7-2 Yearning

Author: Bishamon Mine
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0664js/9/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

◆◇Sight: Yachimata Alice◇◆

 

I, Yachimata Alice, am from Britain.

I used to be named Alice Taylor.

The reason I became Yachimata is that after Lydia-okaasan, who gave birth to me, died, Father eloped with my current mother——Yachimata Kagami-san, and became a son-in-law.

I took the Yachimata name as Father’s child from his previous marriage.

I have a little sister.

A girl born between Father and my current mother.

My sister’s name is Maika.
Maika seems proud that I work so many ways—model, actress, voice actress, singer—and she’s very attached to me.
The neighborhood even says there’s no gap to get between the Yachimata sisters.
Some people call us yuri sisters.——We are not that kind of relationship.

That day, though, we fought.

“Onee-chan, who is this person?”

I was on the living-room sofa playing with my phone when Maika peeked at the screen from behind and pointed.

My phone wallpaper was Suu-san.

“This person…… is an amazing player. I’ve become a fan.”

When I say that, Maika’s voice gets a little rough.

“Wh-why!? Until now you had Maika as your wallpaper! Why someone this plain.”

At Maika’s way of putting it, my voice gets a little rough too.

“P-plain!? ——She’s cute, isn’t she!”
“She’s plain!”
“What’s wrong with plain!?”

——If you’re going to speak badly of Suu-san, I will not forgive even Maika!?

When I glare at Maika, Maika looks away.

“———Onee-chan you idiot! I don’t care!!”

And so it became a fight.

But when Maika left the living room, the fight seemed to have ended.

After that I opened the dresser to go take a bath, and I noticed something was odd.

“Huh? Somehow——are there fewer clothes?”

I put my face out of my room and ask Mother in a loud voice.

“Okaasan, I have a lot fewer clothes, though…… are you doing laundry??”

Then Mother’s voice from the living room.

“Ehh? Not at all.——Ah, you said before you wanted to reduce your clothes, didn’t you. So Maika put old clothes out as charity, as Isshiki Alice hand-me-downs.”

A scream-like voice of shock punches out of my mouth.

“———Wha!”

I don’t actually have a complaint about clothes being put out for charity without asking. In my line of work I have a huge amount of clothes.
There are a lot I don’t wear, and I had thought I wanted to reduce them.
But many of them are expensive, so I could never quite throw them away.
Inside my clothes, though, there is a treasure I would never even think of letting go.

“The dress——that dress alone……”

The pure-white dress Father bought for me when I was little.
The one Onee-chan prioritized me for.

And the treasure that became how I met the most important person!

“……It isn’t here! ……It isn’t here! Why!?”

My head goes blank, and tears even well at the corners of my eyes.

“———Maika!!”

I raise an angry voice, fly out of the room, and open the door to Maika’s room next door.

……She isn’t there.

I run down the stairs and burst into the living room, and Maika has a thin potato snack in her mouth, playing a game on her phone.

“Eh, what’s wrong, Onee-chan……”
“———Maikaaa!!”

With blood still in my head I run at Maika and grab her.
Maika’s face is confused.

“What’s wrong…… what’s wrong.”

I draw my hand back.
And just like that——I slapped her as hard as I could.

It made an incredible sound. I am, even so, an athlete who took eighth in the middle-school kendo nationals in my third year.
And I hit with everything I had.

At the sudden event, Maika’s face is knocked sideways as if flung. She puts a hand to her cheek.
Then she slowly turns back toward me and looks this way.
Maika’s eyes were round.

I was shocked at my own action too.
I stare at my own trembling palm.

Mother and Father are looking this way, surprised too.

Maika and I, always close, who had never once fought.
I had never once gotten angry at Maika, and raising a hand was unthinkable.

“……O-Onee-chan……?”

Maika, tears welling in eyes still round, is staring at me.
But, but…… that dress alone……

“That dress is my treasure……!!”

I shed tears too, and looked at the floor.

“That dress alone is not allowed……!”

When I say that, Maika, stuffy-nosed,

“……I-I’m sorry.”

It was a trembling voice.

“I-I’m sorry, Onee-chan.”
“I don’t want this anymore! ……I don’t even want to see your face. I don’t want to see Maika’s face!!”

I shouted and flew out of the house.

“O-Onee-chan…… wai——!!”

I heard Maika’s voice trying to stop me, but this time only, I simply could not forgive it.

