Lanj: 2011/9/20
Translated from the original Japanese.
2014/02/07
Note from Nias: This account is ported from an old edition.
2011/9/20.
“Big Sister, we’ve come here.” As Seren set foot in a room in Flanje, he greeted with delight a woman with brown hair.
“It’s been a while, Seren. Has your research been going well?”
This woman named Miifa was, like Mel, one of the few supporters of the modern study of magic.
Originally, she helped run the orphanage along with Liiza, and she was five years older than Seren. When they first met, she was still a youth at the age of fifteen.
Seren reached the point where he longed for Miifa to be his older sister, just as Mel longed for Seren to be her older brother. But the mysterious thing is that rather than calling Miifa her older sister, Mel always called her a teacher.
“Is Ridia already used to this place?”
While Seren always spoke politely to Liiza, he spoke to Miifa as a companion. She did things more briskly and with more vigor than Liiza.
As Miifa looked at Seren with her green right eye and her blue left eye, she shook his head, saying, “Ridia… she seems like quite a Sleeping Beauty. She’s in a daze all day. Even when we try to talk to her, it’s as if she’s not really there.”
“Could it be the same as when we first met by the pond… could she have a wound in her heart, perhaps from when her parents abandoned her?”
“It’s not necessarily that they abandoned her.”
“What?” Seren tilted his head.
“… It’s nothing. Just that Liiza has been saying mysterious things like that.”
“Is that so…”
“Well, my impression is that rather than being injured…”
“—?”
“It seems that she had lost any heart to be hurt.”
“In other words, she doesn’t have a receptor for emotions, as if she were a doll?”
“It’s a bit different from a doll. There’s a life dwelling in her body, but it seems that her mind has gone dormant.”
“So that’s why she’s a sleeping beauty…” Seren folded his arms.
“I’ve tried talking to the other kids, but since there’s been no response, it seems that they’ve been leaving her alone lately.”
“Is it that it didn’t go well with everyone?”
“Well, it’s not as much as bad relationships.” Miifa approached Seren, bringing her shoulder near him. “Seren, you were pretty down in the dumps at the beginning, too. In fact, you were a selfish, out-of-control child who didn’t know any patience.”
“But thanks to you and Teacher, I’ve changed. Especially you…”
Because you’ve wrapped me up strictly but kindly, I’ve ended up unbent—he thought of saying that, but he was too embarrassed to do so.
At the same time, he knew that this time, he must take care of Ridia.
“Hey, Seren, were you this tall?”
“Huh?”
“Look, long ago, you were shorter than me.”
“Sister, that’s talk from whenever,” smiled Seren bitterly. “What simple hugs you can give.”
“Lie.”
“Like hell that’s a lie.”
As he laughed with a puff, he put his hands under Miifa’s arms and knees and started carrying her in her arms. Miifa had a subtly sweet smell to her.
“Wah! You’re just a thin scholar and you’re that strong?”
As he let Miifa down to the floor, he whispered, “I’m a man, after all.”
But Miifa laughed a-ha-ha. “How cheeky!” Seren saw that sort of woman as lovely.
That night, after returning to his own home, Seren took out a notebook from his desk and started writing his diary with his pen. It was an old-fashioned and intense analogue operation.
“September 20. I met my older sister in a long time.
“She was lovely as usual, and she also smelled good and had a soft voice.
“But she still seems to think of me as a little brother.
“… Yeah, that’s good. Besides, it has to be that way.
“Big Sister has changed me, a piece of scum who was a selfish coward who didn’t know of patience. Since I’m a piece of scum by nature, I’ve only become a slightly better piece of scum, but thanks to her, I haven’t gone wildly astray.
“Big Sister is my target of gratitude. She must not be anything else, or she might not have helped me even if she saw me.
“Big Sister is beautiful.
“Big Sister is gentle. And strict at the same time.
“Big Sister, Big Sister… I…”