Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.03

003

Just to be clear, let me take a moment to state that Karen and I aren’t particularly close─she and my other sister, Tsukihi, the youngest child, were born a year apart and are pretty chummy-chummy, but I’m afraid the same cannot be said about my sisters and myself.

You might even say that we didn’t get along. That there was hostility.

Karen and Tsukihi, for their part, never listened to me, while I, for my part, had it up to here with their infantilism─especially how they played at defenders of justice as the Fire Sisters. The recent encounter with Deishu Kaiki had fallen short of making them mend their ways.

Man, that Kaiki was so useless. In being a bother and nothing else, no other grownup came close.

So you see, it was rare for me and Karen to be out and about like this, just the two of us─almost as rare as it was for her to do anything at all without Tsukihi.

Which was why we tiptoed around each other when we spoke.

The fact that all the tiptoeing wound up with Karen cutting off her ponytail and me on her shoulders proved what a nuisance it was to be siblings.

It certainly wasn’t like a manga or anime. That sort of affection for your little sister is as nonexistent as a unicorn. They say incest is the purview of the upper classes, so I suppose that makes sense. We Araragis are decidedly middle class.

So why today, Monday, August fourteenth? Why were Karen and I spending time together this day?

Relax, there’s a perfectly good reason that isn’t suddenly winning the lottery and ascending to the upper classes. A respectable reason, which I suppose I’d better give if there are to be no bizarre rumors about Koyomi Araragi getting along oh-so-well with his little sister.

Begin flashback.

Earlier that morning.

“Koyomi? Is there something you’d like me to do for you?”

I forgot to mention, but I’m a high school senior. In other words, I’m studying for entrance exams, so there’s no vacationing in my summer vacation. It’s just summer.

For everyone else, mid-August is the Obon holiday season, but sadly, as an exam taker, that passed me by, too. Actually, in the first place, our family doesn’t pay much attention to old native customs.

Oshino would be furious if he knew.

So would Hanekawa, probably─then again, in her case, she’d scold me just as much if I used the holidays as an excuse not to study.

Well, getting scolded by Hanekawa only put a spring in my step, so she could go right ahead. I wish she’d get pissed off, her shoulders shaking, and her breasts, naturally, shaking as well.

Okay.

I’d woken up early once again and was working on my usual morning drills before breakfast when Karen suddenly (and without knocking) threw open the door and burst into my room.

My sister.

Karen Araragi.

The perpetually jersey-clad middle schooler.

“Not a thing…” I replied.

By the way, “throw open the door” doesn’t entirely capture the reality of what she did. If this were a mystery that hinged on narrative devices, critics would call me out on it. In truth, like investigators rushing the culprit’s hideout in a police drama, she didn’t just throw the door open but kicked it open.

That was Karen’s standard interaction with doors.

In her cultural milieu, they were always opened with the back of one’s foot, whether it was a sliding Japanese one or a hinged Western one─

No… If it were a cultural thing, then Tsukihi and I, raised in the same milieu, would behave in the same manner, so scratch that.

“Whaaat? There must be something,” Karen complained, approaching my desk (I didn’t bother turning around) and throwing herself at me.

When I say she threw herself at me, I don’t intend that as a figure of speech like “my legs are dead” or “his eyes popped out” or “walk through fire.” I mean it literally. She approached me from behind and wrapped her arms around my neck like a scarf. She was glued to my back without a hint of hesitation. In that sense, she hadn’t so much thrown herself at me, as on me.

Snap.

The No. 2 pencil in my right hand broke in half. My writing implement, pentagonal in shape to bring luck to the exam taker─what an ill omen.

I’m repeating myself here (as much as I’d rather not, given the shame and mortification), but my sister, Karen Araragi, is significantly taller than the average third-year middle school girl─and worse, is still growing. Taller today than yesterday, and taller still tomorrow than today, her height continues to increase.

Sure, she could measure as many feet and inches as she liked. That, in itself, was no skin off my back─the problem here was the lamentable fact that she was consequentially taller than me.

People of a certain size can’t help intimidating the rest of us whether they mean to or not. On top of that, Karen did martial arts. She was a second-degree black belt.

In other words, having installed karate techniques on the hardware she’d been blessed with, namely her body, she possessed the fighting capabilities to easily take on some wild animals.

In fact, I had witnessed her putting her fist through a stucco wall like it was tofu. Afterward her arm had gotten stuck, and to free herself she’d bust down even more of the wall.

It was insane, a bonus round in an old-school fighting game.

Anyway, if you’re wondering what the point is, I just thought you should know what kind of a grizzly-bear sister had thrown herself at, or rather, on me. Can you imagine my horror? I don’t think you can, but I still wanted to put it into words.

“Come on, Koyomi, I want to help. Believe it or not, your sister is someone you can rely on. I’m your faithful little sister, you know? Your devoted little sister? Anything you want, just say the word and I’ll do it. I am at your service, o-kay?”

“Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing. What in the hell could I possibly want from my sister so early in the day? There is nothing I need, and there’s nothing you can do. In the fifteen years since you were born, you haven’t been of any help whatsoever to me, woman.”

If anything, she could leave me be. I was busy memorizing vocabulary at the moment. With that implicit message, I brushed her arms from around my neck.

If she had a mind to, that is to say, if she lost it for a moment and squeezed those arms tighter, soon I’d be tilting my head, and not in the sense of feeling perplexed, but in the way of bidding this earthly plane a swift adieu. I didn’t want her hanging off me any longer than necessary.

A bout against a legendary vampire. Mortal feline combat. The crab, the snail, the monkey, and the snake. And the bee.

After all those tribulations, it would be a shame if Koyomi Araragi, the battle-hardened veteran, were done in by his little sister’s sleeper choke.

That aside, having my sister hanging all over me doesn’t float my boat.

I was simply creeped out.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to focus on my studies? I haven’t the time to mess around with a lower life form, you amoeba. If you’re bored why don’t you go for a run? Feel free to never come…back…”

Assuming that all this nonsense was just her way of killing time, probably because her schedule didn’t match up with Tsukihi’s, I turned around, finally, to chase Karen away─and was left speechless by what I saw.

I had no words. I became acutely aware of humanity’s state of mind before we acquired language. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d never have guessed that lacking the means to describe something in plain sight could inflict so much stress on an organism’s psyche.

But if I must─

If I must, for the honor of the primate order, somehow put into words the uncanny sight─

“Let’s see…”

Karen Araragi, my sister, was wearing a skirt.

……

So what, you might argue.

To convey if only a fifth of my shock, I might have put that in italics, like so: My sister was wearing a skirt.

But I’d even forgotten to italicize it. Italicization had been lost to me.

Like I said earlier, Karen always wore a jersey. To rephrase, she wore nothing else. Jerseys were her combat fatigues, or like the robes of a saint. Yet she had doffed the cloth and donned a skirt.

Her all-too-long legs were receiving undue emphasis.

A similar phenomenon was manifest, not just for her lower body, but from her waist up.

She wasn’t wearing a sports top or a windbreaker. Not even a running dress.

Instead, she was attired in an entirely unsportsmanlike stole and sleeveless turtleneck.

Such long arms! So slender a neck!

And, and…

Who was this pretty girl?!

Napoleon I supposedly said, “The clothes make the man.” If so, the Karen Araragi standing before me, in this room, in this house, was and was no longer Karen Araragi.

Well.

She was a middle school girl, after all.

