Luna Is Such a Fool
It hadn’t been smooth sailing from the start, but the date wasn’t bad.
…No.
“Hey! Let’s go over there too!”
In a certain sense, you could call it a resounding success.
This was the first time I’d ever seen Rina this excited.
I walked over toward Rina, who had already gone on ahead and was pointing that way with an outstretched hand, and spoke to Luna, who still refused to let go of my hand.
“I didn’t know Rina was coming too.”
“Huh…? You don’t like it?”
“No, that’s not it.”
Quite the opposite, actually. From my perspective, the number of beauties capable of making my eyes happy had simply doubled.
Even if this place was originally an aquarium, with Luna and Rina at my side it might as well have been a flower garden.
Or a flower shop? Seeing as I had one in each hand…
Anyway, even with Rina unexpectedly tagging along on the date, it was pure gain for me and no loss at all.
What I was actually worried about was Rina herself.
Luna had probably planned from the beginning to have Rina join us on the date. She was ridiculously soft on her little sister, after all.
But according to what Luna had told me, Rina had volunteered to come along before Luna could even bring it up.
Looking at how happily she was enjoying herself, maybe she really had just wanted to play…
Yet the Elysia-radar I’d been carefully calibrating over the past month or so was telling me otherwise.
Rina wouldn’t abandon the Mors Family for something trivial—not with that sense of duty of hers.
I didn’t know the exact reason… but she was probably fretting over the idea of Luna and me being alone together.
Honestly, if I’d been in Rina’s shoes, I would’ve worried too.
A woman with looks on my level, if she put her mind to it, could make even Luna—the boss of the Mors Family—fall for her without fail.
If I’d been harboring any wicked intentions, I could’ve turned Luna into my personal puppet…!
And then I could’ve done whatever I wanted with her…!
From the perspective of an innocent little sister who adored her big sister, of course she’d be worried.
Because Rina was a sister-con. This is important, so I’ll say it twice. She was a sister-con!
You could tell just from her usual behavior.
At a glance it might look like she was reluctantly looking after her hopeless older sister, but every single thing she did for Luna was laced with tiny, careful acts of consideration.
And just the other day, when she’d been straightening Luna’s clothes, the sheer amount of love in those hands…
It was a shame that Rina barging in on the date meant I couldn’t do whatever I wanted with Luna… wait, no! That’s not it.
It was a shame I couldn’t spend some cozy one-on-one time with Luna!
But it was also nice getting an even clearer look at how much Rina loved her.
Rina’s heart for Luna was truly huge! Truly huge!
Important enough to say twice.
I’d already been thinking I wanted to get a little closer to Rina, so this was actually a fantastic opportunity for me.
I’d use this chance to get super close to her and swap phone numbers…!
“What are you two doing? Hurry up!”
“Coming~.”
From far ahead, Rina waved us over, urging us on.
If I wanted to get closer to her, maybe the best approach was to go along with whatever she wanted as much as possible?
I glanced sideways at Luna, who was still holding my hand. She didn’t seem to have any particular thoughts on the matter.
She was just staring blankly at Rina waving in the distance.
She seemed more moved by the simple fact that the three of us were hanging out together than by the aquarium itself…
I gave Luna’s hand a gentle tug and started walking toward Rina.
When the distance between us and Rina had roughly halved, Luna suddenly spoke.
“…Rina looks like she’s having fun.”
The expression on her face as she said it felt somehow unfamiliar.
The Luna-Rina sisters usually didn’t show much change in expression; they were almost always blank-faced.
But right now, while little sister Rina was grinning from ear to ear like a child who couldn’t contain her joy, Luna’s expression had sunk low.
Something about that lonely look made me ask without thinking.
“…Aren’t you having fun, Luna?”
“…I am having fun, it’s just…”
“Just?”
“…….”
Luna fidgeted with the hand that was holding mine, hesitating for a moment.
“It’s been such a long, long time since I’ve seen Rina smile like that.”
“…….”
Guilt was plastered thick over her voice as she said it.
Apparently Luna felt sorry toward Rina.
I’d heard the rough outline of their past from her before.
From childhood on, their days had been more grueling than joyful.
Their parents had died when they were young, and they’d been taken in and raised by their aunt—the original boss of the Mors Family.
But before long their aunt had fallen ill with some nameless disease and died, and their uncle, jealous of Luna’s talent, had threatened their lives on a near-daily basis.
Even so, Luna had said she’d been happy just being together with Rina.
