3

The next morning, after eating breakfast, I went down to the living room. Kisaki and Kokoro were nowhere to be seen, so I started playing with my phone. I imagined they were still in my sister’s room, but they didn’t show up at all, no matter how long I waited.

At around noon, I began to worry about them, so I went up to Kisaki’s room and knocked on the door.

“Hey, you two! It’s past twelve already!” I said.

After a while, the door opened, revealing a sleepy Kokoro in her pajamas. Behind her, I could see Kisaki still passed out in her bed.

“Really? Dang... We spent the whole night chatting and reading doujinshi together and then ended up going to bed at like seven in the morning...” Kokoro explained, holding back a yawn.

“You really get along well for two people who just met yesterday.”

“You don’t get it! It’s like she’s the sister I was separated from at birth or something! We have similar tastes in everything, we ship the same couples. It was the best, I swear! We had so much fun!”

Kisaki, woken up by our conversation, sat up on the bed with a big yawn.

“...Oh, good morning, Kokoro,” she said.

You greet her and not your own brother?! And you’re already on a first-name basis with her?!

“Good morning, Kisaki!” Kokoro replied. “Totally sorry I ended up crashing in your bed last night. That must have been super uncomfortable for you. Don’t worry though, I’m gonna get a hotel room today, and I’ll put all my stuff in your brother’s room.”

They slept together?!

“A hotel?! No, there’s no need to spend all that money! You can just stay in my room!” Kisaki said, much to my surprise. Sure, they liked each other, but this defied all expectations.

“I couldn’t! That’d be, like, waaay too much to ask!”

“No, really! And you can leave your stuff in here too! Actually, if possible, I’d prefer if you did. Th-There are some more doujinshi in here that I’d like to take a look at...”

“I don’t mind lending you them and all, but wouldn’t it be hard to relax with a stranger around?”

“Not at all! I’d rather you be here than having to be all alone with Kagetora. Ugh.”

Hey! I’m right here! And I have feelings too! I thought. Aside from the insults though, I actually agreed. Having Kokoro around would probably make things less awkward with Kisaki.

“R-Really? If you insist...”

“Yay!” Kisaki grinned.

“To be honest, this works out loads better for me! Staying in a hotel would have cost a fortune.”

And thus, Kokoro was able to remain my roommate while Kisaki was back in Japan. I didn’t even have to deal with my sister’s anger, which was a relief. But I was ultimately surprised that, after treating me so coldly for so many years, Kisaki would be so friendly with Kokoro.

＊　＊　＊

　Later that day, Kokoro cooked up lunch—which I guess was breakfast for the two girls—with the stuff we had left in the fridge. We all sat down and ate together.

“Wow, this is so good! You’re amazing, Kokoro!” Kisaki said after taking a bite.

“Oh, come on! You’re flattering me!”

“No, really! Even though you’re an otaku, you’re gorgeous, attractive, all your clothes are so cute, and you’re a great cook!”

Once again, I felt confused and somewhat sad that Kisaki would have so much admiration for my roommate. Kokoro was just as much of an otaku as I was, yet Kisaki hated me. Other than the fact that their tastes were so similar, this definitely had to be because of how well Kokoro took care of herself. Kisaki probably respected her as a girl and as an otaku.

“Still, you know, even though we had a free room here, I’m surprised you decided to stay with someone like him,” Kisaki said, pronouncing the last word with enough contempt to hurt my feelings again. “You’d never guess the two of you would have anything to do with each other. Were you friends to begin with?”

“Not really,” Kokoro replied. “We got to know each other because we had the same, um, goal in mind.”

“Goal? What kind of goal?”

“It’s okay to tell her, right?” Kokoro asked me.

“Sure, go ahead.” We didn’t really have any reason not to tell Kisaki, and hiding the truth would just make her suspicious.

“You see, we both want to find an otaku date. So he’s helping me look for a boyfriend, and I’m helping him look for his otaku dream girl.”

“D-Date?!” Kisaki asked, her jaw stuck open in disbelief. “My brother’s looking for a girlfriend?”

She took a short pause to give me the kind of look that you’d give a filthy toilet.

“Ew...” she then said.

“What?!” I exclaimed, offended by my sister’s reaction. “What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“So that’s why you two ended up living together?” Kisaki asked, as if I’d said nothing.

