Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume32 Chapter2 4 (section)

===<noinclude>Onee-sama's Racket. </noinclude>Part 4.===

So, for now, Katsura returned to the classrooms and quietly waited for her onee-sama. Before long she came out to greet her, and they left together. 

It usually wasn't as big a deal as I imagined it was. Using those words as support, Katsura gathered her courage and asked. It was at the fork in the path in front of the statue of Maria-sama, because she had a feeling that Maria-sama had an interest in this too.

"About the racket I gave to Mizue-chan?"

Her onee-sama stood still, with a slightly conflicted look on her face.

"Yeah. I want to know what your feelings were at that time."

"My feelings..."

"Yes."

It looked as though she had never imagined that Katsura would ask her so directly. So her onee-sama was now searching for what to say. Not so that she could evade the question, but so that she could properly express herself. Eventually, she came up with a sentence.

"Let's see. I thought that it would be a good thing, for you. I guess."

"A good thing for me?"

Katsura was bewildered as to why she had come up in the conversation. But she had asked her onee-sama for her feelings, and if that was it then it would be wrong of her to interrupt, so she should be silent and listen attentively. 

"I thought that if you saw Mizue-chan innocently swinging away with my racket, that you might use that racket you have that you don't use."

"What do you mean, the racket that I don't use?"

Her heart was hammering in her chest. No way, there's no way she could have known.

"Last year – "

"How do you know about the racket that Haru-sempai gave me?"

Ahh, she'd just ruined everything. She hadn't been able to endure it and just blurted that out. And she'd been playing dumb too. What a catastrophe.

In her heart, Katsura whispered.

Yumi-san.

You said it usually wasn't as big a deal as you imagined it, but you left out what happens when it doesn't go as usual. Adding that in, you'd say there's a possibility it would be a complete disaster, like now.

Onee-sama knew. And knowing everything, she gave her racket to Mizue-chan.

This must have been retribution for a selfish petit soeur. 

But why had she done it now, when graduation was right before her.

Or maybe it was because she was about to graduate that she had done it.

"That's because."

Her onee-sama hesitated.

"Please tell me."

Katsura was desperate.

"I want to know the truth."

How long had her onee-sama known about it? Who had told her? What did she feel back then? What does she think about it now? She wanted to know everything.

For their relationship to break down on the day before her onee-sama graduated was deplorable, but she was just paying for her mistakes. It was nobody's fault but her own.

Katsura had no excuse for her actions regarding Haru-sempai's racket. If she was asked to return her rosary, she would just silently obey.

Thinking back on it, she hadn't even known the names of all the seniors in the tennis club when she was asked to become a petit soeur. She had said okay to the first person that had asked her. Even so,  she had been nervous, and loved her onee-sama.

"You asked me why I knew. That's because..."

"That's because?"

Katsura pressed her. As though she was blind to her own shortcomings. She knew those well enough.

"Because I asked her to."

Was her onee-sama's response.

"Huh?"

"I knew you looked up to Haru-sempai. So I asked her. Haru-sempai didn't have a petit soeur, so she cheerfully agreed. Sure, she said. Because she liked you too."

On one hand, she thought that was foolish. But on the other, she could kind of understand it. Either way, she didn't think her onee-sama was lying to her.

"A year ago, I thought you'd be delighted by it. So I didn't make a big deal of it. But you never brought Haru-sempai's racket to our club activities. That's when I started to think that maybe I'd done something terrible. That Haru-sempai's racket was a far heavier burden than I had ever imagined. I'm sorry, Katsura."

"Onee-sama..."

Tattered tears fell from Katsura's eyes. At that time, her onee-sama must surely have been hurting. Even so, she had said sorry. When surely it was Katsura herself who should have been apologizing.

"Even after I graduate, as long as there are people in the club who remember Haru-sempai, you won't use that racket, will you? In that case, it's not just you that I should apologize to, but also Haru-sempai. Therefore..."

Therefore, she took a chance.

"You gave your racket to Mizue-chan...?"

"Yeah. I told her that she had to use it, and not just hang it up on the wall."

And true to her word, Mizue had used it during practice. Did that mean that for her, the racket was of no special significance. 

"But I misunderstood once more, and caused you even more pain."

Her onee-sama used a finger to wipe the tears from Katsura's face.

"You're wrong about that."

Katsura shook her head.

"I love you, onee-sama. And thinking that, the tears came."

"Oh."

Onee-sama smiled, and this time she ran her finger over her own cheek.

"Then, in that case, I'm glad you told me your feelings so directly, Katsura."

As her onee-sama's damp hand took hold of her own hand, Katsura thought:

Yumi-san.

In the end, you were wrong about it not being a bigger deal than I had imagined, but I'm glad I took the chance to tell her about my feelings.

Sometimes it works out better than you had imagined too.