The Strongest Little Brother’s Commonplace Encounters with the Bizarre?!

by Tsuyoshi Fujitaka

  “Isn’t that a bit harsh? It’s like saying that what’s inside doesn’t matter at all.” Yuichi scowled. Kanako surely wasn’t asking for their help to do something so exploitative.

  “Sakaki, I don’t have any control over that...” Kanako said.

  “If you want to do it, there’s no reason why you can’t,” said Makina. “I have clout with game stores, too.”

  Mutsuko’s random idea that had seemed irresponsible was suddenly given the weight of reality by Makina.

  “Huh? Ahh... well... m-maybe we shouldn’t...” Kanako looked around awkwardly. She must have thought it over.

  “I see... what about flame war marketing?” Mutsuko asked. “Post something people will want to attack on the internet! Then when everyone’s talking about it, you give a half-baked apology and fan the flames! You get aggregate sites and news sites up in a furor, and people start thinking ‘Fine, what did this idiot end up writing?’ It’s a great way to get sales!”

  “Would you stop it with the crazy schemes?” Yuichi shouted. “Even if you got sales that way, you couldn’t keep it up!”

  All that would do was ruin Kanako’s reputation. It would be one thing if the book sold, but if it didn’t, her life as a writer would be over.

  “Fine, we’ll stick to the above-board!” Mutsuko said. “To get people to pick up your book, you need to appeal with the surface information! That means the packaging is important! To trigger the buying impulse of readers in the stores, you need them to know what it’s about when they just see it on the rack! In other words, you need a gimmick in the title, the cover illustration, and the obi!”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but that’s something you do after you know what the story is about, right?” Yuichi asked. “Thinking about marketing doesn’t matter until the story’s decided.”

  “Wrong!” Mutsuko declared. “You can come at it from another angle! Think of packaging that will sell, then come up with story to match! You can come up with the plot and the themes later, but first, you need to look at it from the point of view of ‘what kind of packaging will sell’!”

  “Are you sure about this?” Yuichi looked around the room to see what the others thought.

  Aiko’s jaw was dropped in shock; perhaps she had been blown back by Mutsuko’s forcefulness. As usual, Natsuki’s expression was unreadable. Makina was looking at Mutsuko with an intrigued expression on her face, while Kanako, the person most invested in all of it, appeared to be deep in thought.

  “That’s true... the fact that I’m desperate enough to ask for your help does suggest that I don’t have any ideas of my own,” said Kanako. “Maybe it would be good to write based on a prompt...”

  So Mutsuko’s suggestions hadn’t crushed her pride as an author? Yuichi had been worried about that, but Kanako seemed surprisingly unfazed.

  “If I could weigh in?” Makina asked. “Cover design and obi are an editorial matter; not everything goes through the creative staff. But Mutsuko’s idea isn’t a bad one. And if you can attain synergy with the editorial side from the start, it just might work.”

  “Synergy?” Yuichi asked, unfamiliar with the word.

  “It means a team effort that leads to something better than what each individual could produce on their own. I’m speaking in business jargon. Paradigm, leverage, proactive, consensus... we love our three-syllable words.”

  “I don’t suppose you could speak to my editor for me?” Kanako asked.

  “I’d rather not,” said Makina. “Of course, I could give the order as a member of management, but that would reduce the editor’s motivation. He has the right to pursue his own duties however he seems fit. I don’t want to impose on that.”

  It felt a bit strange hearing Makina talking like a responsible CEO. It was hard to understand how someone could have so much knowledge of how the mundane world worked, yet still set up those murder games.

  “I see,” said Mutsuko. “We’d need their help with the cover and the obi, but first, the title! That’s the most important thing! If you can’t plan the cover and the obi, the right title can spark word of mouth, and viral advertising and lists! Why don’t we think up that first?”

  Mutsuko wrote “Let’s think of a title!” on the whiteboard. As usual, her handwriting was ridiculously good.

