Abby and Violet (Yuri Light Novel)

Once again, my sister wasn’t joining us for dinner. Despite how it hindered my efforts, I’ve been thanking that ever since day one because the only thing worse than not being courageous enough to approach her was sharing the same space in silence while cowering.

“Have you and your sister talked at all lately?” dad asked me, his voice low and worried.

“No, but… Violet gave me a slice of the sweet she made today to give her, so… I will do it after dinner.”

He nodded, a bit of happiness appearing on his face as he chewed his food slowly. Then…

“Your sister is dealing with a lot of stuff… Stan advised me to give her time but to also intervene when I feel like I should. Would you tell me about your talk later?”

I would, and I also would like to know what he meant by Sophie having a lot to deal with. He didn’t specify, only that Sophie had a lot of thinking to do now.

What could that be?

There was her internship report. That was either done, or close to, I figured. What followed that? Normally, that would be jobhunting correct…?

“Isn’t Sophie going to work with you?” I asked on reflex while also remembering how sis didn’t want to have anything to do with mum nor was she forced to go work under her. “Right… of course not.”

There were also not that many places around that could employ a recently graduated Management School student. For that, she’d likely have to go live someplace else, a feeling of urgency now filling my chest and compressing my heart. This night was feeling very final.

“…”

“Violet made this?” my dad asked, snapping my attention away from the doom and gloom I was diving into. “That girl should consider becoming a baker or a cook.”

“Yeah, I told her that, but Violet doesn’t want to cook for anybody else other than me and you guys.”

“That’s a shame. Talented as she is, she could very well capitalise on it.”

That was such a managerial statement he just made, wasn’t it?

I told him the same I had told Violet half-jokingly but now that I had some time to think about it, I fully meant what I was saying now: she was too much of a housewife at heart for that. For as much as she talked about finding something she’d like to do professionally, there was always something that turned her off. She could very well find some part-time thing to feel like she was paying at least part of the bills, but ultimately, I think she’d be the happiest version of herself the more she could spend time at home making it a sweet place for us to live in.

“Hmm… now that you say it like that, I can’t really disagree with you. Although, I think that she’ll at least have to definitely find a part-time job. Rents can be absurdly expensive in some places.”

And I had the feeling that Violet had already been looking at them since we had plans to live together once I got into a good university. And Violet being Violet, she’d likely want to be as independent from our parents as possible when that time came.

…She’s gonna be a huge pain, won’t she?

Overwork herself, stress too much about my studies, probably not letting me help around the house so I had more time to study and rest… yeah, I could see a couple of arguments rearing their ugly heads on the horizon, but love and relationships aren’t supposed to always be easy, so I wasn’t scared about them. We certainly went through worse stuff already and without the level of maturity we’d have in two more years too. If I saw that Violet was still the kind of person who’d do that, I’d just have a sit down on our first day of living together and make some sort of arrangement with her. I mean, we should do that regardless just to make sure we weren’t just making assumptions about what the other would do and give rise to some other dumb arguments as a result.

“Well, I’m going to give sis her slice,” I said, voice trembling a bit as I got up.

“You’re not eating dessert?”

“I already had it at Violet’s.”

“Before having dinner?” my dad asked with an arched eyebrow, ready to start scolding me.

“Gee, dad! I ate everything, didn’t I? Also, once it gets inside my belly, it’s not like the order of arrival matters!”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead before signalling me to just keep moving.

As I walked by him, I tapped his broad back and said that I loved him, dad grumbling something in response that I couldn’t quite pick up. It was either that he loved me too or something like calling me a handful, both having a fifty-fifty chance of being correct guesses.

My will to make jokes dried up once I walked into the corridor that led to the bedrooms and bathroom, sis’s door being the first one I came across. I was shaking a bit, the dessert fork I had brought for sis ringing on the plate as my hands shook, but I still felt brave enough thanks to Violet’s support and the expectations that made me create for myself.

I changed the grip of the plate to hold it one handed and prevent the fork from continuing to vibrate against the place and knocked on the door three times before I heard sis walking up to it.

The first thing that happened once Sophie slightly opened the door to see who was knocking wasn’t me seeing my sister’s face, but my nose being hit with a heavy air smelling strongly of sweat and coffee. Seeing her face was the second thing that happened, and it was just as bad. Since last time I’ve seen her, her hair had gotten even more messy, her face was reflective with grease, her eyes had huge sets of bags under them and her cheeks had become a bit sunk. She was looking—and smelling—just as bad as I likely was when Violet had come to my rescue almost a year ago.

“What… what is it?” my sister stammered, partially hiding behind the door.

“V-Violet sent you this,” I said, trying not to show any negative reaction to what I was experiencing. “As a thanks for having taken care of her.”

“S-she did?” my sister asked, further hiding herself behind the door.

“Yeah… she made it herself.”

“…For me?”

“Y-yeah.”

“…”

I didn’t remember asking Violet why she baked it, but it certainly wasn’t for my sister, but since Violet had sent one slice specifically for sis, then it was alright to lie, right? In fact, technically speaking, it wasn’t a lie at all, was it?

