The Deceiving

by Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)

  Now I was up.

  “My name’s Shuuya Kano. Thanks a lot.”

  The girl nodded at each of us in order.

  “Great! Now we all know each other’s names.”

  “Y-yeah,” I replied, facing downward to keep from showing her my blushing face.

  The moment we finished with the self-intros, the girl began fidgeting to herself once again.

  “All right, then! With that out of the way, it’s about time you, uh…”

  About time we do what?

  Judging by the way she put it, it must’ve been something she planned in advance. But we had nothing to go on. We patiently awaited the resolution, only to have the wind taken right out of our sails.

  “Could you maybe start calling me ‘Big Sis’ now?”

  The girl glanced at me first.

  “Or, on the other hand, regular old ‘Sister’ is fine, too…?”

  Then she winked at me.

  On the other hand: What…?

  Right. So that’s what she meant. She just wanted her newly minted younger brothers and sisters to make it official in her eyes.

  Sneaking a look over, I found Seto staring blankly into space. Kido, meanwhile, appeared to be deeply pondering some question or another.

  “All right,” she said after a moment, “…Big Sis.”

  This seemed to instantly elate the girl. “Oooh, Tsubomi!” she said. “That’s so cuuuute!” She gave Kido a loving pat on the shoulder, then whisked herself straight over to Seto and me.

  Her twinkling eyes had “Okay, your turn next” written all over them. I could feel the waves of pressure pounding upon us.

  “Wh-what’s up? I’m your big sis, right? Come on…”

  Her face, as it sidled ever closer to our own, was crisscrossed with sheer determination.

  “B-Big Sis!”

  Seto shouted it without hesitation.

  I could tell he just wanted this over with, but the girl didn’t seem to care. “All right!” she said as she patted his head. “That’s the way to do it, Kousuke!”

  It made Seto look remarkably happy.

  That left me last.

  The girl’s eyes turned to mine, once again drawing dangerously close.

  It would’ve been easy to just say it, of course. But it felt a little weird, the “big sis” stuff. I honestly thought this girl was either my age or maybe a year younger.

  “Come onnn,” she said, eyes locked with mine, wholly unaware of my hesitation. “What am I to you, hmm?”

  All right. I give up, If that’s what she wants, fine. It might feel weird, but once I get in the habit of saying it, it’ll be done.

  “Uh, Sis…?”

  The moment I uttered the single most important syllable in her life, I felt the word tuck itself straight into some forgotten corner of my heart.

  Simply saying it made my brain begin to identify the girl in front of me as my family.

  The girl blinked in apparent surprise. “‘Sis’…? Huh. I guess there was that, too, huh?”

  I stared back at her. What was she talking about? But she once again paid me no mind.

  “Well…okay! Sure! Great! Good to meet you, Shuuya,” she said as she patted my head.

  From that moment on, the girl in front of me was Sis. And being patted by her had a sort of…irritating feel to it. Much different from Ayaka. I was so embarrassed by it that I edged away from her.

  My “sister” puffed up her cheeks. “You’re trying to avoid me, aren’t you?” she pouted.

  Well, yeah. Someone patting you on the head in front of other people is gonna make you want to run screaming, all right?

  “One more time.”

  For some reason—faced with the sight of her, hand in the air, face all scrunched up—I couldn’t say no to her.

  If my sister was still just a “girl” to me, I would’ve had no problem leaving her blowing in the wind. But now I had a different perspective on her. And that wasn’t an option any longer.

  I resigned myself to it, coming in closer. “Therrrre you go,” she said as she ran a hand through my hair.

  My body was frozen in place by the shame. I could see Kido grinning at the sight.

  …How much longer will this go on?

  I felt like I wanted this moment to end as soon as possible…and, simultaneously, continue on forever.

  Looking back, maybe I transferred some of the emotion I used to reserve for my mother over to my sister on that day.

  After all, from that moment—until the very, very end—I was incapable of defying my sister in any way at all.

  ONE DAY, ON THE STREET

  I plodded on in silence through the dimly lit street, making my way home.

  I could feel no heat, nor any cold.

  It was like all of my senses had gone haywire.

  The image of the last time I saw my sister was burned into my mind in dull orange colors.

  Where should I be heading toward? What should I do? I had no idea any longer.

  At the very least, I had better do what that snake tells me to do.

  If I don’t, the two I left behind are gonna be in serious trouble.

  The snake said it’d “kill” them. If I don’t live up to my end of the bargain, that’s gonna be a reality—in as cold and barbaric a way as possible.

  I’m not allowed to choose when I die any longer.

  Despite that, I couldn’t talk to the rest of them.

  The only force pushing my staggering legs forward was the words left in my mind by that snake.

  “Huff…huff…Agh!”

  As I kept walking, mind in a deep fog, I tripped and found myself hurtling to the ground, scraping a knee hard against the concrete. Pain ripped across my leg.

  “…Ngh…!”

  I grabbed on to a nearby light pole for support.

  Oh, right: I needed to revert back to normal before returning home anyway. Maybe this was good timing, in a way.

  If I stayed in the form of my sister for too long, that snake would…

  …What am I even doing?