  “First, let’s all offer some ideas! Yu first! Whatcha got?” Mutsuko pointed straight at him.

  “That’s pretty abrupt... um, let’s see... how about ‘Forte Piano’?” Yuichi asked. He had no idea what kind of title would sell, so he just pulled a phrase from his hobby, piano-playing, that he thought sounded a little stylish.

  “Disqualified!” Mutsuko struck the whiteboard.

  “Why?!”

  “The title sounds like it has to be about classical music, and that’s not going to grab the readers’ interest. It also has a fundamental problem that you can’t hear music in a novel, which would make doing performance scenes very difficult. You’d also need a lot of specialist vocabulary to write it, and it would get very tedious.”

  “You can’t know that!” Yuichi exclaimed. “Even if piano is the theme, The Perfect World of Kai and Your Lie in April both sell. How can it be bad for a novel but okay for a manga?” Yuichi felt a bit miffed about having his suggestion shot down so abruptly.

  “You can hear music in a manga!” Mutsuko answered forcefully. “It says so in Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga!”

  “Then you think up a title, Sis!”

  “Good point!” she exclaimed. “I can’t just shoot you down without coming up with an idea myself! Let’s see... we want to pull from titles popular on the internet now... and catchy, too...”

  Mutsuko thought for a moment, then, as if getting together her thoughts, wrote on the whiteboard:

  “When I Saw the Most Beautiful Girl in Class Being Sold as a Slave...”

  “That’s way too harsh!” Yuichi found himself bolting to his feet.

  “Really? I’d be incredibly curious to hear what it was about!”

  “But Orihara is the one who’d have to write the story!” Yuichi looked at Kanako. She was sitting there, mouth hanging open, and apparently surprised by the suggestion.

  Aiko’s face turned red, as if it had triggered certain thoughts in her mind. Natsuki was, as usual, expressionless, while Makina was trying to stifle a laugh.

  Kanako was calmer than he’d expected. “Sakaki... it does feel rather catchy, but I feel like it’s missing something.”

  “Good point... it’s from the protagonist’s point of view, but it does sound like the material might be limited... how about this, then?” Mutsuko added to the title.

  “When I Saw the Most Beautiful Girl in Class Was Sold as a Slave... (I Got a Part-Time Job!)”

  “He’s planning to buy her?!” Yuichi yelped.

  “Yes! The protagonist is going to try to buy the girl! It’s a simple, easy-to-understand goal!”

  “That is never going to sell!” he shouted.

  “You think? It would sell a lot more than yours, Yu!”

  “You don’t know that!” he exclaimed. “Is it really that bad?!”

  “Light novel titles are something you need to put thought into!” she told him. “What about you, Noro? Do you have anything?”

  “Ah, let me see. I’ve been looking at quite a few...” Aiko seemed to have been looking them up on her smartphone. “I put together some popular keywords. How about ‘I Was Reincarnated in an Isekai With My Class and I’m Raising a Cheat Harem to Explore Dungeons’?”

  “Noro... you...” Yuichi looked at Aiko in exasperation.

  “Noro... that’s a classic bad pattern, you know?” said Mutsuko.

  “Huh? Is it?”

  “It’s okay to put popular keywords together,” Mutsuko said. “But what you’ve done is dilute the theme. Isekais, reincarnation, and harems go together, but cheats and raising don’t mesh, and doing a class reincarnation story might make it hard to tell all the characters apart.”

/>   Mutsuko’s criticism of Aiko’s idea was much more gentle than her treatment of Yuichi’s. He felt a little annoyed by the favorable treatment.

  “I see...” Aiko mused, then turned to Natsuki, who had snorted at her suggestion. “Fine, Takeuchi, do you have anything?!”

  Natsuki, who had otherwise been listening quietly, spoke up. “Those long titles are so predictable. I stopped listening to it halfway through. Here, then, is my suggestion.”

