My Stepsister is My Ex-Girlfriend - Volume 1 - Chapter 2

The Ex-Couple House-Sit

“I live here, so what’s the problem?”

In what could only be described as a folly of youth, I had a so-called boyfriend during the eighth and ninth grade.

His face was nothing to write home about, he put no effort into what he wore, he had awful posture, and he never had anything interesting to say. He might have been on the smarter side, but overall, he was pretty much a completely unattractive loser devoid of any charm.

But in the eyes of my middle school self who was firmly in the midst of her adolescence and a plain girl of unparalleled proportions, his slight kindness and our slightly similar interests were slightly fun. Before I knew it, it all made me happier than anything.

It was a mistake. It was truly a folly of youth.

What really put the final nail in the coffin was the love letter that I had elatedly written in the middle of the night and gave to him in the heat of the moment. That was what set everything in motion and placed me on the fated train of my doomed middle school romance.

After all, our relationship was nothing like any of those transparently deceitful shojo manga. Eventually I just opened my eyes, saw the reality of everything, and broke it off as if nothing had ever happened. That was precisely how things ended between me and that guy.

And then our parents got married, we became stepsiblings, and began living in the same house. People might say that nothing in life ever goes the way we expect, but how could the worst possible situation just conveniently play out like this? There was no doubt that some prankster god had laid this trap for us—a trap called destiny.

Although I’ve already shoved the memories of my time together with that guy into the garbage can of my mind, as much as I’d like to deny it, there’s still a memory that I just can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try.

It was the spring vacation between eighth and ninth grade, and that guy had called me over to his house.

“So, my dad’s not home today,” he said in a slightly embarrassed voice that made my foolish self at the time jump to conclusions.

It’s finally time. Like any normal middle school girl, I was thinking that since we’d been on dates and kissed, the next step was...you know what. This thought process was perfectly natural for any middle school girl in this day and age, so it wasn’t like I was especially dirty-minded or anything. Seriously. 

From the conversations I’d overheard between the girls in my class, I could glean that this was a time where these kinds of conversations often came up. We were all beginning our battle with the abhorrent thing called menstruation too. We were in a completely different frame of mind compared to the bastards who would make a huge fuss over some pictures they saw on the internet.

I had steeled my resolve. I was finally about to experience the thing that I’d only read about in books. I was about three parts excited and seven parts worried when I marched into my boyfriend’s room for the first time in my life.

“March” might have been a silly word to use—especially for me—but it appropriately reflected my readiness. It goes without saying that the night prior, I had gone on the internet, pored through tons of pages such as Things to Know before Your First Time, and I even perfectly mastered moaning tricks.

I knew that my preparations were flawless. As I entered that guy’s room, I looked for a place that I could put myself. With his room as messy with books as it was, the only place I could really sit was the bed.

The bed? Is this really happening? While I was frozen with my rampant thoughts, that guy just casually said, “Go ahead. Sit down.”

So with that, I ended up sitting on the bed, but I couldn’t have expected what happened next. He sat next to me without even blinking an eye—like it was natural.

Huh?! H-He’s more aggressive than I thought! He’s usually so reserved!

I can’t believe how single-minded my past self was. As much as my present self would like my past self to have been hit by a truck and disappear to another world, she unfortunately continued to cling to life like a stain and began talking with that guy.

I don’t remember what we talked about. My head was filled with thoughts about when he was going to push me down onto the bed, if he would start off with a kiss, and if the underwear I was wearing was all right or not.

Him adjusting himself on the bed was enough to make me jump, and his pinky brushing against me was almost enough to make me squeal. This tragic time of me being an innocent maiden continued for ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty.

Huh? Not yet?

As soon as those thoughts crossed my mind, that guy opened his mouth and said, “Oh wow, it’s already this late. I guess it’s about time...”

It’s happening. It’s finally happening! Please don’t hurt. Please don’t be scary. Please let me do everything right!

“For you to go home.”

Huh? E-Excuse me?

“I don’t really want you to go, but it’s getting late, and I’m sure your mom is going to be worried,” he explained. “I’ll walk you back.”

And with that, we left his house, and he took me back to my apartment.

Is he going to make a pass at me now? Is this the part where he lets himself in?!

Right to the very last second, I thought that something would happen, but after actually using my brain, I realized that my apartment wasn’t empty. Mom was home. If he was really going to make a move, the best place would have been at his house.

