Monogatari Series - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.02

002

“Rise and shine, big brother!”

“Come on, you can’t sleep all day!”

That morning I developed a sudden philosophical interest on the issue of alarm clocks. To be frank, I dislike the term alarm clock almost as much as the existence of the things themselves. I’ve never liked them. At all. In fact, they disgust me. I’ve never liked them for a single moment. I feel a singular, momentous disdain for alarm clocks.

But as to why I dislike them so much, the answer is guaranteed to come out sounding like some kind of Zen exercise. Do I hate them for being alarm clocks, are they alarm clocks because I hate them, or are they hate clocks because I alarm them? While the unvarnished truth is that I’ve wished for every single alarm clock in the world to go to hell, I don’t believe that everything that goes to hell must be an alarm clock. That thought never even crossed my mind. If that proposition were true, wouldn’t it mean that I myself am an alarm clock, since I’m almost certainly headed for hell?

You, yourself, being an alarm clock─who’d ever want to grapple with that fear?

There is one proposition that I have considered, however, and I’d love to run it by you. I need to run it by you. It inevitably arises when I consider the question of why I, or in fact, probably everyone in the world, or at least most people, the vast majority of the majority anyway, loathe and abhor alarm clocks as if they’ve wronged our loved ones. Perhaps it’s not a proposition but the proper position─I honestly feel sheepish about describing my own realization as if it’s some kind of grand discovery, but anyway, maybe people find alarm clocks so difficult to like because the words clock and alarm together sound too much like lukewarm.

Something that’s not hot enough.

Something you took the trouble to heat up that went and cooled down.

All for naught, a wasted effort.

That act, which even smacks of a blasphemous revolt against the law of entropy, shares something with the irritation of being jolted from sleep, and this is why I, we, why all the world holds such a deep hatred for alarm clocks─I call it the Nuance Proposition. And it doesn’t end there; I propose that similar words end up with similar implications and drag similar emotional responses along behind them. I can give you any number of examples. Take Bruce Lee and brûlée. I think we can all agree that they share the quality of being awesome.

But even putting aside the veracity of the Nuance Proposition, it must be noted that there are some minor issues with its application to our hatred of alarm clocks. First of all, as I’ve discussed at length, it’s an affliction shared by humanity the world over, whereas the likeness between the clock-alarm combo and lukewarm is specific to one language, unfortunately rendering the proposition’s use as the sole expositor of the phenomenon somewhat vexed. I haven’t thoroughly examined the literature on the subject, but nonetheless suspect that the alarm clock predates modern English. It calls for a trial translation of both phrases into, say, ancient Greek, but a second piece of counter-evidence frees us from that need.

This second point is a so-called irrefutable rebuttal, and thus not really the second but the ultimate piece of counter-evidence: even if we limit the field of inquiry to languages where the two phrases are indeed similar, the average person probably learns the term alarm clock prior to lukewarm.

That’s some counter-evidence.

You might say irrefutable.

Upon reflection, I myself feel unclear to this day about the precise meaning of lukewarm. Luke, warm. From the word itself I can just about grasp that something has been at least partially warmed, but any request for a concise definition would be greeted with grave silence on my part. I would remain as silent as the grave. In fact, if we refuse to let go of the Nuance Proposition, perhaps what we’re really talking about here is alarm clock having a negative influence on lukewarm rather than the other way around.

Still, I hate alarm clocks.

A wise man once said there’s no accounting for taste, some people have a taste for accounting─which is all well and good, but it’s equally true that no one wants to feel like the kind of nobody whose preferences are based on nothing. Everybody wants to be a somebody. Surely I am no snob to want to ascribe a reason to them, for the sake of my own worth, even if it requires straining interpretation.

And I trust we can also agree that it is because I’m not a snob that I’m about to lead the discussion into even more profound territory. “I am not unthinking, therefore I am unthinkable”─well put, or actually it’s me putting it like some maxim, I must be the first person in human history to put down those cryptic (or crappy) words. All thinkers must of course recognize the debt they owe to their predecessors, but you don’t get to blame them for your stupidity.

