Ichika 3

Ichika approaches the Nakano apartment. She has been eating dinner there every night that she isn't too busy with work, despite the fact that she doesn't live there anymore. It's mostly so that she doesn't have to pay for her own food and to enjoy Nino's cooking. But recently it has also been for the purpose of witnessing the newest drama between her sisters.

I wonder if Fuutarou is here. I hope he isn't. Nino is pissed off that he and Yotsuba are walking on eggshells around us, but I don't think I'm as strong as her. I think I'm glad that they are doing that. I'm trying to be a good onee-chan, but I'm too weak to keep this up. I hope it gets better with time.

Ichika runs into Yotsuba, who is leaving the apartment building. The gloominess that she feels from her inner thoughts are amplified when she sees Yotsuba, causing a pain in her chest.

I can't take out my pain on her. Not like Nino. I need to be the mature one. I need to be onee-chan.

"Hey Yotsuba-chan, you are looking better. Are you feeling better after the other day?"

"Yes, somewhat better."

Yotsuba approaches Ichika and gives her a weak hug. Ichika and Yotsuba have always been the most physically affectionate out of the sisters, and in this moment it benefits them greatly. Ichika returns the hug, and she can feel the tightness in her chest loosening somewhat.

"I still have big issues that I'm going to have to deal with," Yotsuba says. "But I'm feeling much more hopeful now. By the way…" Yotsuba pulls back from the hug with a shy look on her face. "How are you doing? You've been really supportive lately, and I'm sure there has to be some things bothering you after what happened on the Kyoto trip and the culture festival."

She really is a good girl. No wonder he chose her.

"I have been fine," Ichika says. "Being so busy with work definitely helps drown out any inane drama that might be bothering me otherwise. I liked Fuutarou, so I was sad when he turned me down. But to be honest, my own guilt from what happened in Kyoto is a hundred times more of a big deal to me."

Yotsuba gives Ichika another hug, which makes Ichika smirk despite her lip quivering from emotion.

"Let's talk soon, 'kay?" Yotsuba says. "Or we could do something together to destress."

"Sounds good. Please leave Nino to me. Focus on yourself and Fuutarou."

"Text or call me any time you want to talk!" Yotsuba says shyly.

Ichika pats Yotsuba on the head. Despite their identical appearance, this is a moment when Ichika truly looks like an older sister.

"Thanks for worrying about me too. We'll talk more soon."

"Love you! Bye!" Yotsuba waves once more at Ichika before sprinting off.

I'm sure she's going to spend more time with Fuutarou. That makes me feel sad and jealous, even though I have no right to feel that way.

I told her that my guilt over Kyoto was worse than my heartbreak over Fuutarou, and that's probably true, but I definitely downplayed things. But that's what good mature older siblings do, right? I shouldn't worry her over me, especially since she already feels guilty about ending up with Fuutarou.

I should be a rock for her, and for the others. I should be strong for them. Right, Mom? Mom would be proud of me doing that, right?

Being strong and supportive will make up for what I did, right? Will you forgive me, Miku?

Will you forgive me, Mom?

—

Ichika opens the door to the apartment and is greeted with a strong and pleasant smell.

"That curry smells amazeballs!"

There is no response to Ichika's proclamation. Despite the smells and sounds of cooking dinner, the apartment is surprisingly quiet. Ichika kicks off her shoes and peers out of the entryway.

Itsuki is seated at the table studying, as she has been doing often lately. Nino is busy in the kitchen, and Ichika immediately recognizes that something is off with her.

"Is Miku gaming in her room?" Ichika asks.

"Yep," Nino says. "Tell her dinner is almost ready."

The gloomy thoughts swirling around in Ichika's head resurface.

Should I go pray to Mom? Or should I go try to talk to Miku? I should do at least one of those right now, to alleviate my feelings a little.

Ichika pulls off her sweater and tosses it onto a chair. She looks down at the short shorts and t-shirt she is wearing.

I should probably wear something a little better when I'm out and about, since people might start recognizing me soon from my movies. But doing laundry sucks.

Ichika goes upstairs and digs around in her room, piling up more clothes to take to her apartment. But what she is actually doing is pondering what to say to Miku.

After Ichika finally steels herself, she walks past the door to Nino's room, which is still a huge mess from her tantrum the other day, and goes to Miku's door. Ichika knocks softly.

"Come in."

Ichika notices that Miku tilts her computer monitor a bit when she enters the room, as if Miku doesn't want her to see what's on the screen. Ichika feels a strong urge to pry and tease her sister, but she suppresses that for the moment.

"Hey, so I wanted to check in. How have you been doing since the culture festival?"

