My Little Sister Can Read Kanji: Volume 3

by Takashi Kajii

  She’s one to talk, after having her own debut as a translator fall into her lap.

  “Well, I have my suspicions, but... basically, for now, I’m hoping for the best for you. Good luck,” finished Kuroha, not really making me feel any better.

  Maybe she’s unhappy that my debut as an author is because of Amaneko-chan?

  I remembered the discussion I had had with Kuroha that evening...

  ......——

  To the outside observer, I bet that they’d see Kuroha and me as siblings that were very close. We often would spend time together in one of our rooms during the evening.

  This evening the two of us were in Kuroha’s room. Her room was relatively plain for a girl’s room, without many decorations. It was nice and tidy and there wasn’t any trash or dust left around. Even the window was washed clean.

  It was already midnight. I was at my place by her low table, reading a book, while Kuroha was sitting at her desk, tapping away at her computer’s keyboard.

  “Kuroha, you seem to be making good progress,” I commented.

  “Yeah...” she replied off-handedly, trying not to break her concentration from the computer screen.

  Kuroha was in the middle of translating, you see. She was working toward her upcoming debut as a translator. However, there was one thing that struck me as a little odd...

  What she was working on right now wasn’t classic literature.

  She was translating current-day literature to modern Japanese, by taking all the katakana and hiragana in those books and converting them to kanji here and there.

  “Who’s gonna actually read that? Must be an extremely niche audience, no?” I asked.

  “It’s for people in the Special Cultural District, it seems,” replied Kuroha. “But if it gets a good response, they told me they’ll publish it nationwide.”

  It seems like the patron which was involved with Kuroha’s debut was a wealthy person from the Special Cultural District. She had told me he was the one who had chosen what book she had to translate, and he had complete control over the process.

  He must have some purpose if he’s going to publish a book with kanji in it in this era.

  I had jokingly suggested, “Will you translate my books into modern Japanese one day?” but she had replied to me quite seriously, “Sure thing, that’d be nice.”

  As I looked at Kuroha’s slender back as she pounded away at her translation, I really felt glad for her. In the past, “My Little Sister Who Can Read Kanji” had been just a non-conforming malcontent. She’d had amazing talent, but that talent had ended up causing problems with the people around her, like her being bullied for reading old books — those sorts of things — which had caused her to become really insular.

  But she was different now. Her genius had been recognized by others, and she was going to spread her wings out in the world.

  I can’t lose to her!

  If I was to debut as a novelist, I needed to improve my writing skills.

  “Kuroha, I’m going back to my room to work on my novel,” I said.

  “’kay. Do you best,” replied Kuroha without even turning around from her desk.

  As I was about to head out to the hallway, my cellphone buzzed. I’d gotten a message.

  Is it from Amaneko-chan?

  QUESTIONS: WILL ANSWER IN PERSON

  WILL YOU DRESS UP FOR ME NEXT TIME☆

  Questions, huh?

  I had sent Amaneko-chan questions about my birth parents before I had gone to the professor’s. She was saying she’d answer them the next time we met.

  “When we meet, huh?” I muttered, and from behind me there was a sudden reaction.

  “Wait a sec. Who was that message from just now? Was it... her?” pounced Kuroha, her crisp voice bouncing off my back.

  “You’re talking about Amaneko-chan, right? Yeah, it was from her,” I answered.

  “What did she say?” pried Kuroha.

  I explained what she had sent me, and Kuroha responded immediately.

  “No way!”

  “No way,” what? I don’t get what you mean.

  “Don’t meet with her. No way,” she said firmly.

  “But she said she’d answer the questions the next time we meet, so if I want to get answers, I have to, right?”

  “Just call her on the phone,” she said.

  “She said she wanted to see my clothes, so it has to be in person.”

  “Clothes? Your clothes?! I-I don’t understand what that’s supposed to mean... I-If you want someone to compliment your clothes, I’m happy to...”