They’d leaned on each other, supported each other, and eventually Luna had become the boss of the Mors Family.
But had Rina been happy?
“Just out of curiosity—when was the last time the two of you went out to play?”
“Went out to play? Hmm…”
Luna tilted her head, thinking hard, then for some reason glanced at me a little nervously before speaking again.
“About… ten years ago? We haven’t really gone out to play since Mom and Dad died…”
“…….”
We were twenty-one now.
Rina, born just a few minutes after Luna, was twenty.
So ten years ago… that meant the last time they’d played together was around age ten.
From elementary school age—right when kids most wanted to play—they’d never gotten to play at all and had just worked nonstop. No wonder she was this excited.
“If I’d known she’d like it this much, I should’ve forced myself to take her out more often.”
Luna’s eyes sank coldly as she spoke those guilt-laden words.
Then she started muttering something under her breath with dead eyes.
Probably self-recriminations.
Just as Rina cherished Luna, Luna cherished Rina enormously.
She was surely inventing every possible reason in her head to blame herself for Rina not getting to play.
If only her talent hadn’t surpassed her uncle’s children. If only she’d hidden that talent.
If only she hadn’t become boss of the Mors Family and given Rina the secretary position.
And so on.
Yeah. If things had gone that way, Rina might have graduated high school like a normal girl and enrolled in the Academy—an utterly ordinary young woman.
But. But, you know.
I casually let go of the hand I’d been holding, raised it, and flicked Luna right on the forehead with a sharp thwack!
“Eek!”
She looked up at me with wide, round eyes, blinking—more startled than hurt.
I held the fiercest expression I could manage for a moment while meeting her gaze, then used the same hand that had flicked her to ruffle her hair thoroughly.
Luna made a confused face.
Even if Luna felt a sense of responsibility as the older sister, even if she felt guilty that Rina was so happy over something this ordinary because she’d never gotten to live a normal life—
Luna was still just a kid, same as Rina.
She might be the “older sister,” but as I’d said earlier, the two of them had only been born a few minutes apart.
When Luna had awakened to her talent, when she’d become the new boss of the Mors Family and given Rina the secretary position, she’d been far younger than she was now.
People often say life is a series of choices.
In a life that is a series of choices, even fully grown adults don’t always make perfect ones.
So how foolish was it to beat yourself up over choices made by a past self who was nothing more than a child?
Just reaching a certain age doesn’t make you an adult.
What separates adults from children is the mindset with which you accept a wrong choice when you make a mistake.
A real adult accepts their mistakes and takes care not to repeat them.
A child collapses after a single mistake and can’t get back up. Even if they do, they’ll make the same mistake again.
And a child pretending to be an adult is the kind of person who feels unnecessary responsibility and calls their past self an idiot.
In that sense, Luna was a child pretending to be an adult.
She’d been young, and she was still young.
Of course, that wasn’t a bad thing.
Most people go through that phase on their way to becoming adults.
It was a little funny for me—still a kid myself—to be saying this, but Luna was so pitiful and yet so endearing that I simply chose to keep ruffling her hair without a word.
At first Luna had looked confused while being petted, but now she was standing still and quietly accepting my hand.
The way she squeezed her eyes shut and focused every bit of her attention on the head being stroked was incredibly cute.
She looked like a small animal, or like a little kid, and I muttered without thinking,
“Call me Mommy…”
“…? Mommy?”
“Ah, n-nothing! Rina’s waiting. Let’s hurry!”
To cover it up I deliberately mussed Luna’s hair even more and fled in Rina’s direction.
“……?”
She stood there tilting her head, roughly smoothing her messy hair as she slowly followed.
Rina shot me one sharp look after seeing Luna like that, then walked over and began gently fixing her sister’s hair with affectionate hands.
In an instant the heavy atmosphere that had settled over Luna vanished without a trace, leaving only a warm gaze directed at Rina.
Watching them from a short distance away, I understood with absolute certainty.
Luna was a fool…. And a seriously bad one at that…….
I probably didn’t even need to step in and tell her she didn’t have to feel guilty.
Just as she always had, Rina would keep supporting her from now on too.
And Luna would keep supporting Rina in turn.
If the two of them ever wanted it, I’d gladly step in to help, but…
“Unni. Did you see the shark?”
“Yeah. It was huge…”
“Right? It was so amazing! Oh, and Unni! I heard there are penguins on the surface too—let’s go see them!”
“Let’s.”
I honestly wondered whether the day would ever come when those two actually needed my help.