DISCLAIMER: "Shin Megami Tensei" and "Persona 4" and all associated characters and likenesses are the exclusive property of Atlus. Used here without permission. This is a fictional story made for purely entertainment purposes. Any relation to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Amid the lonely, drifting steam of a bath, his sister is beautiful.

Sitting chest-deep in the clear water, she dozes and sweats, her hair floating around her like tangled strands of light blonde seaweed, dreamily clutching and releasing her smooth, pale, perfect flesh.

He used to be close enough to touch that flesh: in a bath, in a bed, when they were younger and she was still his. He used to cuddle close to her, clutching and releasing her with his smooth, pale, perfect fingers, when dark dreams would come. And she would let him cuddle close in those days, and come into her bed, and squeeze himself beside her beneath the sheets, to chase the dark dreams away.

Now, she lives in his dark dreams, the ones that come at night when he's in his bed, and through the thin walls between their rooms he hears her whispering on the telephone, and giggling to a hidden companion, the way that she used to whisper and giggle to him. And the only way that he can keep those dark dreams at bay – without her touch, without her voice, without her sweet, forbidden kiss – is to steal glances through the sliding door of the bath, to keep watch over her, to keep her safe. Because if he can keep her safe, then she'll always be pure; she'll always be perfect.

She'll always be his.

She moves in the water – slowly, gracefully, like a mermaid kept pallid and pastel from years spent captive beneath the sea – and sighs, her voice whistling in the heavy air. She stands then, her hair tumbling down and tracing rivulets of water along her skin. And he starts behind the sliver of open door, to see her again, as he has so many times before: the faultless silkiness of her skin broken only by the dark brown circles of her nipples, and the shallow shadow of her navel, and the soft patch of blonde hair between her legs, into which he can see if he looks hard enough as she climbs out of the bath.

She bends over for a towel, shifting her hips and legs into a kind of lazy arabesque, and he holds his breath, struck dumb and still by her femininity, which is so foreign and yet so familiar to him at the same time. He used to lie beside her, after all, naked in soul if not in body. And as he drinks her in – all of the subtle, beautiful nuances of her – he lets go a little noise of amazement, at how much he wants to lie beside her again.

She turns around, her wet hair slinging against her shoulder. “Who's there?” she says in her quiet, silky voice.

There's no good to become of hiding, so he stands up and pushes – gently, oh, so gently – upon the door. “It's me. Can I come in?”

She sighs again, almost like a groan, and something hardens in his heart to hear her turn peevish at his revelation. “Naoki-chan...!” she says, almost like a scold. “I was in the bath. What do you want?”

“Mom and Dad are working late tonight,” he says, still hovering at the door. He only half-glances into the open splinter of space; he can see the flutter of fabric, and the light step of her toes on the tiles, as she pulls on her yukata, the worn-thin one with the patterned roses that she's had since she was a girl, and that he's always remembered from the nights when she would sit beside him, her arm curled around his shoulders as she read stories to him as a boy.

She was still only his, then.

“Of course they are,” she mutters now, sounding disgusted. Then, before he realizes it, she's at the door, sliding it open with a brisk, brusque efficiency.

She looks him up and down. “I thought you wanted to use the bath,” she says, quizzical. She shrugs her sleeve higher onto her shoulder, the fold of her yukata not quite covering her breast; he can see the white, round curve of it, faintly shaping the cloth settled upon it.

He doesn't look away. Instead, he murmurs, “Someone called for you.”

She doesn't seem to notice his stare, as though it's natural, or even welcome. “Ugh,” she groans, her shoulders drooping. “If it's that pest Hana-chan, I swear-”

“Adachi,” he tells her, and she stops of a sudden, her slim, fragile body stiffening up. “He said his name was Adachi.” And now he does look up from her breast and into her eyes, to meet her wavering gaze. Standing before him, she's no longer a mermaid, but a statue – a cold, chiseled-stone statue, her features frozen and marbled. And he thinks that if he touches her now, he can make her soft again; if she'll just let him touch her, he can make her his again, the way it used to be.

“Did he say anything else?” she asks at last, sucking a long breath that makes her chest puff, like a preening peacock...or a threatened blowfish.

“No,” he replies.

Her spine relaxes, visibly, but she still crosses her arms in front of her chest, her nipples perking against her yukata. “Good,” she mumbles, as she draws her long hair into her hand and pulls it over one shoulder. She moves past him then, through the toilet and down the short hallway to her bedroom.

He follows her, padding softly upon her steps. Her whisper now makes him remember other whispers from her soft lips, and as she moves into her room, he hangs by her door to ask:

“Is he the one you talk to at night?”

Standing at her short bed (just a futon laid out on sturdy crates from the shop, but it's always been so comfortable and comforting when he's snuck in here when she's not around, to press his face into her pillow and smell the scent of her hair, to remind him of the days when it was still only the two of them), she turns to look at him...and in the dim not-quite-light of the room, her fair skin turns colourless, and her grey eyes turn ghostly.

This new and frightening aspect of her makes him start, and for the first time in a long time he whispers her name – not “ne-chan” – as though pleading:

“Saki...!”

“No,” she says softly.

“...No...?”

She offers him a smile, and a sudden look of love that he doesn't usually see from her. “No,” she says again. “He's nobody.”

“Oh,” he murmurs lowly, the tight and jealous gnarl of his guts unraveling. Then: “Good.”

She stops, and cocks her hip to the side, her familiar teasing smile coming to her lips. “Is that what you were afraid of?” she asks, her voice mellifluous yet mocking. “That I'd found some other boy to take your place?”

He swallows, his stomach clenching again, this time with an odd but fluttering anticipation.

She doesn't wait for him to answer. Instead, she steps over to him, cooing with something like sympathy, her hands half-raised to his face.

“Naoki-tan,” she whispers, the babyish honorific sounding almost wishful from her pouting lips, instead of the snide taunting it's represented these last few years, since she grew up and away from him.

She clicks her tongue, taking his face in her pale, feminine hands; looking at her is like looking into a mirror: they share the same colour of hair and skin, the same slender shape of features...and now, when he looks, he sees – the same desire in the eyes. And he knows that there will never be another like her, or another like him, not for them, not for each other.

As if to give meaning to the pattering in his chest, and the stirring in his bowels,she smiles at him again, so soft and seeking and sought after.

“No one will ever be you,” she whispers, and she brushes her palm across his motionless cheek.

He feels the heat of her body and breath, as she steps up so very close to him. And in that heat he knows she is neither ephemeral specter nor deathly sculpture, but soft and silken and tender, like the body to which he remembers and dreams of pressing himself. It makes him shudder and sweat, for adoring want of her.

He feels the light pressure of her thighs, and of her breasts, and of her lips, as she pulls him toward her, gently but surely. And it makes him close his eyes and sigh, for unique and tentative lust for her.

And then, most beautiful of all, he feels the naked, delicate brush of her mouth and tongue, as she meets his strange, verboten desire with a kiss of her own want, a kiss that is neither sisterly nor celibate, but oh-so liberating and wonderful for that. It makes him bloom with an impassioned and assured love for her, as they take one another in their arms and slide, supple and slow, to the top of her bed, to sink into their shared dark dream, together.