4

　Left alone at home, I cleaned my room before relaxing with my usual otaku stuff, which mainly involved watching VTuber videos and playing gacha games on my phone. It was my turn to make dinner, but Kokoro had told me she would be eating while she was out, and I had no idea when Kisaki would be back. So, instead of cooking, I ordered some gyudon for delivery.

At around eight, just as I was tucking into my cheap meal of beef and rice, I heard someone walk through the front door. It was too early for Kokoro to be back, so it could only be...

“Hey.”

“O-Oh, Kisaki...”

This was the first time my sister and I had been alone together since she’d come back to Japan. Thanks to Kokoro, we’d actually talked to each other more than we ever used to, but I still felt awkward around her. It was hard to believe that we used to play together so much as kids.

Should I go back to my room? Maybe it’s fine to stay though. I was here first, and she’ll probably go straight to her room so she doesn’t have to hang around me...

Kisaki silently walked to the fridge and poured herself a glass of Kokoro’s homemade barley tea. Glass in hand, she then headed into the living room and took a seat on the chair in front of the couch, where I was sitting.

Huh? I thought she’d avoid me and rush to her room...

She started sipping her tea while looking at her phone.

I-Is she going to just... stay here? Doesn’t it bother her to be alone with me? B-But this is so awkward! This is the first time in forever that we’ve sat so close to each other without someone else in the room!

I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, so I tried to think of a topic to start a conversation. Then at least she couldn’t accuse me of being rude.

This wouldn’t have happened if Nishina were here! Why am I even worrying about being polite to my sister anyway? How stupid is that?!

“So, K-Kisaki... You were an otaku all along, huh? I thought you’d stopped liking all that stuff when you started middle school.”

This was probably the best time to ask her about what had been on my mind for a while, but I was worried that bringing it up out of nowhere had come across as a bit weird.

“S-So what? What do you care?” she replied, making me immediately regret speaking to her.

“It’s just that, you know, you went with Mom and Dad to India without complaining or anything, even though it’s so hard to get hold of otaku stuff there.”

“I obviously didn’t want to leave my hobbies behind... but family is supposed to stay together,” she murmured.

That last part was so surprising coming from her that I didn’t know how to reply.

“But you...” she continued, her voice lowered to practically a whisper.

“Me...?”

“...No, it’s nothing.”

“Huh? Wh-What is it?”

How could I not be curious after she stopped mid-sentence like that?

“Anyway,” she said, changing the topic, “I still can’t believe that a girl that pretty is a friend of yours, and that she’s an otaku, to top it off.”

“Excuse me?!”

“You never made friends with girls before.”

“U-Uh...”

That was true, and I’d only become friends with Kokoro by coincidence. If we hadn’t run into each other at that party, I probably still wouldn’t have any female friends. Spending time with her was also what got me kind of used to girls, at least to the point where I’d managed to speak to Elena. I’d only met the other girls I knew right now—Mashiro, Yume, Iroha, and Mikoto—because Kokoro had convinced me to go to more events and take on a part-time job with her.

Now that Kisaki mentioned it, I realized that all of this would have been unthinkable for me just a few years ago, and it was probably all thanks to one person: Kokoro.

“You even used to get nervous when I had friends over. Grade school friends,” Kisaki pressed.

“What?! I-I wasn’t nervous around your friends!”

“The more I think about it,” she continued, ignoring me, “the weirder it gets. How the hell did you manage to become friends with Kokoro?”

“Ugh... W-Well, we’re both otaku, and her situation was similar to mine, so... I think being able to talk about our hobbies was a huge part of it.”

“Oh...”

“By the way, are you able to enjoy your hobbies over there in India?” I asked her.

“As if! How could I do that outside of Japan?! It must have been easy for you though, since you were so selfish and stayed here by yourself!” Her tone made it clear just how mad at me she was.

Hey, if she’d wanted to stay in Japan she could have just said so, but then again she was very close to our mom, and it must be hard living away from your parents when you’re still in middle school. On the other hand, the reason she didn’t stay could be that she didn’t want to live alone with me...

“Say,” I said, changing the subject to something else I had to ask her about. “About those doujinshi you’re going to sell. I just have to make sure—they aren’t adult doujinshi, right?”

“D-Don’t be stupid! Do you really think I could draw something like that?! That’s still way too embarrassing for now...”

“...For now?! So you’re going to do it eventually?!”

She’s already thinking of drawing raunchy manga at her age?! Is she some kind of closet pervert?!

“Anyway,” she said, “what’s the most popular game genre here in Japan at the minute?”

“Gacha games are the thing right now. FG0 and that...”

“I see... And what are girls playing?”

