Before leaving.

I was getting ready to leave that Sunday morning. I was getting dressed after my shower when I heard something interesting coming from my sister’s bedroom.

“You are a stupid idiot,” Isabelle said in a tired, lightly exasperated tone.

After getting dressed, I went to check what that was about. Her door was open and I saw her looking up. I followed her gaze and saw Cake, on top of Isabelle’s rather tall closet, meowing down at her.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“She keeps jumping up there,” my sister said, pointing at the cat, “but she doesn’t know how to get down by herself. I let her down and she jumps again! Guess how many times this has happened?”

“...Three?”

“Four!”

I looked up at Cake. She was walking on top of the closet, around the edges, looking down at the floor and at us. “You’re a stupid idiot,” I told the cat.

She meowed back.

“When did she even grow enough to be jumping so high?” Isabelle put to words what I was also wondering. Her desk was next to the closet, so if she jumped from there it was possible, but still.

It had been nearly a month since we adopted Cake. She was still very clearly a kitten, but she was growing quickly. She was taller and longer, nimbler too, yet it was the kind of thing we only noticed once we compared her to older pictures.

Isabelle sighed. “Anyway… You’re going out now, right?”

“Hm? Ah, yeah.”

She looked me up and down and scowled. “You’re not… going out like that, are you?”

“Hm? What’s wrong with this?” I asked, looking down at myself.

I was wearing some black jogging pants because they were comfortable, a plain white long sleeve t-shirt and a gray windbreaker over it. Everything was clean, and I picked it for comfort, mostly, and I didn’t think I looked ridiculous.

“That’s something you’d wear to go buy something at the store, not to go out with…!” Isabelle stopped herself short, then corrected her sentence. “Not to a big event full of other people, Oliver.”

“It’s fine, isn’t it? I don’t need to dress to impress.”

There was another reason I picked that outfit. I DIDN’T want to dress to impress. I didn’t want to make this… special.

I was going to get together with Noelle, not one of my girlfriends. It felt wrong dressing up like I was going out on a date, even if that had been my first instinct.

“...Maybe,” Isabelle accepted, “but that doesn’t mean you can just dress like you put on whatever you found lying around. You’re meeting a friend. It’s disrespectful.”

I flinched. Isabelle had a point. Maybe I was so worried about not making this a date that I went completely in the opposite direction.

“Come on. I’ll help you out.”

“W-What?”

Isabelle walked out of her room. As I was following her, Cake screamed at us.

“You stay there for a while if you like it so much!” Isabelle told her.

She then went directly into my room and opened my closet. “I’m not letting my brother go out looking like he doesn’t care about his appearance.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. I can choose my own outfit, Isabelle.”

I was completely ignored. From the hanging rack, she took out my new peacoat, the one I bought when I was out shopping with the girls. “Since when did you have this? It’s perfect!”

She stepped closer to me with the coat in hand. She put it in front of me to see how I would look, then looked up at my face. That was when we both realized something.

“Eh?”

“W-Wha…?”

Isabelle… was looking up at me. Slightly, but she had to turn her head up to meet my eyes.

“Did you… grow taller?” she asked, mouth half-hanging in shock.

“M-Maybe it’s the shoes?” I said, afraid. Not afraid that I was taller, but afraid of getting excited over nothing. I took off my shoes, and they didn’t make a noticeable difference. Isabelle still had to look up.

I think we were both in shock. For as long as we could remember, we’d been the exact same height. Mom said our father wasn’t very tall, so maybe we wouldn’t be, either. It bothered me, but I thought I’d made my peace with it. I thought.

This small, but noticeable growth sprout was… exciting. Maybe I wouldn’t be a 1.65m tall guy forever! Maybe… maybe I could at least reach 1.70! Was that asking too much?

“You really are changing, aren’t you?” Isabelle said with a wry smile.

“It’s… It’s just a couple of centimeters at best,” I said.

“Do you think you would’ve gone to an event full of people before?”

“...” I swallowed. “No, I wouldn’t have. Not that it doesn’t make me nervous.”

“Thomas, Milana, Grace, Sarah, Benjamin, Kevin… Noelle and Alice, Lena and Amanda, too. You couldn’t even speak in front of others before, but now you have more friends than some people I know.”

“...Quantity is not what’s important,” I said.

“So they’re just acquaintances to you?”

“Of course not!”

“See?” Isabelle chuckled. “I think I’m the one who’s lagging behind this time.”

“It’s not a competition, Isabelle.”

“I suppose. It just… makes me feel awkward. Inadequate.” She grimaced, then spoke in a nearly inaudible voice. “Was it like this for you, too?”

“...” I opened my mouth to answer, but Isabelle suddenly pushed my coat into my hands.

“Put that on, you hear? And change your pants, too. It’s cold outside, so wear a sweater or something.”

With that, Isabelle walked out of my room.

I sat down on my bed with a wry smile of my own.

“Doesn’t feel nice, does it?”

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Also, consider voting for your favorite character of the story in this poll. I ran a poll on the patreon, too, but I figured I'd run one here for fun to celebrate the (almost) one year aniversary of this story. Only one vote per person, so it'll hurt us all.