"What's got you fermenting like that, Onii-chan? Your face is even worse than usual, and that's saying something."

I tilted my face, which had been planted squarely onto the kotatsu table, to the side. "Oh, it's just you, Komachi."

"Just Komachi? Is that how you treat the other people around you?" Komachi slipped into the kotatsu and eased her cheeks onto her hands as she scrutinized my melancholic features. "Maybe that's why you're looking like that. You made someone cry again, didn't you?"

Even if it didn't take a genius to figure that out, my little sister had – as usual – hit the nail squarely on the head of the coffin, or something along those lines. "I don't know why you'd think that," I murmured, turning away and staring at the window, where the last vestiges of sunlight danced across the crimson sky, painting the clouds orange like the mandarin that Komachi now peeled in front of me. As the smell of fresh citrus slowly wafted into my nostrils, my vision was abruptly filled by a messy array of stringy vesicles.

"Open up," Komachi instructed. I obliged, and she thrust the mandarin segment unceremoniously into my gaping maw. "Normally you'd retort after Komachi said something like that." She sighed. "Who was it this time? The long-haired one? Or the short-haired one? Komachi's betting it's the latter. She looks way more the type to cry."

"That's not a nice thing to say," I chided, even if I was forced to agree. "Anyway, I wanted to ask you something."

"Komachi knew that'd be coming," Komachi replied smugly, popping a mandarin into her own mouth. "What's the question?"

"Let's say I have a friend who-"

"A friend who definitely isn't you, right?"

"-who inadvertently says something hurtful because of a deep-seated complex they have about themselves. What should they do about it?"

The withering look of pity Komachi gave me upon hearing what I had to say was more than enough to make me seriously reconsider ever going to her for advice again. I could take an expression like that from just about anyone else, but to lay my inadequacy bare in front of the one person in all the world towards whom I ought to show strength was unbearable, to say the very least. Nevertheless, what was said could not be unsaid, and I would have to live with the consequences, just as I had done many times before.

"Onii-chan…" Komachi muttered slowly with a slight shake of her head. "If you don't even know what to do in a situation like that, then Komachi genuinely fears for your future." A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Still, that kinda makes Komachi happy, hearing you ask something like that."

"Me – I mean, my friend – being in trouble makes you happy?" I queried, unsure whether to be confused or indignant at her admission.

"That's not it," she said, poking absent-mindedly at the last remaining mandarin segment on the table. "You know, Komachi isn't as stupid and helpless as you think she is."

"I never thought-"

She held up a finger, and I knew better than to interrupt any further.

"Komachi will never stop appreciating what you do for her," she continued, "but sometimes you just try a bit too hard for Komachi's liking. The little girl you've watched over all your life needs some space to grow on her own, too. So, when you lean on her and allow her to return the favor once in a while… it makes Komachi happy." Her smile broadened until it stretched from ear to ear, illuminated by the apricot sheen of the late afternoon, and it was all I could do not to leap over the table and wrap her in a tight embrace. Instead, I glanced away at the window again, hoping that the glow of the waning sun would sufficiently hide the surge of reddening heat that suffused through my cheeks.

"As for what you should do…" Komachi lifted the mandarin and pointed it at me. "What do you think?"

"What do I…?"

"Komachi thinks you already know the answer – you just wanted someone else to say it for you. Anyway, Komachi has to make dinner." She rose from her seat, patted her skirt down, and turned to look at me.

"Do your best, Onii-chan. Komachi will too."

She pattered out of the living room, leaving me to stare at the lonely mandarin segment sitting atop the table, too busy pondering over what Komachi had told me to eat it. My immediate reaction was to assume that she was overestimating my abilities – if I understood exactly what I had to do, I would simply do it without hesitation. It spoke to reason that I only came to her for help because I was unsure of my next step.

After some thought, however, I was forced to concede that my little sister was – as usual – right on the money about me. I could only run away from my problems so many times before they inevitably caught up with me, and I knew I wouldn't like it at all when they did. Besides, if Komachi felt so strongly that I could figure things out for myself, it behooved me to reciprocate her belief in me.