It wasn’t completely unheard of for her to wear the school-designated skirt and blouse (as for the likelihood, imagine glancing up at the sky and happening to spot a cascade of shooting stars, and you wouldn’t be far off), but that was just her uniform.

If I took that into account, though, it was comprehensible. She was bending the rules, but she must have her reasons, and I could be magnanimous and let it slide.

Yet her current outfit looked bare to a degree that was unthinkable for school clothes.

It flaunted the edicts of nature.

She could…wear something other than a jersey?!

That was like Kiryl equipping the Zenithian Armor!

I gulped, hard. This took beating the summer heat to a new level.

They were probably Tsukihi’s clothes. Her outfit looked like something you’d see on the pages of a fashion magazine, stylish and coordinated. Tsukihi, for her part, went for traditional Japanese clothing so hard that she joined her school’s tea ceremony club just so she could wear kimonos, but she wasn’t as much of a fanatic as Karen (in other words, didn’t attach as much meaning to the way she dressed) and had plenty of ordinary clothes as well.

Still, Karen and Tsukihi possessed very different body types.

The turtleneck showed off Karen’s contours as clearly as a form-fitting T-shirt, while the creased skirt, probably not designed to be very long in the first place, transformed into an extreme miniskirt.

She wasn’t wearing stockings or even socks, and her long, bare legs jutting out from the hem of the skirt were enough to fill me with terror.

Terror.

A host of traumatic incidents came back to me. This and that and…

Hey, all of it happened in the past few months!

Seriously, how many brushes with death have I had in that time?!

But forget about my trauma… Right now, we’re talking about Karen.

“Karen… If you’re being bullied, you should have told me! Why didn’t you come to me sooner, before things went so far?!”

“Nah, I’m not being bullied,” Karen denied after I leapt irate from my swivel chair and grabbed and shook her by the shoulders, which she, with a tired look, let me do. “If anyone is bullying me, honestly, it’s you.”

“Urk.”

“I can laugh about it now, but back in grade school, some of the heartless things you said made me want to kill myself.”

“Urrk.”

Deep.

Why was she confessing this to me now? Did I really say anything that mean?

“It’s what inspired me to become a defender of justice─so you see, my hatred of evil actually stems from you.”

“You don’t say.” What a thing to be responsible for, don’t place that on me… “B-But, Karen, there’s no way you’d dress like that unless somebody threatened you! Ah, you poor thing… Someone forced you to wear those silly clothes instead of your usual jersey and posted the pics on your school’s secret student forum…”

Everything went black, and I cradled my head.

Unbelievable. Not even noticing that my sister was dealing with terrible stuff, I’d been studying for my sorry exams. Wrapped up in percentiles and the cult of academic merit, I’d lost sight of what matters most…

My conscience lashed at me like waves upon the shore. If I didn’t get ahold of myself, I might go on some rampage. The only thing keeping me sane was my anger.

Anger at myself, and also against the world.

“Don’t worry, Karen! I’ll fix this somehow! I’m your brother, leave it to me! Just tell me the address and phone number of whoever’s been bullying you, and the name of the homeroom teacher who turned a blind eye! I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done!”

“Sometimes you’re hotter than fire, big brother.”

I’m crushing on you, Karen added with a smile.

It was a gentle smile.

Hmm. Judging from her reaction, I seemed to be on the wrong track.

But if she wasn’t being bullied, what explanation was there? Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say that when you’ve eliminated the logically untenable possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

Unless there was some possibility that I was missing?

Hrrm. Mr. Holmes’ articulation of the process of elimination was kinda loose.

“Ahh, I got it! Cosplay!”

“Since when is a girl wearing a skirt cosplay?” Karen objected. “It’s not like I never feel hurt, you know. That’s the kind of stuff that made me want to die back in grade school.”

“Oh, yeah? So you were pretty delicate once upon a time,” I remarked as if it had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t showing an ounce of remorse, if I do say so myself. “Well, if you’re not being bullied and it’s not cosplay, what the hell?”

“Oh, um, aren’t I cute?”

With a husky moan, Karen struck an enticing pose with all the muscles in her body.

It was far from sexy. If anything, it was a superb martial arts stance. I guess that wasn’t surprising since she’d rotated her hips while standing straight.

“I-I don’t know about cute,” I stuttered.

“Cute is the word,” warned Karen, still in her enticing pose.

It was actually a fairly strained stance, and maintaining her balance couldn’t have been easy, but she was indeed athletic.

By the way, while I’d rather not divulge a fact that touches on my dignity as an older brother, my sister is genuinely terrifying when she tries to intimidate me for real. According to legend, once, she even beat a lion at a staring contest at the zoo.

Looking away as casually as I could, I said, “C-Cute, yes.”

N-No, I wasn’t sucking up to my little sister on account of some unstated threat! (Ex)cuse us, is what I meant to say!

I just misspoke, like Hachikuji!

Sorry, a slip of the tongue!

“……”

Karen continued to intimidate me in the same pose. She was seriously scaring me.

The pain from when she beat the crap out of me the other day during the bee incident had to be engraved in my marrow as my latest trauma.

My body began trembling uncontrollably.

“Cute! Cute! Cuuute,” I found myself repeating.

Clearly, I was just misspeaking serially here, and what I meant was, Cut! Cut! Cut (your crap). I’m sure Hachikuji’s tongue would have slipped more elegantly, but I’m no Hachikuji. True, an elegant slip of the tongue is an odd metaphor.

“……”

We both fell silent. The awkwardness was palpable. Several seconds passed…

“Eheheh!”

…and, believe it or not, Karen hugged me.

A middle-school girl hugging you might sound adorable, but the facts on the ground belied that image.

That image is fake.

Going back to the lion at the zoo, and expanding on it, I imagine you’ve seen clips on TV and elsewhere of wild carnivores hunting in Africa and other places, right?

Karen’s movements were analogous.

Swift and nimble. From her first step, she was already at top speed.

In traffic accidents and such, when humans are in imminent danger, we often mistakenly stiffen up. Well, even if I hadn’t frozen, Karen’s attacks were impossible to dodge─maybe during spring break, but not this summer vacation, not me.

Indeed, Karen was able to hug me head-on as if she were tackling me.

About a year ago, I’d witnessed her crashing through a steel girder at school with the same maneuver. It was already pretty deteriorated, but still─the scene flashed before my eyes.

Fortunately for me, I did not share in that steel girder’s fate. The impact, however, was enough to knock the wind out of my guts.

My ribs, made of bone and not steel, creaked dangerously.

Karen, who had wrapped her arms around my back with no apparent concern for my lungs, now proceeded to slide them up around my neck and to pull herself close.

Total coverage. As in around-the-clock? No, twenty-four hours of this would be a little much. Actually, even one minute!

If she bear-hugged me with all her strength, she might split me right in half. Neither Shinobu over spring break nor the cat monster over Golden Week had done such a crazy thing to me.

If this wasn’t horror, then what was?

“K-Karen?”

“Thank you! I’m so happy to hear my brother say that! So happy! Yay!” Still hugging me, squeezing even tighter, Karen let out a jubilant cry.

Yet another helping of horror…

This was all-you-can-eat horror.

“………nkk!”

We had a serious situation here.

My sister…was being affectionate.

Well, maybe not a serious situation, but certainly an unfunny one. Honestly, she’d been weird from the beginning. Asking me if there was anything she could do for me, even if it was just to pass the time, was unlike Karen.

Can I make you pass out to pass the time? would have been more like her (which is scary enough coming from your little sister).

