invisible claw around
Kotoha’s heart and sent her staggering out of the beloved seventeen-year-old’s room. The organ pounding
inside her ribcage hurt so terribly she thought she was going to collapse onto the carpeted floor more than
once before she safely reached her bed. Atop the soft and comfortable mattress she trembled. Into the
pillow she issued hot, ragged breaths. There, she let her mind spin endlessly in chaos while wondering why
she was behaving in such a peculiar way.
What could have been wrong with me, onee-chan? she thought.
More thoughts, all dark and impossible to decipher, bubbled up from the depth of her heart until
she couldn’t stand it anymore. Bounding to her feet, she fetched clean clothes and a towel from a closet and
hurried out of her room, fervently hoping the hot water of the bathtub would wash all of her trouble away.
17

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My sister and I------------------------------- Chapter Two ---------------------------- Hidden emotions.

CHAPTER TWO: HIDDEN EMOTIONS.

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