--Tina''s side--


    The thing I remember most clearly when I was little is the first time I met a boy.


    His dad took him to the house next door one day. It was the day they were moving in and they were doing a meet and greet. I don''t remember much of the reasoning behind it because I was so young.


    When we went to the next house, we were greeted by a kind-looking woman, and then we walked into the house and saw a man with a scary face.


    I remember hiding behind my dad because I was scared.


    And while the fathers were talking, a baby in that room caught my eye and approached me.


    I remember thinking it was a girl when I first saw her, though I later realized it was a boy.


    She had a pretty face and her wide eyes were looking straight at me.


    I hugged him because he was so cute, but now I wonder if I felt sorry for him because I hugged such a small baby so tightly?


    After I met the boy, I went next door to see him almost every day.


    I didn''t realize it at the time, but I sensed something in the boy that I didn''t think he was a baby or a child.


    When I was playing in the yard and fell down with a flourish and scraped my knee and cried, it was the boy who came to me first.


    The boy was just two years old and he washed my knee down with water.


    I saw the water coming out of his hands, and when I asked him about it after he stopped crying, he told me it was magic.


    What is magic?


    How can you have a magician?


    I asked the boys questions and they answered them all.


    I wondered how he knew so much about things, even though he was three years younger than me.


    After that, I played with the boys a lot and learned a lot of things from them.


    One time I heard the mothers say that we were like brothers and sisters, and since I was the only boy''s father nearby at the time, I asked him what he meant....


    I asked him what he meant........he said, ''You must be a woman who can be relied upon.


    I realized then that I was always relying on boys in reverse, and I wanted to be the big sister that he could rely on.


    He was always running and I would follow him, and I even tried to play swords with him, but my mothers stopped me from doing so.


    Instead, the boys taught me magic and we trained together.


    At first I wasn''t very good at it, but after a day of training, I started to understand what magic was all about and I started to enjoy it.


    While we were training together, the boy looked at me with a complicated look on his face, but I didn''t know why.


    The boy''s father is one of the few people in our village who works as a hunter.


    I don''t know much about what he does, but it seems that he defeats dangerous monsters and animals in the forest.


    He distributes the meat of the monsters and animals he defeats to everyone in the village evenly, so everyone in the village trusts his father.


    More and more often than not, I was the only one at home waiting for the boys to follow me to that job.


    When I was ten years old, I was able to follow him to that job for the first time.


    I enjoyed going to the forest with a boy without telling my mom and dad, so I was skipping through the forest, but the boy and my uncle were in a very serious mood, so I quietly followed them.


    Suddenly they stopped, and I wondered what direction they were looking in, and I saw a big monster.


    It seemed to be a red bear, one of the most dangerous demons in the forest.


    I made a noise and he almost noticed me, but luckily he didn''t notice me.


    After some consultation, the plan was that the boy and I would release our magic and make the first attack, and then the uncle would finish it off.


    I was anxious about the act of killing a creature for the first time and the thought of what to do if it didn''t work, but the boy saw me and held my hand.


    He had held my hand before, but this was the first time a boy had ever held my hand.


    I was surprised, but my previous anxiety disappeared as if it were a lie, and I was trembling without realizing it, but it stopped and I was able to firmly turn to the demon and activate my magic.


    The result was solidly my magic tore through my parent''s Red Bear, and the boy''s magic was finished off by my uncle after giving him a fatal wound.


    Afterwards, my uncle saw my magic and asked me if I wanted to become a hunter... but the boy had said before that he wouldn''t be a hunter either, so I refused to do so.


    When I returned to the village, my father and mother were a little angry with me. They told me not to worry about them.


    I apologized to them because I had gone into the forest without telling them.


    But when I went into the forest, I realized that boys are very dependable.


    He would call out to me and hold my hand to stop me from trembling.


    I knew that I wanted to be dependent on such a dependable boy....


    So I won''t give up on being a big sister.


    --I''m eighteen years old now, a few years have passed since the day I first went to the forest.


    And today is a boy, my brother -- Eric''s birthday.


    ''Happy birthday, Eric!''


    The little baby I first met is now sixteen years old, and his pretty face is now a little more masculine.


    He was much shorter than me, but now he''s a little bigger than me. Considering my uncle''s height, I''m sure Eric will be even bigger.


    ''Thank you, sister Tina,''


    Even though he''s taller than me, Eric thanks me with the same smile he had when he was little.


    Seeing him smile makes me smile even deeper.


    I hope this happiness will last forever....


    I was celebrating Eric''s birthday while thinking that.


    Do you want me to talk to your mother about it?