The Novelist Is a Little-Sister-Obsessed

“C’mon, Bro, time to get up, up, uuuup…”

As I opened my eyes to the voice, I was greeted by the sight of Alice, completely naked.

Alice is my little sister. She just turned fourteen years old this year, and her flowing blond hair and ruby-like crimson eyes leave an unforgettable impression. She’s a beautiful girl; nobody could possibly lodge any complaint against her.

“Mngh, morning, Alice,” I stammered, still in a daze. She giggled in response.

“Boy, Big Bro, you sure look sleepy-weepy this morning! And I got just the thing for a sleepyhead brother like you…”

She quickly thrust her face right up to mine…and gave it a smooch.

“…!”

Alice’s soft lips pushed close against my own, banishing any lingering drowsiness I could possibly have had. “Feeling more chipper now?” She withdrew her lips, flashing me a sly grin. Her cheeks were a little reddened. “Today Alice has a super-dee-duper-special breakfast for you! C’mon down before it gets cold!”

“Oh! All right,” I replied. She nodded at me, looking all satisfied in her birthday suit, and left the room. Her butt, soft and supple as a freshly peeled shrimp, jiggled this way and that as she sauntered off.

I had kicked off hundreds of mornings like this before, but it never got old to me. Reflecting upon the pure joy it brought me, I zoomed out of bed, eager to tuck into my sister’s latest culinary masterpiece. On the way, I washed my face with the hot water left over from my sister’s morning bath and wiped it clean with her still-warm brassiere before heading for the dining room table. Yoshiko was there, which was a surprise, considering I thought she had died yesterday.

“Okay, Big Bro,” the achingly nude Alice belted out with a heart-melting smile, “get it while the getting’s hot!”

“Thanks!”

Her fried-rice omelet was, as always, a masterpiece. The milk she served with it overturned all previous notions I’d had about what milk could taste like. The eggs she laid for me and her fresh-squeezed milk couldn’t have complemented each other better.

“Ooh, Big Bro, you got a big dollop of ketchup on ya! Ooh, mee-owww, what will I ever do with you? Um, something to wipe with, something to wipe with…”

Deftly conjuring a transdimensional gate to a parallel universe, Alice took out a warm, fuzzy pair of panties and dabbed at one corner of my mouth with it. The intoxicating fragrance of the Alice from the alternate dimension wafted into my nostrils, exciting them and whetting my appetite even further. Sure wish I could eat these panties. Nom, nom, nom… Oops! Now I’ve bitten into them. Munch, munch, nom, nom… Man, what a culinary delight.

Before long, I had scarfed down the entire undergarment. Alice responded with a bashful pout. “Ooh, Big Brotherrrr… If you wanted to eat my purty li’l panties, I woulda whipped up a piping-hot new pair—along with more of my farrrrm-fresh milk, of course! Tee-hee! ”

“You got it, Sis! I can’t wait to take a whiff of your fresh-baked, fresh-stripped, fresh-tasting lacy stuff!”

“What in the hell is this?!”

“Whoa! Wha…what’s up?”

Itsuki straightened up as Toki slammed his manuscript against the table and shouted at him.

“What do you think is up? …Th-this world of yours is sheer insanity… I thought I was going into the loony bin for a second there!” Toki said, glaring as he attempted to catch his breath.

Itsuki crossed his arms and flashed a world-beating smile. “Heh… Guess my expertly woven world’s found another captive, huh?”

“You…are such a psycho…,” Toki replied, face tense.

Itsuki—to be exact, Itsuki Hashima—was a novelist, twenty years old, and a little small and wiry for his age. His eyes were sharp and villainous looking, but there was still a trace of youthful innocence to his face—even as he stared brazenly at Toki, clearly attempting to annoy him. Itsuki Hashima was his real name; he didn’t opt for a nom de plume like many fellow writers in his genre.

