Chapter 7: If I’m Going to Forget One Day

There were already rays of sunlight shooting through the gaps in the curtain when the handle of the front door slowly turned with a muted click.

Kai pressed the power button on his phone to see that it had just hit 8 o’clock in the morning. The PowerPoint slide on my laptop screen is as blindingly white as the morning sun, he thought, and folded his computer. He also shut his notebook, into which he had aimlessly scribbled words the previous night. None of what was written there had led him to a new idea.

Kai stretched his arms to the ceiling and then whirled around to see his sister, who was wearing a rather risqué bikini, and attempting to stealthily tiptoe in. Misako held a water gun in her right hand and a vinyl kiddie-pool in her left, along with an inflatable pool ring already around her waist. From the look on her face, he had a feeling that she was quite proud of being fully equipped, which she most definitely was.

“Good morning, everyone!” Misako exclaimed.

“I’m the only one here,” Kai replied dryly.

“To share a wonderful moment at the pool with such beautiful girls under a sparkling midsummer sun...” she began rambling. “The gates of paradise have opened! Now, Nanaka-chan, allow me to cover every nook and cranny of yours with sunscreen!”

“...Nee-san?” he ventured.

“Oh, Aya-chan, are you headed for the water slide? Don’t underestimate me. I’ll have you know I’m a novelist who can elegantly handle the waves of encroaching deadlines thrown my way. Watch, as I go down the slide while standing on the inner tube! And when I succeed... you know what comes next, don’t you?”

“............Are you having fun?”

“Don’t stay grounded in reality by yourself!!!” Misako whined at him. “Kaaaaaaaaai! Don’t you understand?! You of all people should know just how badly—just how desperately I wanted to go to the pool with everyone...! How much I wanted to ‘teehee’ and ‘ahaha’ with them!

“Can’t you see that and play along for me?! Or are you basking in a sense of superiority because you got to enjoy the experience with all five of your senses?! That’s low,” she said accusingly. “And lewd! Kai, you naughty perv! I wanted to feast my eyes out of my sockets, too! I’m so frustrated! And sad! Aaarghhh!!! Time, I beg of thee, rewind! But leave my manuscript completed!”

Misako looked like Edvard Munch’s The Scream as she put both of her hands to her disheveled face. She had sped through her words like a spirit speed-chanting a curse as she made her way toward her little brother. Her eyes were bloodshot and overflowing with so many tears that it almost seemed like an elaborate prank.

Just how excited was she for the pool trip? Kai wondered.

...Sigh. He knew letting out his breath audibly would only cause more trouble, so he simply said, “Give me a second,” before heading to his room. He brought back the digital camera that was on his desk, with a single photo that had been properly printed. “Here,” he offered.

“...Could... this be...?” Misako asked haltingly. The developed picture was the first group photo they had taken. Kai had thought of the idea when they’d come across a convenience store with a printer on their way to see off Akane.

In the photograph, Nanaka was smiling. Akane looked like she was posing for a passport, but Aya was sporting a goofy grin. Eru was squinting at the brightness of the sun, and Kai was in the center of the photo. He was blushing as he held out a peace sign and awkwardly stared in the general direction of the camera. Honestly, it was one of the single most embarrassing pictures he had ever been in, but it was Misako’s request, so there had been nothing to be done about it.

“There’s messages from everyone on the back,” he told her. Kai had added a disclaimer that they didn’t have to put much thought into it, but he’d asked all the girls to write a comment all the same.

Thank you very much! I hope you can join us next time, Misako-san! -Nanaka

My sincerest gratitude for allowing me this precious opportunity. -Kurenai Akane

It was fun, but I’d prefer a play store card next time. -Aya

I got some good practice drawing swimsuits, so thanks. -Kuroba

A handful of simple and haphazard messages were written on the back of the photograph. Kai felt awkward penning a note to his own sister himself, so he hadn’t planned on doing so. But Nanaka told him, “She’d be the happiest to see one from you... don’t you think?” Figuring that Misako would only see it once her deadlines had been taken care of, his message simply read, Good work on your manuscript.

“...Did Nanaka-chan get everyone to do this to thank me?” Misako asked.

“............No,” he admitted. So she’s asking me this, after all. “It’s just... I thought you’d be legitimately depressed, so...”

“It was you?”

“...Yeah, what abo— Whoa!” Misako was hugging him in an instant. She was too fast for him to have any chance of escaping. “N-Nee-san...!” he choked out. “Think about what you’re wearing!”