“No idea why you’d ask me that, but... I guess the HypMic game is pretty popular,” I said.

It then dawned on me that I was having a normal, natural conversation with my sister for the first time in years. It felt weird—as if we’d gone back in time to when she was still in grade school and we were so close to each other.

We kept chatting for a while, talking without any awkwardness and asking each other lots of questions: I asked her about India, our parents, and how she liked school over there, and she asked me about the latest otaku trends in Japan.

I used to think that she’d changed, but I soon realized that this wasn’t the case. She was still the same impertinent kid that I remembered. I was happy that she was at least talking with me once again, and I wished that we could have gotten back to this point when she had still lived in Japan... although it was obviously too late for that. However, our little conversation ended up making me even more curious about the reason she’d started avoiding me in the first place.

Surely I didn’t just imagine that... did I? I want to ask her, but I can’t. As the older brother, I just can’t...

“Hi! I’m back!”

“Kokoro! Hello!”

“Oh, you’re back. Hey.”

“Were you two... chatting?”

Kokoro, who’d just walked through the door, looked from me to Kisaki. She’d probably noticed how little interaction we usually had with each other, hence her surprise at seeing us together.

Later that night, I woke up and went downstairs to use the restroom. I tiptoed as silently as possible so as not to wake up Kisaki or Kokoro.

Just as I reached the last step, I noticed that the light was still on in the living room.

Is one of them still up?

“Thank you so much... I wouldn’t be able to bind all of these by myself.”

“Aw, don’t mention it! I’ve always wanted to make a doujinshi, you know? But I can’t draw or write or anything, so I’m happy I can help out in some way! And it’s even a HypMic doujinshi!”

Through the living room door, I could hear two voices, the sound of the printer, and something playing on the TV at low volume.

So Nishina is helping Kisaki bind her doujinshi...

“You’ve been a huge help! Really!”

“You already got your newest work bound, right?”

“Yeah. I’m going to sell it for around a hundred yen or so, as an extra. I got the idea for the story just recently, so I didn’t have the time to get it printed and bound properly, but I still wanted to have it ready for Comiket one way or another.”

“But that’s super cool! I love it when my favorite circles sell copybooks!”

Even though I had no experience publishing doujinshi myself, I had heard about copybooks. Instead of having their work turned into a properly published manga volume by a company, sometimes artists just photocopied their drawings and bound them by hand.

Kisaki’s so passionate about this that she even drew a last-minute doujinshi, wow. I have to respect her commitment, even if it’s just another BL story...

I would have offered to help out too, but she probably didn’t want me seeing her drawings, so I decided to continue to the bathroom and then head back to bed.

The second I grabbed the door handle, however, I heard Kokoro’s voice once again.

“So, like... I’ve seen you talking with Ichigaya quite a bit since you got back, but he told me the two of you didn’t get along at all. Was that true?”

Her words took me by surprise, so I froze in place, my hand still stuck to the door.

“No, you’re right. We definitely didn’t...” I heard Kisaki reply.

“I remember him saying it wasn’t always like that though...”

“Yeah, we used to get along fine when we were kids.”

“I was just curious about what happened to get you two talking again.”

Straight to the point! I’ll just stay a second longer. Maybe knowing her answer will do me more harm than good, but I have to hear it!

“Oh, but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel like it,” Kokoro said.

“No, it’s not a problem. It began years ago, when he started avoiding me all of a sudden.”

Huh...? Did she just say that I was the one avoiding her?

I was so surprised that I had to grab the door handle tighter to prevent myself from walking into the living room.

What’s she on about?! She was the one avoiding me!

“He... was avoiding you?”

“It was right before I started middle school. We used to watch anime and play games together all the time, but then he started taking all those things to his room to do by himself...”

Hmmm? Watching anime and playing games by myself, instead of with her... Well, maybe that does ring a bell...

Years ago, I did all of those things in the living room with Kisaki. Middle school, however, marked somewhat of a coming-of-age for boys like me, who begin to develop a taste for... improper material. Anime and games with sexy scenes in them, erotic manga and illustrations, and other things in that vein.

Of course, I couldn’t check out that kind of thing in front of Kisaki, which is why I’d started spending more time alone in the privacy of my room. Kisaki had often tried to come in, and she once even did so without knocking. Thankfully, I wasn’t doing anything indecent at the time, but I realized that if I wanted to avoid an encounter that could traumatize both Kisaki and me, I had to set some boundaries.

At the time, I’d scolded her and told her not to enter my room without permission. She’d started knocking and asking me what I was doing, but more often than not, I’d tell her to leave me alone because I was busy. And busy I was... as boys often are during puberty.