“Right after we decided to help each other out, my parents told me I had to move overseas with them,” Kokoro began to explain. “I didn’t wanna leave Japan, because that’d have meant being away from otaku culture. But they were all ‘a girl your age can’t stay here by herself.’ Y’know? Ichigaya was there at the time, and he told my dad I could stay here. I totally didn’t see that coming, but I’m super grateful he did it. My dad is kind of... weird, you see. He’s really into the whole romance thing. So we had to lie, but when we told him we were dating, he let me stay.”

“Wow! I can’t believe that worked!”

“But like, the only problem is that when my mom and dad come back to Japan, they expect your brother and me to get married...”

“M-Married?!” Kisaki shouted. “Are you two really going to—?!”

“No way!” Kokoro and I yelled in unison, cutting her off.

“We just figured that if we both found something super serious by the time my parents are back, we could convince them to forget about the whole marriage thing.”

“That sure is a lot to take in... I’m surprised your parents didn’t try to stop you from marrying someone like my brother,” Kisaki said.

Huh?!

“Well, Mom and Dad think it’s fine to marry whoever you like, as long as you’re happy with them,” Kokoro replied.

HUH?!

I was so offended that I didn’t have enough strength left to interject. But with our situation finally explained, Kisaki changed the topic.

“By the way, are you going to Comiket?” she asked Kokoro.

“I’m planning to! There’s a bunch of doujinshi I wanna buy! Oh, and, when your brother and I went to WonFes, I met this super handsome Toppo cosplayer... and he’s gonna be at Comiket, so I really wanna see him there! Awaaah! It’ll actually be my first time there, so I’d be way too scared going alone, but...” Kokoro turned to look at me. “You’re going too, aren’t you?”

“Y-Yeah, I guess I am...” I replied. I’d also been planning on going, so I figured I might as well go with Kokoro.

“Did you say ‘super handsome Toppo cosplayer’?”

“Sure did! Wait, I have pictures! Here, this guy,” Kokoro said, showing Kisaki her phone.

“Wooow! He’s so cool! You said you’re looking for a boyfriend, so are you trying to go out with him?” my sister asked, practically bouncing in her seat.

“W-Well, it’s not like I’m going to ask him out or anything, but... I thought it’d be nice to see him again and maybe cosplay together or something!” Kokoro replied, just as excitedly. She was probably too embarrassed to outright admit that she wanted to date him, but her reaction made it pretty clear.

“What about you, Kisaki? Do you wanna go?” Kokoro asked.

“Oh, er, yes. Well, to be honest... I’m going to have a booth there.”

“Your own booth?!” Kokoro shrieked.

I was just as shocked. First I learn that my sister is actually an otaku, and now she’s going to have a booth at Comiket?!

“You draw doujinshi?!” I asked.

“Y-Yeah...” she reluctantly replied.

“Were you doing that when you still lived here?” If she was, then she’d been pretty good at hiding it.

“I’ve been uploading my art online for a while, but I’ve never sold physical copies before. Last winter, I also reserved a booth, but then I had to move to India. I kept posting my work online from there though.”

“So you came back to go to Comiket?” Kokoro asked.

“Well, I also want to see my friends, go shopping, and stuff like that, but Comiket is the main reason, yeah.”

“You’re still in middle school and you sell your own doujinshi?! That’s awesome! What characters do you base them on? HypMic ones? Toppo?”

“Y-Yes...”

“I knew it! Awww, I really wanna buy it! Would you show me your drawings? Please?”

She doesn’t just read BL... My sister draws BL.

“I-I’m not that good though! But if you really want to see, well...” Kisaki handed her phone to Kokoro, probably showing one of her drawings.

“Not that good?! You’re amazing! Wow, this is so cute! Awaaah!”

How good are they? I kinda want to see them too... I thought. My eyes met with my sister’s, but she puffed out her cheeks in annoyance and looked away.

She’d never show them to me... Still, I can hardly believe it. Kisaki became a huge otaku, maybe even more so than me! Didn’t she say she was uploading her stuff while she was away? At least she has the internet over there...

Not only had my sister been hiding her hobbies from me all this time, but we were eating and chatting together at the same table. Everything was so weird. Back when we’d lived together, we’d almost never spoken to each other.

