“Ugh, just shut up already…”
I curled up in a ball under the covers and tried my best to think about something more pleasant. Like how when I moved to Tokyo and saw Kanae again, it might be nice for us to go somewhere fun together. Maybe the aquarium or an amusement park. I didn’t really care where, honestly, as long as I could be with him. There were so many things I wanted to talk to him about too. I wondered if he’d joined any clubs at his new school, what kind of friends he had, and…whether he’d already found a girlfriend. What would I do if he had? The thought of him having a girlfriend who was way cuter and funnier than me made me sick to my stomach, but it would explain why he hadn’t been in contact with me. Ugh, I hate this. I should just text him and ask so I know for sure. Yeah, I’m gonna do that. But wait… What if he says yes? How will I even respond? Gah, okay, no. I need to stop letting my pessimistic imagination get carried away. I willed my brain to shut itself off so I could get what meager amount of sleep I could.
A few months passed. Before I knew it, it was June, and the national preliminaries were right around the corner. I remembered coming home one day after eleven at night, totally exhausted from practice and work. But before I hopped in the bath, I pulled my bankbook out of my desk drawer and flipped it open. I glanced through the list of deposits to see that my savings were really starting to add up. Once I deposited today’s paycheck, my account would break the long-awaited million-yen barrier. That was more than a year’s worth of living expenses already! I did feel a little bit miserly, standing there wringing my hands (figuratively) over how much money I had, but seeing the numbers add up gave me the push I needed to keep going. I did some math in my head, trying to figure out how many more months of work I’d need to do to hit my original goal, when all of a sudden, the door to my bedroom swung open.
“Whoa!” I cried out as I dropped my bankbook on the floor in a startled panic.
“Hey, Akari. My buddies are coming over later,” said my brother. “Gonna need you to go out and buy some snacks for us.”
I couldn’t believe it. The gall—the sheer audacity. He’d barged into my room without permission—without even so much as knocking—and now he was demanding I go play errand girl for him again. I wanted to scream. Who the heck did he think he was? Despite all this, I couldn’t bring myself to talk back out of fear that he might start throwing stuff at me again. So I bit my lip and knelt down to pick my bankbook up off the floor. Once I returned it to my desk drawer, I grabbed my wallet and stomped out of the house without a word.
“And be quick about it too!” my brother yelled after me.
I was seething. This last remark nearly pushed me over the edge. Still, I did as I was told, went out and bought the stupid snacks my brother always told me to get, then came back to the apartment. My brother snatched the grocery bags out of my hands the second I came through the door, then immediately returned to his room without even a single word of thanks.
Late that night, right as I finished up my studying and was getting ready to crawl into bed, my brother’s friends showed up at the house—almost as if they’d planned it that way just to prevent me from getting even a wink of shut-eye with their stupid, obnoxious antics. Only this night, they actually went a little bit further than that.
“Hey, you’ve got a little sister, don’t you, Akito? Akari-chan, right?” asked one of my brother’s friends. Again, the walls were so thin that I could hear each and every word.
“Yeah, and? What about her?”
“Oh, I just thought I saw her around town the other day. She’s gotten pretty cute, man. Is she over there in the room next door right now?”
My blood ran cold. My body seized up in primal terror. I felt an intangible evil gnawing its way into my chest, tracing its icy tongue along the contours of my heart.
“Wanna invite her to chill for a little while?” said his other friend.
“Hey, good idea. Go tell her to come over here and get wasted with us, Akito. Lord knows we could use some chicks around here.”
“Dude, no. That sounds lame as hell.”
“Aw, c’mon, man! Fine, I’ll ask her myself. Hey, Akari-chaaan! You still awake over there?!”
A burst of uproarious laughter came blaring through the walls from the room next door. Even my brother was laughing now. Meanwhile, all I could do was lie there petrified, shivering in fear with my head under the covers. I didn’t even know what I would do if my brother came marching in here right now. The thought alone was so terrifying that I started sobbing into my pillow. Never in my life had I been more frightfully aware of the fact that there was no lock on my bedroom door.
I didn’t get one wink of sleep that night. My brother and his friends didn’t end up doing anything, but it was still the most harrowing experience of my entire life. I had reached my limit. As soon as my brother’s friends went home in the early morning, I ventured out into the living room and confronted my brother head-on.