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“Th-That voice... Is that... Nishina? Do you two... live together?”

I was too shocked to reply to Elena’s question.

That day, after getting home from work, I’d received a phone call from Elena, who wanted to tell me how her VTuber work was coming along. Lately, she’d been worrying about her management steering her in a direction she was uncomfortable with, but she’d managed to improve things by bringing it up with her company. I was happy for her, and even more so because she’d taken the time to tell me. But no happiness lasts forever.

“Ichigaya! I’ve been calling you from downstairs! Can’t you hear?”

Kokoro barged right into my room, loudly summoning me for dinner—so loudly, in fact, that Elena heard her. Minami... She knows we’re living together...

I was already speechless, but when it rains, it pours. Right on cue, I received a text message from none other than my little sister.

“Kisaki: I’m coming back to Japan by myself next month.”

I stood there, completely dumbfounded.

“Huh? That voice on the phone... Is that Minami?!”

The color drained instantly from Kokoro’s face as she was hit with that same realization.

My roommate had even more reason to worry than I did: if a reasonable adult found out that we were living together—excluding her parents, of course, who were somehow totally supportive of this—she’d be in serious trouble. She’d told them that she was in love with me so that she wouldn’t have to leave Japan and her beloved otaku culture behind, which was completely reasonable when you think about it. But she’d also lied to them about my own parents being okay with it. So, if anyone told them the truth, her mom and dad would most likely be mad at her and force her to follow them overseas.

Possibly motivated by this fear, Kokoro’s brows knitted together as she thought silently for a moment.

“Jeez, Ichigaya! Y-You’d better hurry up and find a girlfriend to cook for you if you’re gonna be so ungrateful! I’m not your slave just because we live next to each other!” She spoke nervously, taking care to be just loud enough for Elena to hear.

Huh? I thought for a second, but I quickly understood what she was up to. She was pretending that we didn’t live together, and that she just came to my home to cook me dinner. There’s no way Minami will fall for this!

“Oh...? Nishina comes over to cook you dinner?” Elena asked, surprised.

“Yes! She does do that sometimes!” I said, quickly agreeing with Kokoro’s story. As contrived as the lie sounded, going with it was the only way we were going to get out of this.

“So... Nishina is in your house? Right now?” Elena asked again.

That does sound like the two of us are dating... But that’s still better than her finding out that we live together! It’s not like I have any other option.

“Y-Yeah... You see, I live by myself, so she helps me out. It’s not like we’re dating though!” I said, hoping that she’d swallow it.

“I-I see... You must be very close friends,” she replied. She sounded like she believed me, but I wasn’t so sure. After all, it was weird for a girl to cook for a guy that wasn’t her boyfriend.

“H-Hello? Minami?” Kokoro, unable to contain herself, took the phone from my hands and started addressing Elena directly. “We really aren’t dating! I just cook for him, because... As a thank you, that is!”

A thank you? For what? I thought.

“A thank you? To Ichigaya?”

“Yes! You see, he’s got a lot of games, you know, and I’m like, hiding that I’m an otaku, right? So he lets me play games at his house!” Kokoro explained.

Isn’t that going to make her even more suspicious? I guess it’s partially true though, since we played that game together. Though I’d rather forget about that...

“Oh, games...” I heard Elena say through the phone, as if finally understanding.

“Yep! He has yuri games! You like yuri, don’t you? He even has, like, Yuri Kiss, and it’s super cute. You should check it o—”

“Really?! Ichigaya has Yuri Kiss?!” Elena asked, practically screeching into the phone. Kokoro shivered a little bit.

Yuri Kiss was my first yuri game—I’d been able to buy it without any problem since it didn’t have any R-rated scenes. It was so popular with yuri fans that I knew Elena would like it, and her reaction seemed even more positive than I could have expected.

Kokoro, on the other hand, had probably just mentioned a random game title that she’d seen on my shelf. She gave me my phone back, probably thinking that I’d be better suited to continue this conversion.

“Uh, I, er... Yeah! I do have it!”

“I’ve always wanted to play it, but my computer’s in the living room, and my family would find out...” Elena said.

“I-I see...”

I’m not sure I can see where this is going...

“E-Excuse me for being so forward,” Elena said with a shaky voice, “but, if it isn’t a problem... could I come to your house to play it sometime? I’ll pay back the favor of course!”

“Huh?!”

Minami? Come to my home?! Does she want to play this game so much that she’s willing to go to the house of a boy who lives by himself?!

Whatever the case, the fact that Kokoro and I lived together was a secret to be protected at all costs. I couldn’t have Elena visit and run into her. Even if Kokoro went out while Elena was here, she was bound to find out the truth.

My roommate, who had probably heard Elena’s request on the phone, also knew this was a bad idea. I could tell by her frantic head-shaking.

“W-Well...” I said, unable to find the words to deny a cute younger girl who’d asked to come to play in my home.

“I-I’m sorry!” she said while I still hadn’t managed to reply. “I know I’m not as close a friend to you as Nishina is. I shouldn’t have asked for something like that!”

“Not at all! You can come when you have the time!” I said.

I, er... What did I just say?!

Kokoro’s eyebrows almost jumped off her forehead.

“R-Really?! Thank you so much! That makes me so happy!” Elena said enthusiastically. She sounded so overjoyed that there was no way I could take my offer back now.

