Chapter 5

My sister and I seemed to have found our footing. Life was improving day by day.

Our youngest sister grew older and stopped attending the academy.

She had plenty of time to spend on her appearance. New clothes, jewelry, fashionable styles—she knew them all by heart. Even without much money, she could buy little things and arrange them into something distinctive.

She had a gift for it.

Once, I asked whether she would like to learn the business with me at the shop.

I meant well.

She was my sister, after all.

I had already experienced our parents’ unreliability and knew they could not be depended on. I did not believe they would be a dependable refuge for her in the future, either. They had invested too many hopes in her. If she fulfilled them, all well and good. If she did not, the backlash might be more than she could bear.

I still wanted her to learn something that would let her support herself. Even if the Taoist’s prediction came to nothing, she would be able to make a decent life.

She reacted as though I had insulted her.

Her face flushed crimson. Her delicate lips parted.

“Why would I do such lowly work?”

Hurt and resentful, she left to complain to our parents.

I felt as though lightning had struck me.

This was… lowly work?

Had she always considered us lowly people?

The last little remnant of sisterly affection in my heart shattered to pieces.

My other sister tugged my hand and gently shook her head.

My heart went completely cold.

She no longer called me her sister. I no longer called her mine.

We were strangers living under one roof.

I left early and came home late, busy with the shop and the household, struggling to secure something more for myself, something that might give my hollow heart a little confidence.

She remained noisy and carefree. The house rang constantly with her happy laughter and chatter.

Her unrestrained liveliness made the two of us seem very quiet.

Many nights, I listened to her laughter and felt irritable.

Then one night, kept awake by her voice, I suddenly understood. She laughed because she knew this was her home. I could not laugh because I knew it was no place in which I could build my life.

Some people seem to be born without a home.

The night I understood that, I wept bitterly.

My sister climbed out of her own bed and watched me in silence.

Barefoot, she came to my bedside, her eyes full of worry and understanding.

“I’m all right,” I whispered. “Go to sleep. I just need to cry for a while.”

Obediently, she went back to bed.

I could hear my own stifled sobs.

But the next morning, her eyes were swollen, too.

She had been crying as well, silently, quietly, like a frightened little bird whose terrified heart was about to burst, yet dared not make the slightest sound.

This home was like a dark forest.

Some birds were not allowed to sing.

Did we envy the bird that could make all the noise she pleased?

We did!

Over the long years, that envy had grown into hatred.

Usually it lay silent. When it finally erupted, even I was shocked.