A Time Of Reflection

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Shiho

The first memories I have are a glob of vagueness.

I remember some of the rakish faces, bathed in the shadows streaming from the fluorescence light bulbs shining from the hallways into the darkened room of my cot. I also remember childishly holding onto the rails, denting the fine skin of my palms against the wood as I screamed, possibly ticking off whoever was watching me since the person held me, placed me down, held me, placed me down.

It was an annoying circle and it annoyed the person as much as it annoyed me. But even if you were ask me, I wouldn't be able to name the person, nor the one I was screaming for. I can only remember how cold and dark it was.

The only thing that I remotely enjoy remembering is the soft touch of my sister when she held me, placed my little a head on her shoulder and hummed a little tune that even now I can't remember, but it used to lull me to sleep, and I think that was enough for me.

Having her by my side was enough for me during those days.

But when I touched the age of three things started to change, partially my doing but in hindsight, it would have happened eventually. Intellect, cannot be hidden that easily.

On day that I was only playing inside the living room, building towers out of geometric shapes and castles in fortresses bound by blue lakes I used to make out of paper mache. Childish, I know, but these things used to interest me in those days, somehow.

Onēchan sat was across the room, struggling with basic arithmetic with a pencil chewed between her lips, gazing at the black board with desperate eyes as the teacher pointed at the board, face red and eyes wild, explaining for the tenth time the mathematical rules that still (somehow) whizzed past her sister's head. And I remember watching her as she canted her head to the side, lips pursed with an invisible question mark hovering across her face, dumbly staring at the board.

To this day I still can't tell whether she daydreamed or purposely played dumb but it felt as real as the first morning rays when she recoiled, and when I looked at the teacher I knew, why.

She was angry, fed up and incredibly annoyed and strode towards my sister, gnashing her teeth together with a face deeper than purple, and I saw fearful glint inside my sister's eyes couldn't have hit me harder than a punch.

It was that day that changed everything.

When I crushed my foot against the lake and stumbled over my own fortress, crossing the lawn of my own ignorance and setting sail into this darkened life.

That was the beginning of my hellish life.

But back then I didn't know that. Foolishly, I grabbed the chalk and scrawled an answer on the board. Of course, I have done it to help my sister. I have done it for my sister. But when I turned around, she only had that saddened smile that spoke of unvoiced disappointment. As if she didn't want me to do that.

I thought, I was doing her a favour. But now, I can't help but wonder would have been, if haven't done that.

A little after that the teacher came back with a stack of papers, full of questions, some easy; some hard; some completely nonsensical but I always followed the pattern once I have found it and made up my own when I couldn't find one.

The mathematical questions were and arguably simple, the literary were pretty straight forward as well, and the visual questions? They gave me headaches whenever I stared at them for too long. Now thinking about it, they were without a doubt an acute pain to figure out as well. But I did them anyway, for no other reason than I was told to do so, and frankly I had nothing better to do.

Onēchan would always chide me whenever I said that.

She always wanted me to act more of a child. But with those people hovering above our necks and squeezing out the potential of my brain, I had hardly time for fun.

And Onēchan being Onēchan, she would always bring the fun inside.

Usually, she would pluck gardened flowers or borrow board games or drag me out into the balcony in the middle of winter to play with fallen snow, as little as it was. But naturally, those things have stopped after that day.

Onēchan hardly spoke to me, nor looked at my direction. The only time was at a study session. Well, during the study sessions I had, they cut back Onēchan's lessons.

Why? I never asked. Perhaps, I was kind of afraid of the answer. I never wanted to be condescending little sister but the way they used to stare at me and ignore my sister always made me feel otherwise.

I think, that's one of the reason why Onēchan started hating me.

During that study session I was handed another paper, rows of geometrical shapes and questions asking for the next likely pattern. They were questions from the IQ test. They probably had a tough time believing my intellect could be that abnormally high and threw at me every question they found.

After third paper, my eyes grew blurry and I took a break, glanced around the room only to find my sister sitting on the carpeted floor with a small house in front of her, built of a cuboid and a triangular prism, little trees out of cylinders and a triangle. The design, simple and easy. Seeing that, I could think of different shapes and combination that would have made it better, and at that moment, she glanced up and looked at me. Really stared at me for a full minute.

But then Onēchan moved, toppled over the building and left.

I have always found it weird and I could never put a finger on what really happened.

Until now.

Onēchan must have realised that at that time—in that tiny moment—I was the condescending little sister that I never wanted to be.