 

◆◇◆◇◆

 

I remember my memories with “Suzuhi-chan.”

Memories from not long after I came to Japan.

“Yaaay, blondie. Delinquent!”
“Foreigner!”

My looks were apparently very unusual in Japan, and neighborhood boys would point at me.
I was still little.
A common story.

I get along well with my important stepmother now, but when I had just come to Japan I didn’t know how to treat my new stepmother, and I couldn’t stay in the house.

That day too I was swinging on a swing in a nearby park.
Then that day, a boy who had gotten carried away dripped ink on my head.

The boys laughed hard. “Now you won’t get bullied for being blond!” “We’re so nice!”

Even I, as I am, burst into tears at that.

“The clothes Onee-chan asked Father for, that I got bought……!”

My precious, precious white dress was stained with ink.
To keep the dress from getting any dirtier, I got off the swing and hurriedly took the dress off.
But because of my long hair, the dress went completely black as I took it off.
The boys made a fuss.

“This one took her clothes off outside, delinquent, pervert!”
“Pervert!”

I didn’t care about the boys’ voices anymore. I could only look at the dress covered in black stains and cry, and I collapsed onto the park ground.

(This is surely punishment. Punishment for me, who can’t fit in with that kind mother. Why did I come to the park again today. Why do I make Mother make a sad face.)

I couldn’t move from regret and self-reproach, only shedding tears, when something was gently laid on my shoulders.
When I looked, it was a thin pink spring jacket.

“A-are you okay?”

I turn toward the voice, and a girl with curly hair in a ponytail.
A girl who seemed terribly frightened, somehow.

“Uwah, curly!”
“Suzusa-germs!”

Apparently the curly-haired girl had put the jacket over me.

“Ah, don’t…… your jacket will get dirty.”

When I worry about the girl’s clothes and try to give it back, she holds my hands, shuts her eyes, and shakes her head.

“It’s okay.——That dress of yours is something important, right?”
“Eh……. Y-yeah…… Onee-chan…… asked Father and I got it bought.”

The instant I said it, the color of the curly-haired girl’s eyes changed.
The eyes that had looked frightened until then suddenly seemed to blow fire.
She yells at the boys as if breathing flame from her mouth.

“———You!!”

A girl’s loud voice you couldn’t imagine from how frightened she had been a moment ago.

“You did this to someone else’s treasure———!!”

At the curly-haired girl’s roar, the two boys flinch.

“——I-is she mad?”
“Um, Suzusaki got mad!?”

Suzusaki? Her name?
Suzusaki-chan runs to the swing, then throws the swing farther from the boys at them like a pendulum.

“Uwah, close.”
“What’s this one doing!”

When the boys try to run, she runs to the swing closer to them, jumps on, goes high in one pump——and jumps off the swing just like that——

“Eh, watch——!!”

——and, drawing a parabola, dropped her foot on a boy’s head.

The boy blew backward with incredible force.

Suzusaki-chan failed the landing too and rolled on the ground.

Suzusaki-chan did hold back, it seems. She had been in a posture to drop a heel, and she turned it into more of a push with her foot.

The boy who landed on his rear starts crying.

“It huuurts, it huuurts!! Waaaaah.”
“S-s-s-Suzusa-germs, what are you doing!!”

Amazing. That thin a body, and even holding back she did in both boys.

“Y-you, doing this…… I’ll tell your parents!”

The unhurt boy raises an angry voice, but Suzusaki-chan’s angry voice is further.

“Go ahead! We’re going to tell your parents right now.——And make them pay the cleaning bill properly!!”

One boy is bawling, but the other boy’s face goes bad.

“Eh…… stop.”

Suzusaki-chan turns back to me as if that were nothing, and smiles at me kindly.

“A cleaner can get ink out too, I think.”

Those words eased me.
……That said, getting ink out was apparently one of the hardest things even for a cleaner.
After that, Suzusaki-chan did what she said.
She explained the situation to the other parents with a precision you wouldn’t think was elementary-school, and got the cleaning money exactly.
She even lent me a bath and clothes so I could wash my hair.

Suzusaki-chan was being scolded by her mother, “Violence is not allowed,” but when I said, “P-please don’t be angry at her!” Suzusaki-chan’s mother smiled like the sun.
Then she patted drooping Suzusaki-chan’s head and praised her: “But, well.——You did good!”

