Hisaki covered her face and let out a breath through the gaps between her fingers.
That breath lasted twice as long as usual.
Then she moved her hands away from her face.
Her expression had changed……not the gentle one she reserved for Rinna, nor the stern one she used with her father.
It was something in between—a patience laced with gritted teeth, but held back by blood relations to keep from exploding.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, lips pressed downward, the ends of her brows lifted at a tiny angle.
“I’ve told you so many times.”
Hisaki’s voice lowered to a level that Sumire could just barely hear, but not loud enough to wake Rinna, who was still sleeping in the room.
Her enunciation was much clearer than usual, each word sounded as if it was ground out from between her teeth.
“I don’t want to meddle in your crossdressing hobby.”
She paused.
“But don’t show up around the house wearing that.”
When she said the word “house,” her voice dropped even lower, as if afraid someone at the other end of the corridor might hear.
Her gaze swept quickly over the long corridor behind Sumire… No one was there, but someone could appear at any moment.
“You’re the eldest son of this family. You’re supposed to inherit the household.”
“You let those people see you like this… what will they think?”
Sumire’s eyes dropped.
His silver-white eyelashes fluttered twice in the dim light of the corridor, then lowered to cover his amber pupils.
His lips pressed into a line, his chin tucked in slightly, and his whole body looked a bit shorter than before……not actually shorter, but because he had slumped his shoulders and retracted his neck.
He stood there, the hem of his little white dress lifted briefly by a draft in the corridor, then fell back down.
His fingers lightly gripped the seam on each side of the skirt, creating a tiny crease, then immediately let go.
Hisaki watched him, her eyebrows pressing down a little.
“Mm.”
Sumire’s voice came out muffled from deep in his throat, the end of the word stuck somewhere between rising and falling.
“I understand, big sister. I won’t wear it around the house from now on.”
He lifted his eyes, and his amber pupils were filled with that kind of grievance……not the grievance that came after being scolded, but one that had been stored there for a long time and now flowed out all at once.
But he didn’t cry; he just looked at Hisaki and blinked once.
“I just wanted to show you, like this……do I look pretty? Cute?”
His voice rose a little at the end of the question, carrying a childlike earnestness, as if he were handing in an assignment waiting to be graded.
Hisaki looked at him.
For about two seconds.
Then she let out a sigh.
This sigh wasn’t helplessness—it was letting out the last half of the breath still left in her lungs.
She reached up and rubbed her temples, her thumbs pressing on the outer edge of her brow bones, her index and middle fingers pressing on her temples, circling clockwise three times, then lowering her hands.
“Mm, very pretty, very cute.”
Hisaki’s voice returned to its usual flat tone, but the end curled up slightly, as if coaxing a sulking child.
She nodded as she spoke—a small nod, but steady in rhythm, the kind that said “you’re right, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Sumire’s eyes lit up.
Not the kind of brightness that explodes with a “wow,” but a light that appeared in his pupils while the rims of his eyes were still red.
The corners of his mouth lifted, curving into a smile almost identical to Hisaki’s.
Then he laughed—a real laugh……his eyes bent into crescent moons, and two very shallow dimples appeared on either side of his mouth, making him look like a doll that had all its negative emotions sucked out.
“But.”
Hisaki cut him off.
Sumire’s smile froze on his face; the corners of his mouth were still lifted, but his eyes weren’t as curved anymore.
“Go back to your room and change. It won’t look good if Dad sees.”
When Hisaki said this, her tone had already returned to that formulaic, no-room-for-negotiation Hisaki.
Sumire was taken aback for a moment, then nodded—a very light nod, as if the screws in his neck had been loosened.
He turned around, the ends of his twin-tails bouncing on his shoulders. He walked toward his own room.
The hem of his little white dress swayed gently as he walked, the bow at his back bouncing up and down with each step.
He took a few steps, stopped for a moment, as if he wanted to look back, but didn’t, then kept walking.
Hisaki watched his back disappear around the corner of the corridor, then quietly, without making a sound, closed the door.
thud.
The wooden lattice of the sliding door slid to the end of its track, letting out an extremely soft, low thud.