Could she be talking about that? Did she think I was avoiding her?! That’s more or less the same time as when I thought we’d started drifting apart...

“When I tried to find him in his room, he’d just tell me to go away...” Kisaki told Kokoro.

“What?! That’s horrible! He didn’t tell me that!” Kokoro replied, clearly infuriated.

Y-You see, I had a very good reason...

“So, since he was avoiding me, I thought I’d keep out of his way, and we grew distant in no time. To be honest, today was the first time in years that we talked so much.”

Wait, wait, wait. So she started acting like that because she somehow thought I was avoiding her... Just because I needed some privacy to practice using the mouse left-handed?! She didn’t start hating me or anything?!

“I wondered what I’d done to him, and I still do... but it’s not easy asking something like that. N-Not that I was lonely because he wasn’t playing with me or anything though!”

“Unbelievable! Why would he do something like that to his cute little sister?!”

I was in a kind of trance listening to Kisaki’s explanation, so it took me a second or two to remember the reason why I was down there in the first place. But I couldn’t go to the toilet now—the flushing noise would have made them realize that I’d overheard them.

So I snuck back up to my room, taking care to be even quieter than I had been the other way, and got back into my bed with a full bladder.

She was basically just lonely because I wasn’t playing with her... That’s way sweeter than I expected! Did I really risk the bond I had with my sister for something so stupid? I can’t believe it! I still wanted to play games and watch anime with her too! The non-sexy ones, at least...

I turned and twisted over and over, torn between relief and regret. I would never get back the years I’d spent unwittingly driving Kisaki away, but at least I could be kinder to her starting tomorrow.

And then, when she comes back to Japan for good, I’ll do my best to fix things, so we can go back to being two happy, loving siblings again.

I promised to myself that I’d try my very best to improve my relationship with my sister, before praying to whoever was up there that the two girls would find their way back to their room before I wet the bed.

＊　＊　＊

“Good morning, girls.”

Kokoro yawned. “...What? Ichigaya? You’re already up?! What are you doing? You’re making breakfast?!”

Kisaki, who had come down just behind her, was also staring at me in disbelief.

“Huh?! You’re cooking?!”

It was the next morning, and I was greeted by nothing but surprise. Our rule was that Kokoro and I would each worry about our own breakfast, and so, as I wasn’t forced to cook in the morning, I almost never did. As for Kisaki, she had never seen me near a stove top at any time of the day, so her surprise was understandable.

“I’ve actually had to cook for myself since you guys left for India, you know? Well, not every day, but still...”

“You’re the last person on the planet I’d ever imagine cooking,” she replied.

“You’re not going to show some appreciation when I’ve gone through the trouble of cooking for you?”

“What...?”

I ignored her conflicted expression, plated the wieners and sunny-side up eggs, and put the three dishes—one for each of us—on the table. Then, I plucked three slices of toast out of the toaster and put one on each.

“Y-You made mine too?” Kisaki stammered. “What’s gotten into you?! You’re scaring me!”

“In all the time since I moved in here, this is the first time I’ve seen him wake up early to cook breakfast,” Kokoro said, just as bewildered.

“What? Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.

The two girls immediately responded with a “Yes!” and sat down. After what I’d heard last night, I’d decided to attempt some kindness toward Kisaki, for at least for as long as she was going to stay in Japan. But instead of gratefulness, I’d somehow just made her suspicious.

“Kagetora actually cooked this... Is this some kind of weird dream...?” she murmured to herself.

“I wanted to ask before, Kisaki, but is there anything I can do to help with your doujinshi?” I knew she’d already had a hand from Kokoro, but I might as well give it a try.

“...Huh?! Where’d that come from all of a sudden?!”

“It’s just a few days till Comiket, isn’t it?”

“Th-There’s nothing in particular... and I don’t want you to see my drawings anyway!”

“Hmm... All right. Just let me know if anything comes up.”

“Why are you acting like this?! It’s creepy!”

“Hey! Is this how you thank me for trying to be nice to you?!”

Now that she’d gone straight from surprised to creeped out, I was starting to regret trying to make it up to her.

Kokoro, meanwhile, watched our back-and-forth in silence with a faint smile on her face.

＊　＊　＊

The night before Comiket, Kisaki and Kokoro were busy preparing in Kisaki’s room. My sister had to take care of her doujinshi, and my roommate had to take care of her cosplay; both were a lot harder than what I had to do. Since I was only going to help out with the booth, my preparations amounted to putting a couple of bottles of water in the fridge so we’d have something cool to drink the next day.

