Volume 1 Epilogue

As the sun threatened to set and dusk drew closer, I trudged out of my bedroom to get the tools for our weekly car maintenance session. There was no waiting image of my father in the kitchen though, so I headed straight to the garage. After all, I was already late.

And what welcomed me was Misaki-san, sleeves rolled up, dutifully wiping down the hood of the car with a cloth. My father stood beside her, arms folded, watching her with an unmistakable smirk of pride. It was the same smile that he always propped when I was still the one taking care of everything.

"You're really a fast learner, honey! Keep at it like this, and I’ll have to start slacking off soon!”

She laughed in return, brushing a strand of her ashen hair behind her ear. “Don’t tease me, honey. I’m still a beginner at this.”

The sound of their voices, so close, so warm, froze me where I stood. Just at the thought of taking over her duty felt like an insult to their intimate moment, so I stepped back and peered over the living room window.

I almost forgot that my father was seriously considering divorce just hours ago. Yet here they were—moving together, two halves finally syncing to the same rhythm.

I looked away, realizing how fragile it all was. How easily misunderstandings fracture a delicate balance two people worked so hard to achieve.

I clenched my fists at my sides.

I couldn’t keep pretending this distance between Asahina-san and me didn’t matter. Not when their happiness—their marriage—was caught in the middle of our cold war.

So, before I lost my nerve, I walked away from the garage, feet carrying me down the hall. I passed my own room until I was standing before her door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The desire to retreat never came. I haven't come this far only to leave empty handed. If anything, I wanted to finally get things straight with her. If I don't, I will only witness their relationship deteriorate day by day due to our selfishness.

"Come in." she finally responded after my second try.

The cold immediately hit my palm as I pushed her door open slowly. As expected, Asahina-san didn't bother getting up from her seat to receive me, and she kept scribbling down notes in her notebook.

The realization that she was studying dawned over me, and I took a step back.

"You actually knocked," she said, eyes still on the page. "Should I be honored that you took initiative?"

"Ah—no...I didn't mean it to be flattery. I just want to talk about something."

“If you came all the way to approach me first, then it must be serious. Should I keep studying, or…?”

“If you can stop for a while, I’d appreciate it. It's actually an urgent subject.”

Her pen rolled a little when she finally set it down. She turned the lamp off, flicked the ceiling lights on, and leaned back against her chair. Her eyes, as passive as ever, fixed themselves on me.

“Alright,” she said, folding her arms loosely. “Go on. What is it you want to discuss?”

For a moment, I just stared at the floor, at the line where her rug ended and the wooden floorboard began. The words I've been rehearsing in my head suddenly died in my mouth.

How should I start?

Should I be on point?

Do I remain calm if things go south?

The questions buzzed rapidly in my head. If I won't be ready now, then when am I ever gonna be? If everything is already irreparable?

Fearing this, I sighed.

"It's about our parents."

Our eyes finally met. After a gulp, I continued.

"Apparently, my father already noticed us being distant to each other."

Her lips parted, just barely.

"And?"

"Like I feared, he misunderstood that we were protesting against their marriage. He actually strongly considered divorcing Misaki-san for our sake, though I explained our situation and his errors in decision, and eventually agreed to preserve their relationship."

Hearing that, she let out a dry, humorless laugh.

“…Figures. My mother said the exact same thing.”

That made me blink. “She did?”

“Yes. Only she wasn’t rational about it. While I kept my composure, she became emotional and desperate."

The image already popped up in my head, and I immediately regretted it. I've known Misaki-san as a cheerful woman who loves us with all of her heart, and seeing the other side of her emotions would put me to the edge at least.

"It's not like I could easily take that away from her now that Reiji-san already said it. Does cold water prevent burn marks from surfacing?"

"I don't think so."

I perfectly understood the meaning behind that metaphor. When people are struck with something they never saw coming, it doesn’t matter how steady they’ve been until then. And if Misaki-san already forgave my old man for trying to end things like that, it spoke volumes about her love for him.

"She always spoke about how he loved Reiji-san and was looking forward to the future they had to build. I clearly knew that, and I had to do everything in my power to calm her down. I rationalized things and convinced her that she was overthinking everything."

She loosened up her arms and laid it on the chair's armrests.

"But the truth?" she whispered. "I hated it. I hated seeing her again like that."

Her eyes had lost their usual composure—they weren’t shaking, but I could feel the tremor beneath them.

"I always remember my biological father each time she breaks down in front of me." she continued. "I am always reminded of the countless hits she had endured for the littlest of mistakes she did. While I acknowledge that she found safety in this family, no amount of assurances can completely erase those memories in me."

She finally snapped from her seat and stood up, and I can finally see emotions surfacing from her normally tranquil gaze. A bitter anger, resentment and disappointment—even pain.

