So her name was Takamatsu Tomori.
Making this tiny baby… carry lifelong regret? How was she even supposed to do that?
...
"My name is Takamatsu Chiose, and today is my sixth birthday."
"Pause… hold on, did I forget to turn the camera on? Hmm…"
"Today is my sixth birthday! The camera I'm using to film this video is the one Dad bought me after eating grass for three whole months!"
Yoshiiro — now Takamatsu — Chiose held up the pale-blue camcorder and shoved it directly into her father Takamatsu Yuji's face, snapping away with reckless abandon.
"Hello, hello. This is Takamatsu Yuji speaking."
"Hello to you too!"
The father in his dress shirt set down his newspaper and gave the camera a mild, good-natured smile.
He had only just gotten home. Work had been relentless lately, and the weight of it all had given the still-young Takamatsu Yuji the worn-down air of a much older man.
"And this is my mom — Mom got me a super giant teddy bear! I'll have to hide it somewhere safe, or little Tomori will snatch it and bury it in the backyard."
Chiose swung the camcorder around toward Takamatsu Hikaru, who greeted the lens with a tired but genuine smile.
"As long as little Sai likes it. But Tomori wouldn't do something like that. Dinner's ready — go call your sister out to eat, would you?"
"Sure~"
Chiose stole one last glance at her mother Takamatsu Hikaru, then bounced off down the hallway.
"She really is something, that little one."
"She is. Though lately, the two of them look…"
"Less and less alike?"
Takamatsu Yuji helped his wife carry dishes to the table, his gaze drifting every so often toward the children's bedroom.
"Right. They're twins, but somehow it feels like they were poured from two completely different molds. I asked the doctor about it — apparently it does happen," Hikaru said, wiping the water droplets from her hands.
"Neither of them takes after us in personality at all. Whose genes did they even inherit? Some hidden recessive trait of yours?"
"Isn't that a good thing? If they actually inherited our personalities, I'd be the one with a headache."
"Do you know how brooding you can be sometimes?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
...
The living room. The kitchen. Far from both of them now, Takamatsu Chiose trailed her fingers along the wall as she made her way toward the bedroom she shared with Tomori.
The smile on her face faded, degree by degree. A shadow of melancholy passed through her bright black-and-red eyes — eyes that normally brimmed with joy and childlike wonder.
[Six years already…]
It had been six years, just like that.
How long did it take to truly belong to a family?
The answer: no time at all. One moment was enough.
Her parents got along well. The household wasn't wealthy, but she was never made to feel wanting. And she had a ready-made elder sister who had grown up right alongside her, blank stare for blank stare.
All of it felt so vivid, so deeply lodged in memory. Before things had fallen apart in her real life, maybe Chiose had lived something like this too. But she couldn't remember anymore.
This fiction was so beautiful, so warm, that Chiose found herself genuinely at a loss — she had no idea how to make the Takamatsu Tomori of this simulated world carry lifelong regret.
She simply… couldn't bring herself to do it.
No, it wasn't just a question of whether she could bring herself to act. She didn't even know where to begin.
Making someone feel regret — she really, truly wasn't cut out for it.
Chiose pulled up the system panel. It displayed the number of simulated days that had elapsed, alongside the lifespan she had earned by making Takamatsu Tomori regret.
Six years in. Not a single second of lifespan earned. An absolute failure.
[Tonight… I really need to sit down and think through a strategy.]
As Chiose's body in this simulation grew and developed, her brain becoming more fully formed, her consciousness had grown sharper and clearer along with it.
No matter how happy the simulation was, it wasn't real. The only thing that was real — the only thing worth fighting for with everything she had — was finding a way to be happy in the real world.
Chiose walked slowly along the wall with the camcorder raised.
This was such a warm, lovely place. It would be even better if little Kyoumoto were here with her.
Her little sister… she missed her more and more with every passing day. Whenever Chiose had a quiet moment, she'd take out a notebook and draw Haizuka Kyoumoto.
She had to move quickly. Wrap this up fast — and get back to Kyoumoto's side.
"This is the little hallway leading to my bedroom."
She tilted the lens downward and kept narrating.
"These are my feet! My feet are always happy!"
Her toes wriggled freely inside her slippers, lively as little waves.
"And this is me!"
She turned the camera on herself, and in the small screen she caught her own face — porcelain-smooth cheeks that belonged on a work of art.
"And…"
Takamatsu Chiose drew the words out slowly, long and deliberate, like an emcee building suspense before the curtain rose on the main event.
On the screen, the bedroom door swung open. A small, timid girl peeked out from inside.
"This is my elder sister. Or rather, you could say…" Chiose stuck out her tongue and murmured in a voice only she could hear, "my virtual elder sister."
The girl who had appeared shared a resemblance with Takamatsu Chiose, though with telling differences.
Tomori looked more delicate. Where Chiose wore her hair in twin tails, Tomori had chosen a bob cut as her signature style.
Her every movement was infused with the cautious wariness of a small animal. Standing in the doorway, she looked exactly like a roly-poly bug suddenly exposed to sunlight when a rock is turned over in the grass.
"Chiose… what's that?"
"Quick! Hold it steady! We need a shot of us both in the frame for the ending! I'm going to make a face at the camera."
Tomori took the camera from Chiose and dutifully did as she was told, pressing pause at the end and carefully reviewing the recorded footage.
"You filmed it beautifully, didn't you — you duck-lipped elder sister of mine."
Chiose leaned in beside Tomori to watch the playback, and as the footage rolled, something in it sparked a sudden flash of inspiration.
"Come on, everyone's waiting for us downstairs."
"R-right! Okay!"
Chiose hung the camera around her neck and naturally, without thinking, took Tomori's small hand in hers.
They held hands often. It made them both feel safe.
...
"Just how exactly does a person become a qualified victim — the kind that leaves someone else consumed by regret for the rest of their life?"
In the deep of the night, Chiose sat propped against the corner of the bed, thinking through the problem while Tomori slept soundly beside her.
"The whole point of the simulation is to make my target suffer. Everything I do has to be in service of making that outcome happen."
But how?
A six-year-old girl… how was she supposed to make another little girl carry lifelong regret?
Hmm. Lifelong regret… lifelong regret…
"I could just die, couldn't I?"
"If I die, elder sister Tomori is sure to feel awful — devastated."
But simply dying wouldn't be nearly enough.
"I'd need to make Tomori feel like my death had something to do with her… frame it that way somehow… that kind of thing… ugh, it feels awful to even think about it, honestly disgusting — but it would absolutely work…"
But wasn't that exactly what "lifelong regret" was made of?
For these past six years, Chiose had been turning the problem over in her mind the whole time.
She knew that playing the villain would solve everything in one stroke. But the gnawing ache in her conscience had been the thing holding her back all along.
Chiose stared up at the bedroom ceiling. The same blank white that had greeted her on the day she was born in this simulation.
"Alright… I'll give you a little more time, just a little while longer. My false, simulated sister."
Chiose pulled the small blanket back up over Takamatsu Tomori, who had kicked it off in her sleep, then closed her own eyes and settled in to rest.
____
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