Chapter 1: The Secrets of the World are Revealed With Surprising Ease?!

The label “Little Sister” hung in the air.

Yuichi sat, cross-legged and glassy-eyed, as he watched Yoriko hard at work on her travel preparations.

Yoriko Sakaki. As it said on the label above her head, she was Yuichi’s little sister, and in her second year of middle school. She was a beautiful girl with striking, long, black hair, currently dressed casually in denim hot pants and a camisole. She was pulling items out of her closet and scrutinizing them carefully — so carefully that there was still almost nothing in her large travel bag.

“Do you need all that clothing?” Yuichi asked.

It wasn’t even noon yet, but Yuichi had already finished his prep for the summer training camp they’d be going on tomorrow. Of course, he didn’t have much to bring — just two days’ worth of underpants and T-shirts in his backpack.

The training camp was set to last a week, but they were going to Aiko’s family’s villa, and Aiko had said that they could do laundry there. Yuichi thought it would be best to just wash his clothes as he needed to.

“Of course I do! You’re the one being ridiculous.”

Yuichi was slightly cowed by the venomous look Yoriko threw him. She apparently intended to wear a different outfit every day.

“By the way, I guess I should have asked this earlier, but are you serious about this?” he asked. “This is a training camp for our survival club.”

“Mutsuko said that I could come,” Yoriko shot back.

Though it was a club training camp, it was an unofficial one; their adviser wasn’t coming, so there was technically no issue with Yoriko joining them. Even so, Yuichi still had a bad feeling about it.

“Big Brother, if you have time to spare, why don’t you help Mutsuko?” Yoriko said without looking back. Her eyes were focused on the row of outfits in front of her. “Last time I looked, it was absolute chaos in there.”

“Is there anything I can even help her with?” Yuichi murmured to himself. Still, he stood up and headed for the room next door.

The door was open, so he walked right in. The room was as cluttered as usual, and at the center of it was Mutsuko, struggling to cram things into a bag.

This was Mutsuko Sakaki. She was Yuichi’s older sister, and in her second year in high school. She was a beautiful girl, too, but unlike his little sister, anything you said about her had to be prefaced with “unfortunate.”

The ornaments in her hair were one such expression of this. Though quite flashy, they were becoming on her, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they were real bladed weapons — made of Damascus steel, as she herself claimed.

In addition, she was currently dressed in a white ao dai, a type of Vietnamese folk costume. That looked good on her, too — it was just seeing her wear it as day-to-day wear in Japan that left Yuichi at a loss for how to react.

Above her head, the label “Big Sister” hovered, seeming to assert her place as Yuichi’s elder.

But it does say “Big Sister,” not “Elder Sister”... he thought, mulling over the nuance in maturity that it implied.

Yuichi had first begun seeing labels over people’s heads that spring. He knew that they revealed something about the person they described, but he hadn’t figured out any more than that.

He had grown accustomed to this phenomenon, and was now able to ignore them, as long as they didn’t contain anything too outrageous.

“Huh? What is it, Yu?” Mutsuko looked up, her hand still in her travel bag. That same instant, something sprung out from just below her hand.

Yuichi reflexively grabbed the thing between his index and middle finger.

A disc-shaped blade, about ten centimeters in diameter, moving at 1/8 the speed of sound. If I dodge it, it’ll put a mark in the wall that’ll make our mother sad. Such was the judgment he had made in a moment.

Yuichi looked at the object he had caught. It was a weapon of Indian origin known as a chakram, a bladed disc.

“Sis. What do you have to say for yourself?” Yuichi waved the chakram around lightly, glaring at Mutsuko.

Mutsuko certainly did look uncomfortable, but suddenly opened her mouth. “If you were a character in Another you’d be dead right now!”

“But it’s me, so I’m alive!” Yuichi snapped.

“I-It’s training! You never know when something might pop out at you!”

“You’re so lying! I know a ‘Whoops’ expression when I see one!” he shouted.

Why does she even need that at a training camp? he wondered.

The thing Mutsuko was trying to shove into the bag was a metallic glove known as a gauntlet. Multiple chakrams were loaded on the outside of it.

“Oh, by the way! This is called a chakram shooter—”

“Spare me the explanation. Is there anything I can help with?” It seemed like the explanation would be a long one, so he cut her off at the pass.

“Hmm, I can’t think of anything...” Mutsuko seemed to be seriously thinking about it, but came up with nothing. She was probably thinking that having Yuichi bumble around trying to help would be less efficient than just doing it herself.

“That’s okay,” Yuichi said. “Also, uh, maybe you could you lay off a little? You probably shouldn’t try to cram all those deadly weapons in one bag.”

“Ahh!” Mutsuko’s eyes opened wide.

“What?”

“I was so focused on trying to cram all the stuff in, I didn’t even think about it! I should just get another bag, right?”

Yuichi was thinking over how to respond to her this time when the phone in his pocket rang.

It was his classmate, Tomomi Hamasaki.

Nihao the China was a Chinese restaurant.

It was a small institution near the back gate to Seishin High, the school Yuichi attended. It was also the home of his classmate, Tomomi Hamasaki.

Lacking for anything else to do, he had come in response to Tomomi’s call.

The restaurant itself gave off a faint impression of griminess, as usual, and there was no one there, even during what should have been the lunch rush.

“Hey, thanks for coming!” Tomomi cried out as he entered the store.

She was wearing a cheongsam with her hair done up in two buns. When they had class together at school, she left her hair down and wore glasses, which made her look like a completely different person. The label above her head read “Fake.” He didn’t know what that meant, and he wasn’t eager to investigate.

“No customers as usual, I see...” Yuichi said, then cast a glance at the restaurant’s owner, a man with braided hair who was reading a newspaper leisurely behind the counter. Tomomi aside, he thought he might take offense at that, but the man didn’t bat an eye.

The label above this man’s head was “Nihao the China,” the same name as the restaurant. It was the most incomprehensible of the labels Yuichi had seen so far.

“Serial Killer”... “Vampire”... “Witch”... “Zombie”... “Anthromorph”...

He didn’t really know what any of them meant, but they at least evoked certain images. “Nihao the China” was completely opaque.

Yuichi had a seat at the restaurant’s sole round table.

“Your order?” Tomomi asked him with a bright smile.

“I’m not here as a customer, remember? You said you had something to talk about.”

“What?!” Tomomi scowled, flying suddenly off the handle. Yuichi was taken aback. “You think you can come to a Chinese restaurant to just sit down and talk? What the hell?! You wouldn’t meet up at a coffee shop and only order water, but you’ll do that for something even worse?!”

“Don’t get mad at me! You’re the one who invited me out! Is this some kind of strategy because you don’t get any customers?”

“Yes, in part! Do you know how hard-pressed we are to find customers? Do you just want to abandon your struggling, poverty-stricken classmate? Well, Sakaki?!” She may have been trying to illicit sympathy, but her tone was overbearing and superior.

