Pant… pant… pant… pant… after two and a half hours of pedaling with all my strength, I finally reached the front of my house.
I knew all too well that you could almost see steam rising from my body as the sweat evaporated off my skin. I wasn't hot… rather, I was burning up. My shoulders rose and fell with my heavy breaths, and I took a ten second breather.
"Phew… alright!" With a shout, I took out my cell phone and called my sister. After all, it would be bad if my mother was still awake.
"… Why the heck was your cell phone off… !? And when the heck are you getting ba—"
"I'm in front of the house."
"Huh?"
"I borrowed an amazing bike from a friend and got here as fast as humanly possible. Is Mom still awake?"
"… H-hold on a second…" I heard a clatter on the other end. It sounded like she had gone out of her room and was going to check. "… Looks like she's sleeping… I'll go unlock the door."
The front door opened in front of my eyes, and I saw the pajama-wearing form of my sister appear.
"Hey."
"… Mmm."
Naruko looked uncharacteristically meek as she nodded, and invited me in.
"… Onii-san, y-you're sweating like crazy… ah, here's a towel…"
"Ahh Thanks." I wiped my face with the towel she handed out to me.
"I'll go bring you a change of clothes… so go take a shower and come over."
"Yeah, I should."
I was supposedly staying over at Sun's house right now, so I knew it would be bad if I made too much noise in the shower, but I really couldn't stay like this either. So, I decided to take as quick of a shower as possible. And then, I dried off as quickly as I could, and changed into a fresh set of clothes.
Afterwards, I picked up my old clothes, my shoes, and my towel, and softly went up the stairs with my sister. We arrived on the second floor. Arriving at her room, Naruko turned to me and put her index finger to her lips, signaling me to be quiet as she invited me in.
It seemed that she wanted to do what we had come here to do in her room. I nodded silently and entered my sister's room. Following me, Naruko came into the room and shut the door behind her. And right then, we both were able to let out the sigh of relief we had been holding in.
In my sister's room, the table she usually put out when her friends were over was set up, and her laptop was turned on and set on the table. Why in the world was her laptop on when she had a desktop?
Well, putting those random, pointless thoughts aside, I handed two eroge over to my sister, "Here ya go. These are the right ones, right?"
"Yeah… t-thank you… sorry… you know, for asking that much of you."
"Nah, it's fine… "
Naruko sat down with a thump on her bed and set the two eroge boxes on her lap and began to rip off the plastic covering. Finally finishing with that, she opened the big eroge box.
"Ahah."
The minute she saw the contents of the box, her face lit up in a sincere smile. It was almost like she was a kid opening a gift at Christmas. Next, Naruko took out the game manual from the box, along with a clear case with the game disk inside. Holding one item in each hand, Naruko stared at the illustrations on them with a stupid grin.
"OoooOOoo… nice nice niiiiice… heehee… let's get this installed right awaaay."
Naruko plopped herself down in front of her table. The same table on which the laptop had been placed. Humming all the way, Naruko loaded the disk into the laptop.
Why was she using her laptop to install the game when she had a perfectly good desktop? Well, whatever.
… Geez. She was honestly the spitting image of a little kid who had just gotten a new toy. It was a cute, charming scene. It made going all the way to Akihabara, waiting in line for a late night sale, and then biking thirty-two kilometers at top speed on that bike seem all worthwhile.
I took a look at the clock on the wall, and saw that it was already past three in the morning. I turned heel, and took a step towards the door.
"Alright, I'm off to sleep. Tonight's a school night. You too, try not to overdo it… you can stay up and play that game, but just don't be late to school."
I heard no response. She was probably already completely immersed in installing the game. Naruko had her back turned towards me. So I couldn't tell what she was thinking.
"Hey, Naruko? You listening?"
"Eh? A-ah… yeah, I'm listening…"
She's not listening, is she…? She's obviously completely focused on her eroge, and completely inattentive to anything else. Granted, I could empathize. It's not like I had played many games up until now. But I still remember the times I would buy a new CD album of my favorite band I had really wanted, and the butterflies in my chest when I tore open the packaging.
