Chapter Text
The girl’s vision was obscured with tears, her face contorted with anger. All she could see in front of her, from the iron bars to the dark hallway beyond, was tinted red.
This wasn’t her fault. It was because of Aoi. Aoi, and her beautiful, fake smile. Aoi and her lovely, fake, personality. Aoi and her pure, fake, intentions. She lured in all the men in Nene’s life. She gained the approval of all of the women in Nene’s life. The tables were turned against her from the beginning, all because of that oh-so-perfect lavender-haired ball of sunshine Aoi Akane.
Nene sobbed in rage, clutching the iron bars as she curled up against them. If she could do it all again, if the time turned back to before any of this happened, life would be different. She would run away from the Akane marquisate. She would go back to living as an orphaned commoner, where at least nothing would have been taken away from her because nothing was offered to her.
If Nene could do it all again, she would do it without Aoi lingering by her side.
As she ran through these thoughts in her head, she heard the grating sound of the metal latch against the heavy cellar door.
~~~
Nene groaned at the sudden warmth surrounding her body as she came back to her senses. Why was it so warm? Why did it feel as if she was being smothered by blankets? It was almost as if she was back in the Marquisate, sleeping in the soft sheets of her bed which she had never quite gotten used to…
“My Lady, the history tutor is waiting for you.” Nene heard the familiar, firm voice of her maid from afar, but for some reason she was too comfortable to get up. The pillow-like sheets, the warm rays of the sunlight and the strangely indifferent tone of the voice directed to her simply amplified her grogginess. It was strange - Nene usually didn’t have any difficulty waking up from her cell…
Hold on. She sat up and opened her eyes, then immediately squinted at the bright light of the room before her. However, as little time as she had to take in the view, Nene could tell… This was her bedroom!
“Would you like to get dressed on your own, My Lady?” the maid, asked her, but Nene was barely paying attention.
“O-Okay,” Nene dismissed her, but then stopped her from leaving before asking, “Um… What’s the date?”
Without missing a beat, the maid replied, “It is the second day of the second month in the year 1135, My Lady.”
“Right… 1135, you said?”
“Yes, My Lady.”
“Thank you… You can go now.”
The maid closed the door to her bedroom, and as soon as Nene heard the soft ‘click!’ she rushed over to the vanity and checked her appearance.
Her hair was disheveled, but without a single trace of dirt or grime. Her eyes were red, but rather from sleepiness than tears. And most importantly… she looked younger . Smoother, chubbier cheeks, eyes that still carried the light of innocence… Nene always thought that she never aged, but now that she was back in time, she could really tell the difference…
No, wait, she was going off on a tangent. Nene slapped her cheeks with the palms of her hands. She went back in time?!
1135. That was three years ago - Nene was currently 16 years old. Where she had just been was in 1139 and a jail cell at 19 years old, waiting for the date of her execution - that was supposed to be the next day. However, it seems to have been pushed back three years.
Nene let out a laugh of disbelief. When she heard her immature voice, again indicating that she was, in fact, back in time, she laughed even harder. She pinched her cheek as she slid to the floor - it hurt. This wasn’t a dream, was it? Maybe this was the afterlife? She hadn’t been executed yet, though.
As the confusion dissipated from Nene’s mind, only a single desire remained. Nene ran out of her bedroom, forgetting her promise to her maid to change first, and ran towards the room next door - Aoi’s.
Nene pushed the door open, ignoring the surprised call of Aoi’s maid beside it, and ran to the girl who was still in the middle of braiding her hair.
“Aoi!” Nene cried, running up to Aoi and tackling her in a hug. “Aoi, I’m so sorry!”
The violet-eyed girl didn’t seem to have processed what was happening quite yet, only raising her hand to pat Nene’s arm in the midst of her confusion. “Nene?”
“Please forgive me, Aoi… My sister…” Nene squeezed Aoi tighter, who seemed to react to the word ‘sister’ by widening her eyes.
“Is… Is anything wrong, Nene?” Aoi asked nervously, as if she couldn’t believe the words coming out of Nene’s mouth nor her actions. But she didn’t respond, only holding the girl in a tighter embrace and trying her hardest not to cry into her shoulder.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Nene mumbled when she came back to her senses, pulling away from Aoi. Her fingers softly ran through Aoi’s hair in an attempt to fix what she had ruined as she quietly added, “I just had a bad dream.”