“If you’re going to Comiket, I can give you a circle ticket,” Kisaki offered. To Kokoro, of course.

Circle tickets... I’d never drawn a doujinshi in my life, but even I had heard of these mysterious artifacts. Doujinshi artists usually publish their work through their “circles,” and the circles that participate in Comiket are given these special tickets. It’s said that the owner of one may enter the Comiket venue before all normal visitors do.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me?! That’d be so awesome! Would you really do that?” Kokoro asked.

“Sure. I don’t have anyone helping me sell my stuff, so I have no one to give my extra tickets to anyway.”

“Really? But doesn’t that mean you’re going there by yourself? Isn’t that a bit... dangerous? Don’t you have any friends you can ask to come and help you out?!”

As soon as she heard Kokoro’s question, Kisaki’s face flooded with gloom and depression.

“Actually, I don’t have any otaku friends. Some of my classmates here used to watch anime, but that’s about it. I was too scared to ever tell anyone that I’m a fujoshi...”

So she wasn’t only hiding it at home, but at school too. But, er, why does this story sound so familiar?

“It’s the exact same for me! I’m, like, hiding my power level at school, so you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to about BL in real life!”

“Really?! You’re the first person for me too! I can only talk about my favorite ships online, you know?”

The two girls, having discovered yet another commonality between them, began to chat more and more excitedly.

“What do you say I help you with your booth? As thanks for the circle ticket! It’s not safe for a middle schooler to go to Comiket by herself, you know? And you could go see the rest of the venue while I handle the sales stuff for you!”

“R-Really?! That’d be a huge help! I’d love to buy a ton of doujinshi myself, but I’d given up on that because I thought I wouldn’t have the time to leave my booth!”

“May I ask how many circle tickets you have?”

“Three, including mine.”

“I see. What are you gonna do with the one that’s left over?”

“Pfft, I don’t know.”

“Then what about having Ichigaya come help with the booth too?”

“Huh?!” I exclaimed.

Having a circle ticket would be nice, sure, but... helping Kisaki sell doujinshi? BL doujinshi?!

“H-Him...?”

“Wouldn’t it be real unsafe for two cute girls to stand alone behind a booth? Having a guy there would be loads better. And if he’s helping out too, we can totally take shifts so we have even more time to buy doujinshi together!”

Did she just call herself cute? I mean, it’s no lie, but... Anyway, Nishina’s planning to use me so she can have more time to run around Comiket, isn’t she?! That being said, if I could get my hands on a circle ticket in return... that’d be a fair tradeoff.

After lining up with the normal Comiket visitors last year, the thought of hell no longer scared me—it was preferable to waiting an eternity in the scorching heat while surrounded by other suffering souls. Sitting behind a booth selling doujinshi would definitely be better than that, and if there were three of us, I’d have plenty of time to go shopping myself.

However, even if I was fine with it, I doubted Kisaki would agree. Having your own older brother help you sell BL doujinshi was probably too awkward to even consider.

“N-No way! It’s BL drawn by his little sister... He’d never do that... right?” Kisaki asked, confused, taking a quick glance at me before looking away. I was surprised to see that, more than she disliked the idea, she was worried that I’d be the one to turn it down.

“Why not?” Kokoro said. “He doesn’t mind BL at all. He’s even been playing a BL game I recommended to him.”

“You... played a BL game?” Kisaki asked me in utter shock.

“It’s not like I was interested in it! Nishina just told me I should learn about that kind of thing if I want to date an otaku girl...”

“Ohhh... So you did play it then. That’s surprising,” Kisaki said, screwing up her face like she was creeped out.

Agh, great, now she thinks I’m a closet BL fan...

“You don’t mind helping your own sister out if it means getting a circle ticket, do you?” Kokoro asked me. “Maybe you could even meet some girls there! You could meet a cute doujinshi artist, or like, a cute cosplayer selling stuff at another booth!”

“I-I was planning to go either way, so I’d definitely help out in exchange for a circle ticket.”

Truth to be told, lately, I’d been so busy thinking about what Elena had told me that I hadn’t even considered the possibility of meeting girls at Comiket.

