“Leave it,” I say, putting my hand on Rona’s shoulder. At my touch, Rona flinches in surprise, and starts shaking slightly.”I….. I1 don’t want to see you become a bad person.”
The moment he actually hurts someone, there will be no turning back at that point.
Rona looks back at me, and gives me a huge, cheerful grin.
“Eh? Niisan, what are you talking about?”
His smile may be carefree and guileless, but I’ve already ascertained for the most part what he had been about to do. Until I had called out to him, Rona had been staring fixedly, straight ahead. Right at Cecile Alldington and Ashley Carlyle as he carried her away.
As if he was sharpening his resolve, he watched them without even blinking.
After verifying that the two of them had left the room, I grab Rona’s arm and force him to turn towards me.
“Rona Randolph. Who the heck are you?”
Just now, he had been about to use magic on either Cecile or Ashley and judging by his expression I’m sure its effects would have been nothing good.
But even so, I just can’t bring myself to think that he’s the hidden character. In the first place, I can’t seem to grasp his personality. Just what sort of person is Rona Randolph? His actions don’t seem to make logical sense. What possible benefit could he gain from going after Cecile?
If he had come into contact with Leila, then I guess I could imagine it. Although Leila is unquestionably the assailant, if you were to just observe their relationship from the sidelines, then for the most part you would only see Cecile violently driving Leila away from her. And if you didn’t know anything, it would be easy to assume that Cecile is actually bullying Leila. There are probably a couple people in this school who see it that way. Even though in this case, Leila completely brings it upon himself.
But either way, it would be odd for the hidden character to attack Cecile without a clear reason. And as far as I know, Rona hasn’t been in contact with Leila, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to go after her just because of a misunderstanding like that. And Cecile herself says that she has no idea why Rona is acting like this towards her.
“Who am I…? Obviously, I’m your little brother, Rona Randolph, right?”
“You know, I’ve noticed since a while ago that whenever you’re lying you have this habit of grasping the middle finger of your left hand with your right hand.”
I’m taking a gamble.
I might just be overthinking things… but I’ll know in a moment since Rona’s face tends to be like an open book; he’s not very good at concealing his feelings. And it looks like I was right.
Rona’s eyes go wide and he starts trembling slightly. A moment later, he had gotten himself under control again, though the damage had been done. The corners of his lips arch up, possibly trying to feign nonchalance still.
“Oh? You’ve been paying close attention, Niisan. Someone who’s realized that habit of mine….”
“There’s only been one person up until now, right? Well duh. I am your older brother after all. Of course I would know you better than anyone else does.”
＊＊＊
I’m not like Cecile who has only vague memories of her past life. I remember everything. My past self, family, friends, teachers, it’s all crystal clear in my mind. Though it’s not like I had self-awareness of all of this from birth like Leila.
It’s likely that every reincarnated soul reacts slightly differently and so the information they remember as well as the timing that the memories come back varies from person to person.
For me, I regained my memories when I was 15 years old. It had been a few months before I started attending this academy. I had been getting all of my things in order when suddenly I had this thought:
——-I hope I’m able to graduate this time round.
But, at that time such a thought seemed unnatural.
What’s ‘this time’ supposed to mean??
In this world, we go to school for three years and that’s it. And I’d obviously never gone to school before this. Sure, I had a few home tutors over the years teaching me the basics, but you don’t exactly graduate after receiving that kind of tutelage. So why would I have thought that?
And as I continued to think about it, I couldn’t figure out why I was so fixated on graduation either.
It felt like there was something… that I had wanted to protect. Not something like my position or social status, something more important. And by graduating and getting a job, I was hoping to be able to protect it.
But what?
What had I wanted to protect?
And that’s when it all came back to me.
Including the thing that had been so precious to me.
I was initially from a dual income family. My parents had run their own traditional Japanese style restaurant together. And back then, times were hard. They often made just enough money to make ends meet. That means my little sister and I were left to fend for ourselves the majority of the time so that they could work even an hour more. And although she was a year younger than me, she was quite the sharp kid. She understood from a young age that our parents couldn’t spend much time with us because we needed the money. I’m sure all the meals we ate by ourselves must have tasted flavorless and sad to her. Even though she’s the youngest child, someone who should have been doted on, she never said a selfish word to our parents.
But then, at some point it just became too much for her to handle. She could no longer bear the unhappiness and anxiety that she had been bottling up, and she ended up having a melt down. It was around the time when she was in her second or third year of elementary school. She cried and screamed at me about how she wished she could have been born in a more normal family. The fact that our parents had suddenly become unable to participate in yet another of her school events had been the cause.