Aoi, despite her bewilderment, managed to laugh it off, telling Nene, “You’re being a little weird, but sure. Was the dream that bad?”
“Awful.” Nene finished braiding Aoi’s hair and looked at her expression in the mirror. She looked younger, too, but carried the same air of purity and innocence that Nene had loathed so deeply. This time around, however, Nene wasn’t going to let her jealousy ruin her.
“You look lovely as always,” Nene smiled, to which Aoi’s mouth fell open in surprise.
After glancing at her own disheveled appearance, Nene suddenly realized that she, herself, hadn’t gotten changed yet and rushed to leave the room. “I’ll be waiting for you, sister!”
When Nene closed the door and bowed to the maid in apology, Aoi was left on her own, quietly running her hand over the neat braid that Nene had finished for her.
~~~
Nene was an orphaned commoner who had suddenly been picked up by the guards of the Akane Marquisate and taken in as their adopted daughter. This family was good friends with the Minamoto royal family, and had a long history with the Aoi family, who was known for having a long line of high-ranking civil servants. In short, Nene had been given a silver spoon at the age of ten. It was certainly a life to envy.
And yet, Nene still found reasons to be jealous of other people. More specifically, her adoptive sister, who was nothing but kind to her.
Nene sighed as she ran through the tangles in her hair, muttering, “Was there really a reason to be so suspicious of a person that was only ever nice to me?” To the Nene from 3 years ago, there was, she supposed, a reason; Aoi was clearly faking it.
To Nene, who was used to having her last loaf of bread stolen by other children on the street and being tricked into menial jobs and tasks for no payment in return by older adults, she could tell when someone wasn’t being sincere. Aoi, as a result, oozed of insincerity all the way down to the way she put one foot in front of the other.
Nene didn’t trust Aoi from the beginning for that reason, and she’d constantly poke and prod at Aoi, hoping to make her snap or reveal who she truly was underneath. However, Aoi was a strong opponent—she didn’t budge. And Nene hated it. Nene hated her . Until the day she came to visit her cell…
~~~
“What are you doing?” Nene mumbled as the girl walked silently down the hallway in the dark. The sound of her footsteps were delicate, as always, but the way they echoed against the damp walls seemed to bode something ominous. Nene suppressed a shiver as she looked up at the dark figure that she could still tell was Aoi.
“What do you want from me?” Nene laughed helplessly. “Are you finally here to reveal your true colours?” Even now, Nene was still hoping to prove her point—that Aoi was a lying snake. Even if she was the only one who would know, Nene could die happy.
However, Aoi didn’t respond. Instead, she simply stood there, in front of Nene, who was trying to taunt her. Nene glanced over at Aoi’s hands and her eyes widened—she was holding something sharp.
“What exactly are you…” Nene trailed off as Aoi brought out the dagger-shaped object, flinching as she brought it towards her. However, contrary to Nene’s expectations, Aoi wasn’t going to use it on her; she instead starting scraping away at the metal rods.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Nene screamed, grabbing Aoi by the arms as she reached through the cell.
“I”m trying to get you out, stupid!” Aoi yelled, Nene’s grip on her arms loosening at the unexpectedly harsh words.
The light-haired girl was silent for a moment before she scoffed. “I get it. Trying to play goody-two-shoes again? Helping me escape so that you’ll be seen as the heroine one last time? I don’t want this stupid artificial sympathy of yours.”
“Shut up!” Aoi cried, and Nene’s hands jerked back when she noticed the tears forming in her eyes. “I don’t want to see you die! I just want you to get out of my face!”
Nene wasn’t sure what expression she was making, but it had surely gone blank by then. “...What?”
“All I’ve ever wanted my whole life was a sister. A girl friend who I could share all my secrets with and she could share mine. Someone who I could trust anything with, rely on when I was going through a rough patch. All I’ve ever tried to do is get you to open up to me, get you to feel like you could do the same with me, and this is what I got!”
Aoi’s arms shook as she continued to scrape away at the iron bars. “Go life a better life, Nene! Stop acting as if the world is against you! If you’ll remember nothing about me, just know that I never wanted any of this from you. I just wanted a sister .”
“...A sister.”