"Well, whatever. G'nite."
"Ah, w-wait a sec Nii-san."
"Hmm?"
My hand was already on the doorknob, but I stopped and turned around. When I did, I saw Naruko purse her lips and lay a hand on her laptop. It seemed that the installation had finished, and the startup screen for "Oniai" was showing on the display.
"Do you want to… play together? For old time's sake."
No way. How the hell am I supposed to play a little sister game with my little sister? And honestly, that must be the hundredth time I'm saying that. Also, I was exhausted. I really wanted to get to bed. And what's more, my parents believed I was out of the house right now, so I had to get up early and sneak out before they woke up, right? So let me just tell Naruko all that—
"… Please?"
"… Well… okay… just for a little bit, alright?"
Yet that was what ended up coming out of my mouth. This is crazy. Indeed, tonight, I was every bit as crazy as Naruko. And so, for the first time in a long while, I found myself in the awkward situation of playing eroge with my sister.
We were currently both seated in front of her table, facing her laptop. And the question I had before, of why she was using her laptop… that question had an answer. There was a reason as to why she was making a point to install all her games on her laptop instead of her desktop.
Because from the very start, she was conniving to have us play the game together like this. And yeah, if we were going to play a game together for a long time, we were going to naturally end up in this position. But…
"H-hey… d-don't get so close."
"What else can I do!? I can't see the screen!"
"Hey, isn't your face pretty red?"
"T-that's because I just got out of the bath, alright?"
Why in the world did I have to be sitting here so close to my sister, playing little sister games together…? And… dammit… my sister smells pretty nice. Don't tell me that she put on perfume even though she's about to go to bed…
"This game was the newest in the 'Little Sister Maker EX' series, which was the sequel of 'Loving My Little Sister'. The game system was the usual adventure game system, and was the same one that had been used in 'Loving My Little Sister.' But the thing that sets this game apart from the 'Little Sister Maker EX' series is that there's only one little sister you can go after."
"So… you mean… there's only one route to go through?"
Just like she had done many times before, Naruko was explaining eroge to me with a smile on her face.
"No, no, no. There's only one heroine, but there are also a lot of routes for her! And you can't see all the routes on one play through, and each time you clear the game new story options pop up, and you can get to different endings… well, it's a formula that a lot of games follow. Each of the scenarios themselves are relatively short, and they assume that you're going to play the game more than once… in that way, it's sort of like the A.D.M.S. system in YU-NO. I still haven't played, so I don't know, but this might be a 'loop' game. And then, there are sneaking mini-games in the middle like you see in Metal Gear, and if you beat them you get a new item, and you have to get those to unlock the true ending, or something…"
Blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber… man, she just goes on and on… geez… it just drove the point home. This girl… she really loved these kinds of games, and she really loved talking like this about these types of games. I couldn't care less about what she was saying, but… well, it's not like hearing her talk like this was unpleasant.
I mean, talking about otaku things with Naruko was the only time I actually felt like we were real siblings… I think. Call it a momentary truce, or a special occasion. For me, and for Naruko. But there was still something I didn't understand. And that something was: why did she choose me? If this were ten months ago, I would understand. At that point, she didn't have a single person with whom she could talk about eroge. I was the brother she hated, but I was also someone she could talk to.
However, now the situation was different. Now… she had Blake and Rias. And, although there were a few strings attached… she also had Akeno. She had made precious friends with whom she could speak frankly about her hobbies, and hold nothing back. So, if she really wanted to talk about eroge, then she could just go to her friends. My business here should have already been done. And yet, to this very day, she was coming to me for life advice. She came to me and asked me to play games with her. Perhaps… it's one chance in a million, but perhaps…
"Thanks, brother."
"I… a-also love you… Onii-chan"
"Thanks for everything, Onii-san."
Maybe she didn't hate me as much as I thought she did.
Maybe my belief that we had always hated each other was just a figment of my imagination.
Maybe at some point, our cold war had ended.