●

Epilogue: April 30th (Saturday) – Asamura Yuuta

My shift tonight was supposed to be business as usual, but today was different. It wasn’t just the typical Saturday rush, with more customers and staff on the floor. The real reason was that every extra staff member seemed to be buzzing around Ayase-san. A box of thank-you sweets from her sat in the office, and it seemed everyone was using their gratitude as an excuse to strike up a conversation.

It wasn’t as if they’d been on bad terms before. But during work, Ayase-san was the type to keep her head down and focus, never one to start idle chatter. Someone like Yomiuri-senpai might be able to draw her out, but if the other person was just as focused on their work, a conversation was unlikely to ever begin.

But today was her last day, and everyone was finding any excuse they could to say a few words to her.

Watching her, so clearly loved and missed by her colleagues, a warmth spread through my chest. That’s a testament to all your hard work, Ayase-san.

But almost as quickly as the warmth came, a sharp pang of loneliness pierced through it.

This is the last time I’ll get to work alongside her like this…

She had told me a little while ago, over dinner, that she’d decided to take an internship at Akihiro Ruka-san’s office. She’d always been interested in design, so it was a great thing that she had actively sought out something she wanted to do. I’d smiled and told her, “I’ll be cheering for you,” and my heart had swelled with affection when she’d replied with a bashful, “Thank you.”

There wasn’t a single lie in how I felt at that moment. Not one. And yet… why did my heart have to feel so unsettled?

Now, of all times?

It’s a strange thing. We see each other at home every single day.

Still, the time we spend together will inevitably shrink now that we’re no longer working at the same place.

I was suddenly reminded of the tale of heartbreak—not heroism—that Nakamura had shared with me at university. As he and his girlfriend spent less time together, she met someone new in a community he wasn’t a part of. Before he knew it, they had grown close, and she was gone. Nakamura might laugh about it now, calling it a classic joke, but I was in no mood to find it funny.

My own father got divorced after being cheated on. I know firsthand the fragility of the human heart, and the sorrow of the one left behind. Stories like that always set my own heart on edge.

And yet, I believe that Ayase-san… that Saki, of all people, would never betray me.

University life. The internship. These new worlds would be thrilling, a roller coaster of new experiences that would surely sweep Saki away. She’s a curious person, and her instincts would always draw her toward a dazzling new ride over a slow, predictable attraction.

I wonder if feelings really do cool when you spend less time together, just as they did for Nakamura’s ex-girlfriend.

Well, Tsukinomiya is a women’s university, so that should be fine… No, but there will probably be men at her internship. The opportunities for new encounters are endless.

…This isn’t a good feeling.

This spiral of negative thoughts was a dead end. Positive self-reflection is one thing, but this kind of backward-looking anxiety just wears you down.

Scolding myself, I tore my gaze away from Saki, who was surrounded by staff bidding her farewell, and forced myself to focus on my work.

Even a special day is over in a flash. Before I knew it, midnight had arrived, and it was time to clock out. After a final check of the store, cleaning up, and closing out the register, I changed and returned to the office. The manager was waiting with a grin. He handed me a square object, which I accepted with a silent nod. A moment later, Saki came in, and I presented it to her. “Thanks for all your hard work.”

It was a message board from all the part-time staff. We’d even had Yomiuri-senpai stop by on her way home to secretly add her message, and Kozono-san—though she’d already left for the night, being a high schooler—had written hers with considerable enthusiasm. Although, her parting words, “I’ll never lose to you, you know!” were a little confusing.

Saki clutched the message board to her chest, looking overcome with emotion, yet she managed the same firm, professional smile she always wore when dealing with customers.

“Thank you… so much.”

And with that, the final day of bookstore clerk Ayase Saki was over.

After saying our goodbyes, we left the store, leaving the manager and veteran part-timers to their post-closing chatter. As much as we might have wanted to linger, we couldn’t stay long. We may be university students, but our parents would still worry if we didn’t come home.

We stepped out of the store, about to be swallowed by the late-night clamor… when my hand was suddenly grabbed.

“Wait.”

“…Ayase-san?”

When I turned, she was staring at me, her expression unreadable.

“There’s somewhere I want to go.”

“Now? Um, where to?”

Saki paused for a moment, then said with a hint of a joke in her tone, “A pilgrimage to a holy site.”

Late-night Dogenzaka was a scene of beautiful chaos. Sleazy touts, stumbling drunks, and the relentless glare of shops that refused to sleep.

