“You know, the TV shopping channel?”
“There. Perfect,” nodded Odaira-sensei. “It has the name of the country in its name, so clearly it must be a channel that sells reputable goods. I would not be surprised if it sold booby mousepads.”
“Where can we watch this channel?” I asked.
“Maybe in one of those electronics stores? Like that one, over there,” replied the old lady, pointing to a far off building. When I looked at the building, I saw a sign that said “石丸電気 (Ishimarudenki), and although I couldn’t read the kanji, I was sure it had to be an electronics store.
“Thank you very much!” We all thanked the old woman, and headed to the electronics store.
I was so fed up, I wanted to yell, “Goddamn it!”
We had left the electronics store and were now wandering the streets of AKIHABARA. There were TVs in the electronics store. Plenty of them. Every one seemed like an antique, but they all worked properly. And yet, the Japan Shopping Network never came on, even though we waited patiently. For two and a half hours!
“Did she trick us?” Odaira-sensei stamped his feet in frustration.
“She didn’t trick us, she just didn’t really know what we were asking,” said a tired-sounding Kuroha. “We should ask someone else,” she suggested, and everyone had no choice but to agree.
We asked any number of people walking by. But not one of them would tell us where they sold booby mousepads.
When one person responded, “What the hell are you talking about?” and I replied, “A piece of fine art!” forcefully, a women called out to me from beside us.
“If you’re looking for art, I can show you a place,” she said.
She got our hopes up, but all she did was try to sell us some paintings. And of course, they didn’t show anyone’s panties or scenes of pretty girls losing their clothing... just paintings of scenery.
Is this really that AKIHABARA?!
“I’m sorry, Gin-san,” said Yuzu-san.
You don’t need to apologize, Yuzu-san! I was just annoyed at how un-AKIHABARA-esque the paintings were.
After that, we continued to wander around AKIHABARA for a little while. Where in the world can we buy a booby mousepad? We didn’t have any leads. We were starting to get pretty tired.
“Nii...” Miru had been really good so far, but she looked like she was reaching her limit. “I’m bored.”
“Miru, be a good girl, okay?” Kuroha cautioned.
“But this is so boring.”
Hey! If you say that, Yuzu-san is gonna feel responsible!
I was a little worried, so I looked at Yuzu-san. She smiled a little, bent over, and met eyes with Miru. “You’re right. We’re tired, and this is boring. Let’s do something fun!”
Ah, she’s more angel than human! Thank you so much...
“Are you sure?” asked Kuroha, clearly not wanting to impose.
“Yes. After all, we can watch Japan Shopping Network on my TV at home.”
That made sense to me. Then, what should we do now?
“Nii, I want one of those,” Miru said.
“One of what?”
“A hugging pillow cover.” Unlike booby mousepads, we knew what hugging pillow covers were. We had even seen some in the museum.
But...
“We can’t buy anything. We don’t have any money,” said Kuroha. We were penniless in this era, and every yen we used came from Yuzu-san. We couldn’t put her in even more debt just for our sakes.
But Yuzu-san quickly got on board with the idea. “Hugging pillows can’t be more than twenty thousand yen, right? Let’s buy one!”
Kuroha and I were against it, but it seems like it wasn’t much of a burden to Yuzu-san, so we decided to let her buy us one.
We’re in your debt.
“It’s nice that you said you would buy one, but we don’t know where they are sold, right?” said Kuroha with a troubled look on her face.
“Gotta ask someone, then,” I replied. That was what the situation called for. I hoped whoever I asked would be nice, but it was hard to tell if they would just by looking at people.
“Nii, there’s a robot guide over there,” said Miru, pointing across the way.
When I looked, I saw a girl that looked very artificial standing on the corner of the intersection. It looked like she had been made so that people could easily recognize her as a robot.
Okay, let’s ask that robot!
