Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and relationships depicted herein are the
product of the author’s imagination and the collective tropes of moe otaku subculture.
Any resemblance to real persons or sibling dynamics, living or dead, is coincidental.

The author sincerely hopes that this book never falls into the hands of their older
brother, for this would lead to an embarrassing conversation about the extent of their
otaku brain rot, an outcome which he could never have anticipated when he introduced
the author to Naruto in seventh grade.

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repost the illustration separately from this book without obtaining the artist’s permission.
Approximation of a Brother Complex: A Sibling Love Story

“I want to marry my big brother.”

I don’t know if that was my answer the first time the adults asked me what I wanted to
be when I grew up. But it was the first dream I remember having. To my kindergartener
self it was utterly logical; I said it with the same effortless confidence that any other kid
would say “doctor” or “firefighter”.

The adults didn’t react with surprise. I was far from the only girl who said she wanted to
be a bride, after all. They simply smiled, patted me on the head, and said, “One day,
you’ll find a boy you’ll want to marry even more than your brother!”

I was shocked. There’s a boy out there even cooler than my brother? I’ll forget about my
brother and marry him instead?

I couldn’t imagine it then, and I can’t imagine it now.

中1

I woke up in a cold sweat, with a pillow damp with drool.

For a moment, I scrambled in the darkness, a stranger in my own skin. It took too long
to get my breathing straight.

“Hey, Miharu, are you okay?”

The voice on the other side of the door belonged to my older brother.

As soon as I heard that mild, soothing voice, a shiver went down my spine. “Don’t come
in!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“Are you in pain? Did you have a nightmare?” he asked, sounding worried.

Honestly? I had the most frightening dream, but he was the last person I could say that
to.

So instead, I said, “Shut up! Get lost.”

He was quiet for a moment. Just when I thought I'd succeeded in getting rid of him, he
said, “Miharu, is it possible that you're scared of going to school? Is there someone
making life hard for you?”

At first I didn't understand what he was getting at. Then it occurred to me that he was
trying, as delicately as possible, to bring up the subject of bullying.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I'm always here for you.”

It was a touching, immaculate display of sibling support, the kind of scene that would
warm anyone's heart.

In reply, I said, “Yeah, there's someone I consider a pain in the neck.”

“Who is it?” he asked, ever eager to help.

I couldn't stop what came out of my mouth next. In my defence, there was no way he
couldn't have seen this coming. I had to go for the low-hanging fruit, Your Honour! It's
my duty as a little sister!

“You,” I said, and I immediately felt better.

***

As it turned out, my brother was the kind of guy who looked great in a naked apron. In
my innocent youth, I would never have considered the thought. But after the dream, I
knew all too well.

My brother had such slender, almost effeminate looks. He would look amazing in any
kind of drag.

Ahhhhhh! He was just my type.

Normally, I would be content with admiring my crush from afar, but there was one little
problem in this scenario: I was his little sister. We came from the same uterus.

I tried to tell myself that it wasn't all bad. Maybe it was a rite of passage for all little
sisters!
Unfortunately, when I looked it up on the Internet, the only things that came up were
light novel titles.

No matter how you look at it, it wasn't normal for a girl to feel this way about her brother.
I was already in middle school, for crying out loud! I wasn’t going around telling the
world anymore that I wanted to marry my big brother! No offence, but that’s cringe!

The only bright spot was that my brother hadn't worked out what was going on with me
yet. Good thing he wasn't that smart to begin with, but it also helped that he was a high
school student. He spent most of his time outside school hanging out with his friend or
studying in his room by himself, so I only ever really saw him at breakfast and dinner.

It was the appropriate amount of distance, I suppose, for siblings our age.

I hated it, though.

Even though we lived together, there were times I found myself wishing that I knew
more about him. There were so many parts of himself that he would never, ever show
me. Maybe if I knew about them I could explain the way I thought about him in my
dreams.

And so, once every while, I followed my brother and his friend around for a day. Not,
like, creepily or anything. I did it because, well… because.

Because I was researching for the sake of curing my disease!

As per my habit, I slipped on an overcoat and my biggest pair of shades for the day’s
expedition. The two boys were on their way back from the bookstore, carrying several
manga volumes between them. I adjusted my shades and crept in closer so that I could
hear their conversation.

“The latest chapter was so good!” I heard his friend exclaim. “I’m rooting for the girl with
the biggest boobs!”

This loser pervert’s name was Naoki. I wasn’t sure why my brother hung around him.

“You sure talk about some funny things, Naoki,” said my brother.
Thank goodness! Even with this mud stain in his life, my brother was better than all
those sex-obsessed hyenas. Even when talking about a booby manga, he sounded so
serene!

“C’mon, man,” said Naoki. “You gotta have an opinion. There’s a time in every man’s life
where he has to take a stand!”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, so spill! Which girl do you like?”

“Hm?” Instead of answering straight away, my brother tilted his head slightly. “For some
reason, I feel an intense stare on my back…”

I hid behind a ledge right before the two boys turned around and saw me. Phew, that
was a close one!

“Guess I imagined it,” my brother said. “Anyway, if you’re talking about that manga, I
haven’t decided yet who’s my favourite. I like all the characters.”

“Heh. Figures you’d say that.”

After that, the subject changed to their upcoming school test. It didn’t sound like
anything too interesting, so I let them drift out of sight.

Phew! That was too close for comfort. I decided to call it quits for today.

A certain question lingered in my mind even after I got home, though. Putting manga
aside, what kind of girl did my brother like? I wondered if he had a thing for tomboys
with twin pigtails. Not asking that for any particular reason, of course. Just idle curiosity.

At the same time, I didn’t see the point in wondering about his tastes. My brother would
probably ask a girl out at some point, and that person had nothing to do with me. He’d
spend all his time with her, and maybe one day they’d start living together, and then
there’d be nothing left of us.

For some reason, this thought left a crushing weight on my chest. These days, I was
experiencing that feeling often enough that I now had a strategy for dealing with it: I dug
out the family photos.
This album was my only evidence that our relationship was special, that I was still the
most important girl in his life. When I looked at the two of us playing together, the knot in
my stomach would always ease. The photos captured a fragment in time that would
never fade, no matter how much we changed in the future. I could—and did—gaze at
those memories for hours.

This time, as I stared at my brother’s smiling mouth, a sudden impulse came over me. I
don’t know what I was thinking. I brought the photo of him to my lips and felt it in my
skin: this was the closest we were ever going to get.

When finally, I looked up and opened my eyes, I was no longer alone.

My brother’s friend was standing at the doorway, his mouth agape.

The ensuing silence might have lasted for centuries. Naoki’s eyes twitched as his gaze
went from my face to the saliva-covered photo in my hand.

Finally, he said:

“Nice weather, huh?”

His words snapped me out of my stasis. I turned my body swiftly and mechanically, like
the Terminator homing in on his target.

“You shall be silenced,” I said, with killing intent.

“Hey now! This could go on your juvenile record!” Naoki babbled.

“Who are you, my father?!”

“Just a concerned citizen.”

Well…

He had a point. I couldn’t exactly kill him. But if murder was eliminated as an option,
what now?

“Please don’t look at me,” I said, burying my face in my hands.

“Awww, it’s okay,” he said soothingly. “Just put it all behind you.”
“I can’t do that! I mean, I—and my brother! You saw! I mean, blargh!”

“Blargh indeed,” he said dryly.

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you, you perverted asshat!”

He snickered. “What a foul mouth you have for a twelve-year-old.”

“Yeah, so what?” I glared witheringly at him.

Unexpectedly, he smiled, and not in the teasing way. “There now, you’re not so
embarrassed anymore, right?”

He patted me on the head, so I kicked him in the nuts.

“P-please tell my mother that I love her,” Naoki croaked.

Oh wow, he really did look like he was about to drop dead.

Suddenly, I felt bad about hitting him. He had gone about it in a completely stupid way,
but I actually think he was trying to cheer me up. Oh dear.

I crouched next to where he was writhing on the floor and said in a low voice: “Sorry.”

“Don’t do that again,” he said weakly.

“Do you swear not to tell anyone?”

“Yep,” he said. He still looked white in the face from the pain I had subjected him to. “Let
us never speak of this again.”

“Okay,” I said solemnly.

I stood up, went to the kitchen, and got him a glass of water because he looked like he
needed it. To my surprise, after he downed the drink, we really didn’t speak of what he
had seen me doing.

And that was the end of that.

 ***

Actually, that wasn’t true at all. Far from it. Even though Naoki didn’t say a word to me or
anyone, my secret was no longer my own, and knowing that meant it was no longer a
secret.

On the surface, my relationship with my brother was the same as ever, but I felt sick in
my stomach whenever I looked at him. The thing about having dirty thoughts is that they
taint you. Even if no one can see anything different about you, the world changes
forever, like it’s gone through a filter.

“Hey, Miharu,” my brother said to me one evening, mere days after the incident. “Is it
just me or have you been acting strange lately?”

“W-w-what I have no idea what on earth you are talking hahaha you idiot loser pervert
you,” I said, very coherently.

Crap, I was thinking frantically. Has he found me out?

I eyed my brother carefully for any telltale signs of wariness or disgust. But he was
completely cheerful and oblivious. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed, for which
I was eternally grateful.

A second later, my brother said, “I know what your problem is! I bet you have a crush on
a boy at school!”

I snorted out the barley tea I was drinking.

“What led you to such a dodgy conclusion?!”

“Don’t worry, I’m rooting for you,” he said happily.

“D-don’t you care about what kind of boyfriend I get?” I asked shakily. “Doesn’t he need
to go through you first or something?”

“Why would he need to do that? It’s your choice, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t even begin to tell him what was wrong with his opinions.
This was the bad thing about having a nice, pushover brother. He wasn’t a siscon so he
didn’t care about protecting me. If I left him, he’d just happily relent without a word.

“Miharu, are you okay?” my brother asked again, sounding like a broken record at this
point.

“Don’t talk to me,” I snapped.

“But there’s something you want to say,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”

I shot my gaze back up at him again, but despite the perceptive glint in his eyes, he
looked at me with gentle patience.

My brother was the kind of person who never got mad at anyone, even when it was well
within his rights.

He’d become a really good boyfriend, one day.

“I, big brother, I—the truth is…”

I swallowed. I had to say it to him. I couldn’t live with myself anymore otherwise.

“Yeah?”

I was going to say it. I swear I was going to.

“Er, um… well…!”

But then it occurred to me that he’d never look at me with such kindness again. Even a
saint like him was bound to be disappointed in a sister like me if he found out the truth.

“I don’t like any of the boys at school,” I mumbled finally. “I won’t like any of them, ever.”

“Aww, you shouldn’t be so defeatist. And it's not like there's any rush anyway. You’ve
only just started middle school.”

Of course he would say that. In the end, even he assumed as a matter of course that I’d
go down the narrow and beaten path like anyone else. He had no reason to think
otherwise.
I wanted to kick him in the nuts just like Naoki, but restrained myself in time.

I knew I shouldn’t be taking out my anger by hurting other people. But what could I do?
The frustration boiled within me. I just wanted to talk to someone about… I don’t know…
my feelings. But there was no one. I couldn’t even talk to my own brother. There was
only one person besides me who knew and wouldn’t judge.

Knowing that, I felt the loneliness claw at me.

“I’m going out,” I declared, standing up.

“What? Right now?” said my brother, looking confused.

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I walked out the door and into the moonlit street.

With no one around, I no longer felt lonely. But I knew this feeling could not last forever.
At the nearby park, I got on the swing and pushed myself up and down slowly. As the
cold bit at my skin, I stared at the crescent moon, wondering what I was supposed to do
with myself.

I wanted to hurt my brother. I really wanted to hurt him.

Because maybe then he would care about me. I wanted him to care. Not kindly, but
intensely. With the same kind of agitation that ate away at me.

I think I had been out for fifteen minutes when I noticed someone walking a dog down
the sidewalk. Even though I still had no idea what to say to him, I hoped it was my
brother, coming out to look for me.

But no, it was just Naoki.

“Hey, what are you doing here, little sis?” he asked, as he pulled on the leash. His
poodle sniffed my feet with curiosity.

“What are you doing here?” I asked back without much enthusiasm.

“I bet your brother’s worried about you,” he said.

“Don’t talk to me about him. He doesn’t care about me and I don’t care about him.”
Before long, the dog lost interest in my scent. Still holding the leash, Naoki sat down on
the swing next to me.

“You really didn’t tell anyone about that, did you?” I asked, growing suspicious of his
silence.

“Oh, what, nah,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how you shouldn’t be out by yourself at this hour.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. What he said was such a big brother line,
delivered with just the right amount of nonchalance. The spring air was still cold, but
underneath my prickling skin, I felt a bit warmer than I did a minute before.