Anyway, back to alarm clocks.

Alarm clocks, for waking up.

I’m not sure how this could have happened, but I somehow forgot to explain the second law of the Nuance Proposition: the appearance clause, which goes beyond the way it sounds. Words with similar appearances provide similar sensations, and what’s similar is assumed to be the same. If the first hypothesis is auditory, then this second is visual.

Take for example E and F. They don’t sound a thing alike, but because their shape is ninety-percent similar, the nuance we derive must be similarly similar. I and L would of course provide an equally valid demonstration of this principle.

And from this we can derive the similarity between a lack of self-awareness and a clock of self-awakeness─it’d be no surprise if some people deemed them equivalent, synonymous. Leaving aside the initial c, a little bit of pressure turns an a into an o, and surely no one will dispute that with the addition of a small line or two, r becomes k.

In which case a lack of self-awareness and a clock of self-awakeness are the same thing.

Even if they’re not identical, they’re nearly identical. No evidence has yet been offered to refute this.

And the word, or rather phrase, or maybe I should call it a line… Anyway, whatever you call it, however you put it, “a lack of self-awareness” does not carry a positive implication.

They say it’s not about what was said but who said it, and they’ve said it so many times that I’m sick of hearing it, but no matter who utters the phrase “a lack of self-awareness”─no matter who told you that─it’s uniformly and fundamentally a rebuke, or dare I say an insult.

You’re not very self-aware, huh?

Not too self-aware, are ya, buddy.

No one would take such a remark as a compliment─even if it were said affectionately by one’s teacher or master, even knowing it was said with one’s best interests at heart, there’s not a person on earth whose feelings wouldn’t be at least a bit hurt.

The notion that this antipathy might be connected to our negative emotions toward alarm clocks is both logically and intellectually compelling, and as far as I’m concerned it leaves no room for argument. Alarm clocks are themselves manifestations of a lack of self-awareness, so to speak.

If I am hesitant to present this theory in academic circles, it is by no means because I have reservations about accepting the concomitant honor and prestige, but rather for the two reasons outlined above. In other words, the congruence between a lack of self-awareness and a clock of self-awakeness is once again a phenomenon specific to one language, and while I cannot make such an extreme pronouncement as I did regarding lukewarm, people learning about their own lack of self-awareness before learning about alarm clocks strikes me as a contradiction.

Leaving aside our vocabularies, or our order of linguistic acquisition, it makes some kind of intuitive sense that a person wouldn’t be scolded for a lack of self-awareness before “waking up” from some kind of standby state. It seems slightly foolish to rely on gut feelings in the course of our reasoning, and yet intuition can prove to be a surprisingly reliable tool.

When people say, “I have a bad feeling about this,” for instance, they’re often correct. Because, alas, we can say with certainty that there’s no such thing as a life, or even a day, when not a single bad thing happens. Not a single such day in our entire lives. And that’s why it’s much more auspicious to blatantly disregard this fact and declare first thing in the morning, in the way of autosuggestion, “Seems like something good will happen again today!” Just tell yourself, “I’ve got a good feeling about this,” whether or not you do. Because there’s also no such thing as a life, or a day, when not a single good thing happens─in fact, if you’ve woken up in circumstances where you can still make that statement, you’re having a pretty good day. In any event, trust your instincts. In fact, alarm clocks and a lack of self-awareness having precious little to do with each other is something you might realize quite well without having to think about it, even if you can’t explain why.

Let us forget about the Nuance Proposition for now, if we may.

It was a bad joke, okay?

Like waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

If seeking things that are like an alarm clock is a futile endeavor, just as seeking people who are like ourselves often is, might we not instead consider the thing itself? They say like attracts like, but if we interpret this as friendship, or fellow feeling, then it’s hard to imagine an alarm clock having any friends, or fellows. Hence, it is only in speaking about the alarm clock as a unique entity in the world, a unique concept, that we can discover the true nature of our loathing. It is only in so doing that the man can become the master.