As we approached the robot guide, something seemed odd. She wasn’t moving at all, and a crowd of people were around her taking pictures. It felt more like some kind of exhibition or attraction. The girl had on a pink outfit, and was a little larger than Miru. Next to the girl was a sign that read “Magical Girl Super Sadie Motion Picture Commemorative Full Size Figure,” but all I could read was the “Sadie” written in hiragana.
Wait... “Sadie”?
“It doesn’t seem to be a robot guide. Let’s go, Onii-chan.”
“Wait, Kuroha. A statue of Sadie? Could this be the one that’s worth 50 billion yen?!” I was extremely excited, but Kuroha kept walking right past with a “First things first!”
Awww......
I caught up behind everyone reluctantly. When I did, I saw a young woman dressed as a maid handing out flyers.
Maybe I should ask her? She probably wouldn’t know, though...
I asked her about hugging pillow covers. And she responded.
“You can buy those at Toranoana, or Mandarake, or Melon Books!” she told us clearly and confidently. She said she often bought doujinshi from those stores. She even told us exactly where they were.
You know what they say, when in trouble, ask a maid! I made a mental note to recommend that Yuzu-san hire a maid.
We arrived at one of the stores she recommended, and asked where the hugging pillow covers were sold. Illustrations of girls were covering the walls, and it seemed like we had to choose which one we wanted a cover for.
Well, this isn’t easy. All these girls are cute. It’s hard to choose.
“Miru, which one do you want?” I asked.
“The marshmallow one!”
“There isn’t one of a marshmallow,” said Kuroha, with a strained smile.
“Kuroha-kun, what Miru-chan is saying is that she wants a girl with her panties just slipping off, her face ever so-slighted flushed, and her skin as white as marshmallows. You have to almost hear the sound of the panties slipping off...” explained Odaira-sensei.
“Please die,” requested Kuroha.
“Miru, it doesn’t look like they have one with pictures of marshmallows on it, so we have to choose a different one,” I explained, and Miru started thinking about it.
“I want one that’s cute like an oni,” she said.
Um, what’s that supposed to mean? To me, they all looked cute.
“Yuzu-san, which of these would you call cute?” asked Kuroha.
“Um... My brother really loved this kind of stuff, but I don’t really know very much. Why don’t we decide by all pointing at one?”
“And choose whichever gets the most votes? Sounds like a plan,” replied Kuroha.
Everyone else agreed, and when I gave the signal, we all pointed at one of the illustrations. I choose one where the girl had blonde hair and a black hair accessory.
“Ah!”
“Ah...”
Yuzu-san and I had both pointed to the same girl, and our hands had bumped into each other a little bit.
“S-Sorry...” I apologized and pulled back my hand.
Yuzu-san had a bashful smile, and her face was flushed.
Ba-dump! My heart pounded.
“Um... So you also want her, Gin-san? Why did you choose her?”
“Because she wore a black accessory with her blonde hair. Honestly speaking, that’s really my type.” That was the style Homyura had, after all.
“Oh, my...”
“Why did you choose her, Yuzu-san?”
“I just stuck out my hand randomly.”
<
br /> Coincidence? I wondered. No, more like a miracle!
Yuzu-san and I smiled.
“...Are we done here, then?” a voice cut in from the side, coldly. Looking over, I saw Kuroha pouting with her arms crossed. She looked like a statue of Ashura, with an ever-so-slightly cross look on her face.
“Uh, okay... Miru, are you okay with this one?” I asked.
“Any of them is fine.”
Wait, didn’t you say you wanted one that was cute like an oni?
And so we bought it. The hugging pillow cover had an illustration with a picture of a girl in a school uniform on the front, and a swimsuit on the back. The picture on the back was quite sexy, but this was a piece of fine art, after all, so it wasn’t anything uncouth, of course.
We handed over the cover to Miru, and she looked at it intently and said, “I’m gonna put it on.”
Roger that.
Her small little body fit snuggly into the extra large pillow cover. A walking hugging pillow cover had now appeared in the store. It looked a lot like a worm walking upright.