“Okay,” I mumbled, as the will to argue back fizzled out of me.

I could only look down at my feet as we walked back to the front door of my house. We
didn’t exchange a word until we got to the entrance.

“See you later, little sis.”

“W-wait!” I exclaimed, even though I had no idea what to say.

“Hmm?”

“Er…” I gulped a mouthful of the cool nighttime breeze. “Thanks… I guess.”

Naoki stopped in his tracks.

“What?” I demanded, feeling like an idiot.

Abruptly, he swung back around to face me with a boyish grin on his face. “There’s
something about you that reminds me of my dog.”

“H-hey! What’s that supposed to mean, you lump of crap?!”

“See! You’re even yapping like a dog! You’ll upset the neighbours!” He laughed. “Well,
later!”
And then, before I could muster a retort, he really was gone.

In spite of that annoying interaction, I felt kind of better. I was no longer mad at my
brother or at anyone, really. I even found myself thinking that I was probably just
overthinking a bunch of things, and that none of it really mattered in the end.

But that sense of ease did not last long. When I walked inside, my brother was waiting
for me. He was trying not to look too concerned as he sat on the sofa pretending to
watch TV, but I noticed his eyes flash in my direction and soften with relief.

It was then that I understood what my encounter with Naoki really meant, but I couldn’t
bear to say it aloud. Neither of us could say anything about the elephant in the room. I
didn’t know whether it meant my brother cared about me or… or if he decided to make
that some other guy’s problem.

“It’s not what you think,” I insisted. “I just wanted to walk by myself for a bit. Honest.”

“Well, as long as you’re feeling all right,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Just don’t make a
habit of night walks, okay?”

“Whatever, I’m going to bed,” I said sourly.

His eyes flickered, and then turned downward.

“Okay,” he said, not making a move.

We said nothing more to each other that night. We avoided eye contact, even.

And that was how our evening ended.

中2

Let me describe Naoki. He was as stupidly tall as he was stupidly stupid. He was
touchy-feely. He would sling his arm around my brother’s shoulder and talk his ears off
with dirty jokes. He had a face that seemed permanently used to smiling.

Naoki was my brother’s friend since middle school, so I knew him for a long time before
I ever spoke to him. I didn’t hang out with him as if he was my friend or anything,
though. That would have been weird.
Instead, whenever I had a problem, I just complained to Naoki about it. After he learned
my secret, it got easier to tell him about other stuff.

In return, he told me about his goals in life. He was a pretty simple man: all he wanted
was a girlfriend before he graduated high school.

“Why does it have to be before you finish high school?” I asked.

“Because if you don’t set a time limit, a ‘someday’ wish will become a ‘neverday’ wish,”
he said.

“Hmm.” I gave that some thought. “Are you sure it’s not because you’re horny and
insecure about yourself?”

“Definitely not,” he said, without a hint of self-awareness. “Little sis, you gotta
understand. I wouldn’t go out with a girl just to fill a quota. There has to be passionate
love between us!”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Like with her,” he said, gesticulating.

I looked where he was pointing.

Seemingly by coincidence, there was actually an attractive girl walking in front of us.
She would have stood out in any crowd because she was wearing a bright blue kimono.
With long, flowing black hair that fell all the way down her back, I could see that even
from behind, she was a classical Japanese beauty.

I assumed Naoki just identified her randomly to make a rhetorical point, but when I
blinked he was sidling up next to her.

“Hey, Motohara!”

Wait, he actually knew her? And he was hitting on her?

The girl turned around. I caught a glimpse of an exceedingly beautiful face; I could
easily see why guys would be attracted to her.
“Oh,” she said coolly. “Hello.”

“Sooooo,” said Naoki. “How’s it going, beautiful?”

“I see you are up to your usual cheap antics and pickup lines, Fujita-kun.” The girl had a
deadpan expression on her face.

“Thought it would work this time,” Naoki said as he scratched the back of his head
sheepishly.

“The definition of insanity is to attempt the same thing and expect a different result.”

“You really don’t like me, huh…”

“What’s more, it appears that you have become a lolicon.”

The girl appeared to have noticed me.

“Hey, I’m in my second year of middle school!” I insisted indignantly. I knew I looked
small for my age, but come on!

“My apologies,” she said, smiling more warmly at me than she did at Naoki. “This kind of
discussion must be very unsettling for you. Unfortunately, it reflects the mysterious
workings of Fujita-kun’s shockingly perverted mind. I suggest you proceed with caution
in his presence.”

I didn’t really get it, but she knew lots of big words to insult someone with, so I thought
she was really cool.

But she was still intimidating, so I didn’t know what to say to her.

“Oh, man, that was amazing,” Naoki said enthusiastically. “Verbally spank me some
more, Motohara!”

This guy’s depths were lower than I thought.

“I must decline,” said the girl, wincing. “I would rather not let my words be twisted. Well,
then, take care.”

She bowed courteously at me and walked on ahead.

“So who was that?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s Motohara Reina,” he replied casually. “A classmate of me and your bro.”

It made sense why he knew her, then. But wait, if she was also on her way to school like
the two of us, why was she wearing a kimono? What a mysterious girl…

“One day, I’ll marry her,” Naoki declared.

“Isn’t that escalating a little quickly?!”

Although I felt safe in Naoki’s company, I knew that if I were not his best friend’s sister I
would be staying far, far away from him. Everything about him screamed “Delusional
Pervert”.

Just as we reached my school’s gates, Naoki sighed and said, “I know what you’re
thinking. It’s never gonna happen, is it?”

“Probably not.”

His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “You’re honest.”

Not as honest as you, I thought. Naoki was probably too honest.

“I think it’s a shame,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe things could work out if Motohara
didn’t like your brother.”

Um, what?

Motohara Reina liked my brother?

“Well, anyway, see you later!” Naoki waved cheerfully and walked off.

I stood stock still in the middle of the path, like a deer caught in the headlights.

Someone that beautiful and intelligent liked my brother?

Eh.
…EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

***

Naturally, I was completely unable to concentrate on classes after that.

My head was in a daze. I longed to know what Motohara Reina liked about my brother.
Although I was attracted to him myself, I could not explain why. Since she was good
with words, maybe she could explain it on my behalf.

But more than that, I wanted to know if my brother felt the same way about her.

Don’t worry, Miharu, your brother is an idiot. His density exceeds that of Jupiter's
atmosphere. Even if a beautiful girl pursues him, he would probably be nice to her the
same way he is to everyone else.

I tried to soothe myself with facts and logic, but I still had the heebie jeebies. After all,
just because he’d never had a girlfriend before didn’t mean he’d stay innocent forever.

So I ambushed Naoki outside his school gate after school.

“What do you mean Reina-san loves my brother?!”

“You’re starting with the interrogation?”

“I’m really worried!”

My brother was busy with club activities, so fortunately there was no possibility of us
bumping into each other. I wasn’t yet ready to face him. That was why I had to take out
all my frustrations on Naoki, a proud member of the “go straight home from school” club.

“Wow, little sis! I’m so touched! I didn’t know you cared this much for my sake!”

“Actually, I don’t care one bit about you.”

“There wasn’t a hint of tsun in what you just said! You meant that entirely straight, didn’t
you?!” Naoki looked aghast.

“More importantly,” I said, trying to get this conversation back on the rails. “How can
Reina-san like my brother? I never gave her permission!”
Naoki looked at me wryly but didn’t respond.

I thought he was making fun of me so I kicked him in the shin.

“Aye aye, captain,” he said. Looks like I didn’t even need to tell him to keep his promise.
Even after I kicked him, he still had a turd-eating grin on his face. That was really
annoying, but whatever.

“Naoki, I’ve decided,” I declared. “I’ll help you out.”

“Your actions don’t match your words. How are you going to help me out, anyway? And
with what?”

“Weeeeeeell, you like Reina-san, so you can have her. Everyone’s happy!”

“That is actually not too bad an idea,” Naoki admitted.

We smiled at each other.

Then Naoki said, “So, uh, how are you gonna go about this?”

“Shut up, Naoki.”

“Don’t tell me you have no plan!”

“Shut up,” I said again.

“This is why you shouldn’t rely on little sisters for anything.”

“Shut up,” I said for the third time. “Everyone loves little sisters. Even Reina-san, I bet.”

Suddenly, Naoki grinned.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

I had no idea what he was talking about at first, but he explained it all to me in detail. It
sounded really dumb, but it was a worth a shot. Half an hour later, we put our plan into
motion.
According to Naoki, Motohara Reina spent a lot of her free time in bookstores. In this
backwater town, there were only a handful of stores worth mentioning. Sure enough, we
found her in the bookstore next to the station, the one which had the biggest selection of
new releases.

Thanks to his absurd height, Naoki easily spotted Reina hanging around the back. She
was trying very hard to ignore us by reading a paperback mystery novel.

“Oh man,” Naoki said loudly. “Fuck the police! You’ll never catch me reading a book!”

I don’t think Naoki was very good at acting like a delinquent from an 80s flick; he
sounded more like someone on TikTok. It was a good thing there were no other
customers in this aisle to witness this embarrassment. Meanwhile, Reina continued to
ignore Naoki.

Not one to be deterred by common sense, he went on:

“My mother never loved me. My father was a chronic gambler who hit me whenever he
was drunk. The only person I love in this cruel world is my darling little sister, the apple
of my eye. I love her innocent, beguiling look, her untainted thighs…”

Now he was sounding creepy.

Naoki leaned over and said into Reina’s ear:

“You honestly can’t find a bigger siscon than me!”

Finally, she looked up. Her expression was calm but it looked like a storm was brewing
underneath her stony exterior.

“I had no idea your fetish went this far, Fujita-kun.”

“It’s a lie, super honest, I’m actually into cool beauties who look exactly like you.”

He was blowing his cover already?!

See, I knew Naoki could never pull off a “delinquent who only loves his little sister” act.
How lame. He was so passionate when he was trying to convince me that all girls have
soft spots for guys with sister complexes, but clearly he didn’t have the guts to commit
to it.
“I’m actually a super nice guy once you get to know me, plus I love my sister in a
completely platonic way, except she’s not my real sister so we can get married and
that’s okay.”

Naoki was pestering her so much that even I was getting irritated with him. It was a
wonder Reina didn’t punch him in the face already.

“Stop it, Naoki,” I said, tugging on his sleeve. “Either you’re doing it wrong or the world
doesn’t actually like siscons.”

Reina looked at me expressionlessly but I think I saw some approval in her eyes.

“You know what?” said Naoki. “Screw you! You suck as a sibling. Let’s get divorced.”

“How can you divorce your sibling?! And I’m not even your little sister in the first place!”

At this point, Reina finally spoke up.

“You’re quite a pair.”

We were both startled, mainly because she was smiling.

It was simple and yet so powerful. It took even my breath away. I think in that moment I
could understand just why Naoki could be so infatuated with her. There was something
nostalgic about her face, like I knew it fondly from somewhere.

I don’t really know what happened, but… she liked me! Little sisters are the best!

***

Unfortunately, none of this led to Naoki scoring a date with Reina so it ended up being a
complete waste of time. No matter how he approached her, she never changed her
answer. My presence didn’t change a single thing in the end.

It made sense, I suppose—if people’s feelings could change so easily, words like “love”
wouldn’t exist to describe them. It would take a lot of time for Reina’s heart to turn
towards Naoki, if it ever happened at all. Even Naoki probably figured that he couldn’t
force it; all we could do was live our lives one day at a time, waiting for the seasons to
change.
And so the days trickled by, slowly but surely. I stopped hanging out with Naoki when
midterms approached. My brother would always help me study for my big tests, a
leftover ritual from my elementary school days, and the last thing I wanted was for his
friend to butt in.

As the promised time drew near, I couldn’t help but get excited. Normally, I hated
studying, but my brother and I were going to be close again. At this time of year, it
wouldn’t be weird for our shoulders to brush. I could get a good look at his eyelashes,
which were so long for a guy, and I could listen to his steady, rhythmic breathing. This
was the kind of exposure I could only fantasise about the rest of the year.

On the day of our date, however, my brother didn’t come home the time I was expecting
him to. By the time an hour had passed, I got fed up with pretending to study. It wasn’t
unusual for a high school student to have an erratic schedule, but today it really
bothered me.

Maybe… Maybe this was the year he decided that it wasn’t worth keeping this promise
anymore.

The thought left a cold pit in my stomach.

When the orange sunlight started to dim, I had no choice but to call it quits for today. I
walked over to the window, intending to close the curtains, but when I peered outside, I
stopped in my tracks.

I saw him.

