"I'll see you Monday, then?" Isami said, halting at the front doors of the school. Kyohei nodded. "Don't let Yan-chan get to you too much, with your parents gone," Isami said, and though his voice was teasing, there was a hard edge beneath it that was uncharacteristic of his usually carefree attitude.

"I'll be fine, Isami," Kyohei assured him, smiling faintly. "Ayano and I don't do much together, anyway, and I've survived the last week, haven't I? Besides, she's my sister. You act like she could murder me at any second."

Instead of laughing, as Kyohei hoped he might, Isami only jerked his head at Kyohei's left eye, his mouth hardening.

"That was years ago," Kyohei tried to convince him. "It happened when we were eight, 'Sami. Besides, it was an accident."

"Whatever you say."

Kyohei waved as Isami walked off in the opposite direction to the bus stop. He stumbled as a few people jostled him on their way out, clutching his bookbag closer to his chest.

"Watch where you're going!" A girl snapped. She was much taller than Kyohei was, bold and striking with bright orange twin-tails that streamed behind her as she tossed her head, her eyes bright with annoyance as she stalked off.

"Sorry!" Kyohei called, something he seemed to be saying a lot recently. Even if you were the one that walked into me.

"Are you ready to leave?"

Kyohei nearly started at the sound of Ayano's quiet voice behind him. He'd been with her all his life, but he'd never quite gotten used to how subtly she could come up behind him. Perhaps more eerie was how her voice had changed, now that there was no one in their immediate proximity to hear her. Even around their parents, she kept up the façade of quiet but contented thoughtfulness. Around Kyohei alone, however, perhaps deciding it was too exhausting to pretend when he was always around, she dropped the pretense. She was always flat and entirely inflectionless, something that was reflected in her cool grey eyes that were identical to Kyohei's own. Though she had asked a question, there was no real concern behind it, or any real interest to hear the answer.

"Y – yeah," Kyohei said, stumbling over his words. "Let's go."

The bike ride home was quiet, as it always was. Even if there had been an opportunity to talk between street-crossings, Ayano had never been one for small talk. It gave Kyohei time to lose himself in his thoughts, which wasn't always an entirely enjoyable experience.

His thoughts were wrought with unease. In the past week, he'd learned quite a bit. Yamada Seishiro, from what Isami had told him, was popular and well-known around the school. There were more than a few girls at Akademi High who giggled when he passed by, who fixed their gazes on him wherever he went. And he could understand why – he was brooding and contemplative, but at the same time, friendly and amicable to anyone who approached him. He was tall, with handsome features and slightly messy hair that sometimes fell into his bright hazel eyes. Kyohei didn't have a chance, but, well, there was nothing wrong with admiration from afar. It wasn't as if he would have been brave enough to approach him, even if he had had a chance at all. Besides, he was fairly certain that Yamada's closest friend would have something to say about anyone trying to make a move on him, from what little he'd seen of the two of them together.

Ayano, though, was a different story, and that was what made Kyohei cringe inward with dread.

Ayano didn't want things. She ate and drank because she had to, she talked to classmates and teachers because she had to, she pretended to care, because she had to. Ayano had never wanted anything in her life, never, never…except for one thing.

She wanted to feel.

And if Yamada Seishiro was the one that made her feel, then Kyohei didn't know what lengths she would go to in order to make him hers.

It felt like only a few seconds later that they arrived at their home – a pretty white house in a nice neighbourhood, with their father's silver car in the driveway and the little red flowers in the flowerbeds waving cheerfully in the wind, stark against the neatly trimmed lawn. Kyohei followed Ayano as they wheeled their bikes into the garage and entered an empty, silent house.

Uncharacteristically, Ayano didn't immediately drift off to her room. Kyohei rocked back on his heels, biting at his lip and wondering what she was thinking, stood in the middle of their living room.

"I – I have a bit of homework," Kyohei said, to break the silence.

"Najimi Osana," Ayano said suddenly.

Kyohei blinked in surprise. Ayano met his eyes steadily before clarifying…sort of. "She has orange twin tails. She's in my class."

"What about her?" Kyohei asked.

Ayano's grey eyes, previously blank and neutral, became hard and cold. When she spoke again, it was with a chilling emotion that Kyohei had never heard before in her voice, feigned or otherwise. A dark rage that bled into her voice and turned her familiar, plain features into ominous, dark shadows.

