Chapter 12: Volume 2 - Prologue

A step-sister is nothing more than a stranger. The experience I have amassed speaks to the certainty of that fact.

Our parents suddenly decided to get married. As a result, we’ve been practically forced into a relationship as siblings, with no affinity that should be born from our genes, and no overlapping birthdates. Being strangers as a result is quite possibly the most natural thing that could happen.

However, now that a month has passed since my old man and Akiko-san decided to remarry and the four of us started living together, I’m starting to realize that this odd position of having a step-sister who is basically a stranger is quite incorrect. I can’t exactly treat her like a stranger, since we live in the same house. That being said, if you asked me what kind of relationship she and I have, I’d be stuck trying to think of an answer.

School ended for the day, and I arrived at my house and turned the doorknob the same as I always would.

“Welcome back, Asamura-kun.”

“I’m home, Ayase-san.”

Right after opening the door, my step-sister greeted me with the same words she had been using for the past month. Because of a mere one-week difference in age, I was the older brother, and she was my little sister. Naturally, that hierarchy had practically no bearing on our interactions, as we are practically strangers to each other who had dropped the normal honorifics.

There’s no adorable ‘Welcome back, Onii-chan~’ welcoming me here, nor any verbal abuse like ‘Can you not make such a disgusting face, you lame big bro!?’ either. Luckily, you could say. However, as of late, at the end of our greeting, we’ve been adding a few more words. For example, something like…

“Your part-time work starts again today, right?”

“Same for you, Ayase-san?”

“Yup,” she gave a brief response.

Of course, it’s a frank and pretty altruistic exchange no matter how you look at it, but it shows that there’s been a change born between the two of us, albeit a small one.

The week before the end-of-term exams, I took time off work temporarily. As for Ayase-san, my old man and Akiko-san told her to hold off of making food for a while, or rather, they urged her to. Today, our exams came to an end, and we had just confirmed this fact with that little exchange.

This caused me to ponder the fact that I now had a little step-sister, who is both a stranger as well as a member of my family. It might have felt short, but a month is still a long time depending on the circumstances.

For example, if we were lovers who had been living together for a month, we would start to see all the negative aspects of each other, and our relationship would possibly start becoming awkward, which on the flip side would help us know each other better, and we’d become even closer than before. That’s about the levels of changes that I would expect to see happen in a month.

Of course, I had never lived with a lover of my own. This is merely a deduction I’ve made from knowledge I’ve gathered reading books.

So what would it be like if she was my actual blood-related sister? Indeed, nothing severe would change in a mere month. That would be the correct answer. If we ended up spending decades together, a single month wouldn’t change much at all. This means that there shouldn’t be any drastic variation to our behaviors in such a small time frame.

A younger step-sister isn’t someone close enough to irritate me and make me feel stressed whenever she’s around, but she’s also not someone I’m familiar with to the extent where it feels like she’s always there, like the air I’m breathing. I would argue that I’ve read a fair amount of books in my day, and yet I still can’t come up with an expression to describe this sense of distance that we have. Yet, that is.

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I started going to my room to change clothes when Ayase-san called out to me.

“I got some cheap chicken today, so I’ll be making Yurinchi chicken1.”

The name of that dish could only come from Chinese cuisine, so I found myself poking my head out of the room before I even took off my uniform.

“You can make that at home?”

“Of course.” Ayase-san gave me a wry smile. “It doesn’t even take that long.”

“Really now?”

Since me and my old man didn’t even bother with delivery too much, we just lived off convenience store lunch boxes, so I had no familiarity with exquisite dishes like that. As a result, my cooking knowledge hasn’t improved much from the compulsory cooking classes in home economics.

“Well, it’s only Yurinchi chicken, so no worries. I won’t go too crazy with it.”

She was basically trying to say that it wouldn’t be too much of a burden for her.

“All right. If you say so.”

Whenever Ayase-san is stuck in a corner, she tends to go above and beyond what’s required of her. Even though we had barely lived together for a month, there were a lot of things you could learn about someone in that period of time. This reminded me of the night, roughly one month ago, when she came up with the idea of a high-paying family-intern part-time job (with me as the employer). Honestly speaking, that was terrifying.

“Should you really be taking your time here?”

“A-Ah, yeah. Then I’ll be going… Oh, right.” Right when I opened the door to leave, I turned around one last time. “Can you teach me how to make that? I’d like to try it myself.”

“…There’s no need to force yourself, okay?”

This time, I was the one making a bitter smile. She had definitely seen through me. Current society is based on a contract system. Sadly, though Ayase-san has been preparing meals for us, I have been unable as of yet to introduce her to a high-paying part-time job, which is my side of the bargain. Ayase-san said that she’s always been more give than take, but I also need to show some results.

Pondering about what I could do, I started making my way to the town of Shibuya on another summer day with the sun still high in the sky. The cicadas also seemed to be reminded of their duties, and they were chirping to create a soundscape befitting the season. Through the gaps between the buildings, I could see cumulonimbus clouds that were colored scarlet red.

1 Chinese-style fried chicken topped with chopped scallions and sweet vinegar and soy sauce

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