And she hated me for that.

At least, that was what I have always thought.

(Always foolishly thought. . .)

It was maybe roughly six months later when I realised that Onēchan wasn't smiling anymore.

I knew she barely looked at me since that teacher came in (so long ago), grinning bright and singing praise that I wasn't just unusually smart, but a genius.

A rare, genius as that.

But it still hurt knowing that a "Good for you," was the only thing Onēchan's could say to that. Whenever she said it, I felt like she rejected a part of me. And being around four or five years old, that realisation had hurt particularly much.

I think, it was at that point I stayed away from her.

As long I didn't have to stare at her nonchalant expression and hardened gaze, I thought that the pain would eventually ebb away. But I was wrong.

Painfully wrong.

Since I enrolled in a private school school much earlier than anyone else, I was stuck inside a classroom with people twice my age, or even older. It was unpleasant experience, the feeling of nausea and unease still follow those blurry memories. I have forgotten most of it, only the tranquillity I felt whenever I entered the school's library and immersed myself into the thick printed books, reading pages upon pages until the bell rung and I had to drag herself into the stuffy classroom, seem to linger in my mind.

But I have only stuck around for mid-terms to get an official test done for some reason, and like they all expected I earned a complete hundred percent on every test. It was then, they abruptly decided that I should receive home-schooling to conclude the remaining primary materials before the year ended and, of course, without my concession.

But what else should I have expected?

They chose their line of thoughts and focused what lay inside their mind. Even as Onēchan stood at the doorway, test papers in hand and glassy eyed, they never spent her a single glance.

Even with my fragile age of six, I could recognise the excitement flashing inside the teachers' eyes and greed reeking behind their rotten smiles. By that point I knew they had something planned, and it used to make me excited to guess what.

Call it a child's curiosity, one that wears away with age and experience, but I used to have fun tracing and imagining the footwork of my future.

But now I can only shut my at what I have become.

Somewhere along the hours of reading and learning, I had started to see my sister less and less.

At first, I didn't mind it. I would locked myself up inside the study room, read whatever book was brought to me and answered whatever question sheet was printed.

Whenever I woke up, my sister's bed was undone, tousled bed sheets strewn on the floor as though she overslept and suddenly sprang from her bed and wrecked the entire room before she rushed to school.

Or so she would have me believe.

I was young but I wasn't fool. It was a constant occurrence. I would open my eyes and the room was a mess. For the first, second and third time, I cleaned it up. But then I stopped cleaning altogether. But during those times I was convinced that she had done it on purpose. She only wanted to annoy me.

I even blamed it on my sister whenever I was asked, for no other reason than it being the truth, even if it made me feel a little bad ratting her out. She was, after all, still my sister.

But it would be a lie to say that I never gotten a glint of satisfaction whenever she was shouted at and told off to clean.

But even then she never stopped.

The mess continued to greet me every morning.

And I was curious, but I never asked why.

(But now I know I was a fool.

A terrible, little fool.)

I was seven and half-way through the secondary material when my teachers first started talking about universities. I had no interest and yet their eyes sparked like candles held in the dark whenever they tried to advice me which courses I should take.

At that time Onēchan was only fourteen and her in last year of middle school. She started school much earlier than I had, and yet in roughly two years of studying I had completely overtaken her. If she was shamed, I couldn't tell. But then, I couldn't tell much about my sister.

What little I saw of her were only fragments of her entire being and now I wished I could have seen more of her. If I had faced her more, spoke to her more, maybe I would have known what lied behind her smiles. But during those day, I only cared about what I saw in front of me.

That's why it took so long for me to realise that Onēchan never slept at night but only feigned sleep untilI fell asleep.

I only found out by pure chance in the middle of summer. My throat was parched and in desperate need of water. I stumbled into the kitchen, drank, and headed back into my bed. It was then when I noticed my sister's bed was empty.

At first I didn't care but she didn't return after thirty minutes. A bathroom break wouldn't take that long. I was worried even though I didn't want to admit, but I still grabbed my orange blanket and trod across the carpeted floor into the hallway, looking for her and peeked inside the nearest room.

It was the living room.

The curtains were unveiled and the balcony wide opened.

First, I thought it was a burglar but there wasn't a single sound nor the slightest noise, I neared it and peeked out side.

Sitting on the cushioned chairs was my sister, fast asleep with her arms on the table, brushing the ends of small notepad, and without thinking I took it, flipped through it, expected it to be a revision book, but what can I say?