She confessed her pain to me, but she never once said anything to our parents since they were only doing their best to raise us.
And while I watched her sobbing her eyes out, I swore.
I told myself that once I had graduated from high school, I’d find a job.
I couldn’t go to college, since then our parents would have been even more busy trying to save up money for my tuition fees, meaning they would have even less time to spend with my sister. So I decided to become a civil servant. That would be perfect. Plus, I heard that my uncle had managed to become a civil servant just after graduating high school. As long as I pass a test, I would have been able to get a job at city hall. That would also mean that I could help out my family’s financial situation a bit more. And, becoming a civil servant would mean that I wouldn’t have to lessen the amount of time that I could spend with my little sister either. I didn’t want her to feel sad any more.
Thinking about it more now, since she was only one year younger than me, by the time I was old enough to graduate and get a job, she wouldn’t have been the sad and lonely little girl that craved her parents’ attention anymore…. But even so, I just wanted to be able to make up for all the painful times she had to endure.
Once she had reached middle school though, almost all traces of my cute, lonely sister were gone. She had become this cheeky little brat who called me ‘Aniki’ instead of ‘Oniichan’2 and who was obsessed with video games. She would unabashedly play otome games in the living room right in front of me and was altogether quite the annoying little runt, but even then she was still my precious baby sister.
And then, I was just about to graduate.
I was almost there.
“Didn’t get enough sleep?”
“Yeah… I stayed up super late playing that game.”
It happened when we were on our way to school. When I had started high school, I had wondered if we would eventually stop walking to and from school together, but it just never happened. I guess after so many years of commuting together, it would have been more annoying trying to change things up at that point. But thanks to that I was able to protect her, so I guess it worked out in the end.
“Hey! You idiot…! The light’s still……–!”
“Eh…..?”
She should have already learned that red means stop. That numskull. And she shouldn’t have been playing games to the point that she can’t even pay attention to what’s right in front of her face in the first place.
Because of her….. I guess that might sound patronizing but, whatever. For that brat’s sake I’d been studying so much for the public servant exam that I wasn’t even able to get a girlfriend.
And I had really wanted to have a girlfriend, you know!? And so what if they were unrealistic, I also had a few fantasies for what I hoped my life would be like. Sure, I didn’t have a face that girls would drool over, but like an idiot I still had my own hopes and dreams that I was working as hard as I could for.
But, you know.
It wasn’t a bad life. Since I was at least able to protect my baby sister.
Even as I was being run over by that full-size car and my life was flashing before my eyes, that’s what I thought.
And if I died in one shot like this, then at least I wouldn’t have had to see her crying face….
“Oniicha……–! Thank god…… You woke up….!”
But when I opened my eyes again, I was in the hospital.
And there, standing next to the bed, my parents and sister were all crying over me. I meant to sit up, to assure them all that I was fine, but my body wouldn’t listen to me.
“…What? Oniichan….? From here on, make sure to always call me that,” I tell her.
I had initially wanted to say it offhandedly, like I normally would, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate. It came out sounding hoarse and weak. And from that, I somehow knew I wasn’t going to make it.
Even as the tears were streaming from her eyes, my little sister smiled at me, laughing at me like I had just said something ridiculous.
“Sounded just like I was a cute little sister, right?”
What a dolt.
“You’ve always been my cute little sister.”
“What are you saying?? You’re so embarrassing, stupid aniki.”
Ahh, I guess I won’t be able to see her smiling face after this….
“Now, don’t go thinking anything stupid like this was your fault.”
“Oka–….. I wasn’t even thinking that anyway.”
Liar.
“Whenever you’re lying, you have a habit of holding the middle finger of your left hand with your right hand, ya know.”
I did that cause I wanted to. So don’t you dare think about following after me out of some misguided feeling of responcibility.
“You probably don’t know…. But you can’t go to heaven if you kill yourself. You better live for as long as you can, and then come straight to find me once you’ve died of old age.”
And then I’ll finally be able to see her smiling face again.
＊＊＊
The moment I remembered everything, the whole world felt like it was flipped upside down. The personality that had developed since I was born in this world as Gray Randolph had suddenly vanished, and I was left with nothing but my past self. I had changed so much, I didn’t even have the confidence that I would be able to continue living according to the scenario I had been born into in this world. But that was how I became the person who I am today……
“Rona Randolph. You have other habits as well. Like, when you’ve just heard some good news, you tap the toes of your left foot on the ground. Or when you’re lost in thought, you tend to touch your earlobe. And when you’re tired, you often thump your lower back with your fist.”