Sumire walked past the Budo Dojo, past the Courtyard Corridor, past the huge closed sliding door of the Guest Reception Main Building, and finally returned to his own room on the other side of the Inner Residence.
He was the eldest son of the Kurose Clan……Kurose Sumire, twelve years old, just started middle school.
It was a heavy identity, so heavy that it had been pressing down on his shoulders for as long as he could remember, making him too tired even to stand up straight and walk.
His father, Hei Luan Yu Si, had expectations for him that were different from those for his sister.
Hisaki was the Young Lady; he was the eldest son. He had to inherit the family business, had to uphold the Kurose Clan’s reputation, had to become the kind of man that everyone in the organization could approve of.
The kind……who wore black suits and black ties, with thick eyebrows and deep nasolabial folds, speaking in only two-word sentences.
Just like his father.
But Sumire didn’t want to become like his father.
He liked wearing skirts, liked the feeling of the hem brushing against his knees when the wind blew, liked the bow at the back, liked lace collars and white hair clips.
He didn’t know if this counted as “abnormal”…… He had looked up a lot of things online and secretly read a few books about adolescence he’d swiped from the school health room.
He knew that the world’s definition of such things was always vague yet frighteningly harsh.
But in this home, tightly wrapped in walls and rules, he couldn’t find a single person to ask this question.
His mother was gone; his father wouldn’t understand; his sister…
His sister’s gaze was always chasing after Shirase.
Sumire closed his own door, separating himself from the vast, cold world outside that was filled with rules and expectations.
His room was a bit smaller than Hisaki’s, about ten tatami mats, with a similar layout but without all the photos plastered on the walls.
On his desk was a laptop and a few manga; on a shelf were several dresses folded neatly……not the kind shoved into a corner as a secret, but folded neatly.
He walked to the desk, sat down in the chair, but didn’t turn on the computer or change out of the white dress.
He stared at his reflection in the small mirror on the desk……silver-white twin-tails hanging on either side of his shoulders, a white hair clip holding his bangs in place, the collar of the little white dress pressed flat against his chest, his eyelashes quiet and still.
Sumire went to an all-boys school; there he wore a black stand-collar uniform, with nothing to do with skirts.
He had friends at school and good grades—the kind of good student teachers liked and classmates liked.
But every day when he came home and changed into a skirt in his room, looking at himself like this in the mirror, he felt that those three words fit him better.
Better than when he stood on the podium in his black stand-collar uniform to receive an award.
“Pretty” was fake. “Cute” was fake.
Those words were just candy thrown carelessly by his sister out of obligation and perfunctory indulgence—not worth treasuring.
What was truly worth treasuring was the look in his sister’s eyes when she lifted her head toward that person……a look that could burn him to ashes, burn even his jealousy into gray-black debris.
All his desires were worthless in his sister’s eyes.
He hadn’t even reached the point of needing to compare himself to others……his very existence was already a failure.
Because that person occupied all of his sister’s attention, not even leaving a sidelong glance for him.
He shed all the innocent, naive expressions from his face.
The curve at the corners of his mouth gradually pressed down, from the crescent moon shape just now into a straight line without any arc.
The muscles at the outer corners of his eyes first relaxed downward, then tightened upward, revealing the coldness that had been deliberately hidden underneath.
The light in his pupils seemed to be sucked out from within, leaving only a cold, no-longer-concealed anxiety and resentment.
“Sis, can’t you……look at me a little more?”
His voice was no longer the soft, upturned tone he had used when speaking to Hisaki just now.
It was just as quiet as before, but the timbre had completely changed.
He stared at himself in the mirror, reached out, and gently pressed his fingertip against the face on the mirror’s surface—a face that belonged to him, yet didn’t quite look like him.
What his fingertip touched was only cold glass, with no warmth, no response, nothing at all.
That pretty, cute, perfectly polished face in the mirror could never compare to that person’s natural colors.
“It’s all that Shirase’s fault.”
Sumire’s voice dropped even lower, so low he could barely hear it himself.
His lips barely moved; the voice vibrated directly from deep in his throat, as if speaking a monologue that didn’t need to be heard or answered—just something he needed to confirm for himself.
“……She stole my sister’s love.”