Sugawara-kun seemed to be shocked when he got his answer wrong, and he had taken out his 2D girlfriends to console him.
Man, I wish I had a girlfriend...
Now then, I must answer this question myself. Hmm... To force the death of one’s lord like that, they must had really been arguing over something fundamental... Something that they could just never see eye-to-eye on, no matter what...
Ah! I know!
“Because they couldn’t agree whether jitsumai (blood-related little sisters) or gimai (non blood-related little sisters) were better!”
It has to be this!
It wasn’t.
D’oh!
A girl appeared on the screen in a miniskirt, but no wind blew at all. The girl glared toward me looking irritated, then disappeared.
“That’s your 30th wrong answer, you know,” said Kazoe-sensei coldly.
Oh, crap! In my school, if you got 30 questions wrong, you had to receive a penalty. Kazoe-sensei continued to announce my punishment without any expression.
“After school today, you will have supplemental lessons. The subject will be Art History. You must memorize the names of 30 titles of historical gal games.”
I hung my head in shame. Oh, no... Today’s the day the new Literary Gal comes out, and I wanted to get home early...
As I began to feel down, Kazoe-sensei chimed in. “What’s with that face? I-I guess I’ll stay with you after school, so just cheer up already, sheesh!”
“You will?” I asked.
“I-It’s not like I’m doing it for you, okay? It’s just my duty as a teacher is all! Fine, see if I care!”
As Kazoe-sensei blurted this out, her cheeks got a little flushed, and then she disappeared.
I was silent.
She wouldn’t appear again for a little while. She was set up to do this once in while. It didn’t exactly make class go any faster.
“...And that’s what school is like, Yuzu-san,” I finished.
“Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. If there was a cooking class, I’d like to try taking it,” she said.
“You always did have way more experience with after school lessons than the average person, Onii-chan,” Kuroha commented.
As the three of us chatted, we entered the school building. I had been telling Yuzu-san about the various ins and outs of school in the 23rd century. At a later date, the words of a certain individual would make me think of those days once again.
The classes at the 21st century high school were just as difficult as I remembered them. The teacher was an actual human being, which just seemed off to me. I missed Kazoe-sensei. However, the culture in the 23rd century had completely changed, so there probably weren’t any 2D teachers there, either. We had to fix that, quickly. If only I were able to travel through time, I would be able to do something, but...
It was no use just lamenting, so that evening we all had a meeting to plan our next move. Myself, Kuroha, Yuzu-san, as well as two little girls, one with blonde twin-tails and one wearing a cat-eared beret, all gathered in the living room.
The blonde girl was the great author of the orthodox literary style, Gai Odaira. He was actually a 70-year-old gentleman, but because of a side effect of the time-traveling marshmallows, he had been transformed into a little girl. When asked if he had an interest in turning back to his original form, he had replied, “Not in the slightest.” This was surely due to his desire to know what it felt like to be a girl, to use for his writing.
The girl wearing the beret with cat-ears was my younger little sister Miru. In her case, she didn’t just look like a ten-year-old girl, but actually was one. Miru had placed a sketchbook on the floor and was sitting like a girl silently drawing.
“Something smells good...” said Odaira-sensei as he came into the room, smelling the air.
“...Oh my. But I haven’t started making dinner yet, you know?” replied Yuzu-san, tilting her head a little.
“Yuzu-kun, what are you saying? When I say something smells good, I must be referring to the sweet scent of that blue fairy sitting over there!” said Odaira-sensei, clearly excited and pointing to Miru, still absorbed in her drawing.
Whether Miru didn’t notice or was completely ignoring him, either way she gave no hint of a response.
That’s Miru for you! Always doing things at her own pace.
“I won’t tell you exactly which parts I smell. On second thought, I will. Under the arms, between the fingers, the belly button, behind the knees...”
“How focused of you, Sensei!” I cried. “Are you saying it’s important for works to have a unique point of view to them? I understand! I’ll try licking the space between a girl’s fingers from now on!”
“Cut it out, you pervs!” yelled Kuroha, swinging the dictionary she was carrying in a wide arc. Odaira-sensei and I deftly dodged.
Having missed, Kuroha put the dictionary back under her arm much like a samurai putting their sword back in its scabbard.
“You are always carrying around a dictionary, aren’t you? You must be very focused on your studies,” I said. Since we had come back to the 21st century, Kuroha had started to always carry a dictionary with her.
“It’s not like I’ve given up returning to the future, but if you think about the situation we’re in, it’s important that I completely master the vocabulary for this time period. Just in case, I think you should also learn the skills you will need to survive in the 21st century, Onii-chan.”
“The skills I need? I totally agree with you, but what should I do to learn them?” I asked, craning my neck.
“Oh, I know! How about we play make-believe where you are at work?” suggested Yuzu-san helpfully.
Roleplaying where I am doing a job? Sounds like fun!
“That sounds like a good idea. Yuzu-kun, you be the boss, and we can practice acting like employees,” said Odaira-sensei.
“This sounds fun! I wanna play, too,” chimed in Miru.
So now the three of us were all raring to go, but Kuroha didn’t look so enthused.