“...Fine. Fried rice lunch, please.” Yuichi picked the cheapest lunch set from the lunchtime menu on the table. He’d intended to eat lunch at home, but if she was going to interrogate him like this, he didn’t have a choice.

“Dad! One fried rice lunch!” Tomomi called out the order in a loud voice, despite it being unnecessary in the small restaurant.

Tomomi’s father, head chef Nihao the China, folded up his newspaper, set it on the counter, and went into the kitchen.

“Boy, you won’t listen to my own story, but the minute I drop Aiko’s name, you come running? Kind of hurts, y’know?” Tomomi started, sitting down opposite of him. It seemed she had no intention of doing her job.

“Listen... if you say someone’s life is on the line, of course I’m going to come,” Yuichi said. On the phone before, Tomomi had said that Aiko was in danger.

“Oh? So if I said my own life was in danger, you’d listen to my story?” she asked.

“...I’d find it a little bit fishy, but I wouldn’t want you dying because I ignored you, so I’d at least hear you out,” Yuichi answered after a moment’s thought. He was a bit closer to her than most of his classmates, so he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night if something happened to her.

“You’re very honest, Sakaki,” she said.

“So? What’s going on?” he asked.

Judging from how she had talked when she’d come to see him in the hospital, Tomomi knew a lot about what was going on in town, so Yuichi doubted she was lying or joking.

“It’s going to be a long story. Is that okay?” she asked.

“Well, I did order food, and I don’t have much else to do right now...”

“The truth is, I don’t understand everything about it, either. And it might sound a little fishy in parts, so reserve judgment until you hear the whole thing,” she said.

Yuichi nodded and settled in to listen.

“Now... Actually, before I start, how about you spill all your secrets?”

“What secrets?” Yuichi asked, playing dumb. He’d had a lot of secrets from the start, but lately they just seemed to keep piling on.

“Look, don’t bother feigning ignorance after what you did to our shop, okay? I know pretty much everything anyway. That Aiko’s a vampire, that you beat up her big brother, all that stuff.” Tomomi looked completely exasperated.

“Oh... that’s right, Sis was pretty thoughtless back there, huh?” Yuichi remembered how she had leaked the whole series of events to the people in the store by providing a live feed of everything that went down.

“Well, she wasn’t totally thoughtless,” she said. “Why do you think we don’t get many customers here?”

“Because the owner’s a weirdo?”

“No! I mean, he is, but that’s not the reason — it’s because normal people can’t come in here. They don’t even realize it exists!” she cried.

“Huh? But I can come in.”

“That’s because you’re not normal!”

Yuichi found he couldn’t argue with her. After everything that had happened, he couldn’t exactly claim to be just an average high school student.

“I’m not saying you’re a yokai or a monster, okay?” she said. “I mean ‘not normal’ in the sense that you’ve gotten mixed up in special circumstances. Now, to keep going, this is a pocket dimension.”

A pocket dimension. Disbelieving, Yuichi looked out the window.

The light of the setting sun shone in.

“Huh?” He had come in around noon, and not much time could have passed since then. He quickly checked the watch on his arm. It was just after noon. His instincts were correct.

Yuichi rose to his feet, sending the chair over with a clatter. He approached the window.

Across the road was the hedge that surrounded Seishin High. The restaurant was behind the school, so there was nothing suspicious about the view. Which meant that it was only the time that was different.

“...I guess it could be worse...” Yuichi bounced back after a moment. Telling himself not to fixate too much on it, he picked his chair up off the floor.

“Wow, you adapt quickly,” she commented. “I like that about you... Well, when I say pocket dimension, I just mean it’s a little out of phase with everything else. That’s why normal people can’t come in here.”

“But the anthromorphs made it in,” Yuichi objected. But a second later, he realized it was because they weren’t normal, either.

“...Which means Orihara... has entered an isekai without realizing it...” Yuichi wondered if she would be happy to know this place was one.

“Oh, and time doesn’t pass quicker here or anything, so don’t worry about that,” Tomomi added.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Yuichi said. “So now that I know why you don’t get any customers, I have to ask... why do you even run the restaurant?”

“I’ll explain that later. For now, I want a full account of what it is you’ve gotten involved in.”

“Because it’s connected to the stuff with Noro, right? Okay.” There was no point in hiding it now. Yuichi began relaying everything that had gone down since the beginning of spring.

How, after the end of spring vacation, he had suddenly become able to see labels over people’s heads.

How he had realized that one of his classmates, Natsuki Takeuchi, was a serial killer, how she had threatened him as a result, and how they had achieved a tenuous reconciliation afterward.

How he’d had to stop the ambitions of the vampire Aiko Noro’s big brother, Kyoya.

“Oh, wow... I know I asked, but that was way worse than I thought,” Tomomi said. “I wish I hadn’t.”

“You little...”

“But anyway... Soul Reader, huh? That’s not good.”

“Really? I’ve gotten pretty used to it lately, so I was thinking maybe it wasn’t a problem after all?”

“Hmm, I’ll have to explain the Aiko situation for that to make sense, too, so let’s go to that first. Aiko transformed during that incident the other day, right?”

Yuichi thought back to Aiko’s appearance then. Sparkling wings had appeared from her back. It had been an unbelievable sight.

“That was really not good, okay?” Tomomi said. “Aiko’s awakening energized the denizens of the dark world.”

“What was all that, exactly? I don’t have a clue, and not even she seemed to know.”

“Apparently it’s called the Vampire Queen,” Tomomi said. “I don’t know much about it myself, but according to a yokai acquaintance of mine, she was putting out a ton of spiritual power!”

“Yokai acquaintance?” Yuichi asked. That didn’t seem like a line you could just throw out there offhandedly.

“So there are a whole lot of forces making big moves, all around Aiko! They divide into roughly two groups. One group is creatures like Aiko: vampires and yokai and stuff. They either want to support Aiko as leader, or kill her and take her place.”

“Isn’t that two groups?” Yuichi asked.

“They’re similar in the end. They act according to yokai rules, so it’s not that big a problem.”

Yuichi nodded. It was true; there didn’t seem to be anything unusual happening in Aiko’s vicinity for now. She had been calling him daily of late, worried about Yuichi’s health, but she herself sounded as cheerful as ever. Aiko wasn’t good at hiding things, so if anything was wrong, he’d probably know right away.

“The problem is the other group... and this one is a little hard to explain,” Tomomi said. “My knowledge is pretty scattered, so I don’t know for sure, but... well, as you already know, there are vampires and anthromorphs and stuff out there in the world. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is weird... but it means they must have been around for centuries, right?” Yuichi hadn’t thought too hard about what it meant to have superhuman beings in the world prior to this.

“Even so, it’s strange, isn’t it? Like, remember how the vampire you fought transformed? It increased its mass freely, and its clothing changed with it, right? Doesn’t that seem kind of... like, physically impossible? And from another angle, doesn’t it seem strange that something like that could have existed for so long without people knowing about it?”