Alarm clock, alarm clock, alarm clock.

Mclockalar.

If you repeat the words it starts to sound like mackerel, at which a thoroughly average Japanese person like myself can’t help but be reminded of breakfast. A joyful association, but we’ve decided for the time being to dispense with associations, so I won’t say any more on the subject.

Here’s the real issue.

The term in question is alarm clock, but what alarm means in this instance is cause to wake up─it is thus a clock that causes a target, the person sleeping next to it, instantiated in this case as me, to wake up. That’s the definition of an alarm clock, or its raison d’être to put it in slightly exaggerated terms. If it didn’t cause me to wake up, it’d be an un-alarming clock.

Which is hard to say.

And now we come to it.

It is without a doubt due to the maddening pushiness of the word alarm itself that I, that we loathe alarms clocks so much. People, left alone, generally tend to wake up, and I do feel a Luddite-like antipathy toward the very idea of relying on a machine, but all of this begs the fundamental question of why we have to wake up in the first place.

Not waking up means dreaming. Waking up means abandoning our dreams, which doesn’t leave a particularly good impression. Not particularly good, or not to mince words, bad. It would be appropriate to call it the embodiment of heinousness.

Recessions, economic slumps, an uncertain future.

Precisely because we live in a world that is hostile to dreams, shouldn’t at least nighttime offer a space for them? The behavior of alarm clocks, who so churlishly upend this (and yes, I will anthropomorphize them with a “who”) is unforgivable. We all learn the truth of this world at some point. Why rouse sleeping children from their dreams?

I’d rather not wake up, thank you very much.

Nor waken, awaken, or be woken.

People like to say “bright and early,” but if it’s so goddamned early, how about you let me sleep a little longer? Forget early, how about we go for just right. If you were nice enough to say good night to me before I went to bed, then let me get a good night’s sleep! To be perfectly honest, when someone who wished me a good night gives me the bright-and-early treatment the next morning, I feel somewhat betrayed.

Betrayal is tragic.

To begin with, it’s been proven that needing to wake up just because it’s morning is hopelessly outdated. History has proven this. Humanity has become nocturnal, as is evident from the mostly late-night broadcast times of anime, Japan’s proudest international cultural export. Even biologists will recognize the ironclad fact in the not too distant future; it is no joke. Study and construction work are also carried out late at night. In becoming nocturnal, humanity is poised to evolve further. In time, the significations of the Moon and the Sun may become reversed. Indeed, morning is when people should sleep, and alarm clocks, who wake people up in the morning, indeed must be called works of fiendish deviltry for obstructing our evolution.

I get it.

I get why people want to depend on alarm clocks, their functionality─but now is when we summon the courage to wean ourselves from that function. A time for clean breaks is at hand.

Can’t we just stop worrying about the whole “waking up” thing? A life of loafing is at least good for a laugh. In fact, isn’t a life that isn’t laughable kind of lame?

Why not go through life looking at smiling faces everywhere you go?

So this is what we should say to alarm clocks.

With gratitude, not animus.

“Thank you. And good night.”

“Wake up already!!”

“Wake up already!!”

Punched. Kicked.

Jabbed. Head-butted.

And right where it counts. It’d take too long to enumerate the many vital areas of the human body targeted by these attacks, so I’ll leave that to your imagination and simply state that they were only the most critical. Were I not to make this clear, my blinding agony and the ensuing developments would make less sense.

“What a long excuse for not wanting to get up, big brother.”

“And we’re not some clock, we’re your sisters. Your alarm sisters.”

So said Karen Araragi and Tsukihi Araragi, my two little sisters, as they stood planted on either side of my bed like the vajra kings. I don’t mean this metaphorically, it’s not a rhetorical analogy to spice up the narrative, they really were expressing their fuming discontent by striking the alpha-and-omega poses of statues flanking a temple gate.

Karen, with her mouth open.

And Tsukihi, mouth closed.

Cool.

I hope they make figurines of them like that.

“So what? According to the Nuance Proposition of Professor Me, similar words can be deemed identical.”

