“It can be your gravestone, geezer,” replied Miru.
In the 23rd century, the tradition of visiting people’s gravestones had gotten considerably less common, but if the grave was right in front of the train station, it wouldn’t be that out of the way for people.
Good idea!
“I’ve never heard of someone named Torahiko Touji. Have you, Sensei?” I asked.
“Yes, I know the name, and it doesn’t surprise me you haven’t read anything of his, Gin-kun. Perhaps you have, Kuroha-kun?”
“I’ve read what’s considered his classic work, The 21st Century. The description of the lake at the end was incredibly beautiful, and it left a strong impression on me.”
Odaira-sensei nodded in agreement and gazed at the stone marker. “Torahiko Touji... Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like I know something... I can almost recall... It’s like something will click, and yet, it’s not quite there...” Odaira-sensei fell deep into thought for a moment, and then suddenly his face lit up. “That’s it. Kuroha-kun, do you happen to know what Torahiko Touji’s real name was?”
“Real name? No, I don’t... You’re saying that Torahiko Touji was just a pen-name?”
“There are many cases where the author writes under a different name than their given one. For example, Ogai Mori was actually named Rintaro Mori. Edogawa Ranpo’s actual name was completely different, Tarou Hirai. And the author of Oniaka, Kurona Gura, is just Ragnarok with the syllables in reverse order.”
The fact that the pen-name Kurona Gura had been taken from Norse mythology was quite a famous fact.
“I’m sure that Torahiko Touji’s real name is something else. If we knew what that was, then...” Odaira-sensei trailed off.
“Kuroha, it’s not written on the stone marker?” I asked.
Kuroha shook her head no.
“Well, no matter. We’ll soon find out why it was we’ve been led to Torahiko Touji’s cottage,” said Odaira-sensei, pointing to the shack. “From the person that’s inside.”
Suddenly I began to feel nervous. Is the person who sent the letter inside the shack?! I gulped in anticipation, and Miru tugged at my SCHOOL UNIFORM.
“Nii, I’m tired from all this serious stuff. And I’m hungry.” Miru’s stomach growled in agreement with her words.
Speaking of which, what time is it? It must have already been well past noon. Now that Miru had mentioned being hungry, I suddenly realized how hungry I was myself.
“Let’s eat lunch inside, then,” suggested Yuzu-san, holding up the handmade lunch boxes that she had wrapped in a cloth.
Incidentally, Kuroha had tried to make the lunch boxes first, but after she had made Odaira-sensei do a taste test, he had refused to come out of the bathroom. We had decided in the end that Yuzu-san should make all our lunches. That had definitely been the correct decision.
“I can’t wait! Let’s go ahead and eat lunch right now!” I said, and I tried to open the door to the shack. It took a bit of force, but it wasn’t locked and the door started to slide open.
All right, it’s time to meet you face-to-face, letter writer!
I slid the door wide open.
Instantly, my field of vision was filled with smiling faces of 2D girls. The walls were covered with illustrated posters.
“W-What is this...?”
I was at a loss for words. Covering the floor were all manner of things that didn’t match with the old-fashioned construction. Piles of DVDs and Blurays, types of video media that existed in the 21st century, were falling over. There were tons of books and magazines. I could even see some hugging-pillow covers and tapestries here and there.
They were mostly moe.
Everything was just haphazardly strewn about, making a horrid mess. Miru muttered to herself, “This is a den of iniquity...”
Odaira-sensei laughed, “Well if they bought all of this, no wonder they ran out of money.”
Now that you mention it, the letter did say something about running out of cash and being in big trouble. Did the letter writer buy all this stuff in here?
“What an incredible haul. If one had this much treasure in the 23rd century how many tens of billions of yen could you sell it for, I wonder? The Agency for Cultural Affairs would go nuts, and Prime Minister Nyamo-chan might even come to see it!” I said.
Looking around, I actually saw the holy painting of the angel and the tentacles which we had seen in the exhibit at the museum. There was also one of a shrine maiden and tentacles. And one of a nun and tentacles. I knew it! In this era, religious paintings used tentacles as a motif!
“Whoever it was definitely had quite the individual taste... But they don’t seem to be here,” said Kuroha, looking around the room.
There was only this one small room in the building. So if there wasn’t anyone in here, that means the letter writer definitely wasn’t here.
But seriously, there is so much stuff here! I think I’m getting dizzy...
“...Huh?” Something caught my attention. There were so many different moe products here, but not a single figure.
“It looks a lot like my brother’s room, but I don’t see any dolls,” said Yuzu-san.
“Nii, this person is a true believer,” said Miru.
“True believer?”
“They are only interested in 2D.”
Aha! There were some people who preferred 2D so much that they considered even figures to be too 3D for them. Sometimes I would read editorials in the newspapers expressing this opinion.
My classmate, Sugawara-kun, had been someone like that. When he had found out that there had been a figure made of one of his girlfriends, he had gotten extremely angry and gotten himself arrested for starting a sit-in in front of the manufacturer in protest.
“Gin-san, seeing everything in a mess like this kind of makes me want to tidy up. Do you think it’s okay if I clean a little? I’d like to eat somewhere neat,” Yuzu-san said.