We reached the entrance of my apartment, and that guy waved his hand at me and said, “I had fun today. See you later.”

I just stood there, dumbfounded, as I watched him walk away. That’s when I realized that he hadn’t asked me over to his house for the purpose I thought he had. He really just wanted me to come to his room because he wanted to hang out.

I was the only one who wanted to climb the steps of adulthood?!

“Yume? Why are you so red? Did you catch a cold?” my mom asked in a worried tone as I walked inside.

But I couldn’t even properly answer her. I just walked to my room and fell onto my bed and lay there in agony over my humiliation.

By the time we ended things approximately one year later, that guy and I had never ended up engaging in any of those kinds of activities.

◇

“Dad and Yuni-san wanted me to let you know that they’re gonna be home late today,” my stepbrother, or rather, my younger brother suddenly reported to me from my doorway.

I’d finally finished unpacking and organizing my things from the move and was currently elegantly enjoying a mystery novel.

“Oh, okay. And?”

“Really?!” My stepbrother, Mizuto Irido, shot me a sour look.

Hm? I see. So even having to talk to me because he was told to is painful for him. Interesting.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked.

“Are you trying to say that dinner’s my responsibility? I’m not your mom.”

“I know. I was just asking you as a person who sits at the same dining table as me to weigh in on the decision. God, talking to you is a waste of time.”

You make me sound like I’m indecisive, but I’m better now. Better than when we first met.

My thin-as-a-beanpole stepbrother began tapping his toes on the floor out of irritation. The look in his eyes, which has always been on the menacing side, got even worse.

Truth be told, he had a picturesque face, but it was ruined by his unkempt hair and baggy clothing. His crappy attitude would usually piss me off, but because of that face, it didn’t. This, in turn, just got on my nerves even more.

“Fine, I’ll make dinner,” Mizuto said with a scowl. “You’ll just have to eat whatever I make. Got it?”

“You can cook?”

“A little. After all, it’s just been me and dad all this time. What about you— Ah.” Mizuto stopped himself while letting out a short laugh, a smile creeping up on his face.

This guy knew that I couldn’t cook. In the past, he finished an entire lunch I’d made for him that was pretty much on the level of industrial trash, and then he lied through his teeth, telling me, “It was so delicious.”

“Well, we’re family now, so it behooves me to throw you a bone here. Be thankful as you slop up the food I make like the pig you are.”

I internally swore that I would kill this guy one day, but for now, I quelled the murderous intent welling up inside me and tried to force the biggest smile that I could.

“Oh, that’s quite all right, Mizuto-kun. I couldn’t possibly let you do all the work by yourself. Allow me to help.”

“Don’t need it. I don’t want to deal with the pain of having to bandage up your hands like a mummy.”

“I’m saying that I don’t want to accept your one-sided charity, you cold-blooded guy.”

“Sheesh, I don’t wanna hear that from a cold-blooded girl like yourself.” Mizuto let out a haughty sigh in response as if it was his last breath, and I secretly hoped that it was, with the way he was acting all high and mighty.

“Fine, then let’s go,” he said.

“Go where?” I asked, tilting my head.

“To go buy groceries for dinner. Did you expect food to just pop out of thin air or something?”

What the heck is going on? Why was I with my ex at the supermarket not even a month after we broke up? We looked like we were newlyweds who were living together!

“Hm... Oh, this is cheap,” my ex-boyfriend said as he stood next to me while tossing various products into the cart.

Does this guy feel nothing from being in this situation? Just how dense is he? Or maybe he doesn’t even see me as a girl? Well, I guess we’re not “boy and girl” to each other but “little brother and big sister.”

I tried to calm myself, realizing that at this rate I was going to end up repeating the past where I’d get too worked up over something that he wasn’t even thinking about in the first place. I needed to stay calm.

“It just looks like you’re grabbing whatever you can get your hands on. Do you know what you’re making?” I asked.

“Hm? No idea.”

“What do you mean you have no idea?”

“I’m buying whatever’s cheap and seeing what we can make. If we buy everything according to a recipe, there’d be some things that we’d have to buy no matter how expensive they were, right?”

“I guess...” I begrudgingly agreed with his reasoning.

Is this what people call common sense? I never thought his wisdom stat was so high. What’s wrong with him? Why is it so high?

