Oniisan 7: Rip

There were a million things I could have done instead: told him in all seriousness that my love for him was not child's play; closed that distance and kissed him; stripped right then and there... I could have finished the seduction game. But when he said "Get changed," my mind registered, "Not this." A funny emptiness suddenly vacuumed away my heart, and I fled in tears.

Cue an emotional retreat into the bedroom.

So I lay there, soaking the sheets, dampening the bed, as my rain-drenched clothes dried against my skin. I shivered, but there was no motivation to move. I lay on my side, arms tucked close to me, and the first thing in my line of vision was Yulia the bear and the thing going through my head was, How could you do this to me? And in another split second I realized that I was doing it all to myself and didn't know who to hate now because I most obviously was incapable of hating him, and hating oneself must run contrary to some natural law.

And so I lay there, exhausted and brain dead with agony.

The pounding of rain was muffled by the closed windows. I could faintly hear the dryer's hum bouncing around downstairs. Over that was the sound of footsteps. My pulse quickened. Adrenaline shot through my veins but I was too frozen to move.

The door opened.

My eyes were closed and, motionless, I was, to all appearances calm, perhaps even asleep.

He sat on the edge of my bed.

"Are you angry?"

"No."

"You'll catch cold if you stay in wet clothes."

"I know."

"Come on. Get up."

I cracked open an eye. He sat directly across me, face once again holding that tenderness I see only when he has done me wrong. Gingerly, I hauled myself upright, flinching when the soft material of a towel met my face. If I did away with that towel, his hand would be...

I shuddered. Violently.

"Yulia." The worry in his eyes closed up my throat. I wanted to tear up. He shifted closer, rubbing my hair dry. It was my last chance. I was determined to gamble everything on that last chance.

Conscious that he was watching me, I looked up; held his eyes. A tug, and the apron came off in a crumpled heap. I knew what I was going to do. I was fully conscious of every second of it, but no shame came upon me; no blush averted my eyes because I was doing it to show him just how much I–

He grasped my hands. The buttons were halfway undone. The towel slipped from my head to shroud around my shoulders. His fingers pressed against my trembling lips. His eyes were saying, "Don't."

Tears spilled over. But as I cried he leaned down, his head touching mine and his breath in my ear. The arm around my back was strong, almost possessive; the hand on my shoulder grasped it hard. "I'm your brother," he whispered, and I heard the tiredness in his voice.

"We're siblings."

"Yes." There was a hint of relief there.

Taking the hand over my mouth, I pressed it to the exposed skin of my chest. Tears slipped one after the other down my cheeks. "But I can't stop."

~010101~

It had kept raining since then. The pavements had a sheen of water over them – tiny eddies that rippled with each fall of the raindrops. I stared outside my classroom window and couldn't see all the way across to the seniors' building for the fog.

"Heeh, it's raining again..."

"Dont' you have an umbrella, Misa-chan...?"

"I forgot to bring it..."

"She's just waiting for Maki-senpai to offer her one!"

"Ssh! Yulia-san can hear you!"

I heard them loud and clear, and my heart clenched at the unfairness of it all. What made being blood related so special anyway? If anything, I loved Oniisan more than those girls did. I loved him most in the whole world. But that love was supposed to be dirty just because he was my brother?

A loud scrape of the chair in front of me brought Kiyota. "Yo," was all he said, already beginning to tilt his seat back, arms crossed behind his head.

I refused to acknowledge him.

"I won't judge you, you know."

"Neither do you have any right to."

He appraised me for a long minute, and then his chair fell back on all fours and he leaned far forward onto my desk. "Look, what's gotten you all riled up?"

"You getting into my business?"

"No, before that." Propping his chin on one palm, he followed my gaze. "It's impossible to see through that fog."

"The most important things are seen through the heart."

He grinned at me. "Damn. So you really were listening during Literature. I thought you were spaced out."

I smiled back, despite myself. "Ne, Kiyota, why are you so persistent?"

"Because I'm the Golden Rookie." He went back to staring out the window.

"Only in basketball."

"Naw. I'm the Golden Rookie in real life, too. I want to take care of you, Yulia-san."

I stared at the back of his mop of hair for the longest time after that comment. And just after I muttered, "I don't need it," he shot up straight and yelled, "Hey! The fog's clearing up!"

Nobody ever listens to me.

~010101~

It used to be that ballgames, no matter how high or low the stakes were, were something to be paid attention to. Ball games were Oniisan's turf, and ballgames made me think of him more than anything. It was that flagrant love that he had for it that I saw as a threat, but a threat I had to learn to embrace. It was a threat in whose path I threw myself wholeheartedly, if only to chance a peek at that part of his world in which I had no part.

But bit by bit, that exclusive world of his was opening up to me through somebody else. Kiyota roped outsiders into that world, and he liked pulling me in. And yet the more I was made to see of this world of Oniisan's, the less attention I paid to it. I began to realize that, even if I immersed myself wholly in basketball, it would not change a thing. Oniisan would continue to love it, and I would continue to hate it. For the secret was not in sitting at the spectator seats, watching the Kings mark out their territory. It was so much more than that. The secret to Oniisan's world was in his head, and that was something I could never penetrate.

And so I blindly watched, replaying Kiyota's pleas for me to attend that afternoon's practise as I noted the setting sun outside the large, second-floor window of the gym, and remembering his face, puppy-eyes and annoying and endearing at once.

Oniisan's last words since the weekend jumped into my head. "We're siblings."

