After dinner, I borrowed the shower and followed Cire up to her room on the third floor. Her room was simpler than I had expected. On the wall hung a poster of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  “Do you like Audrey?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Cire replied with a shy smile. “She’s someone I admire.”

  Roman liked Audrey too.

  Back in middle school, I had tried to get closer to my sister’s tastes by copying Audrey’s hairstyle and cutting my hair short. Of course, I could never come close to her real beauty. I had none of Audrey’s charm or sweetness, none of those rge, luminous eyes that seemed to draw you in, none of that effortless elegance she carried.

  To other people, I probably just looked like a sharp-eyed girl with short hair. But when Roman saw me with my new haircut, she had been far more delighted than I expected.

  “Avery, it looks great on you. You’re even cuter than Audrey.”

  She had said it with such enthusiasm that I couldn’t tell if she was joking or serious. I knew perfectly well that I could never be cuter than Audrey Hepburn. But hearing Roman praise me like that had made me so happy it almost took my breath away.

  Since then, I had kept my hair short.

  “My sister loves Audrey,” I said. “So I copied her and cut my hair like this. It’s kind of stupid, isn’t it? Everything I do somehow revolves around her.”

  Cire shook her head.

  “I don’t think it’s stupid at all,” she said gently. “It just means you love your sister that much. Being able to love someone so deeply that you’d give everything for them… in a way, that’s a kind of happiness.”

  “Is it?” I murmured. “For me, it’s brought far more pain than happiness.”

  “Maybe that’s because you keep hurting yourself.”

  “Hurt myself?”

  “You bme yourself for loving your sister. And you grieve over the fact that you can’t be her partner, don’t you?”

  “…Yes. I suppose I do.”

  Her words startled me.

  The one who had hurt me the most all this time hadn’t been my sister—or the people who came close to her.

  It had been me.

  I had cursed myself and this fate more times than I could count. For falling in love with my sister. For never being able to become the most important person in her life. For feeling something so intense that it could never simply be erased.

  And the thought that I might continue being dragged around by these feelings forever filled me with a deep, quiet despair.

  “I don’t regret meeting my sister—meeting Roman,” I said at st. “Not at all. But it’s true that I hated myself for loving her. Even though putting myself down never changed anything.”

  I paused for a moment.

  Audrey in the poster rested her cheek on her hand, dressed in a bck dress and pearl neckce, smiling with a pure, almost childlike innocence. Her wide eyes held the same fascination they always had.

  For the hundredth time, I felt that familiar envy.

  She was refined, beautiful, and charming all at once. She seemed fearless.

  I wished I had that kind of absolute charm—something strong enough to keep Roman by my side forever.

  “I always wanted to experience a normal kind of love,” I said quietly. “Holding hands openly, going shopping together, watching movies, having dinner at a nice restaurant on special occasions. Like Audrey and Gregory in Roman Holiday—riding a Vespa together and eating geto.”

  I gave a small ugh.

  “But I know the truth. I know my feelings will never come true. And I know that if things stay like this… I’ll probably never be happy.”

  If I had tried, I might have dated someone else.

  But Roman’s presence in my life was simply too rge. So rge that everyone else faded into the background.

  Sometimes I envied my cssmates. They walked through town with their partners without caring what anyone thought, linking arms and ughing together. I had long ago convinced myself that a kind of happiness like that would never come to me.

  Cire spoke softly, noticing that I had turned my eyes away from the poster.

  “Avery, someone who loves you will appear someday,” she said. “Just because things have been painful until now doesn’t mean they always will be. I’ve always believed that somewhere in this world there’s someone who’s perfectly meant for me—and that someday we’ll meet.”

  “Do you think someone like that exists for me too?”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  Cire looked at me and smiled warmly.

  I returned her smile.

  The old me might have ughed off words like hers as naive romantic nonsense.

  But for some reason, at that moment, I found myself wanting to believe them.