For a long moment after the knock, Mirai didn't move.
Her body heard Yuuto's voice and reacted before her mind did—muscles tensing, throat tightening, fingers tightening around the blanket. Part of her wanted to stay curled up and pretend she was asleep. Or gone. Anything but open that door and see disappointment written on his face.
He knocked again, softer this time.
"Mirai," he called. "Can I come in?"
The house was quiet. Too quiet. She could still feel the echo of her parents' anger vibrating faintly in the walls, like a storm that had passed but left the sky heavy.
If she stayed silent, he might leave. He might decide she didn't want to talk and go back to his room. And then the distance would start. It would grow, little by little, until one day she would wake up and realize that even Yuuto had stepped onto the other side of whatever line she had crossed.
Her chest hurt at the thought.
Her hand moved before she finished thinking. She sat up slowly, legs unsteady, and slipped off the bed. The floor was cool under her bare feet.
She wiped under her eyes out of habit, as if that would somehow erase the redness, the swollen edges, the thin cracks in her expression.
Her fingers curled around the doorknob.
He's going to be angry.
Of course he is. He has every right to be.
The thought spun in circles as she turned the knob and pulled.
The door opened with a soft click.
Yuuto stood there in the hallway, an ordinary figure in ordinary clothes—just his hoodie and sweatpants, hair still a bit messy from earlier. The plastic bag hung from one hand, slightly crumpled.
He looked… normal.
His eyes scanned her face for a brief second, taking in the tear tracks, the forced control around her mouth. Something flickered in his gaze—pain, yes, and worry—but it was so gentle she almost missed it.
Then he smiled.
Not the loud, teasing grin he used when he stole the last piece of fried chicken from her plate, but something smaller. Warm. Familiar.
"There you are," he said lightly. "I thought you might have fallen through the floor or something."
Mirai blinked.
Of all the greetings she had braced herself for—"Why?" "How could you?" "What were you thinking?"—none of them sounded like that.
She opened her mouth, expecting her voice to break, but the words that came out were small and automatic.
"I… was just lying down," she said.
"Mm. I can tell," he replied, glancing past her to the crumpled blanket and the scattered textbooks. "The great honor student, defeated by her bed."
The joke was weak, but it stepped into the air between them like a bridge.
He lifted the plastic bag a little, the contents rustling.
"Here," he said. "I brought tribute."
She stared at it for a second before her brain caught up.
"…Tribute?" she repeated.
"Pudding and cake," he explained. "And that disgusting sweet coffee you like."
She felt something shift inside her chest. It wasn't much—like the tiniest crack letting in a sliver of light—but it was enough to hurt.
"You… went out just for that?" she asked.
He shrugged, as if it was nothing.
"Well, I was coming home anyway," he said. "The store just happened to be in the same direction as the rest of the planet."
Her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Almost.
He nodded toward her room.
"Can I come in?" he asked. "Or is this a no-brothers zone now?"
She stepped back without answering, opening the door wider.
He stepped inside, glancing around with the casual, practiced familiarity of someone who had been in this room a thousand times—when she was a child with toys scattered everywhere, when she was in middle school with posters on the wall, when she was in high school with notes taped over her desk.
The air felt different tonight, heavier, but he treated it like any other day.
He sat cross-legged on the floor beside her bed, placing the plastic bag between them.
"Behold," he said, carefully pulling out the little containers and lining them up like some kind of offering. "The sacred combo: pudding, cake, terrible coffee."
Mirai sank slowly onto the edge of the bed, hands twisted together in her lap.
"This is… a lot," she murmured.
"Hey, emotional damage requires sugar," he replied simply, opening the pudding lid with a soft pop. "Scientific fact."
He said it so casually she almost believed for a second that he didn't know. That their parents hadn't told him everything. That he was just being kind for some vague, unrelated reason.
But she knew better.
She could see it in the tiny tightness at the corner of his eyes. In the way he took a moment before looking directly at her, as if steadying himself.
He held up a spoonful of pudding toward her.
"Say 'ah'," he said.
She blinked again.
"I'm not five," she muttered.
"True," he said. "Five-year-old you would have tried to steal the whole cup."
He waited, the spoon still held out patiently.
Her throat tightened. It was such a simple thing, ridiculous almost—but her eyes stung again.
She leaned forward a little and took the bite.