“Sure, Yuzu-san,” I agreed. “But there is something I need to do before that.”
“What is that?”
“Go to the bathroom.” I left the shack and headed out to do my business in the woods.
I was hungry and wanted to hurry back to everyone so we could eat lunch, so I didn’t take very long and was about to head back.
“Uwa.... Wah....”
I heard a voice. I stopped and listened.
“Uwah.....”
The voice was coming from somewhere close by. It sounded like a girl’s voice by the tone.
“Uwaahhh...”
Is she crying? I could hear sniffling now. Who could it be? A girl crying in the cold, shadowy woods? I was curious.
I headed in the direction of the voice, and I found a little girl sitting on the ground.
She was short, and looked like she was still a little girl. She was dressed in what we called in our time period the “old school style,” which is more correctly called a sailor uniform. Her hair was tied with two scrunchies, and she was wearing goggles on her head. The bag she was wearing on her front was like a little pouch.
You’ve noticed I’m standing here... She spoke to me without even looking up.
“Who are you-noda?”
She spoke in a high pitched, childlike voice that sounded like a character from an anime, complete with a -noda vocal tic.
Who? Who else would it be in some random forest like this?
“I’m just a passerby,” I told her.
“It’s not normal for someone to be passing by in a forest like this-noda. Now, go away-noda!”
“But I can’t just abandon a crying little girl...” I said. The girl stood up and looked at me. If I were to describe her face using animals for comparison, I would say that her eyes were big like a squirrel. They were extremely adorable. By the looks of it, she was probably in middle school, and definitely younger than myself.
I couldn’t tell for certain with her sitting down, but her sailor uniform looked slightly too big, and the sleeves w
ere too long. Maybe this is a fashion style in the 21st century?
The girl looked me straight in the face with her teary eyes. “You’re kind-noda. But also suspicious-noda. Who are you-noda?”
“I told you already, just a passerby.”
“Someone wandering around deep in the mountains wearing a school uniform... What would you think about someone like that?”
“I’d say that would be a pretty literary happening.”
“...I’d say it was someone who was definitely not a passerby-noda. It was someone who had a reason to be there-noda.”
“Are you here for some reason yourself?”
“Hai-noda. I am searching for something-noda.” The girl bit her lip. “I screwed up-noda. I was so happy that I didn’t watch my surroundings-noda.”
“You lost something?” I asked.
She nodded and took out a number of cards from her little bag. All of them had illustrations of pretty girls on them.
“These are trading cards-noda. If you collect them all you can even play card games with them-noda.” The girl held up the cards joyfully.
How rare for a girl of this time period to be so interested in moe.
“The problem is I lost one of the cards-noda. It was totally my mistake-noda.” Tears began to well up in her eyes. “The wind blew it away, and I can’t find it anywhere-noda. I searched all around the ground, but it’s just not there-noda...”
“I see. Well, if looking down didn’t work, then...” I took out a pen and paper and wrote what I wanted to explain and showed it to the girl.
“What’s this? ‘↓ × ↑ ◎’... What do those symbols mean? Some kind of special move?”
“Don’t look down, look up,” I explained.
“I kind of feel like I’m being talked down to-noda...” She started to frown, but then looked up. “Ah!” she said curtly, and pointed straight up. There was a card stuck in the branches of the tree. “I found it-noda!”
As the girl yelled in glee, she started rummaging around in her little bag.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m gonna take out my secret weapon to get it-noda!”
When she pulled her hand out of the bag she was holding a colorful plastic toy grabber hand. It was clearly too big to fit in that little pouch...
How did she do that? I don’t understand at all how that works...
“I present to you the ‘Meguri Hand’-noda!” she yelled, stretching out her arm holding the grabber toward the tree branch with the card. But unfortunately, the grabber only grabbed air. The girl was too short, and it didn’t look like the grabber would come even close to reaching it.
“Hm-hmm, don’t think I’ve given up yet-noda. I have an attachment called the ‘Meguri Extendo-matic’! It makes the ‘Meguri Hand’ stretch further-noda!” she said, rummaging around again in her little pouch. “I-It’s not there! I must have forgotten it-noda!” It seemed like she didn’t have what she was looking for this time. “Maybe I really am a screw-up-noda...”
She started to cry again.
Poor thing. I should help her.
“Please, you can climb on my shoulders,” I said.
“Huh?” Perhaps she didn’t understand what I meant at first, because she looked suspicious for a moment, but then her face lit up. “Okay!”
She hopped right up on my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of her thighs on my neck.
“Okay, now stand up-noda!” she commanded.
On command, I slowly stood up. I could feel her weight on my shoulders, but she was small and light.
“Let’s try this again-noda! ‘Meguri Hand’!”
I looked up and saw the girl once again stretch out the grabber, and this time she successfully grabbed the card.
“I did it-noda! Thank you-noda!”
Maybe the girl got carried away, because she jumped for joy on my shoulders. Her little butt was floating in the air.
“W-Watch out!” I cried.
“I’m fine-noda!” she said, but... “Uh oh... -noda!”