While I was borrowing the bath, Suzusaki-chan’s mother’s kind voice came from outside.
Suzusaki-chan’s mother saw the ink and treated it immediately. Thanks to that, the ink apparently came out properly.

“It’s Suzuhi’s clothes, is that all right?”

Suzuhi…… that was that girl’s name.
And the nameplate said Suzusaki.
Suzusaki Suzuhi-chan.
I learned her name and swore I would never forget it.

After that I came out of the bath, and looking at a refreshed me, Suzuhi-chan muttered——

“Pretty hair…… like a bundle of light.”

It was the first time I’d been told “pretty hair,” and even “a bundle of light,” and I got embarrassed and went bright red.

Then after that we went to the cleaner’s.
Suzuhi-chan still hadn’t cooled down, and she says to me,

“Those guys are idiots too. Kids who get bullied for their looks, they mostly have the makings of a beauty. The kids adults say will become beauties, they’re mostly the ones getting comments about their looks.——You’re the prime example. Those guys will definitely regret it later. Tell them in the future, ‘I became a beauty, see. How dare you bully me. I hate you. It’s too late to regret it!’”

I imagined the future and laughed a little.

And then, several years later——
because Suzuhi-chan praised my looks then, I was able to think of becoming a model.

But I thought then, too. Getting bullied for looks—doesn’t that apply to Suzuhi-chan as well?
She was getting called “curly” and such.

At the time I tried to say, “Suzuhi-chan will…… get cute too,” but it sounded like I was saying I liked Suzuhi-chan, and I was embarrassed.
The words never quite came out of my mouth.

That day we said “goodbye.” At night I was thinking, “I made my first friend in Japan! From now on I can play with Suzuhi-chan a lot!” but……
after that, Suzuhi-chan never came to the park even once.

She was taken in by relatives, I heard.

I was so lonely, so lonely, I shed tears without meaning to. I was a coward then, wasn’t I.

“……I wanted to tell Suzuhi-chan she was cute.”

I was caught by that regret.

 

But she appears before my eyes again, as the new-student representative at Souha High School’s entrance ceremony.

“New-student representative——Suzusaki Suzuhi.”

(Suzuhi-chan……!)

Suzuhi-chan’s clear, carrying soprano—truly like a bell blooming—rings through the gym.

“On this good day of spring——”

I could believe this reunion was fate.

I got to see Suzuhi-chan again!

And Suzuhi-chan, top of the class at Souha High, which is hard just to get into—amazing!

After the ceremony I recalled cool Suzuhi-chan going up on the stage again and again, and trembled with emotion.
After that too, I kept watching from far away, thinking I would talk to Suzuhi-chan someday.
This is exactly like a creepy girl watching Suzuhi-chan from far away, isn’t it.

When I learned the kanji of Suzuhi-chan’s given name, I was slightly dancing with wild joy.

“Suzuhi, Suzuhi!! ——A cool princess, what a wonderful name!!”

No, correctly, I am a creepy girl watching Suzuhi-chan from far away, aren’t I.

The whole school——even the teachers—would get Suzuhi-chan’s name wrong…… I had sworn in my heart that I alone would never get Suzuhi-chan’s name wrong.
And then that day, my bicycle broke and I rode the monorail.

Without knowing the Shonan Monorail was such a terrifying place.

While I was pale and trembling, someone stood beside me in my vision.
I look up, and the one watching me with concern was a curly-haired girl.

(Suzuhi-chan!?)

Without meaning to I was gripping the hem of her clothes, clinging.
Suzuhi-chan always appears in my pinch.

But Suzuhi-chan had completely forgotten about me.
So the things from when we were little are still a secret for now.

But the Suzuhi-chan I reunited with, maybe because of old trauma, didn’t seem to have confidence in her looks.
Then I will say it.

The way Suzuhi-chan did for me, so I could have confidence in my looks.
I will keep saying it. “You’re cute.”

◆◇◆◇◆

When I say to Suu-san, “Help my sister,” she nods firmly.

“Leave it to me.”

Suu-san, who until a moment ago had seemed somehow unreliable, suddenly changes atmosphere.
I felt that if I left it to this person, nothing was frightening.
This person seemed like she would make even a situation that looked impossible possible.
That is how she looks now.

I point the camera at her, who has suddenly put on reliability, as if smitten.

She turns as she climbs the ladder to the cockpit.

“Come with me.”