“In the worst case, if we can’t think of anything, we can just throw everything into a pot, add some curry roux, and have curry, albeit a scuffed version. I hope you now understand the difference between ‘making food’ and ‘making a meal,’ my little sister.”

“I’m not your little sister. I’m your older sister.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The more he explained himself, the more pathetic I felt for giving him that horribly made lunch way back when.

“Well, poorly made food can be kind of cute every now and then, but having it every day would be a little overkill. So just keep that in mind.” These words fell out of his mouth without even the slightest hint of difficulty, but both my body and mind froze.

C-Cute? This guy is just talking out of his ass again. Wait, no, he didn’t seem to be putting too much thought behind what he said, so maybe he truly meant it?

“What’s wrong? You coming?” he called out.

I didn’t even realize that I was just standing still in the middle of the aisle. I hurriedly ran to catch up to Mizuto, shaking my head in an effort to clear my unnecessary intrusive thoughts.

This really was just like back then, when I’d get the wrong impression while this guy would just remain aloof. It was the epitome of unfairness.

I’ll make him self-conscious. I’m going to take that unpleasant face of his and make it redder than a tomato. I’ll make him call me “onee-chan.”

After shopping, we came back home, reluctantly stood next to each other as we cooked, and then ate our curry. It was overall uneventful, aside from Mizuto freaking out while watching me use a kitchen knife and saying things like “Stop, you’re scaring me! Put your fingers like this!” and then thoughtlessly touching my hands without my permission.

Our parents weren’t home, so we didn’t have to pretend like we were getting along. If anything, it was easier for us this way.

“Bath’s ready. What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I’ll take mine first.”

“Thought as much,” he said, unsurprised.

“I don’t want to get in the same water that you bathed in.”

“Oh, so you’re okay with me getting in the same water that you bathed in?”

“Never mind. You first!” I quickly shouted.

I never really gave it too much thought when our parents were around, but now that I thought about it, I’d been sharing a bath with this guy every day.

Wait, doesn’t this mean... Isn’t it kinda like we— Okay, I need to calm down.

It was the perfect time to cool my head since Mizuto was in the bath right now. I needed to have a level head so I could launch my counterattack on him.

In order to get my thoughts together, I played the closed-room-murder game in my head—a game I had come up with where Mizuto was killed in a closed room, and I needed to think of all the possible tricks that could have been used to kill him.

But not even ten minutes passed before Mizuto came back, his hair still wet.

“I’m done,” he said.

“Uh...”

“What?”

Almost anyone who saw him with his hair wet—like it was right now—would no doubt think he was good-looking. In other words, that was a perfectly normal reaction. There wasn’t any meaning behind it. None at all.

“That was fast. Did you even wash yourself? You didn’t, did you?” I asked.

“At least wait for me to answer before deciding that I didn’t wash myself, because I did. Staying in the bath for too long just felt like a waste of time.”

I hated how he was always in a rush to move on to the next thing. He used to slow down for me when we first started dating, though...

But either way, I knew that the time had come to put my plan in motion. After mentally cleaning up Mizuto’s corpse in the imaginary closed room that I’d made, I stood up and said, “Okay, I’m going to take a bath now. I’ll kill you if you peep.”

“You wouldn’t even have to kill me. My eyes would rot and kill me first,” he retorted. Internally, I knew that this was his last chance to get smart with me.

Just in case, I kept glancing at the door of the bathroom while I got undressed. I never really gave it a second thought when our parents were around, but it dawned on me that I was getting naked in the same house that he was in. If that guy barged in on me taking a bath right now, no one would be around to help me.

But of course, that kind of aggression was beyond what that string bean was capable of. If he did barge in, I’d just bite off various parts of him.

After thoroughly cleaning and warming my body, I got out of the bath, wrapped my body in a dry towel, and dried my hair with a blow dryer.

And so it begins. I tightly gripped the towel tied around me with determination. There was no turning back now—I hadn’t brought a change of clothes to the bathroom with me. I had burned my figurative bridge of retreat all in order to back myself into a corner. I was definitely going to break his cool and calm demeanor.

I didn’t have a change of clothes, so there was only a single option—walk out like this in front of him!

As I looked at myself in the mirror, I could tell that my body had become more womanly since the two of us had dated, especially in my chest area. I had changed a lot in the past year—so much that even my mom and classmates were jealous.

Because I’d just gotten out of the bath, my exposed cleavage was slightly flushed, which was quite alluring, if I do say so myself.

