Making Friends
“……Both of you… your mothers aren’t around?”
Inside the rattling carriage, the siblings who looked nothing alike stared fixedly at Siriel and spoke up.
“Yeah.”
“That’s right!”
Shiron answered first, and Lucia chimed in right after.
The two of them didn’t merely look different—even their expressions were worlds apart. One face was thoroughly indifferent; the other was flushed with excitement. The contrast seemed to lay bare the gulf between their personalities.
“I… I…”
Siriel fretted at her lips, stumbling over the words.
She couldn’t understand why the friends sitting right in front of her were looking at her with such cold eyes.
She started to say something, then abandoned it. She wanted to keep the conversation going, but her mind had gone blank and nothing would come. Her body refused to move the way she wanted, and a heavy ache settled in her chest.
Siriel was, after all, just an ordinary nine-year-old child. She was slow to grasp which part of what she had said had rubbed them the wrong way. Even so, she could dimly sense that the fault lay with her.
“Uh…”
Having spent her whole life among adults older and more experienced than herself, Siriel had no resistance whatsoever to the unkind stares of children her own age. The way the two of them simply stared through her without a word was a sight utterly foreign to a girl who had grown up cocooned in adult affection.
The place, the situation, the friends—every single element was strange and unfamiliar, and it left her sluggish and slow.
“…….”
Siriel pressed her lips tightly shut and dropped her gaze to the floor.
With her head bowed and no words forthcoming, the carriage filled with nothing but the clatter of the wheels.
Only then did Siriel fully realize how deeply she had offended them.
She was sorry toward her friends; she couldn’t bring herself to look them properly in the face. Yet she had nowhere to run. The closed-off space of the carriage had her completely cornered.
There weren’t many options available to a nine-year-old in a situation like this. Cry. Stay silent. Or brazen it out.
Siriel chose the first.
The girl pressed a hand to the tightness in her chest.
“……Hic.”
A tear beaded and fell onto the back of her small hand.
“I—hic… I’m sorry.”
The little girl of barely nine years kept her head hung low and could only repeat the same apology over and over.
“I’m sorry. Really, hic… I’m sorry.”
“Ah…?”
Siriel wasn’t the only one struck speechless. Watching the child break down into proper, sniffling tears, Lucia felt the situation veering off in a direction she had never expected and grew flustered.
She had been on edge worrying that Shiron might get hurt—and now, instead, Siriel’s tear ducts had burst wide open.
Lucia waved her hands about, trying to calm her.
“D-don’t cry!”
“I—I’m sorry…”
But she had no idea how to soothe a child. The only thing she knew how to do was tell someone not to cry.
She patted Siriel’s back. She stroked the crown of her head. Yet for all her efforts, Siriel’s tears would not stop. The girl just kept sobbing the same apology again and again.
What do I do?
Lucia was certain her own words had only made things worse. She was the adult here, and instead of mediating a children’s quarrel she hadn’t even managed to rein Siriel in—she had made her cry. The realization only deepened her confusion.
Why… why on earth is she crying?
Lucia had no way of knowing why Siriel was weeping so bitterly. Siriel was the one who had said the rude thing, so why was she the one in tears? It made no sense.
And so, while Lucia fretted and stamped her feet in place—
“Hey. Move.”
Shiron flicked his bandaged hand at the restless Lucia. She tore her gaze away from Siriel.
“……Huh?”
“I said move over. There’s something I want to try.”
“Uh? Ah… okay…”
Lucia stared blankly at Shiron for a moment, then shifted aside.
The moment a space opened beside her, Shiron plopped himself down right between Lucia and Siriel.
……Is he going to comfort her?
Having been the one to press Siriel, Lucia couldn’t think of any suitable words of consolation herself, so she decided to sit quietly and watch how this played out.
Shiron slung an arm around Siriel’s shoulders and pulled her in against him. She ended up leaning into his chest. The practiced ease of the motion made Lucia’s eyes go wide.
That’s… kind of amazing.
Even with only a two-year age gap, Shiron really was the older brother. Lucia found herself looking forward to whatever he might say to soothe Siriel.
“Siriel Prien.”
Meeting the lowered gaze of the girl in his arms, Shiron began to speak in a gentle voice.
Hearing that tone so close above her head, Siriel wiped at her tears and peeked up at him a little.
“Sniff… Yeah…”
“…….”
“What exactly did you do that was so great you’re crying over it? Shouldn’t I be the one crying here?”
