Pamil took a noisy step backward.
It was weird, wrong; something had gone wrong. She didn’t know what, but it was wrong.
“...What’s wrong, Kyouhei?” Pamil asked carefully—in her own way—to avoid making things worse.
Kyouhei replied with an unnecessarily bright and cheerful grin. “Wrong? Hahaha, nothing at all, Pamil. I’m getting breakfast ready, so you should go wash up.”
That phrase had caused an intense feeling of unease in Pamil, but Kyouhei himself didn’t seem to have noticed.
And then...
“The hell? Something smells real good?” said Shuuhei, coming into view while biting down on a yawn, his hair askew. Then, he saw the arrayed lunchbox: “Wow, that must have taken a fair bit of effort.” He then casually reached out. “They look pretty tasty, let’s have a bit...”
Rudely, he went for one of the wieners. That was where Kyouhei’s yell came in.
...Or where it would have, normally.
“You can’t do that, Dad,” Kyouhei scolded him lightly “Children learn from their parents. Be a better example for your children, don’t just snatch food.”
Silence fell.
With a horrified expression, Shuuhei looked between Kyouhei and where Pamil was still frozen.
“...Ah... I see. The time has come...” Shuuhei seemed to have understood, but Pamil was still lost.
“Hmm? Kyouhei, do you have some sort of fever, or an error...?” she asked hesitantly, a confused expression on her face. She approached him timidly, reaching a hand out to his forehead to check his temperature.
“Haha, Pamil, I’m completely normal. Look, your tie’s crooked,” he said as he fixed her tie. His tone made it sound like it should have a music note or heart at the end. “There we go, done. And you’ve got to call me ‘Onii-chan,’ right?” He smiled widely. A ray of light from the window shone off his teeth.
Like he was sparkling.
● ● ●
“And that’s... what happened,” Pamil finished, speaking like Ju*** Inagawa telling a ghost story. “He’s been acting clearly different than normal. It’s like it’s someone else wearing his face. Seeing the lunch reminded me of it.”
“...Maybe it’s just Nanbu-senpai being more conscious of being your brother?” suggested Youko.
“Conscious of it? Hmm, I don’t really know what constitutes a standard brother in Japan, but if that’s it, why so suddenly?”
“Yeah... I wonder why,” Youko said.
“...Shuuhei said something about a ‘time,’” Pamil added.
“Hrmm...”
The two of them then noticed that something was wrong with Sanae.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?” Pamil asked.
“...Looks like her time has come too,” said Youko tiredly.
Sanae’s eyes were nearly blank as she muttered things like “Senpai... Senpai fixed her tie... He said ‘Your tie’s crooked♪’ and... Ahhhhh.”
“Sanae, don’t you start going weird too,” Youko grumbled sharply.
“...Huh?!” The chill in Youko’s voice had brought Sanae back to Earth. “I was nearly in the Astral Realm...”
“And where in Ikebukuro is that?” Youko demanded.
“More importantly, Pamil,” Sanae continued, ignoring Youko’s quip, “you said that Senpai was like another person... Could it be...!” Sanae pulled the strawman out from somewhere and started clinging to it. Who knew whether it was for curses or blessings, but let’s ignore that. “Senpai got ensorcelled...?!” she suggested.
“Hm? Sauce? He didn’t seem to have any sauce on him.”
“That’s not what I mean!” Sanae then began to explain, deaf to Youko’s attempts to stop her. “It’s like fox possession or dog possession... It’s where an evil spirit takes over your body and completely changes your personality...!”
“I... I see...!” A horrified expression on her face, Pamil was caught up in Sanae’s claims rather easily. “That would certainly make sense!”
“Make sense? You pair...” Youko groaned, but neither of the other two seemed to hear her.
“This is awful! How do we expel the spirit in Kyouhei’s body, Sanae?!”
“There are lots of ways... It’s alright, leave it to me, I’ll find out which way is best with a séance!”
“Right, I shall,” Pamil nodded at Sanae as she clenched her fist.
Things had gone far too off the rails, in several ways. Where would you even begin?
Even Youko, used to such things, had given up any form of protest and just let out a sigh, stealing a squid-shaped wiener from Pamil’s lunch. “...Poor Nanbu-senpai...”
Yes indeed.
● ● ●
“Agghhhh...” Kyouhei let out a heavy sigh.
He was... tired.
He’d gotten up early to make that elaborate lunchbox, and acted as brotherly as he could. His research had meant that he’d been able to play the ideal brother (from his perspective), but it was oddly exhausting.
So, when he heard the chime signaling they were done with cleaning the classroom, he slumped.
“Kyouhei, the rep said to go throw the trash out.”
He turned to see who was addressing him.
Mizuhito was standing there with a blue trash bag in his hand.
He had an electric guitar on his back and artificial red hair and green eyes. He was overbearing; his appearance screamed out for attention just from standing there.
“You look knackered, somethin’ happen?” Mizuhito asked.