  My beloved sister is dead. Why do I have to pose as her corpse and get all of those photos taken of me? It was just pure torture. Pure torture.

  I wish it could just kill me already. Why won’t it?

  “Ugh…Damn it…!”

  I was so pained, so helpless, I didn’t know what to do.

  What now? Somebody help me. Somebody…

  “Ayano…? Ooh, I thought it was you, Ayano.”

  I turned toward the voice. Under the dim streetlight, I saw the form of Shintaro Kisaragi.

  “What’re you doing down there?”

  Wait. I just felt all that pain. Why wasn’t I back to my normal form?

  …Oh, crap. This is awful. And I just had to run into him…

  “What? You feeling okay? …Oh, I bet the summer-school teacher yelled at you about something, didn’t he? Eesh. You know that happens to you because you never study, right? I just gave you that tutoring session and everything, too…”

  “…Shut up.”

  “Wh-what…? Geez, you don’t have to stare daggers at me like that…”

  I pushed Shintaro Kisaragi aside and walked away.

  “Hey! Hey, what’s up with you, man? You’re acting weird!”

  I turned around one final time and addressed him directly:

  “This is all your fault. You never noticed any of it.”

  YOBANASHI DECEIVE 5

  The night was drawing near.

  Outside the window, the sun was slowly being swallowed up by the rectangular outlines of the buildings below. In the blink of an eye, it fell below them and disappeared, leaving only a dim afterglow behind.

  The homes, bathed in an orange glare, slowly began to be enveloped in blackness. Nobody could stop night from coming now.

  It was true. That was the way the world worked. It wasn’t going to show me any mercy from the start.

  I couldn’t turn back time, and I certainly couldn�
�t make it go any faster. No matter who lives or who dies, the world goes at the same speed it always does.

  These incredibly obvious laws of nature seemed all the more vibrant to me as I groggily stared out the window.

  Lying on my back in bed, I turned my eyes away from the window and turned my body to the side to follow them. The bookshelf that entered my sight featured a neatly arranged selection of superhero comics that I hadn’t touched in a while.

  How long ago was it when I used to pretend I was a hero, fantasizing about all the exciting adventures I’d join the ones on TV in? Or when we used to run around the neighborhood, pretending that we were a group of undercover superheroes ourselves?

  The more I thought back on it, the more I reflected on how much had happened over the past few years.

  We tried to go to school but never quite fit in—and when it finally all fell apart, the three of us cried the whole night through in frustration.

  All the notebooks, textbooks, school uniforms my mother and father bought us…It all went to waste. I felt terrible about that.

  They told me to do my best, but I couldn’t keep my part of the bargain. That was the most painful thing of all.

  I think it was around then that Seto tried to skip out of town, no longer able to stand the grief his powers gave him.

  I thought he was just going out to let off some steam, but he still wasn’t back after dark, which made me fear the worst for some time.

  The entire family went out to search for him, of course—but, really, that wasn’t as hard as trying to console my sister, sobbing loudly throughout the hunt.

  When Seto returned the next day, the first words out of his mouth were “I met this cute girl.” My reaction went beyond anger and into the realm of exasperation.

  Kido beat the stuffing out of him, as everyone expected. Strangely, though, Seto managed to keep his powers a lot more under control after that point.

  Maybe it was thanks to that “cute girl” he supposedly met in some forest somewhere. They were still getting along well, I heard, but given how reluctant he was to let us see her, I was starting to have my suspicions.

  Kido, for her part, had softened considerably from before. Her own power wasn’t causing as much trouble for her any longer, either.

  She “got the knack” of it is how she boastfully described it. But being able to flick her presence on and off at will created other problems.

  Back when Seto and I were joking about her to ourselves, she appeared right by our side and said, “What’s that supposed to mean?” I thought I was gonna go into cardiac arrest.

  And on that topic, the conflict over excessive apologies that raged for years between Kido and Seto was finally in its closing stages.

  Apparently, Kido’s hang-up over it stemmed from the habits of the people she used to live with, way back when. “I didn’t want any more friends who did that,” she explained.

  Since she opened up with that, Seto made a serious effort to improve—though if anything, it made his speech even more awkward than it should have been. I had just about gotten used to it as of late, although it was kind of sad to see the old Seto become a thing of the past.

  Still, they were getting along much better than before, so I couldn’t complain.

  The two of them made an effort to change, and they did.

  The only one who didn’t—who never even tried—might be me, lying here in the middle of the room.

  This had happened before, once, me spending the whole day doing nothing, sitting in my room and thinking about assorted things.

  About when my mother—the one who gave birth to me, that is—died.

  I really thought, back then, that life would just go on for me. Like I was floating in space, nothing reaching out. Happiness wasn’t something I even dared to hope for.

  But how did that work out?

  I was blessed with new parents, new siblings, and a life that I could spend smiling and laughing all day.

  It seemed like some kind of fever dream, sometimes. Like the world had seen what I went through and finally said, “Let there be happiness.”

  Until a month ago—until Ayaka, the mother who brought me to this point, passed away—I seriously believed in all that crap.

  “…Why did it have to wind up like this?”