  Natsuki stood and walked towards the whiteboard. Then, she wrote:

  Massacre.

  “That’s totally not a light novel title!” Yuichi shouted. It just evoked images of a series of tragic, blood-soaked scenes. Certainly there were light novels with high body counts, and one had even been a big hit in the past, but it would be hard to repeat that success.

  “I see... You rarely see light novels with just one-word titles nowadays, so it could stand out...” Mutsuko put a finger to her chin, looking rather intrigued.

  “If we want short, how about this?!” Aiko exclaimed.

  “.”

  Rebelliously, Aiko wrote a single dot on the whiteboard. Just a period, nothing more.

  “That’s... also actually pretty good, surprisingly,” said Mutsuko. “Sort of like striking down a full stop. It’s cool.”

  Yuichi found himself walking forward and wrote his own suggestion: “fp”.

  “That’s just an abbreviation for ‘Forte Piano’! Why are you so obsessed with that?!” Mutsuko exclaimed.

  “Why do you only object to my suggestions?!”

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  Kanako watched blankly as the club argued with each other.

  I guess this won’t work after all...

  She had asked the others for help, but it didn’t look like this was something that could be settled by committee.

  She would just have to write the novel by herself, without shunting the task to anyone else.

  Kanako swore that she would do the best she could.

  Chapter 2: Second Week of October: The Hinoenma

  “I now call this family meeting to order!” Mutsuko declared to Yoriko and Yuichi.

  They were sitting in the room he shared with Yoriko, and while she called it a family meeting, their parents weren’t involved. Their mother was preparing dinner, and their father was out late, as usual. Their parents probably didn’t even know they were holding this meeting.

  “Isn’t it more like a sibling meeting?” Yuichi tried to object, but Mutsuko completely ignored him.

  “Big Brother, take this seriously,” said his little sister.

  Yoriko sounded like she meant it, so Yuichi fell back into silence. He was getting the feeling this was not a situation he could fight back against.

  Yoriko was in middle school, famous as the younger of the Beautiful Sakaki Sisters. Even Yuichi, her brother, thought she was a lovely girl whose long, black hair suited her well. Above her head hung the label “Little Sister.”

  “Well, okay, but what I don’t get is why it feels like I’m being attacked.” Yuichi had been forced to kneel on the other side of the low table from his sisters. They sat side by side, looking at him.

  “Really? You don’t have any clue at all, Big Brother?” Yoriko asked.

  “Well, I do, but...” Yuichi cast a glance at his left shoulder.

  There was a little girl dressed in a red kimono clinging to it. She looked about six years old, and had a big smile on her face.

  “Yu... an actual kindergartner? This is simply unacceptable,” said Mutsuko.

  “Exactly,” Yoriko agreed. “It’s all right if you’re close with Noro and such, but this is just... wrong!”

  “Hey! It’s not like I sought this out!” Yuichi shouted.

  “What is going on here? First Noro, now this real little girl... is my big brother a pedo?” Yoriko murmured, fixing a glare on the girl.

  “I can still hear you even if you whisper,” Yuichi said furiously. “And I’m not a damned pedo!”

  “Your ears only seem to hear what’s convenient to you, Big Brother!”

  “Hey, Yu,” Mutsuko said, “I’m a forgiving person. I don’t care what fetishes you indulge in the 2D realm. Love as many fictional little girls as you like! But... this is one thing your big sister cannot allow!”

  “It’s like you guys think I’m a lolicon or something!” Yuichi was getting angrier and angrier at each statement.

  “Then how do you explain this? You just bring a little girl home with you, and immediately try to get her in the bath?” Yoriko demanded, just like an interrogator. Yuichi had never seen her so intense before. It had his head spinning.

  “Well... she was dirty, so she wanted me to bathe her!” He cast a glance at the little girl. She was covered in mud from a fight she’d been in.

  “Bathe her in what?! You perv!” Mutsuko pounded the low table.

