Glenn woke up early in the morning, took a shower. and after cleaning his room, he took the pills the doctors had prescribed for him. He was supposed to take them twice a day, so his schedule - once in the morning and once in the evening — seemed like a good idea. After swallowing three pills with water, he returned to the kitchen to make breakfast.
From the refrigerator he got two eggs, tomatoes, and cucumbers. He got a frying pan from the upper cabinet. As he was slicing the fresh cucumbers into chunks with a sharp kitchen knife, his phone, which lay on the glass countertop, rang. Without stopping, he carefully reached for the phone with one hand, quickly picked it up and put it to his ears.
"Hello?"
He heard the girl's apathetic voice, which he knew at once who had called him so early in the morning.
"Hello."
"Li-Lilia? Hi".
"I flew into the airport in Tokyo. Brother, I'll be home soon."
'Wha-what?! Hold your horses!'
"You're already in Tokyo...?! You didn't tell me anything! And how did you get here on your own?"
"I flew in with Uncle Rickert. We're in the waiting room now."
'Rickert? Doesn't Mother have anything better to do?'
"Well... at least Rickert knows Tokyo."
Rickert is a man who at one time worked with Isaac and was his loyal colleague. Despite the fact that he was more than a decade older than Isaac, Rickert did not force himself on his wife, who was soon widowed. He now lives on his pension.
'Rickert has a house in Japan, but why should he have returned to Tokyo after all this time?'
"Ah, by the way. Brother, I'm going to stay with you for a while until my vacation is over."
"Okay, but we'll talk about that later. And what were you thinking, not telling me you were coming in advance?"
"Excuse me..."
His concern was not without merit, and with a sigh, he added: "You will tell me when you get home. Rickert must know the location of our house, at least I hope so."
"Okay, we'll be there soon..."
Turning off his phone, he relaxed his body.
'Lilia decided to come to me this New Year's Eve... and I can't really get her anything. Maybe I should take her shopping later.'
He continued to make breakfast, but not just for himself anymore. About fifteen minutes passed, and in that time he had managed both the omelet in the pan and the salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and green onions. All in all, he would have had a good breakfast, he thought to himself, but the imminent arrival of Rickert and Lily made him a little worried, for he thought they might either get lost or something else might happen.
As expected, his subdued anticipation of his guests and his musings on the chair were suddenly interrupted by the buzzer of the electronic intercom. As he ran up to the intercom and pressed one of the three buttons responsible for the basic operations of the intercom, he let them into the entryway. Turning the lock once, he opened the previously locked door and leaned against the wall.
'I see Lilia all too rarely. She flew to me from another continent, despite my irresponsibility and our unimportant communication. I should thank her.'
He heard the sound of the elevator in the entryway, which seemed to get louder and louder each time. A few seconds later, the elevator stopped on his floor and its doors opened, from which two silhouettes emerged, eventually walking up to the door of his house. Glenn saw a frail, short, European-looking girl standing next to a man.
In the meantime, Lilia had changed both her hair color and her hair in general — her long brown hair was braided around her head in two braids and gathered into a ponytail without losing its lushness. She looked studious, but when she looked into Glenn's eyes, she looked away and became sort of confused.
Behind her, a European-looking mature man, carrying a small load, stood meekly. He nodded silently, giving Glenn a sign.
The guy treated Rickert with respect and considered him his family, for his upbringing, which Glenn thought was right, had also influenced his present life.
"Hi," Lilia said softly with a downcast look.
"Hi. You dyed your hair."
Lilia looked sharply in his direction, "Did you notice...?"
"You look gre..." Glenn added, and then Lilia interrupted him by hugging him tightly. Glenn was a little discouraged, but as he looked at her bored face pressed against his body, he became more gentle. "I missed you, too."
Lilia didn't say anything, however, as she was sure her behavior explained her feelings enough, and when Glenn turned his gaze to Rickert, who was slowly entering the house, they nodded to each other in appreciation.
'I'm completely blurted out. They flew here worried about me.'
"I thank you for coming..."
***
At ten o'clock in the morning, with nothing foreboding, Mari, Akiko, and Yumiko rang Glenn's front doorbell; each holding a bag filled with groceries.
"I wonder how long before the others arrive?" Akiko said, to which Yumiko shrugged.
"But they'll probably come when we're done cooking and rearranging the house for the holiday."
"We still have to have time to move things around so we don't break anything," Mari added, and then the door lock began to be unlocked.
They stared in awe at the door, which soon opened to reveal a very young girl behind it. Yumiko and Akiko were instantly fascinated by her, while Marie was shaken and disoriented.
"W-what?! Another person started living in this house?! Maybe we got the apartment number confused...!"
"Brother, you've got company," Lilia calmly called him in German, astonishing the girls.
'Something in Elvish...?!'
"Ah, so you're Glenn-kun's little sister," Akiko said.
"Glenn-sama's little sister?!"
Lilia bowed her head and switched to Japanese, "Hello. My name is Lilia Zaleman, nice to meet you."
"She knows Japanese...!" Akiko's eyes sparkled with brilliant stars. "She's also a cutie, which makes me jealous!"
Yumiko said hello back.
"Akiko Akiyama! Nice to meet you, Lilia-chan."
"Lilia-chan...?" the girl was confused, and covered her flushed face.
Following her, Mari greeted her, too, in her respectful style, and Lilia responded with obvious surprise.
"Oh... I'm only her little sister, after all."
"By the same token, you are no less significant, Lilia-chan. You are Glenn-kun's adorable little sister!"
"Come in..."
'Brother has such kind friends.'
After a short time, Yumiko and Akiko, accompanied by Glenn, began to prepare food for the table together, with the foods they had purchased ranging from meat to vegetables or canned goods.
"Yuttyan, I haven't seen you cook before. Truth is, I'm not very good at it myself, but I can cook something tasteless. My mother gets tired of explaining the same thing to me over and over again. I seem to be completely unlearned when it comes to the kitchen."
"That's all right," Yumiko said as she cooked the food in the pan. "Not everyone is good at cooking. The important thing is to like the outcome yourself, and, well, the experience."
"Beautiful words," Glenn pronounced, helping her with her cooking.
"Glenn-kun, do you think Yuttyan is cooking good?"
"She's good at it. She had to spend the night at my house once..."
"Glenn-kun, it's not worth talking about."
Involuntarily, Akiko thought something naughty as she looked at their smirks. They were clearly mocking their friend, who was in the dark.
"And you, Glenn-kun, are you a good cook?"
Their conversation could be heard throughout the house, and from the sounds of frying sunflower oil, something crispy was cooking.
"I didn't know Lilia-chan would turn out to be a girl of about eleven, because from her grown-up look, you could give her all of thirteen, if not fourteen."
"Attyan, you're exaggerating a bit. It must be hard for her to be tall and look older at her age."
"I've heard some people have begun to be afraid to show their faces in public because of it! Geez, where do their parents look?"
"Lilia didn't have complexes about her physique or her age," Glenn replied peacefully, and got the girls' attention. "How should I know, though, she's mostly taciturn... I don't know what she's like in front of her friends."
"She's so sweet! I wish I could take her with me and squeeze her face all night."
"Is she not talkative?" Yumiko said.
"Yes, ever since she was a baby. Except I barely have to be conscious of what makes her so."
Yumiko hung her nose. Lilia's long-standing condition was undoubtedly the cause of the other worries she did not speak of. The brown-eyed girl understood that more than the others, for she herself often had to be apathetic, away from everyone.