My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 2

by Takashi Kajii

  “Elementary school aged girls draw little girls all the time, right? I love to watch them draw from behind. An elementary school girl drawing elementary school girls... being watched over by me, in the body of an elementary school girl... Could there be a more blissful trinity?!” Odaira-sensei’s voice rose ever higher from my cellphone.

  “＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊!” (＊Translator’s note: Improper language has been removed.)

  Odaira-sensei had gotten himself so worked up that he had started spouting words you can’t say on the radio one after another, so they had to suspend the program suddenly. This happened quite a bit during Odaira-sensei’s show, and there were not a small number of listeners who quite looked forward to it.

  The radio program shifted abruptly to an instrumental version of an anime song.

  “That’s Sensei’s show for you! You never know when there might be an ‘accident’ on air like that,” I beamed. “It’s quite the thrill. I can’t get enough.”

  “I’m surprised that the show hasn’t been canceled, Onii-chan,” said Kuroha.

  The professor said, “His sponsor Toyoda can’t drop him-noda. Odaira-sensei’s popularity can’t be matched-noda. Since he’s in the body of a little girl, he could even work as a 3D idol-noda. For a flesh and blood girl to become an idol is like a miracle-noda!”

  The image of Odaira-sensei singing on a glittering stage, his twin-tails waving back in forth, filled my mind...

  Whoa, gotta be careful, or I’ll totally be entranced!

  “Onii-chan, what are you gawking at?” demanded Kuroha.

  “Just, I really like girls with blonde hair...”

  “Oh, my...” said Yuzu-san, her cheeks flushing. At the same time, Kuroha stared at me with daggers in her eyes.

  “Imose-kun, please refrain from saying inappropriate things-noda. What would you do if you got stabbed in some horrible incident-noda?” the professor asked.

  “I’m not going to do anything that’d get the police involved, sheesh!” complained Kuroha.

  After her admonishment, the professor laughed merrily. “But I didn’t say anything about you doing it, Kuro-chan!”

  “Grr...” Kuroha clamped up like she was angry about something. I felt sorry for her, so I decided to change the subject.

  “Speaking of incidents, whatever happened to Mr. Bedhead?” I asked.

  “I have not a clue-noda,” dismissed the professor.

  “You haven’t talked with him?” asked Kuroha.

  “Nope-noda.”

  Hmm...

  “Professor, Sadame-san is your older brother. You should really try to get along,” suggested the ever-so-kind Yuzu-san. To Yuzu-san, who had lost her brother, she truly felt that not getting along with one that was alive would be a terrible shame.

  “Me and my brother have different tastes, and we think totally differently-noda. The thing we have in common is that we each go our different way-noda!” The Professor grinned and laughed. “I’m not a good little sister like Kuro-chan or Yuzu-cchi!”

  It didn’t seem like the Choumabayashi siblings’ relationship had changed. I was interested to hear how Mr. Bedhead was doing, but judging from the professor’s reaction, I wasn’t going to learn anything from her.

  It had been one month since we had returned to the 23rd century, and so it had been one month since Mr. Bedhead had transferred to that area.

  “I didn’t contact him, but...” The professor pulled out a book from her little pouch. “...all of a sudden I got this sent from my brother. I think he wants me to give it to you, Imose-kun.”

  The professor handed me the book. It was Haruka Haruka’s AFTERSCHOOL LITTLE SISTER CLUB.

  “Wait, that’s the wrong one.”

  Torahiko Touji’s 21 CENTURY.

  “That’s... a current-day Japanese edition, isn’t it? Kuroha, was there a current-day edition of Torahiko Touji’s The 21st Century?” I asked.

  “Not when I read it before, no. Torahiko Touji wasn’t well respected in our time period.”

  “Maybe it just came out recently?” I asked.

  “Nope, this was published quite a long time ago-noda.” The professor opened it up to the copyright page. According to the first publication date, it had come out half a century ago. I took the book from the professor and looked through it. The cover illustration was a landscape, and I couldn’t find a single insert illustration on the inside.