The acute pain started me back to reality in time to note the new person who slipped into the empty spot beside me. Automatically, i inched away to give her more space inside the crowded gym, whereupon she glanced up, the ready thanks on her lips dying to the smile that followed.

"Ah! Shinichi-san's imouto!"

I blinked at her.

"We've met before." Sweet smile and a modest nod. "I'm Hikari."

The Hikari I remembered looked a little dazed the first time I saw her, the happy smile on her face matched by the glaze of excitement in her eyes. But the Hikari now was confident; grounded.

I only found enough composure to try to nod and to shut my slackening jaw.

"I don't think I have your name," she went on, and shifted up the thin stack of books and notes in her arms. From one of them hung a towel.

"Yulia." With some effort, I managed to drag my eyes back up to focus on her overly-bright ones. "Hikari-san is Oniisan's...?"

The giveaway blush suffused her face, but she did not bother to turn away. "Classmate," came the reply, her tone of voice and affected manner clearly implying that they were on the road towards something else. "We're lab partners."

"Oh." How convenient then, that they should sit together for one hour every day, five days a week, and sometimes have to cooperate with each other. The could be brushing of hands, embarrassed smiles, fake burns and gentlemanly solicitations, all of which she would undoubtedly take full advantage of –

Hikari suddenly clapped. "Shinichi-san scored!" I turned to look but caught only Kiyota, who was his teammate, high-fiving him. Silly boy. "Shinichi-san is so good I can't imagine him ever being a beginner!" she went on. "But Yulia-san must have seen it!"

I opened my mouth to reply when I understood that she did not expect me to make an answer that would tear down the godly image she built up of him. I would have told her that Oniisan worked very hard to be the kind of basketball player she so adored, but I was not sure I would have also told her that seeing him when he was weaker did not, does not, and will not, change my adoration for him.

Hikari continued to extol his virtues, gushing over academic excellence and sports excellence, and unrivalled manners and kindness and perfection that no doubt every girl in Kainan held of him. Reflected in that warped mirror, my visions of Oniisan became achingly clear, and in my eyes, he took on a form that I had never before wholly accepted as true. When I put on Hikari's rose-coloured glasses, I saw the black patches in my love brighten. Never more sure was I of the truth, and of the sincerity of my love than I was then.

He had shown me the bad and the ugly in his life. I have been privileged to be a witness to the inner him he did not show to his classmates, his teammates, his adoring fans. The closeted side of him was a secret only the two of us shared, a secret that filled me up with enough sense of power to interrupt Hikari mid-praise to say,

"What exactly do you want with Oniisan?"

Her eyes widened and lips began to move silently, though no sound came from them. Looking her straight in the eyes I said, "He's mine." But the shrill whistle ending the game drowned me out and I did not bother to repeat myself.

We stared at each other until the crowd began to break up and we noticed Oniisan coming towards us. His smile tightened when he saw me.

"Hikari-san," he nodded when he was close enough to be heard. He looked in my direction, hesitated, and finally said, "Yulia."

"Good game, Shinichi-san!" Hikari cut in, stepping towards him with a proffered towel. He laughed, thanked her, and apologized for making her wait.

"Oniisan..."

"Go on home ahead," he said at once, eyes hard and unapologetic. "Hikari-san and I have things to finish."

She threw me that resurrected smug smile and inched closer to him. Kiyota was bounding over. For the last time, I sought to capture Oniisan's averted gaze, failed, and at last nodded as I backed down to meet the second fiddle.

~010101~

He is the one who walks me home, who insists on keeping me company when it's dark and I'm alone, and who waits downstairs while I sit on the bed in Oniisan's shirt, popping sleeping pills so I won't have to face him while he's in the house. And when I traipse down the stairs, a little happier for the drugs running amuck in my system, he is the one who smiles and blushingly says he has made dinner.

I take those pills for plenty of reasons, amongst them so that I don't have to feel bad about telling him I'm too sleepy to eat, because it's true, and so that I won't have to remember the crestfallen look on that earnest face when I wake up the next morning.

I barrelled into him the minute I stepped off the stairs, and we half-stumble, half-dance into the living room where I collapsed lengthwise across the couch and pulled him towards me. Inches from my nose, he grinned, face cherry red with pleasure. And I...I am drunk with drowsiness and abandon. My hands tightened their hold upon his collar and I dragged him forward. Our lips crashed. He was frozen with shock; unmoving; and I released him after I felt like I have ravaged his mind enough.

"It was good wasn't it?" I demanded, before he can say anything.

He stammered. It came out in the affirmative.

"See?" I could not help sobbing, and shoved him away. "He would have had that had he not chosen that bitch over me!"

"That bitch?"

"Hikari," I hiccupped. "Oniisan wasn't even hers to begin with. Stealing him from me...is unfair. Unfair, stupid bitch."

"If it's any consolation, I'll always be here –"

Mad, raucous laughter ripped out of my throat. "You? You're no match for him." Kiyota must have flinched, but I did not notice. The drugs were clouding my head, and very soon, I was out.

A/N: I was still supposed to edit this...it is my writer's obligation. But after months of stress and hyper-busy days, it is only now that I managed to write the latter part of this chapter (and also to finish it! XD). As an excuse for my laziness to edit what I wrote some days ago, I will say that I am very, very excited to post this chapter after too long a break. Please bear with me. Future chapters' quality will upgrade after my brain has sufficiently recovered.

Thank you for your understanding. :)