My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 1 (Ereader)

by Takashi Kajii

  Tell me you weren’t moved by the scene where she helps put in his dentures!

  “Don’t just focus on the characters by themselves. You should think about the relationship between the main character and the little sister.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  What’s with that attitude of hers? If you keep making fun of me like that, I’m gonna get angry at you for real!

  “...and who might you be?”

  A head had appeared from behind the gate. I would remember those as the first words he had ever spoken to me. He looked at us with some suspicion.

  It’s really him.

  There he was, the real Gai Odaira, standing before me. He looked exactly like his author portrait. He had a head of white hair and a nice-looking beard to match, and wore a pair of classic black-rimmed glasses. I could see his eyes behind the lenses, sharp and dignified.

  “How do you do? My name is Gin Imose.” I used my full name to introduce myself.

  As I did, he began to stroke his beard and looked up to the side as if in thought. “Was I scheduled to have a visitor today...?”

  Oh, no! Could there have been a mix-up in the scheduling? Sensei looked at us doubtfully, but...

  “Hmm. Could you excuse me for a second?” Furling his brows, he placed his hand up to his ear. As if listening to someone’s voice, he nodded in confirmation. Perhaps he had a small communications device in his ear.

  “Ah, sorry about that. I seemed to have forgotten, but my little sister remembered for me. Yes, that’s right. It was today.” Sensei began to smile welcomingly, and opened his arms toward us.

  Seems like he’s inviting us in! That’s a relief...

  “This is my little sister, Kuroha.” I adjusted myself to one side and introduced my sister, who was standing behind me.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Kuroha.”

  “...Ooh. A little sister.” Sensei’s eyes quickly narrowed.

  “She is your jitsumai, I take it?”

  I took a deep breath. Why would he ask a question like that? Is she my jitsumai? Well, actually...

  “No. Kuroha and I are not related by blood.” That was the truth. My birth parents had put me in foster care soon after I was born, and I had been adopted by my new family. It wasn’t something I liked to talk about with people.

  “A gimai, you say?” He almost snarled at us.

  Huh? Sensei was clearly behaving oddly. His shoulders were almost shaking.

  “You dared to bring your gimai to see me, the man that is known as ‘Gimai Odaira’?” He stared at me with eyes that told me I was his enemy. “Was it your parents remarrying?”

  “No, I was adopted when I was a baby.”

  “That is pretty rare indeed. And with a little sister involved, to boot.”

  “I-I’m sorry...” His fervor was enough to make me instinctively apologize.

  Sensei caught himself and his expression softened.

  “A-Ah, my apologies. It’s not like I’m jealous of you or anything... Please, come inside.”

  It looked like he had calmed down. He opened the door, and gestured for us to come on in.

  After excusing myself, I went to step inside.

  “Hold it right there,” he said in a low voice, bringing me to a standstill right before I entered. “I’d like to check something. Is she your only little sister?”

  Such a sharp mind! I almost shook because of how perceptive he was.

  “No, I have another one.”

  “And how old is this other little sister?”

  “Ten years old.”

  “T-Ten years old?!” His face twisted into a freaky smile. “Don’t tell me that you’ve been asked to help her when she’s wet the bed...”

  “Yes, I have. She was worried that if she told our parents or Kuroha, she’d get yelled at...”

  There was a loud bam! Sensei had kicked the door.

  “Oooooooooh!” His face was turning more and more red. It seemed like any moment, steam would come out.

  “A ten-year-old little sister that wets the bed!” Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and he took something out of his pocket that looked like a cellphone.

  “Hello? Is this Choumabayashi? This is Odaira.” He began to speak, as we stood there in stunned silence. “There’s a boy I’d like you to return to a baby.”

  What in the world is he talking about?

  “He’s got two gimai, and one of them is ten years old! Can you believe it? I don’t think I can take it. Return him back to being a baby, and then they’ll all be his older sisters.”

  As he was speaking, I had a revelation.