We climbed a short flight of stairs in a building that housed several restaurants, stopping on the landing. Leaning against the railing, we looked down upon the vulgar, vibrant streetscape below.

I glanced at Saki’s profile, and for the first time in a while, I was strongly reminded of her as my “little sister.” Lately, my awareness of her as my “lover” had been at the forefront, so the feeling was almost nostalgic.

Why now? There was a reason.

“This place brings back memories, doesn’t it?” my little sister said, her eyes narrowing slightly.

Even amidst the glittering city lights, she never faded into the background. Her golden hair, the fierce will in her eyes, her ramrod-straight posture—she had a presence that felt like she could navigate any world with unshakable strength.

And yet, here we were, a miraculous encounter that made me believe we could truly share the same values.

“Yeah,” I replied. “…It’s where we first met.”

This was the exact spot.

In the family restaurant just up these stairs, my old man and I had our first meeting with Saki and my stepmother, Akiko-san.

And it was on this very landing that we formed our contract.

To not expect anything from each other.

“That day, my new life began,” she said softly. “An exceptionally happy one—the happiest of my entire life.”

“It’s the same for me. For me, too.”

“And, you know, I think it’s because we were able to properly come to an understanding right from the start.”

“Definitely. I think it’s because we laid out our terms here that we were able to live together so peacefully afterward, sharing the same values.”

Proposing a relationship based on a contract could have easily made the other person pull away. For her, it was a way of communicating, of confirming things, a risk she took despite the possibility of being disliked.

If I reach out and they don’t push me away… If they do, I can just say sorry.

It was a step taken with immense courage.

Thanks to that courage, our lives as brother and sister became comfortable. In a way, I had been riding on her bravery all this time. I see, I thought. This relationship of ours, built on aligning everything through words, was born from a willingness to risk being misunderstood.

“So, you know,” she said, turning to look me straight in the eye.

The next words didn’t come right away. Her beautiful eyes darted between mine and a point just to my right, as if searching for the right phrase.

Until now, I would have waited. I would have waited for as long as it took for her to find her words, because I believed it was rude to preemptively speak for someone else.

But, if we were to build a new life together—

“You want to align our values again?” I ventured. “A major value. One that will affect our lives from now on.”

“…!”

As I took the plunge and voiced her thoughts, Saki’s eyes widened.

Then, she nodded repeatedly. “Yes! That’s it! That’s what I meant!”

She leaned in close, her breath catching with excitement. “A consultation about making a baby!”

“…!”

This time, it was my turn to be stunned.

She gasped immediately, her face flushing crimson. “Ah, no, that’s wrong! The subject, I mean, a modifier was missi—”

“A-anyway, that’s not it! Look, my mom consulted you about making a baby the other day, right?”

“Ah, ahh, yeah. She did.”

She’d told me not to hold back on what we wanted to do just for her sake. Judging from the context, it was clear that my stepmother, Akiko-san, had already figured out the true nature of my relationship with Saki.

“After that, you know, Mom told me something,” Saki continued. “She said that in another two years, I’ll be the same age she was when she had me. And she’s sure that in the not-so-distant future, I’ll bring home someone special.”

So that’s what they’d talked about when my stepmother had called just Saki over after our talk.

“And, you know, she said that no matter who that person is, Mom and… my stepfather, Taichi-san, will definitely give us their blessing.”

“Sounds like she was clearly thinking about me, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was super obvious,” Saki said with a self-deprecating smile. “But when I honestly tried to confess, ‘The person is Asamura-kun,’ she stopped me. Ah, sorry for trying to reveal it on impulse without consulting you. But at that moment, I just felt like I had to.”

“That’s fine. Honestly, I had a feeling she already knew.” That wasn’t what was bothering me. “I wonder why she cut you off. Does that mean she doesn’t want to hear it yet?”

Perhaps it was a form of denial, where she suspected the truth but wasn’t ready to have it confirmed.

But Saki immediately shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that kind of vibe. She just said… ‘Cherish the time you have now, and slowly nurture your love.’”

I thought about my stepmother’s words. Below us, crowds of people flowed past, sometimes nearly colliding. I wondered if some of them had been drinking at the bar where she works.

Just as Saki and I were starting university and making new friends, people’s lives are always hitting major turning points. My stepmother, having worked in Shibuya for so long, must have witnessed these transitions countless times, seeing people come and go from both the city and her bar.

Change is just the way of the world.

Could it be that she felt that forcing us to confess right now might bind us in the wrong way? As a mother, what she wants isn’t for us to be happy as a couple. It’s for each of us to live happily, freely, without being tied down.