“Ahh, it’s so relaxing hugging my big brother like this. It must be because you’re so accepting. I bet this is what a Tempur-Pedic pillow feels like.”

“Geez, stop, you’re freaking me out. Yuck, yuck, yuck, let me go. I’m sorry, you really are.” I thrashed around but couldn’t pry myself loose. Physically, I was no match for Karen, but I’m not sure it was even her arm strength. It almost felt like some sort of structural restraint. “Seriously, what kind of prank is this? What’s with your new character?”

She really wasn’t being bullied? Then was it some kind of dare? In which case, I was the one getting mistreated here. What did I do to deserve to be picked on by a bunch of middle schoolers?

“Hey, be happy,” Karen ordered. “Your cute little sister is bothering to act all cuddly.”

“My cute little sister…”

“You just said I’m cute. Real men don’t go back on their word.”

“I haven’t got any for you right now!”

Well, sure.

Maybe it was just the novelty of it, but she actually didn’t look half bad in a skirt.

“Just, tell me what you’re up to,” I said. “Not just what you’re doing, either. Explain in order, starting with what you think you are.”

“Huh? Sure, I just thought…I’d turn over a new leaf and start pitching myself as the little sister who loves her brother and never disobeys him.”

“Pitch all you want, I’m not buying it! Besides, you’re stepping on Kanbaru’s turf!”

Obviously she wasn’t my little sister, but as my junior her position was similar.

“Kanbaru,” Karen uttered─and suddenly let go of me.

The sense of freedom reminded me of being un-cuffed (something that actually happened to me late last month, the simile is based on experience)─and Karen took three steps back to put some space between us.

As though to avoid stepping on her master’s shadow, as the saying goes.

Hm.

What now? Karen had a weird look on her face.

She’d been acting weird from the start, but this was straight-up weird (though “straight-up weird” is another odd turn of phrase).

As glad as I was to be free, she was acting very quiet all of a sudden. Maybe I’d surprised her by suddenly mentioning an unfamiliar name in the way of quipping.

“Umm, Karen. Don’t let the ‘baru’ mislead you, it’s got next to nothing to do with Bao the Visitor. Kanbaru is one grade under me at school, and…”

I figured this was my chance to change the topic, and if I was lucky, maybe Karen wearing a skirt could be consigned to the dustbin of history, so I proceeded to try to explain who Kanbaru was, but that was easier said than done.

My junior Kanbaru. A second-year student at Naoetsu High School, and a former ace basketball player.

In a sense, no one could be simpler to understand, but in a different sense, no one was as incomprehensible. How did I explain her?

It was almost like trying to explain how a centipede walks. Or like being asked how falling in love works.

If I just shared my plain, unadorned thoughts on her, it’d sound like I was badmouthing her. Her reputation would suffer, and I didn’t want that at all.

My vocabulary sucked. No wonder I had so much trouble improving my composition scores.

“Let’s see… Kanbaru is like an E5 series bullet train, one of those maglevs…or maybe a fighter jet…like the Phantom?”

As I babbled searching for the right analogy, Karen interrupted─ and surprised me.

“Of course, Suruga Kanbaru.”

Huh?

Wait, what? I’m pretty sure I hadn’t said her full name yet.

“Karen?”

With a determined air, she yelled, “Big brother! I have a favor to ashk you!”

Suddenly raising her voice had made the end come off sounding babyish. The speed with which she followed up, however, cancelled out the trivial error.

Too fast for the eye to see, it was like a flash step. Or a full-body Futae no Kiwami double limit break.

Rapidly dropping to her knees, she planted her palms out in a forty-five-degree angle completely flush with the carpeted floor; bent her supple, lithe upper body forward as if it were an attachment designed for that purpose; and then smacked down her forehead, one of the hardest parts of the human body, as if in rebellion against Mother Earth.

Put simply, she prostrated herself in a dogeza.

Put simply or not, in fact.

“I beg you, please introduce your worthless little sister to Kanbaru-sensei!”

“………”

Ah. Right.

So that’s what it was.

Karen’s suspicious, totally uncharacteristic behavior, so suspicious that I might have called the police, the hospital, or maybe even a prison hospital if she weren’t family, finally made sense.

Suruga Kanbaru─as I said, she was a former basketball ace, but that profile was far too commonplace to truly describe her. She was a phenomenon that transcended ordinary phenomena, the biggest star in our school’s history.

Kanbaru was so talented that she led our sports-poor prep school’s feeble basketball team all the way to the national finals. To say the least, how many girls could pull off a slam dunk?

She had to leave the team partway through her second year for certain reasons but never ceased to be a star. Even now she was quite popular, especially among the younger students.

Quite a few of her admirers were fanatical.

I don’t even want to recall exactly when, but this one time, I got surrounded and mobbed by a throng of her fans, a terribly awkward and overwhelming experience. Fortunately, Hanekawa showed up with Kanbaru to break things up and I survived, but I’d feared for my life.

First Senjogahara’s fan, Kanbaru, tried to kill me, and then Kanbaru’s fans made their move. I sure had some luck. Maybe next time Kanbaru’s fans’ fans would try to kill me.

In any case, I was aware that her popularity, her power of attraction, exceeded the confines of Naoetsu High. Still, middle schoolers knew about her, too?

She really was something else.

Suruga Kanbaru.

“Well, come to think of it,” I said, “since martial arts are a sport nowadays, you knowing about a national-level player who’s a local star isn’t weird at all.”

Apparently it was the rule or custom or whatever at Karen’s dojo not to participate in tournaments (Or rather, they couldn’t. Their style was so focused on actual combat that they were forbidden from joining related clubs at school), but Karen being Karen, if she did enter into such competitions, then make no mistake─or mistake as you might─she’d get to the nationals.

Maybe she felt close to Kanbaru in some way.

Still, did my worthless sister just say “sensei”?

I didn’t know about that.

“Please, Koyomi─oopsy, my dear big brother!!”

“‘Oopsy’…”

“Daisy!”

“Great timing─but!”

In place of a verbal riposte, I stepped on Karen’s head.

Yes, I’m the kind of older brother who grinds his younger sister’s head beneath his foot as she lies prostrate.

Consider it payback for her scaring me earlier (not that I was scared!).

“Ahh, it’s an honor to be stepped on by you, big brother,” Karen dared to say, resilient, face down and unresisting.

Basically a jock, she aspired to fortitude of the mental variety as well, and if it was in the service of some goal, this degree of punishment and humiliation was, as expected, practically fun for her.

Hmph. If I do say so about my own sister, she was M cool.

“Actually,” I told her, “I’m pretty tired of seeing you prostrate yourself. Quit flattening yourself for every little thing, or soon that’s how you’ll be saying good morning. Do I look like an imperial parade? What sort of lord am I? Let me tell you something, little miss Karen, dogeza is a form of violence in this day and age.”

It was strong-arm blackmail.

Even if I was stepping on her head.

“Of course!” my sister agreed. “Then I’ll lick your foot! Starting from the big toe and in descending order!”

“And I’m saying I’ve had enough of that!”

“Nrkk!”

Karen lifted her face slightly from her position on the floor to look up at me. A fire seemed to smolder in her eyes as if to welcome any obstacle standing in her way. It was quite a wonderful expression.

“Fine then!” she cried. “What about my virginity? You can take my virginity!”

“I don’t want my little sister’s virginity!”

I gave her a swift kick to her face.

Reality admits of certain situations where violence against your little sister, still in middle school, is warranted.

“Ghak!”