“So, yes,” she went on, more firmly now, “I’m pissed because we could've prevented this from happening in the first place. I've been trying...trying all the time to be diplomatic with you. I bent myself in ways I didn't think I could because I just wanted you to share your burden with me, even if I brought it all to you myself. But you—” Her eyes finally snapped to mine, sharp as broken glass. “—you always shut me out. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? To know I was always reaching out, and you couldn’t even take one step forward?”

She wasn't wrong. It was partly my fault that I wasn't able to recover from where she threw me into. But...

"It's unfair..." I whispered.

I tried to take hold of my emotions but my trembling fists gave me away.

“It’s unfair for you to say I should’ve adjusted,” I said, lifting my head at last. “Do you think I couldn’t? That I was incapable of it?”

“But that's the only way this could've been prevented, no?”

“I could’ve—if what you did back then hadn’t left scars this deep. If the consequences were minimal, if it was something I could brush off as childish pettiness, then maybe. I could’ve stood next to you without hesitation. But it wasn’t like that, was it?”

Her lips parted, which I took as acknowledgement.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful that you tried to be apologetic at the time we became stepsiblings. But...that's what I needed. What was necessary at this rate was understanding and compassion."

Her brows furrowed.

“…You think I didn’t try to understand you? Every initiative I made since moving here, was with the thought of repairing us. I approached everything diplomatically so that we’d have somewhere to stand without falling apart completely.”

"Diplomacy isn't compassion, Asahina-san. That was a tragedy, wasn't it? You never had that."

She may have been trying to manage the situation calmly and finding a pragmatic solution that would have the least negative impact. But I'm way past that.

Diplomacy is skimming on the surface to find solutions. I didn't want a "solution" from her. I wanted her to understand where I came from. This pain, this humiliation, and the injustice I she dealt me—I wanted her to be on my side now, to be an ally who cared about my feelings, not just the optics of the situation.

"Diplomacy won't reveal the truth about what happened before." I continued. "You may have thought that the scandal you caused me was like being slapped on the wrist by our teacher in middle school. But that's not what it was."

I saw her eyes widen slightly, as if my words hit somewhere she didn’t expect.

“In this society, forgiveness isn’t measured by words alone,” I continued. “It’s measured by how the person carries the stain. I carried that every single day after you framed me, saying apologies to everyone that seemed suspicious of me.”

I wanted to stop there because a part of me was screaming that I’d regret it if I let it all out. But what good would hiding do? Asahina-san deserved to know the truth of what she had done.

So I pushed forward.

“You don’t know,” I said, my voice breaking now, “what it’s like to watch your father work two jobs—ten hours each, with barely any sleep—just to pay half of the two million yen in six months. You don’t know what it’s like to stand at the register of a convenience store day and night, knowing the few bills I earned weren’t even enough to make an impact. You don’t know the shame of seeing his hands shake from exhaustion while I stood there feeling useless because I couldn't even compensate for what he was feeling.”

I heard a gasp across. She had gone pale, gaze everywhere but me. The composure she always carried, the coolness, the intellect—it all slipped in an instant. For the first time, I saw her truly speechless.

I drew in a shaky breath. “You know what happens when a man spends too much of himself working two jobs? When every waking hour is sacrificed for survival? When a husband is never home, his wife looks for warmth elsewhere.”

Her eyes widened, but I didn’t let her speak.

“My biological mother cheated,” I continued flatly. “She was tired of seeing my dad coming back every night with his body wrecked and spirit hollowed out. And I had to watch him break, physically and emotionally, over and over again until there was nothing left of him but exhaustion and grief from everything he lost. That's why I..."

I stopped, then slowly, deliberately, raised the hem of my shirt.

The scar was still there—an ugly, pale line etched into my abdomen.

Her voice broke into a gasp. "F...Fujimiya… what is that?”

I held her gaze, steady despite the tremor in my hands. “It’s what I did to cover the rest of the debt."

I thought that jumping straight into that decision was impossible at first. But given the lack of options and me growing sick of my father living that way, I pushed through with it.

"I sold one kidney...to the black market." I breathed. "To fill the other million yen I didn't even steal."

Her breath hitched, but I pressed on, my voice dull and heavy.

"It was a desperate attempt to rescue my father. I only told him that it was a wound from an accident in my part-time job. If he ever found out the truth, it’d probably crush him.”

I lowered my shirt, hiding the scar again, though the weight of it burned through the fabric.

“I’m not telling you this so you’ll pity me. I’m telling you because silence doesn’t erase consequences. Just because I never spoke of it doesn’t mean those nights, those choices, the two years I stopped studying, never existed.”

