Reincarnated as the Heroine’s Big Sister, but My Little Sister Fell for Me Instead - Chapter 1

When I opened my eyes, it was an unfamiliar ceiling.

A stone, old ceiling. Fine cracks ran through the plaster, and the light streaming from the window outlined them in white. This wasn’t the ceiling of my room. I thought for a moment about what the word “my” even referred to anymore.

I sat up. It felt light. My arms seemed too thin, so I looked at my hands. My fingers were pale and long. They have nice nails, I thought, a completely irrelevant observation.

A dressing table stood against the wall. It took me a moment to understand that the person reflected in it was me.

Hair a silver-tinged white. Pale violet eyes. A well-proportioned face, yet with a shadow over it somewhere.

I knew this face.

—Rene de Croire.

A sensation like a title logo flashing in my mind. The otome game Stargazing Garden. Its initial antagonist, the protagonist’s older sister—”she”—was now in the mirror.

She wasn’t much of an antagonist. Just a person who disappears. Believing in her talent for light magic, never improving, and in the end, consumed by jealousy of her younger sister—the protagonist’s—talent, she scatters dark magic, runs amok, and is defeated.

Because she exited the story without much depth, I’d been a little curious about her when I played. I wondered what kind of person she was.

I stood up and went to the window. A courtyard was visible. In the morning light, a man who looked like a gardener was tending to a flower bed. The mansion grounds were vast. A noble’s house.

There was a knock at the door.

“Young mistress, are you awake?”

A maid’s voice. When I answered, the door opened.

As I received help with my morning preparations, I sorted through my thoughts. The game’s setting. Rune’s fate. And then Lian’s—my sister’s—face floated into my mind.

The heroine of Stargazing Garden. A candidate for the Saint of Light. A girl beloved by all, at the center of the story.

As a player, I had liked Lian. More than the romances woven with the love interests, I liked the innocent expressions she showed sometimes. I liked Lian best in those scenes where she looked frightened, yet somehow also as if she was seeking something to cling to.

I had always thought it wasn’t Lian’s fault. It was because Rune had looked in the wrong direction. Because she convinced herself she was the Saint, practiced only light magic, failed to improve, grew impatient, and became twisted.

I had become Rene.

In that case…

“Just a moment, please?” I said to the maid and went to a corner of the room. Facing the stone wall where no one was, I raised my right hand. I envisioned the incantation for light magic and then stopped.

Instead, I tried reversing the flow of mana.

Light and dark are opposites. So, not trying to emit light, nor trying to draw it in, but simply gathering darkness into my hand.

A black mist seeped from my fingertips.

Faint, unsteady, but undeniably there.

There was no exhaustion. The empty fatigue I had felt or rather, she had felt, as Rune’s memories were already beginning to blend with my own—every time she practiced light magic was absent.

In its place was a sensation of filling up, a feeling of substance.

I looked in the mirror.

Pale violet eyes looked back at me.

I had thought there was a shadow over them, but perhaps that was wrong. It was simply a face that knew the night. A face like the lapis lazuli sky just before dawn.

Rene, I called in my heart. As if calling her name, as if mourning her.

It’ll be alright this time.

From beyond the door came the sound of small footsteps. Tap, tap, the sound of someone running down the hallway. Then the door burst open.

“Big sister!”

Standing in the pure white morning light was Lian.

Snow-white skin, long blonde hair. Clear, transparent blue eyes.

Her face still held a touch of childishness. Right, I thought, this is childhood. The story before the game begins.

Lian looked at me and for just a moment seemed to hesitate. Then she immediately smiled.

“Good morning.”

A slight pause before I replied.

“…Good morning, Lian.”

Lian’s eyes widened just a little.

Perhaps she was surprised to be called by her name.