“When we get back to the future, will you wear one of my little sister covers for me, Miru-chan? A little sister-covered little sister! Like the doors opening to Nirvana... Ah... It’s so...” Odaira-sensei looked enraptured.
“I’m glad you like it, Miru,” I said.
“Yeah!” said the moving pillow cover brightly.
It felt nice to do good things for people. There was nothing more fulfilling than a family that cared for each other.
“Onii-chan...” interjected Kuroha while I was basking in the warm feelings. She moved next to me with her eyebrows furled.
“The other customers are staring at us. Did we do something really strange, maybe?”
I am finally in my happy place, and she goes and says something like that?!
“Hey now! Don’t be jealous. You can have your turn in the cover afterward,” I said.
“Jealous?! Are you dense or something? No, thank you!” sputtered Kuroha, averting her gaze from me.
Her mood sours just like that! What a little hothead.
Kuroha let out a surprised, “Oh!” She was looking at something carefully. “Onii-chan, look at that,” she said, pointing at a shelf.
A white tag there said “booby mousepads.” It was written in all katakana and hiragana, so I was able to read it.
Yuzu-san noticed the tag, as well. We exchanged glances...
Mission... accomplished?
In the end, we weren’t able to buy the item. That store didn’t carry the Magical Girl Super Sadie booby mousepad. It was a limited edition product, so they had sold out of it awhile back. But since we were there, we bought a booby mousepad of a different character instead. It was a beautiful girl called “関羽”... I gathered the name was pronounced “Kan’u.”
Kuroha taught me that the 羽 kanji meant “feather.” It gave me an image of giant fluttering white wings... How incredibly beautiful! If I have a daughter, I’d love to name her that.
We were all starting to get sleepy, so we headed home.
“Sorry we couldn’t find it,” I consoled Yuzu-san as we walked back to AKIHABARA Station.
“We did what we could. I guess we should just go home now and buy it from the Japan Shopping Network.” Even though she was clearly exhausted, Yuzu-san still said it with a smile.
I agreed that it was the right decision. The Japan Shopping Network had “Japan” in its name, so it was basically a given that it would sell fine art products like booby mousepads.
We rumbled back from AKIHABARA to OKUTAMA on the trains. They shook a lot more in this era, and it was even more noticeable when we were so tired. At first we continued to talk, but soon words came less and less, and we all fell silent.
We sat, sinking deep on the long seat, spacing out. Yuzu-san, Kuroha, and Miru were on the seat across from me, leaning on each other, asleep.
“Gin-kun.” We were about to reach OKUTAMA when Odaira-sensei sitting next to me spoke. “What did you think about today?”
“What do you mean?”
“About the moe.”
“The moe?” I questioned.
Odaira-sensei’s expression sunk. “Honestly, I was extremely disappointed. The moe in this era is much less than what I had anticipated. I thought it would have spread far more than it has,” he continued.
I remembered the things we saw that day, like AKIHABARA and the rest of TOKYO that we had seen from the train window. Just like Odaira-sensei said, there wasn’t much moe anywhere. Aside from AKIHABARA, we had hardly seen anything moe at all.
“There was only a little hint of it in AKIHABARA. But that’s not nearly enough,” he continued.
“This is back when the Prime Minister was still a real person, after all,” I answered.
I had seen it on the news we’d watched in the electronics store. They had showed the Prime Minister, and he was most definitely just a flesh and blood old man. In our time period, it would have been an unbelievable sight.
In the 23rd century, the role of Prime Minister was handled by a 2D character of an adorable girl. During the second half of the 22nd century, they changed the Prime Minister from a person to a 2D character in order to counteract the apathy the citizens showed toward government. It was extremely effective, and the people had started caring a whole lot more.
There were some movements out there that were against having the Prime Minister be a 2D character, but personally I thought she was adorable, and I loved her a lot.
“I suppose moe has not yet become such an integrated part of the citizenry,” I added.
“Don’t worry. Anytime now, it will explode and become the center of culture.
