Maybe it was normal for all little sisters.

Maybe she was misunderstanding.

When she was little, young but just old enough, she tried to misunderstand.

But the petty resentment was always rooted there regardless what she did. Inextricable. She could bury it and smile, at her mother and her father and even at him, but it still gripped and chilled her—when she was little, that ounce's worth of jealousy could consume her like the deluge of the sea. A good day turned bad at the drop of hat, because…

Her brother was a genius.

She didn't remember a time when this clicked, when she realized that her brother was exceptional, above average, prodigious. He was so lazy. And he definitely wasn't a praiseworthy older brother. Shintaro wasn't cruel, but he kept to himself. Momo wasn't hurt so much by that (not that much, not that much, she learned not to follow her big brother around early on, that way. Really, what an unreliable guy.)

She didn't mind it because he was that way with everyone. When she spotted him at school, he was alone. When he walked home, he was alone. On the week-ends and on holidays and on festivals, her top-performance brother couldn't be bothered to foster relationships properly, damn him.

It just made him stick out more. So it drew Momo into his shadow.

Because even if she'd learned early on not to follow nii-chan—he wouldn't let her, he didn't care— she already was following nii-chan. His teachers were her teachers, but his reputation preceded her. Smart kid, bad attitude. That Kisaragi genius kid. That made her that Kisaragi's little sister, not nearly as precocious, not even remotely; it was as if he'd sponged up all the smarts in their family and left her brain bare. It was almost as if he'd said it himself: she was stupid. She was a simpleton because of him, and she hated him for that.

Those were the days when she'd pull his hair and ruin his sand castles, ruin his everything if she could get her grubby little fingers on it, and she cried sometimes because she didn't want to do it but she was driven by envy and it was the only way to get their parents to glance aside their talented, troubled eldest son. Momo was generally cheerful, so she didn't need anything, right?

It wasn't that they were bad parents, and yet—and yet— she couldn't get them to notice her when it counted, and it ached deep down somewhere she had no name for. Shintaro wouldn't even notice her glares. Nobody would.

But at some point—and she can't remember—her fits got so bad that it worked. Something was understood. She was understood.

She was really happy, that day her dad took her to the beach.

It was almost like he was making up for lost time. He didn't mention Shintaro once. They sang in the car and he bought her ice cream and carried her on his shoulders.

Swimming in the ocean, too, would have been fantastic. But it was unexpected; the tides carried her little body away, away, away and down. She hadn't meant to go so far out. It's strange, though, how close to a dream that memory is, how oblique and shadowed. When she thinks of it, she's simply flooded with a feeling of terror and streaks of memories that ring brief and loud.

The water had sapped her energy away. Her limbs had never been heavy before or thereafter, but at that time she fought to swing them, to flail, to wave, anything, anything to tread water that far out. The waves wouldn't let her progress, the waves continually dunked her entire body down as if she were a teensy bath toy straying in the tide. She pushed her head above the water and she screamed, she screamed until her voice was nothing and her sea-addled lungs were aching. She could see the shoreline, but the colorful throngs of people—not one of them could see her.

She was going to die, cold, fatigued, devoid of hope and unnoticed in time of crisis. It was frustrating, it was too frustrating—whatever energy she had left must have manifested in her angry tears.

She passed out, and she's sure. She sank. She sank, and she heard the voice of an angel.

And when she woke up, quivering, she was surrounded first by sand, and secondly, by a crowd of beachgoers, their craned, concerned faces forming a circle around her vision. They cheered when she coughed up saltwater, her first sign of life—of coming back to life?

Maybe it was normal for those who underwent near death experiences like that.

But she felt slightly, profoundly different, a detail poised at the edge of her bare brains, something she couldn't place.

("Your eyes," Shintaro had said in the doorway to her room. "Were they always like that?" )