Intermission: Brother-Sister
Intermission: Brother-Sister
Intermission: Brother-Sister
Intermission:
Brother-Sister
G ONDOU ASAMI, A.K.A. GON-CHAN, SECOND-YEAR of class 3 of Momozono Junior High, peered over her friend’s shoulder at the camera’s LCD display. It was pointed at her friend’s brother, a boy by the name of Nukumizu Kazuhiko. She wanted to call it a candid photoshoot, but photoshoots typically weren’t held from around shady corners. There was no sugarcoating what they were up to.
Nukumizu Kaju sneered as she double-checked her work.
Gon-chan tore a piece of rainbow cotton candy and fed it to her. “You’re a natural, Nuku-chan. You sure you don’t wanna go ’n say hi or nothing?”
Kaju, a.k.a. Nuku-chan, gobbled up the candy and smiled a slimy grin. “It wouldn’t be very candid if he knew I was snapping photos, now, would it? Look, look! I got him choking on udon! This is an SS-rare right here!”
“M’kay. Well. Happy for you.” Gon-chan tore off a bit of yellow.
Her friend had a bit of an obsession. And “obsession” was a good word to describe it. It may have even gone beyond that, but Gon-chan liked “obsession.”
“We’re good then, yeah? I say we get on and go do something else,” she said.
Kaju kept on staring at her camera. This picture was of a girl in white robes shoving a dango skewer at her brother. “Say, Gon-chan. Look at this photo of my Oniisama and Yanami-san. What do you see here?”
“I’mma guess ‘Yanami-san’ is the drop-dead gorgeous one.”
She could have nitpicked the ghost costume, but other than that, she looked like the popular type. Bubbly and fun to be around. That said, Gon-chan spent a long time deciding how much she was willing to risk their friendship for the sake of brutal honesty.
“They’re why I came here today,” Kaju said. She clicked to the next photo. This time, there was a small girl with a single tuft of hair tied up on one side. She had that shy, closed-off look that triggered something maternal. “But Komari-san—she’s made a surprisingly good showing. My dearest Oniisama, as kind as he is, would be drawn to the pitiful type. But it’s not just her…”
Kaju furrowed her brow. “Basori-san of the student council. She’s a dark horse I never anticipated. The maid outfit. The cat ears. Nothing could be more targeted, and I know that because Oniisama has no less than seventy-two saved photos of cat maids. Both 2D and 3D.” Gon-chan didn’t particularly care to hear that. “To suddenly shoehorn in something so ham-fisted in the midst of what I consider to be a slow-burn romance, well, clearly there are some differences of opinion that need ironing out.”
Gon-chan didn’t particularly care to hear what those opinions were either. Sensing her friend’s sanity teetering on the edge, she picked off some red and held it down to her mouth.
Kaju nommed on the fluffified sugar.
Gondou presented a pamphlet in an attempt to change the subject. “C’mon, Nuku-chan, I wanna get goin’ and see the judo club. They’re doing a cross-dressing contest.”
“I…suppose we can do that. I didn’t realize you were into that sort of thing.”
“I like big guys. Don’t you like big guys? The bigger the better, I say.”
“The bigger the better?” Kaju tentatively considered that, then smiled and nodded. “The world is a vast tapestry, Gon-chan. I support you, no matter your tastes.”
Gon-chan did some backward mental math, calculating the risk to their friendship Kaju had deemed worth the brutal honesty. She decided to smile and nod back.