Misako had instantly tossed aside her pool ring and begun clinging to Kai while wearing nothing but a drawstring bikini. She was practically naked at this point, so he could feel a variety of different soft bits pressing against him, but the fact that it was his sister left him less than pleased.

Despite his best efforts to peel her off, Kai couldn’t best Misako’s ridiculously deceptive strength, and she didn’t intend to let go on her own volition. Plus, he realized, trying to force her off could cause her swimsuit to catastrophically slip off.

In fiction, the situation might have been considered a ‘lucky pervert’ moment, but alas, this was reality. Kai was incapable of getting excited over his sister’s body. All he felt was overwhelming discomfort.

“Kai,” Misako suddenly broke the silence at point blank range with the most serious expression he had ever seen on her. “Let’s get married.”

“We can’t,” he told her flatly, “and I don’t want to.”

“Your sister’s serious, you know?”

“The way you just referred to yourself contains all the reasons we can’t. Besides, I’m serious about not wanting to, too.”

“...What a troublesome little princess,” Misako mumbled. “Rejecting a proposal from yours truly? ...Now I’m interested.”

“You can do your weirdly good ‘prince charming’ voice all you want, but you’re not raising any flags here,” he insisted. That aside, Shiraseki Kai’s gender was male. At the very minimum, he wasn’t a princess, anyway. “...Well, I’m glad you cheered up.”

“Don’t excite me out of the blue any more than you already have, my kitten. Otherwise, I won’t be able to hold myself... Hm?” Misako stopped, as if she had discovered a tiny stain on a shirt. “Come to think of it... you look awful, Kai. Did you paint those bags on yourself?”

“Why would I ever do that?” he demanded grumpily.

“Then I guess something must have happened,” Misako deduced. “Alright. I guess your dependable, trouble-busting older sister will give you a little leg up.”

“Can you stop giving me multiple places to stop you in one sentence?” Kai complained. First, Misako was a self-sustained troublemaking factory. Second, her legs had already been wrapped around him, so it was a little late for her to be offering him a ‘leg up.’

“Big sis is in a really good mood right now,” she said coaxingly. “I’m pretty sure I’d properly answer any question you ask me.”

“...In that case...” Perhaps it was because Kai had been swept up in his stupid sister’s blazingly fast pace. But he had spent the entire night wracking his brain... to come up with zero ideas. He was probably even more exhausted than he himself realized. But by the time he’d noticed, Kai had already thrown his question out. “Nee-san, why did you become a novelist?”

It wasn’t as if this was the first time Kai had asked. The last time he’d tried, Misako had dodged the subject by saying, “It’s to write about my little brother.” She did include a little brother in some form or fashion in each of her novels, so it wasn’t fair to say that this was a complete lie. However, just like with her usual antics, Kai had a hard time figuring out what she was truly thinking.

“...Young man,” she said sternly, “can you promise that you’ll talk to me about what’s on your mind afterwards?”

Kai hesitated for a moment, but ultimately nodded in reply. Misako gave a mature laugh, answering, “It’s simple. I wanted to live out my own reality.”

“...Sorry, what?”

“The reason I like novels the best out of any art form is that—no matter how many copies are printed, no matter how many people read the book—all it amounts to is a different world for everyone,” she explained. “In essence, I’m greedy. I want someone to see the world I see, but I don’t want to share my world with anyone else. That’s why it had to be novels.”

“But, if a lot of people read it... Is that different?” he wondered.

“For example: ‘The man was of average height and build, but his t-shirt bent along his hunched back as he rode his bicycle upside-down.’ I’m sure that no two people would imagine the exact same man,” Misako went on. “There exists a world for every person who reads it; that’s all it is. I don’t have any noble reason... I love creating my own little world. And I’m happy if that can become someone else’s unique world, too. That’s why I write novels.”

“...So that’s why,” Kai muttered. He could tell from all the years he’d known her; despite the fact that there were a lot of parts about her answer he didn’t quite understand, this was undeniably one of the rare occasions that Misako was laying her heart bare.

“...And?” she asked, pressing him to hold up his side of the bargain with her eyes.

Having experienced one of Misako’s scarce moments of pure honesty, Kai didn’t feel the urge to run or hide, and explained everything from A to Z. He explained that he had talked big by promising to write the proposal himself, and that no good ideas had come to mind. That, maybe, the reason for his failure was that he didn’t have anything that he wanted to make. Not only that, but his reason for wanting to do so hadn’t been spurred on by Hifumi Tetsuma, Kongouin Mirei, or even his own pride as a planner. It was just a pathetic show of bravado because he was anxious about the forward momentum he saw in Nanaka.