Every single one of them….
“Just like my little sister.”
Plus there’s how her face was like an open book…. And how she was absolute trash at math.
“Uuu….. ah…….”
Rona hangs his head, letting out a little whimper as he slowly trudges closer to me. When he was right in front of me, without looking up, he buried his face into my shoulder.
“O…..niicha…..?”
“Yeah…..”
I had somewhat suspected this for a while. He had all the same habits, his speech patterns and conduct seemed pretty similar at times, and plus there was how he often stared right at all the important characters from the game…. Their similarities just kept piling up. At some point, I had almost convinced myself that I was right, I just needed to confirm it. So, I baited him. But when I realized that I had been right, I felt so relieved. Cause if I had been wrong, Rona definitely would have looked at me like I was crazy.
Thinking that Rona might actually be my sister does seem pretty insane, but it’s almost equally unimagineable that all of that could have been just coincidence.
“You better not have taken your own life.”
“I didn….t…… I got in an accident…..”
Agh, what a headache.
“You…..”
“But Onii…… Aniki! You just went up and died on your own!” my sister whimpers as she starts batting her fists on my head. She’s crying so much that snot’s dripping from her nose but she doesn’t seem to care. Thankfully no one’s nearby to overhear us, so we probably just look like a couple of siblings messing around with each other.
“I felt so guilty…. so much regret that I thought I would die!! It was all my fault….. Because of me…… I’m so…rr…..”
Using such a cutesy tone of voice with that face of hers……3
“Gross……”
“Sorry…. Stupid Aniki…. Don’t you have anything else to say to me!?”
While I’d love to continue on with this touching reunion, there’s some things that need to be taken care of first. The game’s story is still progressing. I need to confirm some stuff first before doing anything else.
Unlike that miss oh-so-helpful rival character, the Rona Randolph who’s standing before of me is someone who’s actually beaten the whole game.
“First, I need to ask. Are you…. is Rona Randolph the hidden character?”
“Haa?” She says, scrunching up her eyes incredulously and using a tone of voice that makes it clear that she thinks that I’m an idiot.
“What are you talking about?? Of course not…..?”
Then, that means……
“So it really is Oswell Arkwright…..!”
“Leave it,” I say, putting my hand on Rona’s shoulder. At my touch, Rona flinches in surprise, and starts shaking slightly.”I….. I1 don’t want to see you become a bad person.”
The moment he actually hurts someone, there will be no turning back at that point.
Rona looks back at me, and gives me a huge, cheerful grin.
“Eh? Niisan, what are you talking about?”
His smile may be carefree and guileless, but I’ve already ascertained for the most part what he had been about to do. Until I had called out to him, Rona had been staring fixedly, straight ahead. Right at Cecile Alldington and Ashley Carlyle as he carried her away.
As if he was sharpening his resolve, he watched them without even blinking.
After verifying that the two of them had left the room, I grab Rona’s arm and force him to turn towards me.
“Rona Randolph. Who the heck are you?”
Just now, he had been about to use magic on either Cecile or Ashley and judging by his expression I’m sure its effects would have been nothing good.
But even so, I just can’t bring myself to think that he’s the hidden character. In the first place, I can’t seem to grasp his personality. Just what sort of person is Rona Randolph? His actions don’t seem to make logical sense. What possible benefit could he gain from going after Cecile?
If he had come into contact with Leila, then I guess I could imagine it. Although Leila is unquestionably the assailant, if you were to just observe their relationship from the sidelines, then for the most part you would only see Cecile violently driving Leila away from her. And if you didn’t know anything, it would be easy to assume that Cecile is actually bullying Leila. There are probably a couple people in this school who see it that way. Even though in this case, Leila completely brings it upon himself.
But either way, it would be odd for the hidden character to attack Cecile without a clear reason. And as far as I know, Rona hasn’t been in contact with Leila, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to go after her just because of a misunderstanding like that. And Cecile herself says that she has no idea why Rona is acting like this towards her.
“Who am I…? Obviously, I’m your little brother, Rona Randolph, right?”
“You know, I’ve noticed since a while ago that whenever you’re lying you have this habit of grasping the middle finger of your left hand with your right hand.”
I’m taking a gamble.
I might just be overthinking things… but I’ll know in a moment since Rona’s face tends to be like an open book; he’s not very good at concealing his feelings. And it looks like I was right.
Rona’s eyes go wide and he starts trembling slightly. A moment later, he had gotten himself under control again, though the damage had been done. The corners of his lips arch up, possibly trying to feign nonchalance still.