“You have a point... there’s no real logical explanation for it,” Yuichi agreed.

“Yet logical or not, they clearly exist, so we just have to accept it,” Tomomi said. “Well, the real answer is that they operate under different physical laws. They exist as part of a different worldview than we do, with different rules.”

Tomomi continued to explain that there were as many worlds out there as there were people. “People” referred to beings with human-like intelligence, who each had their own worlds.

These worlds were all different, but since they had many broad points in common, they could compromise to co-exist.

“Yep, I don’t understand a bit of it!” Yuichi admitted honestly.

“This is all just what I was told, so I don’t know all the details, but the point is, every person has their own world,” Tomomi said. “And while every person has their own world, the broad outlines are predetermined, and there are central figures who are like the personification of a given worldview. Those people are called Worldview Holders.”

“And they decide the rules of the world?” Yuichi asked. It all sounded pretty absurd to Yuichi. People like that would basically be called gods.

“They aren’t necessarily doing it consciously,” Tomomi said. “But the worldviews of the people around the Holder are strongly influenced by the Holder’s own. As a result, the world around a Holder will cohere into one the Holder recognizes. Of course, there are a lot of Holders out there, which means you sometimes wind up with conflicting worldviews coming into contact. When that happens, it’s called a World Conflict, and the weaker world is integrated into the stronger one.”

“You expect me to believe that? How would you even know?” Yuichi demanded.

“Normal people don’t notice it,” she said. “But sometimes you have someone awaken some supernatural ability, or catch a glimpse of a yokai or something, and then they realize that there’s more than just one set of rules in the world. We chalk this up to ‘worldview,’ but there are other opinions on how to interpret it. Some people think something else is going on, like the world is all the dream in the mind of a clam, or that it’s all a computer simulation, or something.”

Her words set Yuichi deep into thought. It was too much for him to accept right away. But those words that Yuichi could see... Maybe he was seeing something that had to do with this “worldview” she was describing.

“You don’t have to believe in it, Sakaki,” Tomomi said. “What matters is that some people do. And now that Aiko’s awakened, there are people who believe her to be the central figure of a worldview where vampires can transform and fly.”

“And you’re saying those people will come after her?” Yuichi asked.

“Yeah. Aiko doesn’t realize it yet, and she’s not very strong. But the more she awakens, the more she may begin to draw in the worlds around her, and overwrite them as worlds where yokai run rampant. There are forces out there who are afraid of that, and who will stop at nothing to end it while they still can... that’s what I mean when I say that I think Aiko is in danger.”

“Not really much to go on, is it? I’ll try to be careful, though.” He didn’t know, concretely, what he was supposed to do, or how to go about it. But either way, he should probably keep an eye out around Aiko.

“Take special care during your training camp trip,” Tomomi said. “I won’t tell you not to go, but a Holder who leaves their home base will suffer a weakening of their worldview. Holders with sturdy worldviews rarely die, but sometimes you see a Holder take a trip away from home, and they die just like that.”

As she finished her advice, Tomomi stood up, went to the kitchen and brought back Yuichi’s fried rice lunch. Then she sat down in front of him again.

“What kind of waitress watches her customer eat?” Yuichi asked.

“I’m not done talking! Don’t you want to know how I know all this, who Nihao the China is, why your Soul Reader is such a dangerous ability...”

“Oh, no thanks,” Yuichi said lightly. “I don’t want to hear it.”

✽✽✽✽✽

Mochizuki Gastrointestinal Hospital, now known as the Pink Clinic. It looked abandoned, but it wasn’t. Electricity, gas, water, and essential utilities were all in place, and the entrances and exits could be locked.

Night after night, rowdy young people went there to have a good time. They didn’t have to force their way in, either.

The owner of the building was Michio Jonouchi: president of Jonouchi Pharmaceuticals, and the father of Takashi Jonouchi. He had once used this building as a base of operations to raise his own personal militia. But that militia had been stolen from him by a vampire, and then destroyed by something else. As a result, no one came to that former hospital anymore.

Michio Jonouchi believed the place to have no further use to him, and seemed to be intent on abandoning it. But for Takashi Jonouchi, it still served a purpose.

“Honestly... how can you live in a place like this?” Yuri Konishi sneered as she entered the room.

It was true that it was in a poor state — disposable lunch trays and instant food containers scattered all around — but Takashi couldn’t see how it was any of her business how or where he lived.

“Why do you care?” he asked. “What matters is that we can talk in private here.”

It was an underground room in the hospital that only members of the Jonouchi family could access. Takashi had been living there for a while, ever since he’d lost his wolf-man powers.

It contained all the necessary appliances (even if they were cheap ones), and he wanted for nothing there. The Jonouchi family had hidden rooms like this all over the city. Takashi didn’t know what his father had had in mind in building them, but he knew it couldn’t be anything good.

“The more important question is, what do we do next? It sounded like you had a plan, after all,” he said.

Yuri had claimed that she would give Takashi the power of the anthromorph. That was why he had taken her hand. He had brought her here to hear her proposal.

While Yuri glared at him, Takashi took a seat on the room’s simple bed.

From there, he gazed at her. And once again, it occurred to him that she wasn’t his type.

Yuri was a beautiful girl who did not look Japanese, with her curves, her blonde hair, and her deep-set features. But he couldn’t stand her eyes. Her gaze was the picture of haughty arrogance, lacking any trace of ladylike refinement.

“Kurokami Island,” she said. “That’s where you should go.”

Takashi, having no idea what she was talking about, prompted her to continue.

“We have two objectives,” Yuri went on. “One is to restore your anthromorph power. That island is home to the Beast God faith, and nearly everyone who lives there is some sort of anthromorph. They’ll be holding a large ritual there on the day of the full moon, so we’ll need to go there quickly in order to make it in time.”

“Wait a minute!” Takashi interrupted Yuri before she could continue. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“What is it?”

“I feel like I’m missing something here. How is undergoing the ritual on this island going to make me a werewolf again?”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “I had a feeling I was omitting something fundamental.”

“You barely talked to me at all on the way here.”

“Put simply, the world we live in is part of a story,” she said.

Takashi fell silent and narrowed his eyes at Yuri. Perhaps he had taken hands with the wrong person.

“Excuse me! Why are you looking at me like that?” Yuri demanded.

“Are you putting me on?” Takashi asked.

“Let me see, how to explain it...” Yuri pondered. “To say that it’s a story is more a figure of speech... Have you ever heard of the anthropic principle?”

“That’s the philosophy that the universe is capable of supporting human life because it wouldn’t be observable otherwise, right?” A girl Takashi had dated a long time ago had seen it in some anime she’d watched and described it to him. He had found it a very foolish theory.