  “No insert illustrations? So it’s not a current-day remake, but just a translation into current-day Japanese, then?” I noted.

  “It looks a lot like a book from my time period,” said Yuzu-san.

  “Yes. If you ignore the fact that the prose is in current-day Japanese, it is quite similar to books of the Heisei era,” said Kuroha.

  “Do you think it was published in that area?” I asked.

  “I suspect so,” she said.

  I thought about that place in my mind: the place where Mr. Bedhead had gone.

  “Onii-chan, look.” Kuroha pointed behind me, snapping me out of my thoughts about that place. I turned around, and the big screen display over the shopping plaza was showing a news program. An anime character was presenting the news.

  “Ah!” I exclaimed.

  “Perfect timing, that place is on the news right now-noda,” the professor said.

  We all sat back and watched the news broadcast.

  “—we have a live shot. Take a look at the festival atmosphere.”

  The broadcast shifted to a live shot. We could see what looked a lot like a Heisei era street. No, actually if you looked more closely, it was even more retro. According to Kuroha, it was a mixture of Heisei, Meiji, Taisho, and Showa era styles. There were a ton of signs written in kanji.

  The news continued to show the festival. A group of people were carrying a portable shrine, and a group of masked dancers called shishimai pranced at the front of the parade.

  It was a tradition that should have been long extinct in our time period. I had never even heard of a shishimai outside of a children’s anime called, “Cover your face, but not your butt! Shishimai.”

  “Oh? Look at that!” Yuzu-san had noticed something, and was pointing at the screen. I looked and saw a young man whose spiky hair made him stand out of the crowd.

  It was Mr. Bedhead.

  “I still can’t get over that hairstyle of his. I wonder what his secret is for preserving such an amazing bedhead,” I wondered.

  Mr. Bedhead had his arms crossed and was taking in the festival with a nasty look on his face.

  “God damn him, how can he make such a unhappy face during a festival-noda!” his sister exclaimed.

  The camera zoomed right up to Mr. Bedhead. He noticed and turned toward it, and then suddenly bellowed, “Readers, listen clearly! My literary talent will completely uproot the orthodox style! Remember that!”

  “Suddenly making a declaration straight toward the camera... That’s very like him,” said Kuroha with a sigh.

  An old woman next to him spoke up, saying, “Your hair’s a mess, you know!”

  He countered, “This is my LITERARY HAIR!”

  He never changes.

  After a little while, the shot returned to the news studio. The city that had just been on the news was the “Ariake Special Cultural District.”

  The genesis for this “Special Cultural District” had gone like this. Kurona Gura had written I Want to Have Onii-chan’s Baby (Oniaka) after being inspired by Ani MAJI Mania. Thanks to that, culture around the world had gone back to being the Oniaka culture. However Mr. Bedhead’s The 21st Century hadn’t just vanished into the black hole of time.

  Gura had taken the manuscript and shown it to his editor, who had had it published as a book by “An Unknown Author.” It hadn’t made the kind of impact that I Want to Have Onii-chan’s Baby had, but it had collected a small following of true believers.

  “It wasn’t my brother’s talent, but the greatness of the original work by our ancestor-noda,” s
aid the professor.

  “No, I think your brother’s talent played a role. I could feel his pure passion for the works of your ancestors,” I said.

  Mr. Bedhead’s The 21st Century was a work filled with nostalgia for the past. It had had a small, but real, effect on Japanese society, and among a certain group gave rise to a strong passion for preserving the culture of the past.

  The number of these people who protected the culture of the past had grown each generation, and eventually they’d created their own “Special Cultural District” on the man-made islands in the Tokyo Bay. At first it had been a small encampment, but by the current-day, it was now a designated Tokyo metropolitan ward with a population in the tens of thousands.

