Chapter 23: The Unrelenting Campaign

Rina’s campaign of affection and teasing was not a phase; it was a lifestyle. She had an entire arsenal of devastatingly flustering comments and actions, and she deployed them with the strategic genius of a grandmaster.

"Night, Onii-chan," she'd say, poking her head into my room before bed. "Sweet dreams about kissing your sister. Whoops, did I say that out loud?" Then she'd vanish, leaving me staring at the ceiling for hours.

The sofa became her primary battleground. If I was sitting there, she was practically glued to my side. One evening, I was trying to read a manga, and she snuggled up next to me, resting her head on my lap and looking up at me with wide, innocent eyes.

"This is nice," she sighed contentedly. "If we weren't brother and sister, this would be a perfect secret date. We could even hold hands." She wiggled her fingers expectantly. I promptly shoved the manga in her face and retreated to the safety of my room.

Her most potent weapon was her uncanny ability to create situations that were one wrong move away from utter catastrophe.

One afternoon, I was helping her with a fitting for the Amaterasu costume's armored corset. I was tightening the laces on the back, my knuckles brushing against the silk of her undershirt.

"A little tighter, please, my dear husband," she said without missing a beat.

"I am not your husband," I ground out through clenched teeth, my face on fire.

"Not yet," she whispered.

Later, she claimed to have a smudge of paint on her face and asked me to get it. As I leaned in to wipe it away, she suddenly "lost her balance" on her stool, lurching forward and grabbing my shirt to steady herself. Our faces were inches apart. I could feel her breath on my lips.

"Whoops," she whispered, her eyes sparkling with unconcealed mirth. "Almost accidentally fell on your mouth. That would be so terribly, terribly forbidden, wouldn't it?"

She pulled back with a triumphant giggle, leaving me a red-faced, stammering wreck.

I kept telling myself it was a coping mechanism. She was processing the trauma of our situation through humor. She couldn't possibly be serious. But every hug that lingered, every joke that hit a little too close to home, chipped away at my resolve. My carefully constructed wall of "forbidden" was beginning to look less like a fortress and more like a pile of rubble. And Rina was dancing on top of it.