Kisaki-san, Orihara-san, and I were in Orihara-san’s apartment, and none of us could manage to break the silence between us. The mood that filled the room was intensely heavy.
Orihara-san had told me she’d be going to lunch with her coworker today, but it looked like she was called here just like I was.
Even though she had plans, she was forcibly summoned here... It’s understandable, I suppose: from Kisaki-san’s point of view, this must have seemed like that much of an emergency. After all, her little sister’s boyfriend, who she thought was twenty-five years old, is actually fifteen.
“...Sigh.” After a really long silence, Kisaki-san let out a deep breath. As Orihara-san and I faced her from across the table, that action alone was enough to make us twitch in surprise.
“What should I even say? I’m too shocked to be angry anymore,” she continued, her words spilling out like a deep sigh. She had a grim look on her face, like she had gone beyond being mad to being disgusted, and then went beyond being disgusted to having a headache. “So, in the end, the two of you were deceiving me.”
“W-We weren’t deceiving—” Orihara-san said out of reflex.
“You deceived me. Hime-chan, you lied to our mother and to me,” Kisaki-san said, stopping her with a stern voice. “You said that Momota-kun is a twenty-five-year-old adult, after all.”
Orihara-san was unable to say anything.
It’s just as Kisaki-san said. She deceived her. Also, it wasn’t just Orihara-san. I’m just as guilty. I’m just as guilty, and I’m complicit. I didn’t deny her lie and got on board with it.
After we had arrived at the apartment, we ended up confessing everything. I felt like we were in a situation we couldn’t lie about anymore, so all we could do was tell the truth. That’s why...we told her everything about how I was really a fifteen-year-old high school boy.
“You sure piled it on thick with the whole ‘rising young star of an IT company’ thing, huh, Hime-chan?”
“...”
“You even said he was an IT elite who’s an expert in programming and computering.”
“C-Computering...?” I couldn’t help taking notice. I can understand programming, but... computering?
“Oh, you don’t know about it, Momota-kun?” Kisaki-san said, like she was disappointed. “I guess you really are just a high schooler, if you don’t know anything about computering. If you were involved with an IT company, there’s no way you wouldn’t know about computering,” Kisaki-san said with a huge, smug look on her face.
“...”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but next to me, for some reason, Orihara-san looked like she couldn’t bear it any longer, and in a small voice she said, “...Um, Onee-chan? It’s difficult to say this, but...there’s no such word as ‘computering.’”
“What?!”
“It’s just an IT-esque word that I made up on the spot at our drinking party before...”
“M-Made up?”
“Yes...”
“No way... But I bragged about it all over the place... I even said stuff like, ‘He he, you guys don’t know about computering? You’re so behind the times’!”
“...Sorry.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me...”
Apparently, a lot of things have happened that I wasn’t aware of...
Realizing that she had been spreading false information with a smug face, Kisaki-san blushed bright red with embarrassment. However, she steered the conversation back to the serious, main topic at hand. “Th-The issue isn’t computering! The issue...is that you’re a high schooler and a minor, Momota-kun!”
I deeply lowered my head. I didn’t know what I should do aside from that. “I’m truly sorry for lying to you all this time.”
“O-Onee-chan! It isn’t Momota-kun’s fault! It’s my fault for lying to you and mom in the first place. Momota-kun just played along with me, so...”
“I’m not saying someone is at fault,” Kisaki-san said like she was at her wit’s end. “It’s not the kind of problem you can fix by apologizing... Seriously, why is something like this happening to me?”
She looked up at the ceiling and held her head in her hands. Her voice was full of anguish. “Just when I thought I had finally, finally, found someone nice... Just when I thought that I could become happy this time... Even though Shigeru-san has kids, I thought that I could love them if they were his, and I was determined to do my best to become part of his family... What is even going on? His son is my little sister’s boyfriend? Plus, he’s a boy I already knew, and someone I thought was a twenty-five-year-old adult? Just what am I supposed to do in this crazy situation?!”
“S-Sorry,” I said, once again apologizing to Kisaki-san as she yelled from the depths of her soul. I guess... I’m sorry for a lot of things.
“Onee-chan... You said that you met Shigeru-san, Momota-kun’s father, in June, right?” Orihara-san asked.
Apparently, my dad and Kisaki-san had first met each other in June, around the time that Kisaki-san had come from her hometown and stayed in Orihara-san’s apartment, and it looked like a lot happened between her and dad at the time.
Well, according to what Kisaki-san told me before at the karaoke parlor, they...were intimate on the day that they met. What’s more, it was something that Kisaki-san aggressively pushed for... How should I say this? I didn’t even want to hear that kind of story about my girlfriend’s older sister, and now I know it was about my own dad? Seriously... I really didn’t want to know about it...
“If we’re talking about the order things happened in...you met Shigeru-san after you met Momota-kun, right? You didn’t notice anything? Like his last name or his face? I think Momota-kun’s and his father’s facial structures are really similar.”
“How could I have known? I thought that his last name was just a coincidence, and as for his face...”
“As for his face?”
“...I just thought, ‘Hime-chan and I have the same taste in guys! That’s sisters for you!’”
“Huh?” The Orihara sisters blushed in unison, and I also became embarrassed as the mood in the room got kind of awkward.
Well, I mean, I do really resemble my dad. We’re both tall, we both have broad shoulders, and we both have subtle facial features with a rather hard look in our eyes. Like father, like son.