2

He should have gotten a time frame: he always asked for one, even with family. Not knowing when his step-sister was going to show up was driving Natsume crazy, making him antsy in a way no pending meeting ever had. He couldn't count the number of times he had loosened and unloosened his tie, debating whether he should go casual or professional. What he longed for most was a cigarette, but he had exhausted his last pack the night previous, smoking one after another out the open window of his apartment until he was certain the neighbors upstairs must have assumed he had installed an illegal chimney. On his desk was a paper-clipped stack of some of the preliminary dialogue dreamed up by the writing team in what, he suspected, had been an all-night effort to impress the producer. The character sides had been written for the as of yet unnamed female protagonist.

A tentative knock sounded at the door, and Natsume reared back in his chair. He had forgotten his secretary had asked to take her lunch, abandoning him in his office without a front line. The man quickly swept his hands about his desk to make it tidy, accidentally knocking over the family wedding photo. Maybe it was better if it stayed down. "Come in," he bid his visitor in a voice tightly controlled, even as he nearly lost his pencil holder over the side of his desk. It fell into an already open drawer, and Natsume slammed it closed.

Ema didn't immediately enter, but rather paused to lean around the corner, as if the knock hadn't been enough to announce her presence and prepare him for a visitation. It hadn't. Her hair, a luxuriant brown, had been released from its usual ponytail, and heaped itself heavily on her thin shoulders. She wore a cable-knit cashmere sweater he had never seen before, and… Natsume in took his breath when he saw his scarf looped around her neck. Had the temperature outside dropped in the time he'd been behind his desk, or was she wearing it for him?

She looked embarrassed, and Natsume realized he had stood up at her arrival. He quickly sat back down, reaching up to loosen his tie, before discovering he had already done so.

"You don't have to stand there, Ema. Come in."

His redirect worked, and the girl flushed at her own hesitance. She obliged him, coming into the room to seat herself across from him. He saw his apartment key glint in the creased pink palm of her hand.

"I hope I'm not troubling you."

"You never trouble me."

The lie was effortless. He stared at her, and she gazed back, stricken by the intensity of his look, until he was certain she had forgotten even the weight of the key nestled in her hand. His gaze mapped every inch of her, taking in every detail their time apart had stolen from his memory. It had been less than a month, but to Natsume, it felt like years. They had maintained contact through e-mail, usually his preferred form of communication, but their messages to one another these past weeks had been brief, and it was usually Ema who initiated conversation.

It was his stepsister who glanced away first, dropping her gaze to her lap, before recovering enough of her courage to meet the level of his desk. Natsume was now gazing out the window.

"I hope that's true. I mean… it looks like you have a lot of work," she said sheepishly. His eyes tracked back to his desk without any movement from his head. She must be referring to the character sides stacked atop his inbox. Her character sides.

Natsume didn't usually await invitations—none of the Asahina siblings did—and this seemed like as good as any he was going to get. He rocked forward in his chair, before thinking better of making a grab for the script. He laced his fingers at the last moment.

"It's progress," he said slowly. "It's a new script that's just crossed my desk. I would love your opinion on it."

"My opinion?" The color sprang back into her cheeks. "But I don't know anything about that sort of thing! Wouldn't you rather ask someone else?"

"You know what you like, don't you?"

Ema said nothing, just stared askance at her own shoulder, as if suddenly aware that the sweater she wore itched uncomfortably, and Natsume realized the question had held more weight than he had originally intended. He pushed on, fighting to curb some of his intensity. He couldn't make this personal; this was about her, not them. "Ema, you must realize by now that I hold your opinion in the highest regard. I wouldn't ask this of just anyone. The project is still in pre-production, so this script is, for all intents and purposes, confidential. You are an expert gamer, and an expert on my company's games in particular. I consider your input as vital as if I had hired an independent contractor."

The words sounded neat, his explanation uniform, but Natsume realized too late it had been the wrong thing to say. Ema shook her head slowly, then with enough force to displace her hair.

"Please, Natsume, I'm just here to return your key. I should really get going, they'll be expecting me back…"

"Have lunch with me," he said suddenly. The invitation came without warning, taking them both by surprise. He tried to convince himself that the move was strategic, but he couldn't banish the mental picture of his brothers' faces gathered around a dinner table, laughing, with Ema and her squirrel sandwiched happily amongst them. They had her to themselves almost every night—he couldn't let this opportunity slip through his grasp.