A-And now I’m supposed to show all of this off to him?! I severely regretted not having at least brought a pair of underwear to change into, but I was sure that if I hadn’t gone this far, there was no way I would make that blockhead even flinch.

“All right,” I said, steeling my will. I left the bathroom and walked barefooted into the living room. “I-I’m done with my bath.”

“Fdsajfdsaj?!” Mizuto spewed out the tea he was drinking as soon as he saw me and began coughing. His reaction was even better than I had hoped!

I turned away so that he couldn’t see my relaxed expression.

“T-Towel? Why?!” he stammered.

“I live here, so what’s the problem?” I said, completely unfazed as I sat down diagonally from Mizuto on our L-shaped couch. Mizuto was looking off so far into the distance that he could probably see two days into the future. Even so, he was still stealing peeks at me.

“Yeah, but I’m here, you know?” he said. It was obvious that he had no idea how to react.

“So what? We’re siblings. Or maybe...” Taking this opportunity, I shot him a flirtatious glance as a smile crept across my face. “Or maybe you’re a bad boy who looks at their stepsibling with naughty eyes?”

“Geh.”

Aha ha ha! He’s getting so red! He’s blushing so hard! Serves you right!

Mizuto turned his back to me in order to escape my gaze, but he was still looking. I could feel his gaze on me. He couldn’t help but look at my cleavage or my thighs that were barely covered by my towel.

Heh heh, maybe this was too much stimulation for you? After all, you only knew me when I was still underdeveloped! Oh, you poor thing. You’ve only dated a girl who had the body of a child, and aren’t used to being around someone like me, someone who has the body of a woman. Wait, that girl was me. Maybe I should try crossing my legs again.

“Hnn!”

Oh, you saw that, didn’t you? You’re so obvious! You always try to play it cool, but look at you now. That facade is in pieces! Ha ha ha! This is so much fun!

I pretended to reach for the remote, using it as an excuse to put my cleavage on full display.

“Mngh!”

He’s looking. He’s looking so, so much. He’s smitten. He might be trying to keep a straight face, but it’s taking all that he has to do so. It felt as if I’d gotten my revenge on him, not just for today, but for that mess a year ago too. He’d never look at me at all back then, and now he couldn’t take his eyes off of me.

Is this what one would call a woman’s pride? At the very least, I was pretty sure it was pride welling up inside me.

That being said, though, I was starting to grow embarrassed. He was looking at me a lot more than I expected, and if I crossed my legs the wrong way or my towel slipped, he would instantly see parts of me that he shouldn’t.

Actually, what the heck am I even doing? Isn’t this just plain seduction? If that’s the case, could I even complain if this guy came over and pushed me down?

Suddenly, a cold clarity washed over me. I was holding the towel up so that it would only show my cleavage, but I had to be careful or the towel wouldn’t cover enough of my lower half. One wrong move and I’d be stuck with a mistake that I could never take back. All I could do now was sit still. I-I may have gone too far. Why do I get so full of myself sometimes?!

Mizuto let out a heavy sigh, stood up suddenly, then walked over to me.

N-No way. Is this really happening? I gripped the towel tighter, my body frozen solid, as Mizuto took off the jacket he was wearing. My heart skipped a beat. Huh? I-Is he really? Is he really planning on taking this further?!

I inadvertently closed my eyelids as he approached. I felt a sensation on my shoulders. It was the light texture of a jacket being laid on me. Huh?

“Let me guess,” he asked. “You were trying to get a rise out of me, but dug yourself into a hole too deep to get out of, right? Dumbass.”

I cautiously opened my eyes and saw Mizuto’s jacket around my shoulders. Then, there was Mizuto. He was standing in front of me, looking down at me with an annoyed expression.

“You’re usually so reserved, but sometimes you get so carried away that you end up doing something crazy. You should really fix that habit of yours. I can’t cover for you anymore.”

His words were blunt, to the point, and had a hint of displeasure. Even so, it had the same tone of those he’d utter back in middle school during the countless occasions I was saved by him.

I pulled his jacket closer to my chest, the warmth from his body still lingering. His words and this warmth made me think back to a year ago without even realizing it.

“Last year...” I began.

“Hm?”

“When you invited me over to your house... Why didn’t you try anything?”