“Make-believe? We’re not little kids, you know... Well, I guess I can’t stop you. What are you going to do, exactly?”
“Yuzu-san is our boss, so that means we have to follow her orders, right?” I asked.
“So, I need to decide what I want you to do...” said Yuzu-san, and after thinking for a bit she announced her clear intention: “I want to tie you up, like I used to do with my brother.”
Well, that’s a surprise. Tie me up?
“Is that... practicing for work, somehow?” asked Kuroha, her eyes wide in disbelief.
“I suspect this would be practice not for our jobs, but for Yuzu-kun’s,” explained Odaira-sensei.
I had heard from Yuzu-san once that she had always tied up her late brother when she played “Little Piggy” with him.
“What happens when I get tied up?” I asked her.
“You warp.”
“I warp?!”
“My brother would often yell out ‘I’m going to warp! I’m going to warp!’ and then his eyes would roll to the back of his head and he would sort of foam at the mouth, so I always thought he was warping to some other world.”
Hold on a sec! Warp? Could this be the same kind of thing as our time travel?
“When we played ‘Little Piggy,’ I would tie up my brother all the time. I don’t want to forget those times...”
“Yuzu-san, I guess you had some peculiar kinks awakened in you. Your brother clearly wasn’t so innocent...” pointed out Kuroha.
“Yes, your brother was most definitely someone with refined tastes,” summed up Odaira-sensei.
“Indeed, he was very refined,” agreed Yuzu-san, smiling with a slightly sad look on her face. I was sure she was remembering her departed brother.
Don’t make that face, Yuzu-san! I want you to smile and laugh!
“Please, tie me up!” I cried reflexively.
I might find out the trick to time traveling! If I manage to time
travel, we can solve our problems and return to the future!
Yuzu-san nodded at me with a full-faced smile, and immediately started to tie me up with a rope.
Um, where exactly did that rope come from?
“Please, think of me like your brother,” I told her.
“Gin-san, why do you always say these things that make me so happy? Thank you so much. I’m gonna do this all the way!” Yuzu-san declared so happily that tears began to well up in her eyes.
...A chill rolled up and down my spine.
My body was bent back like a shrimp, and both my arms were tied behind my back. I couldn’t move at all.
“You know what you’re doing,” remarked Odaira-sensei.
“After I started tying up my brother, I got more and more passionate about it. I practiced a whole lot, you see. The fundamentals are very important.”
I see. The fundamentals are important for writing novels, too. Well, for pretty much anything.
After my entire body was bound tight, hand and foot, she finally put a rope around my neck. The pressure made it feel like I couldn’t even breathe.
“Gin-san, I’m sorry, but I think the ropes are still too loose,” she told me.
“Um, actually I think they’re pretty tight already...”
“This is not tight at all!” she declared.
Yuzu-san, do I see something different in your eyes? Something... dazzling?
“Until I tighten the ropes, it’s not complete, you see,” she explained.
“What’s not complete?”
“The technique.”
“And what happens when the technique is complete?”
“The ropes around your body will all constrict at the same time, Gin-san.”
“And then, I’ll... warp, is it? I’ll be okay, r-right?”
“It’s a gamble.”
“Hey, did you just say something really ominous?” I yelped.
“My brother gambled and won, so it should be fine.”
Kuroha had been watching with her usual exasperated expression, but she was now starting to look worried. “H-Hey, Yuzu-san... Are you sure he’ll be okay? You’re not going to turn him into a bigger weirdo than he already is, right?”
“It’ll be fine. If something happens to him, I’ll take responsibility and care for him,” said Yuzu-san, taking the rope coming off of my body in her hands. I could tell she was gripping the rope very tightly.
“What? Yuzu-san, what do you mean, care for him? You mean always stay by his side?! Don’t tell me you and him have already...”
Kuroha was clearly uneasy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Miru with her hands placed together, chanting “Namu.”
I did not have the time to consider the meaning of what she was saying. Why? Because my consciousness had already warped...
Perhaps it was a dream, but I was back in school in the 23rd century. I was walking down the hallway with the first year classrooms, going to meet Kuroha. Kuroha was in first year class △... There it is.
I looked at first year class △ through the window from the hallway. I could see some boy in the row closest to me reading a magazine. The magazine cover had the headline “POPULAR BOY → READ GAI ODAIRA.” It seemed like a special issue.
A devotee of Odaira such as myself was not happy with people reading his books for some pithy reason like being popular. Odaira-sensei’s books were the pinnacle of hentai literature, not some tool to make yourself look better.
I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll give him a piece of my mind.
I opened the window with a clatter. “Hey, you! Don’t go reading Odaira-sensei’s books because of a reason like that!”
“...Huh?” The boy who had been reading the magazine looked up in surprise.
“You have to read Odaira-sensei’s books with pure feelings in your heart! If you truly want to read Odaira-sensei’s books with a mind devoid of worldly thought, come see me in second year class ☆! I’ll lend you his books!”
“S-Sure...” the boy said, his eyes wandering. He seemed to be trying his hardest not to make eye contact. I felt it was important that upperclassmen like myself did our best to set the younger students on the correct path.