Kenjiro Toki, meanwhile, was Itsuki’s editor and a rather intense-looking man, twenty-six years old, in glasses and a business suit. He and Itsuki were in the midst of an editorial meeting. They kept in contact via text and phone conversations, but as much as possible, Itsuki preferred to see Toki in person and have him read hard copies of his progress. It let him better gauge his editor’s unfiltered responses to the work, he thought.

Today they were in Itsuki’s apartment—not an unusual meeting place for them, since it was only about a five-minute walk from Toki’s office.

“…So just to make sure we’re on the same page here,” Toki ventured, his voice weakened from fatigue, “this is your submission for chapter two of what we’re calling Demon Hunter in Scarlet for now?”

“Of course.” Itsuki briskly nodded. It only made Toki wince harder.

“…Well, that’s weird, isn’t it? Because according to the plot outline, chapter two’s supposed to start with the hero being surprised by the sight of the heroine at breakfast, even though she died defending him from a demon attack at the end of chapter…one…?”

“Yep. And I’m following that outline perfectly. A little too perfectly, if you ask me.”

Toki was referring to a handwritten flowchart of the general plot that the two of them had hammered out beforehand.

“Following that outline how, exactly?”

Itsuki winced a little himself as Toki banged a hand roughly against the table. “What? The hero’s acting surprised, isn’t he? That girl died in front of him yesterday, and now she’s right… Um, what was her name?”

“You can’t forget the main heroine’s name! It’s Yoshiko, all right? Yoshiko! And that’s a pretty generic name, too, don’t you think? Is that really a good name for a woman fighting alone, uncelebrated, in the dark realms against hordes of demons? …I mean, all right, you did cram her in there and make the hero shocked to see her. I almost skipped that line entirely, but…”

“Wow, some editor you are,” Itsuki said, letting out a light sigh. “I mean, don’t you hate it when you write something plain as day into the story and people forget about it or skip right over it, and then they bitch at you about how there’s no foreshadowing or the story’s all over the place?”

“Don’t make me the bad guy here!” Toki fired back, voice raised, before taking a deep breath to calm himself. “Sticking Yoshiko’s return in there like an afterthought is one thing, but that’s not even the main issue.”

“What is?”

Toki rapped at the printout with his middle finger and replied, “The main issue is, who’s this new Alice girl? I don’t remember hearing anything about her!”

“She’s the hero’s sister. I wrote it down in the character descriptions, didn’t I? That he had a little sister.”

“Yeah, and that’s all you wrote in there! You didn’t go into any more detail, so I thought she was just a secondary character. No major exposition needed…and then you give me this monster…!”

“A monstrous beauty, right? Ha-ha-ha! I’ll say!”

“No, you dumbass! For the love of…! I mean, it’s creepy enough you have her naked by default, but then there’s all this other crap going on, and I can’t even begin to explain what’s the most screwed up about it! You have the hero sniffing bras, literally eating panties… What kind of deranged is this guy? Are you sure you didn’t mean, like, ‘pancakes’ instead of ‘panties,’ or…”

“Well, that’s a silly question. Do you really think I’d make such an amateur mistake?”

“Goddammit, of course you wouldn’t… And what’s all this stuff about Alice’s ‘milk’ or whatever?”

“What? It’s just like I wrote. It’s milk from Alice’s breasts. Really rich.”

“And those eggs…?”

“Yeah, she lays them. It’s, like, a thousand times better than caviar, not that I like caviar all that much.”

“Ha-ha-ha… Both of them are absolute maniacs! And you’re the biggest maniac of all for dreaming up this BS! And I thought the hero was meant to be this average high school student from a cookie-cutter modern family! With this show, readers are gonna forget all about the Blood of the Demon Hunters, along with anything else!”

The extended dressing-down made Itsuki frown a bit. “Hmm… Well, if you put it that way, maybe the whole milk-and-eggs thing was going just a little bit too far… I figured, you know, with all these supernatural fight scenes, I could get away with just a teensy break from reality…”

“Just a little bit…? Seriously…?” Toki shuddered.

