Aiko walked up to Yuichi, whose face was contorted in pain. “Hey, Sakaki,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“Have you been hiding the fact that you’re really strong?”
“Um...” Yuichi unconsciously averted his eyes.
“If you could beat him, did we even have to do all that running around?”
“Well...” Yuichi fumbled. He was sure his expression reflected dire embarrassment.
“Allow me to explain!” Mutsuko interrupted, popping up beside her. “‘Oh, it’s so hard! I’m so strong, yet I must hide my true power to avoid the spotlight! I cannot reveal it for something so trivial!’ That’s the little performance he likes to keep up.”
“No! That’s not how it is!” Yuichi screamed so hard he nearly spat blood, and pleaded with his eyes for Aiko to believe him.
“...Sorry... I think I just misunderstood something about you, Sakaki. It’s okay. I believe you...” Aiko patted Yuichi’s head gently.
“What did you misunderstand?”
“The way you sprung that secret on me and stuff? I thought you were a real jerk.”
“Oh, that... Um, sorry...” His apology was genuine. Even though he’d wanted her help, there would probably have been a better way to ask for it.
“Welp, too bad that your secret’s out now,” Mutsuko continued, oblivious to the quiet moment they were sharing. “Bye-bye to your peaceful school life, huh? All those surreptitious glances... hey!” she fumed, as she finally seemed to notice. “Don’t leave me and go off into your own little world! It’s lonely out here!” She clearly didn’t like being ignored.
“Anyway, it’s not like I was hiding it,” Yuichi muttered. “It’s just, people who bring up how they can kick anyone’s ass for no reason are idiots. And I just started high school this year, you know? It wasn’t really the time to start bragging about my fighting skills. And... maybe if I’d studied proper karate or judo or something, I wouldn’t mind coming out with it. But... look, I practice a weird fighting style my sister made up based on stuff she read in manga! I can’t show that to people, it’s humiliating!”
“Oh, Yu! So easily embarrassed, even in high school!” Mutsuko gave him a playful clap on the back.
“It’s because I’m in high school that it’s embarrassing!”
“Um... I won’t tell anyone if it would embarrass you. But can we figure out what do we do with that oni person?” Aiko asked, cutting into the sibling argument.
Yuichi focused back on their fallen enemy. He could wake up at any time, so dealing with him had to be their first priority.
“Good question,” Mutsuko said. “We can’t just leave him here, but I’ve got my escalator workshop to get to...”
Yuichi’s eyes widened in surprise. “Huh? You’re still going to that? Doesn’t this seem a little more important?” He couldn’t believe she was putting some stupid workshop over this.
“How can you say that, Yu?” Mutsuko asked. “It’s important to keep your promises. The adult world runs on trust.”
“Ugh... Now you’re playing the common sense card?”
Mutsuko squatted next to the fallen boy and prodded him here and there, as if investigating something. “I see. He definitely looks like a foreigner. See? His eyes are blue.” Mutsuko pulled up one of his eyelids.
The features of the boy’s face were deeply set, his hair blond, and his eyes blue. Viewed up close, he was clearly not Japanese.
“You said he had a horn when you first saw him, right? But I don’t see it now... Maybe it only appears when he’s using his powers? ...I get it. So there’s some truth to the Foreign Oni theory. You know this one? It says the oni from the Momotaro legend were actually foreigners. There’s a theory that tengu are foreigners, too. What if they’re all just foreigners, you know? I guess some people must think kappa and stuff are foreigners, too...”
“Enough with the trivia! What are we doing?” Yuichi urged her. He looked afraid that if he let her go on, she’d never stop.
“For now, we should get him tied up. Yu... no, you probably can’t handle it yet. Noro, then. Could you take that end?” Mutsuko lifted one of the boy’s arms, and directed Aiko to take the other. She seemed to want to drag him somewhere.