Dealt such a blow, you couldn’t maintain a dogeza even if you were Karen. Yet if you were Karen, you instantly leapt backward on your knees to diffuse the impact.

She even transitioned into a backflip, a so-called moonsault (I don’t know if it was to downplay her reflexes or what) in my hardly spacious room, brushing the ceiling but completing the remarkable maneuver.

10.00! 10.00! 10.00! 10.00! 10.00!

What an incredible athlete.

She landed on my bed. The springs creaked, loudly.

I’d be sleeping a little less comfortably from now on.

What did she have to do that for?

“Karen… I know you get carried away and it seems fine now, but in ten years’ time, when you’ve matured physically and mentally into an adult, you’re going to cringe when you remember how you prostrated yourself before me. Just so you know, I won’t ever forget that you did.”

“Hmph. This is about now, not ten years later. How can there be a tomorrow unless you survive today?”

“That’s a great line and all…”

But it meant prostrating yourself?

How pathetic. What kind of tomorrow awaited someone performing a dogeza today?

“I’m still gonna ask you, though, just in case,” I said. “You’re not doing this kind of shit outside the house, are you? Like with your friends or classmates…or teachers at school?”

“Of course not! Everyone looks up to me.”

“……”

I supposed that was true. She was one of the Fire Sisters of Tsuganoki Second Middle School, after all. Plus, Karen was the enforcer of the pair, so she tended to stand out more than Tsukihi. Karen occupied the most dangerous, most conspicuous position as the hotshot.

“My rule is that I only bow down to my big brother!”

“Don’t be singling me out.”

It was a nuisance. Maybe she needed to go die once so she’d be cured of her stupidity. Or maybe she could just be stupid and go die once anyways.

True, partly on account of her popularity, I did think at some point that she “resembled” Kanbaru. Due to their different circumstances, there were various minor dissimilarities, of course, but they definitely had a lot in common. Karen hearing rumors abut Kanbaru and idolizing her wasn’t unthinkable.

It wasn’t, but…

As accustomed as I was to seeing her prostrate herself─it was pretty much an everyday sight─switching out her jersey for a skirt, which she usually detested (I guess she considered it the proper attire for a doting sister) was a first in the history of Karen Araragi.

Since, out of pride or self-respect or something, she usually hated asking me, her big brother, for help when there was something she needed to do, it had to have taken a lot of resolve on her part to beg this hard.

Hmm.

“I’m surprised Tsukihi was willing to lend you her clothes, though… They’re probably going to get all stretched out on you.”

“Yeah. That’s why I borrowed them without asking.”

“……”

She was gonna get chewed out. Tsukihi was even scarier than her.

“I know you praised me and all,” noted Karen, “but skirts don’t really suit me. I mean, ‘suit’ isn’t even the right word because I’m flashing so much skin. This mini sure makes kicking easy, though.”

“Well, I don’t think it was designed to be that provocative.”

You better not walk up any stairs, I cautioned, to which she retorted, I’d never step out of the house in this embarrassing outfit.

Considering that she’d taken Tsukihi’s clothes without asking, that didn’t seem like a very nice thing to say. But I doubted Tsukihi would be too mad since it didn’t pertain to her kimonos.

About only Level 2 on her anger scale.

“By the way, Karen, how did you know that Kanbaru and I are friends?”

I couldn’t help it when it came to being a quipper and had uttered her name, but I’d been very careful to keep the fact under wraps. In general, I hid my socializing from my sisters because they were bound to make a big fuss. They knew what was up with Hanekawa and Sengoku, but that was pretty much it. I’d been particularly secretive about my relationship with Kanbaru…

“Oh, right,” Karen explained, “you’re half in-frame in an awful lot of the snapshots that come attached to her unofficial fan club Kanbaru Seule’s online newsletter…”

“They don’t get her permission for those pics, do they!”

Unofficial fan club? Kanbaru Seule?!

Ah, of course, their cell phones! My parents decided to give both my sisters cell phones, at last, starting this summer, in light of the rash behavior that the “defenders of justice” get up to.

It was a bad idea.

Forget online newsletters, the amount of info the Fires Sisters got their hands on had increased drastically─the ruckus the other day with the bee was a case in point─and Karen also ended up finding out about me and Kanbaru (the pic attachments on their own probably weren’t enough).

The information age was terrifying. The world was truly going to hell in a hand basket.

Maybe I needed to talk to my parents and have my sisters’ cell phones taken away. Karen and Tsukihi were definitely less safe for having them.

“Whaaat? Koyomi, isn’t that a pretty old-fashioned way of thinking? Adults are always complaining about kids using phones during class, but back when they were kids, didn’t they work on other stuff and pass notes and all that?”

“Well, true.”

The tools change, but our behavior doesn’t. People are people.

While griping that young folks don’t read enough and are therefore ignorant, older generations can be clueless in turn about smartphones and the internet.

Kids who’re unable to read classical literature and parents who’re unable to read light novels might not be so different─put more extremely, Lady Murasaki may have been a brilliant woman of letters, but transported to the modern era, even a picture book would stump her.

Comparing a culture vertically is pointless.

Okay, that last line is Hanekawa’s, verbatim.

“When I dug a little deeper,” Karen reprised, “I found out that Kanbaru-sensei holds you in high esteem! I don’t know what trick you used, but she looks up to you as some sort of mentor?”

“Well…that’s not wrong.” It wasn’t wrong, but the way Karen put it sounded so off. I hadn’t tricked Kanbaru or anything, but it was all in her head.

“And so, Koyomi, you’ve become a real person of interest among middle-school girls. ‘Who’s this short dude bossing Kanbaru-sensei around like some errand girl?’”

“Junior high kids I’ve never even met have got it out for me…” I wasn’t bossing her around, and if anyone was being inconvenienced by her devotion, it was this guy, right here.

“No, they’re all your fans. You’re the burning focus of envious middle-school girls.”

“So much charisma, without my even noticing…” It was unpleasant in its own way. There was such a thing as bad publicity.

“Obviously, I’ve kept it a secret that we’re related, but this has got to mean something, right? I’m tied to her through you─it’s like fate. Like she and I were meant to meet. So please, couldn’t you introduce me to Kanbaru-sensei?”

“Fate, eh…”

“I bet she and I would get along just swell, actually,” Karen muttered as if she were just talking out loud, folding her hands behind her head, whistling, and casting furtive glances at me.

That was apparently her attempt at nonchalance.

What a pest. The fact that she was actually a good whistler only made it more aggravating.

Well, she and Kanbaru probably would get along─they were both jocks and tomboys.

All the same…

All the same, I didn’t intend to introduce my sister to Kanbaru.

Not a chance in hell. I had my reasons.

Namely─I happened to be aware of the sportswoman and national-level athlete Kanbaru’s little-known sexual proclivities.

“Karen.”

“What is it, brother dear?”

“Give it up.”

Szukk.

An unnatural sound emanated from my stomach. It almost sounded like a spade being buried into dirt.

Sister had resorted to violence against brother, and without a moment’s hesitation.

A lightning-quick spearhand jab right between the ribs.

It felt like my liver was gone.

“Now, now, Koyomi. Let’s talk this over.”

“……”

Hold on, it was going to be a second before I could talk again.

It wasn’t even a matter of pain. I simply couldn’t speak.

“You’re not ready to oblige your cute little sister? Fine, I’ve got some ideas.”

“H-Hrk…”

Karen was sounding like a regular hoodlum. What she had weren’t “ideas”; the gods had granted to someone they absolutely shouldn’t have something they absolutely shouldn’t have.