The sweetness hit her tongue, soft and familiar. It wasn't anything special—just cheap convenience store pudding—but it tasted like every small kindness she'd ever received on bad days that didn't have names yet.
Yuuto smiled, satisfied, and dug out another spoonful.
"Good?" he asked.
She nodded silently.
They ate like that for a few minutes—passing the pudding back and forth, unwrapping the cake, sharing it with unspoken rhythm. The normalcy of it felt surreal, like they were performing a scene from a life that had existed just a week ago.
He asked about school.
"Did that math teacher finally calm down with the surprise quizzes?"
She answered, voice thin but steady.
"He's… still evil," she said. "But he gave us a break today."
He rolled his eyes. "Figures. When I was there, he was a demon. You show up and suddenly he discovers mercy."
He complained about work.
"The manager keeps messing up the schedule," he said. "Then asks me why no one is showing up for shifts."
She found herself responding automatically, concern slipping out of her even through the numbness.
"Don't let them overwork you," she said. "You always say yes when they ask you to stay late."
"Well, someone has to fund your snack addiction," he replied.
It was almost normal. Almost.
But normal had a different outline now, and Mirai could feel it pressing against them from every direction. The unsaid sat between every sentence, quiet but solid.
Finally, the words she had been trying to hold back slipped through the cracks.
"Yuuto," she said.
He was in the middle of taking a tiny forkful of cake. He paused.
"Mm?"
Her voice didn't want to move. It clung to her ribs, afraid of the answer.
"Are you…" she started, then stopped. Her grip on the blanket tightened. "Are you disappointed in me?"
The silence that followed wasn't long.
But to Mirai, it stretched and stretched, long enough for her to imagine a dozen possible worlds—one where he laughed bitterly, one where he sighed and nodded, one where he looked away because he couldn't stand to see her.
She forced herself to look at his face.
There was no anger there.
No disgust.
What she saw instead hurt in a completely different way.
Sadness.
Not the sharp, impatient kind that came from being inconvenienced, but a deep, quiet ache. The sadness of someone looking at someone they cared about and seeing them broken in places they couldn't glue back together.
His eyes softened even more.
"Why would I be?" he asked.
His tone was gentle, the same casual lightness he'd used to joke about pudding—but there was something underneath now. Something careful.
"Because I…" Her throat closed around the rest.
Because I ruined everything.
Because I'm the reason Mom and Dad are angry.
Because people will talk. Because the future you imagined for me is gone. Because I did exactly what every parent warns their child not to do.
The dam cracked.
"I did something stupid," Mirai whispered. The words came out quiet and hoarse, trembling on the edge of a sob. "I thought… I thought I was being careful and I still… I still messed up. I trusted him. I didn't think it would… I didn't think…"
She swallowed, but nothing cleared.
Her hands shook in her lap.
"I knew better," she said. Tears blurred her vision again. "We learned about this in health class. We heard all the warnings. I'm not a child. I… I chose it. And I still let it happen. Mom and Dad are right. It's my mistake. It's my fault. If I had just said no, if I had stopped sooner, been more careful, if I had—"
"Hey."
Just one word. Calm. Slightly firmer.
Yuuto set the fork down and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. His gaze was steady, grounding.
"Look at me," he said.
She hesitated, then lifted her eyes.
He held them there, not letting her retreat into the floor or the wall or the safety of staring at her hands.
"I'm not going to say you didn't make a mistake," he said quietly. "You did. You know that. I know that. We'd be insulting your intelligence if we pretended otherwise."
The honesty hurt and soothed at the same time.
"But," he continued, "making a mistake doesn't mean you deserve to be thrown away with it."
Her breath caught.
"You didn't do this alone, Mirai," he said. "You didn't get here by yourself."
She laughed weakly, a broken sound.
"He said… it was my responsibility," she whispered. "That I should handle it. That I shouldn't ruin his life. His parents said the same. Mom and Dad… they're worried about their name, their future, your future. Everyone keeps saying 'your mistake', 'your fault'… It's always… mine."
The words spilled out, messy now.
"I went to his house, Yuuto," she said, voice cracking. "I stood there in front of his parents, and they looked at me like I was some… some stain trying to stick to their son. They told me to get rid of it. Like it's nothing. Like I'm nothing. They didn't even look at him. They just decided everything was my fault because… because I'm the one who carries it."
Her shoulders shook.
