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In a match between the two of us, who would win?
The bathtub was filled with water of the perfect temperature, but Sora had remarked earlier that it was burning. Shiro didn’t understand him; obviously, it needed to be warm to feel good—maybe his skin was just too sensitive.
It was rare for her to get to do stuff like this. The aroma was good, everything was perfect and she should be relaxed by all means, but instead, being alone like this gave her mind the freedom it’d been craving to think—overthink, really—about all the things that she’d temporarily buried away. Things that she could pretend didn’t exist when she was busy playing a game or being in the company of others—they hit her like a truck now.
Shiro thought she was cursed sometimes; with her streak of bad luck, she’d probably manage to lose in every gacha game known to man. It was ironic how for all the emotional intelligence Sora claimed to possess, he was somehow none the wiser to her feelings towards him.
Seriously, she’d done pretty much everything to show how she felt for him, but he just wouldn’t understand for some reason. What kind of sister would sit on her brother’s lap and outright flirt with him? It was so infuriating that she couldn’t stop herself from doing all these things due to her own uncontrollable desire—and privately, that one in a hundred chance that he would somehow understand and reciprocate—only for them all to go unnoticed or ignored.
When it came to these things, Shiro’s own intelligence unfortunately also fell short. Being younger than Sora meant she had less experience with romance than he did, and honestly, she knew she didn’t look to be the type of person who would care about these things. She didn’t know what to do. It didn’t make sense for a perverted teenager like Sora not to understand the meaning behind her words, right?
Or maybe—and Shiro despised entertaining this notion—he noticed her advances and didn’t want to hurt her feelings, ergo his ignorance and avoidance. Smiling at her and rubbing the back of his head as if it would soothe her feelings and make them disappear. Shiro hated it—hated the possibility that this was the most likely truth. Whose sake was it really for? Stupid nii. If he really wanted to reject her, he should do it directly like a man.
Then again, she didn’t have room to speak. She still had yet to confess; the frustration at her inability to calculate what would come out of a direct confession made her want to tear her hair out. She wanted so badly for things to change between them, but she didn’t want them to change for the worse, and there was no way to tell what could happen.
Sora never pushed her away, although he sometimes verbally rejected her with a shitty excuse, but when it came down to it, he would always choose her . She wondered if he might like her romantically, at least a little bit, and was simply afraid to act on it. After all, they didn’t act like a normal pair of siblings—they couldn’t even live a few feet apart—so why did it matter if they got into a romantic relationship?
Moreover, didn’t they already promise to start a new life in this world? They didn’t look that much alike—and even if they did, it wasn’t like they couldn’t change that—so if her age was the problem, they only needed to wait a few more years, no?
Shiro wasn’t sure what happened, but the next thing she knew, she was blinking her eyes open to unfamiliar bearings. There were bright lights above her, yet the world felt foggy. After a few seconds of willing her eyes to focus, she finally remembered that she was currently on a vacation with Sora, and this was their hotel room. She belatedly realized that Sora was peering at her from the bedside, looking worried for some reason she couldn’t comprehend right now.
“Nii?” she said, her voice much hoarser than she expected it to be.
She tried to sit up, and seeing this, he immediately crouched down to help her. “Shiro, are you okay?” he asked as he rubbed her back as if he was trying to soothe her, while grabbing a glass of water from the nightstand. She still didn’t understand why he looked so distraught, but she obediently drank.
“What happened?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. I found you unconscious in the bathroom,” Sora said pointedly. She wondered if he would be angry if it weren’t for his distress.
From this, Shiro could more or less tell what happened. She probably fainted from dehydration and Sora, realizing that she was taking way too long in the bathroom, went in despite her state of undress. At this point, she was so used to the less platonic things he did—including dressing her up while she was unconscious—that she didn’t even blush anymore upon realizing it. Neither of them even batted an eye when he only got them one room—and one bed. There was something lovely about reaching this level of comfort and trust with someone, yet her recent thoughts in the bath reminded her that this lack of reaction was exactly what doomed her feelings to remain unrequited for perhaps the rest of time.
They worked so well together—too well—that they’ve taken for granted the ability to communicate without actually talking, understanding each other without words. Now Shiro looked at him and sometimes the words died on her tongue.
Shiro wanted to slap herself out of her reverie.This was neither the time or place to be thinking about such things; she was literally in front of her brother in the one room they shared. Looking away, she replied, “I was just sleeping.”
Without looking at him, she could hear how he furrowed his eyebrows. “In the bathtub?” he asked in disbelief.
She was starting to realize that the longer this confrontation lasted, the more likely Sora was going to become suspicious. Therefore, she completely changed the subject as she pulled the blanket away and stood up. “I’m hungry,” she declared haughtily before proceeding to lose her balance and collapse.
It was Sora who stopped her dive onto the floor, catching her by the waist before she made an utter fool out of herself. She was reminded of those lame soap operas where there was usually a scene just like this, and she never understood the appeal of it until now. Apparently, she was also weak to being so close to the one she liked to the point that she could hear their breath in a compromising position when she had just had less-than-platonic thoughts of them in the bathroom. She loathed herself for it.
This time, with much more success, she pushed him away and headed straight for the door.
“Wait, I already brought you food—”
“I don’t want it!”
The rest of the day, as expected, did not go well.