My brother was standing outside our house, talking to Motohara Reina intently about
something.

My heart sank at the sight of her. How long had they been standing out there together
like this? I didn’t know what this meant for me, for her, or for anyone. I strained my ears
to listen but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

What happened next defied all explanation. Even in the fading light, I could see it. Reina
wrapped her arms around my brother and pressed the side of her face against his
chest, as if listening to his heartbeat.
No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening! No more thinking, or else I’d cry. I sprinted to the
front door and opened it breathlessly.

“Big brother! I can’t believe it! Why would you…! With Reina-san…?!”

“Huh? What’s up, Miharu?”

My brother asked that question as if he wasn’t right in the middle of being passionately
embraced by a girl. What a farce!

Wait. Something was weird.

I blinked and squinted, but Motohara Reina was gone. Only my brother was standing
outside the door.

“What’s going on here?” I demanded incredulously. “Where’s Reina-san?”

“Huh? Why are you asking about Motohara all of a sudden?”

I stared at him hard, but my brother’s face did not betray any guilt or embarrassment.

And yet I knew I had seen Reina with him just a moment before. Where did she go?
Why was he hiding that fact from me?

“You…!” I began, and then stopped as a sudden wave of uncertainty hit me. Maybe I
really had been seeing things. My brother looked so innocent that it was almost
impossible for me to doubt his purity.

“Miharu, are you stressed out about your midterms?” he asked soothingly. “Is this why
you’ve been acting strange lately?”

“That’s not… that’s not it…! You’re the weird one, big brother!”

“Me? What did I do?”

He looked at me, so wide-eyed and clueless. Even though his ignorance contained no
malice, it stabbed me like a knife.

Putting aside the weird Reina business, there was one definite truth in this whole matter.
“You forgot our promise. That you’d help me study.”

His smile froze in its place.

“Was that what I was supposed to do today?” he said vaguely. Even more than forgetful,
he looked just about ready to drift off into space like a dandelion spore. “Maybe you’re
right. I had the feeling I was forgetting something.”

I almost said it to him then: “I wish Naoki was my brother instead of you.”

If that were the case, then everything could have been all right. I would have been so
happy, living with a brother I could easily understand.

But I didn’t say that.

Because I think, for just a small moment, I caught a glimpse of what my brother was
thinking. On his face, I could unmistakably see the ripples of guilt and regret. How far
did that all stretch back? I would never understand him, but I could not hate him.

For a long moment, neither of us said anything, until my brother sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s not too late now, is it?”

“No, there’s still time,” I insisted. I’d make time. As much as I lamented what was lost, I
didn’t want to give up on what little was left. I’d clutch at those straws, hold them close
to my heart, and count them one by one.

He smiled in a way that didn’t quite show emotion, and said, “Let’s go, then.” I followed
him inside.

Even with my buried feelings, I was still his sister. No matter who he was, we would live
together inside that house until we became adults. The idea of cutting myself off from
him never even occurred to me.

中3

I suppose I should tell you a story about my brother.

When he was in his third year of middle school, he got sick with an illness that left him in
bed all day. He was like that for a long time. Every day, I prayed for him to get better.
But when he finally recovered, he was no longer the brother I remembered.

He had always been nice to me when we were younger. He was still that way
afterwards, but he became distant. He stopped playing with me. He stopped protecting
me.

We started drifting.

Just like yesterday, I can still remember racing through the tall grass and hunting for
rare bugs in the long summer. I learned how to ride a bicycle so that I could ride down
all the dirt-beaten tracks alongside him. He never told me that he loved me, but I could
feel it in my bones.

Sometimes, I wonder if those memories were nothing but lies. My body throbbed with
longing for a warmth I could never take back, no matter what I did.

I wonder where those days went, when the sun shone brightly on us both and I never
thought about anything as complicated as love?

***

Naoki let me ride on his mountain bicycle one day.

I was surprised he let me ride on it when I asked. I could tell at a glance that it was
meant for far greater things than porting groceries.

“Mind you, if you break anything, you are dead to me,” Naoki was quick to remind me.

While I sat on his bicycle, feeling like a king, he sat by the riverbank twiddling with his
phone.

“Hey, help me ride this thing,” I said.

“You don’t know how to ride a bicycle?”

“Well, this one’s all big and stuff… I’m scared to put my foot on the pedal…!”

“Heh, you’re hopeless. Let me show you how the master does it.”
“Oi, this isn’t a two-seater!”

“Doesn’t matter since you’re tiny. Hold on tight!”

The bike jerked into motion. My stomach lurched forward and I hastily wrapped my arms
around Naoki’s lanky body.

“See, what you do is put one leg in front of the other like this!”

“Idiot, not so fast!”

The wind whipped my hair across my face. My stomach lurched; I had the sudden,
searing fear of falling into the hard dirt. I clung hard to Naoki, more out of panic than
anything.

I think he noticed my discomfort, because he maintained a slower, more pleasant pace

after we turned a corner.

It was nice of him to look out for me. I hadn’t been thinking of Naoki’s feelings before,
but in that moment, something occurred to me.

“You’re frustrated, aren’t you?” I said. “About Reina-san.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Wouldn’t anyone be frustrated if the person they like is after your best friend instead?”

I never told Naoki about that bizarre interaction I saw between Reina and brother, partly
because I wasn’t even sure it was real. I don’t think Reina ever became my brother’s
girlfriend; I never saw her around our house again.

But when I thought about the two of them, I had the unshakeable impression: there was
something between them that the rest of the world couldn’t pry into. Something even
more sacred and inviolable than a sibling bond. It was a sobering and terrifying thought.

“It’s okay,” said Naoki with a chuckle. “I know if I just wait, she’ll get over him.”

“That’s stupid,” I said instantly. “Weren’t you the one who put a time limit on your goal
because you didn’t want it to go on the backburner and drift away?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Naoki?”

“Never said I was smart, did I?” he said.

“So you think you’re stupid?”

“Dumb as dog poo,” he said.

I didn’t really get it, but he made me laugh. The bike was still moving and the late
afternoon air felt cool and soothing. I held my arms tighter around Naoki’s body,
pressing myself against his back. There were traffic laws forbidding this, but who cares?
He kept pedalling.

***

This was my brother’s last year in high school.

I’m the first to admit that I’m a bad sibling, but even I had enough decency not to disturb
my brother when he was studying for entrance exams. That was the reason I was
spending more time with Naoki. He didn’t study at all because he was a stupid moron,
but since I wasn’t keen on hitting the books either, I didn’t feel like lecturing him like a
hypocrite.

At the same time, I didn’t want his life to become a trainwreck, so I racked my brains on
something I could do to help him out. This was what got me thinking about his
relationship with Motohara Reina.

Reina was intimidating, but I’m sure she wasn’t a bad person. Maybe her coldness
masked her secret fondness for Naoki. They would make a cute couple, I’m sure.

Every time I saw her around in the bookstore, however, I couldn’t bring myself to call out
to her. I remembered that vision of her resting her head against my brother’s chest, and
I found myself thinking: I’m too scared to know the whole truth.

Still, I had to talk to her. If not for my own sake, at least for Naoki’s. The day after my
bicycle ride with him, I mustered the courage. Taking a deep breath, I approached Reina
in her usual spot in the bookstore after school.
“Er, um, hi,” I said to her, heart pounding.

“Hello,” she said calmly.

Talking to her face-to-face, I was once again struck by how overwhelmingly pretty she
was. I could only yearn to be as beautiful as she was. If I got carried away, I’d start
asking her out instead.

As I stood there, tongue-tied, Reina filled the awkward silence. “I don’t bite,” she stated
flatly.

“Hahaha, that’s good to know.”

Reina nodded solemnly and said nothing.

I searched frantically for something to say. “So what are you reading?” I asked finally.

Reina tilted the cover slightly to show me. It was a book about Izanagi and Izanami, the
divine siblings who fell in love and created the islands of Japan.

“So you’re into Japanese classics, huh?” I asked.

Reina shook her head. “It is not a hobby.”

“Then, uh, what would you call it, then?”

“Existence,” she said.

I laughed, thinking this was a deadpan joke, but she looked at me blankly as if she did
not see the humour. My laughter trailed off into sheepish silence.

“It seems there is something you want to ask me,” Reina said, looking at me closely.
“But this is not the right place for a long conversation.”

As she led me out the bookstore and onto the main road, I scratched my head and
searched for where to begin. I decided that there was no graceful way to bring up the
subject.

“Why don’t you like Naoki?” I asked directly.

“That is a broad question.”

This wasn’t going well already.

“I know he’s a pervert, but aren’t most boys like that at his age? Well, besides my
brother, I mean.”

“It is not a mere matter of dislike. Until that boy grows up, he will never know what true
affection means.”

Oof. Harsh, but fair.

“What about my brother?” I demanded quickly. “You like him! Why do you like him?”

“My, aren’t you an interrogator?”

“I-It’s not because I like my brother or anything!”

“I see.”

I had a feeling she was completely unconvinced by what I said, but whatever. At least
she didn’t linger on it.

After a single blink, she said, “Your brother is the person I respect the most in this
world.”

“Do you want to be his girlfriend?”

She did not even look taken aback by my question.

“Must you insist on putting labels on feelings? Surely you have feelings for others that
you would rather not name, because that would destroy their meaning.”

I felt as if Reina was looking right through me as she said that. It made me wonder what
she saw in me. I swallowed, but couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a muted tone. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

Fortunately, Reina didn’t seem mad. She looked at me sympathetically and said, “You
ask me these questions because you care equally about Fujita-kun and your brother,
yes?”

“Well, yeah…” I had no idea what she was getting at, but I answered honestly.

She closed her eyes and smiled. “I’m happy to hear that.”

Together, we walked down the narrow suburban streets in silence. This time, It wasn’t
the awkward kind of silence. I got the feeling that Reina only spoke when she thought
she had something useful to say. Once I stopped trying to coax her into small talk, I had
fun walking with her.

That is, until we got to the tiny park where Naoki and I met a few years ago. We hung
out there sometimes since it was just around the corner from his house.

The park was deserted as usual, but a lone car was stopped in the middle of the road
just outside it. Black skid marks inked the asphalt where the car must have screeched to
a halt.

As Reina and I approached the scene in curiosity, a blonde-haired and blue-eyed

foreigner who looked like he could be in his early thirties emerged from his car and
peered at the ground in dismay. At first, I couldn’t see what he was looking at because I
didn’t see any damaged objects around, but as I drew closer, a small body came into
view. My heart plummeted.

A dog was lying in front of the car, limp and motionless.

That macabre sight in itself was enough to ruin anyone’s day, but the matter only got
worse when I realised that the body belonged to a cute poodle. Its collar clearly
identified it as Naoki’s dog.

“God damn shimatta!” yelled the foreigner. “My kuruma hit the inu!”

I felt awful for Naoki, but first things first, I had to calm this man down. His Japanese
was not very good and neither was my English, but using a mixture of both languages I
managed to tell him that I knew who the owner of the dog was and that I would call him
over.

“Little girl, arigatou. I am very ureshii.”

Next, I turned to Reina. “Stay here. I’ll go get Naoki, okay?”

“No need,” said Reina calmly.

She was cradling the dog in her arms. Before my eyes, its eyes fluttered open and it
started yapping weakly.

Thank goodness! So it wasn’t dead after all! I didn’t want to break it to Naoki that his
cute dog had bit the dust.

The foreigner seemed very impressed. He said he could have sworn he had hit the dog
directly. At least, that’s what I think he said. His sentences were too complicated for me
to understand.

Gingerly, Reina placed the dog back on the ground and patted it on the head. It wobbled
hesitantly for a few steps before breaking out into a confident stride. It trotted happily
across the street, back towards Naoki’s house.

“Very kawaii desu,” said the foreigner. Looking very relieved, he climbed back into his
shiny red car and winked at Reina and I. “Sayounara, young shoujo-tachi!”

And with that, he drove off, leaving me alone with Reina.

Even as relief gushed through my heart, I couldn’t help but stare at Reina’s smooth,
expressionless face.

“You don’t hate Naoki at all, do you…?” I found myself saying.

“Hmm, why do you say that?”

“You did something to that dog to bring it back to life. That’s what I think!”

She looked at me, eyes glimmering with an inscrutable emotion. “Wouldn’t it be nice if
that were true?” she said.

I had no idea what she meant by that. Taking her words literally, I suppose she was
saying that it was silly to suggest that anyone had power over life and death. The
thought normally wouldn’t even cross my mind, but for some reason, I just naturally
assumed: Reina-san is special.
“So you would want to resurrect Naoki’s dog, if you could,” I said, not wanting to
concede on this point for some reason.