“Oh? You’ve been paying close attention, Niisan. Someone who’s realized that habit of mine….”
“There’s only been one person up until now, right? Well duh. I am your older brother after all. Of course I would know you better than anyone else does.”
＊＊＊
I’m not like Cecile who has only vague memories of her past life. I remember everything. My past self, family, friends, teachers, it’s all crystal clear in my mind. Though it’s not like I had self-awareness of all of this from birth like Leila.
It’s likely that every reincarnated soul reacts slightly differently and so the information they remember as well as the timing that the memories come back varies from person to person.
For me, I regained my memories when I was 15 years old. It had been a few months before I started attending this academy. I had been getting all of my things in order when suddenly I had this thought:
——-I hope I’m able to graduate this time round.
But, at that time such a thought seemed unnatural.
What’s ‘this time’ supposed to mean??
In this world, we go to school for three years and that’s it. And I’d obviously never gone to school before this. Sure, I had a few home tutors over the years teaching me the basics, but you don’t exactly graduate after receiving that kind of tutelage. So why would I have thought that?
And as I continued to think about it, I couldn’t figure out why I was so fixated on graduation either.
It felt like there was something… that I had wanted to protect. Not something like my position or social status, something more important. And by graduating and getting a job, I was hoping to be able to protect it.
But what?
What had I wanted to protect?
And that’s when it all came back to me.
Including the thing that had been so precious to me.
I was initially from a dual income family. My parents had run their own traditional Japanese style restaurant together. And back then, times were hard. They often made just enough money to make ends meet. That means my little sister and I were left to fend for ourselves the majority of the time so that they could work even an hour more. And although she was a year younger than me, she was quite the sharp kid. She understood from a young age that our parents couldn’t spend much time with us because we needed the money. I’m sure all the meals we ate by ourselves must have tasted flavorless and sad to her. Even though she’s the youngest child, someone who should have been doted on, she never said a selfish word to our parents.
But then, at some point it just became too much for her to handle. She could no longer bear the unhappiness and anxiety that she had been bottling up, and she ended up having a melt down. It was around the time when she was in her second or third year of elementary school. She cried and screamed at me about how she wished she could have been born in a more normal family. The fact that our parents had suddenly become unable to participate in yet another of her school events had been the cause.
She confessed her pain to me, but she never once said anything to our parents since they were only doing their best to raise us.
And while I watched her sobbing her eyes out, I swore.
I told myself that once I had graduated from high school, I’d find a job.
I couldn’t go to college, since then our parents would have been even more busy trying to save up money for my tuition fees, meaning they would have even less time to spend with my sister. So I decided to become a civil servant. That would be perfect. Plus, I heard that my uncle had managed to become a civil servant just after graduating high school. As long as I pass a test, I would have been able to get a job at city hall. That would also mean that I could help out my family’s financial situation a bit more. And, becoming a civil servant would mean that I wouldn’t have to lessen the amount of time that I could spend with my little sister either. I didn’t want her to feel sad any more.
Thinking about it more now, since she was only one year younger than me, by the time I was old enough to graduate and get a job, she wouldn’t have been the sad and lonely little girl that craved her parents’ attention anymore…. But even so, I just wanted to be able to make up for all the painful times she had to endure.
Once she had reached middle school though, almost all traces of my cute, lonely sister were gone. She had become this cheeky little brat who called me ‘Aniki’ instead of ‘Oniichan’2 and who was obsessed with video games. She would unabashedly play otome games in the living room right in front of me and was altogether quite the annoying little runt, but even then she was still my precious baby sister.
And then, I was just about to graduate.
I was almost there.
“Didn’t get enough sleep?”
“Yeah… I stayed up super late playing that game.”
It happened when we were on our way to school. When I had started high school, I had wondered if we would eventually stop walking to and from school together, but it just never happened. I guess after so many years of commuting together, it would have been more annoying trying to change things up at that point. But thanks to that I was able to protect her, so I guess it worked out in the end.
“Hey! You idiot…! The light’s still……–!”
“Eh…..?”
She should have already learned that red means stop. That numskull. And she shouldn’t have been playing games to the point that she can’t even pay attention to what’s right in front of her face in the first place.
Because of her….. I guess that might sound patronizing but, whatever. For that brat’s sake I’d been studying so much for the public servant exam that I wasn’t even able to get a girlfriend.