“You see it all the time in books like this. Like, the hero’s parents are actually famous adventurers, or they’re secretly the hidden successors of some ancient martial art that the hero’s got a talent for, too.”

“Okay, so you’re telling me that these psychopaths laying eggs and chowing down on panties are the same thing as the basic backstory of every fighting-hero manga ever?”

Toki’s head was visibly throbbing at the temples.

“…All right,” Itsuki timidly ventured, “but if you’ve got a younger sister and she takes a bath first, then sure, it’s totally normal to wash your face with the hot water she leaves in there, right?”

“You call that normal, you sister-obsessed ?!”

Toki screamed at the top of his lungs.

Itsuki Hashima had made his debut after winning a prize for new authors at the age of sixteen. In the ensuing three or so years, he had published a total of twenty novels—five one-shots and three multivolume series.

Even with what he had already written before going pro, twenty releases in three years was a dizzying pace—and with the level of quality he still managed at that speed, he had built up a fairly decent reader fan base. Several titles had made it onto the top-ten paperback bestseller lists released by Oricon, the most well-known sales charts in Japan. You could, in other words, say he was kind of a rising star.

When it came to writing speed, imagination, and ability to formulate a compelling story and engaging characters, Itsuki Hashima had what it took to grow and mature as a popular novelist going forward—but despite that, all his recent works had sold at a decidedly “eh” level.

One trait common to all his stories was that the main heroine was framed as a “younger sister” type.

It was a common trope among novels like these, and one that was easy to turn into a popular character, but his dogged adherence to that mold for heroines certainly made some readers roll their eyes and go, “Not again…” And given how Itsuki himself constantly strove to differentiate his little sisters from those in other novels, these characters were trending slightly further along the “extreme” scale with each new volume. As of late, even his male leads were talking about their sisters in ways that can be described only as demented, no doubt turning off quite a few readers along the way.

Figuring Itsuki would need to step away from this trope for a bit if he wanted to experience a second big break, Toki had half forced him into devising Demon Hunter in Scarlet (final title TBD). He discovered that in doing so, Itsuki had instead created an entirely new breed of sisterly monster. “Ugh… The guy’s just crazy for little sisters…” Toki was on his way back to the office from Itsuki’s place. He heaved a weighty sigh, releasing a cloud of visible breath in the crisp January air.

“Oh! Hello, Mr. Toki!”

He was cheerfully greeted by a small young man in a windbreaker with a plastic bag from the grocery store hanging from one hand.

“Ooh, hey there, Chihiro,” Toki replied. “I was just coming back from discussing story ideas with your brother.”

“Were you? Well, thanks for being such a help to him.”

“Oh, not at all. He’s helping me, really.”

This was Chihiro Hashima, Itsuki’s younger brother. He was in his first year of high school, and between his neck-length black hair and fair-skinned, indifferent-looking face, he had a sort of dashing charm to him. Itsuki described him as the perfect kid—head of the class, a star on the sports field, the whole bit. The Hashima family home was around twenty minutes by bus from Itsuki’s current apartment, and Chihiro made the trip frequently to cook for him, tidy his space, and so forth. That made him an acquaintance of Toki’s as well.

“Here to make dinner for him again?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“…Man, he’s lucky to have a brother like you. I’m almost jealous.”

“Oh, no, really…” Chihiro blushed a bit at Toki’s heartfelt compliment. “I should get going, though. Let me know if you need anything from him.”

With a polite bow, he walked off. Toki watched him go, reflecting on what a kind, gentle, gallant kid he was. A good cook, and he kept an ever-watchful eye on his big bro. Perfect.

“…Too bad Chihiro wasn’t born a girl, I guess. Then maybe Itsuki wouldn’t be a with all these little-sister fetishes… Oh, but then he probably never would’ve become a novelist in the first place… Hard to say, I guess…”

Several minutes after Toki took his leave, Itsuki heard the doorbell ring. He opened the door, as he had been expecting Chihiro around this time.

“…Hey.”

“Yo.”

“…Mm.”