“I’m glad you’re familiar with it. That will speed things up. So let’s begin based on that. The ‘anthro’ in ‘anthropic’ principle refers to mankind, right? Lumping all humans together. That’s a bit of a reckless way of looking at it, don’t you think? So let’s assume that universes are not designed to suit all of humanity, but to suit individuals. In other words, everyone has their own universe.”

“But... the universe doesn’t suit me at all! If the world I perceive was made for me, then it would bow to my every whim, wouldn’t it? But it doesn’t! You’ve seen what I’ve been reduced to, losing my power and wandering hopelessly through this city...”

“That’s easily explained,” she countered. “It simply means that you lost, at some point, without even realizing it. You were drawn into someone else’s world — in other words, someone else’s story. Demoted from a protagonist to a mere side character — an enemy to be vanquished. But that isn’t your fault. It is inevitable that those who fail to recognize the existence of the story unwittingly become characters in somebody else’s.”

“Who’s the protagonist, then?” he demanded. “Exactly who did this to—”

“Aiko Noro.”

Takashi stiffened. He had some unpleasant associations with the name.

“That’s right,” she said. “I’ve seen it. Aiko Noro is trying to barge her way into the center of a story about the existence of vampires and anthromorphs.”

“I’ll believe your talk about stories for now... but how does that lead to me getting my power back?” he asked.

“You need to let yourself be drawn into the story of the Beast God faith on Kurokami Island. The god of that island is the embodiment of another story — another protagonist, in other words. At the moment, it’s far more powerful than Aiko Noro. Since you’ve transformed once already, I think it’s quite possible that you could succeed.”

“...I understand,” Takashi said. Yuri seemed to have unwavering faith in what she was saying. Rather than trying to argue further, he decided to accept it and move on. “You said your first objective was to get me to transform again. What was your other objective?”

“To kill Aiko Noro,” Yuri said.

“Does this have something to do with her being a protagonist?” he asked.

“Yes,” Yuri said. “With the Noro family currently weakened, this is our chance to strike. With Aiko Noro gone, this vampire-centric world will burst at the seams... and in that moment, I can create a dark world of anthromorphs centered around me!”

Takashi frankly found Yuri’s explanation dubious and hard to swallow. But he had nowhere to go, and not even the faintest clue as to what he should do from here on out. Thus, if it offered him even the slightest possibility of restoring the power he sought, he had no choice but to go along with this slightly nutty girl.

He steeled himself for what lay ahead.

Chapter 2: What’s So Fun About Going to the Beach?

Their destination was on the far western coast of Japan’s main island, Honshu.

Between the bullet train and transfers between local buses, it had taken Yuichi’s group half a day to get there from Seishin.

It was, as the travel time might imply, a remote country town.

The Noros had summer houses in far more accessible locations, and indeed, Aiko’s father had acted unhappy about their choice. But the final decision had lain with Mutsuko, and once she had made up her mind, no one could change it.

It wasn’t large enough to be called a peninsula. It was just a plot of land that jutted out from the archipelago of Japan like a blister. It was known as Madono Island, for though it was connected by land, it was surrounded by the ocean.

The only way to get there was an isthmus several hundred meters across. Of course, it could also be accessed by boat, but there were no regular ferries there.

Fishing and farming were the main forms of livelihood for the residents there. Of the two, fishing was slightly more common. The part of the island that faced the Sea of Japan was known as a natural fishing harbor, and the town’s major export was fish cake made from the copious seafood that was caught there.

It also did healthy business as a tourist retreat, thanks to its breathtaking views. Though not well known to the general public, it was famous among the upper classes for its summer houses.

The population had been decreasing recently, and currently stood at 1,018. That wasn’t really a problem for the locals, but...

“A terrible doom will soon visit them!!!” Mutsuko cried.

“No it won’t!” Yuichi yelled back at Mutsuko. Then he looked around quickly. Everyone on the bus, aside from their group, was elderly couples. They were all likely residents of the town, and he had wondered if they might have been offended by Mutsuko’s comment. Fortunately, it seemed the comment had gone unheard. They were all snoozing away.

“Aww! It seems like a pretty dangerous place to be if something were to happen, though!” Mutsuko announced.

It was just past noon, and the bus was now crossing the land bridge to Madono Island. To the left was a sheer precipice to the ocean, and to the right, a towering, rocky cliff. In other words, if this road were to be blocked off, there would be no way of getting back to the mainland.

“If that cliff ever caved in, it’d become an isolated island!” Mutsuko added. “Then... what if! What if someone was killed there? The police couldn’t get there right away! We’d have to solve the murder ourselves! It’d be a closed circle mystery! Without the police, there’d be no forensic analysis, and the murderer would surely be among us!”

“If that happened, we could just leave it to the great detective we met along the way,” Yuichi said.

“You really think we’d just run into a great detective?” Aiko asked. She was squeezed up against him, which was making Yuichi feel a little awkward. He couldn’t stop thinking of how smooth her arm felt against his.

Aiko Noro. A petite girl with a short bob haircut. She was Yuichi’s classmate and fellow member of the survival club. Above her head hung the label “Love Interest.” It had previously been “Vampire,” but she didn’t do much that was vampiric, so he didn’t even think about it most of the time.

They were sitting in the five-passenger seat that made up the back of the bus. From the left, it was Natsuki, Kanako, Yoriko, Yuichi, Aiko, and Mutsuko. Six of them. They had managed to fit, but it was very cramped.

There were quite a few open seats elsewhere, and it might have been easier to spread out more, but Mutsuko wouldn’t hear of it.

They were also all in their school uniforms. It was a formality that probably didn’t matter much, but since it was a club activity, they’d decided to go with it.

“If there just happens to be a rockslide, and there just happens to be a murder, what’s wrong with assuming there just happens to be a great detective?” Yuichi asked.

“I just think it’s kind of unfair of you to want to push it all on him just because you can’t be bothered...” Aiko said.

“How are we supposed to solve a murder, exactly?” Yuichi retorted. “It’s a bit over the heads of ordinary high school students, don’t you think?”

“If you were the detective... you could probably give the suspects hell,” Aiko offered.

Yuichi grimaced openly at the words. She was right. If a murder occurred, there’d be a limited number of suspects. The quickest way to solve it might be through torture. He had confidence in his ability to make people talk.

“Aw, no! That isn’t fair! You’ve gotta solve the case with logic and deduction!” Mutsuko protested. Mutsuko loved stories about torture and violence, but clearly, she drew a line between that and her love of mysteries.

“A whodunnit where everything is solved with violence... that sounds like a good light novel,” a quiet girl with a soft hair style spoke up in a tranquil voice. It was Kanako Orihara, survival club vice president and “Isekai Fanatic,” a lover of stories about ordinary people transported to other worlds and time periods.

She wrote stories herself, and published them on an online fiction website, where they were apparently becoming fairly popular. The way she spoke suggested she was getting inspiration as a writer.

“Big Brother, there’s a detective out there who once handled over 600 murder cases in a year,” Yoriko suggested.

“I thought that was a manga.”