They could be a little too capricious.

If they were going to endow her with that option, equip her with some ideas first!

“Wh-Who ever heard of going straight from a dogeza to violence… Give me a break!” I was finally able to speak, but I could feel my diaphragm vibrating against my guts, and my voice came out too strained and plaintive to call it quipping. “What d’you mean?”

Trying to cover up how sorry I sounded, I attempted an allusion, but unfortunately, it sounded even sorrier.

I did like the first one best; I find it small-minded and limited of viewers to huff that only the initial series is truly Gundam or that they won’t accept the new Kamen Rider, but when I consider the evolution of Pretty Cure, I kind of know how they feel.

“Give you a break? What am I to do, Koyomi? How else will you see my side of things if we don’t talk this over?”

“Your idea of talking things over involves fists.”

As Tsukihi once said to me, in the context of human culture, punching and kicking was actually a means of communication. I think that only applied, though, when the parties were evenly matched. One-sided violence didn’t qualify.

Can we take a moment to recap?

Back in grade school, they taught me to be neat and tidy.

Let’s try that now.

Karen Araragi’s goal was to get me to introduce her to Suruga Kanbaru─or more accurately, to get me to introduce Suruga Kanbaru to her.

That seemed pretty set. Firmly, immovably.

Karen was the type to balk at nothing to reach her goal.

She wasn’t above believing that with enough moxie even one plus one could equal three. Once she got going, there was nothing anyone could say to sway her.

But there was another side to it─Karen rarely pursued goals for her own sake. She was surprisingly selfless in that regard. While she never hesitated to act on someone else’s behalf, her own will could be incredibly weak.

Even feeble.

That was one big reason I considered Karen a fake. I’d been telling her that justice for others’ sake was only a flimsy imitation in face of justice for your own sake. That was exactly why…

When she did have a clear goal of her own like now, she was very insistent, and I, for my part, wanted to do everything I could to help her achieve it.

However.

This time─I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to introduce Kanbaru to her.

I absolutely did not want to introduce Kanbaru to Karen.

That was my standpoint, Koyomi Araragi’s objective.

Experiencing the occasional setback built character. I didn’t want Karen and Tsukihi to turn into people who’re squashed by a setback─that was my stance.

There was no room for compromise between us. We were in total opposition on the matter.

It was a binary issue, all or nothing, and one of us had to completely give in to the other─and since I had no intention of doing so, my only option was for Karen to. How, though?

If it came to blows I’d lose.

No way I could beat Karen in a fight.

Well, if we’re being precise, with full backup from Shinobu, I couldn’t lose─but per human rules that was probably out of bounds.

I thought this staring down at my shadow.

We were indoors, so it was faint.

“Hrm…”

In any case, we weren’t going to resolve this by talking things over or punching things out. Getting beaten up wasn’t going to change my mind, if I do say so like it didn’t concern myself.

I’m large enough to accept any amount of violence my sister can dish out─I’d like to think so, being her older brother and all.

Maybe not her “dear big brother,” but still her big bro.

“I guess this calls for a match,” I said.

“Huh?”

“When we disagree, we have a match. That’s how it’s been between us.”

It won’t be an even one, though, I added.

I returned to my desk and closed my drills. I had no choice but to cancel my early-morning study session. I’d make up for it later.

No English vocabulary word superseded family matters.

“You’re making a unilateral request, Karen. In gaming terms, it’s not a match between players. You’re playing against the house.”

“Ah…”

Glimmer.

Her tone shifted. She lit up, as they say. She was equipped with a vector-motion sensor that responded automatically to any mention of a serious match.

“All right, deal,” she assented. “You get it, after all. Set any rules you like. I’ll overcome any and all conditions to be acquainted with Kanbaru-sensei.”

She was as dense as ever.

So dense that it sometimes made my skin crawl.

At this rate, she was going to grow up a catastrophe of a person─setbacks or otherwise, if she didn’t learn better, she was going to be “at risk.” So much so that I’d be worried even if she wasn’t my sister. Seriously at risk, dangerously so.

Well.

I was about to teach her a lesson.

How to go about it? She said I could set any rules I want, but I couldn’t make it too hard of a challenge.

My sister had a developed sense of distaste for cowardice and opportunism. Her “burning soul of justice” supposedly didn’t tolerate it.

The line had to be just on this side of feasible rule-wise and just on the other side condition-wise─a seemingly fair and just setup.

That’s what I needed, but I was drawing a blank.

While I didn’t want to make it too hard, for Karen not many challenges fit that description to begin with.

I mean, she’d even undergone a hundred-man kumite─and come out with a winning record. She was a lot gutsier than your average person.

Once, with a hostage held against her, she was pummeled by a biker gang, but even then she never cried uncle─though, true, I did have to come to her aid on that occasion.

If I hadn’t made it in time, it would have ended in tragedy…

How the heck did that happen to you in such a peaceful town?

In other words, excessive gutsiness was a problem. Too much could be worse than too little.

Even apart from the whole soul-of-justice issue.

If I wasn’t careful and made it too hard, she might go overboard trying, and it wouldn’t be just a setback, she might injure herself in some final manner.

She didn’t know how to back down─so you had to back up. Miss Passionate was the type to confront an enemy even when she was ill.

In that sense, I was the one in a fix here… It’d have to be hard and great if I was going to force her to admit defeat.

In fact, just the other day, when I tried to stop Karen from confronting that adversary despite her illness, we got into a huge fight… Would I have to go that far again?

Pain didn’t pain her, and shame couldn’t shame her.

Okay, she was kind of incredible… Calling her M cool fell short.

Was she really my sister?

Maybe she was adopted?

Hey, that’d be kinda moé.

I shouldn’t be getting cold feet even before settling on a match, but maybe it’d be faster if I just gave up now and introduced her to Kanbaru─hm?

Mmm, right. This was all because of Kanbaru. In which case, what if I followed Kanbaru’s lead?

“Wait here a second,” I said. “I’ll go get what we need.”

“What we need? Are you planning on having us play cards? No fair!”

“What a thing to be calling unfair…”

How bad did you have to be at games where you used your brains to think that?

Fear not, Karen, I won’t go that route. You won’t admit defeat if I did.

It had to be something that seemed possible but wasn’t (though I honestly worried about my sister’s future if a game of cards was too much for her).

Time to give her a glimpse of hell that rivaled the one I had over spring break!

I left Karen in my room and went down to the bathroom. I found what I was looking for right away and returned with the items.

Karen was sprawled out on the bed.

Talk about making yourself at home. Her legs were spread out audaciously, with her underwear clearly on display.

Apparently my idiot of a sister had even borrowed Tsukihi’s underwear. I know they were both girls and all, but Karen was going a little too far.

“Ah, Koyomi. That was fast.”

“Were you seriously trying to take a nap while I was gone? Are you Nobita or what?”

“‘No better’? But I am, thanks to my beauty sleep.”

“That wasn’t even clever.”

“Be nice or I’ll start sulking ‘Suneo’ later,” she shot back, working in another character from Doraemon.

“That was annoyingly clever!”

“Hm? Koyomi, what’s that you’re holding?”

With that observant remark, Karen sat up. The way she rubbed her eyes, she hadn’t been just lying down but actually napping.

Was I dealing with a wild animal? Or some sort of grizzled soldier?

“That’s my toothbrush,” she said.

Indeed. I’d gone down to grab Karen’s orange-handled, fine-bristled toothbrush. I also remembered to bring toothpaste, which I was holding in my other hand.