"I know you must be angry," she whispered. "At me. For lying. For not telling you sooner. For making everything complicated. For making our parents shout. For… for not being the kind of sister you can be proud of anymore. So if you want to yell, or say you hate me, or tell me I ruined everything, just… say it. I can't… I can't stand waiting for it."
The last sentence broke the rest of her control. The tears finally came, hot and relentless.
She hadn't cried like this even in the bathroom with the test. Even in his living room. Even when her parents' words hit her like stones.
Maybe because this was the person whose reaction mattered the most.
Yuuto watched her for a second, expression unchanged.
Then he moved.
He slid closer and reached out, carefully, like he was approaching something fragile. His hand rested lightly on the top of her head first, fingers threading gently through her hair the way he used to when she fell as a child and didn't want bandages, just contact.
"Why would I be angry at you," he said softly, "for being human?"
The question landed like something impossible.
She stared at him through her tears.
He pulled her gently toward him.
There was no dramatic gesture in it, no movie-like pull. Just a slow, steady motion, giving her time to resist if she wanted. She didn't.
She leaned forward, and the space between them disappeared.
Her forehead pressed against his shoulder first, then her arms found his hoodie and clung. His shirt was warm under her fingers. He smelled faintly like outside air and the convenience store.
Her body shook.
The first sob into his shoulder sounded strangled, like she was still trying to swallow it. The second came more freely. By the third, she stopped holding back.
Yuuto wrapped his arms around her, one hand on the back of her head, the other between her shoulder blades, fingers splayed. He held her with a careful firmness, not too tight, not too loose. Enough to remind her that she was here, that she was not falling alone.
She cried.
Not the quiet tears she'd shed in the bathroom, pressed into a towel. Not the muffled ones she'd hidden in her pillow.
This was raw, shaking, ugly crying, the kind she hadn't allowed herself since she was small enough to be scooped up and carried.
"I'm scared," she choked out between sobs. "I'm so scared, Yuuto. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how I'm supposed to go to school, or face people, or… or look Mom and Dad in the eyes. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this… this life inside me when everyone keeps telling me it's a mistake. I don't know how to breathe without thinking about it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry—"
"Stop apologizing to me," he murmured into her hair. His voice was steady, a calm thread through the chaos. "You've apologized enough."
He didn't say it to scold. He said it like he wanted to take that habit from her and throw it away.
He let her talk.
He didn't interrupt when the words got tangled, when she doubled back, when her sentences collapsed under the weight of too many feelings. He just kept a hand steady on her back, drawing slow, grounding circles.
She told him everything.
About the test in the bathroom. About the phone call. About the long walk to his house, her heart pounding with a hope that shattered as soon as his parents spoke.
About their words—get rid of it, his future, your mistake—and how they had carved themselves into her thoughts.
About the days of pretending. The forced smiles. The way rice tasted like cardboard. The way her reflection had started to look like someone else's.
"I wanted to tell you," she sobbed. "So many times. When you texted. When you asked if something was wrong. When you joked about bringing me sweets. But every time I tried, I thought… if you knew, you would look at me differently. Like I'm… dirty. Or stupid. Or—"
"Hey," he interrupted gently. His hand stilled on her back for a second. "I could never see you like that."
She shook her head against his shoulder.
"You don't know that," she whispered. "Maybe you say that now, because it just happened, but later when people talk, when our relatives find out, when your friends say things, you'll start to… to resent me. You'll wish I had… gotten rid of it. Like they said."
The last words came out in a whisper that barely existed.
Yuuto's grip on her tightened slightly—not enough to hurt, but enough for her to feel the conviction.
"Mirai," he said.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, hands on her shoulders. Her face was flushed and wet, eyes red, hair sticking to her cheeks in small messes. She avoided his gaze, but he waited until she finally met it.
"Listen to me carefully," he said. "Okay?"
She sniffed and nodded, biting her lip.
"I'm not going to lie and say this isn't hard," he said. "It is. It's going to be messy. People are going to talk. Mom and Dad are going to panic about what the neighbors think. I'm probably going to want to punch a few people."
His lips twitched faintly at that.
"But," he continued, "no matter how ugly it gets out there, I will not be angry at you for existing. Or for being scared. Or for making one mistake."
Her eyes blurred again.
"You didn't do this knowing it would happen," he said. "You didn't wake up one morning and say, 'I think I'll ruin everything today.' You trusted someone who didn't deserve it. You believed you were safe. You believed someone would stand beside you."
He let out a slow breath.
