7 Days with My Stepsister: Day 5 (Part 1/3)

* Note: This volume features the heroine's past.
It does not contain any OneShota (older girl x younger guy) scenes.

1 cover + 1 character bios + 3 frontispiece + 70 main pages

[Synopsis]
Neither good, nor bad. Flat and uninspiring, No major setbacks, nor successes.
I had lived life up to that point as if it were a picture of mediocrity itself.

The only big event... my mother's adultery and her divorce from my father.

Mother had never really shown much interest in me.
Though not to the point that you could call it ab*se... or abandonment.

She would cook meals for the family, and turn up at school events.
I just don't remember her ever smiling at me. I also don't remember her ever getting angry at me.
Regardless of whether I got a good test score... or dropped something at home and broke it...
Mother would never react in a big way.

After I entered high school, my parents divorced.
The cause was my mother's infidelity, however, there is one thing that I have kept secret from father.

That was... that I knew that my mother was having an affair all along.

One day, I just happened to see her walking arm in arm with another man.

I was a little surprised that I was even surprised... but not because my mother was having an affair.
Rather... by the "smile" that she had on her face. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile.

It was at that moment I understood.

That raising a child was simply a "duty" to my mother.

That she must just have felt that a child born must be raised.
That she didn't actually want to give birth or have have children or anything like that.

I wonder... Was a slip up during a moment of passion? Pressure from others? Or perhaps my father's wishes?
Was I really brought into this world... because someone wanted me to live?

I do not know the answer to that, but there is one thing I am certain of.

My mother did not have a lack of interest in me, no... she plain and simply found me unpleasant.
The expression of a "woman" that she gave to her partner in infidelity... said it all.

After my parents divorced, my father started taking days off from work... until finally he stopped working entirely. His drinking, which only used to be a little, increased, and he would spend his days wasting away in his room.

Had my quiet, earnest, and kind father loved mother so much that the divorce has broken him...?

Love... like... while I understand the concept... it's a word I have never well and truly understood from experience.

Like a picture of mediocrity nothing good, nor bad... no setbacks, nor successes...
No like, nor dislike... and no love in sight... I will surely depart this world... old and alone.

That must be the life of Akane Misawa.

So, I don't want you to get involved with me... Talking with other people is like suffocating.
They're just my classmates... and I've never had anything to do with them.

Yet, they nonetheless continue to speak to me...

"Hey Misawa, do you wanna join us for a mixer?"