  “No, that’s not it,” I said. “Okay, let’s meet her together. It’ll be a gimai-jitsumai set! If I remember right, that famous restaurant with the big M sign has a value set like that...”

  “What?”

  “The soft bun above the hamburger was the gimai, and the soft bun below the hamburger was the jitsumai, and the hard piece of meat in between the two soft buns was the older brother,” I explained.

  “Why do you have to say it like something so lewd...? And wait, that’s not a value set, that’s just a hamburger...”

  “Close enough,” I said. “Anyway are you coming with me to meet her or not?”

  “No way. I mean, she totally hates my guts.”

  “All right then, I guess I’ll have to go by myself...” I began, but Kuroha immediately told me I couldn’t again. We clearly weren’t getting anywhere with this.

  “Anyway, I have to respond to her message,” I said at last.

  “No!” Kuroha yelled like a little kid, grabbing my hand and pulling me forcefully in front of her TV.

  “W-What’s with you?” I complained.

  “We’re going to watch TV until the sun rises, so concentrate on the TV!” she declared.

  “What about your translation?” I asked.

  “I need to clear my head,” snapped Kuroha, turning off the lights and turning on the TV. We usually turned off the lights when watching TV together. I could see Kuroha’s face next to me, illuminated by the light from the TV in the darkness.

  “‘Ish mine,’ my butt. I ain’t letting you have him,” pouted Kuroha to herself like a little kid. She wasn’t budging from in front of that TV.

  Fine, I guess I’ll play along.

  There was anime showing on the TV. It seemed to be a little sister show, where the older brother that was in high school and his little sister—

  —were taking a bath together.

  “Oooh, Onii-chan, no... No. Mom and Dad will hear us...”

  It was a super simple love story.

  The two of us watched it in silence for a little while.

  “So, Kuroha...” I began.

  “Wh-What is it?”

  “What are you thinking about right now?”

  She leaned over a bit, but didn’t answer my question.

  “I bet you’re thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “What...? Whaaaaaattttt?!”

  Why are you looking so shocked? And you’re blushing so much that I can even see it in the dim light from the TV!

  “Well, wh-what are you thinking about, Onii-chan?” she stammered.

  It’s a scene about a brother and his little sister getting along in the bath, right? Well then, obviously...

  “We used to take baths together a lot when we were little, remember?” I asked.

  “Y-Yeah...”

  “And the thing I remember the most was definitely playing write-on-the-body, you know?”

  “So you were reminded of how we used to take baths a long time ago?” asked Kuroha, seeming like it wasn’t what she was expecting.

  Huh? Then what in the world were you imagining?

  “Did you know that you’re supposed to play write-on-the-body by writing directly on the skin, and not through any clothes? And if possible when both people are completely naked.”

  “H-Hentai. Completely naked? Yeah right,” said Kuroha dismissively.

  I su
ggested that maybe I should ask Miru, or Yuzu-san, or Amaneko-chan, but after I said each name Kuroha would shout “No!”, without exception.

  “I’ve explained this before to you, but you realize that write-on-the-body is the origin of my prose itself, right?” I asked.

  “Y-You want to do it that badly?” she stammered.

  “Yeah. It’s been a while, and I’m getting the urge.”

  “I guess you’ll end up doing it with some other girl eventually otherwise...” Kuroha seemed a little troubled, started playing with the end of her hair, and then said quietly to me, “O-Onii-chan, if you i-insist, then I guess I...”

  “Oh, look at that, Kuroha!” I cried. “A sub-heroine has appeared to get in the way of the brother and sister pair!”

  She said nothing.

  We ended up watching TV together until nearly dawn. The two of us really got along. Anybody could have seen it, and I certainly felt like we got along really well.

  —Maybe that’s why I wasn’t able to realize how Kuroha really felt that easily.

  ......——

  In the end, class was over before Kazoe-sensei ever reappeared. It was now summer vacation, and I headed over to Class 1-△.

