Conflict of the Heart

By Any Means Necessary

When Ame was nine, she got a boy expelled from her school.

He was older than she was, but not by much; maybe a year or so above her, but with a predilection for picking on those younger than he was, and chasing the little girls who didn't want to be chased. Ema had been one of those girls, being too shy and skinny to escape his attentions, and Ame had been forced to run him off whenever he set his sights on her sister. However, on the days when she was placed in charge of tidying up the classroom during recess and couldn't go outside, Ame could only watch helplessly as he terrorised her sister up and down the yard.

Telling the teachers did nothing. They brushed it aside as her being 'overprotecive'. They laughed and said that 'boys will be boys' and 'how cute, maybe he has a crush on her!' But they knew nothing, and Ame was the one who had to comfort her crying little sister at the end of the day.

It had been much easier than it should have been to get rid of him. The principal of the school had an unbelievably spoiled daughter who attended the class next door. Moira was a pretty girl, taller than everyone else, with natural blonde hair from her mother's side of the family and a uniform that had clearly been custom-made which she wore with a ring that she loved dearly. It hadn't been regulation-approved, seeing as it was pink and shaped like a lotus flower, but no one had ever put up a fuss. Moira liked to tell them that it was a gift from her dad from when he took them to England on holiday.

Most days of the week, Moira's mother gave her a packed lunch to bring to school, and since the ring was large and cumbersome, she took it off so she could handle her utensils.

It wasn't until Ame had dropped the ring into the boy's backpack that she vaguely wondered if this had been a step too far, but by then it was too late for second thoughts and she could only drift back to her seat and wait for the purloined accessory to be discovered at some later date.

A few days later the boy was called out of class. A week later he stopped attending school altogether. By the next month, the board of directors had appointed a new principal to replace the old one due to accusations of corruption and nepotism. On the playground, Ema ran free across the grounds, and no one was there to chase her or make her uncomfortable. Ame had seen to that.

Ame would always see to that.

Yes time had gone by; she was older now, and she understood the moral ambiguity of her actions, but she wasn't sorry. Not as sorry as she ought to have been. In the grand scheme of things, Ema came first, and no one was going to touch her baby sister as long as she was around to make sure of it.

"Good day, Subaru!"

He yelped, surprised by the sudden greeting, and then proceeded to choke and cough as the water he'd been gulping went down the wrong way. Ame detachedly applied a coat of gloss to her lips while he hacked up most of the liquid, and smiled sweetly once he was done. Subaru whirled around to face her. "Ame-chan! W-What are you doing here?" The labs and classrooms were across the campus, and unless your class or activities had to do with a sport of some sort then most people had little reason to visit the fields or gym.

The tube of pink shut with a quiet snap, and Ame blinked at him."Do I need a reason to visit my new brother? Especially since you might be playing in the next game."

"O-Oh…" he wasn't sure what else to say. Ame had been rather benign considering what she'd overheard the night before, but that didn't mean she was alright with him more or less inviting her sister out on a sort-of date to watch his match. His sister too. Step-sister technically, at least on paper anyway.

She must have been coming from somewhere else, and was dressed cutely in a pale pink collared dress, a blue cardigan, tights and black kitten heels. Her thick hair had been swept over her left shoulder, and pinned in place. Ame looked like she had just been on a date, or was heading for one. She was tapping at her cell-phone now, lips pink and shiny and curved in a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I bet you're excited for that, aren't you Subaru? I heard that there're loads of important people at these games. Scouts and coaches etc. Oh, but I don't think you care about that right now," Ame lifted her head and regarded him. "Do you, Subaru?"

His face blanched when he saw the picture on her phone screen. It was the group wedding photo, the one they had all taken. There was only one in the house, hung up on the wall, and no one paid much attention to it. However Ame had cropped the image on her phone so that Subaru's face was the focus, and it was perfectly clear who he was staring at.

"It probably sounds romantic to you, doesn't it?" She commented casually, resuming her tapping. "You win the game and then, riding high on the the sheer adrenaline of victory, you sweep her off her feet and profess your undying feelings to her. It is romantic, but it's not going to happen."

Subaru's eyes narrowed, defiance beginning to replace the nervousness. "What do you mean by that? I have all right to tell Ema-chan how I feel!"

"Mmm, do you though?" Ame arched an eyebrow and slipped her phone into her bag. "Because I don't think you have as much right as you seem to think you do." She took a step forward, her heels clicking threateningly on the concrete. "In fact," she continued, backing him up against the side of the gym, "I happen to think that you have absolutely no rights to Ema's feelings whatsoever, apart from whatever she deems you worthy of! And so far, she considers you a brother, so you had better stick with that and enjoy it because I swear, if I hear that you've made my baby sister even the slightest bit uncomfortable, there will be dire consequences."

Anger and fear swirled inside Subaru. A part of him wanted to ask about these consequences, but the longer he stared into Ame's eyes the less he wanted to know. Gone was the sweet, innocent expression that looked so similar to Ema's, and in its place was something cold and ruthless. She didn't wait for him to agree or disagree, and simply spun around and walked off cheerfully. Her skirt hair swished at her thighs, and Subaru vaguely wondered if Kaname or Ukyo or any of the others knew what they'd got themselves into.