Aiko did as she was told, taking the boy’s hand and working with Mutsuko to pull him to the club room door. “Will just locking him up in a room be enough? He’ll probably wake up soon,” she said.
“Don’t you worry. I’ve got ways of dealing with oni!” As she spoke, Mutsuko unlocked the door.
The two worked together to drag him inside.
Yuichi managed to pick himself up, curious about what they were doing. He had recovered a little bit. Running was still beyond him, but he could manage a slow walk.
It seemed she had finished her anti-oni preparations in the time it took him to get there. The boy had been set on his side on the floor, wrapped again and again with shimenawa, a ceremonial Shinto rope. Some kind of dried fish and leaves were stuck into and on the rope. A peach had been shoved into his mouth — probably fake, since it was holding its shape — likely to act as a gag.
There was a paper talisman stuck to his forehead painted with symbols Yuichi couldn’t understand. That was all strange by itself, but there was more. All around the boy, there were more strange items: measuring cups full of soybeans, swords made of wood, and swords made from coins linked together with thread...
The sheer nonsense of it was making him dizzy.
Mutsuko caught sight of him. “Oh, you can walk already? Huh... I bet that means we can extend the furukami’s activation time... Hey, can you make it home yourself? If so, I’ll just go straight to my club activities.”
“I can make it home myself. So, what is all that stuff?”
“Oni countermeasures! Sardines and holly leaves and soybeans for Setsubun! And just to be safe, I added in some Chinese-style measures. Swords made from plum wood and coin swords!”
“I won’t even ask where you got those. Do they work?” Just like her room at home, the club room was piled high with inscrutable items. He wouldn’t be surprised by anything he might find.
“You bet! When it comes to yokai and ghosts and urban legends, pretty much all the common knowledge stuff works. I mean, if there were no easy way to stop them, they’d overrun us in no time! In other words, they’ve gotta have tons of weaknesses. Take vampires, for example. They’re vulnerable to the sun, garlic, crosses... can’t cross running water, can’t be seen in mirrors... That’s how they get weeded out!”
Aiko’s jaw dropped.
Yuichi’s face turned a shade paler. There was a vampire with very few weaknesses right in front of her. It cast extreme doubts upon Mutsuko’s logic.
“Listen... just hypothetically, what if there was a vampire or something that didn’t have those weaknesses?” I asked.
“Good question. I guess it’s possible! But no worries. If they don’t have weaknesses, they’d be pretty weak themselves, and thus, no threat to us!”
“What kind of logic is that?”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about oni, at least. Come on, they’re famous! Why would we still do the Setsubun Festival here in Japan if this stuff didn’t work?”
Mutsuko left the room, beaming with confidence. Yuichi and Aiko followed.
Yuichi cast a worried glance with Aiko. Her confusion was written all over her face. It must have all seemed incomprehensible to her.
Yuichi put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Noro. I don’t get it, either,” he reassured her.
Mutsuko hummed to herself, clearly confident in her countermeasures as she locked up the room.
“Hey, it’s one thing to leave him here, but what if someone comes? The night teacher has a key, right? Won’t it be bad if they find him?”
“Smart thinking, Yu! I hadn’t even considered that! But don’t worry! I just had a great idea!”
Mutsuko went back into the room and returned with
some printer paper, a felt-tipped pen, and a bit of tape.
“I’ll just put up a sign!” she exclaimed. Mutsuko sat down on the floor and started scratching words on the paper.
Yuichi peeked over her shoulder, curious about what she was writing. In elegant handwriting, it read:
Now serving: chilled ramen!
“That’s the opposite of what we want! Anyone would want to open the door to find out what was going on inside!”
“It was a mistake! That’s just where my mind goes when I think about writing signs...” Mutsuko crumpled up the paper and tried again. Her handwriting was once again unnecessarily elegant. This time, it was probably what she meant to write.
It said: Bug bomb in progress!