Misako neither laughed nor taunted and simply nodded along as she listened... or so he’d thought.

“...Pft.”

“.........Huh? Nee-san...” Did she just... laugh?

“...I, I can’t. Ah... Ah... Ahahahaha!” she cried out, exploding in laughter. “Kai, even for me, that’s too much for my heart! Give me a second here!”

“I already told you everything, anyway,” Kai said harshly. Misako’s roaring laughter was so far beyond his expectations that he couldn’t help but be a tad bitter about it.

“Sorry, sorry. I was wondering what kind of serious trouble you had for me, but... Okay, let me give you two bits of advice,” she began, holding up the index finger on her right hand. “First, Kai, it’s a mistake to think of people’s minds as some mathematical formula in which some singular input leads to some singular result. You see, humans aren’t made to be that simple. For example, I came here from my own apartment in this swimsuit earlier.”

“What’s wrong with you...?” Kai wondered.

“What do you think was going through my head?”

“That’s my line...”

“I thought, ‘I want to surprise Kai.’ I also had a feeling that it’d feel nice to walk around in a swimsuit,” she added. “Plus, I was curious as to how people would look at me if I did it. Of course, the desire to vent my frustration over missing the pool trip was probably mixed in there, too. All of these ideas were contained in the human we know as ‘Shiraseki Misako.’”

“I have a feeling that can all be summed up as your brain boiling over,” Kai said dryly.

“Kai, I’m sure that Hifumi Tetsuya person lit a fire within you,” Misako went on, ignoring his statement. “The same goes for that Kongouin Mirei girl. You got heated... and frustrated. There’s nothing wrong with that. The anxiety you noticed over Nanaka-chan is probably true, too. But that’s not the only thing. Kai, you have a habit of belittling yourself.”

—Do not submit yourself to inadequacy. Kai heard a certain voice in his head.

“You just like social games,” she told him. “That’s more than enough. Bring that with you to the ends of the world. Kai, reckless confidence and hope for the future are the privileges of youth. I try my best not to forget them, but it’s harder than you’d think... One day, they’ll slip my mind. That’s why they’re special,” Misako cautioned herself with a delicate voice.

Nee-san, Kai was about to open his mouth when she suddenly shifted gears.

“But all that aside, aren’t you turning away from another important emotion of yours?”

“Huh?” Another one?

“I mean, this is basically all because you wanted to show off your cool side to Nanaka-chan, right?”

“............Huh?” No. No way. As the words spun around Kai’s mind, he recognized that his face was getting hotter by the second. His embarrassment was about to exceed its boiling point.

The fact that he was embarrassed meant... Misako was spot on. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.

In that moment, Kai vaguely perceived a flash of brightness, which was Misako snapping a photo of him with her digital camera. “Ahahahahaha!” she laughed.

“There’s no helping it, Kai,” she told him next. “The maze of youth is like a labyrinth, and there’s no one a person understands less than themselves. Leave it to Ace Detective Misako to deduce all this from a stray lamb’s testimony!” Mustering every ounce of smugness into her smile, Misako chortled.

Kai wanted to say something, but he was still too busy cooling down his face.

“And the other thing,” Misako went on, lifting a second finger to create a V. Now that she mentioned it, Kai recalled her saying she had two suggestions, but he was so flustered that he wanted to run away before even hearing the other one.

“Our paths may differ, but this is my advice as a professional. When you’re so lost that you question foundational ideas like ‘Why do I create?’ it means you’re tunnel-visioned to the point of blindness. It’s impossible to create something good in that state. For times like these,” Misako said, shoving Kai’s back and causing him to stumble in the direction of the front door. He turned to catch his phone and wallet that his sister had tossed his way. “You should take a walk until your mind is nice and empty. Go, get going!” Misako kept pushing him along, and he was at the door in seconds.

It was a fact that Kai wanted to cool off. At any rate, he sincerely wanted to put his heart in order after all the embarrassment he’d just experienced.

There was something fleeting about Misako’s gentle smile as she watched over him and said, “I only know how to live by creating things on my own. I don’t know the hardships of creating a single world with someone else. He fights his own battles in a foreign land; that’s why I respect the human we know as Shiraseki Kai. So, hold your head high,” she concluded.

If only she hadn’t been in a bikini as she said it, Kai knew he would have been proud of his awesome older sister.