  You could say that it was a town that had been born from Mr. Bedhead’s passion, so it was only natural that he had gleefully moved there.

  “He talks big, but all he ever really wanted was a group of like-minded people to be with-noda!” said the professor.

  “I hope he has a good time there in the Special Cultural District. He won’t think of trying to change the world’s culture again like he did the last time,” I said.

  I’m glad for you, Mr. Bedhead. The books you write won’t be ignored anymore. At the very least, the people in the Special Cultural District will give you some feedback.

  “As for me, I can’t understand what people like about this Special Cultural District, but there are always people every generation who like older stuff-noda,” the professor added.

  “And who was it that spent themselves penniless buying vintage items from the Heisei era?” Kuroha needled.

  “That’s like, completely different-noda!” yelled back the professor.

  “What do you think about the Special Cultural District, Onii-chan?” Kuroha asked me.

  “I don’t really care about it, but if there are people that want to preserve the past, why not?” I said. As long as they didn’t try and stop us from doing things here, I had no intention of saying anything against them.

  “But you just heard him say he was going to destroy the orthodox style, remember-noda?” the professor said. “You sure that’s okay, Imose-kun-noda?”

  “Sure, I’ll take him on! I have to do my best as someone who loves the orthodox style!” I answered.

  Odaira-sensei had said to me that something truly amazing might be created out of something that wasn’t mainstream, such as the Special Cultural District. If the orthodox style rested on its laurels, it might lose its place to something else.

  “I won’t allow the orthodox style to be destroyed!” I cried.

  “Imose-kun, if only you knew...” muttered the professor.

  Huh? What was that supposed to mean?

  As I gave her a strange look, the professor freaked out a little and started waving her hands up and down by her sides. “Never mind-noda!”

  Kuroha overheard our exchange and responded in a worried tone. “But is this really for the best? I mean, it was just a little bit, but we did change history.”

  Kuroha was a serious person, so she must have wanted to reset the world to precisely how it had been before. Any way you looked at it, this Special Cultural District was an alien addition that had been inserted into our old world.

  But...

  “I think it is for the best,” I answered. I opened my copy of Torahiko Touji’s 21 CENTURY and showed it to Kuroha. “Kuroha, think about it. In the original Oniaka world, no one appreciated Torahiko Touji, no?”

  “If there wasn’t even a current-day edition published, that’s certainly true,” she said.

  “And in the Seishin world, what do you think?”

  “It might have been well known there, perhaps. A lot of books were probably still well known there.”

  “I think so, too. But in that world, they all used kanji. So I...”

  “You couldn’t read them, Gin-san,” Yuzu-san said, finishing my sentence.

  Kuroha continued to look straight at me.

  “I think this is the first world where a book by Torahiko Touji has come out that I can actually read,” I explained.

  “That’s probably true,” said Kuroha.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked.

  “I understand what you’re trying to say, Onii-chan. You want me to say that it’s a wonderful thing or something, right? But you’re just overthinking it, Onii-chan.”

  “You think?”

  “Even if you read it, there’s no way it’d be to your liking,” she added.

  “Yeah. I had that feeling just flipping through the pages.”

  “Read it properly, sheesh. Otherwise there’s no point to it.”

  “True. I might be inspired somehow, you know? And just being able to read it, even if it’s not to my taste... That’s a big deal, don’t you think?”

  Kuroha didn’t answer.

  “I mean, I bet that all those modern Japanese language books of a certain genre you like are probably coming out with current-day editions.”

  “I-I’m not really into those t-type of books...” she stammered.

  “Ahaha... when people call me a maniac, I take it as a compliment, but Kuroha doesn’t like it when you talk about her literary tastes-noda. You need a lot of specialized knowledge to really get into the fandoms, see... A healthy thirst for knowledge-noda!”

  “It’s good to learn new things,” Yuzu-san chimed in.

  “See? Yuzu-san just wrapped up this conversation in a nice little bow!” I cried.