She began to lose her balance, and started slipping of my shoulders. She took me with her, and I also fell with a thud.
I fell flat on my back, and the moment I hit the ground, I saw stars.
“Owwww... Are you okay?” I managed.
I turned toward the girl and saw her face right next to mine. She was so close I could feel her breath. Her adorable face was right in front of me, and I was startled...
“Staaaarrrrre...” The girl took a good long look at my face.
I was feeling a little embarrassed and sat up, and she also stood up.
“I feel like I’ve seen your face somewhere before-noda,” she said. “Tell me your name-noda.”
“Gin Imose.”
When I said my name, she made a face like “Oho!”
“...Say that again-noda,” she told me.
“Sure. I’m Gin Imose.”
“Gin Imose... No, that’s just too much of a coincidence...” For some reason her voice went quiet. “...I’d like to ask you a question. Are you writing a novel?”
“Yes. I’m hoping to be a professional writer one day.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Do you happen to have little sisters?”
“I do. Two of them, in fact.”
“And when you write, you use a lot of symbols?”
“When I write novels, yes, I use them a lot.”
“...One last question. If you had to choose between leggings, knee-socks, or pantyhose, which would you choose?”
Each one had its own good points, but for a man of the Imose household, there was no other choice but to love black stockings. So much so that it was a family tradition that any girl in the Imose family had to wear black stockings from the age of 15 years old.
“Pantyhose. Black, if possible.”
When I answered, the girl’s face went nearly pale, and she looked like she had just seen a ghost.
I’m just a normal human, you know!
She pointed a finger at me, waveringly, and said, “You’re... that... Gin Imose...”
“Uh... Yes... And?”
“...No. Never mind. It’s nothing-noda.” She shook her head a little bit, and said to herself, “No, I must not-noda...” as if convincing herself of something.
What in the world is this? Is my name such a strange thing to hear in this time period? As I was questioning her reaction, her expression straightened out.
“Gin Imose-kun, it’s only polite that I also tell you my name-noda!” She proudly proclaimed her name from her tiny lips: “I am —”
“What are you doing?”
Just as the girl was about to state her name, a pointed voice interrupted. It didn’t sound pleased.
“I was just...” I looked toward the origin of that voice, Kuroha. She had her arms crossed, her brows furled, and was walking straight toward us.
“I was wondering what was taking you so long, and here I go finding you...” She stood in front of the girl and me.
“I think I’m scared-noda...” the girl said, hiding herself behind me. Kuroha came right up to me and looked at the girl hiding behind my back.
“Yup, as I figured,” said Kuroha, who began to flip through the dictionary she was holding under her arm. “To think we’d meet a famous person in a place like this. Onii-chan, she’s this.”
I looked at the page Kuroha had opened for me. The entry her long, thin finger was pointing to was “Professor (博士).”
I wasn’t able to read the kanji, but I could read the hiragana, so I knew what it said.
“I see! You must be named ‘Professor,’ then! What a nice name!” I exclaimed.
“You’re playing dumb on purpose... right?” Kuroha asked. “Think for a second! Professor! Professor! Like as in science!”
A science professor... Ah!
I turned around in surprise. The girl was smiling smugly up at me. Her adorable face started to trigger some memories from deep in my mind. I remembered watching
the news in the 23rd century. It was about a certain person who was creating inventions that humanity had never seen before. I compared the newscast in my memory to the girl standing in front of me...
“Kuroha, you mean she’s...”
“Yes. This is Professor Choumabayashi, the genius girl who has been called the brains of Japan.”
“Pleased to meet you, Imose-kun-noda,” the girl said. “I’m Meguri Choumabayashi-noda!”
“Pleased to meet you too, Professor.” As I said this, I took a close look at the professor. After all, she looked like an angel of hope to me. You see, if she was here in the 21st century, that meant that she had crossed the boundaries of time to get here. In other words — she had to have the marshmallows that allowed you to travel through time! Could she be the solution to all our problems?!
Of course, things were not so easy.
“Ah, my bad-noda. Not only did I forget to sign the letter, I also totally forgot to put in the first page. I really messed up-noda.”
We had returned to Torahiko Touji’s cottage. Professor Choumabayashi had an apologetic look on her face. It turned out that it was the professor who had sent us the mysterious letter. It seems like she had been camped out here in this shack for a certain reason for a while.
“That’s so like you, Choumabayashi-kun, to spend all your money and get stuck here,” laughed Odaira-sensei.
After traveling to the 21st century, the professor had been so overjoyed that she had gone on a shopping spree. She had burned through all the money from this era that she had prepared, and she hadn’t even had enough left to buy a train ticket. She had used her last bit of cash to buy a postage stamp and asked her friend Odaira-sensei for help, so it seemed.
She’s got a serious love for 2D, and also a serious spending habit.
“But you can just buy things that are national treasure-level from online stores-noda. How could I control myself in a situation like this-noda?! And then they would tell you, ‘People who purchased this item also bought these!’ like it would just read my mind-noda! If I didn’t buy them too, I would feel like a loser-noda!”
“Those are some pretty poor excuses,” said Kuroha.
My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 2 Page 4
