It was quiet that night.
The festival had ended hours ago, yet echoes of its warmth still lingered in the air.. faint traces of laughter, of music, of flickering lights now lost to the dark. Everything felt like a dream folded away and shelved. I lay on the porch beneath a sky dusted with stars, the cicadas' hum soft in the distance. Beside me, a cup of barley tea sat untouched, condensation trailing down its side like the ghost of a moment slipping by.
Aoi joined me without a word.
Barefoot, wrapped in a blanket, she settled beside me, her presence delicate, like something that might vanish if I acknowledged it too soon. She didn't speak. Just tilted her head back and looked up at the sky, her hair loose and catching what little light the moon offered.
It felt like old times.
But it wasn't.
"You looked like you were having fun today," she said eventually, her voice barely more than a murmur.
I glanced sideways at her. "You mean before or after you gave me the silent treatment?"
She didn't respond right away.
"I was just tired," she whispered.
A weak excuse. We both knew it. But I let it hang there, unchallenged.
We fell into silence again.. the kind that wasn't uncomfortable, but full. Full of unsaid things, of glances not exchanged, of truths we were too careful to name.
Then her voice broke through the quiet again.
"I still have the bracelet."
I turned to her, surprised. "What?"
She raised her wrist. There, barely clinging to it, was a frayed loop of thread.. faded now, but unmistakable.
The bracelet. The one we made together when we were little. Mine had snapped years ago, forgotten. But hers had survived.
"You kept that?" I asked.
"Of course," she said simply. "You gave it to me."
The air shifted.
Something about the way she said it, like it still mattered, like I still mattered made my chest tighten. Made everything around us feel impossibly still.
She turned to me slowly, and there was a rawness in her eyes I hadn't seen in years. A quiet ache, unguarded and trembling just beneath the surface.
"Hey, Riku…" she said softly, almost like it hurt. "If we weren't siblings… would you love me?"
The world fell silent.
And I laughed.
I didn't mean to.
It wasn't a laugh of mockery.. just something helpless, a breath too sharp, too sudden. A reflex when something touches a part of you you're not ready to feel.
"What kind of question is that?" I said quickly, fumbling for levity. "You've been reading too many shoujo manga again."
But Aoi didn't laugh.
She didn't even smile.
She just looked at me...steady, unreadable, and I felt my words falter.
"I was joking," she said after a beat, her gaze dropping to the wooden planks. "Sort of."
But she wasn't.
I knew she wasn't.
It was in the way her voice wavered at the edges. In how her fingers clenched the hem of the blanket like it was the only thing keeping her grounded. In how she suddenly couldn't look at me again, because maybe she was afraid of what she'd see in my eyes.
She meant it.
And the terrifying part... the part I couldn't admit, not even to myself....was that some part of me didn't recoil from the thought.
Some part of me stayed silent.
Stayed still.
And didn't hate the idea.