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Blood stains with little appeal and makes a mess to rival that of cheap food left to rot on the floor.
It also leaks from a split in her brother's head like an afterthought. What were his last thoughts? Did he even have time to think of any? His sister stares down at him with a sort of jaded indifference, but in spite of that her small, fragile hands still tremble. He was her only companion while their parents yelled and struck them and left the two children to scavenge for leftovers. Some days they huddled together for warmth, while on others they had their own fights, which mostly consisted of the little girl wrenching a piece of stale (but edible) something from her brother's hands while he bawled and bawled in protest.
She came to resent him for taking what could have been hers (what she needed) and filling their already violent home with even more unnecessary noise. Why couldn't he see that doing that would only encourage their parents to lash out even more? She knew- she was smart, unlike that idiot, and one day...
His companionship wasn't worth the struggle for her own survival, she decided.
From that day on, after she became Inukai Isuke (a name she loved to hear Eisuke say, rolling off his tongue like smooth cream), she always believed in her own self-importance. Eisuke immediately reached the conclusion that her brother's death came at the hands of his biological parents, not when the little girl had struck him over the head with a... what was it? A broken chair leg? A shard of glass? Or maybe she didn't even hit him at all, and instead shoved him with enough force to make his head glance off the edge of something. Her parents had screamed when they found their worthless, wretched daughter standing over the body of their worthless, wretched son. Not with shock or grief, but with fury. If Eisuke hadn't been alerted by the noise she surely would've joined her brother.
The would haves don't matter anymore. Eisuke never questions his adopted daughter about her family or her circumstances and Isuke never brings up that little boy Eisuke failed to save. They left him there in that dirty house, neither of them ever looking back once.
Eisuke came to assume that Isuke had placed the blanket over her dead brother while he was busy taking care of her biological parents as a childish way to bring him comfort, even in death.
But really, Isuke had covered him up because she couldn't stand to look at the unsightly mess.
---
Many years later, Isuke finally finds another human being she actually feels some attachment and affection towards. She opens herself up little by little like a flower slow to bloom, but Haruki has enough patience to wait and hold Isuke close in the meantime, just like how Eisuke had done the same.
One day, Haruki asks if she ever had any siblings.
Isuke smiles and says she'd always been an only child.