Things had started getting bad between us right after that—after we’d entered the ninth grade. That’s why, back then, I thought that maybe it was my fault that our relationship got messed up. I thought that maybe I did something that made him become disillusioned with me. In the end, that was just my own misunderstanding, and the reason we broke up was because of something completely different.

“Wh-Why are you bringing this up now?!” he stammered.

Huh? Mizuto’s expression was not what I expected. It was as if I’d dragged up an embarrassing memory. His face was painted with shyness and sulkiness.

“What? You wanna laugh at me? Then laugh!” Mizuto suddenly switched to being on the offensive. “Laugh at the guy who called his girlfriend over to his house after going through so many painstaking preparations, and then in the end couldn’t even make a move because he was too scared. Laugh at me! Laugh at the loser!”

My mind stopped functioning for approximately five seconds after hearing that.

“Huh?!” My mind jump-started itself and I let out a yell as I shot to my feet. “P-Preparations?! Too scared?! Wh-What is that supposed to mean?! I-I prepared myself for that day, but nothing happened, so I always thought I completely misinterpreted your intentions!”

“Huh? W-Well, you became really rigid and guarded, so I kinda lost my nerve...” he said, trailing off.

“I. Was. NERVOUS!”

“Huh?!” Mizuto yelled, his eyes widened. “You’re kidding me! You were totally down and ready to do it too?!”

“Totally down and ready! I was completely prepared to make a memory that I would remember for the rest of my life in your room!”

“S-Seriously? Then why did I spend all those days in my room overwhelmed with regret?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“That’s what I want to know too! Give me back all the time I spent worrying that I wasn’t attractive!”

“That’s not my problem! It’s your fault for freezing up like that!” he snapped.

“No, it’s all your fault, you wuss!”

“Say that again!”

“Maybe I will!”

After that, our conversation turned into an indescribable back-and-forth competition of insults. After some time, we stopped insulting each other and started violently brawling it out over the couch.

After we had exhausted both our words and our stamina, we leered at each other while trying to catch our breaths. Mizuto had me pinned down on the couch and our ragged breaths collided against one another.

I really hated this. We both liked books, but our preferences were like different corner pieces of the same puzzle, or parallel lines that never intersected with one another. The cherry on top was that we were siblings now.

Suddenly, I felt like crying. Why can’t things ever go right for me? If I hadn’t been so nervous on that day, or even right now...

“Crying while we’re fighting isn’t allowed,” Mizuto said.

“Shut up! I know!” I wiped the tears away with my arm.

I was done relying on this guy like I had last year. I wasn’t the same weak girl that I had been back then. Even if my growth as a person was what started the deterioration of our relationship, I don’t regret it. That’s why I knew it wasn’t my fault that we broke up. It was this guy’s fault! It was all his fault!

“Hey, Ayai...”

My heart skipped a beat. He called me Ayai. It was my old last name—what he called me when we were in middle school.

I rubbed my thighs against one another. The jacket that had been around my shoulders had fallen off somewhere during our fight. Right now, the only thing on me was a towel, which was already roughed up and seemingly about to fall off. I was basically naked.

As he continued holding me down on the couch, Irido-kun reached out to me with one of his surprisingly slim, smooth hands and swept my bangs to the side. This was a sort of ritual we had before we did a certain thing.

When I still lacked confidence and was shy, I had long bangs, and he would sweep them to the side so he could see all of my face. He would always do this before he did the thing that came next.

He could probably tell that I’d stopped fighting back as he peered into my eyes. It felt like he could see right through me. I tried covering my face, but Irido-kun gently gripped my wrist and held it down next to my face. It was as if he was telling me that I couldn’t run away from his gaze. All I could do was use my mouth to let out a weak and flimsy excuse.

“W-We can’t. The rules...”

The certain thing in question was, without a doubt, a game-losing action. Stepsiblings definitely did not do this, but even so, I couldn’t believe how feeble my words were. They weren’t enough to stop him. This much, I knew from experience.

“I’m okay with losing today,” Irido-kun said in a low voice that echoed inside me.

Our eyes met. My face being red right now wasn’t just because I was tired from the fight we’d just had. His eyes were drawing me in. His warmth, his breath, his pulse—I could feel every last part of him. At a certain point, I’d closed my eyes.

Oh, we haven’t kissed in so long...

“We’re hooome!”

“Mizuto? Yume-chan? Are you two in the living room?”

We both jumped as soon as we heard the voices of our parents ring out from the entrance.

They’re home?! Already?!

