After saying his goodbyes to Yukio, Horikita Manabu finally shifted his gaze toward his little sister, falling into a brief silence.
Horikita Suzune was just as tense. Her left hand was pressed against her chest, while her right hand had nowhere to go, wandering anxiously through the air.
Yukio, on the other hand, was purely here for the show—that alone was enough to make Horikita Manabu hesitate.
…This is bad, he thought. I forgot to have her step away before I talked to Yukio.
At the core of it, it was because his farewell with Yukio hadn't contained anything that needed to be hidden. Letting his sister listen openly wasn't a problem. If anything, she might even gain some insight from it—some perspective for her own life.
But now that he wanted to talk to his sister, he no longer had any decent reason to ask Yukio to leave. He couldn't very well say, "You could stay for my talk with Yukio, but now that I'm talking to my sister, you have to go." That would be way too awkward.
Still, Suzune and Yukio had two more years of school together. It was fine. In a sense, he was also entrusting his sister to Yukio's care.
Thinking that, Horikita Manabu stopped hesitating.
"Before I realized it, a full year has passed," he said. "Suzune… you finally managed to face me."
"Ah… that…"
Hearing his quiet sigh, Suzune still couldn't quite relax. Her heart was still in knots. But under Yukio's presence at her side and her brother's gaze in front of her…
That uneasy, nervous feeling slowly turned into momentum, helping her calm down bit by bit.
"Y-yes," she answered. "To be honest, I… still feel… confused, inside."
As those words from her heart slowly came out, Horikita Suzune seemed to find her rhythm. Her speech became smoother, more earnest.
"I actually really wanted to… see you off, Brother. But I was scared. I was afraid that if someone as useless as I am showed up to send you off… it would only upset you, make you feel I'm still just as disappointing."
"Only… Yukio said something that really struck me. No matter what, I shouldn't keep running away from this. From the moment I chose to enroll at ANHS… it was because there were a lot of things I wanted to say to you, Brother."
Horikita Manabu didn't interrupt her emotion or her words. The affection behind his glasses softened his gaze as he watched his sister.
He didn't ask what, exactly, she'd wanted to tell him. He just quietly gave her the time she needed to put her feelings into words.
He didn't know whether it was Yukio's presence, or his own gaze, that gave her courage, but Suzune's anxious heart was already regaining its composure.
The sweat-damp fist she'd been clenching finally relaxed on its own.
"But… it's different now than it was when I enrolled," she continued. "What I'm thinking, what I want to tell you… isn't the same anymore."
"At first, all I wanted to say was that I could be reliable. That I could catch up to you. If you could attend ANHS, then I could get in too."
"I wanted to tell you that as your little sister, I hadn't shamed you."
"But… now, a year later, I don't think that way anymore. That's no longer what I want to tell you."
"What I really want to say is this…!
"From the time I was small, I've always been chasing after your back, Brother. Whether it was studying or sports, all I ever thought about was copying you, achieving what you achieved."
"Academics, athletics—it was all for the sake of earning your approval. That's the only reason I did any of it."
"Brother, you were like a great mountain standing at the front of my life's path. Throughout my entire life so far, there has only ever been that one mountain. Everything I did was just imitation—trying to become a mountain like you."
"But things are different now. There's another, even higher mountain up ahead."
"The first time, during the workplace exam, when you lost to Yukio… I really didn't want to accept it. In my mind, you were so outstanding that you could never lose to anyone."
At that point, Yukio's expression turned especially alert and amused, while Horikita Manabu's face slowly grew a bit stiff.
But Suzune didn't notice. She kept spilling everything out like a machine gun, desperate to empty her heart.
"Back then, I deliberately downplayed it. I forced myself not to think about it, not to remember."
"I kept telling myself you hadn't really lost, and I made up all sorts of excuses to protect that idea."
"Because… I really, really wanted to surpass that guy."
"I wanted there to be a day where I could stand in front of him fair and square and say, 'I can beat you.' I wanted to make him regret beating me that time at Field 3 during the sports festival."
"If, in my mind, even the most outstanding brother I worship lost to Yukio… then what chance would I ever have of catching up to him?"
At that, Horikita Manabu instinctively threw a glance at Yukio, not sure whether to feel pleased or depressed.
Pleased that his sister held such deep admiration for him. Depressed that, in her eyes, he was already below Yukio.
Yukio listened with a grin and noticed that sideways look.
He shrugged lightly. "Isn't that good, though? Admiration is the emotion farthest from understanding. In the future, your sister will definitely understand you a lot better."
As for Suzune wanting to make him regret teaching her at the sports festival—that part, he actually found pretty interesting.
"Ahem."
Horikita Manabu's expression was complicated. On one hand, Yukio's line was annoyingly on point—admiration and understanding are far apart really did sound like a famous quote. On the other hand, he really didn't want their rare sibling talk getting derailed by Yukio's commentary.
But there wasn't much he could do about Yukio here. So he could only turn back to his sister.
"So," he asked, "you've decided to become another mountain yourself?"
Suzune didn't let Yukio's interjection, or her brother's question, shake her resolve.
She tightened her hand into a fist again, as if trying to show her determination in front of him. She squeezed so hard that the pale skin on the back of her hand swelled with a few faint green veins.
"No. I'm not going to copy anyone ever again."
"That's what I really wanted to tell you in the end, Brother."
"Because after all this time, even if I keep trying not to think about your loss… I still have to face reality."
"I have to face the fact that on the road ahead of me, there's a mountain even higher than the one that was already there."
"Just like before—when all I did was chase you, Brother, and I could never surpass you like that. If I just switch to copying Yukio now, does that suddenly guarantee I'll surpass him?"
"The world is huge. Who's to say I won't meet someone even more exceptional than the two of you someday?"
"I used to stubbornly believe you were the most outstanding person there was—but that belief was shattered by him."
"So maybe one day, someone even more outstanding than him will appear too. There's no way for me to declare that he's the 'highest mountain.' I can't build my life around imitating him either."
"I've already decided—I'm going to walk my own path."
"With my own strength, without copying anyone, without chasing anyone's shadow… I'm going to surpass both of you."
....
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