The Stepsister vs. the Sister Stand-Ins

The next day was a Monday, and that evening, Chihiro went to Itsuki’s apartment only to discover a pleasant aroma inside. It wasn’t from what she cooked for him yesterday—it was another woman (or her cooking anyway)!

Standing in the kitchen was Aoba Kasamatsu, teenage novelist, still wearing her school uniform. A month and a half ago, Chihiro avoided coming to Itsuki’s place in order to keep from seeing Setsuna, but during that time, Aoba volunteered to cook for him instead. It was the first time Chihiro had seen her since that escapade.

“Kasamatsu…”

“Oh, um…good to see you again…Chihiro?” Aoba’s greeting seemed rather self-conscious.

“Yeah… You too… I guess you, um, heard about me?”

“Ahh, yes. Big Bro here just told me.”

The words big bro made Chihiro’s eyebrows rise. It was the term Aoba used for Itsuki, her way of showing endearment for him.

Chihiro somehow managed to crack a smile anyway. “Kasamatsu, thanks for cooking for me. But as his sister, I’m going to be making dinner for Itsuki again, so you’re fine now.”

“Oh, just one minute,” Aoba replied, taking all the karaage fried chicken she was cooking out of the oil at once. Then she turned toward Chihiro. “I’ll keep coming here to cook for him.”

“Huh?!” The response left Chihiro confused.

“My big bro is helping me a lot with my novel, so I want to pay him back.”

“Pay him back…?”

When her debut novel was met with spiteful bashing online, Itsuki had stepped in to give her some much-needed encouragement. Ever since, she’d idolized him as a kind of literary mentor. His advice was effective, though, and work was proceeding on her newest book at a rapid clip. It was only natural for Aoba to want to repay the favor, and Chihiro had little reason to deny her the right. But still…

“You—you don’t need to pay him back!”

“Well, that’s not really for you to decide, is it, Chihiro?”

“Ngh…” She flinched at the cold response.

“Besides, isn’t this your last year in high school? You must be getting pretty busy with college entrance exam prep, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m totally set for my exams!”

“You are?! You’re really confident… It takes a lot of guts to say that.”

Aoba looked surprised at Chihiro’s bravado, and Chihiro herself had to admit she’d gotten a bit carried away.

“…What’re you talking about?” Itsuki said as he poked in his head from the door to the living room.

“I-Itsuki! I’m gonna keep cooking for you, all right?”

“No, no, we can’t distract Chihiro from her studies. I’ll continue to handle dinner duty for you, okay, Big Bro?”

Chihiro rattled off her question, while Aoba maintained an elegant poise.

Itsuki thought this over a little bit. “Yeah, Aoba’s right. I can’t put all this trouble on you when your exams are coming up…”

“My studying’s going along just fine!”

“Didn’t you say your last test score was lower?”

“I—I already took care of that!”

That wasn’t a lie. When she got an unsatisfactory score on a test the other day, it made her ponder what the point of all this studying and striving was. But the chat she had with Haruto solved a lot of that. Her anxiety over hiding her gender from Itsuki—the main cause of that bad test in the first place—was gone, and she had no concerns about her school career now.

“Which universities are you trying for, Chihiro?”

“Well, for the moment—”

She told Aoba her first choice for a university and department.

“Really?!”

“Whoa…!”

She had namedropped a scientific major at a top-class school, throwing Itsuki and Aoba off guard.

“Wow, you’re really smart, Chihiro…,” said Aoba.

“Now I’d really feel bad having you wait on me like this…”

Chihiro raised her hands at Itsuki. “It—it’s fine! That’s my number-one school anyway, and if I don’t think I can cut it, I can switch to somewhere else…”

Itsuki frowned at this. “You know you can’t be so casual about this. Your future’s riding on it.”

Chihiro scowled back. “But, Itsuki, you didn’t prep for college at all. You just picked your schools on a whim, pretty much.”

“I—I had already debuted as a writer when I was in high school. I didn’t even intend to go to college, but Dad was on my ass about it, so I just went wherever would let me in without more studying. But you’re different. You don’t have anything more important than college exams right now.”

“…”

Chihiro fell silent for a bit and then blurted out her thoughts:

“I’d rather be with you than study for exams, Itsuki.”

“Huh?” said Itsuki, puzzled.

“I said I’d rather spend even a little more time with you than study for college exams! I told you the truth finally, so…”

“Chihiro…” Itsuki looked at Chihiro, his eyes a little lost.

Chihiro looked right back at him, making Itsuki avert his eyes. “…I appreciate how you feel, but if you don’t get accepted into your first choice because of that, I’ll so regret it.”

“Well, I’m working hard on my prep so that doesn’t happen. And if it does, then it’s my fault, not yours!”

“But he’ll still feel responsible for it,” admonished Aoba. “That’s what being a big brother’s about…”

“Why’re you taking my lines?” Itsuki asked, glaring at her. “…But yeah, she’s right. As your brother, I don’t want to do anything that’ll drag you down.”