“Y-You would?!” my sister asked before I could ask her if she was fine with it. “B-but don’t you ever, ever read my doujinshi, okay?!”

Does this mean she’s agreeing to it?

“Of course, I’d never do that without permission.”

“It’s all decided then!” Kokoro grinned.

That sure was enough surprises for one day. Not only did my little sister draw BL doujinshi, but we were also going to help her sell them at Comiket. The most shocking thing, however, was that she’d let me come and even given me one of her precious circle tickets. I knew how much Kisaki hated me. Had Kokoro not been there, none of this would have happened. If it wasn’t for her, Kisaki and I probably wouldn’t have even talked much to begin with. After all, we only used to speak to each other when strictly necessary...

＊　＊　＊

　Later that morning, Kisaki left the house to meet up with some friends that she hadn’t seen in a while. She said she’d also buy the things she needed for Comiket on her way back and explained—to Kokoro, not to me—that she’d already turned in the doujinshi she would be selling at the event. My sister now only needed to prepare the booth and the free pamphlets she wanted to hand out there.

Kokoro was sitting on the couch looking at her phone while I washed the dishes left from breakfast.

“Oh, oh! Minami’s gonna be at Comiket too! She just replied to me on LINE. It’s not gonna be for work either; she said she just wants to buy some books.”

The mention of Elena’s name took me by surprise and left me dumbfounded for a second.

“I, like, told her your sister’s gonna be there with a booth and that the two of us get to help her. Telling Minami was fine, right?”

“Huh?! O-Oh, sure. What did she say back?”

“She said to tell her when we know where our booth will be so she can come visit!”

“I-I see...”

This was going to be my first time seeing Elena since that incident. Since she said that she’d come despite knowing that I’d be there, I’d possibly just been worrying too much. Maybe she didn’t even consider what had happened to be that much of an incident at all.

“By the way, did you hear? Minami’s actually, like, doing some awesome stuff in secret!” Kokoro said.

Awesome stuff? Voice acting is awesome enough, but... could this be about her voicing Emily Saionji?

“I might know what you mean...” I said. “But I’m not exactly sure which part you’re talking about.” I tried to keep my answer as generic as possible. Although the truth about Elena’s secret career had already been leaked online, I didn’t know whether it’d be fine for me to tell Kokoro about it.

I’d finished washing the dishes, so I joined Kokoro in the living room and took a seat in front of her.

“You mean the VTuber thing, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “So you already knew about it too, huh? It’s literally everywhere online at the minute.”

So she did find out... The leak has already spread across a ton of different sites, so it was only a matter of time.

“Uh-huh...” I nodded, hoping that she’d assume that I’d also found out about it from the internet.

“I mean, being a voice actress is cool enough, right? But she’s also a super famous VTuber! I’d already heard of Emily Saionji before I found out, and then I tried watching her videos, right? And her voice is just like Minami’s. She’s just as cute as well, and she loves yuri! It’s like Minami’s been made all virtual or something!”

“Yeah, it really is...”

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one to think that Elena wasn’t just voicing Emily Saionji... Elena was Emily Saionji.

“Oh, apart from that, I meant to ask you about how things went with that cute cosplayer you managed to take pictures of last time!”

“Well...”

I did take pictures and take note of her Twitter handle, but I hadn’t even bothered to follow her. I was still too busy thinking about Elena to care about some random cosplayer.

“Things haven’t gone anywhere, to be honest,” I replied.

“What a total waste! You got the camera and practiced taking pictures and everything!”

She had a point, but I couldn’t bring myself to flirt with other girls while I still didn’t know what Elena really thought.

“Anyway,” I said, remembering that there was still something that I had to ask Kokoro about. “What about you? How’s it going with that guy we saw at WonFes?”

“Hmmm, I haven’t really spoken with him since then. I check his Twitter every day, but I can’t work up the courage to reply to anything, you know?”

“Oh, wait, so you know his Twitter? Then you can see what kind of person he is around other people. Does he give off those same sleazy vibes that Bambi did?”

“Not in the slightest! Literally no sleaziness!”

“Really? A guy that handsome, cosplaying a character so popular with girls... and he isn’t even a bit sleazy?”

After all that had happened with Bambi—creepy, narcissistic, pretty-faced cosplayer Bambi—I was pretty skeptical of all handsome cosplayers, and Kokoro could have used some of that skepticism herself.