“Of course,” she said immediately. Her eyes dampened. For the first time, I thought I
caught a glimpse of her sentimental side. “Life is precious. It’s too cruel when it’s taken
away abruptly. It’s better if it fades away quietly instead of being snuffed out. That’s the
most I can hope for.”

“I suppose so…”

This was the most I had ever heard Reina say about herself. I got the impression that
she was kind—perhaps too much for her own good.

I regretted what I said. This mood was too heavy; just from her words, I felt the
oppressive touch of death hang over my heart. I was suddenly, intensely grateful that
nobody had actually died today.

As I struggled to figure out what else to say, Reina spoke again on her own accord.

“I am sorry, Miharu-chan.”

“Huh? What for?”

“That I could not choose Fujita-kun. That choice I must leave with you.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

She smiled softly, and I thought I could see something like remorse in her eyes. But in
the end, she never answered my question. She said it was all up to me.

***

I’ll be honest: I didn’t want Naoki to give up on Reina.

I wonder why I was so attached to the idea of them being together, even though I knew
it would never work out. Maybe it was because I knew for sure that Naoki would be
happy that way.

Or maybe… I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he didn’t end up with her.
After making excuses and dragging his feet for half a year, Naoki finally said that he
would tell Reina he was serious about her on graduation day—the last possible day to
make his dream come true.

He was the kind of guy who would do all his summer vacation homework on the last
day, so that tracked. Still, the fact that he ended up going for an all-or-nothing gambit
was pretty nerve-racking, even to just a humble bystander like me. My own middle
school graduation ceremony felt like such a boring occasion in comparison.

That day, I rushed over to the high school as soon as I could. On the way, I caught sight
of my brother standing alone by the gate. Streams of boys and girls walked past him,
sparing him no glance, but he seemed unperturbed. When he noticed me, he waved.
“Hey there, Miharu!”

“Oh, hey.”

When I saw him there, standing in his uniform for the very last time, I was struck with
the thought that our lives would never be the same after this. I’d been so caught up in
Naoki’s love problems that I almost forgot that today was also a goodbye between me
and my brother.

“Congratulations, big brother,” I said.

“You too,” he said.

A brief, simple exchange of words. That was all our relationship amounted to nowadays.

For a second, I wondered what would happen if I passionately confessed my love to him
underneath a blooming sakura tree, like a scene from a shojo manga. But I immediately
quashed the thought. I’d given up on that kind of relationship with my brother a long
time ago. Or rather, I never entertained the thought from the start.

I told myself that I was content watching over him like this.

“Are you looking for Naoki?” he asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said, not liking how casually he asked that, as if he assumed that I came
to the high school graduation to see Naoki instead of my own flesh and blood.
“He’s right over there,” said my brother, pointing towards an early-blooming sakura tree.
Naoki was sitting beneath it, attentively reading what was undeniably a gravure
magazine.

A streak of irritation zigzagged through me at this overwhelmingly pathetic sight. I

promptly stomped over and snatched the magazine out of his hands. “What are you
doing?” I hissed.

“Nothing much,” he said innocently. “I’m an adult now. What’s the problem?”

“Did you even confess to her?” I clenched my fist. “Well?”

Just for a second, I saw his jaw shut sullenly, but then he threw his head back and
laughed, perhaps a little too loudly.

“Completely rejected,” he said cheerfully.

This was the answer I should have expected, but for some reason, hearing it from him
like this just made me livid. I regretted the brief nanosecond of time when I thought he
was cool, the way he rode his mountain bike so fearlessly.

“Are you just pretending you don’t care, or do you really just not care?”

Naoki didn’t answer my question immediately. I had to wait until all the fake laughter
dripped out of his face, leaving behind an expression of pure fatigue.

“Motohara’s going to the same university as your bro.” He shrugged. “I knew that since
last year.”

In other words, Reina was going far away to Tokyo. It was the kind of distance that was
bound to test any young love beyond the limits.

I bristled. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Why did he act like he still had a chance when he had actually given up a long time
ago? Was I the only one who had ever believed in him?

“You didn’t ask,” he said, which was when I finally got it.
The reason Naoki made everything out as a joke was so that he could pretend he had
never lost to my brother.

Just like how I never tried to let on how serious I was, deep down.

We were both losers in the same way. But unlike me, he could have made it work. He
could have fought the path of inevitability. He could have obtained what I could never
grasp.

So I decided to kick him while he was down.

“Next time you care about someone, don't let her go.”

He looked at me, eyes agape. I didn’t actually put that much force into my kick, only
enough to demonstrate to him that I was serious. Through the touch of our bodies, I
understood that he understood. For just one brief moment, I’m sure he experienced the
same frustration and bitterness as I did.

But then he swallowed, pasted a grin on his face, and said, “Okay, okay. Geez. Cut the
violence.”

“Hmph, whatever.” I realised that this was the most he would understand for today. It
couldn’t be helped. He chose not to comprehend the message, so there was nothing
more I could do for him.

So I left him and returned to my brother’s side.

It was the anticlimactic end of my brother’s high school romantic comedy. He ended up
choosing nobody.

Nobody chose anybody that day.

Naoki sat alone under that sakura tree and continued to read his dirty magazine in
peace. He never saw Motohara Reina again.

高1

In the autumn, there are too many dead leaves to count, but I try to count them anyway.
It’s a habit I’ve had since I was very young. I think it was my brother that started it first
and I copied him, as little sisters do.
Sitting beside the window at my favourite café, I gazed at the crimson leaves littering
the pavement outside. Before long, someone would come along and sweep them up,
only for more leaves to pile up the next day. The world outside seemed so fast-paced
and unforgiving when you looked at it from inside a café.

Inevitably, as it always did, that peculiar feeling of time dilation disappeared as soon as
another person entered my bubble. The warm weight of a hand on my shoulder brought
me back to reality.

“Hey, Miharu. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Hey, Naoki.”

Naoki was dressed in the same loose-fitting shirt and baggy jeans he wore as a high
school student, but I think he had grown a bit since the last time I saw him. He had a bit
of stubble on his chin.

For me, the biggest difference was that instead of “little sis” (imouto-chan), he called me
by my first name, just like my brother did.

“Are you already failing university?” I asked him.

He chuckled as he sat down across from me at the table. “You’re still as blunt as ever,
Miharu.”

“I hope you’ve changed. Otherwise, you’d be a bum.”

“Heh!” With a smug grin, Naoki cracked open his wallet. “You want anything, Miharu? I’ll
shout you.”

“Guess I’ll have the deluxe chocolate banana parfait then.”

I picked the most expensive thing on the dessert menu to mess with him, but he took it
in stride. I guess he was working really hard at his part-time job lately. No wonder I
hadn’t seen him around much.

On the other hand, I noticed a teasing glint in his eyes when I made my choice. “A
parfait, huh? An unexpectedly girly choice.”
“Yeah, so what?”

“And your hair’s all different too. No more pigtails.”

“Yeah, ‘cos I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Too bad. They looked cute on you.”

“Shut up.”

“But your new style’s not too shabby either.”

My first impulse was to growl and brandish my teeth at him like a rabid dog, but then it
occurred to me that he might be trying to compliment me. I shifted uncomfortably in my
seat. “Um, thanks,” I said.

A lot of people change their style after entering high school, and I was no exception. So
it did mean something to me that Naoki, who knew the old me, could tell that I was
different now.

“But hey, don’t push yourself,” Naoki said suddenly, eyeing me with concern.

“I could say the same to you,” I shot back. “You don’t have to force yourself to look out
for me.”

Just because my brother’s last words to Naoki before he got on the one-way train to
Tokyo were “Take care of my little sister for me” didn’t mean that Naoki absolutely had to
follow them like an imperative.

“Hey, it’s no problem,” he said, with his usual easygoing laugh. “It’s not like I’m going out
of my way, so it’s fine, right?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

Naoki went to a local university, so he still lived with his parents at home. Also,
whenever he saw me, he did look happy, so I could take him at his word.

“But still, I can take care of myself now,” I insisted.

“Yeah, I know. Just indulge me, okay?”

I skirted my eyes, because I didn’t want to look at his goofy, doting face. “Fine,” I said.

There were some things I couldn’t say to Naoki. I’d rather die instead than admit it, but
the truth was that I did feel relieved when he was around. He made the pain of my
brother’s absence easier to deal with. I think he knew that too, which made it extra
impossible to say aloud.

***

I still had those dreams about my brother, the same ones from my first year in middle
school.

No matter how far away he was, he would come for me in my dreams. He would hold
out his hands for me and pull me towards him. He would kiss my lips for a long time,
and I would feel safe and happy in his arms.

In my dreams, I was never guilty. What we had together existed independently of our
sibling relationship. It all felt perfectly natural, a logical extension of the imagination.

But whenever I woke up, the world seemed very grey and tiring. They say that being a
high school student is the prime of your life, and that it’s the rose-coloured hour of your
youth, but I didn’t really feel it myself. In reality, there are more dead leaves out there
than there are sakura petals.

I could never tell Naoki about any of this, even though he already knew the gist of how I
felt. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust him, but there were some things I couldn’t even trust
myself about. If I talked about it, I’d go back to being a hopeless girl again, and I
couldn’t bear that thought.

If the last few months had taught me anything, it was that there was no way Naoki
would ever replace my brother. That was a good thing, honestly. I didn’t get butterflies in
my stomach around him. I didn’t mentally replay our once-a-month family phone calls
over and over in my head. And I certainly didn’t cry in my pillow at night, thinking of him.

A part of me thought that distance from my brother might be good for us, but if anything,
it made things worse. It made me regret so many things. There were times when I
wanted to jump on the train to Tokyo and drag my brother back home.
“Isn’t family the most important thing?” I wanted to tell him, instead of letting him fade
away.

***

I was starting to think that maybe it was around time for me to get a boyfriend.

When I said that to my friends, they were shocked. “Aren’t you already going out with a
university student?”

I blinked. “Um, no. What makes you think that?”

“Well, there’s that guy I saw you at the café with the other day…”

“Oh, Naoki.”

“That’s his name? He’s kinda cool, isn’t he?”

“Um, really?”

Didn’t see it myself.

But oh how times have changed. All you have to do is go to university and suddenly
high school girls will think you’re the top dog. I wondered what Naoki would say if he
knew about this.

Wait, eww, if I told him, he would probably start hitting on my friends.

“So this Naoki guy’s your boyfriend, right?”

“No. He is most definitely not.”

“Awww, you’re just in denial!”

I had no idea how to get my friends off my back about this, so I decided to just tell them
the truth. “I’d rather date my brother than him.”

“Ouch. That’s harsh.”

They reacted like I’d just delivered the harshest possible indictment. They were kind of
missing the point, but I didn’t feel like correcting them.

In any case, I wanted to at least try something to forget the past, so I asked them to
introduce me to some guys they knew. They naturally assumed that I was trying to get
over a rotten ex-boyfriend, but I didn’t bother correcting them about that either.

I was kind of hoping that, once you were in high school, boys were easier to talk to. In
middle school, they always got confused or alarmed if you so much as looked in their
direction. Very few of them actually had the guts to casually strike up a conversation
without looking like he was on a dare.

Unfortunately, high school boys weren’t much better, at least not the guys at the mixer.
The nicest thing I could say about them was that they weren’t shy. Even when we had
things in common to talk about, every conversation felt so obviously forced. I got
especially creeped when they got close or started flattering me about things I’d never
put a single bit of thought into. It was like everyone in the room was silently trying to
probe each other out, and it stressed me out majorly.

I wished boys treated girls more like little sisters. It just feels more reasonable for the
girl.

This one guy got right up in my face and kept trying to nudge me away from my group of
friends. He looked like he’d never combed his hair in his life, so I just had to complain to
Naoki about it. I sent him a text on my phone which was more like an essay.

“Who’s the guy?” the mixer guy asked.

Admittedly, it was rude of me to spend so much time on my phone at a social gathering,

but it was ruder of him to look at my screen while I was texting. I made up my mind
about this guy right then and there.

“I’m going home,” I announced, instead of answering the question.

The guy pulled on my arm in the sort of way that could maybe be interpreted as friendly
and jovial, but was so close to forceful that my mind was dazed for a moment trying to
work out the distinction. It was the first time in my life I’d ever had to think about this.

“Hey, we’re just having fun,” he insisted.

“No, I’m tired and I hate the world right now.”

“Haha, you’re so witty and clever!”

What the hell? How was that even witty? I was just flatly expressing what was on my
mind. Was this guy literally just saying anything to look like he was engaged in a
conversation?

Actually, yeah, I guess that was probably it.