They both rose, Natsume pulling his coat with him. Ema laced her hands, looking uncertain… until her stomach broke the silence, giving an agreeable grumble. The girl looked horrified, but it was all the consent Natsume needed. His face softened.

"Please. It's my way of saying thank you for looking after the twins."

Ten minutes later and they were seated across from one another at the arcade. Same table, Natsume reflected, though he wasn't sure what to make of the coincidence. Last time they had been here together, things had been very different.

He watched Ema unwind his scarf from around her neck, his heart skipping a beat. The professional suit he wore had always felt like armor from the outside, but maybe he would need it now to keep contained what was going on within. As she slipped her phone into her purse and leaned to stow it beneath her seat, he slid his out of his pocket and placed it on his knee, concealed beneath the table. He had left the script in his office, and left out the part where he had called her in to audition entirely from their conversation.

Time to improvise.

"I've missed you."

He remembered seeing the words in the script, spoken by another character to the female protagonist. He pitched his voice low, in an effort to disguise the wooden, rehearsed quality any of his own attempted line readings usually carried, but the words sounded sincere. Natsume thumbed a button on his phone as Ema glanced up quickly from her bubble tea.

"I've missed you, too…" Her voice wavered, before her face pinched with pained conviction. "But it's for the best that we don't see each other."

"I disagree," he said at once.

"I don't want to hurt you," she pleaded plaintively, and Natsume felt another tremor in his heart. "I don't want to hurt any of you. You are all I have in the world, my family… and you, I think of you especially as…" Her face flushed, as if she was gripped by a fever, and Natsume thought he had caught it too. His pulse hammered in his ears.

"You think of me especially?" He had forgotten how to breathe.

"I think of you always. I mean, I—"

Distantly, he heard someone call their number. The legs of his chair squealed beneath him, the phone set to one side of the table, forgotten, as Ema clasped her hands over her mouth and likewise rose. He made it around the table before she could escape, his hands coming down on either side of the railing he had her backed against. It had been aggressive and impulsive, but on the inside he saw the move for what it really was: purely desperate.

"Ema." He was so close that the whisper stirred her hair. Ema gave her head a shake, before her hands fell away and her eyes squeezed closed in defeat.

"I think of you as more than family. I think of you as my best friend!" she blurted. "Every day I wish I could see you and we could talk like we used to, but every day I remind myself that I… I can't do any of those things. Any hardship I face, I think of what you would say, and it makes me strong. But I don't want to imagine what you would say—I want to hear those words on your lips, and be reassured, just like I used to be. You are my…" But she blinked her eyes open again and trailed off, her courage failing when she saw how close he was standing. Natsume brought his hand up to the curve of her cheek, his fingers arced like a check mark, but he couldn't quite bring himself to touch her,

How could he have been so blind? How could he have been so selfish? He had allowed her to say her piece on the balcony, but had he ever really been listening? Or had he just been awaiting the moment she would finish speaking, certain he could seal her uncertain feelings with a kiss?

I think of you as my best friend. The words shook him in a way no stammered confession of love ever could, reaching down deep inside him to pull back a fisted hand and reveal the truth he had been blind to, a reciprocal reality he had never even begun to acknowledge: she was his. He never spoke to anyone else in his family about his feelings, on anything—no one except Ema. No one else took an interest in his work or his world, except for the twins, when their career paths necessarily crossed; no one worried about him living separate and alone like she did.

He had lost more on the Sunrise balcony than the first round of some silly sibling rivalry. He had nearly lost this, something infinitely more precious.

Ema was staring at him with wide eyes, rigid in the cage of his arms. Of course Natsume was still a man in love, and in that moment his every instinct compelled him to kiss her senseless… but the moment was banished when he smiled faintly and brought his hand up to shift her bangs aside. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Um… order number fifty-three?" stammered the red-faced cashier from somewhere behind them. Natsume shot an arm out to seize the tray without looking, and the employee fled back to his register in relief.

"Thank you… for listening." Ema blushed, but he could feel her relax physically, and Natsume was gratified.

"Thank you for telling."

He moved back around the table to his seat, the weight of the last month lifting from his shoulders, until his eyes leapfrogged suddenly to his phone. Horrified, he slid it from the table with a quick sleight-of-hand as Ema sat back down, smiling happily to herself, completely unaware that listening ears on the other line had just heard her first audition.