Now, then... I looked around the rest of the classroom. I hadn’t come here to give guidance to some underclassman I didn’t know. I had come to invite Kuroha to eat lunch.
“Where’s Kuroha...?”
There she is. Her long black hair and the green accessory she wore in it made her easy to spot. She was sitting on the window side of the classroom, and was reading a book by herself. The title of the book was “冬耳虎彦 二十一世紀” (Torahiko Touji’s The 21st Century).
The title used kanji, so I figured it must be a work of modern Japanese literature. It looked very difficult to read. To an outside observer, my sister must have seemed like someone that was extremely hard to approach. For someone with her adult beauty and her head buried in modern literature, it must have been difficult for even her classmates to talk to her.
As if on cue, a bustling gaggle of girls passed right in front of her. Yikes... I saw her glance over to them for just a second, giving them a look like “Shut up, I’m trying to read here.” She must not have been in a good mood. It was such a waste of her pretty face to be scowling like that all the time. I wish she would look like she’s having fun sometimes...
In actuality, I hadn’t seen Kuroha smile in school since elementary school. She would always have this stern look on her face. Although it was true that lately she hadn’t had the problems she used to, still...
I’m worried for you. I wish you could smile!
Yes, that’s the only thing to do. Kuroha had told me that it was embarrassing and that I should stop, but as her brother, I felt I must do everything in my power in help her.
That’s right! I’ll go in front of her class and say in a big voice, “Please be nice to my little sister!”
“Everyone, please listen! Kuroha over there may look like a proper lady now, but she wasn’t able to go to the bathroom by herself when she was little! Even when I was paying respects to a panty flash scene in an anime, if she would come to me and say ‘Onii-chan, come with me,’ I would go!” I announced in a loud voice.
That was the day in which I learned that the creature named “little sister” and the creature named “demon” were closely related from a biological perspective.
When I woke up, I was laying in my bed in the room that I was borrowing in Yuzu-san’s house. I could sense someone next to me, and when I turned my head I saw Kuroha sitting at the desk, holding a pen in her hand, writing something as she looked at her dictionary.
“...Hee hee...”
Kuroha, are you laughing?
I narrowed my gaze. Kuroha’s cheeks were slightly flushed, and it looked like she was having fun. I felt like I hadn’t seen Kuroha looking like this for quite a while. I sat up, and called out to her.
“Kuroha.”
Kuroha shoved the piece of paper into the dictionary in a panic.
“What were you writing?”
“N-N-Nothing!” she replied, strangely flustered by the question.
I wonder what she was writing on that paper? Now I’m curious...
“Anyway, are you okay now?” she asked. “You were passed out for about an hour.”
“Ah...” My skin was raw around my neck, but other than that, I seemed all in one piece. “Where is everyone else?”
“Sensei is writing his novel, and Miru is drawing.”
“What about Yuzu-san?”
“...Yuzu-san... She went pale and was shaking, and after I told her everything would be fine, we both carried you up to the bed. After she had calmed down, she went out somewhere.”
“I see... I must have really worried her. I’m so sorry,” I said. Yuzu-san surely felt responsible. I decide to make sure to tell her I was fine now.
After that, we both went completely silent. Kuroha had turned back to the desk and had started rea
ding the dictionary, but then suddenly spoke to me.
“Hey, Onii-chan.”
“What is it?”
“What’s the deal with... you and Yuzu-san?”
“What’s the deal? What do you mean?”
Kuroha became a little impatient. “I mean what’s your relationship with her? You seem pretty close... You were even holding hands together before, remember?”
“We’re friends.”
“Are you just friends?”
“Yeah, of course. I mean, what else would we be?”
My feelings for Yuzu-san were, honestly speaking, complex. If you asked me if I had feelings of the opposite sex toward her, well, I wouldn’t deny it. When we were together, I would often get excited.
But right now my priority was finding a way to return to the future. At the moment we were stuck and had no choice but to let Yuzu-san take care of us, so it wasn’t the time to be developing feelings for her.
Kuroha went silent and kept looking at me, and after a little while, she spoke to me with a very deliberate intent.
“Are you listening? No matter what happens to you, or who you are with, I’ll always be your little sister. Remember that.”
There she goes, saying the obvious again. What a weirdo.
When I was about to answer her, I started to hear footsteps out in the hallway, and after a quick knock, the door opened.
“Gin-san, I see you’re awake. Are you okay?!” Yuzu-san asked, as she nearly ran right up to the side of the bed. “I got so carried away and... I’m sorry!” Yuzu-san was wearing one of her jerseys, and she took a close look at my face.
“Oh, it’s my fault for falling unconscious so easily,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations.” I had realized, see, that the technique she had used was a message from her. She had been trying to tell me that to live in the rough-and-tumble 21st century, one needed to possess a strong body. “I’ll become stronger. Yuzu-san, thank you.”
“Gin-san...” Yuzu-san’s eyes watered up. “By the way, Kuroha-san, you’ve calmed down?”
“Huh?!” Kuroha’s eyes went wide as she was suddenly addressed.
“Did something happen to Kuroha?” I asked.
My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 2 Page 2