Feeling really fed up now, I tried to twist my arm out of the guy’s grip only for him to
tighten his hold. Now I had a definite answer about his use of force, as if there was any
doubt before.

When my brother left for Tokyo, he told me that he trusted me. “You’re strong; I know
you’ll be fine.” And I believed him. Not to brag, but I can throw a mean punch. But
sometimes, I wished my brother was around to protect me, even if he was a weakling. If
only so that I could feel like a little sister instead of a woman.

It was about time to fall back on the time-honoured crotch kick, but at that moment,
someone pulled me out of the guy’s grip first.

“Miharu!”

For a split, searing second, I thought it was my brother coming to rescue me. But when I
turned my head around, it was Naoki. He was panting, as if he had run all the way here
without stopping once.

“Huh?! Where did you come from?!” My harasser looked dumbfounded. Come to think
of it, I still didn’t even know this moron’s name. I think he told me when we met, but I
already forgot. “Why’d you come here if you already have a boyfriend?” he asked me,
as if I was the real nuisance here.

“Leave her alone,” Naoki said, sounding surprisingly serious for once. “Can’t you see
you’re bothering her?”

“Who are you?” the guy demanded.

“Let’s just say Miharu’s like a little sister to me.”

“Um, okay?” I could see So what? plainly written on the guy’s face.

“And one other thing,” Naoki went on, smiling.

“What?”

“I’m a siscon.”

Then Naoki punched the guy across the face.

Needless to say, the guy wasn’t so eager to hit on me after that. In fact, he sort of just
slunk away quietly while he was still in possession of his teeth.

That also marked my exit from the group date, because I definitely wasn’t going to stick
around after making a scene. Not that I was much interested in seeing this mixer
through to the end—it wasn’t my thing at all. I apologised profusely to my friends and
scampered off as quick as I could.

Naoki looked supremely satisfied as we walked out the bar. It was the kind of
expression that made me immediately want to berate him before I could let anything
else be said.

“You’re so lame. You didn’t have to tell him you're a siscon.”

“Heh, but it’s true.”

“Creep.”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me not to let go of someone I care about.”

He still remembered that?

I looked up at Naoki curiously. He scratched the back of his head and grinned. “I can
see myself taking care of you for the rest of my life. You’re pretty hopeless.”

“Hey!” I kicked him in the shin on impulse. Why’d he have to phrase that in the worst
way possible?

But, well, as embarrassing as it was to admit, it did make me happy to see him storm in
like an overprotective brother and do something my actual brother would never do.
As for the “taking care of me forever” part, I didn’t stop to think twice about it. I pretty
much just assumed it already. Unlike my real brother, Naoki would never leave me.

That’s why I didn’t ask about it.

Yet somewhere, I couldn’t help but think that I was forgetting something important. It
niggled at me so much, and yet I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was giving me a
headache.

“Miharu, something wrong?”

I took my hand away from my forehead and shook my head slowly. “Nah, it’s nothing.” It
wasn’t like I was in actual pain or anything—I’m sure the answer would come to me
eventually.

Naoki looked a little worried for me but he didn’t ask any more questions.

Instead, he said gently, “Let’s go home.”

He held my hand in his, the very archetype of a caring sibling. But even then, in the
midst of my comfort, I should have known better. We were already changing.

A sibling’s love, after all, is like any other: it begins, and then it ends.

高2

In my second year of high school, my brother came home to me.

He didn’t call beforehand; in fact, he hadn’t called home in months. The doorbell rang
just as I was about to go to bed, exhausted from an outing with my friends. High off my
euphoria, I opened the door without a second thought.

There, at the doorway, stood my brother, as thin and nondescript as I ever knew him,
smiling with hollow eyes.

I thought my eyes had to be lying to me. Was this what my brother looked like now? I
tried to summon my powers of recollection, but for some reason, it was all vague.
“Brother, is that really you…?”
He didn’t respond to me verbally. Instead, he walked inside and closed the door
gingerly. He was so soft and tender, the way he moved, I knew it was him at once.

“Brother…”

It felt like an eternity had passed since I last saw him.

I should have been so happy to see him. Yet all of a sudden, fear stabbed me from all
directions, squirming in my gut. What if he left me again? What if I never saw him after
this?

At this point, my brother’s existence only evoked hazy memories and longing. Even
now, I barely recognised him.

My breath felt tight in my throat as I called out to him again and again. But when our
eyes met, his vacant gaze threatened to glance right over me.

“What’s happened to you, big brother…?”

Dull static. No response.

I clung to his arm. Even though I had just turned seventeen, I did something so childish.
But I could not spare a thought for my shame.

“Answer me, big brother!”

“Miharu,” he said finally, letting his glazed eyes settle on me. “Miharu, you still
remember, don’t you…?”

I gulped. “Remember what…?”

“How… we used to be.”

“I-Idiot!” Confusion laced with the seeds of panic splintered through me. “You show up
out of nowhere and this is what you say? I don’t get it!”

“If you forget, I’ll die…”

What?
Before my eyes, my brother started to shake. His glazed eyes seemed even duller now,
as if they were nothing but husky orbs. He rolled his head back…

And he was still.

“Brother…? Brother!”

I shook him vigorously.

Now the fear was clogging my throat, constricting my insides. I had no way of knowing if
I was so scared because he was unwell or because it was him I was frightened of.

My brother wasn’t supposed to be like this. When we were young, I learned how to ride
a bicycle because of him. He was there for me the whole time.

The older brother I once adored.

My vision dimmed, perhaps because I had no desire whatsoever to see what was in
front of me. In my mind’s eye, the scenes of our childhood flickered more brightly. The
images overlapped, a stack of family photos splattered across the ground. An image of
my brother kissing my mouth sweetly like a prince. I could no longer tell where
memories ended and ideals began.

I might have stayed forever in that limbo state, but somewhere, I heard a feeble cough.
It came from my brother, the one standing in front of me.

“Y-you’re alive!”

His lips parted, and breathed out a soft murmur. “Uh huh.”

He looked so terribly weak and pale but the smile he showed me was definitely his.

“Miharu, I’m sorry. I didn’t get you a present this year…”

Of all the things for him to say, that was the last I was expecting.

Even though it should have made sense.

My brother always remembered my birthday. Every year, he bought me a present. Even

if it was something small and cheap, he never forgot.
Memories flooded me. My head span. I pressed my body against his and murmured:
“It’s okay. As long as you’re here, that’s a good enough present for me…”

How I had longed for him so deeply. Ever since we were both young, I was never able
to shake that feeling.

That special, safe relationship I could never have with another boy.

I wanted my brother back.

Even now…

***

The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed the next morning.

My brother was gone, and my parents had not seen him. At first, I assumed it was all a
dream, just like the others. But somewhere, I was convinced it was not. In the dreams,
my brother was everything I could ever want from the opposite sex. Today, the image of
his blank eyes haunted me.

For the rest of the year, I never saw my brother’s face. I only heard his voice over the
phone, where he sounded as nonchalant and unassuming as ever. But the encounter
seared itself within my memory. When I thought of my brother, I did not know who to
think of first.

All I knew was that night my brother had come to see me…

…and he was no longer the brother I remembered.

高3

I slapped Naoki across the face.

“I hate you,” I told him, with all the venom I could muster.

Yes, I sincerely meant those words.

What happened? It was a long story. When I entered my last year of high school, Naoki
stopped being a brother to me forever. It happened suddenly, even though I should
have seen it coming for a long time.

In those days, Naoki was still by my side, as faithful as a Labrador. Whenever I needed
a lift anywhere, he took me in his car, as if he had all the time in the world.

But he wasn’t quite the same person anymore. He was less of a pervert, even if he still
cracked stupid jokes from time to time. He was less of a bum. He worked hard at his
part-time job and saved his money fastidiously. His boyish facial features never quite left
him, but every time I saw him it was as if he had grown up a little more.

Whenever Naoki hung out with me, I thought that maybe the world beyond high school
must be such a terrible and wonderful place if it makes the people I love change so
quickly. Even though he was so close to me, I could no longer reach out and grasp him
with my hands. It made me want to hold onto him even tighter.

I wanted my brother, and that meant I wanted Naoki. I didn’t think about it any further
than that; I didn’t want to think about it.

***

The new school year started in spring, with the sakura petals in full bloom. To celebrate
the occasion, Naoki and I went to the park for hanami—not the big, open park near the
river where everyone went to, but that tiny park near his house. A spot just for the two of
us.

He brought a bottle of sake—a reminder that he was of age now—but didn’t drink it.
Instead, we just sat and talked about all kinds of small things.

When I asked him why he brought me here, he gave me his usual laid-back smile. “I
figured this might be your last chance to properly chill out for a while, Miharu.”

With the spectre of university entrance exams looming over me, I found myself recalling
what Naoki was like when he was my age. I couldn’t help but smile. “You never did a lick
of studying,” I said. Naoki had all the time in the world for me, even back then.

“Don’t follow my bad example,” he said with a chuckle, not that I needed him to tell me
that. True, I didn’t like studying either, but this time I was taking it seriously. “But you
shouldn’t kill yourself trying to get high grades,” he added. “It’s not the end of the world if
you don’t get to Tokyo.”

A passing cloud covered the sun; a sudden chill came over me.

Naoki’s blunt words sparked a flash of annoyance in me. How dare he talk like he knew
what was going on inside my head? As if he knew what I wanted better than I did
myself?

“Are you saying I’m too dumb? I should aim lower?” It was my stubborn pride that spoke
first, before the little sister in me could take over.

“No,” he said. “You can do what you want. It’s just… you’ve never said what you actually
want to do in Tokyo that you can’t do here.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I—!”

I stopped myself. After all these years of dancing around the subject, I couldn’t bring
myself to talk about my brother with Naoki.

“Let us never speak of this again,” he’d told me, so many years ago. I ought to have felt
relieved that he kept his promise, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was another
reason he never spoke about my brother at all anymore.

“What?” Naoki asked, as if he was genuinely confused.

It pissed me off, seeing him play coy. So I flipped the question on him.

“Naoki… there’s something you know that I don’t. Is there something you’re not telling
me?”

Naoki didn’t respond immediately.

Instead, he just put his hand over mine.

I’d held hands with Naoki so many times before, but this felt different, like a statement of
intention. I couldn’t muster any words.

“Sorry,” Naoki said, apparently noticing my discomfort. Without looking at me, he

opened up the sake bottle and started to drink from it.
“I-it’s too late to use the excuse that you were drunk!”

“I know, I know. But I need a drink.”

Naoki turned twenty last year, so maybe he felt the weight of society on his shoulders.
As he drank, he looked pitiful and guilty, not very much like a grownup at all.

“What’s with you today?” I demanded.

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“About what?”

“That it would be nice if you stayed with me.”

So that was the reason he raised a stink about me going to Tokyo. He didn’t want me to
leave him behind.

Well, it wasn’t as if I didn’t understand that feeling.

“We can always stay in touch, you know,” I said gingerly.

Thump. A single heartbeat of silence. Naoki frowned. I got the impression that this was
not what he wanted me to say. “You’re not being half-assed about this, are you? If that’s
the extent of how you feel about me, we’ll drift apart for certain.”

I didn’t have it in me to contradict him.

“Do you want that to happen, Miharu?” he asked. “Do you think our relationship is worth
protecting?”

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “I do.”

“Then you have to choose, Miharu,” he said. “If you sit around and do nothing, it gets
harder to connect. You have to make a choice in order to be with someone.”

I thought of my brother, fading away in Tokyo, and I shook my head. “Tokyo is my

choice. But I won’t abandon you, Naoki.”
I could see it in my mind’s eye: the three of us talking and laughing together,
inseparable. I would do anything to make that vision come true.

“So that’s what you want?” Naoki asked, as if confirming something carefully. “You want
to go to Tokyo, but you also want to be with me?”

“Yeah. No matter what.”

Another pause, the length of a single heartbeat.

He turned and looked straight into my eyes as he said, “Then I’ll come with you. I’ve
saved up money. We can find a place together.”

It was my first time hearing any of this; I’d never seen him look so serious about
anything in his life. “But what do you want to do in Tokyo?” I asked, because even after
all those words, he didn’t explain that part at all.

“I want to be with you.”

I was silent, trying to process this.

My brother drifted away from Naoki, just like he did from me. But apparently, Naoki had
accepted it. He seemed to have accepted that drifting was a natural part of life.

But then, if that was the case, why did he stay so adamantly with me?

Why, out of everyone else in the world, would he choose me?

My mind was starting to connect the dots, but I didn’t want to accept it.

Because it would mean that everything between us these past few years was built on a
lie, a false contract.

“Naoki, you’re an idiot!” I bellowed the first words that came to mind. “You never had to
choose me!”

