Emera’s face was flushed as she looked up at me with unfocused eyes, her expression oddly unsatisfied.

Was she that out of it…?

“—!? E-Eito-kun, d-do you need something…!?”

It seemed she really hadn’t noticed me at all—or rather, it took a few seconds for me to register in her awareness. The moment she did, Emera hurriedly brought her hands up to cover herself.

At least she still seemed to have some sense of embarrassment left.

Still… yeah, seriously, what were you doing in front of someone else’s room…?

—Even though I more or less knew the answer, I couldn’t help thinking that anyway.

“Even if it is spring, you’ll catch a cold, you know…?”

“I-I’ll be fine… um, my body feels warm, so…”

Yeah, right! 

—I somehow managed to swallow that response.

If I said anything out loud here and Hina happened to see us, it’d lead to some wild misunderstanding—just as that thought crossed my mind…

Click.

I heard the sound of a door opening somewhere other than the room behind me.

For a moment, I considered retreating back into my own room.

But if someone saw Emera sitting in front of my door, lightly dressed—or rather, wearing nothing underneath and only my shirt—that suspicion would fall on me too.

So, acting on reflex, I grabbed Emera by the arm and tried to pull her into my room—

“Ah… o-nii… chan…?”

—only to lock eyes with Hina before I could pull her away.

Despite it being early morning, my sister was wide awake. She looked at me with her usual, warm smile—and then, in the very next instant, her expression drained completely, her eyes losing all light as she stared at me and Emera.

If anything, from Hina’s point of view, it must have looked like I was trying to drag Emera, standing there in nothing but a boyfriend shirt and wearing no underwear at all, into my room.

It was hard to imagine a worse situation.

“Hina, this is a misunderstanding…!”

“I’m sorry for the intrusion.” 

I tried to explain, but Hina simply put on a polite little smile and returned to her room with a distant, almost formal demeanor.

Yeah. It was already too late.

“Uh, um… s-so…”

Even Emera seemed to realize how bad things were. She broke out in a cold sweat and glanced up at my face, nervously gauging my reaction.

She almost looked frightened.

Turning to the very cause of all this, I—

“You’re getting punished later.”

—decided to make her take responsibility.

“Y-yes…”

However, instead of turning pale, Emera’s face flushed red as she started fidgeting.

In fact, rather than acting reluctant, she looked delighted by the idea.

Just what on earth was she thinking?

Even though my so-called “punishment” was nothing more than ignoring her.

“Damn it… this has gotten complicated…”

Setting aside Emera the pervert, who actually enjoyed being punished, the fact that Hina had misunderstood the situation was a serious problem.

She rarely ever got angry. In fact, she almost never got into a bad mood, but once she started sulking, she became impossible to deal with, to the point where she wouldn’t listen to a word anyone said.

People often say that someone who doesn’t usually get angry is scary when they finally do, but I think there’s also the version where they’re just a huge pain to deal with.

At this point, all I could do was wait for her to cool her head. Whether that would happen before it was time to go to school was another matter entirely…

“So then, why were you outside my room?” 

From what I’d walked in on, I could more or less guess the reason. Still, even if Emera had changed so much she barely seemed like the same person, she had to know that messing around in front of someone else’s room like that would make me angry.

The fact that she’d gone so far as to put on my shirt without asking almost made it feel like she’d come looking to get yelled at on purpose. Even then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some other reason behind it.

—Well, at the very least, I figured I’d hear her excuse.

After that, I could punish her properly, without holding back.

“I-I didn’t do anything wrong…!”

When asked, Emera desperately shook her head in denial, her face still flushed red.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what someone with something to hide would say.”

I mean, she had been doing something suspicious, hadn’t she…?

“N-no, that’s not it…! A cat took over my bed, and I didn’t have anywhere to sleep…!”

“A cat… you mean Myaa-san?”

Now that I thought about it, she’d never been good with small animals.

Even if her personality had changed, that part of her apparently hadn’t.

Honestly, it’d be stranger if a shift from arrogant to meek somehow cured her fear as well.

“I’ll say this now—if you’re lying, I’ll know right away.”

“I’m not lying…!”

Judging by Emera’s demeanor, it didn’t seem like she was lying.

If so, then Furei must have left Myaa-san in the room despite knowing her sister was scared of it… was she really that cold?

Or rather, should I see it as her choosing Myaa-san over her sister?

Yesterday, Emera had been clinging to me more than to Furei. Maybe that had upset her.

With that in mind, I went into Emera and Furei’s room, and sure enough, Myaa-san was curled up comfortably on the bed, fast asleep.

She was usually an early riser, but today, she seemed in no hurry to get up.

“She must’ve taken a liking to the bed after sleeping there with Furei two nights ago…”

No wonder Furei hadn’t brought her to my room.

Even if she’d tried to bring her along, Myaa-san probably didn’t want to leave that bed and put up a fuss.

Since it was the bed Emera and Furei had been using from the start, it was probably top-of-the-line and comfortable to sleep in.

“That’s my bed too, you know…!”

“I know.”

Clearly unhappy about having her bed taken over by Myaa-san, Emera complained to me with a dissatisfied look.

Well, if she was scared of cats, there was no way she could sleep together with one, and she probably couldn’t even stay in the same room.

That was… kind of pitiful.

“So you came to my room, but since you knew Shirayuki wouldn’t let you in, you stayed in the hallway?”

“Yes…!”

Emera nodded vigorously, bobbing her head up and down.

I almost felt like firing back, Then what is that outfit supposed to be, but the thought of finding out the reason made me hesitate, and I found myself torn.

She’d probably been pressing her ear to the door, heard Furei and Shirayuki’s voices, and without thinking, went to the dressing room to grab my clothes. Something like that…?

…No, wait a second…?

Something felt off, and I started to think it over more carefully.

Hina and Shirayuki usually handled the laundry, and both of them should have finished washing everything, hung up anything that needed to be dried, and then gone to sleep with the dryer running.

At the very least, that’s how things were back when Hina was doing it on her own.

So it wasn’t impossible that Emera had taken freshly washed and dried clothes from the bathroom. If she was wearing something that had already been washed, then even if I were being generous, I could overlook it. But from what I saw, there was one part that really bothered me.

“By the way, you’re not going to tell me this is something you wore after it was washed, but actually the clothes I was wearing yesterday, right…?”

What caught my attention was how strangely wrinkled it looked for freshly washed clothing, and before I could stop myself, I ended up touching the fabric.

Then―

“…O-of course it is…?”

―Emera agreed verbally, but her eyes kept darting away as she turned aside. She was completely guilty.