“…”

That’s not fair, Chihiro thought. She had worked so hard to keep her secret safe up to now, even when it potentially meant exposing her rear end to Setsuna—all so she wouldn’t interfere with Itsuki’s creative endeavors. Having that same logic thrown back at her stunned her into silence.

…Or it would have, but she spoke anyway.

“But I don’t want to leave everything I used to do for you to Kasamatsu. I don’t like that.”

“Chihiro…”

Itsuki was growing more and more puzzled until Aoba intervened.

“Then how about Chihiro and I take turns cooking for you, for the time being? And Chihiro, if your test scores take a dive, you can focus on studying after that.”

“Hmm…”

“Mmmmm…”

Itsuki and Chihiro chewed this over a little while—and, in the end, agreed to it.

“That’s a really good idea, Aoba!”

Aoba tilted her head to the side, bashfully accepting Itsuki’s compliment. “I have a younger brother and sister myself, so it’s always been my job to figure out the common ground that’ll make all three of us happy.”

“Oh, you have older sister genes, huh…?”

That impressed Itsuki all the more.

Chihiro, meanwhile, resented this a little—she had agreed to it, yes, but she couldn’t help but feel that Aoba had just taken her for a ride. Still, she didn’t voice her complaint. Aoba was younger than her, but cold, calculating, and mature. If Chihiro kept whining about herself, she’d look like a child by comparison.

“All right. So I’ll handle dinner tonight—it’s almost ready, so Chihiro, can you set the table for me?”

“Um, sure…”

She reluctantly followed Aoba’s orders, and in another few minutes, dinner was served—seasoned rice with a selection of wild plants, an okra and tomato salad, okra miso soup, and fried chicken. This was the first time Chihiro got to sample Aoba’s cooking; the rice was flavorful with the plants, and the twice-fried chicken had a perfectly crisp surface and incredibly juicy insides. The okra, meanwhile, was…well, okra. But between the tastes, quantity, cost, and nutrition, as much as Chihiro hated to admit it, there was nothing to gripe about.

As she stewed over this, Itsuki and Aoba were chatting away about Aoba’s new novel. He had read her latest manuscript while she was in the kitchen, and now he was digging deep into his impressions with her while eating.

“The plotline in the second half takes a surprising twist, which I like, but I think the school principal’s characterization is too weak. Given how unique and novel the protagonists are, he feels like too much of a textbook villain.”

“I wanted to keep him easy to grasp, though, so it’d be more cathartic when he was defeated…”

“Hmm… That’d make sense if this was meant as that kind of exhilarating thrill ride to the reader, but I don’t think that matches well with the overall tone in this case.”

“Yeah, good point…”

There was no space for Chihiro in this conversation. She pouted to herself a bit as she kept eating.

Two days later, Chihiro went to Itsuki’s place to cook, only to find him playing with a little blond girl.

“Yaaay, I got all the gorillas!”

“That’s a really good job, Nadeshiko. You’re a genius!”

“Hee-hee-hee!”

The little girl in the kimono, sitting in between Itsuki’s legs as she faced the table, was Nadeshiko Kiso. She was the granddaughter of Yoshihiro Kiso, the sixty-seven-year-old who recently made his light novel debut, and she was in the fourth grade. Itsuki met her when she had followed her grandpa all the way to the Gift Publishing building; she was a naive, innocent, and friendly little girl, and she instantly captured his heart. When she called him “Big Bro,” he melted into a pile of goo.

Chihiro found Nadeshiko just as adorable as he did, but seeing her own brother fall head over heels for her brought up mixed emotions.

“Hello, Nadeshiko! You came to visit today, huh?”

“Oh, it’s Chihiro! Hello, Big Bro.” The little girl returned Chihiro’s greeting with a big smile.

“Actually, Nadeshiko, Chihiro’s a big sis, not a big bro.”

“Huhhh??” Her eyes shot open as she stared at Chihiro. “You are?!”

“Um, yeah… I am.”

“How did that happen?!”

“Um… It’s a complex situation.”

“What does ‘complex situation’ mean?!”

Chihiro winced at the light of Nadeshiko’s sparkling eyes. “That… Um, it’s a bunch of family stuff…”

“Ohhhhh. I’m very sorry to hear about your complex situation.”

“N-no, um, it’s not that complex…” She gave the girl a vague smile and changed the subject. “So what game are you playing today?”

“We’re playing Ichigorilla! An’ I won three in a row!”

Ichigorilla is a rearrangement of the card game Concentration where instead of finding pairs of cards, players collect different-sized sets of tiles based on their icons—two carrots, four boats, and so on. There are fewer types of tiles than in a standard card deck, the icon counts balanced so you can enjoy a round without needing too much concentration.

Chihiro, with her good recall skills, had almost never lost a round of this.

“Yeah,” Itsuki said as he patted Nadeshiko’s head, “this kid’s got a great memory.”

“Hee-hee! You need to try harder, Big Bro Itsuki!”

“Aww, I could never beat you, Nadeshiko. You might be the best player in the world, even!”

“Whaaa—? Really?”

