A sickly elder sister who needs to be protected by her younger sister and depends on her.
No matter how many times Kikyo saw this trope, it made her heart race.
“Hah…”
Kikyo sighed softly and put the CD case back in its place.
Such a sickly elder sister existed in the real world too, and in the same class no less…
She sat right behind Kikyo.
In short, she was within arm’s reach.
But that sickly elder sister was already being protected from all angles by someone who had even more of an elder sister aura.
Her phone rang.
A ringtone designated for “special care.”
Kikyo reflexively jumped up from the floor. Bracing one hand on the floor and grabbing the bed frame with the other, she walked to the nightstand, bent down, and picked up her phone.
The screen lit up. The banner notification in the center of the screen displayed “Sickly Elder Sister.”
This was the contact name Kikyo had set for Rinna.
Rinna had actually messaged her first!
Kikyo swiped the screen quickly, unlocked it, and opened the chat window, muttering under her breath:
“Is she finally taking me up on that soup curry invitation?”
She tapped out a few words in the text box and sent them, then looked at what she’d just sent:
“What is it, Rinna? I’m free right now.”
She held the phone to her chest, waiting for a reply.
After a few seconds, the status bar at the top of the chat window kept showing “The other person is typing…” appearing, disappearing, then appearing again.
Kikyo’s eyebrows jumped up and down in time with that status.
Rinna was hesitating.
This wasn’t something she could ask casually.
Then a message popped up.
“I’ve fallen for a girl. I don’t know if I should tell her how I feel. I’m a little scared…”
When Kikyo saw this message, her whole body froze.
Rinna had fallen for a girl.
Kikyo’s brain took about two seconds to process the literal meaning of every word in that message, and then immediately—almost in the same millisecond—automatically popped up the girl’s name.
No, to be precise, anyone who knew Shirase Rinna and Hei Lai Fei would know who that girl was the moment they saw this message.
The girl who walked to school with Rinna every morning, who checked on Rinna’s condition with sidelong glances every few minutes during class. It could only be Hei Lai Fei.
Before Kikyo could reply, Rinna’s second message popped up.
“I didn’t decide on a whim, and it’s not some naive crush. It’s just that I happen to be a girl, and the one I fell for also happens to be a girl.”
Kikyo stared at the words on the screen.
This sickly elder sister, even when confiding her sexual orientation to a friend, used such a serious tone, preemptively blocking every possible misunderstanding.
She’d probably deleted and rewritten the message many times in the text box.
For Kikyo, liking a girl had never been abnormal. The bottom shelf of her bookshelf stuffed with yuri game discs was the best proof.
She had confirmed her own orientation since middle school and had never agonized over it for a single day.
But Rinna wasn’t her.
Rinna was probably looking at her relationship with Fei with this kind of seriousness for the first time… Not best friends, not friends, not “best friends,” but something deeper, stickier, the kind of feeling that makes your chest tighten just thinking about it.
And Rinna’s first reaction upon realizing this was—
“I’m a little scared.”
Kikyo hugged her phone, feeling two completely different voices speaking simultaneously in her chest.
One voice said, ‘Tell her. Tell her that liking someone of the same sex is completely normal. Tell her that worldly prejudice is bullshit. Tell her that love only cares about sincerity, not gender. Let her be brave and pursue Fei. Because you know the answer.’
Another voice said… ‘If Rinna really ends up with Fei, will she still need you? Will she still come to you as her “accomplice”? Will she disappear from your life, becoming a friend you can only watch from afar, no longer relevant?’
Kikyo’s fingers gripping the phone tightened by half a millimeter, then relaxed.
She knew her feelings were one-sided.
But she couldn’t deny Rinna’s confusion just because of her own disappointment.
Liking a girl wasn’t wrong.
Rinna needed to hear that. She needed a peer to say it to her with the utmost conviction, no matter whether saying it might cost Kikyo those small but precious interactions with Rinna.
So Kikyo typed a few words in the input box, then deleted them.
Finally, she typed her reply.
“Love has never been about gender, only sincerity. A pounding heart is the purest thing. There’s nothing strange about it.”
Send.
She stared at the line she’d sent, feeling her heart beat faster than before.
As if she had to say everything before she regretted it.
Then she continued typing, her fingers barely pausing on the screen.
“As long as you follow your heart and like a gentle, wonderful person, that feeling is clean and open. Don’t deny yourself because of others’ opinions, and don’t be ashamed of your true feelings.”
Send.
Kikyo turned the phone screen over and pressed it against her knees, her pink hair sliding forward from her shoulders, covering her face.
The phone vibrated.
She flipped it over and saw Rinna’s reply.
“But I’m afraid there will always be prejudice… I’m afraid of being talked about, afraid of causing her trouble, and afraid that this feeling of mine can only be hidden in my heart from the start, never seeing the light.”
Kikyo looked at this message, and the light in her pupils dimmed slightly.
This sickly elder sister was really serious…
She wasn’t just thinking about a romantic love story; she had already added big issues like “worldly prejudice” and “public opinion pressure” to her life’s worry list.
Rinna was seriously considering the pressure that girl might face in the future, so she couldn’t easily speak the words that had been pent up in her chest for too long.
Even if that girl was Hei Lai Fei…
The black-haired girl willing to block the entire world for her.
Kikyo slowly typed a few sentences on the screen, then took a deep breath and sent them.
Then she gently placed her phone on the pink-and-white striped sheets, leaned against the bed, and wrapped her arms around her knees.
She rested her chin on her knees and let out a very soft breath.
The phone screen was still lit, and the status bar at the top of the chat window showed—
The other person is typing…