Chapter 13

Fortunately, I managed to get home safe and sound, so they never found out about my eavesdropping. But the shadow of that day was much wider than what I could possibly have imagined.

The first sign something was off was a couple of days later, when I grabbed a bag full of our dirty clothes.

“I’m going to the laundromat, okay? Be right back. Try not to break anything.”

“Oh… I—” Mana began, hesitating. “I’ll go with you!”

“You want to come…? But why? It’s kinda boring, you know.”

“Oh, well, eh… I don’t trust you with my dirty clothes! That’s it!” What kind of logic is that?

“You know I’ve been washing your clothes there for weeks now, right?”

“Urgh… That doesn’t matter. I’m still going!” Mana said as she stood up.

I sighed and let her come—I mean, I had no reason to refuse. Nothing really happened, other than her being utterly fascinated with the drum spinning around and all the buttons on the machines.

Then, a few days later, as I came back from some shopping, I found Mana curled up in a corner of the room.

“Uh? What happened?! Are you alright?!

“Ju… it’s all gone wrong!” She cried out.

I knelt in front of her, trying to gauge if she was hurt or anything.

She looks fine to me…

“What’s gone wrong?”

“I… I broke your lamp! I’m sorry!”

My stomach dropped.

She doesn’t mean my custom anime-themed lamp, right?!

I looked over to my bedside table, and indeed, there were shards of glass on the floor.

“Oh, the lamp is fine. Don’t worry. It was just the lightbulb that broke.”

“R-Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

That wasn’t what caught my attention, though; it was another item left discarded next to the lamp.

“What were you even trying to do here?”

“I… huh… was cleaning. And… I tripped and knocked your lamp to the floor. I’m sorry…”

Just as suspected.

The item she discarded was my feather duster—yes, I had one of those, courtesy of my sister. I did use it occasionally, and Mana definitely had seen me use it, and she knew what it was anyway.

“It’s fine. A lightbulb is really not that big of a deal. But you didn’t cut yourself or anything, right?”

“N-No… I’m fine.”

“Great. That’s what matters. But like, why were you cleaning? I can do that stuff, you know.”

Yet here, Mana clamped up, turning her face away from me.

“Mana?”

“I-It doesn’t matter! I’ll grab the dustpan!” She said as she shoved me aside.

However, the real kicker in this strange string of incidents happened a couple of days later.

“You’ll… cook lunch?” I said, staring wide-eyed at Mana’s proclamation.

“Yeah! I will! Your sister taught me to, after all!”

“Okay, but you’ll need ingredi—”

“I’ll go out and buy them, duh!” She said as she put on her shoes. “Be back in a bit!”

“Wait, Mana—”

But I couldn’t stop her in time. I tried to follow her, but she bolted out so quickly I couldn’t catch up to her.

Well, I guess this will be a good experience for her.

So I sat around and waited for her to come back.

Sure enough, about thirty minutes later…

“Juuuuu,” Mana said, heaving from her mad dash back. “I forgot to bring money with me!”

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

I stared at Mana like a hawk, barely believing what I was seeing.

She was cooking.

From any possible point of view, Mana was in the kitchen, cooking. Granted, she wasn’t preparing anything too complicated. Some kind of grilled meat in the air fryer, with a side of boiled vegetables and rice. I tried to help her—I really did—but she insisted I let her do everything alone. She sometimes appeared to be on the brink of disaster, with her innate tendency for messing things up in full swing, but she managed to recover quickly enough. And so, with nothing else to do, I found myself observing this oddity, awestruck in a way I hadn’t so far.

She’s really trying to improve, huh.

That’s when a flash of inspiration struck me. I reached out to my sketchpad and began sketching her back. No frills or leaning on sex appeal like I usually did with Mana; all I did was try to capture this unique real-life moment for myself. I could have taken a photo, but that kinda ruins the purpose, wouldn’t it?

And then—

“Auch!”

“Mana? You alright?” I said as I rushed to her side.

“I’m…” She began saying—but paused.

There was red liquid all over the vegetables that had been unevenly cut. Her finger was still dripping blood.

“Ahh, you cut yourself. See, this is why I told you to not—”

“…bleeding,” she said.

“What was that?”

“I’m… bleeding. It… hurts. It really hurts…”

I couldn’t really understand what she was trying to say.

“Well, yes, that’s quite obvious. You are bleeding. It’s not very deep, but these things hurt like hell.” I grabbed some paper towels and wrapped it around her finger. “Just hold it until the bleeding stops, okay? I’ll go grab a bandage.”

But before I could step away from, I saw Mana’s body wobbling.

“I’m… getting dizzy…”

The shock from seeing her own blood, huh?

“Woah, okay there,” I said, supporting her shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”

I brought Mana to the bed, and quickly fetched the bandages; when I returned, though, she was still completely apathetic, not moving an inch.

“Mana? Still feeling dizzy? Or have you finally lost it?”

“Ju… Sorry.”

“Don’t worry. Let me put this on you.”

The bleeding had already stopped, and fortunately the cut wasn’t too deep, so she didn’t need anything more significant than that simple bandage.

“There. All good. Now I guess I should finish whatever you were doing… Mana? What’s wrong?”

She was just… there, sitting still like a statue.

“Oh no, she has finally lost it. Guess it’s finally time to call the authorities…”

Even that didn’t work, huh?

But then, I noticed small wet sploshes on her apron.

“Woah, you’re crying! Wait, was this deeper than I thought? Does it hurt that much?”

“N-No, it’s not that,” she said, taking her glasses off. “It’s just… this is the first time I bled and felt pain, you know? And so I thought, ‘Oh, so I guess I’m really real, huh.’ And it just…”

Ahh, so that’s it.

She had gone through this before with the “putting on weight” thing, but feeling pain was probably even more of a visceral reaction. I felt she wanted to vent, so I sat down next to her on the bed as she caressed her bandaged finger.

“I… I don’t know what to do, Ju. I don’t know what I am. I tried to be a model, but your sister says that I shouldn’t degrade myself like that. But anytime I try to be normal and helpful like she told me, I just stumble on myself or break things. I’m a real person, but I can’t be a real person, you know? It’s like I’m trapped in my own body.”

Oh, I see how it is.

“Is this related to what you’ve been doing lately?”

“Yeah… I wanted to be helpful to you and help around the house, but… And all because you made me this way.”

Her words felt like a punch to the gut.

“Right, this is all my fault,” I said. “If I hadn’t made you to be lazy without thinking about it, you wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m sorry.”

“No, no! I didn’t mean it like that…!” Mana said, standing up. “I’m grateful for you having made me! Really!”

Despite her words, I felt ultimately responsible for what she was going through. After all, it had been my thoughtless actions that resulted in her being like this.

Great, so now we’re both depressed.

“Look, Mana,” I said, turning to her. “You don’t need to listen to anybody’s opinions, okay? Not my sister's nor mine. Just do what you want. If you want to be a model, then that’s fine. If you want to try and help, that’s fine too. You can just discover what you would like to be yourself, can’t you?”

“Right… I guess,” she said, drying off her tears. “I think I’m fine enough to finish lunch, so hold still.”

Even I understood that she was trying to escape the situation, so I just let her do that. The pain of the guilt was too much for me, too.

In the end, she did finish lunch. For her first time, it wasn’t bad at all. But that awkward air between us never really dissipated, just hovering over the apartment, making us both quite depressed.

And the next day, at the worst possible time, the accusations dropped.