The Games for Nihon (BOOK THREE)

Chapter 20 - Brother and Sister

Sofia remembered how much she had envied Orì for having a brother. Right now, she seriously wondered why. Time and again, she resolved to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to judge them right away, to give second chances. With Orì's brother, that proved to be difficult. She formed an immediate and intense dislike to him, and somehow everything he did or said confirmed her initial impression.

Barâan was leading the prisoners out the labyrinth like he was at the head of a victory parade. They were to meet "their saviour", as he had announced with grandiosity. Mother. Apparently, she would be expecting gratitude, and the way things stood at the moment, she was likely to receive it. The closer they got to the surface, the louder the distant shouts of cheer were becoming. Mother had, after all, a way to ingratiate herself with people. And the former queen of Epoch had definitely not achieved that. Scraps of her dresses were already being passed around as trophies. Mother tolerated it, appreciated it, even.

Barâan seemed not to have looked far for a role model to emulate. His resemblance to Mother didn't help. Sofia didn't know if this was what he really looked like, or if it was the same as with Orì. For the time being, Orì was still stubbornly holding on to her blue form. But her silver hair was coiling and uncoiling itself nervously on her head, and she was fidgeting.

"Wait a moment," Sofia said to Orì in a low voice. "What do you actually look like?"

Orì's frown immediately grew deep into her forehead.

"What do you mean? Like this."

"No, I mean, what were you born like? You don't actually look like a mini version of your mother, do you? And you also don't actually look like this."

"I do look like this," Orì hissed. "This is what I look like. If you like it or not."

"I like it!" Sofia protested. She didn't understand why Orì was getting so mad. "I just mean, what would you look like if you had never changed yourself?"

Orì looked at Sofia with a pinched and angry expression.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "I look like this. This is me."

"Alright, alright," Sofia said. "Sorry."

Although her apology would have been more effective if she hadn't rolled her eyes.

"Can you leave that topic for another time?" Ami intervened.

"That other time can be never," Orì grumbled.

"I just don't get why she is so sensitive about it," Sofia said to Ami.

"Maybe you don't need to get it," he said. He turned to Orì, deliberately and slowly, as if that particular conversation was thereby over. "What about your brother? What's he -" Ami hesitated. "What's he like?"

Orì swallowed her anger, and after a moment, she gestured towards Barâan who was walking ahead of them. His gait was tall and determined, and he was looking from side to side with obvious self-satisfaction as if there were mirrors for him to admire himself in.

"He's like that," she said. "Exactly like that. You get what you see with him."

They had reached the courtyard, and at their emergence, there was a short halt in the celebration that was going on.

"The prisoners," some people whispered. There was a certain amount of fear in their voices, but also hesitation. They needed to rethink the words that they had long used and the opinions that they had long formed.