My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 2

by Takashi Kajii

  Odaira-sensei took the cell phone from Yuzu-san, and from his reaction, we could tell that the person calling was Naotaro-san.

  When did he exchange phone numbers with Yuzu-san?

  Odaira-sensei nodded, listening to Naotaro-san. At first he was smiling, but...

  “What?!” he shouted suddenly, and the color began to drain from his expression. I had almost never seen Odaira-sensei look like that.

  Something must have happened...

  We all looked at Odaira-sensei with a sense of unease. He hung up the cell phone, turned to us, and explained, “Naotaro-kun wanted to report that a certain pushy salesman had shown up again.”

  A pushy salesman? Ah, Mr. Bedhead!

  “When Naotaro-kun returned to his apartment, a young man burst out, it seemed,” Odaira-sensei continued.

  “Huh? But I’m sure we locked the door...” I said.

  “Imose-kun, my brother has a number of my inventions with him-noda. The locks of this era would be no match-noda.”

  “He was carrying things in both arms,” Odaira-sensei said. “One was an old book, which was probably the copy of Torahiko Touji’s The 21st Century that he had forgotten.”

  “And in the other hand was... Don’t tell me...” I said slowly.

  I had a really, really bad feeling about this. Please, tell me I am wrong about this, I’m begging you!

  “Yes, it was the Meguri Gun,” continued Odaira-sensei, crushing my hopes.

  ...I knew it.

  “Well, now we’re screwed-noda,” said the professor, pale as a sheet.

  “Naotaro-kun chased after him, but he got away,” Odaira-sensei said.

  “I bet that the marshmallows he has already are past their expiration date-noda. That’s why he stole the Meguri Gun-noda.”

  “...Did Mr. Bedhead know that you can make marshmallows using that gun?” I asked.

  “After he hatched his diabolical scheme, it seems like he secretly researched my inventions-noda. He’s the type that makes sure everything is prepared perfectly-noda,” said the professor.

  “Oh, but he didn’t steal the ingredients, right?”

  “Um... Since carrying the ingredients separately is a pain, I had already loaded them into the gun-noda...”

  How many functions does that gun have already?!

  “Sadame-kun is going to make marshmallows and leave this time period sooner or later. Once that happens, it’ll be all over for us,” said Odaira-sensei.

  “Professor, how much time does it take to make the marshmallows?” I asked.

  “It takes five days-noda.”

  “So we have to capture Mr. Bedhead in five days, or else...”

  “...Game Over-noda.”

  “Do you have some kind of amazing invention that we could capture him with real quick?” I asked.

  “I wish I had something so convenient-noda...”

  ...It’s all over. There’s no use. We have no clue where to go next. We have no way of searching for Mr. Bedhead...

  My soul left my body behind, and the world went white.

  We can’t return to the future. I’ll never see my mom and dad again. Culture won’t change back, and my dear 2D prime minister Nyamo-chan and 2D teacher Kazoe-sensei will never exist. Oniaka won’t exist. My dream of becoming an author will forever go unfulfilled.

  We will have to live here in this Heisei era...

  I could do nothing but lower my head in silence. Even I could not muster the energy to say something positive in this situation... But then...

  “Don’t give up, Onii-chan,” said a voice that echoed in my ears like a mother scolding a child.

  That voice... Kuroha?!

  When I turned to look, I saw Kuroha with her head up, looking at me.

  “I thought you were asleep?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m a little groggy, but I heard what’s going on.” Her cheeks were a little red, but she was back to being the usual Kuroha. She was speaking normally, too. “All we need to do is capture Sadame-san, right?”

  “Yeah. But we have no idea where Mr. Bedhead is headed. It’ll be impossible to find him in five days.”

  “Where he’s headed, is it? What I’m about to say is just my own deduction, but I believe it is a distinct possibility.” Kuroha had switched on her commanding Great Detective mode. It was hard to believe she had been begging me to pet her on the head a little while ago. “Our clue is Torahiko Touji’s 21st Century!” said Kuroha, looking around at all of us. “Sadame-san is probably heading to—”

  Kuroha told us a certain location.