  Choumabayashi... Could that be Professor Choumabayashi, the scientist? She was a genius, and had had a string of successful never-before-seen experiments.

  As Sensei hung up, he looked at me with a slight grin. But his eyes were dead serious.

  “Gin-kun, you might get a chance to experience something no human has before. You can contribute to the progress of science!”

  An experience no human has experienced before! The progress of science!

  “Kuroha!” I looked at her gleefully. Perhaps she wasn’t able to grasp what was going on, as she had completely stiffened up.

  “I’m so honored!” I cried. I was going to experience something extraordinary! I was sure it would be a wonderful source of inspiration for my novels.

  “Sensei!” I threw myself upon the ground before him. Here was a man who should be gazed upon only from below!

  “I have many good friends. They are all top class in their fields.” Sensei stared at me, tears in his eyes. “That includes politicians, and I’ll have them institute a gimai tax. And I won’t exempt minors, either. Gimai are the ultimate luxury, after all. And such luxury should be taxed accordingly.”

  “Magnificent... Thanks to our meeting today, Sensei, all of society will change! This was indeed a miraculous encounter!”

  “...You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not! I am truly overjoyed. I might be able to come up with an idea for my novel that will win the Newcomer’s Prize if I have this incredible experience! Thank you so much!”

  With anger in his voice, he pounced. “Newcomer’s Prize? What nonsense. You have angered me. I will make sure no publisher ever allows you to debut! Consider your road to being an author blocked!”

  Eh? Sensei’s words ran on repeat in my head. My road to being an author... blocked?

  Before I had even realized it, his mood had completely soured! His influence spread throughout the entire literary world, so it would be trivial for him to stop me from being published.

  At this rate, I’ll never become a novelist! I was about to fall into complete despair.

  “Wait a moment!” Kuroha rushed in front of me as I lay on the ground, her black hair swinging back and forth.

  “I know you must be angry, but please look at this.” Kuroha took out her cellphone and showed the display to him. “This is my little sister Miru.”

  Judging from what she said, I gathered she was showing him a picture of Miru.

  “If you can calm your anger, we will bring her here and make her call you ‘Onii-chan.’”

  The second she said that, he froze.

  “Oh...?” Sensei smiled as if in a dream. “Onii-chan... I like the sound of that.” His mouth was half open, and drool was flowing out. He was an elderly man, so perhaps he suffered from an inability to control his mouth muscles properly. Must be difficult for him.

  He stood there for a moment, out of it, but then he quickly straightened his face.

  “It’s a promise!” he shouted, pointing straight at Kuroha.

  “But let’s not talk outside all day. Come on in,” he said, seemingly having regained his composure. He spun around and headed into the house.

  Phew... Looks like I dodged a bullet there.

  “Thank you very much. Come on, Onii-chan, stand up already.”

  As I stood, Kuroha leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“I only said we’d bring Miru to see him to get out of that situation, okay? I wasn’t being serious.”

  “You what? You shouldn’t be tricking him.”

  “If I hadn’t said something, he would have kept boiling over like that. Your dream was this close to being crushed. See, I knew it was a good idea for me to come.”

  Maybe I should have been thankful that Kuroha had come along. I started to get a little choked up. Thanks to Kuroha coming along with me, I was...

  Kuroha left me to my deep thoughts and went inside.

  Hey! No fair you get to go in first! I’m the huge fan of his, after all!

  We were led to a simply decorated living room with white walls and a white table in the middle. Kuroha and I sat down next to each other on the couch.

  “So you are an aspiring author, Gin-kun?”

  “Yes,” I replied. I reached into the bag I was carrying, and took out a bundle of manuscripts.

  “Actually, I brought some of my work with me, and was hoping you would read it.”

  Sensei nodded in acknowledgment, and immediately turned to look at the pages as I handed them over.

  I can’t believe that Odaira-sensei is reading my manuscripts! This is like a dream!

