【英語学習】【小説】半透明兄妹（１）
皆さま
こんにちは
今日も、英語の勉強をほんの少しだけしてみたいと思います。
翻訳は機械翻訳です。
＜英文＞
Chapter 1: Afternoon of the Midterm Exam
"afternoon"
The light streaming through the window in the afternoon, inviting drowsiness, softly filled the living room.
Textbooks and notebooks were spread out on the table, and Yukito was moving his mechanical pencil swiftly.
His arm moved smoothly, faintly revealing the other side through the light, like a piece of glassware.
Across from him, Kurokawa peered into a problem book and opened his mouth.
“Hey, Yukito, how do you solve this quadratic function?”
“...That's outside the test range.”
“Yeah, but it'll be easier if we do it now.”
A thin shadow suddenly crossed between the two as they exchanged words.
Tohka, who was sitting at the edge of the desk, flipped through her English vocabulary cards. Her fingertips were translucent like frosted glass, and the words on the cards faintly floated behind them.
Next to her, Mikuro stared not at the cards but at Tohka's fingertips—or rather, at her older brother Yukito.
“Yukito-kun, I don't understand this...”
Mikuro clung to Yukito's arm without hesitation.
Her small, childish gesture was surprisingly immature compared to Tohka, who was the same age.
Yukito looked a little troubled but brushed it off lightly, as if she were his younger sister.
Meanwhile, Kurokawa glanced at Tohka from across the room.
He liked Tohka, but he never expressed it directly.
Instead, when he stood up or walked down the hallway, he would gently reach out his hand.
- And Tohka would take it, blushing slightly. There was no further distance between them yet.
"recollection"
Yukito and Tohka are slightly transparent.
To be precise, they are semi-transparent humans, with about 60% of their bodies transparent.
Their father is completely transparent, while their mother is a normal human - due to incomplete dominant inheritance, the two were born with this appearance.
From a young age, they were constantly subjected to curious yet fearful stares.
In group photos, their outlines disappeared, and at sports festivals, their figures blurred, sometimes making it impossible to see them cross the finish line, with their names being announced instead.
They had few friends, but Kuroka and Mikuro have always been by their side.
They were among the few who saw the siblings as people, not as curiosities.
"Smartphones at night"
That night.
Yukito lay in bed, staring at his smartphone screen.
The message app displayed a “Good night” from Mikuro.
The warmth from when he had held her arm earlier in the day still lingered, but she told herself to stay calm and replied briefly with just “Good night.”
At the same time, Tohka was holding her smartphone by the bedside.
She scrolled through her exchanges with Kurokawa repeatedly, hesitating with her finger on the send button.
A slight heat rose in her chest, and her transparency increased.
- I wanted to keep this feeling transparent for now.
"Promise to go to the zoo"
The next day, after school in the classroom.
Kurokawa and Yukito were walking side by side down the hallway, discussing their plans for the following Saturday.
“So, it'll be the four of us at the zoo.”
“Let's invite Tohka and Mikuro too, and go together.”
Kuroka was thinking of one person in particular among that “everyone.”
Yukito could tell from the expression on his friend's face as they walked side by side.
Their respective thoughts were still within the distance of holding hands and linking arms -.
＜日本語訳＞
TALESにて日本語版は、公開しております。
ご覧ください。
つづきはまた
気が向きましたら・・・
では