And I had really wanted to have a girlfriend, you know!? And so what if they were unrealistic, I also had a few fantasies for what I hoped my life would be like. Sure, I didn’t have a face that girls would drool over, but like an idiot I still had my own hopes and dreams that I was working as hard as I could for.
But, you know.
It wasn’t a bad life. Since I was at least able to protect my baby sister.
Even as I was being run over by that full-size car and my life was flashing before my eyes, that’s what I thought.
And if I died in one shot like this, then at least I wouldn’t have had to see her crying face….
“Oniicha……–! Thank god…… You woke up….!”
But when I opened my eyes again, I was in the hospital.
And there, standing next to the bed, my parents and sister were all crying over me. I meant to sit up, to assure them all that I was fine, but my body wouldn’t listen to me.
“…What? Oniichan….? From here on, make sure to always call me that,” I tell her.
I had initially wanted to say it offhandedly, like I normally would, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate. It came out sounding hoarse and weak. And from that, I somehow knew I wasn’t going to make it.
Even as the tears were streaming from her eyes, my little sister smiled at me, laughing at me like I had just said something ridiculous.
“Sounded just like I was a cute little sister, right?”
What a dolt.
“You’ve always been my cute little sister.”
“What are you saying?? You’re so embarrassing, stupid aniki.”
Ahh, I guess I won’t be able to see her smiling face after this….
“Now, don’t go thinking anything stupid like this was your fault.”
“Oka–….. I wasn’t even thinking that anyway.”
Liar.
“Whenever you’re lying, you have a habit of holding the middle finger of your left hand with your right hand, ya know.”
I did that cause I wanted to. So don’t you dare think about following after me out of some misguided feeling of responcibility.
“You probably don’t know…. But you can’t go to heaven if you kill yourself. You better live for as long as you can, and then come straight to find me once you’ve died of old age.”
And then I’ll finally be able to see her smiling face again.
＊＊＊
The moment I remembered everything, the whole world felt like it was flipped upside down. The personality that had developed since I was born in this world as Gray Randolph had suddenly vanished, and I was left with nothing but my past self. I had changed so much, I didn’t even have the confidence that I would be able to continue living according to the scenario I had been born into in this world. But that was how I became the person who I am today……
“Rona Randolph. You have other habits as well. Like, when you’ve just heard some good news, you tap the toes of your left foot on the ground. Or when you’re lost in thought, you tend to touch your earlobe. And when you’re tired, you often thump your lower back with your fist.”
Every single one of them….
“Just like my little sister.”
Plus there’s how her face was like an open book…. And how she was absolute trash at math.
“Uuu….. ah…….”
Rona hangs his head, letting out a little whimper as he slowly trudges closer to me. When he was right in front of me, without looking up, he buried his face into my shoulder.
“O…..niicha…..?”
“Yeah…..”
I had somewhat suspected this for a while. He had all the same habits, his speech patterns and conduct seemed pretty similar at times, and plus there was how he often stared right at all the important characters from the game…. Their similarities just kept piling up. At some point, I had almost convinced myself that I was right, I just needed to confirm it. So, I baited him. But when I realized that I had been right, I felt so relieved. Cause if I had been wrong, Rona definitely would have looked at me like I was crazy.
Thinking that Rona might actually be my sister does seem pretty insane, but it’s almost equally unimagineable that all of that could have been just coincidence.
“You better not have taken your own life.”
“I didn….t…… I got in an accident…..”
Agh, what a headache.
“You…..”
“But Onii…… Aniki! You just went up and died on your own!” my sister whimpers as she starts batting her fists on my head. She’s crying so much that snot’s dripping from her nose but she doesn’t seem to care. Thankfully no one’s nearby to overhear us, so we probably just look like a couple of siblings messing around with each other.
“I felt so guilty…. so much regret that I thought I would die!! It was all my fault….. Because of me…… I’m so…rr…..”
Using such a cutesy tone of voice with that face of hers……3
“Gross……”
“Sorry…. Stupid Aniki…. Don’t you have anything else to say to me!?”
While I’d love to continue on with this touching reunion, there’s some things that need to be taken care of first. The game’s story is still progressing. I need to confirm some stuff first before doing anything else.
Unlike that miss oh-so-helpful rival character, the Rona Randolph who’s standing before of me is someone who’s actually beaten the whole game.
“First, I need to ask. Are you…. is Rona Randolph the hidden character?”
“Haa?” She says, scrunching up her eyes incredulously and using a tone of voice that makes it clear that she thinks that I’m an idiot.
“What are you talking about?? Of course not…..?”
Then, that means……
“So it really is Oswell Arkwright…..!”