  ＊

  Special Issue! Literary Gal August 2202

  “Special Interview with Gai Odaira”

  —The Japanese People and the Written Word —

  The man known as the “magician” of current-day Japanese, Gai Odaira, discusses “The Japanese People and the Written Word.”

  Interviewer: To start things off, what do you think about the prose of today?

  Odaira: To separate what we call the Japanese language from its roots in the Japanese citizens is an impossible task. As you are well aware, the text in the current day is extremely simple. It is my belief that the Japanese people’s feelings of compassion and sympathy are what have given rise to the changes in the words.

  Interviewer: Incredible! So it’s the people’s compassion?!

  Odaira: If I were to explain briefly why it is that “compassion” has caused the simplification of vocabulary and grammar, it is simply the most obvious interpretation. Japanese was difficult. The current-day Japanese has done away with kanji, and no longer uses difficult grammatical constructs, which makes it simple to read, and a pleasure to understand. One could say that we have taken our language and made it “handicap accessible.”

  Interviewer: Japanese has been made “handicap accessible”! That’s a very unique opinion you have there, Odaira-sensei!

  Odaira: For example, modern literature had a great variety of terms used to describe foolish behavior, such as “idiot,” “fool,” “dimwit,” “dunce,” “imbecile,” and “moron,” among others. It was such a pity that we had so many words used to hurt other people, and the task of simply remembering them all was a struggle. But in current-day writing, we would simply write:

  DUMBDUMB

  and be done with it. The people of our time have incredible reading ability, and with nothing more than those eight letters, an entire panorama opens up in their minds. Fine nuance doesn’t need to be written when it can be interpreted by the reader. That is why the Japanese people’s compassionate and sympathetic hearts enable such writing!

  Interviewer: You are completely correct, of course! When you said the word “dumbdumb” right there, I couldn’t stop imagining it in my head myself! Oh, no!

  Odaira: That being said, in exchange we have lost some of the breadth of our ability to express things in Japanese, but being imprecise is its own benefit. It is as if the shackles have been removed from prose, allowing the reader to freely indulge in their own fantasies without limitation.

  For example, things that are sacred, things that are precious, things that are beloved, things that are beautiful, things that must be protected, things that are noble, things we should be proud of... Each and every symbol of the Japanese people’s true nature...

  In current-day Japanese, they are all...

  LILGIRL

  Yes, just that one word can express all of that. It’s really amazing when you think about it.

  Interviewer: LILGIRL BANZAI!

  Odaira: But there’s more. Current-day writing can take more than 200 characters worth of content, like...

  As I looked downward from the top of my young little sister’s head, past her flat chest, past her shy little belly button, beyond her surprisingly full hips, to her young, supple thighs, I felt like I would be moved in that certain way. But I was not satisfied. I was not yet going to press my switch of determination. I lowered my gaze once more, and there before me were her pink-tinted
knees. I circled around behind my little sister, and finally, finally, reached the holy land known as the area behind the knees. With great lamentation, I disgorged my desire.

  If I were to write this paragraph in current-day Japanese, what do you think it would be like?

  Interviewer: I can only image! My heart is almost jumping out of my chest in anticipation!

  Odaira: WANT LICKY.

  Interviewer: YATTA!

  Chapter 5 - Older Brother and Younger Sister

  I apologize for the sudden change, but let us discuss for a moment what a “posthumous work” is.

  The professor had said it was the title of some old visual novel, but that is not what I am referring to.

  The “posthumous work” that I am talking about is a creation by an artist that they were working on right before they passed away. It is quite common for them to be incomplete.

  If you look at the history of literature, many of the great writers have left this world while in the middle of writing, leaving the work behind. Torahiko Touji’s posthumous work was the novel, The 21st Century. The book was written at the beginning of the 20th century, and it imagined what the world would be like one hundred years in the future.