“Boy let me tell ya, ‘sister’ and ‘clock’ ain’t similar at all,” Karen kicked me in Kansai-ben. Not only was her intonation off, since she has no ties to the region whatsoever, but the boy let me tell ya came out sounding liked boiled meathead.

Sounds like quite a recipe.

And Tsukihi added, “I’ve heard of a grandfather clock, but…”

That seemed less like a retort than a quibble, but from it I derived the (leap of) logic for my next idea.

“I’ve got it! We’ll sell merchandise called ‘Sisterclock.’ Karen the big hand and Tsukihi the little hand. Wakes you up in the morning with the voices of Ms. Kitamura and Ms. Eguchi.”

“Hey, keep their names out of it.”

“The anime’s already over, big brother. No more tie-in products.”

“Oh…”

How sad.

Such a sad fact.

But sad as it might be, it was a reality that I needed to accept.

Though judging from how they woke me up in the anime version’s style, Karen and Tsukihi were clinging to the past in their own way.

“Urr~~~~r.”

This wasn’t me confronting that shocking reality; talking with my sisters, I had woken up, sobered up, perked up somewhat and stretched out from that curled-up ball of blinding agony. On all fours, looking like some sexy cat. Koyomi Araragi’s cougar pose isn’t something I want you to try and picture.

“All right, I’m up. I’ve regained consciousness.” I faced my Sisterclock, sorry, sisters. “What century is it?”

“Nah. Quit pretending you just woke up from cryosleep.”

“You haven’t been asleep long enough for it to be a new century.”

A twin-engine retort, surround sound─a comedy trio with two straight men, or rather women, is pretty rare, I think?

Wanting another taste of the rare experience, I kept going. I threw them a softball.

“If they’ve woken me up, does that mean they’ve found the cure?”

“As if you’re somebody they’d freeze until they found one.”

“They’ll never develop a medicine that can help you, big brother.”

Nice.

Karen was in an unfortunate position, though, stopping at an inoffensive jibe against her older brother while Tsukihi lay into me with no respect.

“Is the nuclear war over?” I asked next.

“What’s unclear? It’s not over.”

“Huh?!”

Tsukihi was startled by Karen’s line.

I take it back.

When Karen bombed she dragged her little sister down with her, a truly unfortunate position for Tsukihi.

“Hmm…but I think this could work. Coming up next episode: The Three Araragis.”

“We told you, big brother, the anime run is over. And that means no more previews of the next episode.”

“No more promotional videos, either.”

Relentless.

No more PVs either, huh?

“Damn… Looks like we’re back to square one. Starting over from scratch, with the bare essentials.”

The “bare” bit might make Kanbaru happy, but we had to adopt that mindset.

Starting over from scratch.

If we gave it our all, maybe we’d grace your screens again.

“In which case, Karen, give me the time of day.”

“One, two, three, four, five, six…hnh?”

For a second it seemed like she was on board with my rakugo allusion, but middle schoolers these days don’t know the original well enough, and she trailed off midway.

Once again Tsukihi was forced to pass.

The dual-straight-women setup didn’t stand a chance, after all.

I gave up on trying to elicit a reply from them and looked at the clocks sitting in my room. Yes, plural. There are four─though none with an alarm function.

I did use to have an alarm clock, until Karen punched right through it with her fist of righteousness and enlightened me that, hot damn, steel can give as easily as newspaper.

Spake the master: “It’s our duty to get our big brother out of bed, no machine will take that away from us!”

It was an odd character trait for a little sister.

My Little Sister Is a Luddite.

Waking me up every morning at the same time means having to wake up even earlier, which wasn’t easy. Why would you take it upon yourself like it’s your mission in life?

Let’s see… Right.

Pretty sure this has been going on since middle school.

They wake me up like this ever since I started middle school…but why? Why do they wake me up?

Is it to recapture some kind of lost familial bond? If so, when was it lost?

With that long-overdue question in the back of my mind, I confirmed, having just woken up, that it was six o’clock. Confirmed that the big hand and the little hand formed a 180-degree angle.