“Y-You don’t mean…” Karen looked uncharacteristically afraid, even a little green around the gills.

Hm. She was quick on the uptake, all right. Being a wild-animal grizzled soldier, maybe she’d figured it out.

I was hoping to surprise her, so I felt a little let down until she pointed a shaky finger my way and accused, “You’re planning on sticking it up my butt?!”

……

I was the one taken by surprise now. I felt like I’d grown some gills before going green around them.

What the hell went through that head of hers?

“I should have known any brother of mine would be capable of cooking up something truly fiendish!”

“Uh, this brother of yours wasn’t thinking anything of the sort…” She was overestimating me. I was nowhere near that level as a man.

“Really? When some stalker was following around one of the girls in her class, Tsukihi came up with a similar punishment.”

“I’m scared!”

My little sister was absolutely terrifying! Well, yes, it did sound like the sort of thing Tsukihi might come up with! Karen, herself, tended not to think along those lines.

“Not even Tsukihi struck on the idea of using toothpaste,” she marveled. “I knew you were in a different league.”

“Hey, don’t lump me in with Tsukihi.”

“I’m not. You’re in a different league.”

“I’m in a different everything from her.”

I was a little aghast. Tsukihi was a worse punk than Karen and could join a women’s biker gang. Her own brother certainly felt intimidated.

“Maybe she went too far, but a coward who stoops to stalking girls has it coming, don’t you think?” asked Karen, her face somewhat serious.

Given the vibes I was getting, I probably shouldn’t mention to her, for the time being, that Kanbaru used to stalk me.

I guess this was more of my sisters playing at defenders of justice. My saying so would only elicit the usual rebuttal that it wasn’t make-believe, that they weren’t its defenders but justice itself.

“A coward, huh? Yeah,” I assented, “I’m not gonna stick up for a guy who chases middle-school girls’ skirts.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Tsukihi said she’s investigating another rumor like that.”

“A rumor?”

“Yup. Word is, some high school kid in our town likes to assault a little girl with pigtails from behind─he’s more a pervert than a stalker because he hugs her and touches her all over. There haven’t been a lot of eyewitnesses so who knows if it’s true, but if it is, he’s gonna pay for it.”

“O-Oh.”

Wh-Wh-Wh-What a pervert, I agreed, averting my eyes with all I had.

Sometimes I forget that Mayoi Hachikuji isn’t some kind of otherworldly fairy that only Hanekawa and I can see.

So there were eyewitnesses, if not many.

Terrifying─our information society.

Ubiquitous.

“If some scumbag out there is sexually harassing innocent little girls,” Karen fumed, “I won’t leave it up to Tsukihi. I’ll get in on the action and rearrange the guy’s face.”

“Ha…hahahaha. You two sure keep busy, huh? Tell you what, if you find out anything else, come straight to me. You won’t regret it.”

“Look at you, getting involved for a change. I guess there’s a righteous heart beating somewhere in your chest, after all.”

“But of course. Hahahaha.”

“We’re getting off topic, though, aren’t we? If you’re not sticking it in my butt, then what the heck is that toothbrush for? What else would anyone do with a toothbrush?”

“……”

That was some kind of question. If we took it out of context, she was the real pervert. She’d have a lot to discuss with Kanbaru.

However!

Believe it or not, Kanbaru’s perverse imagination soared even higher! The spirit of that woman far outstripped pale words like “stalker” and “pervert”!

Which is why I didn’t want to introduce them!

“Karen, you mean you didn’t know? A toothbrush is a tool that many people use to brush their teeth.”

“A-Ah. That does ring a bell.”

“Of course, if we’re being sticklers, it’s also used to clean other things. Great for getting at those hard-to-reach crevices around the sink or tub, it…”

Ack. I was getting off topic again. Since we were talking about Kanbaru, I couldn’t help but think of cleaning. Tomorrow was the fifteenth, so I needed to go help with her room as usual.

“Koyomi, maybe a toothbrush is a tool you use to brush your teeth, but what’s your point? You’re not going to make me brush my teeth, are you?”

“Right. I’m not.” I nodded. “I’m not making you…because I’ll do the brushing.”

“…?” Karen cocked her head. The gravity of the situation still eluded her. “Um, I don’t get it… You’re gonna brush my teeth for me? Why? I mean, if you want to, I don’t mind…but how is that any sort of match?”

She looked so dumbfounded.

Heheheh. Knowing that her aloof expression wouldn’t be on her face for much longer filled my heart with joy.

“You and Tsukihi both get your hair cut at a salon, don’t you? Me, I get queasy about it. Having some stranger touch my head makes me weirdly tense.”

“Well, I see what you mean. I wouldn’t want to get my hair cut by a stylist that I don’t know.”

“Psychologically, people aren’t comfortable having their hair touched by anyone not close to them. I bet some girls would even rather be touched on their bodies than on their hair.”

Hachikuji was like that.

Once, when I grabbed her pigtails and pretended I was steering them like a Harley Davidson, she got really angry at me, even dropping her usual polite diction. I’d never seen her in such a rage… My regrets were still a fresh memory.

“Yeah…so?” asked Karen, a touch of wariness in her voice. Unable to see where this was going, she was feeling anxious. Her vigilance was second to none.

“It’s a matter of touch─a haircut is the simplest example, but I could give others. Would you ever trust a non-professional to perform a full-body massage on you? It’s that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing…”

“Brushing one’s teeth is that sort of thing,” I said, though I didn’t know why I was speaking deliberately like I was giving a lecture. “You seem unperturbed, but having someone brush your teeth isn’t a common experience. Unlike a haircut or a massage, it’s something you can usually manage yourself and do take care of on your own.”

I was saying this to someone who’d be chopping off her own ponytail a few hours later, but obviously I had no way of knowing. How could I have seen that coming?

“Let me break it down, Karen─getting your teeth brushed by another person is going to feel incredibly creepy. If you can keep yourself from freaking out for five minutes, you win. I’ll introduce you to Kanbaru. But if you make a peep before the five minutes are up, I win, and I won’t introduce you to her.”

“Haha!”

Faced with the rules and conditions, the match that I laid out, Karen laughed─like she was relieved. Actually, it was more of a snort, as if the wind had just been let out of her sails.

“Wow,” she said, “the way you were making such a big deal of this, I was starting to get scared. Now I’m kind of disappointed.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah, bring it on. I don’t want to imagine having my teeth brushed by a total stranger, but my own brother? I can do this. Are you sure you won’t be the one to give in first, humiliated that you’re brushing your sister’s teeth? I gotta say, there’s nothing you could do to me that I’d find embarrassing.”

Well, lookee here. She thought she was dealing with an amateur.

“……”

Keheheh! She’d fallen into my trap! Even her arrogant tone was music to my ears.

I knew full well that she was impervious to shame. How many years did she think I’d been her big brother?

In fact, I became her big brother before she was even born!

“Sure,” I consented, “if I break first you win.”

“Yeah? I don’t know, it seems like a really easy challenge for getting to meet Kanbaru-sensei. I almost feel bad. You could’ve picked a bigger hurdle. You’re so KY.”

“KY?”

“You can’t read the air.”

“Ah”─kuuki yomenai─“I’ve heard that one before.”

“How about SF for ‘a bit mysterious’? I wonder why.”

“What a grandmaster…so far ahead of his times.”

That wordplay, sukoshi fushigi, belonged to Fujio Fujiko. It was more than a bit mysterious, but enough of that.