  “Enough...” Kuroha let out a sigh, but then made an expression like she was looking off into the distance. “But if you can read them now, I won’t have to translate and read them to you, Onii-chan...”

  “Did you say something?”

  “N-No, I d-didn’t say anything.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  After that, we changed the subject and talked about various unimportant things. A little bit later, the female announcer’s voice suddenly came out from my phone once again.

  “We sincerely apologize for the trouble. We will now continue the Gai Odaira Hour with ‘A Song Brought to You By Gai Odaira.’”

  Odaira-sensei’s show was back on the air, and it was time for the segment where he chooses a song to play.

  “Why don’t we have Miru-chan pick a song this week instead of me? Miru-chan, what song would you like?” asked Odaira-sensei.

  “‘LILBRIDE.’” The moment Miru said the name of the song it began to play. They must have decided ahead of time.

  “LILBRIDE” was the common abbreviation for the song “MAKE LILSIS BRIDE,” which was about an older brother’s love for his little sister. The lyrics were left a bit up to interpretation, but it was thought that the siblings in this song were getting married.

  “I can’t believe that Miru-chan would choose a song like this...” said Yuzu-san, looking a little taken aback. “Is she serious about wanting to marry Gin-san? The law is back to the way it was, right?”

  In the Seishin world the law had changed, making it illegal for non-blood related brothers and sisters to get married, but since the world had gone back to the Oniaka route, the law had changed back, too. Ever since, Miru had often proclaimed she would marry me.

  Miru was still a child, so I didn’t think that she really understood what marriage was. It just proved how innocent she was.

  “When I watch the three of you, I start to think that it’s my relationship with my brother that’s the odd one-noda,” said the professor. “With this obvious brother complex the two of you have, it’s starting to screw with my sense of normality-noda.”

  “I don’t have a brother complex. It’s just that without me around, Onii-chan is completely useless, so I can’t help but stick with him all the time,” said Kuroha, responding forcefully to the accusation. The professor just smiled and laughed it off.

  After a little while, the second verse of “LILBRIDE” started to play.

  “THE FUTURE WILL BE FOR THE TWO OF US... ♪” went the lyrics, as the son
g started to talk about the future of the pair.

  ...The future...

  Hearing that word made me remember something. I’d been meaning to check with the professor about something for a long time, and now seemed like a good opportunity, so I inquired.

  “Did you really go visit the 38th century, Professor?”

  “What is... All of a sudden...?!” The professor looked like she had just been punched in the face.

  “I’ve been curious about it for a while, but there just hadn’t been a good time to ask,” I explained.

  If the professor had been telling the truth, then both the orthodox style and modern Japanese literature would all be lumped into the category of “Ancient Literature.” Japanese would be entirely in symbols and numbers, and what passed for mainstream literature then would consist of things completely incomprehensible to us in the current-day.

  Far in the future — probably long after I was dead — something would fall from the heavens and wipe out the orthodox literature that had taken dominance over all the creatures on the surface like it was nothing at all. For someone who loved the orthodox style, like myself, it was a sad thought.

  “So you believed that story, Imose-kun-noda?” the professor said.

  “Partially...”

  “Well it was just a lie to get my brother to give up, that’s all-noda!” she said.

  Oh! That’s all it was! I was a little surprised, but Kuroha nodded like she’d figured that was the case all along.

  “I knew that there was no way that orthodox literature and modern literature could have been lumped into the same category or that Japanese had just devolved into symbols and numbers!” said Kuroha, patting herself on the back.

  “No, no... They were treated in the same category, but within that category, there were still some that were considered ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than one another-noda. An author from the second half of this century had had such a tremendous impact that he was treated basically like a god and his works were considered mythological legends. If they actually met the person, they’d be surprised at what a normal boy he is, but...”

  “......” Kuroha look at the professor incredulously.

  “....Ah.” The professor had a look on her face that screamed “I just spilled the beans.”