"Mmm... I think I heard my phone..."
Haruno stirred slowly, voice thick with sleep, eyes barely cracked open.
Mio held it out. "Your sister called."
"Yukino?"
That cleared the fog instantly. Haruno sat up, took the phone, and called back—something unreadable passing across her expression as she processed it.
Yukino almost never called her. Voluntarily.
Had something happened?
She didn't overthink it. She just hit dial.
The call connected. Yukino's voice came through—measured, cool, but with something else running underneath it. "Sis... where are you right now?"
"Out. With a friend." A small pause. "Why?"
Asking where I am. That was new. Normally Yukino skipped straight to whatever she'd called for, as if every second spent on pleasantries was a personal inconvenience. Not today, apparently.
"Nothing. Mom asked me to tell you—come home for dinner tonight."
"Got it."
Silence. Haruno sensed Yukino hadn't hung up—like she was working up to something. She started to ask—
The call ended.
Haruno sat with the phone for a moment.
"Anything urgent?" Mio asked.
"Nothing serious. Just dinner at home tonight. My mother probably has guests." Flat, uninterested. She'd been vaguely planning to freeload off Mio's kitchen for dinner. That was out now.
An idea surfaced.
She turned to Mio with her most persuasive expression. "Little kouhai—come over for dinner?"
Mio said no without hesitation.
First: Haruno's mother. Second: the phone call itself. Yukino had called to relay a dinner invitation—which meant there was a very good chance Yukino would be there too.
Walking into that situation voluntarily would be walking into a trap.
And if she somehow ended up interacting with Yukino in front of Haruno—a girl with documented siscon tendencies—who knew how that would explode.
"Come on—just stay for a bit. The house is big. If you get tired you can sleep over, or I'll drive you back, whatever you want~" Haruno had deployed the full-pouting voice now.
Mio noted—with some detached appreciation—that even Haruno's wheedling had ticked her conquest rating up by a point.
She still said no.
Haruno stuck out her lower lip in theatrical protest.
This is senpai's dignity? Mio thought, somewhere between amused and exhausted. Pouting at your own kouhai?
Time pressure was real, though. They checked out and stepped back into the cooling evening air.
Mio hunched against the wind.
"So—that's the end of our date, senpai?"
"What if I don't want it to end?"
"If senpai keeps stalling, you'll miss dinner."
"...Fine. I'll head back." She gave Mio one last look. "We're doing this again sometime."
"I'll look forward to it." Mouth said yes. Heart said absolutely not.
They said their goodbyes. Haruno hailed a cab and disappeared.
Home. Living room.
Yukino sat on the couch with her head down, completely absorbed in her phone—so absorbed she didn't register Haruno walking in.
Haruno's mouth curved.
She drifted over. "What are you so focused on?"
Yukino locked the screen immediately. Then looked up.
"When did you get back?"
She was doing a reasonable job of looking composed. But Haruno caught it anyway—the slight stiffness, the micro-tells. Combined with how fast she'd killed the screen display:
Hiding something.
Filed away, without comment.
"You called me earlier. That was a surprise."
"Mom was busy. I made the call for her. Is that a problem?"
"No, no."
A beat.
Then, with obvious and careful deliberateness, Yukino asked: "Sis—are you... seeing anyone right now?"
Haruno blinked. That's unexpected. Her high-and-mighty little sister was actually concerned about her love life?
"Nope, single and free. Why—are you trying to set me up with someone?"
"I'm not. I was just asking."
Yukino looked away.
In the absence of a dating relationship, she reasoned internally, taking a high schooler younger than herself to a love hotel suggests some fairly significant character issues.
"You look like you have something to say. You've always been direct—what happened to that?"
"Nothing." Not ready. She tabled it.
That was when the doorbell rang.
Before Haruno could move, Yukino was already at the door.
Standing outside: Hayama Hayato, and his father.
Hayato's father served as the Yukinoshita family's legal counsel—the two families had a long and frequent association. Hayato had basically grown up alongside the sisters, and dropping by with his father was nothing out of the ordinary.
Tonight his father had business with theirs. He exchanged brief hellos with the sisters and disappeared into the study.
Haruno settled back onto the couch, glanced over at Hayato—smiled vaguely—and returned to her phone.
Mio had sent photos. Sleeping-face photos. With a pig snout edited on.
That little—
Haruno was already pulling up her own photos of Mio's sleeping face.
She has pictures of me. I have pictures of her. We're even.
Hayato watched Haruno completely fail to acknowledge his arrival. The smile on his face gained a tired edge.
Then, out of nowhere, Yukino—who'd been quiet since sitting back down—spoke:
"Hayama. That transfer student—Shirai Mio. Isn't she in your class?"
...