“But I did, because I wanted to.”

I was starting to think that Naoki was one of those serious, morose kinds of drunks.
Because he was definitely getting drunk. His hands were starting to shake, even.
I stood up, trying to clear my head. “You’re getting stupid now. Come on, you should go
home now.”

“I love you, Miharu.”

I never thought I’d hear those words spoken to my face, least of all from him. My heart
was beating frantically in my ribcage. I told myself I could still ignore it.

We could still be like brother and sister.

But of course I always knew that there was nothing so pure about sibling relationships.
It was all based on fantasies in my head. How could I not know that?

“Naoki, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, feeling the chill more than ever.

“I love you, Miharu,” he repeated himself. “You helped me get my life together. I can’t
imagine a world without you.”

He held my hand again and looked at me so seriously that I wouldn’t have known he
was drunk if I couldn’t smell the alcohol on his breath.

“W-what about Reina-san?” I asked quickly.

But he just looked at me, confused. “Reina? Who’s she?”

“How could you forget Reina-san?” Memories of Naoki waxing poetic about his first love
ran through my mind like a jumbled stream. He pretended not to care, but he was
despondent that day she rejected him for real. I knew his feelings better than anyone.
“You loved her all through high school!”

“I don’t know anyone named Reina.” He said that with complete sincerity.

I couldn’t believe my ears.

There was no way I could take his ridiculous confession seriously if his feelings meant
so little that he could just forget that entire chapter of his life.

“Stupid Naoki!” I wanted to kick him. “There’s no way you actually love me!”
“But I do.” He put his hands on my shoulders and drew his face towards mine. “I’ll prove
it to you.”

Panic surged in me as I realised what he was about to do. “B-but I’m a filthy brocon!” I
babbled. “I kissed my brother’s photo! I’ve had weird dreams about him!”

His lips were mere inches from mine. I watched as they curled up in mirth. “Is that your
way of saying ‘I love you’, Miharu? I’m flattered.”

What?

What the hell was this stupid misunderstanding? Did he really believe I was talking
about him? No!

“I meant about my actual brother, you dimwit!” I couldn’t believe I had to spell it out for
him—the awful, mortifying truth.

It was only after I finished the sentence did I realise that this was the first time I had ever
committed these shameful feelings to words.

A strained silence greeted my pained confession. Then Naoki finally pulled his lips
away. “What?” he said, frowning.

He was looking at me like I’d grown another head. That single look told me more than
words could ever express.

No.

My heart sank into my stomach. This couldn’t be… No no no no no no!

I thought about how I loved my brother and how I wanted him back and how right from
the beginning Naoki stepped in to become the replacement.

It was all wrong now. Shredded into a thousand pieces. Shattered beyond all repair.

I couldn’t remember what my brother’s face looked like.

How?

What was wrong with me?

I’d been thinking of him just a few minutes ago, but all of a sudden, the memories were
vague and slippery. It was like trying to catch water with my hands.

“If you forget… I’ll die.”

Somehow, I knew that if Naoki kissed me, I would never see my brother again.

I remembered the day he came to see me last year all too clearly, but what was his
name again…?

Did my brother even have a name…?

A scream built its way up my throat. The inside of my head was a blaring cacophony of
panic and desperation.

no no no no no NO NO NO no no NO no no NO NO NO NO NO!

It was too much. In that instant, my body moved reflexively and I slapped Naoki as hard
as I could across the face.

“I hate you.”

At first, his expression didn’t even flicker, perhaps because the alcohol tampered with
his reaction speed. Then finally he blinked, and his eyes clouded with anger.

“What’s with you?” he demanded.

Panting, I took a step back, my hands still raised. “No, what’s with you?! How could you
forget my big brother?! He was your best friend!”

“Miharu, calm down! I won’t understand if you don’t talk sense.”

“Shut up!” I screeched. The image of Naoki’s face and the half-remembered idea of my
brother warped and blended in my head. It was becoming impossible to tell the
difference. “My big brother is the coolest, no matter what! There’s no other guy who
could ever compare—not even you, Naoki! I’ll never love you more than my brother!”

It was too unfair. He was asking me to explain something I couldn’t put into words,
something I could only feel. But I tried anyway. Believe me, I really, really did my best.
I realised as soon as the words came out of my mouth that I’d said something I could
never take back. Naoki’s eyes widened. He took an involuntary step back, as if I’d
slapped him a second time.

He opened his mouth and spoke in a low voice, made of compressed anger and hurt.
“Are you for real, Miharu…? If you’re gonna reject me, just say it straight! Don’t make up
an imaginary crush!”

An imaginary crush? That was how he thought of it? With that, I knew for certain that
Naoki would never understand me. Never!

“It’s not imaginary! I love my big brother more than anyone!”

Upon hearing those words, something seemed to snap in Naoki too. “Fuck!” he yelled.
I’d never seen him curse so vehemently. He didn’t direct this torrent of wild emotion
straight at me but at the ground instead. I could only watch as he brought his clenched
fists to the sides of his head and trembled, in that very masculine sad-angry way.
“Fuck…!” he exclaimed again, bitterly.

It suddenly occurred to me, as if I was seeing the scene from a bird’s eye view, that I’d
broken his heart. I did it in the worst way possible. Imagine the girl you love rejecting
you so she can be with her own brother instead. I’d delivered such a cruel verdict
without a single thought.

The truth is, even I understood that the ideal ending was for the two of us to fall in love.
The mature love between a man and woman would sweep away my puppy dog
admiration of my brother. Like a kind older brother, he could protect me and make me
feel safe. And there was so much more he could give me than that. He could close the
distance that siblings always unthinkingly maintained. With him, I’d be fulfilled; I’d never
have to pine over a fading love again.

Such was the typical fate of any girl with a brother complex. The inevitability at the end
of this twisting, snaking path.

But I just couldn’t accept it. I was too scared. I didn’t want to make my brother disappear
for good.

I knew that this was the last time… The last time I could feel this way.
And so… I ran. I turned around and sprinted out the park that was supposed to be for
the two of us.

I ran from Naoki.

I ran from his love—our love.

And I climbed on the train to Tokyo.

***

It took half a day, weaving my way in and out of half a dozen stations, to finally reach
Shinjuku station. I used my New Year's gift money to pay for the fare, the entire stack of
wealth I kept saved for my someday wish. After stepping off the platform, I consulted the
labyrinthine map of the Tokyo metro system and made my way to the apartment
complex where my brother lived.

I’d never been to Tokyo before. On any other day, I would have stopped to gawk at the
neon lights and bustling crowds, but today, every other person in the world might as well
not have existed. Even if all of society stood between me and my brother, I would have
pushed right past every breathing obstacle.

Please believe me when I say that I never wanted to do anything either of us would
regret. I told myself that I needed to see him… and then.

Then I would be done.

By the time I found my brother’s apartment, nestled among what seemed like a small
forest of narrow, concrete buildings and telephone wires, it was almost dark. Having
come this far, I didn’t consider for a moment that I was being a nuisance to my brother,
nor did I question whether he was home. I pressed the doorbell—and waited.

Fortunately for me, I immediately heard a light pair of footsteps. A few seconds later, the
door opened very slightly, and a cautious face emerged through the gap.

“You…!”

The two of us blinked in surprise. That bright blue kimono and long, flowing black hair
could only belong to one person. Naoki might have forgotten her existence, but to me
she was unmistakable. Motohara Reina looked exactly as I remembered her, without
ageing a single day.

“Reina-san! What are you doing he—?” I stopped myself in the middle of the sentence.
When I thought about it just a little bit, of course I knew why she was here. My heart
trembled for a moment, and then clicked firmly into place. “You’ve been taking care of
my brother, haven’t you?”

As the surprise on Reina’s face gave way to gentle acknowledgement, she nodded
silently.

Looking into her soft and kind eyes, I found myself recalling a scene from long ago:
Reina clutching Naoki’s dog and willing it back to life. At the time, she denied
resurrecting that poodle, and with the benefit of hindsight I understood that she was
right.

Because it was only now that I found myself remembering that Naoki even had a dog in
the first place. At some point, before I even knew it, his poodle had completely faded
from my memories, as if it had never existed.

“Reina-san, please.” I bowed my head at a ninety-degree angle, the lowest I could go.
“Let me see my brother.”

“Miharu-chan,” the older girl said, her voice fragile and hesitant like snow trickling from
the sky. “Miharu-chan, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be able to remember him anymore. He’s
already…”

“Please!”

My face was pointed firmly at the ground; I couldn’t bear to look at her face, and I didn’t
want her to see mine. Yet still, I was compelled to press on. Having come this far, there
was no going back. I understood now with perfect clarity that Motohara Reina held the
key to everything.

“Miharu-chan…” I felt an unbearable weight in that single utterance. Reina swallowed.

With obvious effort, she pressed on. “Your brother is no longer in this world, but if you
come with me…”

At those words, I finally looked up. As I expected, Reina’s beautiful face was haunted
with guilt and memories. She opened the door a little further and beckoned.
“Thank you, Reina-san.” I spoke the first and only words on my mind. “Thank you…!”

Without pause or reflection, I passed through the doorway, to another time and place.

小1

Beneath the speckless blue sky, the cicadas chirped their summertime chorus. Ayumu
shifted slightly in his bicycle seat, conscious of the sweat running down his legs and
face. He regretted coming out to the outskirts of town today, where there was no shade
or respite from the oppressive humidity.

But there was no way he was going to retire or suggest a different spot. All the boys at
school agreed that this road was the best race course. Both left and right, rice fields
stretched as far as the eye could see across perfectly level earth. The path was straight
for five whole kilometres, and there were landmarks here and there to make shorter
races manageable.

“First one to the bus stop wins!” Ayumu declared, hoping the confidence in his voice
would sweep away the reluctance in his heart.

One race should do it, he thought. If he suggested something else to do after that, he
wouldn’t look like a wuss.

The boys quickly got into position, eyeing their bicycles to make sure nobody was
sticking out in front of the others. “Ready… Set…!” Ayumu began eagerly, only to be
interrupted by the sound of squeaky bicycle wheels behind him.

“Hey, big brother! Let me join in!”

Ayumu scowled. Even without looking, he could recognise that whiny voice anywhere.
“Go play by yourself, Miharu,” he grumbled.

“Why?” asked Ayumu’s little sister, as she laboriously pedalled her way over to the boys
on a tiny pink bicycle. “See?” she said triumphantly. “I don’t need training wheels
anymore!”

“Stop trying to butt in,” Ayumu retorted, feeling annoyed that he was having to deal with
his sister in front of the other boys. Ever since she started elementary school this year,
she kept trying to join in with Ayumu and the others instead of making her own friends.
The other boys exchanged silent looks and shrugged. They weren’t yet at the age
where they had a problem playing with girls. But nobody bothered to interfere with
Ayumu as he berated his sister.

“You’re so unfair, big brother!” Miharu cried. “Why won’t you let me play with you?!”

“You’re too slow to keep up. You’ll just drag us down.”

With that, Ayumu decided to ignore his little sister and sped off on his bicycle. I need to
show her how fast I am, he thought, so she’ll give up on chasing me.

Nevertheless, the annoyance lingered in Ayumu’s mind for several minutes afterwards.
When he lost the race, he mentally blamed the result on Miharu for ruining his
concentration. Also, it was too hot today.

Ayumu was already in a disgruntled mood, but it was when he cycled back to the
starting point that his day plummeted to rock bottom.

Miharu was sprawled in the middle of the road, covered in dirt and clutching her knees.
She was bawling her eyes out. Her bicycle lay flat on the ground half a metre away.

“You idiot!” Ayumu exploded. “Why’d you try to keep up?!”

Miharu didn’t answer; she just cried. Ayumu was tempted to slap her to make her shut
up, but he knew that would make her tantrum worse.

“Get on my back,” he said exasperatedly. “I’ll take you home. Just stop crying already,
geez!”

His sister sniffled and went quiet just long enough to nod. She climbed on Ayumu’s back
and got her snot all over his shirt.

***

When they got home, Ayumu’s mother fussed over Miharu endlessly, bandaging up her
knees and crooning soothingly into her ear. She also had some choice words for
Ayumu. “Ayumu! I told you to take care of your sister!”

“It’s not my fault,” Ayumu tried to say. “She just lost her balance!”
“You should have watched her!”

His mother’s attitude was so unfair. She always coddled Miharu and reprimanded
Ayumu. He did not remember being spoiled like this when he was his sister’s age. Was
it because she was a girl?

“It’s no fun watching Miharu,” Ayumu grumbled. “I want to play with my friends.”

“Then let her join in your games.” His mother said this as if it was very logical. “You don’t
have a problem playing with Miharu when you’re at home, do you?”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” Ayumu insisted.