After the lack of a response, Nene silently stared at the girl who was desperately filing away at the bars of the cell. It was clear to the both of them that the action was futile, but whatever message Aoi had been trying to send to Nene for years and years seemed to finally have gone through to Nene because of such a pointless effort. It was just a shame that the sisters only understood each other the day before one of them would be hung.
~~~
“Would you like to drink tea with me together, Aoi?”
“I like those sweets too, Aoi!”
“I should try that book sometime since you enjoyed it, Aoi.”
“I’ll do anything you do, Aoi!”
“I don’t need anyone but you, Aoi.”
Lately, all of Nene’s activities had fallen into a single routine, all of them including the presence of her Aoi. Everyone in the marquisate that had witnessed the change in this strange girl was fascinated by it; the girl who wanted nothing to do with her adoptive sister was refusing to do anything without her adoptive sister. Truly, the relationship had been repaired between them. The reason? Completely unknown.
One day, as they were having tea together, Aoi finally took the opportunity to ask her: “Nene, is everything alright? I’m not complaining at all, of course not, but lately you’ve just seemed… How should I put it…”
Nene smiled at Aoi’s confused expression and simply offered her another cookie. “Clingy? Well, I’ve just learned that I value my time with my sister above all else. Plus,” she added, “we’ve recently both gotten engaged, so I’m just worried we’ll be distanced from each other as time passes.”
Aoi, whose posture straightened at the word ‘engaged’, suddenly gasped at Nene’s claim. “Of course not! Just because we’re engaged to other men doesn’t mean that I’ll value you any less, Nene! My sister comes before any man!”
Nene laughed at the familiar words. This was the same sentence Aoi had reassured her with when Nene tried to make a backhanded comment on their engagement in her past life. Such words absolutely disgusted her back then. This time, she emphatically agreed. “That’s what I’m saying!”
As the two had recently turned 16, the Akane family declared Teru and Aoi’s engagement to each other, with Akane and Nene’s engagement shortly afterwards. Nene, in the past timeline, thought this completely unfair—even though, in hindsight, it made total sense. Aoi was the biological daughter of the family, while Nene had the blood of a pure commoner; it was lucky that she even got to marry the son of a duke. However, Nene had held a burning unrequited love for Crown Prince Teru, which added to her dissent for Aoi.
Nene suddenly recalled the terrifying gazes of both of the men, who were infatuated with Aoi in the past and still now, and sipped her tea nervously. Maybe it was best for Nene if she were to meet a man that wasn’t a part of the drama in her past life… Any of the feelings she had for Teru had been completely wiped out, and she felt nothing in the first place for Akane, who never acknowledged her, besides perhaps envy for Aoi who had captured both of their hearts.
“On the topic of our fiances,” Aoi began, making Nene look up from her tea at her, “Princess Tiara’s birthday party is next week. Have you coordinated your outfits with Akane yet?”
“Outfits?” Nene smiled nervously. She was aware that Princess Tiara’s birthday was around this time, but she never remembered anything about outfit coordination. “No, I didn’t realize we had to. …Are you?”
“Honestly, I’m not so sure, either,” Aoi admitted, fidgeting with a biscuit in her hand. “I just heard that it’s popular for young couples to match outfits. But I don’t really care for it, if I’m being honest.”
Nene contemplated Aoi’s response, nodding her head in understanding. As much as Aoi stole the hearts of so many men, she never truly expressed any interest in romance, completely unlike Nene. Something as trivial as outfit coordination couldn’t have possibly appealed to her, which was partially why Nene was so surprised to hear it.
Abruptly, the girl came to a realization, and clapped as her eyebrows went up in excitement. “Aoi, what if we match outfits?” Akane and Teru aside, this was a good opportunity to present to the social world that the Akane sisters were finally getting along, as well as a great way to continue building Nene’s relationship with Aoi.
“Hm?” Aoi asked, startled by Nene’s outburst. However, when she realized what Nene had just suggested, she got up from her chair and clasped her hands together with Nene’s. “Us? As sisters? Do you really want to?”
Nene nodded her head eagerly. “Yes, of course!”
Aoi squealed before putting her hands together. “I have so many ideas! Tomorrow, we’re going to go shopping, okay?”
Nene nodded again, happy with how excited Aoi seemed to be. It took a few days, but Aoi seemed to finally be getting used to the fact that Nene truly wanted to spend more time with her. Turns out, for Nene, it was easy to get along with someone that wanted to get along with you.