Published: July 25, 2025
I am Tulli. Six years old.
I have a five-year-old younger sister, Myne.
Myne has straight navy-blue hair like the night sky, and golden eyes like the moon. Even as her older sister, I think she’s incredibly cute.
She’s always sick, running a fever, so she can’t eat much and hasn’t grown very big. Since she hardly goes outside, her skin is pale white.
She’s very cute, but it’s a little disappointing that I can’t play with her. Other kids get to play with their siblings, so I get a bit envious.
Just recently, Myne had a terrible fever. It was so high that we all worried she might die. For about three days, she couldn’t eat or even drink water, becoming very weak.
Maybe the fever made Myne a little crazy.
Because of the fever, she sometimes muttered strange words, suddenly got angry, or, even though she usually listened well, she slipped out of bed while I was washing dishes. Other times, she’d start crying for no reason and keep crying all day long...
At that time, I thought maybe she was still suffering from the fever. But once the fever went down, she got even stranger.
She said she felt uncomfortable and wanted me to wipe her body.
When I boiled water to cook, she wanted warm water.
And every day!
Myne would wet a cloth and wipe her whole body every day. She’d say, “There are places I can’t reach by myself, help me,” so I helped her.
The first day, the water in the bucket got really dirty, but after three days, it stayed clean.
“It’s wasteful to use water when it’s hardly dirty, isn’t it?”
“It’s dirty, so it’s not wasteful.”
No matter what I said, Myne insisted on wiping herself every day. Before I knew it, one corner of the bedroom had become a bathing spot just for Myne.
And for some reason, she even tried to wipe me when I was only helping. Even if I said, “It’s fine,” she’d scrub my face with the cloth. She said, “Tulli goes outside, so you’re dirtier than me.”
Indeed, after wiping Myne, the water was clean, but after wiping me, it got cloudy and dirty. Seeing the dirt on myself so plainly made me feel a bit uncomfortable.
But Myne smiled brightly. “If we use it together, it’s not wasteful, right?”
How can I make her understand that using water every day like this is wasteful?
Hauling a bucket of water from the well is really hard, but how can I make her understand?
Then, she suddenly started tying her hair.
Myne’s hair is straight, so no matter how tightly she ties it, it quickly comes undone and falls. That’s why she hadn’t really tied it before.
She tried several times to tie it again but failed and pouted. Then, she suddenly started rifling through the toy basket. From inside, she brought out a doll — my treasure — that Dad carved from wood and Mom made clothes for.
“Tulli, can I break this?”
“That’s the doll’s leg! Myne, that’s awful!”
I was scared that my little sister could calmly say she’d “break” the doll’s leg. That’s just too cruel.
When I got angry, Myne hung her head and apologized, then pushed back her bangs and sighed. Even though she’s only five, her gesture was strangely mature, and I couldn’t help but catch my breath.
“Tulli, I want a stick like this. What should I do?”
What Myne wanted wasn’t the doll’s leg, but a wooden stick. If so, I could carve one from the firewood we had gathered. Before the doll got destroyed, I took a knife and carved a thin stick for her.
She had many requests — make the tip a little thinner here, round this part so it’s not too sharp — but she seemed satisfied with the final result.
“Thank you, Tulli.”
Myne gratefully took the stick and suddenly stabbed it into her own head.
“Myne!?”
In front of me, who was startled, Myne curled her hair around the stick as if impaling it, then twisted it tightly. Somehow, with just that stick, her hair was tied up.
I was surprised that her hair stayed put like some noble’s magic, but even more surprised that Myne’s hairstyle looked like an adult’s.
“Myne, no. Only adults tie all their hair up like that.”