“I feel a little bad to be treating him like a cockroach...” Aiko said guiltily. “Is it even okay to leave him locked in there until tomorrow? Won’t he get hungry or something?’
“He should be fine if it’s just for a day,” Yuichi said. Aiko was letting Yuichi lean on her shoulder as they walked towards the school’s front gate.
The sun was setting on the tree-lined path. Mutsuko had run off already, worried about being late.
At this time of day, the only people left at school would be busy with club activities. Everyone else was gone.
“Are you okay, Sakaki?” Aiko asked.
“I think a day’s rest should do it,” he answered. “I feel better enough already that I’ll probably be more or less mobile by tomorrow.”
“I hope so... Hey, can I get my money back?”
“Huh?”
“I gave you those 500 yen coins, remember? Give them back.”
“I told you to give them to me!”
“...You really think it works that way? You think you can just get 500 yen and not have to pay it back?”
“Right, but I threw those coins and don’t know where they went.”
“I know. I’m not talking about the ones you threw. I consider those a necessary sacrifice. But you only threw eight, right? There should be two left.”
“...I can’t believe you noticed that. Look, I wasn’t trying to rip you off or anything! I just forgot.”
Aiko narrowed her eyes at Yuichi skeptically. “Well, don’t worry about it now. You can pay me back later.”
“...For someone with all that money, you’re pretty stingy...”
“Hey, do you have any other surprising skills I should know about?” Aiko looked at Yuichi expectantly. He couldn’t hide his discomfort about the question.
“Eh... Well... I do have a few. As far as stuff like this goes, I guess I can throw wooden chopsticks.”
“You mean the kind you get at convenience stores? What good does throwing them do?”
“I can pierce a tatami mat.”
“...Just what have you been fighting, Sakaki?” Aiko stared at him in disbelief.
“I haven’t been fighting anything! If I’d spent my whole life fighting monsters, I wouldn’t be afraid of a serial killer!”
“Oh, good point. So what was that jump you did?”
“It’s called a five-point landing. Parachutists use it to break their falls.”
“Oh, say... Did you use that when you saved me, too? You were on the roof, right?”
“I slid down the wall that time.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a lot safer.”
Aiko let the conversation trail off, sinking deep into thought about something.
“What’s wrong?” Yuichi asked.
“Um... I was thinking I should thank you, but... none of this would have happened if you hadn’t gotten me mixed up in it in the first place... so I guess I won’t.”
“Good point. I just seem to make trouble for you... well, I guess we’re both making trouble for each other. There’s the thing with your brother, too. Though I still don’t know what to do about that.”
“...Hey. Did you get a little less formal with me at some point?” Aiko asked.
“Huh? Did I?” Yuichi looked taken aback. He only just seemed to realize it. A wall had come down sometime when they were being chased by Serial Killer II. “If you don’t like it, I can stop.”
“...It’s okay,” Aiko said. She didn’t mind. “Speaking of which, you didn’t answer before, but why did you run when you could have just beaten him?”
“Look... if you saw a monster, would your first thought be about how to beat it? You’d run, wouldn’t you?” Yuichi sighed. People weren’t barbarians. When attacked, no modern-day person’s first thought would be about how to strike back. It was always safest to run away if you could.
“True enough, but... what made you decide to fight, then?”
“My sister told me I could win. She might be a little weird, but she’s got perfect judgment about that kind of thing. If she’d told me to run, I would have kept running with the two of you.”
“Hmm... So you trust her, huh?”
“Hey! Don’t treat it like some kind of heartwarming story!”
“You don’t think it is? You seem to get along better than me and my brother, at least.”
“...Well, I guess it’s not bad. But isn’t it weird to have a close relationship with your big sister even after you’re in high school?”
“Is it? Well, I guess I wouldn’t want to be that close to my brother right now, myself...”
Their slow walk eventually brought them in sight of the school gate.
Just before they reached it, Yuichi stopped abruptly. Aiko cast him a questioning glance.
