It was strange, pining over your own brother. Well, Ankh wasn't really her brother - he just looked like her brother. A lot like her brother. Like her brother's deliquent twin.
So when Shingo introduces her to Reina, a woman he met at a mixer, it's sort of quite the effort to be happy for their wedding engagement. Reina is a wonderful woman, kind, loving, who cooks wonderful food, and is intelligent beyond her years, and she even begged for the dresses to be designed by Hina herself. There's no other woman Hina would want to be her sister-in-law.
But standing beside the other bridesmaids, watching her brother and his fiance exchange vows, she can't help the pit of jealousy in her stomach. For a quick second what she sees is...is...
Is Ankh getting married. And she hates it.
The reception is kicking but she's slipped out onto the balcony, looking over the illuminated extravagent garden. No matter how many people are saying 'Shingo' and 'Izumi-kun', everytime she looks at him, she sees...
The wind kicks up, but Hina is not cold. The wind is warm, and it whips around her shoulders again and again and again. As if somebody was holding her. Somebody strong, somebody unpredictable, somebdoy who could fly away and show her everything. She closes her eyes and slides her fingers over her arms. The goosebumps on her skin feel like fingers. Maybe even talons. "Ankh..." she whispers to the wind.
She stands there in the air and she'd never felt more comfortable.
"Hina-chan!" Eiji's voice breaks through her fantasy. He's calling from the door to the ballroom, wide-eyed and smiling as he waves like a fool. "Quickly! Date-san's drinking and he says he won't stop until you dance with Gotou-san!"
Hina laughs and nods. With that one movement, she feels the wind pull away from her. It centralizes somewhere else - the small of her back - and it picks up. It even pushes her forward and she stumbles. Like telling her that she should go dance with Gotou before she regrets it. He's a good man. She almost hears those words against her ears.
She smiles at the empty air, slowly pulling away from the balcony railing. "Goodbye Ankh." She whispered back.
The dance went full of awkward glances and sweaty palms and nervous steps and giggling. She catches a glance of her brother and he's glaring at Gotou in his protective-brotherly way and it has Hina giggling again.
At the next slow song, she asks Gotou to dance with her again, and then Gotou asks her. And when Shingo and Reina pass by them, she congratulates them sincerely for the first time.