Had we been planning to line up with all the other visitors, we’d have also needed hand fans, cold compresses, and other measures to avoid dying of heatstroke, but thanks to the circle ticket, we didn’t have to worry about any of that.

“Ichigaya! Can you come here for a sec?” Kokoro shouted from upstairs while I was killing time in the living room.

What does she need me for now?

I announced my presence outside my sister’s room, rather than just opening the door, and heard Kokoro ask Kisaki whether it was fine to let me in. My sister told her that it was, and I walked in to find a whole mess of doujinshi and cosplay-related items scattered all over the floor.

“What do you think of this dress?” Kokoro asked me.

To my surprise, she had taken my advice and bought a white sundress, an off-the-shoulder one with a few frills—simple but cute. It was precisely the kind of dress that any otaku would conjure up in their mind when thinking of cute summer attire for girls.

As much as I hated to admit it, Kokoro looked stunning whenever she wore otaku-approved clothes. A lot of people would be ready to look past her rough personality and fujoshi hobbies on behalf of how attractive she looked.

Well, she can be rough, but she’s a good girl, to be honest, and she even likes anime and games aimed at guys. If she started always wearing this kind of thing instead of all that flashy gyaru stuff she usually goes for, any otaku she met would treat her like a princess... Wait, why am I coming up with all these good things to say about her?

“Um... What’s with the silence? You trying not to laugh or something?! Ugh, I knew it! This is way too cutesy for me, isn’t it? I look like a total otaku-digger... Hah, I mean, I’d never wear something like this in front of my friends,” Kokoro said.

“I think my brother is just at a loss for words because of how cute you look,” Kisaki commented.

“I-It’s not...! I...! I was just thinking that it’s, you know... apt! Very apt! Any otaku guy will love it! You should definitely go with that!” I chokingly replied, mincing my words while trying to object to Kisaki’s (correct) theory.

“Seriously? I thought it was too obvious. In that case, I’m glad I bought it! Then I wonder how I should style my hair... Since it’s gonna be hot and all that, I’ve gotta tie it up, but—”

“Wh-What about a ponytail?!” I interrupted.

“Huh?”

“It’s just that, um, a lot of otaku guys like ponytails, so...” I explained.

“Oh, I didn’t know that! Huh. That’s perfect then! I just hope my hair won’t get too messed up under the wig by the time the event is over,” she replied.

Kisaki looked at her, surprised. “You’re not... going to go out with that Toppo cosplayer after Comiket?!”

“Oh, no, I haven’t asked him out or anything. B-But maybe with some luck...”

“Ah, I see...” Kisaki replied, smiling oddly at her friend’s overeagerness. Thinking about her hairstyle before telling her crush that she wanted to have dinner with him did seem a bit backwards. I couldn’t imagine Kokoro doing something so brazen as actively asking that guy out, which meant that all of this effort could very well end up being for nothing.

“I’m gonna wear a pair of cute heeled sandals to go with the sundress...” Kokoro said to herself.

“Heeled sandals?! Are you out of your mind?!” I asked, shocked. “Wearing anything but sneakers to Comiket is suicide! At least, if you have to go with sandals, go with ones that don’t have heels!”

“But none of my flat sandals fit this dress...”

“Look, it’s going to be slightly better than usual since we don’t have to line up, but even then, we’re talking about Comiket. The place we’ll be at is called the Big Sight Exhibition Center for a reason. Forget about the heels, and try to choose comfortable shoes for your cosplay too,” I told her.

“I mean, at least the shoes that go with my cosplay don’t have heels, so that should be fine. But, since you put it like that, I’ll choose some flats for the dress too,” she replied, easily convinced.

This was going to be Kokoro’s first time at Comiket, so she probably didn’t have any idea yet, but if she prioritized fashion over function, she was going to be in for a lot of foot pain.

“I think that’s about it for the preparations! I’m super pumped already! I bet I won’t be able to sleep tonight!” Kokoro squealed.

Kisaki, on the other hand, remained strangely silent. She was probably nervous about her first time selling her doujinshi at such a large event.

I needed to mentally prepare myself too, since there was quite a bit of shopping that I needed to get done while I was there, even though I’d also have to help with the booth. And yet my mind still wandered back to a certain someone who I’d be seeing for the first time in weeks—Elena.

The last time I saw her had been at Wonder Festival, when she kind of, maybe, possibly confessed to me, and I hadn’t spoken to her at all since. There’d been nothing else on my mind lately. She had asked me to forget about it, so maybe she’d just pretend like it had never happened when we saw each other.

But what if she confesses again?! I guess the first time wasn’t a confession per se, but she strongly implied that she liked me...

I was nervous about seeing Elena... but I was also looking forward to it.