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Aponia had a point, even if Elysia didn't quite understand why, in Aponia's words, she was always the one who needed looking after.
She rolled out of bed, her body still feeling a bit weak. She still didn't have her slippers, and the freezing floor felt incredibly uncomfortable under her feet. I should have just stayed in bed yesterday.
She marched toward the living room with an aggressive air, though she hesitated mid-stride: Should I be gentle, or firm, or should I just go limp and act spoiled? After all, those were all her specialty moves.
But...
"What are you doing?"
"Playing games."
Kaito looked up, not understanding what kind of mood Elysia was in now. Aside from gaming, what else was there to do at home? Chores? Give him a break; he wasn't that much of a martyr.
"...Waaah, Kaito, is your way of sulking alone just playing games?"
Elysia sniffled and quickly leaned over, only to find that Kaito was playing a simple stress-relief game with zero competitive edge.
Kaito lowered his gaze back to the screen. "I booked a psychiatric consultation for this afternoon. We have about three hours. We'll head out right after lunch, so don't think about running off."
His tone was flat, as if nothing had happened.
"Kaito?"
Elysia pressed her legs together and sat down obediently beside him. She felt like if she wanted to mend their relationship, they'd have to swap roles for a few days... though she didn't mind playing the "little sister" role.
"Something the matter?"
Kaito continued slicing fruit on the screen. Naturally, it wasn't the official version; it was a pirated, pure-stress-relief version without a ton of miscellaneous bloatware. He had cracked it himself—it was actually quite therapeutic. He didn't use it for profit, and out of a sense of ethics, he hadn't even shared it with friends.
"I'm sorry... I should have told you about that stuff sooner."
"No need."
He didn't even look up. There was no point; what happened, happened. Apologies after the fact were useless.
"Can't you at least look at me?"
Elysia suddenly felt a pang of hurt. Now she looked like the immature child, even though back in the day, both of their tuitions had been paid for by her streaming earnings.
"...What you should be doing right now is going back to your room to put on slippers, then chatting with your friends or continuing that weird job of yours. Kill some time until 1:00 PM, and I'll take you to the hospital to get your brain checked."
Kaito's tone was utterly calm.
This made Elysia even sadder. A single group chat made it feel like they were about to sever their sibling ties. Boys really are heartless; they don't give you any room to negotiate.
Elysia stood up, huffing. "Don't you have things you're hiding from me too?"
Why was a group chat treated like a capital crime? She had actually been very happy during university. And apologies are supposed to be a two-way street; Kaito wasn't cooperating at all.
Kaito glanced up and gave a soft laugh. "If I do, then I do. It doesn't matter. What happened before is in the past. Don't overthink it, Sis."
Waaaah! T﹏T
Elysia's emotions crumbled instantly. She suspected Kaito was lying, but since they knew each other inside out, they both knew exactly how to break the other's defenses.
"I was wrong, Kaito~"
She cautiously tugged at Kaito's sleeve. He must be truly fuming if he was starting to poke at her heart like this.
"I said there's no need!" Kaito's voice finally had some inflection. "Who you make friends with is your business. I have my own friends too. You calling them 'family' doesn't mean anything—that's just your personality, I've always known that."
It was just that since his rebirth, everything had gone so smoothly that he had developed a dreamlike illusion that everything in his life was flawless. Now, he was just crashing back to reality. But that wasn't a bad thing; people need boundaries. Most of the time, the person who doesn't understand boundaries is the one who ends up being disliked.
Elysia sobbed quietly, reaching out to touch her heartless brother's cheek.
"Then... in the future, when we eat noodles, will you still give me your fried egg?"
Kaito: "..."
"And when we eat spicy crawfish, will you still peel them for me?"
Kaito: "..."
"When we eat watermelon, can I still have the first bite of the sweetest part in the middle?"
Kaito was starting to lose his cool. These trivial things from the past sounded so ridiculous when brought up now.
"Elysia, go torment a future boyfriend, okay? Since when are younger brothers meant to be bullied like this!"
Thinking about it, his life had been so dreamlike—yet he had never dated. Was it because Elysia had "ruined" him by giving him unrealistic fantasies about romance?
Kaito held his head. He suspected Elysia was intentionally stabbing him in the heart right now.
"But we've been like this since we were little."
"I...!"
Heh. Hehehe!
Kaito suddenly covered his face and laughed. "Damn it, Elysia. If we keep arguing, I'm actually going to have the urge to kill you."
Sigh, it's better to just play hack-and-slash games. He thought about the second stage of that mini-game again; he hadn't tried it yet. But in this situation, he definitely couldn't go play games.
"Fine, explain then."
"What the hell is that 'One Big Happy Family' group? I'm not angry. Take your time and tell me."
After laughing for a while, Kaito leaned back on the sofa, having come to terms with it.
"They're my university roommates," Elysia explained.
Kaito nitpicked: "Thirteen people? Did you swap them out every year?"
That tone clearly indicated he was still annoyed...
"I rented a house off-campus," Elysia continued.
Kaito: "..."
"Why didn't you stay in the dorms?"
"Because of work reasons, the dorms weren't very convenient. And there happened to be a big villa available—it was cheap, but there were a lot of tenants."
Kaito went silent for a good while. There were so many problems with that sentence that he didn't know where to start criticizing first.
"Elysia! Who gave you the guts to rent a place like that?"
"Eden was there too, and everyone was really nice. That year the snow blocked the roads, and our New Year's Eve dinner was so much fun."
Thinking back, Elysia smiled instinctively, dimples appearing on her fair cheeks. Everyone was nice—all thirteen of them. Even the most foul-mouthed one, Kalpas, was very considerate of others. Back then, Elysia thought the whole world was full of people like that. Though after graduation, she realized she had been over-optimistic.
"And then you all became a 'family.'"
Kaito crossed his arms, no longer truly angry. The emotional fallout had been calculated and dealt with.
Elysia: "..."
The conversation seemed to have looped back to the start. She wiped away her non-existent tears, stood up on the sofa, and looked down at him.
"Then why didn't you look at my phone before! Why didn't you care about my social life! Why is your desire for control so low!"
"I didn't hide anything from you before, so why didn't you ever ask me?"
"And besides, I'm the older sister, right? I know everything about you, but you don't even know who my friends are. Ask yourself: is this a failure of a sister, or a failure of a brother!"
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