"I'm fine," Miku says. "But let me ask you something. Let's say you have been texting someone for a while and you really like talking to them. You thought it was a guy the whole time, but then you find out it was a girl all along. Would you be angry or annoyed? Or would you care?"

Ichika is confused. "Where is this coming from?"

"It's hypothetical," Miku says. "Just tell me what your reaction would be."

"Well I'd like to know more context," Ichika says. "But it's very unlikely that I would care. It depends on the person, but for me, I get along well with both girls and guys usually. But then there's people like you who get shy around boys. Is that what this is about?"

"No, it's not about that at all," Miku says. "It's just… Well it's nothing important. Is dinner ready?"

"It's probably ready by now."

Miku takes off her headphones and gets up to go downstairs.

"Wait Miku," Ichika says. "After what happened on the Kyoto trip and what happened at the culture festival, I just wanted to check in with you. I'm worried about you."

"I'm a little stronger than I used to be, Ichika. You really shouldn't worry about me. You should be worried about Nino and Yotsuba. And yourself."

As Miku passes her to leave the room and head downstairs, Ichika pauses a moment in thought.

Wait a sec… Was Miku worried about me? I didn't expect that. I wanted to try to express my apology more for what happened in Kyoto, but she kind of turned the tables on me. And I didn't sense any bitterness in her voice. It's almost like she is the mature one and I'm the one that needs worrying about.

Good for her, I guess. But it definitely means I need to try harder if I'm going to be a real onee-chan.

—

After the four girls eat their curry, Ichika follows Nino into the kitchen to help her with the dishes. Once Miku returns to gaming and Itsuki returns to studying, the apartment gets quiet again, with just the sound of the sink running and the scratching of Itsuki's pencil.

Ichika glances over at Nino, and her suspicions from earlier are confirmed. There's definitely something off about her.

I have never seen Nino make a face like that. Ever. But I have seen that face on Yotsuba and Miku plenty of times.

"Hey Nino, is something bothering you? Is Fuutarou still on your mind?"

"No, I don't care about that stupid piece of-"

Nino's sudden burst of anger feels much more familiar than the sullen look she had before. But the burst of anger quickly subsides and returns to the sullenness.

"It's nothing. I'm fine. It's just… Well Bo and his daughter are moving. His boss at that club you brought me to is transferring him to a better job. I'm glad for them… But I'll miss spending time with Maki. I've been so pissed at my real sisters lately that it's been nice to have a sweet little sister around."

"Is that the only reason you're sad?"

"I'm not sad!" Nino's temper flares slightly again.

"You look a little sad. Are you going to miss that big dude?"

"What? No, don't be silly. He's nice I guess, but he's a total idiot. I was only pretending to date him to make Fuu-kun jealous."

"Well, to be honest, it's probably a good thing that you aren't dating a 25 year old guy anymore. Even though he seems to be a sweet guy, it's still kind of sketchy."

Itsuki looks up from her book and pulls down her glasses in shock. "Did you just say 25?"

"He's 23. But who cares about that anyway?" Nino says. "Even if I was dating him for real, I wouldn't care about stuff like that. But it wasn't a real relationship anyway."

"Dad would kill you," Itsuki says.

"Well there's no reason to tell Dad now, since it's over," Ichika says. "But really, Nino, you must not realize how sad you look. Are you sure you didn't have real feelings for that guy?"

"No! Stop with your teasing."

"I'm not teasing," Ichika says. "I'm serious. It seems to me like your obsession with Fuutarou has caused you to miss out on something even better."

"You really think that guy is better than Fuu-kun?"

"I think… Well I'll be honest with you, Nino, and I don't mean this to make you mad but it might… I think you were in love with the idea of love. Not with Fuutarou himself. And I don't think there was ever a chance for you to end up with him. And I should clarify… I myself had even less of a chance, after what happened in Kyoto. So don't think I'm bashing you. I'm guilty of some of the same things myself."

Nino clinks a glass down hard on the countertop. It looks like Nino is about to explode, but to Ichika's surprise, Nino tries to calm herself.

"Maybe your love was fake, Ichika, but mine was…is…as strong as can be. I love him more than anyone else."

Itsuki pipes up into the conversation. "When did you fall in love with him, Nino? Do you know?"

"It was during the camping trip. I'm sure you remember, Itsuki. Being lost in those woods was traumatic. He saved me. Like a knight in shining armor. Though he was in disguise and I didn't know it was him. Later when we had our big fight, he kept pushing me and pushing me, all for my own sake. I feel like he saved me twice. And then during the culture festival, he saved me again."