“I completely forgot... Noro, play dumb.”
“Huh?” she asked.
Yuichi’s voice was hushed, his eyes locked on the gate. What was he looking at?
The grounds were lined with hedges a bit taller than eye level. Yuichi couldn’t see what was past the gate, but he could sense a presence there.
He started walking forward again, cautiously.
The first thing he saw were the words “Serial Killer.”
Natsuki Takeuchi stepped into view from the other side of the gate. “Good day, Sakaki, Noro. Hmm? Or is it good evening?” she said.
She was still in her school blazer. She must not have gone home at all. She must have just hung around outside.
“Nice act,” Yuichi muttered.
Natsuki looked at him in confusion. “Excuse me?”
He suddenly realized that her feigned small talk was due to Aiko’s presence beside him. If Natsuki thought Aiko was uninvolved, it was in his best interest to play along.
"Never mind. What are you doing here at this hour, Takeuchi? Forget something?”
“More or less,” she responded. “You two have been very close lately. Are you dating?”
“Umm... er...” Aiko stammered, her face red.
If Yuichi didn’t stop her, she’d reveal everything. “Not exactly,” he broke in. “I twisted my ankle, and Noro happened to find me. She’s been helping me out.”
Yuichi moved away from Aiko and leaned against the gate.
“Noro. Thanks for getting me this far. I’ll be fine now, so you go on ahead.”
“Um, but...”
“I can make it if I walk slowly enough. I couldn’t ask you to walk me all the way home,” he said casually.
Get going! Yuichi thought as he stared at Aiko.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Well... see you later. Take care on the way home, okay?”
With that, Aiko went on her way. Yuichi and Natsuki were left alone together.
It was Natsuki who broke the silence first.
“I didn’t think I’d find you alive.” She seemed surprised. Almost impressed.
“You sure took your time, didn’t you?” Yuichi shot back, quietly testing his body’s mobility.
Aside from his left leg, he could probably move if he forced it... but if Natsuki’s skills were equal to or greater than Serial Killer II’s, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
“You don’t know where I was, yet you claim I was taking my time?”
Natsuki asked pointedly. “...Well, you’re not wrong. To be honest, I figured you were done for, so I didn’t bother hurrying. I spent a little time searching around the school, but there was no sign of police being called, or any kind of trouble, so I came to see what was going on. What happened?”
Yuichi searched through his pocket. He still had two of the 500 yen coins he’d borrowed. They wouldn’t make great weapons.
“I took your advice and just kept running. That was how I ended up twisting my ankle. Then at some point, he disappeared.”
“Huh? That seems unlikely... but I guess I’ll believe you.”
“Huh?” It had been a pathetic excuse, so the fact that she believed it caused Yuichi’s facade to slip for a second.
“That’s the only way you could have survived,” Natsuki shrugged. “He’s the capricious type, anyway, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did get bored.”
Her words had a certain logic to them. It was probably hard enough to believe that Yuichi had survived an attack, much less fought back and beaten the attacker. He decided to stick with that story.
“Tell him not to come after me again, then,” Yuichi said. “You don’t have any reason to go out of your way to kill me, right?”
“I guess not,” Natsuki said. “I thought things would be easier for me with you out of the way, but it seems like asking him for help just made things worse. I’ll tell him to knock it off, though I don’t know if he’ll listen to me. So I’ll give you a warning. Watch your step on the way home. The hunt may still be on. If you let your guard down, I can’t promise you won’t end up with a knife in your back.” With that, Natsuki left.
After confirming that Natsuki was gone, Yuichi slid to the ground, his back still against the gate.
He let his breath out and relaxed, slowly.
I’ll rest for a few minutes, then head home...
But before he could finish that thought, someone approached him with a desperate cry.
“Sakaki!” Yuichi lifted his face again. Aiko was standing in front of him, her face pale.
“It’s out!” she exclaimed.
The World's Strongest Little Brother Page 9