  “If that’s what you wanted, you could have asked me!” Yoriko scowled.

  It was true. Maybe he hadn’t needed to put her in the bath himself.

  “I’m telling you, you guys have got it all wrong,” Yuichi said. “She looks like a kid, but she’s not. She’s not even human.”

  “Then what is she?” Mutsuko demanded. “Explain right this second, or as your big sister, I swear I’ll take things into my own hands!”

  “She’s a Hinoenma. A yokai!” His voice cracked.

  The Hinoenma clinging to him just laughed.

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  It had all started not long ago. That afternoon, in fact.

  Yuichi had just finished his classes at school. He’d stopped by the house, then headed for the mountains.

  Seishin City was between the ocean and the mountains, rich in natural beauty, as big cities went. The residents had everything they needed close by, but with a little walking, they could also get back in touch with nature.

  The mountain in question was to the north of the city. He arrived at the foot via bicycle, then folded up the bicycle and carried it as he walked the rest of the way.

  The transforming bicycle had been one of the things pushed on him by Mutsuko, but he really liked it. It was compact, after all, and when folded up, it became small enough to carry with him.

  Yuichi walked up one of the hiking courses for a while, but at some point, he left the path to walk deep into the dense forests of the mountain. It was hard to tell at a glance, but Yuichi could make out signs of where people had passed, and he followed those.

  He was heading towards the oni settlement to see Monika Sakurazaki.

  He had met Monika during summer break, after their training camp. She had appeared out of nowhere to demand that Yuichi give Soul Reader back to her.

  In the end, the question of how she had given Soul Reader to him in the first place remained a mystery, but he had decided to help her in her mission of trying to collect the Divine Vessels, parts of the Evil God’s body that had been divided up. Whoever collected them all could have a wish granted, and as a result, a war had broken out over them.

  Monika currently had two Divine Vessels, which meant people might come after her to try to steal them. Since he didn’t want his own family getting targeted, he had left her in the care of an acquaintance, Ibaraki.

  Makina had said the chances of getting attacked would be low for a while, and he’d wanted to call her and let her know, but he couldn’t get in touch with her. Feeling a little worried, Yuichi had decided to talk to her face to face.

  After walking for a little while, he came to an open space.

  There was a village there, but it looked poverty-stricken. There was a dreary and lonely aura around it.

  What era is that supposed to be? he wondered.

  Indeed, it felt like a place forgotten by time, with its houses of thatched and shingled roofs. It was hard to believe that a village like this could still exist, even this far out in the mountains. Perhaps, like Nihao the China, it existed in a slightly different dimension.

  Yuichi checked his c
ell phone. He was still getting a signal.

  “Well, I’ve managed to call her before, so that stands to reason...” In addition, when he looked closer, he saw phone lines leading to each house. It seemed the village hadn’t completely been abandoned by civilization.

  Despite having made it to the oni settlement, he still had no idea where to find Monika. He looked around, and saw no sign of anybody nearby.

  I give up... He walked around a little more, but nobody came into view.

  He was just about to go in a little deeper, when he noticed something strange. Between two buildings, just above the ground, hovered a label.

  “Oni Girl,” it said.

  Where there was a label, there must be a person below it, Yuichi thought as he approached. Still, there was nobody there.

  He knew that labels tended to hang about ten centimeters over someone’s head, which meant that if someone was there, they must be under the ground.

  Yuichi reached down at a dark patch in the earth. It seemed a little too dark, even for a spot that was in the shadow of a building.

  He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but as he reached out, instead of touching the ground, his hand merely sank into the darkness. It touched something that felt like a head of hair.

  He kept reaching down, grabbed what felt like a collar, and pulled.

  Hanging from his hand was a little girl.

  She looked even younger than Monika. She wore a black kimono and had her hair in a bob, and she trembled in his grip.

  “Ahh, sorry?” Unsure of how to react to pulling a girl out of the ground, Yuichi decided to apologize, and set her down.