No way it could be evening, so it followed that it was six in the morning─and since I hadn’t been in cryosleep, today’s date was…

“February─thirteenth?”

I said it out loud.

Mine is a room with four clocks but no calendar.

I know, I know, how could I be named Koyomi and not have my namesake in my room, but I don’t let my name dictate my lifestyle.

After all, what’s in a name?

“The day before Valentine’s Day. Hey, sisters o’ mine, have you finished shopping for all the chocolate you’re going to give me?”

“Aaagh,” Tsukihi let out a cry of disgust in response to my charming little witticism. She looked at me like I was a vase of dead flowers. “What a disappointing big brother… Brazenly demanding chocolate from your little sisters is just too disappointing. Are you even human? Are you humanity’s final stage?”

“What the hell are you talking about? It’s only kind of disappointing.”

“You’ve finally maxed out on your disappointing. That was something that should never be said. Poor big brother. The whole girlfriend thing must be a lie too. Ms. Senjogahara is some extra you hired for a thousand yen an hour.”

“Don’t call Senjogahara an extra. Money doesn’t motivate that woman,” I protested, but upon reflection, she’s pretty hung up on money. A thousand yen an hour would definitely get her moving. Like lightning. Tsukihi, who clearly knew this, wore a triumphant smile. As if to say, He claims to be her boyfriend but doesn’t know shit about her.

Well.

Maybe I don’t know anything.

Maybe I’m profoundly ignorant.

Even if I put that aside, though, ever since I introduced my sisters to Senjogahara, they’ve been thick as thieves─especially Tsukihi, who really jibes with her personality-wise.

Under the circumstances, the chocolate they apparently hadn’t bought for me might be prepped and waiting for Senjogahara.

“Interesting… So the plan is to focus more on the yuri stuff, huh? That shows some business acumen.”

“What’re you talking about, big brother? Yuri? Is that someone’s name? Plus, if it’s about business acumen, pivoting toward BL would be a better idea.”

Tsukihi was cooking up some fiendish scheme.

As befits the brains of the Fire Sisters.

Maybe even overcooking it.

“Come on, big brother,” Karen taunted, “this is no time for you to be worrying about Valentine’s Day. Is it? Is it? You like that?”

She started stomping me. I remained in my sexy cat pose─or was continuing my morning calisthenics routine, so she was grinding her heel into my back as she spoke.

“Only one more month until your college entrance exams. You realize that, right? Do you realize that if you don’t realize that, you’d be better off dead? I’ll kill you myself.”

“What? You’ve got no right to talk to me like that, let alone kill me?”

Though that said, it was indeed exactly one month until March thirteenth, the day when Koyomi Araragi would at last face his college entrance exams.

Happily, I hadn’t been culled by the national exam right out of the gate─considering what was going on at the time, it was nothing short of a miraculous outcome. Though I prefer to think of it as the outcome of my hard work. In either case, it was a close shave as these things go, of course, and when I took a step back, it regrettably seemed like I’d raised the bar for myself…

“Fer chrissakes, this is why you’ll never be anything but trash,” Karen said, crossing her arms.

What a word to use─you see it often in manga and whatnot, but rarely hear people in real life call another living, breathing person trash.

“You can’t even see what you have to do. You can’t see even a month down the line, all you can see is tomorrow, whatever’s staring you right in the face. Your eyes are closed, squeezed shut, you’ve got no prospects for the future. You plan to live like that? You’re in such a sorry state, you probably couldn’t even manage to off yourself. And even if you do get into college, what then? Just thinking about it kills me. It’s quite an achievement to hand me my ass like that, goodwill handassador.”

“Goodwill handassador…”

I think I might be the only person on earth to have been abused in that particular fashion. We were both third-years, the difference between middle and high school notwithstanding, but Lady Karen, who was in an escalator system and didn’t need to do any studying to speak of to get into a high school, was having a grand old time looking down on me.

She already did, purely in terms of height (and unbelievably, the girl was still growing! She wasn’t just taller than me, she was on her way to being taller than everyone), but looking down on me metaphorically as well?