Being an adult, there was no way his mother could have understood the differences
between play at home and outside. It wasn’t as if Miharu was necessarily a bad
playmate—she usually went along with Ayumu’s ideas without kicking up a fuss or being
a sore loser at games—but at home, there was no one to play with but her. Unlike his
friends, he couldn’t choose his sister.

It was impossible, however, for a ten-year-old boy to win an argument against his
mother. For the rest of the day, Ayumu was grounded. This meant there was nothing to
do but play with his sister, who conveniently stopped crying after he was delivered his
punishment.

“Does her leg still hurt?” he asked, for lack of anything else to say to her. She shook her
head. Of course it doesn’t, he thought. It was just a tiny scrape, but she’d cried like the
world was ending.

Miharu brightly suggested they play with the plush toys and plastic figures, which was
her favourite form of entertainment. Ayumu thought that he was too old for this, but he
agreed because he did feel a little guilty about shunning her earlier.

Miharu liked making up stories about their toys, but she changed the plots and
relationships so often that Ayumu could never keep track. One day, she would mash
Baikinman and Totoro’s heads together and say, “They’re boyfriends now.” The next,
she would make Baikinman kick Totoro while cackling “But it was a lie to take over the
world!” At least that was consistent with his character in the anime.
This time, Miharu picked up the Kamen Rider figure—the sole toy in the collection that
Ayumu still had a profound personal attachment to—and said, “Big brother, what do you
think is fairness?”

“I don’t know,” said Ayumu, not at all interested in what a seven-year-old had to say
about such an abstract concept.

Verbally, his sister did not continue that train of thought. Instead, she blithely put her
fingers around the figure’s head—and twisted its head off.

It took Ayumu a full three seconds to realise what Miharu had just done. Then, belatedly,
the rage boiled over and he snatched the headless figure out of her hand.

“You broke him!”

He didn’t even play that much with this toy anymore, but the fact that she took it and
desecrated it in front of his eyes was unforgivable. He would never trust Miharu again.

“But you broke my bicycle!” Miharu retorted. “It broke because of you!”

“No, I didn’t!”

She wasn’t making any sense. For one thing, the bicycle wasn’t even broken; she just
wasn’t using training wheels anymore. For another, Ayumu didn’t lay a hand on it.

But there was no arguing with Miharu. Everything was consistent according to her
just-out-of-kindergarten logic. She looked at Ayumu with eyes brimming with smug
satisfaction and declared, “We’re even now!”

“I hate you!”

Ayumu fell upon Miharu. The teetering balance inside him—the tiny voice in the back of
his head that said maybe his mother was right—vanished in an instant.

As he yanked on his little sister’s hair, pulling it taut like guitar strings, he let the
frustration speak for him: “No one will ever like you!”

“Stop it, big brother! I hate you! I hate you!”

Miharu screamed and howled as if she was possessed. Within seconds, stomping
footsteps announced their mother’s furious entrance. “Ayumu!”

There was no way to make himself look like he was in the right, pulling his sister’s hair
and shouting into her ears, but Ayumu didn’t care. Even if nobody else understood, he
knew what a terrible sister Miharu was, always trying to sabotage him. She deserved
what she got.

Their mother pulled Ayumu away from his sister and slapped him across the cheek with
the back of her hand. “Apologise to your sister!” she ordered him.

“No!” Ayumu declared, and then promptly ran outside.

“Get back here!” He could feel her presence behind him, bearing down upon him like an
invisible yokai. He focused all his energy into sprinting—so much so that he paid no
attention at all to where he was going.

It was only as he was just about to step on the asphalt road that something yanked all
the momentum out of him. Something—someone?—pinned him to the spot. A split
second later, the roar of a speeding truck hurtled right past him, mercilessly running
over the spot he was about to step onto.

Just like that, the tension broke. Ayumu felt all the restless energy in his body deflate;
he wondered what he was doing here. Why did he get so angry before, anyway?

Don’t be so reckless, big brother!

Ayumu’s heart suddenly began to pound in his chest, as if he had been caught doing
something he wasn’t supposed to do. The voice in his ears belonged to a stranger, but it
also sounded faintly nostalgic, like the half-forgotten memory of a corner shop that had
long since closed down.

Trembling, whether from the near-death experience or a sudden haze of ineffable

emotions, he turned around.

***

In the summer of my first year of elementary school, I saw the boy my brother had once
been: selfish and capricious, a product of his tender years. The boy who pulled my hair
and resented me for existing, whose approval I longed for but never received.
It was all coming back to me now. He never taught me how to ride a bicycle—I taught
myself so that I could play with him. Ever since that time I tried to chase him and fell, I’d
stopped liking bicycles; I became a little afraid of them, even. It was Naoki who taught
me to enjoy them again.

The truth was that I hardly knew my brother Ayumu at all. I wasn’t even certain if he had
any affection for me at all as a sibling. But when I saw him run onto the road, my body
moved on instinct; I had to save him.

As I put my arms around his tiny body and held him tight, I knew that I could never hate
this foolish brother of mine.

He turned around, gazing blankly at me. But he wasn’t seeing me. He looked through
me, at the vacant space where I should have been. I stood before his eyes, but he was
unable to even notice my presence. He blinked a few times—and then walked right
through me. I didn’t feel a thing when our bodies touched.

“You cannot interfere with this plane of reality,” Motohara Reina intoned next to me.
“Here, you can only exist as an echo.”

“So he was never going to get hit by a truck?”

“That’s right. This is the past, which cannot be altered now.”

“I see,” I said, feeling relieved anyway.

I watched him from behind as he shuffled back towards our house, shoulders hunched
and hands in his shorts pockets. Looking at him like this, he seemed so small and
uncertain of himself. I was seized with the desire to protect him, even though I was the
little sister.

“If this was my real brother from the past, then who was the brother I fell in love with?” I
asked Reina.

“Come with me,” the other girl said, taking my hand gingerly.

My head swam with jumbled and sinking thoughts, but I nodded back at her. I knew I
had to keep going.
So together, we crossed the road—to yet another time.

小6

The pungent disinfectant in the hospital room brought back a flood of memories. Yes, I
remembered this place all too well, even though I’d only been here a few times across a
single week of my life.

Like a camera lens slowly coming into focus, I saw the younger version of me sitting by
the bed, fidgeting uncomfortably.

“Big brother, you’ll be better soon, right?” she—Miharu—said to the boy sitting up in the
bed.

“Mm,” Ayumu responded vaguely.

Today, this boy was listless. It was yet another side of my brother that I’d never seen
before. He bore no trace of the restless energy that defined his past, nor the serenity of
my imagination.

I remembered this scene distinctly. It was when my brother came down with a sudden
illness that left him bedridden for weeks. He spent a week at the hospital, which left me
anxious at the time, but after that he slowly got better. Still, he was never quite the same
afterwards. He became quieter, more distant.

Looking back, I think that was when he started to fade away.

“This was where Ayumu passed away,” Reina announced solemnly beside me. “May
31st, the last day of spring. Regardless of cause or reason, he was always meant to die
on this day.”

I could only look at her, shocked but also not. When I shifted my gaze just slightly away
from the brother of my fragmented memories, this was the only truth that poked from the
seams.

“But then why do I remember him living?” I demanded.

I wasn’t in denial, or perhaps I wasn’t yet at the stage where I could comfort myself with
lies. The situation was just so absurd that my first impulse was to press for details.
“Miharu never saw the precise moment of death.” Reina suddenly shifted to a
third-person way of speaking. She did not use an honorific either, as if “Miharu” had
suddenly become a non-human entity. “Because of that, this was where the point of
observation changed.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, but she didn’t respond.

She was staring intently at my brother.

Almost imperceptibly, Ayumu’s mouth twitched. He reached out and patted his little
sister on the head. In his eyes, I saw the faint stirrings of an emotion lift to the surface: I
recognised it as dull, sad yearning. A half-complete understanding of loss. A tiny flicker
of desperation.

I watched the other version of myself open her eyes in shock and stare at him in
confusion.

“I’m sorry, Miharu,” he whispered.

“What are you sorry for, big brother?”

Ayumu lowered his head. His fringe covered his eyes, but I could see his jaw trembling.

“I wasn’t a good brother. I was horrible to you.”

It was the first time in his life Ayumu had ever said such a thing. As if shattering a glass
house, his words cut deep into my memories. Longing flooded me—more intense and
fervid than anything I’d ever experienced.

“That’s not true at all, big brother!” Miharu exclaimed.

She took the words right out of my mouth, which only made sense because she was
me. Yet it was still eerie, somehow, to watch this little girl mirror my heart's every
involuntary movement. Shaking fervently in her seat, she continued:

“You’re the best big brother in the world!”

Even without her saying it, I knew it was true. It didn't matter what my brother said, or
what reality tried to show me. The truth was evident before my eyes, in how I felt as I
watched my brother struggle to hold back his tears of regret.
It was then that I finally understood.

This must be the moment the world changed.

In that final exchange, the feelings that neither of us knew how to express came
together to rewrite reality—or at least how humans perceived it. From then on, I would
always remember Ayumu the way he wanted to be remembered, as the big brother I
cherished most in the world.

The feelings were too big for a tiny little girl to hold inside her chest. They would slip
back in time to overwrite the past, and they would distort the present to give this new
Ayumu a second chance at life. It wasn’t just me—everyone would eventually come to
remember my brother as a kind and sweet boy. I would make it so.

“Do you see now?” Reina said. “Miharu’s ideals changed the point of observation. But
they did not change reality itself. Miharu merely chose to peer into a hypothetical
scenario where he lived instead of died. An ideal without any basis in fact cannot stand
on its own. When scrutinised, it falls apart.”

“But it is the truth! My brother is the best!”

“No, Miharu-chan,” she said, directly addressing me. “It was better to let it fade from
your mind.”

I finally wrenched my gaze away from my brother to look at Reina once again. I couldn’t
understand her at all. Didn’t she love my brother too?

“I do love him,” she said quietly, as if she had read my mind. “I love him more than
words can express. But…”

As she spoke, she reached into the folds of her kimono and pulled out two hair ties.
Before me, she tied her hair in two pigtails—the way I used to style myself.

Just like that, the aura around her completely changed.

I don’t know if her facial features changed or if it was just the way I was looking at it. But
all of a sudden, I had the uncanny feeling of looking at myself in the mirror, but with the
expressions all subtly wrong. She was a similar age to me, a girl in her late teens on the
very cusp of womanhood.
And we had the exact same face.

“R-Reina-san! You’re—!”

“Yes,” she cut in gently. “I am you. Or rather, I am Ayumu’s little sister.”

My mind ground to a halt. I’d seen a lot of crazy things today, but somehow this took the
cake. I couldn’t even begin to guess what this meant for me or my brother.

“But how?!” I spluttered.

“What if I told you that Ayumu also dreamed of the ideal Miharu?”

With that, my stalled brain kicked into motion, frantically pulling the pieces together.

Motohara Reina. A classical Japanese beauty. Gorgeous, intelligent, and refined. The
unattainable ideal to my middle school self.

She was me, but so much more than me. When my brother left for Tokyo, she
monopolised all of him. She had a special, unspoken relationship with him that I could
never hope to achieve.

It was all starting to make sense. Too much sense.

“But then… why?” I croaked.

Why would she want me to forget my brother’s very existence? If she was me, wouldn’t
she understand how I felt?

“Isn’t it time,” Motohara Reina said, “to move on? Your brother wouldn’t want his
memory to cause you pain or heartache. That’s why, in the end, he—”

“Shut up!”

I couldn’t stand to listen to this. I understood now that Motohara Reina was my enemy.
She was trying to take my brother away from me. Grow up, she was saying, while
forcing yet another ideal onto me. I couldn’t trust her any more than I could trust myself.
So I punched her with all the strength I had in my body. She had my face; I could hit her
however much I liked.

“Stop this, Miharu-chan!” cried Motohara Reina. For the first time, her graceful features
flickered with alarm as she nursed her bruised cheek. “Your brother only wants what’s
best for you!”

“I won’t lose him! Not even to you, Reina-san!”

Even more than my fists, something in my words seemed to strike Reina to her very
core. She stared at me, wide-eyed and quivering, as if she was seeing me for the first
time. I recalled what she said earlier: an ideal without any basis in fact cannot stand on
its own. When scrutinised, it falls apart.

I punched her again. This time, she didn’t resist; it was as if her soul slid out her mouth.
She crumpled to the floor and I climbed on top of her, straddling her. I smashed my fist
against her beautiful face, over and over and over.

