The Novelist Is a Little-Sister-Obsessed Fk II

“Nwoooooorrrrrhhh!!”

Upon waking up and heading for the bathroom, I found my naked sister there, unleashing a hair-raising war cry, her seven arms flailing ominously in the air as she spewed viscous slime all over the room.

“Oh, mornin’,” I nonchalantly replied. The hideous figure before me—a mix of a bobbit worm, a sarcastic fringehead, and an eel goby, all thrown together against the wall—twisted her frame beyond recognition, gnashing her misaligned, weathered teeth like a pair of serrated kitchen knives. “Braaaaaghrr,” she said. This apparently meant she was happy.

“Yeah, you’re looking great today, too.”

“Goggurrrreeehh,” she screamed from her respiratory pores, like the dying groans of a bullfrog except a thousand times more disgusting, as she twitched the millions of dazzlingly colored protuberances that lined what appeared to be her neck like frills. This was how she expressed her bashfulness.

If I had to sum up my little sister in a single word, “monster” would be it. Her height was a minimum of sixteen inches, though it was normally six and a half feet and upward of sixteen feet when she was trying to intimidate her foes. Her entire body was covered in grotesque feelers, protruding objects, and fine hairs, and while she usually had no arms or legs, she could transform her jellylike tentacles, molding them together to achieve the same effect. Across her body, there were a total of fifteen swollen, translucent lumps, each about eight inches in diameter—five on what appeared to be her back, five each upon what would be her shoulders if she were a four-legged creature—and each one contained a floating object shaped like the human brain.

She had intelligence equivalent to a dog, but since she recognized human beings besides myself as nothing but potential prey, it was generally impossible to communicate with her. I wasn’t entirely sure she recognized me at all, and we often had incidents where, while I was sleeping, her slimy excreta would melt my clothes, or she’d wrap her tentacles around my entire body and try to bring me inside hers, or something. The loathsome, tepid feel of her breath on my skin and the stench pricking my nose would always wake me up, so it was fine by me.

“You tried to eat me last night, too, didn’t you? You know you can’t do that.”

My sister responded to the warning by opening all seven of her mouths wide, gritting her uneven teeth together like jagged saw blades: “Skreeshkreeekkk.” They scratched and clawed at the insides of her mouths, and soon there was a purple liquid dribbling down to the floor, creating small plumes of black smoke where it ate through the tile. I guess she was trying to say she was sorry. Ha-ha! How cute of her.

……This disturbing ecological description of the freakishly vile and nauseating little sister continued for over ten pages, as did the distressing psychological description of the protagonist gently watching over her.

“…What is this?”

Editor Kenjiro Toki could take no more. He tossed the manuscript on the table, his face drained of strength. It was early afternoon, not long into March, inside an apartment building chiefly housing students. In front of Toki was a young man, looking perfectly resolute with his arms crossed. This was Itsuki Hashima—one of the novelists whom Toki edited, and the man who’d come up with this insane concept in the first place.

“What is this?” Toki dared to ask again, and the reply was completely earnest.

“Practice.”

“Practice?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d really nail down what the main little-sister heroine should look like before I crafted a full outline.”

“Ah.”

Toki nodded. When coming up with a new series, a lot of authors chose to begin by writing small snippets of the main turning points of the novels—conversations, battles, sex scenes—to grasp an image of the story first. Editors appreciated these excerpts just as much, since it gave them an idea of things like story atmosphere, which are hard to express with a simple description or plot outline. If the novel was based on little more than rambling slice-of-life episodes, it was common to provide a couple dozen sample pages alongside the pitch sheet, since a story summary wouldn’t really show why the novel would attract a readership.

“So…what is this?” Realizing that this manuscript was a test piece for his writer’s new project only made it all the more enigmatic for Toki.

“I wanted to see how much people could love this little sister based solely on her being a little sister.”

“Ah. So that’s why you’ve done away with everything except the ‘sister’ appellation? She’s not some beautiful woman; she’s not even human; we’re not even entirely sure about her gender. She’s got zero mascot-style cuteness, so it’s not even like Œufcoque from Mardock Scramble [an intelligent talking mouse]. Nothing about her looks indicates any kind of little-sister-ness, unlike Dolores from Zone of the Enders [a giant robot] or Tsumugi from Knights of Sidonia [who’s got tentacles]. You can’t communicate with her. She’s a foul, grotesque, acid-spitting monster who’s even willing to eat herself. And you wanted to see whether just calling her a ‘little sister,’ in and of itself, would get readers to accept it?”

“Yes! Right, exactly…”

The relief was clear in Itsuki’s voice. Finally, someone understood him.

“…And what are the results?” Toki asked.

“The results?”

“Can you get yourself to feel for this otherworldly monster at all?”

The question silenced Itsuki for a moment or two.

“……I’m just barely okay with it, maybe…?” he managed to work out, eyebrows raised,

“You’re okay with it.” Toki shuddered. “Well, if a little-sister-obsessed f k like you is ‘just barely’ okay with it, any normal person would never be. It’d be one hundred percent impossible for a sane adult to recognize this as the hero’s sister at all.”

“…You think?” It was dawning on him now, too. Muttering, Itsuki turned his eyes downward. “…Why? I’ve got the power of a sister with me, but…what is a little sister, anyway…? Nnnngh…”

His thoughts had taken him to a dead end, not that Toki would have realized it. His editor sighed at him.

“I’m glad you’re so enthusiastic about coming up with new projects, but you’re still working on your other stuff, right?”

Ever since Itsuki willfully trashed the idea last month for his project Demon Hunter in Scarlet (final title TBD), he had been thinking up new ideas and pitching them at Toki, one after the other. Working on new titles was important, and the editor side of Toki wanted to compliment him for being passionate enough about it to write snippets on spec like this—but Itsuki Hashima already had two ongoing series, Sisterly Combat and All About My Little Sister. The new volume of Sisterly Combat was set to go on sale next month, but only about half of the manuscript was complete.

“You sent me up to chapter four of Sisterly Combat, Volume 5 last month, but I haven’t heard a thing about it since. You’re still good for it, right?”

Toki squinted hard at him. Itsuki averted his own eyes.

“Oh, was that how it was? Ha-ha-ha… I thought I sent more of it, too, but maybe I didn’t…”

“…If you have any more of it than that, I’d like to see whatever you’ve completed.”

“Um, yeah, I mean, you know I’d love to show it to you, or even, like, send it to you right now, but I’m right in the middle of writing this super-exciting scene. It’d feel like a total anticlimax if I showed you right now, so I’ll save it for when I reach a nice closing point in the story.”

“…All right. I’ll wait a little bit longer, then… But you are good for it, right?”

Itsuki flashed a brazen smile at Toki’s doubtful gaze. “Ha-ha-ha! Fear not, my friend! This is starting to feel like the greatest thing I’ve ever written…even as I’m writing it! So just kick back, relax, and prepare to be amazed!”

“Well, it’s coming out next month, so I can’t ‘kick back and relax,’ exactly…but if that’s how you put it, I look forward to it.”

“Right! Trust me, you’re in good hands here, ha-ha-ha!”

Toki had little else to say to Itsuki before he left, still looking anxious. Once he was gone, Itsuki flopped down on the bed, winced, and groaned.

“…Oh, shit… What am I gonna do…?”