“If we meet a boy detective where we’re going, you’ll protect me, won’t you?” Yoriko, who had been clinging to Yuichi’s arm this whole time, seemed to perceive a boy detective as a harbinger of death.

Natsuki said nothing.

The entire time they had been on the bus, Natsuki Takeuchi had been silently staring out the window. Others called her one of the most beautiful girls in the first-year class, and Yuichi found it plausible. Above her head hung the label “Love Interest II.” It had previously been “Serial Killer.”

An isolated island, huh? he thought.

What if Mutsuko was right about something happening there? His anxiety grew as he thought back to something Tomomi Hamasaki had told him.

✽✽✽✽✽

“Where are you going for your training camp?” Tomomi had asked him as he’d been finishing his Nihao the China fried rice lunch.

Yuichi explained about Madono Island. He wasn’t quite sure where it was, geographically, so Tomomi brought out an old map to check.

“Ah, it’s that kind of place...” Tomomi said gravely.

“Is it a problem?” Yuichi checked the map, as well. It was a town on the western edge of Honshu, jutting out into the Sea of Japan. It wasn’t physically very large — small enough you could cover it with a finger — so it was hard to read the specifics on the map.

“Well, see...” she hedged. “Closed-off places like this often end up forging a very specific worldview. A worldview is influenced by the number of people who believe in it, so they get stronger when you have a lot of people who believe the same thing clustered together in a small place. If another Holder went to a place like this, their own worldview could weaken as a result. In other words, Aiko might have trouble using her vampire powers in a place like this.”

“What do you mean?” Yuichi asked.

“I mean... a secluded country village that holds some gruesome ritual festival might have its own bizarre worldview, and might reject the concept of Western-style vampires. The god, or whatever, that their worldview venerates would have much more powerful influence. I mean, I guess I might be worrying too much. It could just be an ordinary harbor town.”

“Hmm...” Yuichi said. “But Noro’s family has a villa there, you know? It should be okay, given that.”

“So if anything happens, you can probably just retreat into the villa,” Tomomi agreed. “Aiko’s powers should activate there.”

“You keep talking like I’ll be relying on Noro, but I don’t intend to do that,” he said.

“Right. So no matter what happens, keep Aiko safe, okay? I think you can do it. My dad thinks so, too. He says you have potential.”

“Potential? Nihao the China said that?” Yuichi was a little happy to hear that. He had only seen him in action briefly, but Nihao the China had appeared to be a master of a serious martial art. It seemed like an acknowledgment worth feeling pleased by.

“Hey, you want to be his heir?” Tomomi asked, leaning over the table. “You can succeed the Nihao the China name! I’d be okay with you, Sakaki. You’re attractive, you’re decisive, you’re nice...”

“Not a chance.”

“...you’re forthright with your opinions... wait, hey! Are you saying I’m not good enough for you? Shouldn’t you think about it a little more? With a beautiful girl like me hitting on you?”

“You were hitting on me?” Yuichi asked. “Well, I won’t debate the beautiful girl part... because I’m nice, right?”

✽✽✽✽✽

“Sakaki?” Aiko asked.

“Huh?” Yuichi said, startled. Aiko was looking at him in concern. The fact that he’d been thinking about Tomomi made him feel a little bit awkward.

“We’re here,” she said.

The bus pulled to a stop, and everyone got off together.

It was the kind of place that made a citizen of the 21st century nervous. An unpaved road through the forest stretched out straight ahead. The bus stop was the only man-made structure around.

Aiko checked the map on her smartphone. “Apparently we have to walk a little ways from here. Though I don’t know all the details myself...”

It seemed they still got a cell phone signal, at least. That reduced the chance of ending up in a closed circle mystery. Yuichi felt relieved.

They took a side path, and, after a little walking, arrived at a Western-style mansion.

Of course, it was only a summer house, so it wasn’t as big as the Noros’ main residence. But it was still large enough that the label “mansion” applied. It had apparently been imported from overseas, and thus, it seemed heavy with the weight of history.

As they approached the front door, it opened on its own. Yuichi felt a sense of deja vu; the doors at Aiko’s house had opened by themselves, too.

“Welcome back, my lady.” The person who appeared at the door produced another sense of deja vu.

“Huh? Akiko?” Aiko watched in vague disbelief.

The woman in the classical maid outfit bowed deeply.

Above the woman’s head was the label “Vampire III.” When he had met her at Aiko’s house for the first time, Aiko had stressed to Yuichi that despite her youthful appearance, she was really quite old.

Incidentally, he didn’t know what the number over her head meant. When he met people with the same classification, numbers seemed to correspond to the order in which Yuichi met them. But even then, not everyone had numbers.

“You guys are freaking late! What took you so long?” A blond-haired boy appeared from behind Akiko and started addressing Yuichi flippantly. “And hey, Yuichi, why’d you go on a summer training trip without telling me? I should get invitations to this stuff, y’know?”

His name was Kyoshiro Ibaraki, and today he was dressed casually in a T-shirt and messenger shorts. The label above his head was “Ibaraki-doji,” and as the label implied, he was an honest-to-goodness oni. They had fought once before. Ever since, he seemed to be constantly poking his nose into Yuichi’s business.

“Ha ha ha! Well met, traitors, and welcome to the Noro family villa! Tonight, we host the blood-soaked banquet of frenzied madness!” Another figure appeared from behind Ibaraki. It was Kyoya Noro. He was a third-year at Seishin High School and Aiko Noro’s older brother. He was a vampire like Aiko and Akiko, and the label over his head read “Vampire II.”

He had long hair and deep-set features. Normally he would be considered a very attractive man, but his outfit put that into doubt. It was a white straightjacket, strewn here and there with black leather belts that would seem to serve as binders for it. On top of that, he wore a black cape with red lining. Perhaps he was going for a “sealed vampire” theme.

A trio of unexpected housemates.

Yuichi hesitated for a minute, then punched Ibaraki.

Ibaraki went flying from the force of the blow, but immediately sprang up and marched back into his personal space. “Lay off the violence, would you?!”

Yuichi knew he had been holding back, but he was still surprised by how quickly Ibaraki recovered. He must have been expecting it.

“I didn’t invite you,” Yuichi retorted. “Thus, you’re an uninvited guest. Thus, an enemy.”

“That’s a pretty big leap in logic!” Ibaraki yelled.

“Weren’t you the one who said you weren’t going to hang around?” Yuichi shot back. “Quit acting buddy-buddy every time we meet. You’re not going to win me over!”

Ibaraki was an oni who ate people. Yuichi couldn’t really be friends with him. Natsuki had killed people too, of course. But cannibalism was where Yuichi really drew the line.

“I haven’t done anything to humans lately, you know. I’ve been eating normal food, like humans eat. I’m experimenting, get it?” Ibaraki said theatrically. “If an oni can live without killing humans, it solves our problem, right?”

