This story is part of the Wanderer series.
Wringing out the towel over the bucket, Rin pressed it against the floor and took off again, running along the wooden deck with her torso pointed high and her feet kicking underneath. She quickly passed by Nozomi, who was crawling along on her knees to push her towel at an unsteady pace back towards the bucket at the corner of the house, her elbows alternating between locked and buckled as she wormed along the outer edge. Yuka was just inside, wiping down the surfaces of the tables, cabinets, and drawers of all the dust it collected since their visit last summer.
Reaching the other side of the house again, Rin flipped her towel inside out and sprinted back, retracing her path. Catching up to Nozomi again, she stopped just a few steps past and watched her with disapproval.
“What are you doing? Get off your knees!”
“It’s hard!” Nozomi complained as she huffed, eyebrows slanted outwards. She nevertheless continued to push inefficiently forward.
Rin observed her a little longer as she inched along. Then, she lowered herself to her knees and reached out, forcefully grabbing Nozomi by one of her forearms. “It’s your skinny little arms! Stop bending them like that and you’ll stop falling on yourself!”
Nozomi opened her eyes wide and looked naively at her outstretched arm. “Is it? I thought that’s what arms look like.”
“No, you’re just skinny.”
Her eyes shifted to Rin’s arm. “It looks the same as yours.”
Rin drew back, chest puffing and lips drawing in. Then, she suddenly leaned into Nozomi, butting their forearms together as she gripped her tightly. “No it’s not! Look! It’s bigger!”
Nozomi winced. “Ow! Ow! Ow! You’re squeezing my arm!”
Swinging Nozomi’s arm away, Rin finally let go. “See? You’re just weak!”
Poking her head out the back kitchen window from the corner of the house, Yuka looked towards the girls to see what the commotion was about. “Is everything all right?”
Rin crossed her arms in front of Nozomi, closing her eyes. “It’s nothing. She’s just not doing it right.”
Sitting back and rubbing her arm, Nozomi looked over to Yuka, her gaze dropping down to Yuka’s hands gripping the window frame as she leaned out. A light dawned in her eyes.
“Hey, can you show me your arm?” Nozomi called over Rin’s shoulders towards the window.
Straightening, Yuka let out a closed-mouth murmur in confusion as she raised the elbow of her right arm beyond the window sill to glance at it before turning her attention to the other arm, still supporting her leaned position from underneath, winging her elbow out as she gazed over. Rin opened her eyes and turned her head back to her guardian, realizing what Nozomi was doing.
Lowering her hovering forearm a bit, Yuka looked back towards the girls. “Which one—?”
Nozomi sat up straight and pointed excitedly at Yuka, bobbling her finger up and down as she leaned towards Rin. “See?! Her arm is the same too!”
“No it’s not! You just can’t see the difference, you idiot!”
“What do you mean?!” she whined. “It does look the same!”
“Then why can’t you do something as simple as wipe the floor?!”
The two girls continued their back and forth as Yuka watched over them in the background, a smile surfacing as she watched them bicker spiritfully.