That was what any good older brother would do, after all.


The clubroom was a quiet, serene chamber on the best of days, a place where the mid-afternoon breeze could whistle through the expanse with nary an obstacle to interrupt its leisurely sojourn, where the sun could filter through the glass fettered only by the curtains that were never fully drawn, casting the room aglow with pools of white and gray. As usual, the divine presence sitting nearest to the window seemed to suck in all the illumination that surrounded her, wrapping her in a halation of shimmering sunlight. Maybe that explained was why it became so damn cold every time she walked into a room – she was vacuuming up all the excess energy lingering around her, leaving nothing but a sordid tundra of demotivation and defeat in her wake.

I must have been pondering the thermodynamics behind her physical presence for far too long, for I noticed too late that she had closed her book and was now staring daggers at me, though not at a much greater magnitude of hate than she would normally reserve for a supposedly insectoid existence like myself.

"What are you looking at?" Yukinoshita asked frostily, evidently indicating that I ought not even think of gazing in her direction without her consent.

"Nothing in particular." I returned to my own book, hoping that she would leave it at that. Alas, Yukinoshita was never one to let sleeping dogs lie.

"If you have something to say," she continued, "just say it. Better that than having to watch you act like a voyeur."

There was the kicker – I did, in fact, have something to say. A lot of things. Actually saying them, however, was another matter entirely. In another time, I would have shaken my head and kept my mouth sealed, content – if not necessarily happy – to let the world move on without me. But watching Isshiki wrestle with her own inability to speak up for herself had awoken a similar sense of awareness towards myself, as though I were constantly staring at myself in the mirror, shaking my head at how helpless and exhausted I looked.

For the first time in untold eons – perhaps even ever – the great, judgmental searchlight of my consciousness pointed its piercing glow back towards the land that it presumably defended, and it saw much that needed changing. Starting with this seemingly insignificant moment in the grand cosmic scheme of things.

"What… what did you and Isshiki talk about yesterday?" I blurted out.

The air seemed to stand still, untroubled even by the blustery wind that continued to sail into the room. The frown that marred Yukinoshita's forehead deepened.

"Why do you care?"

She and I both knew that question was rhetorical, but I decided to answer it anyway, in the only way I knew how. "Because Isshiki asked something of me, and I have the responsibility of seeing it through. Isn't that the sort of thing you like? People taking their burdens onto their own-"

The sound of her book slamming onto the table made me and Yuigahama jump. My eyes inadvertently flitted away, and they dared not look back for fear of further incensing the Queen.

"I'm pretty sure I've told you this before, but I just don't buy that." Yukinoshita's tone, though ostensibly measured, undoubtedly carried a tremulous undercurrent. "You insist on saying that you don't like her, one way or another, but at the same time you act like everything about her business is also your business, as if that's your whole purpose for being here at the Service Club. As if the rest of us are just a means to an end." She sighed. "If you want to help her out because you're fond of her, Hikigaya-kun, just say so. Don't hide behind some faux presumption of culpability or self-importance. How do you think it makes us feel, having to listen to you say things like that?"

I slowly turned my gaze back towards Yukinoshita, fearing that I might be impaled on the figurative icicle of her trademark icy glare. To my surprise, what I found staring back at me were the quivering lips and trembling eyebrows of a girl who was like any other – insecure in her emotions, hurt deeply by some affront whose source was becoming more and more obvious by each growing moment. I had always conceived of Yukinoshita as being some form of ethereal entity, a presence far removed from our own plane of existence, a quasi-goddess who might be asked favors of from time to time, but never interacted with in any meaningful way. But if Isshiki could – in my mind's eye – be opened up to uncover the human weakness beneath, why not Yukinoshita? And Yuigahama as well, for that matter? Why put them on a pedestal that they did not wish to stand on?

"It's true that you're the one who's contributed the most to helping Isshiki with getting to where she is now," Yukinoshita continued, an edge of unprecedented frustration now creeping into her voice. "But she came to you as a member of the Service Club, and by extension she came to the rest of us as well. Yet it took me coming to the community center of my own volition for you to accept my share of the help, and even then you behaved as if I was being a bother to you."