I saw my sister’s hand appear thought the small gap between the frame and the door, accepting our gift with a whimper. I was asking if I could come in to have a talk, but I couldn’t get past the first half.

“No!” my sister squealed, making me recoil from such a strong reaction. That hurt my sister’s feelings because I saw her head slump slightly more and her eyes were cast down to my feet. “Sorry… the room is a mess… and I need to bathe…”

So, she was aware? Hmm, that made things a bit easier.

“I missed you sis, so… can’t we please talk just for a bit today?” I asked her with a sweet voice and touching the hand she had on the door. “I’ve been wanting to talk with you since day one, you know?”

I was playing a bit—or rather, very—dirty, but my chest was feeling tight, and I didn’t want to know my sister was suffering like this and living like an animal any longer. More than her accepting me and my relationship, I wanted her to at least have a decent life.

“Sorry, I—”

“Go take a nice, long shower,” I said, now firmer. “I’ll be in my room, waiting.”

And before she could say anything else, I walked away, taking the two steps needed to get to my door and walked inside my room, shutting the door behind me.

Next, I pulled out my phone and texted Violet a wall of words with trembling hands to tell her that I had given Sophie her slice and was now waiting to see if she’d come to my room for a talk after I gave her the invitation.

The answer came immediately. It was a short text, but one that gave me everything I needed to keep my wits.

“You can do it! I just know it!”

I texted back a thanks and heard Sophie’s door opening and closing. That was followed with a knock on the door and my sister’s voice weakly saying she was going to shower now.

“O-okay! Take your time!” I told her through the door, now starting to feel excited about how things were going. Not too excited though, because I still needed to keep my cool and decide what we should talk about. Rather, what I wanted to talk about with sis.

There was Violet, of course, but other than telling sis how much of a great help it was her accepting to keep an eye on her while dad and I were away, I decided not to dwell on that subject. The memory of Sophie blowing up on me was still a vivid one, and Sophie likely had the same issue.

I did want to know how sis was doing though, so I guessed I’d be asking if she had already finished her report, but… would it be ok to bring that up when sis had to decide what to do with her life? Had she even enjoyed her university life at all?

“…”

The idea of going inside her room popped up. It resulted from me thinking that after we were done talking, she’d go back in there, fresh from taking a shower. By then, her nose would have likely climatised to my own room and her bathing products, meaning that, the same reaction I had when she opened the door was going to be hers… and that would be worse than me snooping around, wouldn’t it?

“…”

It was a bad idea. It was invasion of privacy, but… I was worried about the conditions my sister was living in while under the same roof as me, so… I did it.

I opened the door and… I don’t know what I was expecting, but… it was both just as bad as I had expected, but somehow, not as bad too.

For starters, trash. There was none.

While Violet stayed here, we never saw or heard my sister but some stuff would appear in the trashcans in the kitchen, so our suspicion of Sophie taking care of that while everyone else slept was proven true.

We—my girlfriend and I—had tried to make the room liveable by moving some of the boxes containing my stuff to somewhere else, and those that had to stay pilled in a corner away from sis’s things. My sister made no rearrangements whatsoever, so that part was more or less neat.

The rest though?

The bed Violet and I had prepared hadn’t been changed ever since sis came back, the sheets having had come loose and no attempts at tucking them had been made, parts of the mattress showing underneath. By the bed was a pile of clothes, all used.

The window, that I now opened to force some breeze to pass through the room with the door open wide, had been used as a cup holder, three mugs of coffee with different levels of being filled on top of it and the now empty plate that previously had Violet’s dessert. One of the cups was completely empty and had not been washed. The ones filled, the coffee was cold and smelled stale, one of them having gone acrid too.

Her laptop was open and running on her desk, the browser visible and with many tabs open, but I didn’t look at them because I didn’t want to breach any more of my sister’s privacy than I was already doing.

“Right… what should I do?”

I asked myself that, but what I was really asking was what would Violet do in my situation.

The answer was simple and immediate: I’d start fixing stuff.

The pile of clothes? Picked up and bagged inside the bedsheets together with the pillowcases that I then took and shoved inside the washing machine, and from that room, I grabbed a new bed set that I used to prepare sis’s bed. Then, the mugs. Those, I took and washed them at the kitchen sink, dad asking me what I was up to from his sitting spot on the couch.

“The same Violet did for me when I most needed it,” was what I told him while cleaning a particularly stubborn coffee stain from one of the mugs.

Up next was vacuuming her room. Sure, it was noisy, but it wasn’t still late enough that I was breaking some law that said I couldn’t do it because I’d be violating our neighbours right to rest undisturbed. It wasn’t that big of a room anyway, only taking me about five minutes at most to be done with it.

That space was now looking a lot better, not to mention the smell. There was still some funk, but letting it air out for a few more minutes should take care of that.

“Abby! What are you doing?!” my sister asked, standing behind me wrapped in a towel right as I turned off the vacuum cleaner. “Did you clean up my room!?”