  I was going to invite Kuroha to eat lunch together. We did that occasionally. But I thought that it might be a good thing if we stopped doing that now, since Kuroha had made friends with classmates of hers.

  Kuroha had been a loner ever since she’d started school.

  “Kuroha, don’t just read books all the time. Why don’t you hang out with your friends?” I had once asked.

  “...Don’t force your value system on me,” she had replied in disgust.

  “Value Sis-dom? Some kind of cheap role-play?”

  Kuroha had replied, “That’s not even funny. But I guess if I were able to be that forward with people, then maybe even I...” and she looked me straight in the face, letting out a deep sigh.

  “Even I could make friends” was what she had probably wanted to say. So when Kuroha had actually became friends with some classmates, it was a thing to celebrate, I thought.

  When it had been decided that she would debut as a translator, the people around her had changed the way they saw her. She had changed from “that girl who sits in the corner of the classroom reading ancient books” to “that amazing high school girl who is a professional classical literature translator.”

  Kuroha herself hadn’t changed how she acted at all. And the rest of the class surely knew that she could read kanji and preferred reading modern literature. What had changed was how the people around her treated her. That was how, yes, even Kuroha had easily made friends.

  As I was pondering all that, I arrived at Class 1-△. And when I went to peek inside from the hall...

  ——!

  Th-This is...

  I was at a loss for words. Kuroha was chatting with classmates of hers. Just seeing that before my eyes was a considerable shock to my system. The light shining in through the window made her glow like the sun.

  Kuroha was chatting with an out-of-it-looking girl with glasses and an energetic girl with short hair. She had a page from a book of modern literature open and was pointing at it, explaining to them about one of her favorite stories.

  “It looks like Kuroha is getting along with the other girls in her class! This calls for a celebration! Everyone, time to put on your celebratory red panties!” I yelled in jubilation, not able to control myself.

  Immediately, I was met with the stares of everyone in the classroom.

  There were about as many shocked faces as there were faces that were all, “Oh, this guy again.” I guess I’d come to Kuroha’s class enough that they’d started to remember me.

  It all happened in an instant. The second I thought to myself, “Why is there a sudden gust of wind?” I realized that it was my little sister. I bent my body around into a comma, barely avoiding her dictionary attack that had come with no warning whatsoever.

  “Why do you always yell all of a sudden like that?!” she complained. “Aren’t I always telling you not to just yell for no good reason!”

  “My bad...” I said. “I just got a little excited. And I had a reason.”

  “No excuses! Sheesh,” said Kuroha, dragging me out of the classroom. “Listen carefully. Your mission is: Do nothing. Say nothing. Become like the air itself. Can you handle it?”

  “Th-That sounds kinda hard...”

  She wants me to become an Air Onii-chan? I remember how Odaira-sensei got into a heated argument on his radio show about his number three most-wanted “Things I want to become” being an invisible man, but...

  “Just stay right here, okay? I’m going to buy lunch,” she commanded.

  “Wait, why don’t you eat together with those classmates of yours instead of me?” I asked.

  Kuroha seemed a little torn for a second, but replied, “I’m not sure I can change my eating habits just like that, so I’ll eat together with you, Onii-chan.”

  “Okay, understood.”

  “Now wait here,” she said. “I’m going to go buy lunch.”

  We didn’t have any lunch boxes from Yuzu-san like we usually did because she had overslept, and I had already bought mine.

  As I watched Kuroha disappear down the hallway, I waited right in front of Class 1-△. We had the closing ceremony after lunch, and after that, it was the start of summer vacation.

  “...-san...”

  I could hear voices coming from inside the classroom. By the sound of it, two girls were talking with each other.

  “...and Imose-san...”

  Hmm? Imose-san... Are they talking about Kuroha? My curiosity was piqued, and I listened in.

  “Imose-san sure is amazing, making her debut as a translator!” one cried.