Itsuki laughs. That is not the reaction that Ichika expected. Ichika has to hold back her own snickers in response, laughing at Itsuki's laughter. Ichika holds herself back, though, because Nino is standing right next to her and fuming.

"What the hell are you laughing at?!" Nino points toward Itsuki aggressively.

"Knight in shining armor? Really?" Itsuki adjusts her glasses and chuckles. "That doesn't sound like him at all. He's an asshole. He went through all that trouble to earn our trust and keep us together because it was his job. I'm not saying he doesn't care about us at all, it's just that we are, at best, friends to him. It's not like he did all those things for you out of love. You shouldn't fall head over heels for someone just because they did the bare minimum."

"Bare minimum? If you were there that night, when he saved me… I nearly fell off a cliff and he pulled me back… I still dream about that sometimes."

"A dream. Exactly." Itsuki bites another cookie. "You are in love with the idea of a knight who saves you. Especially if they look like a delinquent."

Ichika starts to feel a little dizzy.

These things she's saying to Nino… Do they apply to me too?

Itsuki continues. "We went to an all-girls school. We were never around boys. So when Yotsuba met a nice boy on the field trip, she fell in love with him. When we transferred schools, a boy was nice to you so you fell in love with him. You and her would be better off if you fixated a little less, and if you would be a little more realistic. And hell, I might have done the same thing too, if it wasn't for the fact that he called me 'fat' when we first met. There's no way I would have ever fallen in love with him."

Ichika leans back against the counter. It feels like Itsuki's attacks, despite being directed at Nino, are having more of an effect on Ichika instead.

I started having feelings for him at the fireworks festival when he showed interest in my acting. He tried so hard to get me to my audition and to reunite us sisters for our firework tradition. But thinking back, wasn't he just doing that to gain our trust as a tutor? He didn't do it out of love, right? Of course not…why would he love me at that point?

"Itsuki, you just don't know what you're talking about, because you've never been in love," Nino says. "It's like a magical force that pulls you toward someone, and sometimes it's illogical."

"Isn't love supposed to go both ways?" Itsuki asks. "Aside from doing nice things for you to earn your trust, just like he did for all of us, when has he ever shown interest in you?"

"He said he admires my determination-" Nino is cut off by Itsuki.

"And just the other day, he also said he couldn't fall for you because your determination causes too much collateral damage. Truthfully, you aren't compatible with him at all. Neither am I, and neither is Ichika. He might care about us as friends, but what reasons can you think of that he would fall for us?"

Every time I flirted with him, he would blush and squirm. I thought that meant that he had at least a little interest in me. But I was being stupid. That's not real love, that's just squeamishness.

Just as Ichika is momentarily caught in her own thoughts, Nino also pauses and stares down at the plate she is wiping.

"Compatibility is just subjective though, right?" Nino asks. Her tone is strangely pensive.

"I don't know, but it seems pretty obvious to me," Itsuki says. "I can see a lot of ways he would have compatibility with Yotsuba or Miku, but not the three of us."

"That's just your opinion." Nino's words are dismissive, but her tone and expression are uncharacteristically meek.

"You seemed to have much better chemistry with that soul patch guy," Itsuki says.

"You think so?" Nino continues looking down at the plate that she is slowly cleaning. "Maybe…"

Ichika suppresses her own inner conflict for a moment to try to contribute her own words of advice to Nino. "Nino, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. If you weren't so fixated on the guy who chose your sister, you would have realized that there was a guy who chose you."

"He… He chose me?" Nino blushes meekly. Ichika has never seen her sister make a face like that in all their life.

"I think he definitely liked you," Ichika says. "He brought you around his daughter, he had sex with you, and most of all he was willing to be a fake boyfriend for your selfish scheme."

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" Itsuki nearly falls out of her chair. "You had… you had se-…"

Nino regains a little bit of her composure and grins.

"Yeah, a hot guy rearranged my insides multiple times. You jealous?"

Ichika busts out laughing at Nino's sudden change of tone and her blunt phrasing.

"Jealous?" Itsuki is completely thrown for a loop. "I… You shouldn't be doing things like that, Nino… We are high schoolers…"

Nino steps up behind the flustered Itsuki to taunt her. "Don't worry, Itsuki. You'll understand once you experience a dick for yourself. Maybe you should flirt with some of the guys at your tutoring job."

"Nino… you're crazy."

Ichika smiles to herself as she puts away the last of the dishes and plops down on the couch. She really wants to say what she's thinking out loud, but she knows it will enrage her sister so she keeps it to herself.

It's so obvious from the way Nino is acting… The one that she is ACTUALLY in love with is that stupid bouncer. And he just moved away.