Strangely enough, they decided to visit tourist spots instead of playing games all day in their room which Shiro would have preferred before this morning happened. Now, she was just grateful to whichever god was still listening to her prayers because she was glad she wasn’t stuck in a room with the object of her affection because being stuck with him in an open space was already bad enough.
It was supposed to be their vacation, their time away to relax but instead… Well, Shiro had always been a rather quiet person, and they didn’t normally have to talk much, but now, it was so obvious that they were tense in wait and dread for the ball to drop.
And it finally did, at night when they were lying in bed. Shiro should’ve realized that sleeping by the edge would belie her discomfort. It was already too large of a bed for the two of them, so this was obviously suspicious, but she just didn’t want the chance of them touching—or god forbid, cuddling—as they slept. The extreme normalcy of it all; having to pretend her toes weren’t curling in anticipation each time their skins touched under the bed, having to pretend her heartbeat wasn’t racing against time as she nuzzled him for warmth—she just couldn’t handle it right now.
“Why are you lying so far away?” Sora laughed without humor. She pretended to be asleep at first, knowing that Sora would be able to tell, but hoping he would get the hint and drop the subject anyway. Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t cooperating. “You’ve been acting weird all day, what’s wrong?” he asked again.
“Nothing,” she replied, her voice muffled under the blanket.
He touched her shoulder, as if he was about to pull her back to see her face, and it felt like the touch burned. Along with it came the despair that she would have to feel this way for the rest of her life. Living in this paradise yet having to lie every day, it was too depressing to imagine. For once, her resolve shook, wondering if she should get it done and over with; to just confess. Even if he rejected her and grew to resent her, he wouldn’t be able to leave her, right? Neither of them could live without the other, after all…
Without realizing, she had jumped away from the bed. From his touch. And when she finally turned around to meet his eyes, he looked hurt. But Shiro didn’t have the time to acknowledge that.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sora asked in alarm, standing up from the bed as well.
She looked away, taking two steps farther from the bed but unsure where to go. “You wouldn’t understand. Just forget it, okay?”
“Forget what? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—”
“I’m not letting you leave until you tell me—”
He was grabbing her shoulder again, and fuck— his touch burned like she was Icarus and he was the sun, and she just wanted to— wanted so much to—
In an instant, she turned around as she slapped his prying hand away. “I’m in love with you, nii!” she shouted so loudly that the people in the next room probably heard it. Her high-pitched voice was never as annoying to herself as that moment, and she wished she could just hide herself away.
Time nearly paused. They stared at each other, Shiro panting for some reason she couldn’t understand. Maybe she was more emotional than she’d thought.
Shiro had imagined of this moment countless times. She couldn’t help creating scenarios and wondering how he would reject her because there was no way, right? There was just no way. She’d pictured his disgust in her mind, wondered how he would act afterwards—how he would hate sleeping in the same room as her, how he would slowly remember through each and every one of her flirty remarks and look at them differently—and these scenarios had served as a way for her to stop herself from doing something like this. But sometimes when her mind strayed and she imagined how nice it would be like to be loved in the same way. How nice it would be to be held with the same intentions. To entirely have a person, and have the right to be angry and jealous when someone else made advances to them.
She had never expected her face to morph into a grimace before an awkward, bordering on painful laugh came out of his mouth. “W-what?”
Mortification. There was no other way to describe the feeling she was experiencing right now—she was quite certain she was about to vomit. How had she fucked up this bad? Shit. Maybe the hints she thought she’d been seeing all this time was just her imagination. Or maybe— maybe he did all that out of desperation because he never had the chance to pursue anyone because of her. Maybe his actions and hints were just him struggling to reign in his desire, and Shiro was just a way for him to act on them without meaning anything romantic.
There was the horrifying thought that she was the one who’d been cockblocking her brother all this time. Was his lack of romantic and sexual endeavor her fault? If it continued as it did, wouldn’t he grow to resent her?
She averted her gaze, completely intending to flee. She knew she couldn’t stay away for long due to their condition, but at least she could lock herself in the bathroom because she really wanted to throw up. Heck, she’d rather fall unconscious than be confronted with the consequences of her confession—at least maybe she could claim to have forgotten saying anything at all when she woke up, or maybe Sora would be merciful enough to pretend that nothing even happened.
Unfortunately, Sora caught her by the shoulders before she could make her grand escape. He even, in a very merciless fashion, lifted her chin to make her look him in the eye before he asked, “Do you really mean that?”
Shiro gritted her teeth, closing her eyes. “You don’t have to embarrass me like this—”
“No, Shiro, do you really mean what you said?”
She paused, taking a deep breath. “O-of course. When have I ever joked around about something like this?” She’d always been serious, it was him who never took her seriously.
“Shiro, I love you too.”
Shiro was loath to admit how long it took for her to understand what Sora actually meant by those words. When she did, she was in total disbelief, her hands hanging beside her as her brows furrowed in confusion, but Sora met her gaze earnestly. He was even smiling, teary-eyed like he was almost in as much disbelief. “What?”
“I’m in love with you too. I love you.”
In a match between the two of us, I would lose, because I can’t live without you yet I can’t bear to be with you. But maybe you would save me, after all, because you promised me: as long as our hands are touching, we're not gonna lose to anyone.