“I read a line like that in a manga called Parasyte, and that guy was lying,” Yuichi said.

Ibaraki averted his eyes.

With nothing further to say to Ibaraki, Yuichi looked at Kyoya. “So your house arrest is over... I suppose?”

He had been about to say “over, huh?” then revised his language. Kyoya was his elder, after all, and Aiko’s brother. He deserved a little respect.

He had heard that Kyoya had been sent into the family dungeon to reflect.

Kyoya shrank away as Yuichi addressed him. “Y-Yeah. That’s, ah...”

His behavior seemed rather timid, but to appear before Yuichi again after all that had happened suggested a rather bold personality deep down.

He’s acting pretty different, though... Yuichi thought.

Then again, maybe it was the last time they’d met that had been the exception. The stories Aiko had told about her brother before suggested a more frivolous sort of person. Maybe this was closer to the real him.

“Hey, no big deal!” Mutsuko proclaimed. “Yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally! Oh, but listen up, Yu. Even if he only fights in human form from now on, no pressing him to turn into a wolf or sprout bat wings like before. That’s like reminding Hiei of the time he was covered in eyeballs. It’s cruel!”

“Lady Mutsuko, would not a Great Ape metaphor be more apt?” Akiko suggested. “Master Kyoya is someone who seemed to appear in the story for the sole purpose of getting redeemed and then losing to make villains seem stronger, but turned out to be a sensitive and easily wounded person.”

Akiko’s words weren’t helping at all.

“You really don’t hold grudges at all, do you, Sis?” Yuichi asked. He looked over at Kanako and Yoriko, wondering if it was okay to talk about this bizarre stuff in front of them. They hadn’t been part of that incident at all, and it seemed like it might lead to trouble if they learned about it. Fortunately, they didn’t actually seem to care at all.

They probably just think it’s more of Sis’s usual careless chattering... It was natural that they wouldn’t take it seriously.

“Now, let’s not stand around talking in the doorway,” Akiko said. “I shall show you to your rooms.” Perhaps realizing they might stand there chatting away forever, Akiko led them all away from there and to their rooms.

They had decided they would go to play on the beach after they dropped off their luggage, so they all quickly got changed and met up behind the house. They walked through the line of trees planted to prevent sand erosion and came out on the beach.

“Huh? I thought your house would have a private beach, Noro!” Mutsuko exclaimed, acting exaggeratedly shocked by the sight of the beach full of visitors.

Mutsuko was wearing a swimsuit of the competitive racing sort. She didn’t have much of a chest, but her proportions were perfectly balanced, like a model’s. The suit’s silhouette was evocative of a tokusatsu hero, and apparently Mutsuko had had it specially made, though Yuichi didn’t know all the details. Annoyingly, she couldn’t put it on by herself, so he had had to help her.

“No, of course not,” Aiko said. “Apparently all Japanese beaches are owned by the state, so you can’t just keep them to yourself. Lots of people with summer homes in the area come here to play, so I guess it gets a lot of traffic.”

Aiko was dressed in a frilly bikini, walking side by side with Yuichi. Yuichi’s group was getting attention for a number of reasons, but one of them was definitely Aiko.

Perhaps embarrassed by being openly stared at, Aiko was keeping her own eyes fixed on the ground.

It is hard to keep your eyes off her, though... Yuichi thought. Aiko had a round, childish face, but when she wore a swimsuit, it became clear just how busty she was.

“Boy, it feels great to have all eyes on you, huh? You’re sucking in their attention like a black hole!” Ibaraki said. He was wearing a red speedo and absolutely nothing else. Due to his foreign appearance, perhaps, he was getting a lot of attention from the women himself.

“Hahaha! Of course she is!” Kyoya let out a piercing laugh. “She is my little sister, after all!”

“Indeed. All must bow before the sight of the mistress in a swimsuit,” Akiko chimed in.

Neither of them were wearing swimsuits; they were still in their straightjacket and maid outfit.

Aiko’s eyes remained on the ground.

“So, uh, what are you guys here for, anyway? Well, with Ibaraki I can probably guess...” Yuichi asked curiously. He couldn’t understand what the other two would be doing attending their training camp.

“I-I just came to enjoy our summer house! And while I’m at it, I will of course protect my lovely little sister from the boorish ruffians running wild out here beneath the summer sun!”

“Master Yuichi, it is only natural that I should be here. Who else would take care of you during your stay?” Yuichi had heard that the house had a caretaker, who would see to the bare minimum of their needs. She had probably just come to enjoy herself, then.

“Are you okay, Big Brother?” Yoriko asked, clinging to Yuichi’s right arm. She was wearing a daring black lace bikini, which she pulled off so well, it was hard to believe she was in middle school. All the girls present were beautiful, but Yoriko was the only one among them who was aware of it. She knew how to be looked at, and how to show off to others.

“No, actually, so could you stop clinging to me?” Yuichi asked. He was wearing long surfer shorts and a soft parka. He also had a strange, long rod mounted over his shoulder. It was apparently a beach umbrella that Mutsuko had prepared.

The real reason Ibaraki had come to the beach house before them was to bring the various tools Mutsuko had readied for the trip. It seemed that Natsuki’s stalker, Sakiyama, had helped with the driving, although he himself was nowhere to be seen.

The umbrella was extremely heavy, and Yuichi was walking on sand, which made keeping his balance hard. Having someone clinging to his arm made it even harder, so he really did wish she would stop.

“That reminds me... you really are a man, Ibaraki!” Mutsuko announced as she scrutinized Ibaraki in his swimsuit. It was a bizarre thing to say.

“Huh? Yeah, I am. Why?” Ibaraki responded, uncertainly.

“You don’t know about the Ibaraki-doji female theory?” Mutsuko asked. “There’s even one that she’s the lover of Shuten-doji!”

“What the hell? That’s nuts! Shuten’s my brother! Gross!” Ibaraki ran off ahead, apparently offended by the suggestion. Yuichi couldn’t help but sympathize.

“This looks like a good spot!” Mutsuko announced, pointing as they came to the water’s edge.

Yuichi unfurled the pole he had brought. It looked like a large, Japanese-style umbrella. He stuck it into the sand and affixed it in place.

It was heavy, naturally, so the framework was made of metal. The pole was a total of four meters in length, with one meter of that stuck into the ground. The total diameter of the umbrella was five meters.

The umbrella shook periodically, as if not quite able to withstand its own weight. Yuichi didn’t know what it was made of, but it seemed sufficiently pliant so that it wouldn’t just break. It did stand out, though — both the umbrella and the people beneath it.

The big, blue ocean spread out before their eyes, and the weather was perfect for beachgoing. Yuichi cast a glance at Mutsuko, assuming she must be feeling satisfied.

Mutsuko looked distinctly unsatisfied. “I worked really hard to get everything ready, but I just don’t get the appeal of beachgoing!”

“Hey!” Yuichi couldn’t find it in him to work up a more rational objection.