This went well past giving me a complex and ended up being kind of pleasurable. Trampled upon by my towering little sister, who’d also stomp my whole approach to life into the ground. With my youngest sister watching, no less…

“Now, get up and get studying. Put a little pressure on yourself.”

“It’s definitely time for a little pressure, but I don’t know about putting myself in a corner… If you aren’t careful, you might get held back too. You sure you should be worrying about me?”

I twisted myself and, in my new posture, grabbed hold of the foot that was grinding into me. This goes without saying given her height, but Karen’s feet are pretty huge. Almost too huge to wrangle, even with both hands.

“There! I’m gonna tickle you. How’s that!”

“Hahaha, it won’t work. I’ve been training, so the skin on the soles of my feet is nice and thick.”

“There! Then I’m licking you. How’s that!”

“Hiiiik!”

To protect our privacy as siblings, I won’t reveal if I managed to lick her foot before she could pull it away, but in any case, she did withdraw it. I was granted freedom of action, and got out of bed.

At this point I was well and truly awake.

Fully and completely.

I’m a weak-willed person who falls back to sleep if I’m not careful, but thanks to the interference of my little sisters, I completely missed my second window for a snooze. My kindly wake-up crew seemed to have noticed because Karen nodded in satisfaction.

“Our work here is done.”

From her airs you’d think she’d accomplished a momentous task when all she’d done was wake up her big brother.

Karen has impressive powers of self-affirmation.

“’Kay then, I’m gonna go running. I’m going ’na run. Make sure a bath is ready for me. A scalding one. Wanna come with me, big brother?”

“You know I can’t keep up with you. Running means a hundred-meter dash to you─and for the length of a marathon, 42.195 kilometers. Get Kanbaru to go with you.”

“I actually cross paths with her sometimes this time of day.”

“Oh yeah?”

Come to think of it, my dearly beloved junior does two ten-kilometer dashes every morning, doesn’t she? Not quite a marathon, but almost half of one. So statistically, it would make sense for her to cross paths with Karen… They’re different types so maybe it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but which of them wins out in the stamina department?

“So long, big brother. I’m sure you’ll be terribly lonely while I’m gone, but see you again at the breakfast table. If I don’t, you’re going to be tried in absentia.”

“What the hell for?”

Well.

A few things did come to mind.

I’d be lucky if I end up dressed like an inmate rather than some bagged game.

“Bye now, Pops big bro!”

With this parting line, which I could at least tell was an impression, though the resemblance to Lupin the Third was so faint it could have just been a coincidence, Karen left at a run. Whether it’s jogging or a hundred-meter dash or a marathon, I’m pretty sure she’s the only person who gets up a head of steam while she’s still inside the house.

She’s the jersey girl, after all, so she doesn’t even need to change.

I considered coining a term, jerl, but doubted it’d catch on.

“Her hair’s gotten long,” Tsukihi said, watching Karen depart, and now alone with me in my room. “Super long, really. I was pretty surprised when she severed her ponytail over the summer. But it’s pretty much grown back now. Super back, really. When kids grow fast, I guess their hair grows fast too?”

“Yeah, seems like it…”

Severed made it sound like it was a lizard’s tail or something, which was a little scary but not inaccurate, and either way, Karen’s ponytail had recovered well enough. Even if it wasn’t exactly the same, it was long enough to be pulled into a short tail.

“Though it doesn’t grow as fast as yours, kiddo.”

“Or yours, kiddo,” countered Tsukihi.

“Don’t call me kiddo, kiddo.”

It was immature of me to invoke my authority as a big brother, but in any case, Tsukihi’s hair and my own were bizarrely long now.

She’d always been fickle about her hairstyle, but whatever she was thinking or feeling, for a while now she’d been letting her hair grow and grow─it was almost long enough to reach down to her ankles because she wore it straight.

Combined with her taste for traditional Japanese clothes, she looked like some lady ninja who used her hair as a weapon. Kunoichi Tsukihi.

Tsukikage.