“Y-Yeah...”

“I’ll look at my schedule and let you know when I’m free, so please do tell me which day would be convenient for you! And thank you again!” she said.

I only managed a couple of half-hearted uh-huhs, and then our conversation ended.

“Wha... What the hell did you just do?! Why’d you tell her she could come?!” Kokoro yelled the very second I’d hung up the phone.

“What was I supposed to do?! I couldn’t tell her no! And this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started yapping about my yuri games!”

“Are you trying to say that this is my fault?! I was just trying to find a better excuse! It’s too weird that I’d come to your house to cook if we’re not dating!”

“Hah... A-Anyway, we need to find a way to hide this,” I said, realizing that it was too late to discuss whose fault it was.

“And how do you suggest we do that, genius?!”

“You need to leave the house before she comes over, and we’ll also need to hide your stuff from the living room, the bathroom, and anywhere else she’d see. Your room’s easy enough since I can just tell her that it’s my sister’s.”

“All of my stuff? Do you have any idea how much of it there is?”

Kokoro, who wasn’t exactly the tidiest person in the world, had spread her possessions all throughout the house.

“Let’s think of it as a good opportunity to clean up.”

“Ugh... Fine! But you’re helping too, got it?!”

“Yeah...”

Why’s she bossing me around like that? Anyway, as long as her stuff isn’t all over the place, I only need to keep Minami out of her room.

I was scared about our secret being found out, but I was more scared of the simple fact that Elena was going to come to my house. While it was understandable that she really wanted to play Yuri Kiss, going by herself to a boy’s home seemed a bit... much. Of course I was nervous—a beautiful girl, the soul of Emily Saionji, was going to be alone with me in my house.

Speaking of being nervous, there was another huge problem that I hadn’t even mentioned yet. I pulled out my phone and stared down at my sister’s message.

“Nishina... Next month we might need to do some heavier cleanup...”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I got this text and, erm... My sister is coming back to Japan.”

“Are you kidding me?!”

“For now, I’ll try to ask her for more details...”

Although Elena was going to visit first, Kisaki was probably the one that I had to be more concerned about. If she was just going to be here on vacation for a few days, then we could come up with a solution to temporarily hide Kokoro. However, if she was coming back for good, we’d have to find another place for Kokoro to live. As the one that had proposed to her parents that she could live with me, I couldn’t stand having to call that off after just a few months. Of course, back when I’d let my stupid mouth run wild in front of the Nishina family, I hadn’t imagined that Kisaki would actually come back.

What am I going to say to Nishina’s dad?!

“I-Is she coming back, like, temporarily? Or...” Kokoro asked me, obviously worrying about the same thing.

“I’m going to ask her,” I said. I was trying to keep my cool, but my hands were shaking as I typed my message. Kisaki was a few years younger than I was—in her third year of middle school—and, truth be told, we weren’t on particularly good terms.

“What do you mean ‘coming back’? Are you gonna move here? And next month when?”

She immediately replied.

“I’m coming for summer vacation. Still haven’t decided when exactly or if I’ll stay after vacation is over.”

“Sh-She said she still hasn’t decided yet.”

“For real?! What if she stays? What am I going to do?!” Kokoro exclaimed, her face pale.

“I’ll tell her to make up her mind and tell me as soon as possible.”

“Please decide and then let me know. I have to fix my schedule,” I wrote to Kisaki.

“What do I care about your schedule? It’s also my house, you know,” she replied.

“Ack...”

I felt the blood rise to my head in anger.

And to think she used to be so innocent. Then she started middle school, and she started avoiding me like the plague... It must be what popularity does to a girl. Now she can’t even stand to be around her unpopular otaku brother, though she’s never really looked up to me as a brother anyway. Why couldn’t I have one of those cute little sisters like they have in anime?

“I can only keep asking her until she answers me. For the time being, we need to find a solution in case she decides that she wants to stay. And even if she doesn’t, we have to put all your stuff somewhere so that her room goes back to how you found it when you moved in,” I said to Kokoro.

She stared at me in shock. No wonder—Kokoro had brought tons of figures, costumes, doujinshi, clothes, magazines... Moving all of them out seemed like an impossible feat.

“You’re going to help, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her no.

“But I still don’t know what I’ll do if your sister moves here. Maybe I should find another part-time job and start saving up money to live by myself... Is that even possible? Can I save so much money in so little time?” She sighed in frustration.

Since convincing Kisaki to let Kokoro stay with us was out of the question, the most realistic option was for Kokoro to pack up and follow her parents overseas, but she would have died rather than do that.

All I could do was to try and steer Kisaki toward going back to live in India with our parents, but I also knew that she wasn’t the type to listen to other people’s opinions, much less mine.

Since Kisaki hadn’t told me what she planned to do, it made more sense to first focus on the Elena problem. She was much more receptive to making plans with me and we decided that she’d come here on Sunday. On Saturday, Kokoro and I would work together to remove all of her stuff from the living room, bathroom, and entryway.

Today had been one hell of a rollercoaster. I’d found out about Mashiro’s true feelings for me, Elena had almost realized that Kokoro and I lived together, and to top it all off Kisaki was coming back to Japan. It was way too much to think about at once, so I decided to focus on the most urgent issue: Elena.

Before going to bed, I checked Twitter to see if Mashiro had replied to my message. She hadn’t.