  After a little while absorbed in reading, he raised his head.

  “...Is this written in code?” he asked me, looking thoroughly confused. “It’s almost completely incoherent. Especially the symbol. What in the world is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a pictogram of the heroine running happily with her hands spread out.”

  “......” Sensei was at a loss for words.

  “...Gin-kun, you may be the genius we need to break through to the next era of literature.”

  Genius?! Oh, my god! Odaira-sensei called me a genius! I was completely on cloud nine.

  “Sorry...” Kuroha grimaced sightly and glanced downward.

  Huh? Why are you apologizing?

  “I’d like to read the rest soon. Well, if I can read it.”

  “Thank you so much. And could I trouble you for some advice on writing novels?”

  “Hmm... advice, you say?” Sensei thought to himself for a brief moment, and then pulled out an article of clothing from under the table.

  It was a pair of white panties with a tiny ribbon.

  I doubted they were made for a woman. More like a ten-year-old girl.

  “What do think these are?”

  “Panties.”

  “That would seem to be the case.” Sensei turned to Kuroha and asked her, “And what do you see, Kuroha-kun?”

  Kuroha stiffened up and replied, “I also see a pair of women’s underwear.”

  “Exactly. Both of you observed reality. In other words, you explained. But a novel that only consists of explaining is not enjoyable. A novel must describe.”

  “Describe?”

  “Yes... You cannot just write ‘panties’ when there are a pair of panties. You must describe them in a way which captures their essence. For me, I would write ‘a miniature universe in white.’”

  A miniature universe! I would have never thought of that.

  “You must develop your expressive potential every day,” he said, as he put the panties on his head.

  Why did he do that? There doesn’t seem to be any logical connection. Ah, I think I get it! After some thought I understood where he was going. Odaira-sensei wanted me to describe him wearing panties on his head.

  “Okay! I’ll think of a description right away!”

  But all that sat before me was a gentleman wearing a pair of panties on his head.

  I need to think of something stylish and poetic.

  “Degenerate,” muttered Kuroha beside me.

  Why, you... How rude to call him a degenerate! Her description also hardly rose beyond simply explaining what she saw. It wasn’t even close to the awesomeness of “miniature universe in white.”

  At least throw in a “peerless” before “degenerate,” sheesh...

  As we racked our brains, he sat there grinning with those panties on his head, staring at us.

  “So we have an adopted older brother and his gimai,? It’s just like the situation in Oniaka.”

  Oniaka, he says?

  The full title was Onii-chan no Akachan Umitai, which meant “I want to have Onii-chan’s child.”

  It was the great master Kurona Gura’s legendary bestseller that had been published in 2060. A landmark work in little sister literature, it had given birth to the spread of moe and the orthodox literary style. According to researchers, it had not only had a huge effect on literature, but on Japanese culture as a whole.

  My personal history was very similar to the main character in Oniaka. We had both been given up for adoption and gained a little sister.

  “Oniaka was the novel which inspired me to become a novelist,” I explained.

  “Oh, I see.”

  To me, Oniaka was no normal book. Thanks to Oniaka, I had been able to get over my pain of being adopted when I was a child. The first time I had read it, my feelings for the main heroine, Homyura Taitei, had moved my heart. I felt like the sun had finally shone down upon my world.

  “Homyura will be my favorite heroine for eternity.”

  “She is beautiful and admirable, yes. If only she’d been six or seven years younger,” he replied, eyes narrowing. Homyura was sixteen years old in the book.

  I couldn’t help but discuss my favorite book. “The opening scene was excellent, don’t you think? As soon as her brother appeared, there was a gust of wind that blew up her skirt.”

  “Starting things off with a panty flash!”

  “And afterward, it threw in more panty flashes now and then. Wasn’t it neat that you could tell what Homyura was thinking based on the pattern on her panties?”

  “Yes. But there is another meaning to the panty flashes in that work, you know.”

  “Another meaning, you say?”

