Swimming by the Wild Shore [Not Really Siblings]

On a sweltering summer night, Dad brought home a boy from the riverbank, soaked through and covered in bruises.

She was eating a popsicle beneath the old banyan tree, sitting in a rocking chair with her slippers dangling from her toes.

Dad led the boy over by the hand and placed his hand in hers. "From now on, he's your big brother."

She blinked her almond-shaped eyes, took a popsicle she had been saving from the freezer, and went to use it to soothe her new brother's wounds.

Later, on another humid night like that one, greenery crept over the old window lattice. Her brother lifted her onto the windowsill. Through the thin fabric of her cotton shirt, his fingertips undid the clasp of her shoulder strap.

Summer's damp heat spread through the air. He cornered her there, pressing her chin firmly with his fingertips and forcing her lips up toward him.

The girl's dewy lashes fluttered wildly. In the hot, wet kiss, her whole body felt as if it were burning up.

Outside, plum rain fell. The smell of damp earth slowly spread between them, and even their lips and teeth, starved of oxygen, seemed to take on a faint bitterness.

Today, he had treated her with almost brutal force. Even when he saw she was about to cry, he hadn't wanted to stop. It was because he had caught her kissing someone else at school.

But he didn't know that, behind the transparent classroom window, his little sister had narrowed her almond-shaped eyes and bared her tiger teeth to threaten the boy she was kissing.

"Do you even know how to kiss? Come a little closer, or my brother won't be able to see."

Two naughty kids.

The romance begins after they are adults. They are not on the same household register.

Theme: Study hard