  “She’s cool...”

  The first voice was clear and energetic, and the second was kind of out-of-it. I figured it was the two girls who had been talking with Kuroha before. The energetic one had the short hair, and the out-of-it one wore glasses. According to what they were saying, it was the one with glasses who Kuroha had hung out with the other day. Just when I was about to jump in and introduce myself, I remembered what Kuroha had told me, and I held myself back.

  “I... really look up to Imose-san...” said the out-of-it girl, who clearly thought highly of Kuroha.

  Kuroha was pretty, and smart. She was my little sister, and I was proud of her. As I’d thought, debuting as a translator had radically changed how other people thought about her. I nodded in understanding.

  “On the other hand, that brother of hers that just showed up... I mean, seriously!” said the energetic girl, like she was shocked. “Could he get any more awkward, you know? Have you heard anything from Imose-san about him?”

  “...He wants to become a novelist, I think...” replied the out-of-it one.

  “Ahh... He’s one of those typical useless brother types, then. He’s gonna become an author! Yeah, right! More like unemployed. People who want to become authors are either future professors or future NEETs. And that guy is clearly the latter!”

  No way, dude! In fact, my debut is already decided! Actually, it was true that I had never even held a part-time job.

  “What does Imose-san think about her brother trying to be a novelist, do you think?” asked the energetic girl.

  Clearly she’s doing everything she can to cheer me on, duh! I confidently crossed my arms, but then I heard what they said next.

  “...She said that... she is really troubled by him...” said the out-of-it one.

  Huh?

  “No kidding, right?” the energetic girl agreed. “Imose-san is so good looking and smart... and that guy is just, ugh! I wonder if she’s told him how much he bothers her properly?”

  “...I’d rather not say mean things about him...” said the out-of-it one, disagreeing with the energetic one for the first time.

  They changed subjects immediately and started talking about other topics. They talked a
bout how the boy they both liked was into 2D and how it made them sad (it was, surprise, Sugawara-kun), and how if they couldn’t get married maybe they’d become surrogate mothers for 2.5D kids and get the guarantee, and how humans being a substitute for a 2D character was so irritating but at the same time kind of a sweet deal... things like that.

  But none of what they were saying was getting into my head. Rather, the words one of them had said before were continuing to repeat like the refrain of a song...

  “...She said that... she is really troubled by him...”

  Kuroha thinks I’m a bother?

  No, Kuroha loves me like family, I’m sure of it. There’s no way she thinks I’m bothering her!

  ...

  Am I so sure of that?

  Can I say that, with certainty?

  I was trying to figure out whether I’d ever caused trouble for Kuroha, so I recalled a number of things that had happened in the past.

  There was a time when I had suddenly barged in to the bathroom while Kuroha was in the process of taking off her clothes, trying to recreate the “Lucky Pervert”-style scene you would see so often in orthodox style literature.

  There was a time when I had once asked Kuroha to dress up in a school swimsuit as a reference for my novels, but she had refused, so I had borrowed it from her and tried it on myself while completely naked underneath.

  There was a time I had tried to eat Kuroha’s panties, too.

  And, oh yeah... there was that time...

  It had been when we were in elementary school. When I’d told Kuroha I wanted to marry a gimai, she responded with a, “Yeah...”

  She’d blushed and nodded for some reason, but when I responded with, “I meant Homyura, you know,” she’d gotten angry and wouldn’t speak with me for a day.

  ...

  Well, aside from that last one... Maybe I actually have caused her a lot of trouble? But none of that would be enough to make you hate someone, I’m pretty sure of that.

  But...

  Kuroha was the type that’s really careful about what she says to other people, you see. She might not have been able to tell me what she wanted to most of the time.

  A good example would be what had happened today at lunch. She had finally made some friends with her classmates, so it would be such a shame not to eat lunch with them. I was sure that she had agreed to eat lunch with me because she didn’t want to disappoint me.