As for me myself, I’d originally grown out my hair to hide my “neck,” but approximately a year after the events of that hellish spring break, it was pretty damn long even if it wasn’t down to my ankles. The tips brushed the middle of my back, and I could probably sport a ponytail that rivaled Karen’s old one.

After putting off the matter over and over again─I’ll cut it next time, I’ll cut it tomorrow, I’ll cut it at some point so no need to do it today─it had gotten pretty crazy.

Batshit.

“Never mind me, big brother, don’t you think you should cut your hair before exam time? It won’t make a great impression in interviews.”

“What interviews? There aren’t any for college entrance exams. It’s not a part-time job. Though I guess there is the impression you make on the examiner. Dammit, yeah, there’s that. I’m not even growing it out because I want to. In fact I’d like to cut it, but this is how I look in the photo I submitted with my application form, and if I cut it now they might not recognize me,” I said, touching my relatively bedhead-free hair. “I’ll cut it off after exams. The whole mop of it.”

“Makes me feel hot just looking at it, even though it’s winter.”

“Look who’s talking. Yours isn’t hair, it’s a trench coat…hmm.”

I reached out and mussed her hair for no particular reason. So much hair. It’s no good blaming things on other people, but I dunno, Tsukihi’s being that long must have numbed my senses. It’s like that thing, that optical illusion where you put two lines next to each other and try to tell which one’s longer.

Okay, her hair was easily twice as long…

“All right…guess I’ll go get the bath ready for Karen,” I said. “Up with the sun, giving up my precious time, I’ll spur on these old bones to go prepare her bath.”

“I’m sure she’s grateful, but not as full of greatness as you are, big brother.”

“While she’s been tempering her body like it’s a katana, I keenly observe that she doesn’t seem to have joined any school clubs.”

Karen Araragi is a karate girl.

Nowadays they’re called karate dames (nowadays?).

So you’d think she’d be a member of the karate club, or some other athletic club… As someone who’d never had a lick of interest in what my little sisters did, I’d hardly wondered or even conceived of the question, but now all of a sudden it was on my mind.

“Karen can’t join any clubs. Geez, big brother, you really don’t know anything, do you? Do you?”

Tsukihi looked smug.

She was a kind person insofar as she liked to tell you things you didn’t know, but despite that caveat, her attitude was unpleasant.

Well, she always rubbed me the wrong way, and afterwards I would beat her black and blue, but first I wanted to know why Karen couldn’t join any clubs. What was the deal?

“Why can’t Karen join any clubs? This is totally the first I’ve heard of it. That’s no good, I need to know everything about my sisters. Has she been blacklisted? It couldn’t possibly be because she’s too busy with the Fire Sisters.”

If that was it, I’d have to put the kibosh on their activities right away. It’d be a splendid excuse.

“No, no. It’s a rule at her dojo. The students there are forbidden from participating in clubs. Because they’re a combat-oriented school. Because they’re an ultra combat-oriented school. Because they’re a school. Because.”

“…? I don’t really get it?” I cocked my head. “You’re my little sister too, so explain it in a way your big brother can understand, fool. You Le Fou.”

“That’s a hell of an attitude… My attitude is horrible too, but yours is the worst. It’s horribly horrible. Unreal. Just listen for once, okay? If you’ve attained a belt in a martial art or have a pro boxing license, don’t they say it’s like you’re carrying a deadly weapon? This is the same.”

“Ah… I guess they do say that.”

Hmmm.

I’ve also heard that’s just a rumor, but I understood why Karen couldn’t join any clubs. Basically it was against the rules of her dojo.

A combat-oriented school.

An ultra combat-oriented school.

It wasn’t at all clear to me what that all-too-vague expression really meant, but having personally experienced the karate techniques at our sister’s disposal, I was prepared to agree. If Karen employed them in society at large, the whole power balance was liable to crumble.

For my part, at least, I didn’t want to face an opponent who could pierce a magazine with her fingertips─the only people who would were probably those with the same skill, in other words her dojo mates.

