In fiction, the situation might have been considered a ‘lucky pervert’ moment, but alas, this was reality. Kai was incapable of getting excited over his sister’s body. All he felt was overwhelming discomfort.
“Kai,” Misako suddenly broke the silence at point blank range with the most serious expression he had ever seen on her. “Let’s get married.”
“We can’t,” he told her flatly, “and I don’t want to.”
“Your sister’s serious, you know?”
“The way you just referred to yourself contains all the reasons we can’t. Besides, I’m serious about not wanting to, too.”
“...What a troublesome little princess,” Misako mumbled. “Rejecting a proposal from yours truly? ...Now I’m interested.”
“You can do your weirdly good ‘prince charming’ voice all you want, but you’re not raising any flags here,” he insisted. That aside, Shiraseki Kai’s gender was male. At the very minimum, he wasn’t a princess, anyway. “...Well, I’m glad you cheered up.”
“Don’t excite me out of the blue any more than you already have, my kitten. Otherwise, I won’t be able to hold myself... Hm?” Misako stopped, as if she had discovered a tiny stain on a shirt. “Come to think of it... you look awful, Kai. Did you paint those bags on yourself?”
“Why would I ever do that?” he demanded grumpily.
“Then I guess something must have happened,” Misako deduced. “Alright. I guess your dependable, trouble-busting older sister will give you a little leg up.”
“Can you stop giving me multiple places to stop you in one sentence?” Kai complained. First, Misako was a self-sustained troublemaking factory. Second, her legs had already been wrapped around him, so it was a little late for her to be offering him a ‘leg up.’
“Big sis is in a really good mood right now,” she said coaxingly. “I’m pretty sure I’d properly answer any question you ask me.”
“...In that case...” Perhaps it was because Kai had been swept up in his stupid sister’s blazingly fast pace. But he had spent the entire night wracking his brain... to come up with zero ideas. He was probably even more exhausted than he himself realized. But by the time he’d noticed, Kai had already thrown his question out. “Nee-san, why did you become a novelist?”
It wasn’t as if this was the first time Kai had asked. The last time he’d tried, Misako had dodged the subject by saying, “It’s to write about my little brother.” She did include a little brother in some form or fashion in each of her novels, so it wasn’t fair to say that this was a complete lie. However, just like with her usual antics, Kai had a hard time figuring out what she was truly thinking.
“...Young man,” she said sternly, “can you promise that you’ll talk to me about what’s on your mind afterwards?”
Kai hesitated for a moment, but ultimately nodded in reply. Misako gave a mature laugh, answering, “It’s simple. I wanted to live out my own reality.”
“...Sorry, what?”
“The reason I like novels the best out of any art form is that—no matter how many copies are printed, no matter how many people read the book—all it amounts to is a different world for everyone,” she explained. “In essence, I’m greedy. I want someone to see the world I see, but I don’t want to share my world with anyone else. That’s why it had to be novels.”
“But, if a lot of people read it... Is that different?” he wondered.
“For example: ‘The man was of average height and build, but his t-shirt bent along his hunched back as he rode his bicycle upside-down.’ I’m sure that no two people would imagine the exact same man,” Misako went on. “There exists a world for every person who reads it; that’s all it is. I don’t have any noble reason... I love creating my own little world. And I’m happy if that can become someone else’s unique world, too. That’s why I write novels.”
“...So that’s why,” Kai muttered. He could tell from all the years he’d known her; despite the fact that there were a lot of parts about her answer he didn’t quite understand, this was undeniably one of the rare occasions that Misako was laying her heart bare.
“...And?” she asked, pressing him to hold up his side of the bargain with her eyes.
Having experienced one of Misako’s scarce moments of pure honesty, Kai didn’t feel the urge to run or hide, and explained everything from A to Z. He explained that he had talked big by promising to write the proposal himself, and that no good ideas had come to mind. That, maybe, the reason for his failure was that he didn’t have anything that he wanted to make. Not only that, but his reason for wanting to do so hadn’t been spurred on by Hifumi Tetsuma, Kongouin Mirei, or even his own pride as a planner. It was just a pathetic show of bravado because he was anxious about the forward momentum he saw in Nanaka.
Misako neither laughed nor taunted and simply nodded along as she listened... or so he’d thought.
“...Pft.”
“.........Huh? Nee-san...” Did she just... laugh?
“...I, I can’t. Ah... Ah... Ahahahaha!” she cried out, exploding in laughter. “Kai, even for me, that’s too much for my heart! Give me a second here!”
“I already told you everything, anyway,” Kai said harshly. Misako’s roaring laughter was so far beyond his expectations that he couldn’t help but be a tad bitter about it.
“Sorry, sorry. I was wondering what kind of serious trouble you had for me, but... Okay, let me give you two bits of advice,” she began, holding up the index finger on her right hand. “First, Kai, it’s a mistake to think of people’s minds as some mathematical formula in which some singular input leads to some singular result. You see, humans aren’t made to be that simple. For example, I came here from my own apartment in this swimsuit earlier.”