Chapter 4: What's wrong with a little sisterly love?

*What's wrong with a little sisterly love?* is the fourth chapter of the first volume of Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian's light novel.

## Synopsis

Alisa "Alya" Mikhailovna Kujou returns home from school and is greeted by her big sister Maria Mikhailovna Kujou. Maria senses that Alya is in a bad mood and asks her about it. At first, she is hesitant to confide to her older sister, but she gives in and tells her that they had a fight. Maria asks Alya if she likes Masachika, which Alya strongly denies and insists that they are only friends. However, as she remembers that they are friends, she becomes happy, which makes Alya wonder why that is, when she usually hates laid-back slackers like him. Thus, she begins to search her memory for a reason.

Alya first thinks back to her elementary school days where she lost a competition because the members of her group didn't do their job, and when she showed the others how much work she had done, they found her determination wierd. Growing angry at this, she asked the other kids to take the assignment more seriously. They ended up arguing about this, and in the end, Alya took the whole assignment upon herself. However, another group ended up winning. This made her bitter, because she realised that had she just done the assignment herself from the get-go, she could easily have won. So from here on out, she stopped relying on others, and the years went on, her strong determination eventually made her look down on her classmates who didn't take their work seriously.

This, however, changed when she enrolled at Seiren Private Academy. While she initially thought the same way about Masachika, this changed when, during the school festival, Masachika came up with a plan for their class to finish their preparation for the festival. They were initially not going to be able to finish, which made Alya slave away her usual way to make up for the lackluster work of her classmates, but Masachika instead set up an overnight stay at the school, showing her that motivating her peers to do their jobs instead of taking their workload upon herself was a better alternative.

Their class ended up finishing their work in time for the festival. During the dance at the festival, Alya admits that her way of forcing everyones work upon herself was wrong, and to say sorry to Masachika, she wants to give him a reward. Masachika then asks for the right to call her by her nickname, Alya, which Alya thinks is wierd, but she obliges. Following this, a group of boys swarm Alya to ask her to dance with them, but Masachika saves her by saying that they had already planned to dance together.

After their dance, which was led by Alya with Masachika as the supporting cast, Alya realises that Masachika is much more than just a laid-back slacker; he is someone who supports his classmates and elevates them. That is also why she gets extremely distressed and frustrated when she sees him at school after the festival, and he acts the same indifferent way as before. However, it also eased her mind that because he was so laid-back, she could relax around him without feeling the need to prove anything to him.

Back to the present, Maria infers that the two of them have a strong friendship based on trust. However, she also keeps talking about the posibility that she might be in love with him, which Alya still denies, but now she begins to waver. To gain some clarity, she asks her sister to take her socks off her and then put them back on, the same way Masachika did. Maria, who doesn't know of the incident, is reluctant at first, but eventually gives in. When Maria finished the task, Alya throws her out of her room, as she realises she felt completely different when Masachika did it for her. As she retraces his movements when he put on the socks, she blushes and quietly whispers that it can't be love.

## Characters

* Alisa "Alya" Mikhailovna Kujou
* Maria Mikhailovna Kujou
* Masachika Kuze
* Hikaru Kiyomiya
* Takeshi Maruyama
* Sah (mentioned)

## Trivia

* Maria Mikhailovna Kujou really wants Alisa "Alya" Mikhailovna Kujou to call her "big sister" when they are in Japan, as calling your older sister that way is common in Japan, as opposed to calling each other by first name, as is common in the western world.