What came out of Shiron’s mouth, however, was nothing resembling comfort.
“I—I’m sorry… hic.”
“Sorry for what?”
This lunatic…!
Lucia jolted to her feet inside the swaying carriage, staring at the two of them in pure disbelief. But Shiron didn’t so much as glance her way; he only wore a pleasant, amiable smile.
“I… I didn’t know about Oppa’s and Lucia’s situation… hic… and I just went and said whatever I wanted…”
“What? I can’t hear you through all that sniveling.”
S-stop it!
Lucia’s lips trembled.
Shiron wasn’t any ordinary child—no, he wasn’t a child at all. He was pure garbage. She felt like an idiot for having felt even a flicker of sympathy for him a moment ago. She considered punching him, but…
No. If I hit Shiron here, Siriel might start being afraid of me from now on.
Lucia unclenched her fist. Instead she locked her jaw—still quivering despite her best efforts—and shouted.
“Shiron! Cut it out!”
“Ah, keep it down, would you? You’re the one who made Siriel shrink like this.”
Even her attempt to stop him only earned her the blame. Blood rushed to the red-haired girl’s head at his sheer shamelessness.
“Wh-wh-what are you talking about?! You—!”
Lucia was speechless. No one was really at fault for Siriel’s tears, but the one pouring oil on the fire right now was unmistakably Shiron, wasn’t he?
“I… I just…”
Yet even in the middle of that chaos, Siriel clenched the hem of her clothes and tried to answer Shiron’s demand.
“……I got to be with kids my own age… and I was so excited. It was the first time I’d ever made friends, and I was just… so happy. It felt like I’d stepped into an adventure from a storybook, and I got all worked up…”
She still stumbled a little, but it was better than before. Tears kept dripping down her face, yet she fought to get the words out properly.
“So I… got carried away on my own and just blurted out someone else’s family business. I wasn’t thoughtful at all… sniff.”
“Mm. I see. Good girl—knowing how to own up to your own mistake.”
Shiron pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping Siriel’s tears.
“…….”
Even so, Lucia couldn’t bring herself to smile at the tender little scene.
The reason was simple: the smile on Shiron’s face was genuinely, thoroughly unpleasant.
Fortunately—if it could be called that—Siriel had buried her face in his shirt and couldn’t see the expression he was wearing.
Shiron started patting her shoulder.
“So Siriel got all excited because she made a bunch of friends, huh?”
“……Yeah.”
“But I never said I’d be your friend, did I?”
“……I—I’m sorry. I just assumed…”
“Honestly, it’s ridiculous. How do you go around calling someone a friend when he’s a whole two years older than you? Hmm?”
“I—I’m sorry… Oppa…”
“Aigoo, what a good girl. Quick on the uptake—I like that. All right, blow. Blow!”
“Hnn!”
Siriel blew her nose right on cue with his prompting.
What even is this…
Lucia couldn’t tear her eyes away.
She had only ever seen the clever, sharp-witted side of Siriel, so both the girl’s childish behavior and the way Shiron handled her came as quite a shock.
Shiron wiped Siriel’s face for a while longer, then tossed the handkerchief—now thoroughly soaked with tears and snot—out the window.
“I was going to scold you for saying something mean.”
He rummaged in his pocket with his bandaged hand and pulled out a whole handful of candies.
Shiron had spent a long time looking like a drowned rat, yet somehow the candies weren’t stuck together at all; they were as dry and fresh as if they’d just come from the shop.
He picked out a yellow one from the pile.
“But since you’re a good little sister, I’ll give you a reward instead.”
“Th-thank you, Oppa.”
Siriel opened her mouth without needing to be told. Shiron popped the candy right in. She rolled it around on her tongue a few times, then broke into a happy little grin.
“Is it good?”
“Mm. Lemon. I… I like lemon.”
“I like lemon too. So we like the same thing, huh?”
“……!”
“When we get to the mansion later, I’ll give you some lemonade as well.”
“Okay. Thank you, Oppa.”
Siriel beamed up at him with her red, swollen eyes, then nestled herself against his side.
“Hey. You want a candy too?”
“……No.”
Lucia turned down Shiron’s offer and looked at Siriel, who had fallen asleep in his arms.
At some point the girl had drifted off completely, breathing soft and even. After all that fuss, she was already out cold. Lucia narrowed her eyes at Shiron.
Suspicious.
“Suit yourself.”
Shiron popped a red candy into his mouth and crunched it noisily between his teeth.