“If you don’t believe me, here, see for yourself!” she said, shoving her phone under my nose to show me the profile of the guy in question: Yuya. That was his nickname on Twitter, at least.

The bio, other than stating that he was just a beginner cosplayer, included a list of the characters he cosplayed and series that he liked. His icon was a selfie of him dressed as Toppo from HypMic, the same cosplay we’d seen him wearing at Wonder Festival. He looked just as attractive in his picture as he did in real life.

The dude had less than a hundred follows and a few hundred followers—between this and the fact that his account was only four months old, he probably really was a beginner. His pinned tweet was more of the same: a self-introduction with a couple of cosplay pictures, featuring more Toppo as well as Merlin from FG0.

In general, he mostly tweeted about gacha games and other otaku stuff, his life at university, and his part-time job. Except for the occasional rant about this or that, he didn’t look like a bad guy. More importantly, I could tell that he wasn’t just pretending to be an otaku—he really was one.

What weirded me out a little bit were the tweets about the basketball club he was part of at university. Sport clubs were things that cool people joined.

An otaku and cool? I thought you could only choose to be one of those. There’s no way someone that lucky isn’t a womanizer...

Next, I checked the “Tweets and Replies” tab. I was sure I’d see tons of messages sent out indiscriminately to a bunch of different girls... but I was wrong.

The few accounts that he was replying to regularly all seemed to belong to men. I had to scroll down quite a way before finding a reply he’d sent to a girl. It wasn’t even that interesting of an exchange: the girl was thanking him for letting her take his picture, and he’d simply replied thanking her and saying that he’d followed her account back. That was the end of the conversation.

“He doesn’t look sleazy at all...” I said.

I didn’t know how he acted offline, but from what I could gauge from his Twitter account, he seemed to be a decent human being. Handsome, an otaku, cool, and a decent person? Huh.

“Right?! See, what did I tell you?! He isn’t dodgy at all!” Kokoro grinned.

Not only did he not look like a bad guy, but he even looked like the kind of guy I could be friends with. At least, he liked the same anime and games as I did. Of course, you couldn’t tell everything about a person just from how they acted on Twitter, but I had no reason to ask Kokoro to stop involving herself with him at this stage.

“Yeah, I guess so...”

“His account looks nothing like Bambi’s! He almost never messages girls, and I don’t get any fishy vibes from him!” Kokoro said.

Does this mean that she did get fishy vibes from Bambi?

“And you’re going to meet up with him at Comiket, right?” I asked her.

“Well, kinda. Since I know he’s going, I’ll check his Twitter while we’re there and try to find him.”

“Huh? You mean you haven’t even asked him?! You’ll ‘try to find him’?!”

“Y-Yeah... We’re not so close that I can ask him to meet up with me just yet!”

“This is Comiket we’re talking about! You aren’t going to message him at all? You’re never going to find someone in that crowd just from reading their tweets! No, no, that’s impossible. Just so you know, there are usually so many people around that you can’t even get reception on your phone.”

I’d gone to Comiket with Ai the previous year. Finding each other after splitting up had been anything but easy.

“I-Is it really that bad?” she asked, shocked.

“Of course. You follow each other already, so just send him a message saying that you want to take a picture of his cosplay or something.”

“What?! No way! I’ve only ever messaged him, like, one time!”

“Then it’s the perfect opportunity to fix that!”

“B-But... wouldn’t that be way too full-on? We only met each other once!”

“It’s not like you’re asking him to cosplay with you or anything. What’s so bad about asking for a picture?”

“Well... I guess you’re right.”

Looking convinced but nervous, Kokoro began tapping away on her phone. After running the message by me, she sent it there and then.

“There, I did it! But what if he doesn’t reply?! I mean, he has a ton of followers, and back at the event there were loads of other girls asking for pictures. Maybe he doesn’t even remember me.”

I doubted anyone would forget her, considering how cute that cosplay of hers had looked. Not that I’d admit that to her face.

“Now that I think about it, are you planning on cosplaying at Comiket?” I asked.

“Hm? That’s the plan, yeah. But I still wanna focus on helping Kisaki sell her doujinshi and then shop for the ones I want myself.”