“Gah! It’s already this late?!” Mizuto jumped up in a panic and looked at the clock.

Oh god, how long were we fighting?!

“Hurry, put on some clothes! Don’t you know how this looks?!” he hissed.

How it looked was me, basically naked, and him, his clothes ruffled up, intertwined on the couch. While we might have been pretending to be siblings that got along for our parents’ sake, there was a limit to how well we should be getting along. If they saw us getting along this well, that would open a whole different can of worms!

“B-But I don’t have any clothes.”

“Oh, right, if you go out to get your clothes now, you’ll run right into them. Dammit! Then...hide! Um, uh... I got it! Hide here!”

I let out a squeal as Mizuto rolled me off the couch and lifted the couch cushions to reveal its storage area.

“Hurry, get in!”

“Hey, you don’t have to push! I’ll get in myself— Ow! Did you just kick me?! You totally did!”

“Not a word. Got it?!” Mizuto dropped the cushions over me after stuffing me into the storage space, and then everything around me turned dark.

“Oh, Mizuto, you’re by yourself?”

“I could’ve sworn I heard Yume.”

“Welcome back, dad, Yuni-san. If you’re looking for Yume-san, she’s already gone to bed.”

Hearing Mizuto trying to talk our way out of this made me remember what had just happened.

If our parents hadn’t come home when they did, would we have... What was I doing?! I wanted to scream. This is messed up! This is all so messed up! We aren’t together anymore. I hate him. He’s just my disgusting little stepbrother that gets on my nerves. He’s not my boyfriend! But even so, I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding so hard.

Why can’t things ever go right for me? Everything should have been over. Everything should have been easy now. We just had to become siblings and I just had to seduce him—and now I find out that we both had the same intentions back then?!

“Urgh, gosh!”

I really hate that about you!

◇

The next day, I exerted my power as the victor.

“You said you were okay with losing, right, Mizuto-kun?”

“Yeah, sure, I said that, but I feel like I was kinda forced to say it in that situation—”

“Anyway, my dearest little brother, heed your older sister’s command. Get out of your room for a second.”

After dragging Mizuto out of his room, I began searching through it. Yesterday, Mizuto confessed that he went through “so many painstaking preparations” a year ago when he invited me over. I was certain that meant that he must have bought a certain something. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I couldn’t find it, but if he did have it, it needed to be taken care of.

I was prepared to go through his bed, his bookcase, and turn them all inside out in my pursuit for the item I was looking for, but reality is often disappointing. Luckily, I immediately found what I was looking for in the place that I decided to search first: his desk. Though, I guess it was on-brand for him to not hide things in a complex or difficult way.

After finding what I was looking for, I carried it out of his room, and what was waiting for me in the hallway was Mizuto giving me a look with the eyes of a rotting dead fish.

“What were you looking for?” he asked.

“Ahem. Onee-chan.”

“Nee-san...”

“I was looking for something that is unnecessary for a normal stepsibling relationship.” I held the small box of a dozen certain items that I’d retrieved from his room behind my back while feigning a look of innocence.

He bought twelve of them? He must have been much more excited than I thought. But then again, maybe I’m reading too much into this. After all, there weren’t any rules that said that you had to use up an entire box per encounter, right? Yeah, probably.

I headed down the stairs, passing by Mizuto, making sure not to make eye contact.

“Hey, nee-san,” he rudely barked.

“Whatever is the matter, my dearest little brother, Mizuto-kun?” I turned my head back in his direction.

“Can stepsiblings...” He trailed off before saying anything more, then shifted his eyes as if he had thought better of what he was going to ask. “Never mind.”

I lightly chuckled and walked down the stairs towards the entrance, where the trash bag was. I threw the small box inside the bag and tied it tightly shut. The only thing left to do was throw it out on trash day, and it would be gone for good. With this, there was no way that we could make a mistake by doing something inappropriate for siblings to do.

I took a breath, looked at the entrance, and then turned around towards the top of the stairs. Even though I knew that he couldn’t hear me, I responded to what he was trying to say earlier.

“Yeah, even I know that much.”

But this useless knowledge didn’t help me in the slightest. After all, why would it? Just thinking about it was pointless. Just knowing about it was unproductive. That’s why I wouldn’t say it, because there was no point.

That’s why he didn’t say it.

That’s why I didn’t say it.

After all, whether or not stepsiblings could get married was useless knowledge.