“Really, really!”

The simpering grin on Itsuki’s face irritated Chihiro a little.

“Why don’t you play me next, Nadeshiko?”

“All right!”

…It wasn’t the most mature thing ever, but she wanted the child to taste defeat at least once. She sat down facing the pair as she thought over this, flipping over the tiles and mixing them up.

“Nadeshiko’s…,” Itsuki muttered in a low voice. “Well… She’s good, you know. I think she’s literally a genius.”

“Ha-ha-ha…”

Chihiro, assuming it was joke, laughed a bit. Then she looked at Itsuki. There was a bead of cold sweat running down his cheek.

“Oh… She is?”

“Okay, Big Sis, let’s play. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

They used a quick game to decide who went first before beginning. Once they did, Chihiro discovered just how correct Itsuki was. Nadeshiko was ridiculously good. The moment a tile was flipped, she instantly memorized it and always picked it out. Unlike normal Concentration, your turn ended in Ichigorilla after you made a correct pick—but since neither Chihiro nor Nadeshiko ever made a mistake, the match turned into a game of chance and intuition. The core challenge: How often were you lucky enough to find a high-scoring tile in the group that hadn’t been turned yet?

“…This is nothing like the Ichigorilla game I know,” a shuddering Itsuki whispered. “Just watching you guys, I’m already losing my concentration…”

After a close battle, it was Nadeshiko who eked out a narrow win.

“I…I lost…?”

“Yaaay! I win!”

Chihiro sat there, staring blankly, as Nadeshiko innocently celebrated.

“But you’re pretty good, Big Sis!”

“L-let’s play another round, Nadeshiko!”

“Okay!”

The second match was another high-level war of nerves, but this time, Chihiro edged out her opponent. “Whew… I won…”

“Wow, that’s the first time I lost! Let’s play one more time!”

Nadeshiko was all smiles despite her defeat. She went on to win match three.

“Ooh, that was a good game!”

“…Yeah. I think I’m getting my old knack for this back, so let’s try another round.”

Chihiro tried to act unaffected as she challenged the jovial Nadeshiko to a fourth game…and lost.

“I win!”

“…Phew. Okay. Now to play for keeps.”

With that, the fifth match began, ending in another close win for Chihiro.

“You really are good, Big Sis. That was fun!”

Just as Nadeshiko was about to put the tiles back in the box, Chihiro stretched a calm smile out on her face.

“It sure was. Let’s set up the next game.”

“Another one?!” exclaimed Itsuki.

“I’m two and three right now. I need to win two more.”

“You’re gonna play until you’re beating her?!”

“I wanna play a different game,” Nadeshiko said, looking a little pooped.

“That’s not very mature of you, Chihiro…”

The warning finally snapped Chihiro out of it. “I’m sorry… I got a little too serious.”

“Well,” said Itsuki with a grin, “I get it if you’re shocked after a grade schooler beats you in a game you’re good at.”

That wasn’t the only reason Chihiro was taking this so hard, but she just gave him a vague kind of smile.

“Okay, Nadeshiko, what do you want to play next?”

Nadeshiko stood up, looked around the game shelves, and took a box. “I played this with Grandpa before!”

She had picked Let’s Catch the Lion, developed by a shogi player to help popularize the game among children. This extremely simplified version used pieces with cute animal art on them.

“Hmm… I’m good at this one, you know.”

“Geh…”

Itsuki winced at Chihiro’s whispered threat. It may have been a simple, casual game—four pieces per player on a three-by-four board—but just like real shogi, there was no element of luck, making it what game-theory mathematicians called a two-player zero-sum logical perfect information game. Chihiro had never lost before, by the way.

“Okay, Nadeshiko, let’s do it.”

“All right! You first, Big Sis!”

So the match began with a jovial atmosphere…

“I’ll go here… Here… Here… Here… Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here—”

“Here… Here… Here… Here… Here… Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here—!”

The atmosphere became far more serious—almost spine-chillingly so—than when they played the luck-driven Ichigorilla. Both sides peered intently at the board, waging battles incandescent with action.

“Wow! Amazing! What a great match! I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly why it’s great, but it’s so exciting! It’s just like real shogi, even!” Itsuki’s colorful commentary was certainly passionate, if not all that useful.

“Shh!”

“Itsuki, shut up a second!”

“Oh. Okay.”

…And after a battle that lasted nearly an hour, Chihiro nailed down the win.

She took a deep breath, basking in the thrill of victory—just as Yoshihiro Kiso got back from his editorial meeting to pick up his granddaughter.

“See you later, Big Bro Itsuki! I can’t wait to play again, Big Sis Chihiro!”

With a cute bow, Nadeshiko left Itsuki’s apartment—

“By the way, Chihiro, what’s for dinner?”

—which was when Chihiro realized that she had gotten so impassioned over challenging Nadeshiko that she forgot to prepare anything.

“…Well, how about we order pizza for a change of pace?”

“Sorry, Itsuki…”

She may have won the game, but now her critical error made her taste the agony of defeat.