“I just thought that if he saw you cosplaying again that’d make you more memorable to him, whether or not he already remembers you. Since he’s so handsome, you’re probably going to have a lot of competition to take his picture.”

“Oh, good point! Maybe I should do a HypMic cosplay too then. It’d fit with Kisaki’s booth, and if he’s doing Toppo again, we could even get a picture together! Maybe I could cross-dress as Lamta... But Kisaki’s doujinshi are about Toppo, so that might be kinda weird...”

While Kokoro was going on about her cosplaying plans, I also thought about what her best option would be. Cosplaying the same series would be fun and a good way to get a picture with him, but...

“I think you’d better cosplay something else,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“Even if it’s a cute cosplay, you’d still be cross-dressing. If you want to impress a guy, I think you’d have a much better chance cosplaying as a girl.”

“A-Are you sure?”

“Yeah. On his Twitter it says he likes Arimu from IMS. Maybe you could cosplay her.”

“You’re right, it does say that! I guess that’s what an otaku guy would want... Okay! I think Arimu’s cute too, so I’ll cosplay her!”

Immediately convinced by what I’d said, Kokoro started to look for reference pictures on her phone, hemming and hawing about whether her cosplay should feature Arimu’s normal clothes or her maid outfit.

That’s some fast decision-making as usual...

“Oh,” she then said, “but if I’m cosplaying a character who’s, like, unrelated to the doujinshi we’re selling, maybe I should ask Kisaki.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine.”

“You think so? I still need to decide what to wear apart from the cosplay though...”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, say that Yuya and I become friends during Comiket and decide to go have dinner together after or something. I should be ready for that!”

She doesn’t even know whether she’ll be able to find the guy, yet she’s already preparing what she’ll wear to dinner with him?!

“Since I’ll be wearing a wig and all, I’ll also have to fix my hair when I take it off! I need, like, a portable hair iron...” she said.

I mean, sure, I can imagine wearing a wig would ruffle your hair up a bit, but...

“So, what do you think?” Kokoro asked. “What should I wear?”

She was staring at me with puppy-dog eyes, practically begging me for an answer. Kokoro had obviously come to trust me and my opinion when it came to the tastes of male otaku.

Summer clothing that an otaku would like...?

“There’s only one choice, now that I think about it... A white sundress!” I told her.

Can’t go wrong with a white sundress. All otaku love those. I think.

“What...? That’s all? Something so simple?”

“Yeah. Look at how the heroines in anime and games dress in the summer. Lots of white sundresses, right? I’m a hundred percent positive that I’m not the only one who appreciates that.”

“I see... That’d be comfortable at least. I don’t have one, but I’m going to Shibuya with some friends later today, so I’ll try finding one there.”

So she’s going out... Am I the only one spending the whole summer at home? Not that I’d prefer being outside, but...

“Eeeeek!” Kokoro squealed out of nowhere, almost dropping her phone. “He replied!”

“Well, that was fast. What did he say?”

“Um, he said ‘you’re going to Comiket too? I’d love to meet you there! Are you going to cosplay?’” she read, making no attempt to conceal her excitement.

“Oh, that should make you happy, right?”

“Of course! He agreed to meeting me, and he even asked about me, so... I have a chance, don’t I?!” she shrieked.

“He sounds like he wants to be friends with you, yeah...”

“He does, doesn’t he?! He really does! Awaaaah! What now?! How do I reply?!”

“Anything! Just don’t let the conversation end! And you’d better talk about how you’re going to meet up that day so you can actually find him,” I said, trying to put myself in the guy’s shoes. If a girl stopped a conversation there, I’d assume she wasn’t particularly interested in me.

“O-Okay! Oh, snap! I have to leave soon! I’ll reply to him while I’m on the train!”

With that, Kokoro hurriedly got herself ready and left the house.

I can’t be certain, but this sounds like it’s going to end better than it did with Bambi—this Yuya guy seems pretty decent. That being said, all we know about him is what we read on his Twitter page, so it’s probably safer to be cautious here. After all, handsome male cosplayers, by nature, are used to being surrounded by girls. More often than not, they play around a lot.

Nishina’s too excited to see straight. I’ll have to check out this guy myself... for her sake, obviously.