“But now that you mention it, I did hear something about that. I forgot because I don’t give a shit about my little sisters.”

“Really? After all that?”

“And now I remember…I’ve been wanting to meet her sensei. Got to tie up those loose plot threads. I’m pretty sure that’s the last of them, too.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re dead wrong…”

“But it kind of feels like a waste, doesn’t it? It’s kind of, what, a shame for Karen’s strength, the power of that body, her physical might, not to be shared openly and to stay buried amidst the Fire Sisters’ illegal activities.”

“Our activities aren’t illegal,” Tsukihi insisted, but I ignored her.

They weren’t treated as crimes only because the two of them were still in middle school. The activities themselves by and large exceeded the bounds of anything that could be called lawful.

They were out of bounds.

Not to mention, what they exacted wasn’t even justice in my view, but there was no exhausting that argument with my sisters; even if I exhausted my strength the argument wouldn’t be, so I decided to let it go at that.

But even if I benevolently let them ramble on about justice and the significance of their work and blah blah blah, the Fire Sisters business got me in a complaining mood.

“You don’t think it’s a shame, Tsukihi? For Karen’s abilities to remain hidden?”

“Nya?”

“That girl’s got talent coming out of her ears, no question, even if she’s not up to my level. Look, don’t you think that deserves to be in the spotlight? I don’t want her to be held back by her dojo or the Fire Sisters, she should be going for Olympic owwww!”

Tsukihi had stepped on my foot.

And not in a cute way, she’d crushed the nail of my little toe with her heel. A surgical strike, dead on target. “Crushed” is neither excessive nor exaggerated, but the truth─she split my toenail, for crying out loud.

“What the hell?!”

“Huh? You were being annoying, big brother…” She looked at me blankly, her sudden flare of emotion seemingly already cooled. She wasn’t regretting her own behavior one bit. “No one, not even our big brother, can be allowed to annul the bond of the Fire Sisters.”

“Wha… You were considering disbanding the Fire Sisters yourself, weren’t you? Didn’t you say you’d invite me to a farewell party chock full of middle school girls?”

“Hearing someone else say it makes me angry.” At least she was honest, this hazardous, dangerous little sister of mine. “The Olympics? They make me sick. The same stale thing over and over again, every time.”

“Tradition isn’t stale. Don’t call a festival held once every four years stale. Don’t be giving it a thumbs-down. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

“Anyway, Karen will retire from the Fire Sisters someday, but I don’t need my big brother to tell me that,” Tsukihi said, this time with total composure. A tough nut to crack, how vexing. “All kinds of stuff will happen when she goes to high school. All kinks of kinds. Her environment will change. I still don’t think she’ll give up the dojo. She’s so besotted with her sensei, and all.”

“Huh…”

Funny.

Hearing that my little sister was besotted with a stranger I didn’t know anything about was sort of unsettling. Tying up loose plot threads aside, I needed to check out this sensei. For my own peace of mind.

“And I bet they won’t let Karen go that easily, either,” Tsukihi predicted. “Her sensei has an even higher estimation of our sister’s physical abilities than you do.”

“Pardon me? An even higher estimation, you say? Bullshit, this so-called sensei doesn’t know a damn thing about the delicate softness of Karen’s tongue.”

“Um, probably not… And how do you know how soft her tongue is?” Tsukihi glared at me. “Why are you even familiar with the charms of Karen’s oral cavity?”

“Mrgh.”

Yikes, time to retreat.

She had me there.

Either way, it was all just idle chatter, and I had no illusions about settling Karen’s future in the course of a morning’s trifling chat. Just learning that Tsukihi was still ready and willing to disband the Fire Sisters, that she hadn’t forgotten that conversation, was more than enough to satisfy me.

Well, I didn’t know how my exams would fall out, or maybe fall flat, but either way, there was no question that before too long my environment was going to change even more than Karen’s.

But before that happened.

I was, in fact, not totally devoid of a brotherly desire to set Karen and Tsukihi on something like the right path─because yes, it was about time.

For the Fire Sisters to wake up.

For me to.