  I whined to myself, a habit I easily fell into. I suppose if the world had ears attached to it, I could point my grief in that direction. But it didn’t. And if it did, I’d probably try to tear them off instead.

  If the world gained conscious thought overnight, I’d gouge it out from the core, smash it against the ground, and stomp it flat.

  The more I thought about it, the more it made my stomach churn, like my guts were going to spew out of my mouth.

  What did we ever do to anyone?

  We accepted life in this world, held back our tears against injustice, gritted our teeth against unfairness, and thought we finally obtained happiness. And now look.

  How did we let it get taken from us so, so easily?

  Did the world dislike us so much that it wouldn’t even allow a tiny sliver of happiness for us?

  Who was it? Who created this putrid world, anyway…?

  “What’re you moping about?”

  I sat up, startled by the sudden voice, only to find Kido staring down at me in a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants.

  Her hair used to be short and frizzy. Now it came down to her shoulders, making her look much more female even as her face remained cold and indifferent to the world.

  “Y-you were here?”

  There was no telling how long she might’ve been observing me. She was that skillful with it now.

  “What? Something got you down?”

  Kido remained expressionless, but it seemed like she was worried for me. Hurriedly, I stuck a “smile” on my face.

  “N-no, no! I’m not moping about anything, man! Like, I’m feeling super-great right now. Uh, maybe you’re worried ’cause I was sleeping by myself? Geez, Kido, that’s awful cute of you…Ow!”

  My simpering nonsense was cut short by a sudden conk on the head.

  “Wh-what’d you go and do that for?!”

  I held my head as I pleaded my case. Kido paused a bit before answering.

  “…You’re crying, you big liar.”

  I didn’t notice until then.

  The “smile” I pasted on my face was gone. My deceiving powers were temporarily dissolved by the pain.

  “Oof…”

  The real expression I had under the smile…I couldn’t say how she gauged that one. I hid my face, not expecting its tear-soaked visage to be exposed to the world like this.

  “N-no! Seriously, I’m not crying! Man, you’re such a bully…”

  I can’t believe a little bop on the head was enough to cancel my power. This thing’s useless, isn’t it?

  I tried my hardest to freshen up my reddened face, but it was a little too late for that now. Not to mention meaningless.

  With a heavy sigh, Kido crouched down and whispered, “Idiot” into my ear.

  “I-idiot…?”

  I wasn’t able to chain any more words together.

  “You don’t have to pretend,” Kido continued. “It’s not healthy to do that.”

  She certainly had a point. I was pretty much screaming “Please! Worry about me!” to her with my act. I saw no way out.

  “…I’m sorry. My bad.”

  This past month had to have taken its toll on Kido, too. I saw her crying on multiple occasions myself. She really didn’t have the emotional capacity to worry about me, too, but here I was making her do it anyway. I am such an idiot.

  “It’s all right. You’re such an idiot, you can’t help it.”

  The venom-laden forgiveness put my mind at ease a little.

  “I’ll keep on punching you, though. For your sake, okay?”

  Now my mind wasn’t so at ease. I suppose I’m destined for a short life.

  “Ah-ha-ha…What’re
you in here for, though? Did you need something?”

  “Oh, right. Big Sis said it’s time to eat. Dad and Seto are waiting for you.”

  Kido pointed a finger at the door. I stood up in a rush.

  “Huh? Everybody’s home already?! Agh, I’m sorry! I’ll be right out!”

  “You waste so much of my time,” she gruffly replied as she left.

  I couldn’t agree with her more. Even I thought so. But although she was a little rough around the edges, Kido was always kind to me when it counted.

  Ahh, look at the mistake I’ve been making. I’ve still been happy this whole time, haven’t I?

  It’s not like back when I was all alone. I’ve got someone kind enough to punch me now.

  I have to keep on living. I need to get happy.

  If I’m not happy, I start dragging down the rest of the family with me.

  …Yeah. I won’t let the world just have its way with me like this. No way. I need to survive, survive, and get happy, no matter what.

  “Wonder what we’re having…? Hopefully nothing like the horrors we’ve had lately.”

  “I think we’re safe there. Smells kinda weird, but…”

  “Aw, man, seriously? …Ah, well. Better learn how to cook before I bitch about it. Kinda wish you’d cook sometime, though, Kido. You’re a lot better at it.”

  “Sure. I don’t mind. But you know how much Big Sis insists on doing it all the time. Can’t do much about that.”

  We headed for the dining table as we spoke.

  Dinner tasted about as iffy as I expected, but—for a nice change of pace—I was able to laugh with my family a little tonight.

  A typical day in spring.

  I was milling around a small park near my house. I was there because my sister told me to report over there. That she had something she wanted to ask about.

  Looking over the sparse selection of playground equipment, I opted to sit down on a swing. There wasn’t much to do, so I indifferently stared at the sky.

  By this point, I was used to my sister saying weird stuff to me without warning. If anything, I was thankful for the fact she gave me plenty of advance notice this time. Not long ago, she tore into our room, said, “Let’s go out and do something fun!” and then she dragged us out to go catch insects until the middle of the night.