“Let’s begin,” I said. “Sit there.”

“Aye, aye.”

Karen plopped herself down on the bed willy-nilly, sending her skirt flipping up in a mess. Maybe she wasn’t used to wearing one, and the hem was also too short, but clearly skirts weren’t meant for her, I thought as I sat down next to her.

Like best friends.

I added a small amount of toothpaste to the brush, twisted my body in her direction, and placed my left hand behind her head.

“Say ‘ahh.’”

“Ahh.”

I had her open her mouth and inserted the toothbrush.

Now then.

Time to experience the terror that was Kanbaru-sensei.

Take comfort in knowing that none other than Kanbaru’s fetishistic sensibility was your downfall!

“Gh…mphh?!”

Karen finally seemed to grasp the danger she had stumbled into approximately a minute into the match.

Her expression shifted. Well, make that quaked.

I’d never seen a face look so alarmed─and ecstatic.

“Mm…mmph, g-grk?!”

Now she understood.

Too late, Karen-chan.

The match was on.

Yes. My talk of hair salons and massages had been misdirection. Getting your teeth brushed is on a different plane.

We’re talking about fiddling around in your mouth.

Not outside, but inside your body. Not the surface, but underneath.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The truth is that it generates pleasure.

In other words, it feels good.

Brushing your teeth is such an everyday act that you become accustomed to it and don’t notice─I hadn’t thought about it, either, until Kanbaru pointed it out to me.

Yet it’s a stern fact.

Caressing a delicate part of your body with fine bristles can only feel good. When it’s someone else doing it to boot, can anyone possibly keep it together?

Karen had guts. She didn’t bend to pain or humiliation.

She was a masochist, you could say. A total, utter masochist.

Which is exactly what made pleasing her, indulging her in this way such an effective means of breaking her spirit.

Tenacity felled by pleasure! Pride bowing to indolence!

“Ng-gh…nmmphh!”

As I focused on a spot behind her molars and scrubbed where tooth met gum, Karen reacted in a most sensitive manner. Her body started to twitch and convulse.

Her eyes seemed about to roll back.

This was getting scary in its own way…

It was my first time trying this, but the great Kanbaru-sensei certainly lived up to her name.

Don’t hate me, Karen. I’m doing this for your own good!

You don’t want to meet the woman who came up with this crazy idea!

“Ng-gh…huph, huph, huph. N…gh, ahh, ahhh…”

Unfortunately─I had miscalculated.

I’d failed to account for just how gutsy Karen Araragi was. Not even pleasure could break this Gutsy Frog.

I thought she wouldn’t last two minutes, but she was gritting her teeth─well, she couldn’t since I was brushing them (another reason your body went limp), but she withstood my strikes, my strokes, my pampering.

This whole girls’ manga-like situation of being pleasured by her older brother must have felt really naughty to her, and yet… Hmph, not bad, Karen. Not bad at all.

She was inspiring me to try harder.

I (even though it was a little out of bounds) began brushing her tongue.

The underside of her tongue, to be precise─that part of the body was pretty much exposed muscle.

“Karen, you’ll feel so much better if you just gave up─correction! Give up and it won’t feel so good anymore!”

She was in tickling hell. There was no way she could endure this.

Another minute was the most she could take!

“Uh oh… Hold on?!”

In fact, the one who couldn’t take another minute─was me.

I guess Kanbaru figured it was too obvious to mention, but there was a serious pitfall in this match (which probably wasn’t how she thought of it in the first place).

I’d focused on the psyche of the brushee and rushed into this without stopping to consider the very important matter of how I, the brusher, would feel.

It was a huge blunder. One I wouldn’t, couldn’t recover from.

“Aaah… Pheuuu. H-Hnkk!”

……

Holy shit!

Karen’s moaning gasps were making me feel all funny inside!

My heart was thumping faster!

Her every reaction was getting me worked up!

What was this complex feeling, like we were breaking a taboo?!

Knowing that I was pleasuring my own sister felt so immoral!

Each audible scrape of the toothbrush, every frothing of paste in her mouth, began to feel less like cleaning Karen’s teeth and more like polishing my own soul.

Was I satisfying myself the most by brushing someone else’s teeth rather than mine?!

Was I so happy to be of use?!

Is this what my schoolteachers call “service”?!

Okay, probably not!

This was bad. Even the streak of drool spilling from the corner of Karen’s mouth, something I would usually just find gross, was instilling a strange sense of affection!

If I didn’t stop working the brush immediately, something terrible might happen─but even though I knew that, knew that this was wrong, my hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Like some sort of automated machine (an electric toothbrush, even), it refused to stop.

If anything, its movements grew more ferocious. The more I focused, the worse it got.

Karen’s convulsions, likewise, intensified─she was clutching the bed sheet firmly in her hands, I guess because she couldn’t grit her teeth, but that still wasn’t enough to keep her body in check.

And her face had turned crimson red, like it was about to burst into flame.

“Holy…” I said, without meaning to. I managed to swallow the words just in time─but the ones that almost escaped my mouth surprised even myself.

Holy. She looked so cute.

I’ve fulfilled my position as Karen’s older brother for some sixteen years now (The number includes the time she was in our mother’s womb, by the way. That’s what I was getting at when I said I’ve been her brother since before she was born─I wasn’t being rhetorical), but I never found her so cute before.

Earlier, it was only because she’d been threatening me that I praised how she looked in a skirt. No, I mean, it was just a slip of the tongue, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her she was cute now─but I couldn’t retract having thought so.

Once the data leaked, you couldn’t retrieve it.

Holy.

Holy, holy, holy.

This was insane.

Was Karen always this cute?

Wait… Wait a sec…

Was my little sister actually the cutest girl in the world?

Until now, I’d considered my ideal woman to be Tsubasa Hanekawa, but had I been mistaken? Even if she didn’t top Hanekawa, did Karen give her a good run for her money?

Whoa, whoa, hold up!

Koyomi Araragi, stop right there! Do you hear what you’re saying?!

What mortal could possibly compete with Tsubasa Hanekawa?!

This was an illusion, all an illusion! I was just drunk on the bizarre situation!

I saw that, knew it was true!

A-And yet…

“N-Nuhhh…” I moaned as if joining Karen in chorus.

There was some kind of synergy. I lost sight of myself.

My mental circuitry even entertained the possibility that I’d been born into this world just to brush Karen’s teeth.

What an idiotic mental circuitry mine was.

How could brushing someone’s teeth backfire so horrendously? I had stumbled into dealing with dark, forbidden arts.

But it was far too late for regret.

Ignorance was no defense. Ignorance would be my undoing.

This was beyond my control. My only choice was to let the pieces fall where they may.

“K-Karen…”

You know─like cigarettes?

That stuff people stick in their mouths and light up to breathe the smoke? Those super dangerous cancer sticks or whatever that are so terrible for you?

Imagine if they were some stupendous health supplement that made you better the more you smoked.

Would they ever have gotten as popular?

Well, I’m still a minor, and I don’t intend to pick up the habit even when I get older, but that guy Oshino constantly letting a cigarette dangle between his lips (not that he ever lit it) had left a strong impression on me.

You couldn’t help wondering.

Maybe it’s precisely because it’s bad for you─because you shouldn’t─that so many people smoke. That so many don’t stop even now.

It’s wrong, you’re not supposed to do it. Precisely for that reason─

It’s terribly attractive.

It’s terribly enticing.

It’s terribly numbing.

By the time you realize…

By the time I realized─I’d pushed Karen down onto my bed.