She didn’t look mad but shocked that I had gone ahead and did it without any sort of warning.

I apologised anyway, and told her that I simply couldn’t let her keep on living in such a filthy room, those words seemingly cutting deep as she firstly cocked her head back, but after that, she looked down to the floor and mumbled that she hadn’t realised it was that bad.

“Well, it really wasn’t,” I told her. “Sorry for having used such a strong word. You took care of the trash and it mostly needed to be aerated and tidied up a bit, so calling it filthy really was a huge overstatement.”

She looked up at me with a trembling lip before looking at her bed and the lack of mugs and dirty clothes.

“…I don’t know how to make a bed… or how to use a washing machine… unlike you…”

Little amount of words that spoke volumes of her internal turmoil.

Before our parent’s divorce, I was the incompetent, stupid and lazy sister while she could do no wrong, was a genius and hardworking. Now?

Now that it wasn’t our mother defining our worth, the only thing “we” had to go by to base what worth we had shifted. No longer it was academic achievements, being good little dolls, nor social gatherings. Now, she had none of those where she had always shone. Now, she was realising that there was a whole other world out there—worlds, even—and that stuff that was useful then had little to no value now. Now, she was going through something similar to what I had undergone but at a much larger scale because she had no Violet to introduce her into this world. She had no Violet, but she still had me, however.

“I didn’t know any of this too until I met Violet. Don’t worry, I can teach you.”

“…I’m the older sister, not you.”

See? That’s more of our mum’s mental conditioning at play that I didn’t have to deal with and never even thought Sophie would have to. As the youngest, I was dumb, and it was up to my sister do make sure I learned and did stuff properly when mum wasn’t around or cared to bother teaching me instead. It was never to be the other way around.

“Oh, come on sis!” I told her as I sat on her bed. “I’m sure there are plenty of things you can teach me instead.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” she asked, shooting a glare at me that was a bit too close to mum’s for my comfort, but still, I didn’t back away nor allowed myself to flinch.

“Gee sis, don’t think like that! What sense does it make to learn from others that know better than you if you’re putting the caveat that it should only apply if the other person is older or of a higher ranking? And like… Hmm… like, stuff related to university! I never had to write a report in my whole life, so I’ll need some guidance on that! Oh, and maybe how credits work? Like, can you pick any subject you wanna take, or is it limited to credits or field of study? I haven’t had any tutoring in a while, so I might also need some help here and there with homework and stuff. And that’s just school stuff!”

She kept glaring at me, but hopefully, some words might have resonated with her. Breaking away from that kind of thinking would be hard and take a long time, but every trip starts with the first step, and hopefully, this would be her first.

“…Haah…”

She gave up from thinking about it and surrendered, taking a seat by me but still far enough that we wouldn’t accidently touch.

“…How have you been doing?” she asked awkwardly.

“Well… I have a new math teacher that is also my new homeroom teacher… she’s pretty and kinda strict, but very nice too. I’ve made a few friends too since last we met… my grades have also been holding steady and at the top of my class.”

“Hmm… and… and things with…” she stammered, her entangled fingers rapidly tapping the knuckles as she pressed her knees together and kept looking down.

“…They are going better now… we are properly dating too.”

“I… I know. Dad told me when he picked me up at the station.”

“Hmm… I see…”

“…H-how far did…”

She had nothing to do with how far Violet and I had gone and her asking me that got me irritated, but I stopped myself from saying anything mean spirited. This was Sophie trying her best to make sense of things, so I was sincere with her and told my sister that Violet and I had our first time together during summer.

“S-sorry! I… I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“It’s ok… I understand why you asked.”

“…I’ve been trying, you know?” she said, now starting to sob. “I’ve been trying but… there’s so much stuff… so much stuff…”

I made the distance between us disappear to go rest my head on her shoulder and invited her to tell me what was on her mind.

She admitted to it all.

The stress of performing better than everyone else during the internship and the frustration of not having anyone showing any expectations from her to perform as such. The fact that our dad told her to take time to figure herself out when she had never had to make a single choice in her life and how useless and lost that made her feel all the time. How she messed up things with me because I wasn’t acting according to plan more than ever and there were no repercussion. How her life seemingly had no meaning or logic now. How regretful she was to have hurt me, for having acted like our mum would and how lost she felt for not knowing how to even begin mending things between us. How frustrating it was that it was me taking the first step and not her. How meaningless the present made her past feel like to her.

And after dumping all that out of her chest came something I wasn’t expecting.

She told me that she was proud of the person I was becoming and how brave I was to define my own path even though mum opposed it and how I pursued my own happiness unburdened by others. How jealous she felt of me and how she hated feeling that way about her baby sister.

She had a lot to unpack, but I listened to it all without any judgements as I held my big, dumb sister, who thought she had to deal with this all by herself.

I also apologised to her about the horrible things I had said without making any excuses for it and told her that I still loved her dearly.

Just like a few hours before, I was crying my eyes out, but this time, it was with my sister as we finally came clean with one another.