In the week following the "Hot Pot Summit," a strange and unfamiliar calm settled over our apartment. It was deeply unsettling. Ayumi had ceased her clingy, accusatory behavior, instead asking me questions about what Nami was like in class. Hina stopped leaving therapeutic brochures on my desk and started asking for my opinions on Mikuyi's social media engagement strategies. Izuwa, in perhaps the most shocking development, actually acknowledged my existence with a nod in the mornings instead of a snide comment.
Nami, true to her word, had ceased all psychological operations. The 'K-chan' account went silent. My life had, against all odds, achieved a state of near-normalcy. My university life and my home life were coexisting in a state of détente.
Nami and I fell into an easy routine. We'd meet in the library three times a week to work on the Systems Architecture project. Our sessions were a model of efficiency. She was brilliant with algorithms and theoretical frameworks, while I was fast and practical with the actual coding. We were a formidable team. We worked, we joked, and we drank truly terrible coffee from the library's vending machine.
It was comfortable. It was easy. And it was making me deeply anxious.
This peace felt fragile, like a thin sheet of ice over a raging river. The core issues- Ayumi's brother complex, my family's fame, my desperate desire for anonymity- hadn't vanished. They were just… dormant. Nami's masterful diplomacy had bought me time, but I felt like I was living on borrowed normalcy.
One rainy Thursday afternoon, as Nami and I were packing up our things in the library, she paused while looking at the university's main bulletin board. It was a chaotic collage of club recruitment posters, event announcements, and academic notices.
"Oh, look at that," she said, pointing to a brightly colored flyer.
I followed her gaze. The flyer was for the annual University Technology and Culture Festival, a huge, campus-wide event scheduled for the end of the month. It was a big deal, drawing crowds from all over Tokyo.
"The Tech-Fest," I said with a groan. "Right. Forgot that was coming up."
"It looks fun!" Nami said, her eyes scanning the list of events. "There's a robotics competition, a student film festival, a cosplay contest…" Her voice trailed off, and her eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Look at this."
She pointed to the bottom of the flyer, at the list of special guest performers for the festival's closing concert. And there, in big, bold letters, was the name I dreaded seeing in any context related to my personal life: Mikuyi.
My blood turned to ice. "No," I whispered. "They didn't tell me."
"They're the headline act," Nami said, reading the fine print. "It says here they're doing a special one-hour performance to close out the festival. In the main quad. The same place they had the rehearsal."
Of course. It made perfect sense. The Educational Day performance had been a huge success, so the university would naturally invite them back for their biggest event of the year. And my sisters, in their infinite wisdom, had neglected to mention this tiny, insignificant detail to me.
"Are you okay?" Nami asked, noticing the color drain from my face. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Worse," I muttered. "I've seen the future. And it's filled with screaming fans, glow sticks, and the complete and utter annihilation of my peaceful existence."
The Tech-Fest wasn't just a concert. It was an all-day event. Students were expected to participate, to run booths, to help out. It was a day of mandatory campus community. There would be no hiding in the library. There would be no escaping to an obscure lecture hall. And at the end of it all, my three sisters would be on a massive stage, their faces projected onto giant screens for thousands of people to see.
And the worst part? The absolute, soul-crushing cherry on top of this nightmare sundae?
Nami tapped another section of the flyer. "Hey, our faculty is looking for volunteers to help run the 'Introduction to Quantum Computing' booth. It says participants get extra credit in Professor Aoki's class."
It was the very class our big project was for. The very project that was the foundation of my peace treaty with Nami. It was a perfect, inescapable trap.
"We should sign up!" Nami said, her voice filled with genuine enthusiasm. "It would be fun, and we could really use the extra credit. Imagine, we could spend the whole day explaining the principles of quantum superposition to confused freshmen, and then watch Mikuyi perform in the evening! It's the perfect day!"
I stared at the flyer, at the smiling, professionally photographed faces of Hina, Izuwa, and Ayumi beaming up at me. They looked so happy, so confident, so completely oblivious to the existential dread they were about to inflict upon me.
The calm was over. The storm that had been gathering on the horizon had just been given a time and a place. The Tech-Fest. I was going to be trapped on campus all day, working a booth with Nami, while my sisters prepared for a concert that would once again place me at the epicenter of the two worlds I fought so hard to keep apart.
And as I looked at Nami's excited face, I had a terrible, sinking premonition. This festival wasn't just going to be a stressful day. It was going to be a turning point. The fragile peace I had cherished was about to be shattered, and I had no idea what would be left in its place once the music finally faded. This was the end of Volume 1 of my suffering, and the prelude to something far, far worse.