“Can you stop being so sensitive? How long have we known each other, and how long have I known your sister? Relationships need time to build. Also, do you actually dislike your sister?”

  Catching the half-smiling look from Akira, Mai Zenin fell silent once more.

  This Boy always seemed able to see straight through her heart, leaving nowhere for her deepest thoughts to hide. Worse, he never cared whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  “What you dislike is probably yourself, the version that got left behind by your sister and still can’t catch up.”

  “Can’t you leave a lady a bit of dignity? Now I finally know why you and Maki Zenin get along so well.”

  “Enough about dignity. What do you really think?”

  “Why should I tell you? Who are you to me? My boyfriend, or my brother-in-law?” At this moment, Mai Zenin finally looked like a twin.

  “You can think of me as nosy. Let’s call it an exchange. About the question you asked me earlier, I actually thought about the answer. Do you want to hear it?”

  “My mouth isn’t on you, and I can’t stop you anyway. Do whatever pleases Lord Akira. I’m just a weak little woman who goes along with whatever comes.”

  “It would be nice if you had this attitude toward your sister too.”

  Akira did not get angry. Handling Mai Zenin was simply too easy.

  “You asked whether going along with things and drifting with the flow is wrong. Of course not. There are far more people in this world who live like that than not. Teacher Araki once said that fate is a sleeping slave. Only a few dare to struggle against it, and everyone has a different way of living, so right and wrong are hard to define.”

  “Where you are truly wrong is that you haven’t found your own position or clarified your future direction. If you want to catch up to your sister, then chase her with everything you have and stop thinking about useless things. If you want to drift along, then do it properly. As a Jujutsu Sorcerer, as a Zenin Clan Jujutsu Sorcerer, you can still live a decent life.”

  “As long as you accept who you are now and take responsibility for the consequences of your choices, there’s no problem. Saying one thing, doing another, and thinking a third is just lying to yourself. The biggest reason your sister left home was probably that she couldn’t accept becoming someone who bowed to reality.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Mai Zenin snorted. “People look for a safety net because they can’t reach their goals. You’re different from me. You succeed at everything.”

  “Succeed at everything? You’ve got it backward.” Akira laughed at himself. “Did you know my original dream was to be a useless young master who freeloads and wastes time every day? Big goals had nothing to do with me. Clan head or whatever, whoever wants it can take it.”

  “And then?” Mai Zenin grew interested. That sounded like true drifting with the flow.

  “Then reality didn’t allow it. So I started thinking, what should I do? Tell me, Mai Zenin, what do you think I should have done?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Judging by how you turned out, definitely not like me. So like Maki Zenin?”

  “No. I can’t be like her, putting everything on the line with no way back, willing to die without regret.”

  “Then what?”

  “The option you ruled out is the right one. I think the same as you. I want to try my best, but I also want a way back. At least a stable life with food and clothes.”

  “I’m just more practical. My target isn’t someone like Maki Zenin, whom I might not catch up to even if I give it my all. I set goals within my reach.”

  “I break them into stages. What to do in the first stage, what to do in the second. I only move on after finishing the previous one. When setting goals, I never compare myself to others. I only ask whether I can accept them.”

  “I also made a deal with my family. Applied to you, it would be like this. Let me go until I’m twenty and try once. If I fail, I’ll follow your arrangements, marry whoever you want, or do chores at home, whatever.”

  “If I succeed, I won’t demand to be clan head or anything. Just let me decide my own life. See? I have a safety net, and I have goals.”

  “Did you achieve your goals?” Mai Zenin admitted that her heart was moved.

  “The initial goal is done. The second stage is almost there. The third is still in preparation. At this pace, I can not only reach the final goal but also gain some extra benefits.”

  “You mean entering Tokyo Jujutsu High, winning the Goodwill Event, and becoming an independent Jujutsu Sorcerer?” With team events being overwhelming this time, promotion would be much easier with these results.

  “No. I mean making steady money. I told you, I want to loaf around and live off it. How can I do that without money?”

  The initial goal was moving out. The second stage was making money by writing, which he had already achieved. The first volume sold out its initial print run and was reprinted once.

  The third stage he mentioned was discussing investments with Kento Nanami.

  Mai Zenin was speechless. “That’s really realistic.”

  “Realistic is good. I know this path is the easiest to walk. That’s the biggest difference between you and me. I choose what benefits me most. When you say you lack talent, you mean as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, right? What about everything else? I don’t believe you have no strengths at all.”

  “You say you want to beat your sister once. Why obsess over combat and Domain Expansion? Why not take another path? Earn more money than her, be smarter than her. Isn’t that also a win?”

  “Think bigger. Broaden your view. Wanting to be better than others at everything doesn’t make you human. It makes you a superhero.”

  At this moment, Akira looked as if Kento Nanami had possessed him.

  Mai Zenin’s gaze changed once again. She had to admit that this man’s words had hit something deep inside her. Even if she, Makoto, defeated Maki Zenin in battle, it would never be in the close combat Domain Expansion that Maki Zenin excelled at, and surpassing her outside of battle was not fundamentally different.

  Such a simple truth, yet she had never figured it out before.

  “I… can I really do it, Makoto?”

  She was asking Akira, but it was also a question to herself.

  “Whether you can or not depends on your mindset and your head. At least in my view, you do have quite a few areas where you are better than your sister.”

  “Like what?”

  “You are better at makeup and dressing up. I honestly did not expect that in this country, there would be a JK who does not even know how to put on foundation.”

  Of course Maki Zenin would never talk about things like that with Akira. But one should not forget that at Tokyo Jujutsu High, there was also a normal Japan woman, Akemi Aki. After learning about Maki Zenin’s situation, she practically raised her like half a daughter and taught her all the basic skills a girl should have, including makeup.

  “Because she is Maki Zenin.”

  Mai Zenin let out a short laugh, a sense of superiority rising inside her. She subconsciously brushed her hair back and slipped into a mode of showing off her charm.

  “But beating her in something she does not care about is meaningless. I have to find something she does care about, a Domain Expansion.”

  “Makoto trouble, just like sisters.” Always difficult in very specific ways, which was a shared trait of twins.

  “We are sisters. Ari, can you help me?”

  Her watery eyes stared straight at him, and she even reached out a finger to lightly poke Akira in the chest.

  “As long as you are willing to help me, I will do anything you ask, okay?”

  Her voice was sweet to the point of being cloying, with no sense of force at all. It was clearly voluntary.

  Akira admitted that his DNA stirred.

  “Sounds very tempting, but I refuse.”