Gimai Seikatsu

The girl had cut off her long hair.

In a romance novel, something like this would be regarded as a drastic event, but in reality, it wasn’t anything to be shocked or surprised about. Because it was hot. Because it was annoying to deal with. Because the person wanted a change of pace or mood. Considering all these reasons as to why a girl would possibly cut her hair, it was practically meaningless to judge this as a great change in the person’s state of mind or mindset. You might even call such suspicions boorish. Thus, you should accept it as a simple event and just get used to the new hairstyle.

For myself, Asamura Yuuta, that would be the expected reaction, namely to acknowledge it as something perfectly ordinary and routine. Naturally, since we hadn’t been step-siblings for that long of a time, and since this was the first time I had experienced this in person, I couldn’t say this with abundant confidence. This was one of the times I’d love to ask all older step-brothers in the world for guidance.

But before that, I never would have imagined that my old man, who is past his forties, would bring home a beautiful older lady who had taken care of him at a bar he frequented. Nor would I ever expect him to get married to her. When I first heard about this decision, what first came to mind wasn’t happiness and joy, but rather worry and anxiety.

Will this be okay? What if she’s just deceiving him? These thoughts kept me up at night. I had witnessed the divorce between him and my real mother in person, so for me, I’ve never held high expectations for women in general. Fights that lasted entire nights, a distant and disinterested gaze towards her husband and child, cheating without a second thought… After being raised in an environment where neglect was practically a small break from the terror, when I heard about the divorce, I felt relieved more than sad.

My image of a woman was my own mother. She acted all-important and always right in both accusations and actions, forcing her expectations onto both me and my old man, only to act haughtily disappointed if we couldn’t fulfill them. She was kind of nasty, in my opinion. As a result, I at one point started to abandon any expectations I might have had of other people. Because of this, when my new step-sister told me her own opinions on the matter, I felt more relieved than anything.

“I won’t have any great expectations from you, so I want you to do the same for me.”

These words sounded like pure desire for an honest and faithful human relationship. Not demanding anything from the person she’d be living with from now on, but she also wouldn’t hold back more than necessary. In short, we would adjust to each other. A relationship that would allow us both to be honest with each other was something I gratefully accepted. That’s the kind of person Ayase Saki is.

Things should work like that, so that we can become the kind of step-siblings my old man and Akiko-san want us to be. That is how I truly felt. However, there was one significant difference. I couldn’t be bothered to fight against the immense pressure people brought with them when approaching me. I instead decided to take it in and let it blow past me like a breeze. When it comes to most complaints and objections from other people, I don’t defy them.