  In The 21st century, Torahiko Touji truly described in his writing all aspects of Japan in the 21st century, from the capital, to the regional cities, to the farmland and rural areas, and finally to nature itself.

  Torahiko passed away while writing a scene describing the third or fourth largest lake in Japan. It ends with the main character stopping by the side of that lake.

  All of the above was information that Kuroha explained to us.

  “Sadame-san wrote that he was going to complete The 21st Century himself,” explained Kuroha.

  Mr. Bedhead had said to Naotaro-san, “I will complete it myself!” while holding The 21st Century, and he had written in his diary about “fulfilling the will” of his ancestors, so the possibility was definitely there.

  “My brother is a real perfectionist, and he would definitely want to see things himself before writing something,” the professor told us.

  There had been a number of incidents that seemed to back this up. In order to write a book criticizing moe doujinshi, Mr. Bedhead had snuck into a doujinshi event, but he had been mistaken for a cosplayer. Another time, he had been planning on criticizing moe figures and had gone to a figure fair, but he had ended up being caught up with other high school boys protesting 3D figures of their girlfriends.

  The last scene of The 21st Century was a scene at a lake. Therefore, he would surely want to go see that lake in person before trying to complete Torahiko Touji’s will and write the ending to The 21st Century. The lake where it took place was in the same prefecture as Naotaro-san’s apartment and Torahiko Touji’s shack, and was just the right distance away.

  Kuroha said, “If he was going somewhere, that would be the place, no doubt.”

  We didn’t have any time to dilly-dally.

  Under the clear blue sky, we were rowing in three boats across the lake. These boats were a type we couldn’t have even imagined in the 23rd century, where you had to row them by hand. Yuzu-san was across from me in the boat I was rowing. Rowing at exactly the same speed next to me was Kuroha and the professor. Behind us was the boat with Odaira-sensei and Miru, which would occasionally head off in the wrong direction.

  We were not heading out on this lake for fun. We were trying to find Mr. Bedhead. When we had arrived at the lake, we had used the picture the professor carried of Mr. Bedhead and asked around the local tourist and souvenir shops. We had found that a number of people remembered seeing him. People had remembered his unique sense of style and the extreme bedhead he’d been sporting.

  “My brother’s vanity will be his downfall-noda!” the professor declared.

  We kept searching, and searching. We searched for three days. But we couldn’t find him. There were almost no places in the area we hadn’t already checked. The only possibility left was on the lake itself. We embraced this last smidgen of hope, split ourselves up into groups of two randomly, and set out on boats.

  ...It sounds simple when I wrote it like that, but before we got on the boats, there were a number of difficulties. First off, Kuroha was dead set against the pairings.

  “Miru and Sensei in the same boat?!” she exclaimed. “That’s like leaving out bait in front of some wild beast! I will not allow it. We’re going to decide the pairs again!”

  “Then how about you ride together with Miru, Kuroha?” I asked. “Then that leaves Sensei together with the professor, and Yuzu-san together with me.”

  Kuroha looked at me and Yuzu-san with concerned eyes. “...Th-That’s not gonna work, either! Whatever, let’s just draw straws again!”

  We gave in and drew straws once again. It was quite a coincidence, but the results came up exactly the same, and so Kuroha reluctantly agreed.

  But Kuroha still believed this put Miru in danger, so the professor let Miru borrow an invention of hers called the “Meguri Pen” for self defense. It looked like a cute, pink pen, but the professor said it was a tool used to dig tunnels for roads.

  I wonder why she made it look like a pen?

  Kuroha asked the professor if Miru could keep it from now on as an anti-Odaira countermeasure, and the professor happily agreed. Odaira-sensei stamped his feet and pouted.

  When we went to rent the boats, another problem occurred. Both Odaira-sensei and Miru were little girls, so the employee wouldn’t rent them boats because he was afraid they would get in an accident.