With my left hand still cradling her head, I’d leaned over her and pinned her down.

She was bigger than me, but I only had to use a fraction of my weight─and she went down smoothly, not resisting.

I looked at Karen. Gazed at her.

She was swooning, melting into puddles.

She was in heaven.

“Karen, Karen. Karen…”

I repeated her name, over and over. Every time I spoke it, a fever flared up from deep inside me.

Karen’s body, too, was hot.

“B-Big bwother…”

Thanks to the toothbrush inserted in her mouth─well, probably even if it hadn’t been there─she was lisping, her pupils unfocused.

Yet she said─bravely, she said:

“B-Big bwother… Go ahead.”

Ahead?!

Ahead to where?!

That’s how I’d wisecrack under normal circumstances, but I was feeling all sloppy as well.

Sloppy. Slippery.

Syrupy. Seeping.

Woolly. Woozy.

Wobbly. Worming.

I, Koyomi Araragi, gently removed my left hand from behind Karen Araragi’s head and slowly extended it toward her breasts─

“What in tarnation?”

That was when a boorish, insensitive, deflating─no, a saving voice cut in.

When I turned to look at the doorway that I had apparently left open, my other sibling, my littler little sister, that is to say Tsukihi, dressed in her traditional Japanese clothing, stood there awestruck.

Her eyes wide as saucers, her mouth circular, she looked like one of those ancient dogu statuettes. More dumbstruck than awestruck, she might have clenched her jaw if it weren’t on the floor.

“Koyomi? Karen? What in tarnation?”

For some reason Tsukihi was speaking with a Kyoto accent. It fact, it sounded a little like the Gion courtesan variant.

I guess she was confused.

“W-Wait, Tsukihi,” I shouted, “don’t get us wrong!”

Well, shout as I might, there was nothing to misconstrue here. This was, in fact, exactly what it looked like. The situation was pretty hard to misread.

“Koyomi, why are you brushing Karen’s teeth and pushing her down on your bed with loving kindness written all over your face? And Karen, why are you dressed in my clothes with a swoon in your eyes when Koyomi is pinning you on his bed?”

Tsukihi had recovered her senses enough to drop her accent, but the question she posed wasn’t as easy to dismiss.

Her wide-open eyes regained their normal shape to a degree─but only because she was narrowing them in reproach. We’d gone from circles to triangles.

The cold stare, coming from Tsukihi, was enough to shock me and Karen back to our senses.

Once I snapped out of it─

It was just as Tsukihi said. In other words, her question couldn’t be dismissed.

“Gosh! Why am I brushing Karen’s teeth and pushing her down on my bed with loving kindness written all over my face?!”

“Whaaat? Why am I dressed in your clothes with a swoon in my eyes when Koyomi is pinning me on his bed?!”

“Unbelievable!”

“Unbelievable!”

It was unbelievable. I’d never been so shocked in my life.

That…was…close!

Now there was a line you didn’t cross!

Taboo, too taboo!

“Y-You saved us, Tsukihi! Thank you!”

“Y-You saved us, Tsukihi! Thank you!”

Said Karen and I, in unison.

It wasn’t just our voices that were in synch. We whipped our bodies in Tsukihi’s direction and thrust a finger at her, our movements perfectly identical.

If this were synchronized swimming, we were golden.

Under the circumstances, though, our synchronicity only worsened the impression we made on Tsukihi. There was no upside.

A tin medal at the arcade was all we were going to win.

I mean, I was still propped on top of Karen as we spoke.

“Huh… Huh.”

Indeed, what Tsukihi did next was to nod with great interest.

Her eyes were no longer even narrowed, but shut tight, and her face was expressionless.

Karen and I were breathing hard, for an entirely different reason this time.

We were awaiting judgment, anxiously.

Viscous beads of sweat slithered across my skin.

“Yup…”

When Tsukihi raised her head, her face was cheerful and bright.

It looked like we were going to receive a sympathetic verdict. Maybe allowances would be made for extenuating circumstances, or at the least we would get a suspended sentence. Karen and I perked up.

“Would you two mind staying right there?” requested Tsukihi. “I’m going to pop over to the convenience store to buy myself an awl.”

Swoosh, went the rug out from under our feet.

A death sentence.

Man, an awl…

With a grin frozen on her face yet unsmiling, Tsukihi, at anger level 99, went out into the hall. Wham, she slammed the door behind her with withering force.

“Tsukihi,” Karen shouted after her, “I don’t think they sell awls at the convenience store! You’re going to have to go to a dedicated hardware store!”

The comment seemed a little misguided. Tsukihi ignored it completely.

Her feet went pounding down the stairs, and then soon all was quiet.

Yikes. What had just happened?

This was pure pandemonium. Even if she couldn’t buy an awl at a convenience store, with the mood she was in, she’d find one somewhere.

What to do?

Well, the more pressing issue was probably what was going to be done to us.

“Koyomi, you’re crushing me,” Karen complained as I wracked my head.

“Oh, sorry.”

I got off of her. She sat up as well and rearranged her disheveled de facto miniskirt. She seemed a little self-conscious.

A shy Karen was a rare sight. Usually, nothing embarrassed her.

“Koyomi, about our match?”

“Huh?”

Match? Was that word supposed to mean something to me? Was it the name of some plant? One of the vocabulary words I’d memorized that morning?

When I cocked my head in confusion, she added, “It’s been way more than five minutes.”

Ah, right. Now that she mentioned it, this whole incident had started as a match between us. Finally remembering, I glanced up at the clock.

Indeed, the five minutes were up. Or rather, fifteen minutes had passed.

No wonder Tsukihi stumbled on us like that.

“Aw, shucks…”

Ouch. I’d lost.

Actually, putting aside having lost, I had to give props to Karen for her tenacity. It was time for me to cede her the respect she was owed.

I may have forgotten myself partway through, but anyone who could withstand such extreme punishment deserved kudos.

For fifteen minutes, too. She was a monster.

“Ha, I guess you got me… A promise is a promise. Okay, okay, Karen, I’ll introduce you to Kanbaru.”

That didn’t mean I liked it one bit, but if Karen really wanted to meet Kanbaru, I didn’t have any reason to interfere. Or at least no right.

I did suspect they would get along. They were two of a kind, after all.

“You did well, Karen. Victory is yours. Yup, I guess today was my turn to lose. I give.”

“Mm-m…”

Despite my congratulations, her response seemed lukewarm.

Ahem, she cleared her throat loudly as I wondered what was up. Ahem, ah-h-hem.

She coughed several times, apparently on purpose─and then hunched her large frame into a coy ball.

“K-Koyomi.”

“Yeah?”

“W-Well, if you want, I mean only if you insist, I guess we could go for two out of three.”

“……”

“S-See, Tsukihi interrupted us before we were done, so usually it wouldn’t count. B-Besides, we’ve got plenty of time to kill until she gets back. I wouldn’t mind keeping you company for a few more rounds…”

Feigning extreme nonchalance, her cheeks flushing red as she made her proposal, Karen glanced at me bashfully.

“Well…” I─quietly gripped the toothbrush, which was still in my hand. “I-In that case, I’ll request a rematch…maybe?”

“O-Of course. I wouldn’t want to r-run…from a challenge… I accept!”

“Sh-Should we switch dealers?”

“Okay. Th-That only sounds fair!”

Neither of us meeting the other’s eyes─we plunged into a best-of-three match.

Which is how, as of that morning…

Karen and I began to get along just a little better.