I was mistaken yet again.

Written inside were words of introspections, analysed feelings and aforementioned situations, in short, it was nothing short of a diary.

But it was the diary of my sister.

It didn't take me long to decide to read it.

Why? I'm not entirely sure, except that at that moment I was increasingly tempted to dig up all her secrets—a shameful act, perhaps, that I could forever hold in front of her nose. I think, somewhere in my heart I was hoping to find something on my sister that I was able to reject too.

But my sister was a goody-two shoes, and I felt a little frustrated that I couldn't find a single thing on her. In fact, that diary felt worthless. But I was kid that couldn't see value even if it was shoved at my face. Because that diary captured Onēchan's thoughts and feelings. And there's noway I can get it back.

Not when Onēchan burned it along with her childhood books.

(And now I will never know what my sister truly thought.)

But during those days I was carefree and still burying my nose into my books, ignoring catalogue after catalogue of universities in Japan and overseas that my teachers' would bring. It was only by chance (yet again) that I have found a little flyer peeking out of my sister's bag and it was in my nature to grab it.

You should know, my sister always had a knack for hiding things. If there was a single thing that she didn't want me to see, then I would never see it. I haven't even seen the diary ever since that time on the balcony, and I wouldn't have known about its existence hadn't it been for my parched throat.

That's why I'm ninety-nine percent sure she wanted me to see the flyer. But then again, one percent in me tells me it was (again) due to chance, and I can't help but hating it.

That, Onēchan had use this flimsy trick to dispel my doubts.

That, she had thought that a tiny flyer was enough to reassure me.

Enough for me to believe that she hadn't ignored me for the past two years.

Because to me, my sister was that kind of person, who would place her active enjoyments before her sister. Even with our little interactions, I could tell this much about her. It used to make me feel a little happy that I had as much as insight into her personality than she had of mine. But now, I can only feel foolish of myself for thinking that.

Maybe that's why my teachers were sceptical to let me see her ballet performance. The sole request must have surprised them. They must have thought I wasn't that close to Onēchan, and it was true; I wasn't.

Inside my head, I only wanted to watch Onēchan fail or flounder. I convinced myself of it until it became a fact. But I still couldn't deny the tiny amount of excitement forming inside my chest, because for the first time I would see my sister, and that fact alone kept me awake at nights.

But on the night of her performance I couldn't find Onēchan.

I remember watching curtains lift and the lights dimming, the gentle sound of the orchestra strumming as ballerinas tiptoed on stages, dressed in costumes and masks, leaping and twirling across the stage.

I remember looking around, squinting past the costumes in hopes to find glimpses of my sister. But even as the music changed and the humming strings of violins and cellos over-toned the gentle whistles of flutes, and the twirling masses of black and white receded into sparks of red, faint oranges and blooming yellows and the curtains eventually drew close, I still had yet to see Onēchan.

It was only when my sister called out to me, standing at the stairs of the theatre, face bright with lingering excitement that I realised that I couldn't pick my sister inside a sea of a dozen people.

And that moment I realised that my sister—who held me and feed me, whose smile shone into that darkened room of my cot—was gone, and left was a person I didn't recognise.

(If only I had realised that you were trying to stay by my side.

And If I hadn't picked up that chalk, maybe, you would still be alive.

We could pluck flowers and dirty our shoes,

Sitting out at the balcony, staring at the moon,

Playing board games till night and—)

"Oi, Haibara, what have you been writing for the past hour?"

She glanced up. Conan stood in front of her, arms crossed with a throbbing vein on the side of his temple. Quietly, she shut her diary and threw an annoyed glance at the shrunken teenager. "None of your concern."

"Well, I don't particularly care either, but it's your turn to watch after the kids. . ." he nodded at the Detective Boys scampering around Hakase's house, looking for Ayumi's jacket and Genta's missing shoes.

Ai sighed but smiled, idly wondering if this was how her sister felt raising her as she grab the jacket fallen behind the couch and joined the search party, all the while forgetting her little diary she left on the table, and it didn't take long for Conan to notice it as he glanced at the table.

And he was temped, very tempted when his finger lay on the hard cover but it took one look from Ai and he thought better of it.

Better not to anger her.

Conan grabbed the soccer ball, just as Genta found his shoes on his feet. Ai could only swat a hand against her face but laughed nonetheless with her friends, carefree and light, just like her sister always wanted.