  “Homyura’s panties also represented the sign of the times when it was written.”

  Sign of the times?

  “In the first part, Homyura was wearing completely red panties, yes? They represented the suffering the Japanese citizens felt under a crushing tax burden. Gura, the author, wanted to speak out and proclaim, ‘The people are being bled dry and suffering!’”

  I had no idea! How frustrating! It seemed like my skills of literary analysis still had a long ways to go.

  “A normal reader doesn’t need to read that much into it. ‘Homyura is so cute!’ is enough for most.”

  I was a person who aimed to become an author. I can’t just settle for satisfying normal readers!

  “Kuroha, we just heard something amazing! You have to read Oniaka, too!” I said, looking at Kuroha. I was getting excited after learning of this entirely new way of reading my beloved story.

  “I hear you,” she replied coolly. Kuroha loved reading, but she had never read Oniaka.

  I wonder if there is some reason she doesn’t want to read it? It’s such a shame.

  “Kuroha, why won’t you read Oniaka? Homyura is totally the best.”

  “I don’t understand how a fictional character can be ‘the best.’”

  “Maybe Kuroha-kun wants to read it less every time you describe how great Homyura is, Gin-kun.”

  Kuroha blurted out, “That’s not it!” and started to pout.

  “Ha ha ha. Well it was definitely that work that accelerated the spread of moe culture.”

  Japan was now the land of moe, but it apparently hadn’t always been that way in the past.

  “Although, lately there’s something out of the ordinary getting some attention.” Odaira-sensei quipped, but quickly his expression turned serious. “Have you read Usubi?”

  Ah... It seemed like he was also pained by what he had read in that book.

  “I read it. It’s definitely something new, but I wouldn’t call it...”

  “There isn’t a single female character in it. And no panty flashes o
r scenes with stripping, either. The author of Usubi seems determined to challenge the idiom, ‘Without panties, there is no literature.’”

  I could totally understand why he was so infuriated. How could he not be?

  “And to think that book, of all books, would be nominated for the Homyura Prize...”

  The Homyura Prize was named in honor of Homyura Tatei, the heroine of Oniaka, and was the most prestigious literary award in Japan. Any published book was eligible, and each year a book in the orthodox, moe style was nominated. And yet, this year this strange book, Usubi, had somehow snuck itself a nomination. For literary folk such and Odaira-sensei and myself, we couldn’t help but lament the situation. But for a heretic like Kuroha...

  “Personally think it’s refreshing to have a book where the girl doesn’t show her panties.”

  What a horribly uncultured thing to say.

  “Oh? So you think that Usubi is worthy of the Homyura Prize, Kuroha-kun?”

  “I’m not sure I would go that far, but...”

  “For me, I think my main competition for the prize is my rival Haruka-kun’s book My Little Sister Can’t Go to the Bathroom Alone,” Odaira-sensei said.

  He was referring to Haruka Haruka-sensei, another big name author. Considered two sides of the same coin of the Little Sister Literary world, they were known as “Gimai Odaira” and “Jitsumai Haruka” respectively.

  Despite its archaic-sounding title, My Little Sister Can’t Go to the Bathroom Alone was the epitome of a current-day novel. The description of the heroine trying valiantly to hold it in made for a very easy read.

  “What did you think of that book, Kuroha-kun?” he added.

  Kuroha responded with silence, and did not look pleased. I was well aware of the reason why Kuroha wasn’t able to answer the question.

  “My Little Sister Can’t Go to the Bathroom Alone is basically the story of Kuroha when she was little,” I said.

  As Kuroha’s face went flush with embarrassment, she glared at me.

  I remembered those days. When Kuroha had been little, she wouldn’t go to the bathroom by herself. If Mom and Dad weren’t home, she would ask, “Onii-chan, come with me!” and make me follow her to the bathroom door.

  “You might not be able to tell now, but Kuroha had a time when she was actually cute, you know.”