  “I didn’t see a sign saying there was an age requirement! Honestly, you are so inflexible!” complained Odaira-sensei, as we headed behind the building.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Miru-chan,” he said, coming back once again in the form of a man. He was carrying a walking stick and was wearing a hat, looking the part of a British gentleman.

  Odaira-sensei tried to explain to the employee that Miru and he were a very close brother and sister, but Miru said he was some old geezer she’d never seen before, which caused yet more trouble. In the end, somehow we managed to rent the boats.

  A little while after taking off in the boats, Odaira-sensei transformed back into a little girl, saying, “This is my true form, now.”

  We rowed out onto the lake.

  “Gin-san, the wind on the lake feels so nice, don’t you think? It’s like I’ve become a swan!” said Yuzu-san, sitting across from me. She looked like she was really enjoying herself.

  It had been four days since Mr. Bedhead had stolen the “Meguri Gun” which could make the marshmallows. According to the professor, it took five days to make a batch of marshmallows, so we didn’t have much time left.

  Gotta hurry.

  If Mr. Bedhead finished the marshmallows, he would go back to the future and leave us all behind. If that happened, it would be all over for us.

  After I said nothing, the smile on Yuzu-san’s face disappeared. She stayed quiet for a little bit after that, but then asked me something with a serious expression on her face.

  “Gin-san, what do you think of Sadame-san?”

  “What do I think? Well, his hair is pretty out there...”

  Yuzu-san sputtered out a “That’s very much like you, Gin-san...”

  “What do you think, Yuzu-san?” I asked.

  “When I heard about him, I thought to myself that he was a lot like my brother.”

  “I see,” I said. “Like how they both warped. Well, Mr. Bedhead used the marshmallows...”

  “Oh, um, not that part.”

  “Oh? Not that?” I figured it out. “I get it. It’s because Mr. Bedhead is also a little piggy.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that... What I think is that my brother and Sadame-san had similar circumstances, even if their passions were different.”

  Now that she puts it that way...

  Yuzu-san’s older brother had had a very gentlemanly love for moe, and he’d been an outcast
at school because the people around him hadn’t been able to understand his tastes. Mr. Bedhead’s novels and the books of his beloved ancestor Torahiko Touji hadn’t been understood by the world around him, either. That must be why Yuzu-san related the two in her mind.

  “It would be good if there was a way we could have Mr. Bedhead be more accepted among his peers,” I said. “If we change the world back to the way it was, that’s not a world that would easily accept him, after all...”

  A world which can accept anyone is not an easy thing.

  I stopped rowing, and while I was deep in thought, Yuzu-san smiled kindly at me.

  “Gin-san, you don’t need to worry about it so much. We need to find Sadame-san and capture him first. I’m going to do everything I can to help you.”

  “You are?” I asked.

  “That’s right. I’ve been thinking about challenging myself to try new things...”

  What is she talking about?

  I was curious, but Yuzu-san just told me, “Look forward to it,” and laughed.

  “Yuzu-san, don’t overdo it and hurt yourself, okay? But if you do get hurt, I’ll give you first aid.”

  “Oh, thank you!” she cried.

  “That’s a good idea. Let’s practice giving some first aid,” I suggested.

  “Practice?” she asked. “What should we do?”

  “In one of Sensei’s books, he wrote that ‘Wounds should heal if you lick them.’”

  “What?! You’re going to lick me, Gin-san? D-Does it matter wh-where?”

  “Anywhere is fine.”

  “O-Okay, th-then, you don’t have to actually lick, but just press your lips against me gently...” she said, and moved her cheek towards me with some conviction.

  Hmm? Push my lips up against her cheek?

  “Imose-kun,” said a voice from beside me. “Kuro-chan is emitting a strange aura right now-noda...”

  The professor and Kuroha’s boat was right next to ours. The professor had mentioned a strange aura, and when I looked toward Kuroha...