"She's trying to take Senpai away from me."

Kyohei's eyes widened, his mouth going suddenly very dry. "Najimi Osana? She's just his friend. Apparently they've been neighbours since they were kids –"

"I know," Ayano said, cutting him off – and of course she did, Kyohei thought in despair, he'd noticed her watching him from afar nearly every single day, noticed that she'd been coming home late nearly every day. "She wants him to be hers. She's planning on confessing to him behind the cherry tree next Friday."

"How…how do you know this?"

"I just do. That's not important, what's important is that she needs to be eliminated."

Kyohei sat down hard on the couch, looking up at Ayano's usually impassive features. Her mouth was twisted strangely, her eyes steely and glinting coldly. There was a sick sensation churning in his stomach, at her features, her tone, her words...

Eliminated. Not...not persuaded, not even threatened. Eliminated...

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I might need your help. I haven't decided yet. It's essential that Senpai doesn't see me, especially me eliminating her."

"My help." Kyohei swallowed dryly. "My help with what?"

"She feels too entitled to Senpai," Ayano said, her voice dropping lower and crueler in pitch, so that a shiver ran down Kyohei's back. "I'm going to get rid of her and teach her a lesson at the same time. She needs to be taken off of her pedestal, so I'm going to turn the school against her. Not only will Senpai not want her, nobody will, not even her closest friends. She has secrets, she has to – everyone has secrets. I'm going to find it, and I'm going to spread it. If I'm lucky, she won't ever even show her face around Senpai ever again, because she'll be gone from school for good."

Kyohei was almost appalled. While bullying and gossip was a common thing at an elite, snobbish private school such as Akademi High, the fact that Ayano sounded so utterly matter-of-fact made him deeply uneasy.

"You can't do that," he said, his voice shaking slightly. If Ayano noticed, she didn't comment, though her eyes did narrow in suspicion.

"Why not."

It was hardly a question at all – it was dismissive, as if she didn't care much for his answer at all.

"You – she –" how could Kyohei explain right and wrong to someone who didn't care what others thought of her actions, who felt no remorse for things that she had done? "I –"

Ayano seemed to be waiting, now mildly interested to hear whatever fumbling answer had Kyohei so worked up. His heart was hammering in his chest, his mouth suddenly dry and his palms slick with sweat. He usually avoided Ayano, at least when she wasn't pretending. It was sick, perhaps, but he couldn't deny the fact that his sister made him deeply uneasy - though he supposed, he was justified in feeling that way. The thing was, though, he rarely spoke to her one-on-one, and he had never, never tried to oppose her before.

This was different. This was so altogether different. He had never seen her before, like this, never so insistent and cold and ominous.

"She's his best friend," he settled for saying instead, hoping, praying desperately, that it would work. "If you hurt her, it would hurt him." He saw her eyebrows draw together, an indication that she was thinking, and proceeded with renewed hope. "Remember that time that Isami was too sick to go to school? It wasn't my fault, and I couldn't do anything about it, but I was upset, right? It would be like that."

Ayano's lips turned down into a frown, of puzzlement, and of immediate distaste. "I would not like it if Senpai was hurt. But he needs to know that he doesn't need her."

"But, but he's not the one that likes Najimi, right, it's the other way around?" Ayano nodded slowly. "Then just, maybe you could convince her that someone else would be better for her, instead of Yamada-senpai?"

The words tasted strange in his mouth. There was a certain degree of unreality to all this – this was hardly a conversation he would ever have expected to be having. But between distracting Najimi Osana from her currently unrequited love and driving her out of the school, well, Kyohei knew which one he preferred.

"Fine," Ayano said, and Kyohei let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding in relief. "There's a boy that likes her, I think, in your class. I'll do something with that. Only to keep Senpai…happy."

But then she frowned, fixing Kyohei with a steely gaze, and Kyohei's heart thudded painfully in his chest.

"But if it's too bothersome, I won't keep it up. No matter what, she has to go. And I don't care who I have to go through to achieve that."

She turned to leave for her room, and Kyohei melted back against the couch cushions, taking in a deep, shuddering breath as quietly as he could manage.

Ayano turned around, suddenly, fixing Kyohei with a level stare that made him jerk upright with anxious fear.

"No one will stand between him and me. Not even you."