It was only when I looked up at her that I noticed that she was frozen on the spot, trembling and tears welling up in her eyes. She blinked once, and that's where the trail finally raced down her cheeks.

“…S…sorry…” she stammered, her voice cracking like glass.

That was the first time I’d ever heard her break like that. I could see her shoulders slumping slightly, allowing me to see how much my revelations tore her. I still possessed rationality given how emotional we were, but that doesn't seem to be the case with her.

That's because she fell over, knees hitting the floor, and before I could react—she fell into a full dogeza[1]. Her forehead pressed against the floor. I wanted to pick her up immediately but the way her voice broke when she spoke, stopped me.

“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry! It was me—my selfishness, my weakness. I wanted to keep my social status, my friends and the little world I built around me…”

I was supposed to be calm. Though hearing her sobs against the floor, it tore through my defenses.

“I was terrified of being alone. So when they threatened me, I lied. I pointed at you because I thought…I thought it was safer. That if you took the blame, everything else would stay intact.”

“But then…then I found out. It was my friends who stole the class trip money and they used you because they saw you as a weak, people pleasing class secretary. They thought you were someone easy to sacrifice and I let them. I was too cowardly to fight back."

"A...Asahina-san...?"

"I can't bear people looking at me after that, so I cut them all off. I have isolated myself ever since. Because if I can only keep people near me by sacrificing others…then I don’t deserve people at all."

"...No. That's not—"

"If it means you’ll forgive me…I’ll pay back every yen you lost. I’ll work, I’ll study, I’ll break myself if I have to. And if even that’s not enough, then—then I’ll leave this house! I’ll leave you and Reiji-san so you never have to see me again! What I did...I don’t deserve this family after all of it!”

As she said the word 'family', the face of my old man flashed up in my head. The memories of seeing what he went through before ceased to be memories—it became the very image of Asahina-san kneeling broken on the floor, sobbing. Would I just allow her to stray away from us just for me to feel relief from her absence? No, I'm much more relieved now that I am seeing my father happier than ever.

Misaki-san's image popped up next, her constant smile, her gentle laughter, and her kind heart that somehow earned my trust. I don't know much about her backstory, but I want to support her along the way. If it ever comes to understanding her, I need the guidance of her daughter, so as to understand Asahina-san. So the idea of anyone leaving is something I cannot entertain.

Before I realized it, I leaned down and took her by the shoulders.

“I won't let that happen, Asahina-san.” I muttered. My arms wrapped around her trembling frame, pulling her upright.

It took my head a few moments to grasp what I felt. It was far from just holding her arm on instinct, back when she tried to walk through the rain. This time, I was embracing her whole, enveloping her into my warmth. The feeling was beyond comprehension, and it was amplified with her returning the embrace as her wet face pressed against my chest.

“You don’t need to do any of that,” I whispered, tightening my hold. “I don't want to see you work yourself to death. I don't want to see you throw yourself out of this family. I want none of it."

Despite the complexity of our situation, I knew right then and there that I'd give every chance for her to understand my feelings, and for her to accept my words.

I wasn't sure whether she might believe me or not: "It's because I care for you, Asahina-san...as your brother."

Her sobs that shook through me suddenly quieted.

“I realized it the moment I gave you my umbrella without thinking,” I continued softly. “When we secretly shared meals as a token of gratitudes. The truth is, I've always been like this even though I appear indifferent. I care about the people around me, even if they don’t deserve it—especially now that we're family. And whether you believe it or not, you are. We are. That’s what matters now.”

I pulled back slightly, just enough to look her in the eyes, examining how beautiful they were despite the sharpness. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her lips trembling as if fighting words she couldn’t form.

I reached up and brushed the wetness from her face with my thumb.

She whispered hoarsely, “That’s unfair… it’s unfair for you to forgive me so easily…”

That reminds me, I promised to protect our secret just to keep their smiles—even if it costs my sanity. And that involves forgiving whatever they did in the past.

“Then call it unfair." I smiled. "I don’t care. I’d rather live unfairly than carry this poison between us any longer.”

She bit her lip, and slowly, painfully, a faint, fragile smile emerged through the tears.

“…But… I’m happy,” she whispered. “Happy that we finally…reached each other. That we can be siblings for real.”

I nodded, a weight easing off my chest for the first time in years.

"Please take care of me from now on, Fujimiya-kun."

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m looking forward to it too."

With our predicaments finally resolved, a wave of relief washed over me. I can see it returned in her eyes, with a cutesy smile finally forming on her lips as she leaned to embrace me again.

Hmm, my former enemy being my stepsibling wasn't a bad idea at all. Besides, I'm looking forward to whatever this summer brings us, and I'm ready to share each day with her without restrictions and grudges.