"I never-"

"You didn't say it explicitly, but I could tell." She shook her head, and for a moment I thought I saw a tiny droplet fly out from her eyes, though that illusion – a mere trick of the light – was quickly dispelled. "You're not wrong – I like people who take responsibility for their own actions. But this is a responsibility that has been thrust on the Service Club, and the Service Club is made up of all three of us. It always has been."

Of course I knew that. Every time Isshiki came to me – and me alone – for help or advice, a voice in the back of my mind would ask whether I ought to be carrying on our correspondence without letting the other two in on the issues at hand as well. Her request had not been a private one by any means, and without the Service Club I would never have had the opportunity to experience the refreshing rush of confidence and self-assurance that came with being privy to Isshiki's troubles. Yet the fact that it felt good being her confidant of sorts only made the truth of my sins abundantly patent to me.

In short, I was being selfish. I had been this entire time. And I didn't want to confront the increasingly undeniable notion that Yukinoshita and Yuigahama might feel left out of the loop, especially when I talked – or didn't talk – to them about what I was doing with her. I subconsciously understood all this, yet I refused to admit it, not even to myself.

However, I also knew that my own self was the last person I could ever lie to.

"Hikki…"

I looked up. Yuigahama wore a strange expression, one that wavered between sadness and pity, but that did not make her next words ring any less crisply in my thoughts.

"You know, even if we don't show it that much, we worry about what you're doing. We worry about you, too. That's why Yukinon said all that stuff. If she didn't care, she wouldn't bother."

"I…" I bowed my head. In this moment, when even my own conscious self was rebelling against the façade of detachment I had put up, there was little I could do but to admit defeat.

As my dear sister had said to me the day before, it wouldn't hurt to lean on other people once in a while. In fact, they might have been waiting for that chance to feel good about being relied upon, just as I had been these past few weeks. Keeping everything to myself might seem like a heroic gesture, as though I were taking the world itself onto my own back. But I was no Atlas, and the people around me could see that clear as day. Who was I trying to fool, acting like I could easily manage everything by myself? I might've gotten away with that a few years ago, when no one – save for my family – cared whether I suffered in silence or not. Yet that was no longer the case, and I could no longer deceive myself into believing otherwise.

"I know," I murmured. "I'm… sorry. About everything. Also what I said yesterday and all that. It's my bad."

A smile tugged at Yuigahama's lips. "It's okay. You know we're always here to help. Isn't that right, Yukinon?"

Yukinoshita's face momentarily flashed red, though she managed to quell it before Yuigahama could notice. "That's… correct. Don't weigh yourself down any more than you need to, Hikigaya-kun. It won't make you feel any better about yourself. Take it from me." She let out an almost embarrassed snort. "Not that I particularly care that much if you run yourself into the ground, but… it doesn't reflect well on the Service Club, and it doesn't reflect well on you or me, either. That's it."

Yuigahama chuckled, her demeanor loosening in relief. "Come on, Yukinon. At least be honest in a time like this. Hikki needs to hear what you really think."

"But I am being honest. What bearing does the life of an insect have on my own personal circumstances?"

Yuigahama kept on laughing, and I was half-tempted to join her. It seemed as though one of the many knots that coiled around my chest had been untied. In the face of that tiny modicum of respite, the warmth of the afternoon sun, unimpeded by the departing breeze, felt just that bit warmer on my skin.

"Anyway, I think we should be going." Without warning, Yukinoshita rose to her feet, slinging her bag over her slender shoulder as she nodded towards the door.

"It's still pretty early, though," Yuigahama noted bemusedly. "Why are we going home now?"

"Who said anything about going home?" Yukinoshita glanced over me, and for once there appeared to be no visible contempt in her eyes. "You wanted to know what Isshiki-san and I were talking about, right? Well, here's your chance."

I had to do a double take. "You can't mean…"

"I do. We're going to see the student council president. She asked the Service Club for help, after all - it's only right that we give her all the assistance she needs."