"I didn't want to see you hurt."

"Are you okay?"

I waved a hand across his face, trying to hold his attention. His physical body was here, close enough to touch if I reached, but his mind was drifting, in a place where I couldn't touch him. A place only Hatsumi held the key to.

"Did…did something happen?"

I knew the answer before I'd even asked. I'd seen him running after her, what more confirmation did I need? Why did I feel like I needed to hear the words come from him, listen as he admitted what I'd known since childhood. Feelings which had spread and begun to whither before my eyes, feelings I'd tried to shade my eyes from. I could have pretended not to see, as I always did—to let him catch up to her, to let him show her the expression he never showed me. I could have—

"It's nothing."

Looking up at him, his eyes refusing to meet with mine, and a part of me went numb with relief. As long as he denied his feelings for her, there would still be a chance. As long as his reassurances matched what I wished he'd truly meant, everything would be fine. As long as I never had to see him look at anyone else the way he looked at Hatsumi, I'd be fine.

I wondered when I had become so weak.

I remember, even now, so many years ago, his shoulders slightly hunched, playing with a toy train by himself in the corner of the class. The others had found out about him being adopted soon after the school year had started, and their conversations with him had grown further apart until it drifted into silence. I would be talking to friends, trying to ignore the silence of his presence, and yet my eyes always drifted back to him.

I followed him one day, curious as to where he was heading. After school, he always turned right once he was out of the school gates, whereas the rest turned left. The sound of his lone footsteps, and the keychain on his small backpack flapping against the fabric made him seem alone, more so than he was in class.

Trying to leave distance between so he wouldn't notice, I'd taken a few extra steps in an effort to keep from losing him when I lost my balance, falling onto the cement road with a thud. He had gazed curiously behind him, an amusing picture surely, with dust over the navy blue of my school uniform and a skinned knee, he turned, and came walking back. He bent over and held his hand out, concern spreading across his face, quietly asking if I was all right.

With a throbbing knee, I'd limped as I tried to keep pace with him. He explained that he had noticed me following him about five minutes into the walk outside the school gates.

"It was because—"

"Onii-chan!"

His face broke into a wide smile when he caught sight of the small girl whose hands waved enthusiastically, beckoning for him to come.

"Hatsumi!"

He'd run over to her, my presence a forgotten memory. Watching him laugh at something Hatsumi had said, I'd realized it was the first time I saw him act other than the quiet exterior he had shown in the classroom, in front of his classmates, in front o f me. He made no movement to resist as she extended her hand to hold his.

"It was because you seemed so alone."

Only once I had gotten to know them better did I realize, he was in love with her. He was never alone. He had Hatsumi. Even though it wasn't in the way that he wanted.

I wondered when I had become so weak.