"He left," he said. "That's on him. That's his shame. Not yours."
The words sank in slowly. She had thought them in small, private corners of her mind, but hearing someone else say them out loud made them more real.
"You are not the only guilty one here," Yuuto said. "But you're the only one everyone wants to throw stones at. That's not fair. It's not right. And I refuse to join them."
Her lips trembled.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why aren't you angry like them?"
He smiled then, just a little. Not a perfect, bright smile, but something tender, edges sad.
"Because I know you," he said simply. "I know how you think. How you worry about every little thing. How you always try to do the right thing, even when no one's watching. You made one mistake, and now you're the one paying for two people's choices."
He slid a thumb gently under her eye, wiping away a tear that hadn't fallen yet.
"And also," he added, "because I'm your big brother."
The words were soft, but they carried weight.
"I don't stop being that just because you messed up," he said. "It's not a position I give up when things get hard. If anything, this is when it matters the most."
A sob escaped her at that, strangled.
"Yuuto," she whispered. "I… I don't know how to do this."
His gaze softened further.
"You're not going to do it alone," he said. "That's the part everyone keeps forgetting when they throw all the responsibility on you."
He pulled her into his arms again, this time more firmly.
"I'm here," he said, voice low and steady near her ear. "Even if Mom and Dad are too scared and angry to know what to say right now. Even if his family pretends you don't exist. Even if the whole world decides to look away."
His hand rested over the curve of her back, gentle, almost protective of the life he couldn't yet see or imagine.
"I'm here," he repeated. "I'm not going anywhere. You're not doing this by yourself. Not as long as I'm breathing."
She clung to him like those words were the only solid thing in a world that had fractured.
The clock ticked on, marking each second of a future she couldn't picture yet, but for the first time since the line appeared, the sound didn't feel like a countdown.
It felt like time resuming.
Her sobs slowly softened, from jagged to uneven, from uneven to small shivers. Her breathing began to match his—slow, steady, anchored.
They sat like that for a long time.
No plans were made. No solutions were decided. The mess didn't magically disappear.
But something fundamental shifted.
The image that had haunted her—a long road she had to walk alone, carrying shame and fear while everyone pointed—blurred at the edges.
Another image began to form in its place.
The same road, still rough, still uncertain.
But this time, there was someone walking beside her.
"I'm so tired," she whispered eventually, voice hoarse.
"I know," he said. "Rest, then."
"What about Mom and Dad?" she asked, eyes half-closed.
"We'll deal with them," he said calmly. "One step at a time. They're scared too, in their own stupid adult way. They'll need time. But that's not your job to manage right now."
He eased her back gently, guiding her until she was lying down properly, pulling the blanket over her.
She blinked up at him, exhausted.
"Will you… still be here?" she asked, voice small.
He huffed quietly.
"Where else would I go?" he said. "I promised to bring you sweets, remember? I can't break my promise on the same day the world is already trying to break you."
Her lips twitched again.
He reached out and smoothed a stray strand of hair away from her face.
"I'm your big brother," he said one more time, as if sealing the words into the space between them. "I'm always here for you. No matter what."
Her eyes finally closed, the last of her strength spent.
As her breathing evened out, Yuuto stayed sitting there on the floor beside her bed, back leaning against the wall, the empty pudding cups and half-eaten cake forgotten on the table.
He watched her sleep, her brows still faintly furrowed even in rest.
His own chest ached.
Anger flared and faded again in quiet waves—at the boy, at his family, at the way his parents' fear had turned into sharp words that had cut his sister open.
But when he looked at Mirai, none of that anger was for her.
Just a fierce, stubborn determination.
He glanced down, toward where her hand rested lightly over her stomach under the blanket.
"Hey, you," he whispered, voice almost inaudible. "You picked one hell of a time to show up."
It was ridiculous, talking to something he couldn't see or feel. But the words came anyway.
He sighed.
"Fine," he murmured. "If you're staying… then I guess I'm going to have to make sure both of you make it through this."
Outside, the house remained quiet.
Beyond the walls, the neighborhood prepared for another ordinary day tomorrow—alarms, trains, school bells, gossip.
Inside Mirai's room, for the first time since everything began, it didn't feel like the entire world was against her.
She wasn't forgiven.
She wasn't saved.
But she wasn't alone.
And sometimes, at the very beginning of surviving something that wants to crush you, that's the first and most important miracle.