“Nah, nothing really...” Kyouhei answered vaguely, taking the trash. Then, he suddenly remembered something and looked at his friend. “Mizuhito, you’ve got a big family, yeah? What’s it like having a big brother?”
“Huh? Ah, well, you know,” Mizuhito said haughtily, “I guess I’ll explain, even if you’re bein’ really vague about stuff.”
“Oh?”
“Honestly, I get that a lot.”
“Ah, didn’t know that.”
“The birth rate’s dropping, so there’s a fair few people that want to know ‘what’s having siblings like?’”
“...Makes sense.”
Well, looking at the students in his class, the ratio did skew towards only children.
“But it’s not really something that I saw happen; I already had them when I was old enough to notice things like that,” Mizuhito told him. That was fairly logical as far as Kyouhei was concerned. “Like, I don’t know what it’s like being an only child, but if I asked you, what would you tell me?”
“...I get you,” Kyouhei said with a shrug.
In other words, the relationship between siblings was just natural to the people involved, they weren’t concerned with ‘brotherliness’ or ‘sisterliness.’
He had a long road ahead of him.
When he thought of carrying on like today until he could act without being focused on the ‘brother’ part of things, he honestly didn’t know if he’d have the strength to keep on.
“It’s like... I’m just changing my personality with a corrective cast...” he muttered.
“Huh, you say something, Kyouhei?”
“Nothing, I’ll go throw this away,” he said, lifting the trash bag as he tottered from the classroom.
● ● ●
“Kyouhei—I mean, Onii-chan!” came a determined voice that you could even call heroic.
A confused expression on his face, Kyouhei turned back to look. “Pamil...?”
He was in the garbage site behind the school. It went without saying, but there weren’t often many people in the area. Kyouhei was in front of the huge pile of the school’s rubbish, next to a huge incinerator.
And so were Pamil and Sanae.
That wasn’t too odd; they went to the same school, so it wasn’t unusual to see them around the campus.
However...
“Wha...”
The thing that put Kyouhei at a loss for words was their clothing. They weren’t wearing their normal school uniform, they were wearing Japanese clothing which was painful to see, in more ways than one. They were usually called shiroshouzoku. On top of that, they also wore white headbands, with two candles apiece, sticking up like horns.
They were dressed like they were ready to go into a shrine at night and start hammering nails into a strawman... At the very least, those clothes weren’t suitable for cleaning in.
“Onii-chan,” Pamil spoke as she smoothly stepped in front of him, “no, whoever’s inside Onii-chan. Ready yourself.”
Then, gradually, like a predator stalking its prey, she approached him, with Sanae as well.
“Wha...?!”
Someone inside of me?! And what the hell are you doing?!
But Kyouhei resisted his yell, somehow, with great effort.
Calm down...! Like a big brother, just like that, tell off your little sister for running around like that...! Kyouhei demanded of himself, even as he could feel his cheek twitching.
He could feel his whole body somehow creaking, but constructed a ‘suitable line’ in his mind and put it into words: “Hahaha, what could you be doing, Pamil? We’re in school... you should be wearing your uniform, not that strange outfit.”
Calmly, kindly. Those words repeated themselves like an incantation in Kyouhei’s mind.
Then, Pamil seemed to falter with a whimper.
Oh, it’s working?! he thought in joy.
Suddenly, a huge cloud of something flew at him from the side.
He wondered if there’d been a sudden gust of wind that had picked up the dust from the running track or something, but there had not been. A tiny amount of it had entered his mouth and filled it with a salty taste.
“Ugh, bleh... What?”
His eyes were stinging. He took his glasses off and rubbed at his eyes, looking to where it had come from. Sanae was there, holding a pot with “salt” written on it.
“...I-I... I’ll do my best... for Senpai... and for Pamil-chan!” she cried. Was dressing up and throwing salt at people what she was trying her best at?
“M-Murata-san, whatever is the problem? I have absolutely no idea what I’ve done, won’t you explain?” Kyouhei asked, his smile faltering.
Sanae twisted herself, letting out a moan. “N-No, Sanae, don’t fall to temptation...!” she muttered to herself ambiguously.
“Silence, evil spirit!” Pamil spoke over her.
“Huh? Evil spirit?”
“I do not know why you have possessed Kyouhei, but as Princess Pamil Terrill Karl Bergmann, of the Bergmann Kingdom...’s body double android, I shall not be deceived!” Pamil cried like she was on a tokusatsu show. It was like she was about to use an Inner-S**l Illumination Beam or something next.
“We shall now hold the exorcism!!” “We shall!” shouted Pamil and Sanae loudly.
“...Huh? Ah, wai—”
“Making a cute lunch in the early morning, kindly fixing my tie, sitting there with a loving smile... all of these are the actions of an evil spirit—true proof you have been possessed!”
Yeah, ’cause obviously any demon, or Kyouhei in this case, would boast about that.
Pamil then pulled a bundle on the end of Sakaki wood that she’d gotten from who knows where and shook it back and forth. “Evil spirit, begone! Evil spirit, begone!” she yelled.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry... but this is for Senpai...!” Sanae cried as she flung salt towards him.