The flyer on the library bulletin board was a death sentence written in cheerful, brightly colored font. My sisters' smiling faces beamed down at me, advertising not just a concert, but the public execution of my quiet life. Mikuyi, headlining the Tech-Fest closing ceremony. At my university. I felt a cold, creeping dread that was all too familiar, a frigid wave that started in my stomach and spread through my limbs. I could already see it: the swarms of fans, the glow sticks turning the quad into a pulsating alien sea, the giant screens projecting their faces- and by extension, their connection to me- for every one of my classmates to see. The fragile walls I had built between my two lives were about to be demolished by a wrecking ball of J-pop and confetti.
"Isn't this great?" Nami said, her voice a beacon of pure, unadulterated enthusiasm that was completely at odds with my internal screaming. "We can volunteer, get extra credit, and see your sisters perform. It's a perfect plan!"
"Perfect' is not the word I would use," I muttered, my mind already racing through a dozen disastrous scenarios. "'Apocalyptic' seems more fitting."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic," she teased, bumping my shoulder. "Look at it this way: it's the perfect opportunity to assert your independence. You won't just be 'Mikuyi's brother' lurking in the shadows. You'll be Takeshi Kitamaki, the brilliant engineering student, doing his own thing. It's a power move."
Her logic was so infectiously optimistic, so completely alien to my own cynical reality, that I almost believed her. But I knew better. My family didn't allow for power moves; they orchestrated grand invasions.
"Come on, it'll be an adventure," she coaxed, already pulling a pen from her bag to sign our names on the volunteer sheet tacked to the board. "Takeshi Kitamaki and Nami Tanaka. The Quantum Duo. We'll be unstoppable."
I just groaned and let it happen, watching her write our names. The squeak of the pen on the paper sounded like a nail being hammered into my coffin. The ink drying on the sheet felt like a contract sealing my fate, signed in a language I couldn't read but whose terms I knew would be ruinous.
The walk home was heavy with the weight of impending confrontation. My mind was a whirlwind of strategic planning. How should I play this? Feign ignorance? Announce it with defiant anger? Plead for them to cancel? The last option was laughable. Mikuyi canceling a headline performance because their brother felt awkward was not a variable that existed in their universe. No, I had to face them.
I opened the apartment door to find them in the middle of a dance practice in the living room, the coffee table pushed to the side. They moved in perfect sync, a whirlwind of focused energy, their bodies extensions of the powerful beat pulsing from the speakers. Hina paused the music when she saw me, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
"Welcome home, Takeshi-kun. How was the library?" she asked, her breathing barely labored.
"Productive," I said, dropping my bag by the door with a thud that felt unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. I decided to rip the band-aid off. "I saw the flyer for the Tech-Fest. The one where you're the headline act."
The silence that followed was absolute. Ayumi froze mid-stretch, her body locked in an impossible pose. Izuwa stopped toweling her hair and looked at me, her expression sharp and analytical. Even the lingering energy of the music seemed to vanish from the air.
"Oh, that," Hina said, her voice a little too casual, the first crack in her perfect composure. "It was a rather last-minute booking. A great opportunity for campus outreach. We were going to tell you tonight at dinner."
"You were going to tell me that you're turning my university into your personal concert venue, again?" I countered, my voice flat and devoid of emotion. It was my only defense mechanism.
"Don't be so dramatic, Onii-chan!" Ayumi chirped, finally unfreezing and bouncing over to me, her boundless energy returning. "It's going to be so much fun! You can see us perform for real this time, not just a boring rehearsal. You'll be so proud!"
"That's another thing," I said, steeling myself as I looked past her to Hina and Izuwa. "I'm not just coming to watch. I'll be there all day."
"All day?" Ayumi's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Really? You're going to be there to support us from the beginning? You can help us with our sound check!"
"No," I said, cutting through her excitement. "I'm going to be there because Nami and I signed up to run the Quantum Computing booth for the Engineering Faculty." I tacked on the justification before they could interrupt. "For extra credit."
The temperature in the room dropped by twenty degrees. Ayumi's brilliant smile didn't just falter; it collapsed. Hina's welcoming expression sharpened into one of polite, intense scrutiny. Izuwa raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow, a gesture that conveyed more cynical suspicion than a thousand words ever could. The Sister Council was back in session.
"You're… volunteering?" Hina asked slowly, as if the words were foreign and possibly dangerous. "With Nami-chan?"
"She's my project partner. We need the extra credit," I repeated, feeling like a defendant on trial, the words already tasting like ash in my mouth.
"How convenient," Izuwa murmured, a cynical smirk playing on her lips. She began to pace slowly, like a prosecutor laying out her case. "The non-threatening 'friend' just happens to propose an activity that ensures she spends the entire day by your side at the biggest campus event of the year. An event where we are the main attraction. She's not just a strategist; she's a grandmaster. This is her endgame."
"It's not a strategy, it's extra credit!" I exclaimed, my voice rising with exasperation. "Can you please, for one second, accept that my life contains normal student activities that don't revolve around you?"
"But everything you do revolves around us, Onii-chan," Ayumi said, her voice now a hurt whisper as she latched onto my arm, her grip tight and possessive. "And now you're going to be with her all day, instead of us."
"Of course, Onii-chan!" Ayumi suddenly said, her mood shifting with terrifying speed as a new idea dawned. "We understand! And we will be there to support you in your normal student activities! We'll have some downtime before the concert. We can come visit your booth! We can learn all about… quantum… stuff!"
I looked at her, then at Hina's thoughtful frown and Izuwa's suspicious glare. I knew exactly what this was. This wasn't an offer of support. This was a threat. They couldn't openly object to Nami anymore, not after the peace treaty. So they were moving to the next phase: active surveillance. They were going to "support" me by forming a perimeter around my booth, a glamorous, high-security prison of sisterly affection.
"That's… really not necessary," I said weakly.
"Nonsense," Hina said, her leader-mode activating as she immediately began to plan. "A controlled visit is the strategically sound option. It allows us to manage the public narrative of you being there. It will be our pleasure to see you and Nami-chan in your element."
The way she said Nami's name was laced with a chilling sweetness. The Hot Pot Summit had ended one war, but the Tech-Fest flyer had just become the declaration of a new one. This wouldn't be a covert operation fought through catfishing and text messages. This was going to be a direct, face-to-face conflict, fought on my turf, with quantum mechanics as the battlefield. And I, along with my unsuspecting friend Nami, were stuck right in the middle of the blast zone. My only hope was that the principles of quantum superposition would somehow allow me to be in two places at once: one suffering at the booth, and the other, far, far away.