Ah, but Nyamo-chan really is adorable...”
I said, wistfully. Nyamo-chan was the 7th 2D Prime Minister. She was officially a second-year in middle school, and “The People’s Little Sister.”
“Personally, I’d prefer someone a little younger,” said Odaira-sensei.
“Maybe next election, we’ll finally elect an elementary schooler?” I wondered aloud.
“I kind of wish they’d skip right to a ten-year-old. Then she can scold us citizens. The Japanese people need to be whipped into shape, I say!”
“They need to be lectured by a ten-year-old?”
Odaira-sensei let out a “Ah!” and his face started going red almost instantaneously. “Ah... Being whipped by a ten-year-old... Oh, this is a new one... I think I’ve awakened something in me...!”
Awakened? From the conversation we were having, I gathered he must have been talking about something political. His face was now bright red, and he was shaking. To the outside observer, it looked like a blonde, twin-tailed elementary schooler was super happy about something.
With Odaira-sensei off in his own little world, I thought about Nyamo-chan’s innocent smile. Every day, that smile gave me energy. But it had been more than a week since I had seen her. It had been only a few days, but I already found the thought nostalgic.
We still hadn’t found any way to return to the future. I wondered what would become of us. Would we end up living in this time period for the rest of our lives?
I thought if we at least could figure out what caused us to travel through time, we could do something about it, but it was so incredible a phenomenon that there was nothing we could gather at all. There wasn’t anything to even investigate. And it was not like we could rely on Yuzu-san’s kindness forever.
I looked over at Yuzu-san, who was snoozing softly on the seat across from me. Looking at her sleeping there so defenselessly, I felt a strange attraction, and I started to blush thinking about it.
The train arrived shortly after in OKUTAMA. We were all tired from our adventure in AKIHABARA and went to sleep immediately. I had hoped to sleep like a log until morning, but I woke up in the middle of the night.
Looking at the clock, it said it was 2 in the morning. I bet everyone else is asleep.
I left my room to go to
the bathroom. I was careful to walk silently along the hallway, and to step quietly down the stairs, since the bathroom was on the first floor.
After finishing my business, I started to head back up to the second floor, but I noticed that the light was on in the first floor living room.
I was curious and had a look. I saw a girl in pajamas sitting on the couch.
It was Yuzu-san.
Her back was facing me, but I could tell that it was shaking slightly. I could hear a sniffling from her now and again.
Could she be crying? I trembled. I felt like I had seen something that I shouldn’t have. Perhaps I should leave...
I tried to go back without making a noise, but when I touched the door, it made a squeaking sound.
“...Is somebody there?” A voice came out from the figure in the center of the room. Yuzu-san had noticed me.
“It’s me.”
“Gin-san?” She looked at me. Her eyes were red, and there were tears on her cheeks. It was impudent of me, but I thought that her teary eyes and face flushed from crying were a little bit charming.
“The light was on, so I... Sorry.”
Yuzu-san quickly tried wiping off her tears. “I’m embarrassed,” she said, smiling even as her eyes showed her sadness.
There was an awkward silence between us.
What could have happened to have her crying by herself in the middle of the night? Honestly, I was curious.
“Um, Yuzu-san...”
“Yes...?”
“If you’re okay with it, would you like to tell me about it?” Maybe this was prying. But I couldn’t just leave her to cry on her own.
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” said Yuzu-san. She was still on the verge of crying, but she nodded.
I sat across diagonally from Yuzu-san on the couch. On the table, I saw a silver-colored box. The lid had “海苔 (nori)” printed on it, but I couldn’t understand the letters. Below, “Box” was written in handwriting.
It must be a treasure box.
Considering how rich her family was, this had to be a very high tech security box.
“I apologized to my brother, since we weren’t able to buy the thing he wanted,” she said, opening the box. She took out a picture from inside, and laid it in front of me. It was a picture of a blonde girl and a boy with black hair. I assumed it was Yuzu-san and her brother.
My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 1 Page 8