Romantic relationships are unpredictable. You can be blissfully happy one moment and then grow apart over the smallest misalignment. That’s what happened with my father and my biological mother, and with my stepmother and Itou Fumiya.

So, if we were to confess our relationship now, when marriage is still a distant thought, we’d only have to report back in awkwardness if we were to break up. Maybe she would rather we told her when our relationship has truly blossomed, when we’ve made a decision that will shape our futures.

When I voiced this thought, Saki nodded immediately, as if she’d been thinking the same thing.

“We should cherish and nurture our relationship. That’s… that’s what we should do, but…”

“But?”

Her words trailed off.

I looked at her profile. The coldness from the day we first met was gone, replaced by a softer expression. It was hard to tell if the blush on her cheeks was from the neon lights or something else entirely.

“Today is my last day working at the same place as you, right?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“I think with our university schedules and my new internship, our daily rhythms are going to get more and more out of tune.”

“That’ll probably be the case.”

“The time we can spend together will probably shrink.”

“We live in the same house, but… it’s hard to just assume that means we’ll see each other, isn’t it?”

“…Yeah.”

During her most sensitive years in middle and high school, Saki had lived a life out of sync with her own mother. She knew better than anyone that even if you share a roof, completely different schedules can mean you barely see each other at all.

“To be honest, I’m a little anxious,” she confessed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Asamura-kun, I don’t… think. But, you know, a relationship that’s both siblings and lovers is, well, it’s ambiguous. It seems defined, but it isn’t. We won’t lose sight of it if we’re constantly talking and confirming it, but I feel like it might be fragile enough to just… disappear if we don’t have that time.”

I was stunned. To think that she felt the same anxiety I did.

Though I hadn’t considered that the ambiguity of our relationship itself was a source of it.

‘If she doesn’t like it, just say sorry. That’s the end of it, ain’t it? She’s your girlfriend, after all.’

I remembered Nakamura’s words. Deep down, his logic never sat right with me. That kind of thinking is where prejudice begins. “Just because she’s my girlfriend, it’s fine”—that’s not how it should be. Ayase Saki is Ayase Saki; I can’t just slap a label on her and call it a day.

But what she said had a point. People are bound by definitions. It’s a shortcut. Once something is defined, you can accept it without overthinking, lumping it in with similar things. I’ve always avoided such stereotypes, and so has Saki. But that instinct to categorize is stable, fast, and low-cost. It’s sustainable.

Sister, or lover.

We needed to make it clear, so it would never waver.

“I won’t call you ‘Onii-san’ anymore,” she declared, her voice firm. “So when you call me Saki, I don’t want you to call me that as your sister.”

Like the promise from that day, she—Saki, who from now on would be simply my lover—laid out her terms.

“Is that the major value you want to align?”

When I asked, Saki nodded. “Yes.”

“What do you think? …Yuuta.”

“I…”

I turned to face her directly.

Bathed in the vulgar lights of Dogenzaka, she still looked noble, but the thorns that once seemed so sharp now felt like mere decoration. Beneath them was a softness that I could now see, a generosity that would accept me even at my most pathetic.

I realized then how much richer my perception of her had become. It’s because we’re standing in the same place as that first day that I can see the difference so clearly.

The Saki I’m looking at now is infinitely more real, more three-dimensional than the girl I met on this landing.

I see. This is fine.

If I had defined her back then, I would have gone through life without ever knowing the real “Ayase Saki.” But now, after all this time, a simple definition won’t make me lose sight of who she is.

“I want a clear definition, too.”

“Yuuta…!” she gasped, surprised.

It was because I was touching her nape.

My hand had moved on its own, as if drawn to her. I felt the fine texture of her hair against the back of my hand as my fingers brushed her neck, then moved up to cup her cheek, tracing its shape, feeling its warmth.

Did I scare her? Should I apologize?

Timidly, I looked into her eyes.

“Ah…”

And then, I understood. For the first time, I truly experienced what a non-verbal “yes” felt like.

She covered my hand on her cheek with her own.

Sandwiched between the warmth of her cheek and her hand, a gentle heat bloomed, spreading from my palm through my entire body.

This was something you don’t do with a sister, but you do with a lover.

This was how we would define our relationship, and make the path of Yuuta and Saki certain.

“Is it… okay?”

“…It’s okay.”

The heat of our mingled breaths seemed to scorch the air of the entertainment district. The lights, the sounds, the figures of Dogenzaka all melted away, dissolving at the edge of a world that no longer needed words.