With this exchange of grunts, Itsuki let Chihiro in. Despite the fact that they were relatives, there was an odd, ever-present awkwardness in their interactions. They had become stepbrothers three years ago, when Itsuki’s father married Chihiro’s mother—right when Itsuki made his professional debut, in other words. The older son had been in his second year of high school, the younger in his first year of middle school—a time of great emotional change for both. Suddenly becoming brothers left them unprepared, unable to figure out how to deal with each other, and at first they acted more like roommates sharing the place than anything else.

Things began to change only when Itsuki went to college and moved into his own apartment. He could’ve stayed with the rest of the family and commuted from there easily enough, but he rented this place anyway, with his own money, claiming that he could use the time saved to work on his writing. He had wound up dropping out of university during his freshman year, but being near his editor worked so well for him that he decided to keep living there.

During Itsuki’s aborted attempt at college, Chihiro would stop by sometimes with rice and other basic supplies. That was now happening more frequently, with Itsuki’s brother handling basic cooking and cleaning duties as well. Becoming a full-time writer had further accelerated Itsuki’s already lightning-fast pace, but it had also further deteriorated his already poor grasp of living skills. His eating and sleeping patterns grew more and more irregular over time, and it was showing in the grime covering his apartment. After a certain point, Chihiro couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

“I’ll cook this up real quick.”

“…Sure.”

Now Chihiro, wearing an apron, was lining up his ingredients and cooking utensils with obvious familiarity. Itsuki gave him a side-glance or two as he typed away on his laptop, working on his novel. Half an hour later, they were on opposite sides of a table.

“Thanks.”

“No prob.”

He had prepared shrimp in chili sauce, some Chinese-style stir-fry, and fried rice—all made from scratch, nothing Itsuki could ever make, and all bursting with enough flavor to keep his chopsticks busy. Chihiro, flashing a slight smile as he watched his brother feast on it all, minded his manners as he ate at a more measured pace. Even at the dinner table, he was the perfect picture of refinement. Sophisticated, attractive, head of the class, phys-ed phenom, master chef, master homemaker, chill personality, well mannered—some kind of perfect über-bro, really. As his older brother—or as another man, really—Itsuki couldn’t help but foster an inferiority complex. It had a tendency to make him take a dig at Chihiro sometimes.

“…Hey, uh, Chihiro? I really appreciate you coming here all the time, but don’t you, um, have anything better to do? Like… I dunno, take your girl out on a date or something?”

Chihiro soured a bit. “I don’t have a girl.”

“Oh, no?”

“No.”

A matter of personal choice, no doubt. No way Chihiro, of all people, wouldn’t attract attention from the opposite sex.

“Why don’t you go find one?”

“…I dunno. Don’t really want one, I guess,” he said moping. “Plus, y’know… I’m worried about you.”

“Aw, geez, Chihiro, you don’t have to worry about me!”

Chihiro let out a soft sigh. “…Well, maybe I wouldn’t if you could get your act together a little?”

“Hey, I can! Like, if I wanted to.”

“Really? So you can make three meals a day by yourself? Like, real food, with vegetables and stuff, and not just instant ramen? Will you clean and bathe yourself and keep the recycling organized? Could you put your porn games back on the shelf by yourself?”

“S-sure I can…”

“No, you can’t,” Chihiro immediately replied. “Look, Bro, you washed one of your knit sweaters with the rest of the laundry again, didn’t you? That’s what you always do. You just toss all your crap in there, pour in whatever amount of detergent looks right to you, then pick a random setting and start it up.”

Itsuki scowled at this completely accurate description of himself.

“There’s settings…? Um…b-but you got one thing wrong there, Chihiro!”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t put any detergent in at all! I ran out, and I never bothered to buy some more!”

“Wooow, what an achievement. And don’t you have another jug under the sink in there?”

“…Oh, I do?”

“Ugh…” Another sigh. “You’d be pretty doomed without me, wouldn’t you?” he observed, sounding ever-so-slightly pleased.