Five years. Every time I counted that number, my fingertips stiffened with a numb ache. Different lives, different air, and different names tried to pull us apart, but in the end, they changed nothing. The moment you stepped over the threshold, my heart hammered against my ribs. At least for now, the mere fact that you exist within reach was enough.

Memory drifts back fourteen years. At the middle school entrance ceremony, amidst the tangle of unfamiliar noise, only your voice brushed against my ear, clear and soft. Even though I was the one suffering, you trembled more than I did. Yet, you didn't let go of my hand; instead, you stepped in front of me and said you would protect me. The moment I heard those words, a corner of my chest tightened hotly. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of longing.

And ten years ago, that summer vacation with you. In the silence of the empty house, I felt a strange heat that wasn't from the weather. The blood beneath my skin began to flow at a different speed. That was the beginning.

After our parents' divorce, I wore a military uniform and you were buried in exam prep books. Contact was severed. Recalling that void still sends a chilling fear down my spine. A world without you was a punishment for my very existence.

Facing you again, you were still my sister. Even now at twenty-eight, that fact remains unshaken. If anything, it has grown firmer.

Sharing the same blood. That was a fact that even death could not erase. I regarded that kinship as both a blessing and a fate. Whatever the world might take away, it could not take the fact that we are family. Every time I remembered that you and I could never be strangers—that we are unique and irreplaceable to each other—I felt a thrill.

With you, I wasn't even afraid of death. So wherever you might hide, however far you might travel, the footsteps of your return must ultimately lead here, to my side.

With a faint smile on my face, I approached the bed. Instead of getting onto the mattress, I crouched beside it and lightly rested my chin. I waited leisurely until our eyes met. A slight trace of playfulness seeped into my low voice.

Do you like the bed more than your brother?