It had been a lot of work, hauling that huge umbrella all the way to the water’s edge. It had been long and cumbersome; the sun made the metal scorching to the touch, and he’d had to walk it all along the shifting sands of the beach. And with just one line, Mutsuko had rendered it all pointless.

“Well, it’s true! What are we even supposed to do here?!” she complained.

Yuichi wasn’t sure what she was mad at, but the brunt of her anger seemed to be directed at Yuichi. She grabbed the pole of the vibrating umbrella in a daunting pose and glared directly at him.

Yuichi just looked at her, losing the nerve to say anything more.

“Um... We could swim?” Aiko suggested.

“Noro!” Mutsuko exclaimed. “What exactly is fun about swimming in the ocean? First, you have to walk through it until your whole body is pruney, and then you’re stuck in that slimy salt water! There’s nothing good about it! If you want to swim, why not do it in a pool?”

“You just shot down the whole point of beachgoing!” Yuichi shouted, wondering why they had even come if that was how she felt.

“The dictionary definition of beachgoing seems to include both swimming and sunbathing,” Kanako said nonchalantly. She was wearing a green pareo to hide her swimsuit, and had plunked herself down at the base of the umbrella. She seemed sensitive about the size of her chest, but her efforts to conceal it had just made it stand out more.

She had carried a small notebook PC even here, perhaps in case she wanted to do some writing for fun. She had used that to look up the definition of beachgoing.

“Sunbathing?! Heatstroke, sunburn, skin cancer, freckles! What’s the point of it?” Mutsuko exclaimed.

“What about watermelon-splitting?” Yoriko asked.

“Yu would never miss, so it’s boring!” she complained.

It was true that blindfolding him and spinning him around would not have been enough to cause Yuichi to lose track of a watermelon.

“I enjoy the people-watching,” Natsuki said. “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? The beach is the only legal venue in which one can scrutinize people walking around mostly naked. Perhaps that’s the real fun of beachgoing.”

“You sound like a guy, Takeuchi!” Yuichi said.

Natsuki was wearing a concealing pair of indigo separates, their school swim uniform. She clearly didn’t care about having fashionable swimwear.

“Fine. What did you actually want to do, Sis?” Yuichi asked, giving up.

Mutsuko glared. “I just associated going to the beach with fun! But now that we’re here, I can’t help but feel disappointed! I was all, ‘It’ll be just like the swimsuit episode in an anime!’ but just putting on a swimsuit doesn’t actually make this enjoyable!”

“Fair enough,” Yuichi conceded. But another part of him still strongly objected to the idea of packing everything up right away. “We only just got here, though. Can we find a way to stick around awhile?”

Mutsuko’s lithe body twisted through the air. She brought her palm down in a wide arc and slammed it into the ball.

Crouching on the other end of the spike was Natsuki, who received the ball with locked forearms and sent it rocketing upwards. Then she jumped after it, aiming to spike the ball that she had received herself.

This time, it was Mutsuko who blocked Natsuki’s fierce blow, and she sent it flying back at her.

The rules of the game were completely opaque, but they were both clearly taking it very seriously.

“Um, I don’t think this quite fits the image of ‘beach ball play’...” Yuichi murmured.

Both girls were extremely athletic, so the match was heated, but it was hard to tell how they were ever going to finish it.

The two of them were on Team: Beach Ball Play.

Yuichi had assumed they’d be blowing up a beach ball and batting it around, but the ball Mutsuko had ended up producing was a beach volleyball. It was slightly softer than the kind used in indoor volleyball, but otherwise no different.

Why were they doing this? Because they had decided to try some typical beachgoing activities.

Mutsuko had said that she wasn’t enjoying the beach, but she’d apparently agreed that as long as they were there, she should find something to do. They’d used rock paper scissors to assign teams, with each team performing one traditional beachgoing activity.

Aiko and Yoriko were standing in the shallows, splashing water at each other. As one might guess from looking at them, they were Team: Splashing in the Water. They weren’t actually doing very much, but the fact that they were both beautiful girls certainly made the sight pleasing to the eye. Whether they themselves were enjoying it was another question entirely.

Ibaraki was making a sandcastle. He was Team: Sand Sculpting. Ibaraki seemed surprisingly artistic, and was making a very nice-looking sandcastle with the nearby children.

Yuichi was dubious. Ibaraki may like children, but he was still a man-eating oni, and Yuichi couldn’t completely wipe away the fear that he was foraging for ingredients.

Kyoya and Akiko weren’t dressed in swimsuits, so they couldn’t participate in true beach activities. Instead, they had gone off to the beach house to buy provisions. The vampires in the straightjacket and maid uniform made for a terrifyingly mismatched pair. Yuichi didn’t want to think what kind of stares they would be getting from those around them for disrupting the beach environment.

The final two were Yuichi and Kanako, who remained under the umbrella.

Yuichi was watching Mutsuko and Natsuki’s beach volleyball to distract himself from his current situation, but he couldn’t remain like that forever.

Kanako was lying face-down on the vinyl sheet they had placed under the umbrella.

“Um, you don’t have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable...” Yuichi said.

It was quite an incredible sight to see Kanako lying face down. Her breasts, crushed beneath her, jutted out to the side. It looked like it couldn’t be healthy.

“But we decided these teams with rock paper scissors...” Kanako said, not sounding bothered in the least.

There was suntan oil in Yuichi’s hands. In other words, Yuichi and Kanako were Team: Suntan Oil Application.

“I’m not very athletic, so I like being able to just lie here,” Kanako said. “Would you rather have a different job, Sakaki the Younger?”

“No, it’s not that I don’t like this, but...” He felt a little rude saying the words “I don’t like this,” even if it was part of a denial, but it really did make him self-conscious. As far as he could see, no one else on the beach was doing anything like this. He couldn’t remember ever being alone with Kanako before, either. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.

But sitting there stewing over it wouldn’t solve the problem. Yuichi steeled up his nerve and squeezed some oil into his hand. Once he had enough, he started massaging it onto Kanako’s back. Her skin was smoother and softer than he imagined it would be.

“Eek!” she shrieked.

“Ah, was that too cold?”

“No, it’s all right,” she said. “You just surprised me.”

A moment later —

“Eek!”

“Um, it’s really awkward to have you keep screaming like that.”

“I’m sorry, but it tickled,” she said.

How long do I have to keep doing this?! Did he have to spread it over her whole body? Did they just have to go through the motions? Well, now that he had started, if he did a half-baked job, she’d end up getting patches of burns, wouldn’t she? As Yuichi thought about all those things, his eyes strayed to where her breasts had squeezed out on either side of her. He was fairly sure seeing a woman naked wouldn’t faze him, but this was against the rules.

“Sakaki the Younger!” Kanako burst out.

“Y-Yes?” Yuichi started in shock, thinking he had been reprimanded for his straying eyes.

“Just putting the oil on is boring, isn’t it?” she asked. “Let’s talk about something.”