She didn’t scream in pain or even react at all to what I was doing. Instead, she stared at
nowhere with glassy and expressionless eyes, noble and pretty like a hina doll.

Each blow I delivered to her reverberated through me like a pendulum of pain. In my

mind’s eye, I saw my brother’s face, clearer than they’d ever been in my memories.
Every time I hit Reina, the image came into sharper relief. Finally, I felt alive. With this, I
could finally give voice to all the searing hurt inside of me, bottled up for far too long.

Relentlessly, I battered my ideal self, until I ground her into dust. And then I was falling
into the floor, swallowed by the emptiness that suddenly opened beneath me.

Falling, falling, falling…

There was nothing at all to see or hear in this new place. Blank space extended
endlessly across all directions and dimensions, devoid of all colour, form, or shape.

I felt like I’d come to the beginning and ending of the universe. It was not emptiness so
much as it was the entirety of everything beyond the grasp of human perception. Here
in this peculiar limbo state, my own body didn’t have a tangible presence. Just by being
here, I could feel my entire being slowly melt away into the void, where “someday” and
“never” existed side by side.

Could it be that this, in the end, was the true nature of reality? Were we all just cells
within a larger body that we were unable to perceive with our limited human senses?
Even if there was a shared reality, perhaps we were trapped within the bubbles of our
own delusions. Our capacity to interact with the world was limited by our abilities to
observe it.

The only thing that made me certain that I was still me was that I still possessed
conscious thought. This fact brought me no relief; if anything, it was a vague source of
torment.

Who was I? Where did I come from? Why was I here? What was I trying to do? No
matter how deeply I questioned myself, the answers eluded me.

Only one identifying thought persisted within my consciousness, like a fading light.

Big brother! Big brother, help me!

I don’t know whether I actually said those words or simply thought them. I reached out
into eternity itself, searching, searching, searching for that which would finally make me
whole.

That’s right, I was a little sister.

The true nature of a little sister is the zen conception of Nothingness, or perhaps the
indefinable result of dividing by zero. From a fundamental ontological perspective, the
feelings between siblings cannot be clearly explicated. It is a relation of constantly
fluxing probabilities, like a quantum wave function.

I was the one who decided my relationship with others, by defining the mutual point of
observation. Therefore, I was certain that if I tried hard enough—if I could be a good
little sister—then I could summon my brother into this sphere of reality where nothing
else could be perceived.

The more I concentrated on these feelings, the more the landscape gradually took
shape around me. At last I was able to perceive, however dimly, where I was. I was
standing in an unfurnished Japanese-style apartment room, contained within the span
of six tatami mats. There were no walls or sliding doors—only the infinite expanse of
outer space lay beyond the tatami, with no stars or other celestial bodies in sight.

Within this isolated room, cut off from the rest of the human world, I saw him. He was
sitting on his knees in the middle of the floor, gazing up at me with eyes wide with
wonder. His face was so emaciated and pale; it was as if the creature I saw before me
was only half-human. But it was definitely him.

“Miharu…?”

As soon as he uttered my name, I remembered everything about us, past and present.

I had enough feeling in my limbs now to know that my hands were trembling. I leaned
over towards him and touched his cold, clammy face. After stretching the very limits of
my imagination, this was the only presence left that I could still see—the faint
afterimage of a boy long dead.

Whether he was constructed of pure ideals, or if he was a probabilistic simulation of the

young man he would have become if he had lived, I could not say. What I did know was
that this was the closest approximation of a shared image between the two of us,
somewhere within the realms of dreams and reality. Otherwise, without any point of
connection, we could not have met in the first place.

“Miharu… you came…” he said, his voice scratchy and weak.

“I’m here now. I finally found you. We’ll never be apart again.”

He shook his head slowly. “No, Miharu. I can’t be with you anymore. Naoki can take
care of you from now on. You have to forget about me…”

“No! We’ll always be together!”

I could barely control myself as I whispered those words. I wanted to throw myself on
him, embrace him tightly, and shake him awake. The situation evoked such searing déjà
vu that it left me breathless for a moment. I saw a vision of myself from seven years
ago, holding my brother’s hand as his life expired.

“But you have to know the truth, Miharu,” he whispered. “That I’m already…”

“That doesn’t matter!”

He was such a dummy! He didn’t get it at all!

“Even if the real you doesn’t exist anymore, I never want to forget you! So don’t you
dare erase yourself from my memories!”

I was sick of him always trying to push me away. He might have thought it was kinder on
me if he faded out of existence and let Naoki replace his role in my life, but he was
wrong. What we had together wasn’t so cheap that another guy could simply supplant it.

His eyes flickered at my outburst; he couldn’t look me in the face. “But I couldn’t protect
you,” he said ruefully. “I hurt you so much.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad… glad you were with me to begin with.”

Seven years ago, when he suffered the illness he should have died from, I didn’t fully
understand the permanence of death. As much as I feared the idea of dying, I took it for
granted that he would survive—that he would always be a part of my life. I would never
have accepted it if he had disappeared from my life without a murmur.

But at the same, I’m sure that even if he had lived his full and natural lifespan, we would
have drifted apart like we did in this life. There would have come a day when I realised
that our one-of-a-kind relationship was dead. And I might have let it die callously,
stagnant and stillborn, ignorant of even the potential for regret.

I’d said goodbye to him in so many different ways after he passed, even when I didn’t
know it. I could say it again one last time.

Right then, during that fleeting, tentative moment, I could halfway convince myself of
this.

“Miharu…”

His eyes widened once more, and then his mouth curved into a faint, ghostly smile.

It was like none of those other smiles from the last seven years.

He smiled as if he truly meant it, as if I was the only person who mattered to him. He
smiled as if he was sorry.
“Are you sure?” he asked hesitantly. “Will you be okay remembering me as a dead
person?”

“I…”

I was about to say yes, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to form the words. Because the
truth was, no matter how much I put on a brave face, the future seemed so precarious
and uncertain without him.

This was my last chance to tell him my true feelings. No matter how awkward and
painful it was, I couldn’t shy away from it anymore.

“I can’t imagine loving anyone more than you. Will I… Will I be okay when I grow up?”

All this time, I never told him my feelings because I thought he would find me disgusting,
or at least embarrassing. But just this once, within this ephemeral moment divorced
from space and time, he listened to me earnestly.

His eyes softened, and he patted me on the head.

“Yes, Miharu,” he said. “You’ll be okay. I’m sure you’ll find lots of precious things.”

“Even if it’s not the same?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a firm nod. “Besides, you’ve become so pretty now, so I’m sure…”

“You think I’m pretty?” I never expected him to say that.

Maybe it wasn’t just me getting carried away in this moment; he, too, could finally say
what he could never express before.

It looked like my question took him off guard, because for a moment he just blinked.
Then he smiled sheepishly and said, simply, “Yeah.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Was he for real? I could hardly imagine anyone finding
someone like me attractive. Even when Naoki said he loved me, a part of me was
always in doubt.
But to hear him say it… Yes, it meant the world. My eyelids fluttered; my heart raced. In
one way or another, he was with me for my entire life. I’d never thought of myself as a
proper adult before, but I could believe him if he said I'd become a woman.

“Think you’ll be okay by yourself now?” he asked gently.

“Mhm. I’ll try. It’s all thanks to you.”

“Miharu…”

As he uttered my name again, this time more softly, his hand went from the top of my
head to my cheek. As the point of contact between us shifted, so, too, did the world
around us. The tatami expanded into a wall and ceiling; as it did so, the colours and
textures changed. Now we were standing at the altar inside a western-style church.

There was no priest to officiate, nor any friends or relatives to witness us. This was a
place that only the two of us could observe, a tiny corner of reality that existed only for
us.

We were so close now, closer than we had ever been. I was dressed in a pure white
wedding gown, and he was in a tuxedo. In the light reflecting from the stained glass
windows, he looked like the most handsome man in the universe.

“I love you, Miharu,” he whispered to me.

It only took a slight nudge for his lips to meet mine. He kissed me sweetly on the mouth,
the way he did in my dreams. His lips were cold and stagnant, like death itself. But I
accepted him anyway—we accepted each other.

He tasted so sweet; I knew nobody but him. There was no measure for this time. It
could have been an eternity, or it might have been just a couple fleeting seconds. I
could have relished this moment forever, but I came here knowing what I wanted to do.
When eventually I pulled away, the boy I loved was gone.

This time, however, his memory remained with me: both the kind prince and the petulant
brat. They were both equally precious to me, inseparable within the fond, rose-coloured
haze of a schoolgirl’s nostalgia. With a heart heavy with sweet and tender recollections,
I whispered back into the void:

“I love you too—”

What name did I utter then, as I affirmed the feelings that were meant for just this
fragment of time? Did I love him like this because I saw him as my big brother, or
because I saw him as Ayumu? Would this distinction matter to anyone but me?

In any case, it was all over now. I was the only one left who could decide who I was.
With him gone, the church disappeared from view as well. I shifted my point of
observation accordingly. This time, for the very first time in my life, the future was in
sight.

大2 (Two years later)

Today, I talked to this funny guy at my part-time café job. He’s a bit of an otaku, I think.
He always reads a light novel or manga while sipping his coffee. I won’t lie; it’s some
pretty eyebrow-raising stuff.

When I asked him why he didn’t stick a cover over it like most people would, he said,
“Society might say it’s immature, but I don’t like hiding what I like when it doesn’t hurt
anyone.”

“But still,” I said, unable to hold myself back from teasing him just a little, “Building My
Little Sister’s Affection in Another World? Isn’t that a bit embarrassing?”

“It’s actually a really good book,” he said. “Sure, it follows the conventional Narou isekai
template, but the protagonist and his blood-related little sister from Japan get
reincarnated into different families, so there’s a very interesting sense of distance
between them in the other world.”

I couldn’t quite follow all the lingo this guy was using, so I just said, “Cool.”

“You don’t see many light novels with little sister heroines these days, so it’s honestly
very nostalgic,” he went on. “There’s a unique tension that can only exist in sibling
relationships, so in my opinion it’s a waste to only write little sisters as sub-heroines.”

I still had no clue what this guy was talking about when it came to light novels, but I had
to agree on one thing. “Yeah. Little sisters are the best.”

I’ve been finding it easier nowadays to make casual chit chat with guys. Back in my
hometown, there’s a guy who was—and still is—very important to me. It’s because of
Naoki that I learned that there’s nothing inherently intimidating about guys who aren’t
my brother. Even when they do hold desires that I don’t fully understand, they aren't
impossible to talk to. In the end, we’re all just people.

Even though I didn’t choose a university in Tokyo with a specific goal in my mind, I’ve
never regretted my decision to come here. It’s nice watching the world race by and
bumping into all kinds of folk, each with their own story to tell. Whenever I finish my café
shifts, I like to ride my bicycle down the riverside and watch the people weave in and out
of sight, and it always makes me think: the world is a bigger place than I imagined.

I think this is what my brother Ayumu wanted me to see.

***

I’ve always loved the sakura season, when the world blooms a brilliant pink for just a
short while.

Even if it breaks my heart a little when all the petals eventually fall and wither, I know
deep down that it will bloom again next year. It’s never the exact same petals, but it
doesn’t have to be. It’s enough to know this world is capable of shimmering with
beauty—a vista of sweet and tender beginnings and farewells.

I don’t know yet what it means to love someone more than my brother, but I know now
in my heart that this world is full of all kinds of love. There’s no time limit on this wish,
but it isn’t a “someday” or “neverday” wish to me. As soon as I’m ready, I’ll reach out
with my own two hands and find it, as surely as the sakura blooms.
Afterword

Hi, everyone. Frog-kun here! Thanks for picking up this story. If you’re here, I’m going to
assume that you, too, have some fondness for a bygone era of otaku subculture.
Welcome to the club!

This novella is a “little sister” story because I would not be where I am today if I’d never
encountered Oreimo in my late teens. With Tsukasa Fushimi’s Eromanga Sensei novels
ending this year, I felt like the timing was right to finally release this tribute novella to the
world.

The very first version of this story was a failed NaNoWriMo attempt from 2013. I finished
the draft at the time, albeit with an abrupt ending, but it was only 17,000 words instead
of the target 50,000. It would probably have stayed buried if a reader didn’t chase me up
about it nine years later asking for the full copy. Thank you very much for your kind
compliments and interest in a story even the author had long forgotten.

Today, I am releasing this story as a free digital book so that anyone can share it freely.
True to its otaku roots, I uploaded it during the Comiket 100 weekend, a time when so
many passionate artists in Japan are sharing their self-published doujin works to fellow
fans. (Note: This release is not officially affiliated with Comiket.) If you enjoyed this
book, it would make me happy if you passed it along.

Frog-kun
August 14, 2022