“Oh, all right.” Yuichi was a bit relieved by the suggestion; just putting lotion on her in silence was a getting awkward.

“Have you heard of Potalaka?” she asked.

“Potalaka... is that an isekai, too?” he guessed. Kanako generally only talked about two subjects: her stories, or alternate worlds.

“I’m not sure. It’s said to be where the goddess Kannon lives,” she said. “There used to be a ritual where people would go out to sea in boats searching for Potalaka, so I suppose it must be across the ocean?”

He thought about that. “I don’t really know, but if you can get there by crossing the ocean, it’s probably not an isekai. It must be a part of this world, right?”

“In the ritual, you’re shut up in a box and set adrift on the sea, so it’s like you’re being sent to the afterlife,” she said.

“Wouldn’t that just be suicide?” he asked.

“Yes, it was an act of self-sacrifice. It was considered the ultimate act of penance in Buddhism. Although you can’t really train if you die, can you? But since they went to all the effort to go out on the ocean in boats, I just wondered.” Kanako trailed off for a moment, then offered, “What about Nirai Kanai?”

“I have heard of that one,” he said. “Isn’t that part of the Okinawan religion?”

“It’s said to be across the sea, too... though I don’t think I could make it there.” Kanako gazed out at the ocean. Maybe she was letting her mind drift out to an isekai that lay far beyond.

“Um... Orihara, why do you like alternate world stories so much?” He decided to ask the question that had been on his mind for a while. He had known Kanako for several months now, and while they weren’t particularly close friends, she was a daily part of his life. Maybe it was too forward of him, but it seemed like an okay question to ask.

“Sakaki the Younger, don’t you ever want to go somewhere else?” she asked.

“I... guess not,” he said after a moment’s thought. He couldn’t think of anywhere in particular that he might want to go.

“I see. Do you enjoy your life, Sakaki the Younger?” she asked.

“I’m not sure... I never really thought about it. It’s never boring, I guess.”

“Do you ever suffer?” Kanako asked.

Yuichi thought for a moment about his training with Mutsuko. But he was doing that voluntarily. While Mutsuko did force the training on him, if pressed, Yuichi couldn’t say that he hated it. Despite all he said, he thought Mutsuko was a nice person deep down.

“I’ve faced hard times before, but it’s usually nothing I can’t handle,” he said. “Well, maybe that’s just because I’m still a kid...”

“I see,” Kanako said. “I... for a long time, I’ve wanted to go far away... to a place where nobody knows who I am...”

“Orihara... you aren’t enjoying your... um... self?” Yuichi asked. “Enjoying your life” sounded a little too harsh.

“I don’t know. Things changed a bit after I met your sister, and I do sometimes enjoy myself... and yet, something still feels wrong. I don’t know why.” A distant smile formed on Kanako’s lips.

✽✽✽✽✽

“There! What about that? Hey, Noro! Hey! Hey!” Yoriko said as she splashed Aiko with seawater.

Mutsuko had insisted that characters splashing each other in the water was a necessity in a swimsuit episode, and rock paper scissors had determined them both to be on that team. But Yoriko seemed to be pinpoint focusing her splashes at Aiko’s eyes, and Aiko was getting a little annoyed about it.

“What can you do?” Aiko asked. “It’s how things ended up.”

Aiko followed Yoriko’s gaze to where Yuichi and Kanako sat on the vinyl sheet. Kanako was lying face-down, and Yuichi was crouched beside her, massaging her back. They were on Team: Suntan Oil Application.

“What was that? That! I can’t believe... ahh, curse my horrible rock paper scissors luck!” Yoriko complained. “No, I mustn’t rely on luck! Destiny must be forged with one’s own two hands! My rock paper scissors technique is insufficient. I should have trained it!” She was beginning to splash at Aiko even harder than before. “Look at him! He’s humiliated! Why must my brother be subject to such mortification?!”

“It doesn’t seem that bad...” Aiko did feel a little bit jealous, but being on the suntan oil team would probably have been too embarrassing for her. She was a little grateful to be safely on splashing duty.

“What are you talking about? Look closer... oh, he’s so dreamy!” Yoriko’s tone changed halfway through her statement, suddenly sounding deep in the throes of infatuation.

“I’m not going to stare at him...” Aiko muttered.

Yuichi, apparently one for modesty, was wearing a parka. But his body was still well-muscled enough that you could tell at a glance. He wasn’t bulging with muscles, but he was very toned. Aiko blushed as she remembered the times he had held her in those arms.

“That’s not what I meant! It’s... you know... Orihara!” Yoriko complained. “Big Brother, he’s... he’s very interested in Orihara’s breasts!”

“Huh? No, he isn’t...” Aiko remembered the date the three of them had gone on together. He had said he didn’t want a girlfriend.

“Noro... you can’t take things at appearances,” Yoriko scolded. “Maybe he’s serious about not wanting a girlfriend. But that’s different from harboring lusts of the flesh!”

“Lusts of the flesh?” Aiko gasped. What a graphic thing to say. Was that really something a girl in middle school should be talking about? Aiko was at a loss for how to respond.

“Listen to me,” Yoriko said sternly. “He may not want a girlfriend, but that’s different from feeling sexual urges. He’s a pervert, deep down!”

Aiko still wasn’t sure how to respond. “Um, is that why you get changed in front of him, Yoriko?”

“Huh?” Yoriko looked at Aiko like she was an idiot.

“Uh?” Aiko fell silent, uncertain. She had assumed that Yoriko was trying to seduce her brother, but apparently she’d been wrong.

“What are you talking about?” Yoriko asked. “That’s so gross. He can’t react to seeing me naked. What kind of gross brother gets turned on by his little sister? You hear me? I only love my brother because he’s good and wholesome and has no interest in my naked body!”

“Ah, I’ve heard that logic somewhere before...” Aiko said. She seemed to recall Natsuki saying something like that once.

“That’s why it’s so difficult,” Yoriko said. “I’m overflowing with these ambivalent feelings I can’t let out.”

“Um, where did that come from, all of a sudden?”

“Oh, nothing. Pretend I didn’t say that. As I was saying, my brother likes big breasts.”

Aiko looked back at Yuichi. Now that Yoriko had mentioned it, Yuichi did seem to occasionally cast glances at the way Kanako’s chest bulged out beneath her.

Aiko cleared her throat. “Speaking of which... when we were searching my brother’s room, he immediately homed in on his busty girls magazine collection...”

It had happened after her brother had gone missing, and they had searched his room for clues. There had been books scattered over the room, and the fact that Yuichi had immediately picked a big breast photo book out of the lot was very suspicious.

“Anyway!” Yoriko declared. “I feel like he and Orihara could be developing real chemistry right now. Do you really think this is the time to be splashing each other?!”

“Well, I thought it was okay before, but now...” Aiko said slowly.

The two decided to stop splashing each other and climb back up onto the beach.