Ask A Stupid Question

Get a stupid answer. One summer day, Shintaro helps Momo with her homework.

Sometimes, I think the Universe hates me.

I'm probably not the only person to think that way, and I'm sure there are plenty who could put together a compelling argument for why the Universe hates them more, but as it is, those plenty don't have to put up with the things I put up with.

Those "things" being an overly perky computer virus that never shuts up, and a little sister who…also never shuts up. Don't ask which is worse. The computer virus interrupts my livelihood, but at least I can take a short break from her by stepping away from any technology (for about a minute anyway) or striking some sort of temporary deal. My sister exists in the physical world. There's no escaping her.

All I want is to spend the rest of my life in my room in front of my computer drinking soda. Is that really so much to ask for, Universe?

Anyway, why am I complaining about all of this now? I may as well tell the full story, since I already started. It all began one summer morning…

"Good morning Onii-chan," As soon as Momo's perky sing-song voice entered my room (accompanied by her slamming the door open full force, of course), I knew I was in for a headache. I wasn't even awake yet. I was still lying on my bed in my un—sleeping clothes so as soon as I realized that my little sister was in my room at 7 in the morning, I reacted as any man in my privacy-invaded situation would.

Imagine it for yourselves.

"Momo!" I yelled some time later, "What the hell are you doing here this early in the morning!" The real question was what the hell she was doing in my room period. But asking that was like asking her to go on some long winded tangent.

…Not that she didn't do so anyway. "Sorry Onii-chan, I didn't realize you were still asleep," she was all smiles and rainbows. "Didn't realize" my ass. No sane person would be that early in the summer. "But well, you're awake now, so I was really, truly, innocently wondering if you might help me out with a little-not-very-important-but-it'd-make-me-the-happiest-little-sister-in-the-world task."

"No." I wish that would have been the end of it. But as I think anyone with a younger sibling can testify, refusal only invites incessant begging and whining. Momo lived up to those expectations beautifully. She even bit her lip and started pouting.

I like to think that I'm not that bad a brother to her though, so after letting her whine a little (in hopes that she would give up, which she didn't), I finally sighed and asked, "Alright stop whining already. What do you want?"

"Ah well you see, I have this assignment due tomorrow in history and um, some problem sets in math, and there's a passage I need to translate for English, and this and that and…um…" I didn't catch the last bit because she started muttering under her breath. But the basic situation was:

Momo needed help with her homework.

And for whatever ungodly reason, I was the one she came for help to.

"Isn't there a teacher at school that normally helps you?" I asked her skeptically. Come to think of it, didn't she have school today? It would explain why she was up so early.

"Well yes, but um…you see," Momo frowned and looked away. She was fidgeting with her hands. "People were…staring. I…um…don't really want to go outside today." I sighed and didn't push that issue further.

Under normal circumstances, I would tell my sister to man up and go to summer school, like she was supposed to. She wasn't a hikikomori like myself, so there was no reason for her to stay home just because a few people looked her way.

But, my sister is Momo Kisaragi. The idol. We don't live under normal circumstances.

From what I understand, whenever Momo goes out, people gather around her and try to get autographs. Makes sense, she is a local celebrity and all. But, according to her, it happens all the time and it's always large groups of people that follow her around, so every once and a while she gets very nervous and refuses to go outside unless she absolutely has to (and for whatever reason, her teacher appears to be okay with this, according to her). Personally, I think she's exaggerating (she does that), but considering I'd probably die of shame if one person looked at me funny, I can't say I don't sympathize a little.

"Alright," I caved in reluctantly, "But did you really have to wake me up for this? If you're staying home anyway, couldn't you bug me about your homework later?"

Evidently she didn't think of that. At all. Momo laughed nervously. "Ah well, I was, uh, going to do that…but, well, whenever you wake up, you go straight for your computer, and then it's impossible to tear you away! So obviously I had to ask you before you woke up. Yep, that's it. That was my plan from the beginning. What do you think? Pretty brilliant right?"

No. Not at all. I am not impossible to tear away from my computer. Just ask Ene. I leave her alone for minutes at a time.

"Yeah, whatever. Look, just give me an hour to get it together, and then I'll help you out alright." There were probably a few things I could do online in that time. Either way, Momo or Ene would let me know when my hour was up.

"Alright! Thank you Onii-chan," her smile returned, even brighter than before. I smiled a little as well. My sister could be cute sometimes, I guess, even if she was annoying and dumb as a post. Helping her with her homework wasn't my idea of a good day, but unlike her, I was actually fairly smart. How long could it possibly take?

Too Long.

I know I said my sister is dumb, but I can't believe I never realized how much. I entered the kitchen (where she'd set up her books) expecting an hour at most of just showing her where she can find the answers in her books and leaving her to read for herself. That's how we usually did things (not that I helped her all that often…am I a bad brother? Is it my fault she ended up so stupid?)

"Alright, what should we start with?" I asked taking a seat next to her. I briefly scanned the books on the table. From the looks of it, we needed to work on every subject.

"How about math?" Momo suggested brightly, "It's only a couple of worksheets after all." I agreed and let her hand me the papers. It only took me three seconds to realize something was very very wrong.

"Oi, Momo."

"Yes Onii-chan?"

"This is chemistry." I didn't lose my cool or show any agitation, but I was bewildered how anyone could mess up something like that. Momo glanced over my shoulder.

"Huh really? Are you sure?"

Was she serious? "Yes, Momo. I'm sure."

"Oh," she laughed, "I saw the numbers and letters and just figured it was math. No big deal though, right?" My eye twitched.

"No big deal? Did you try reading the instructions at least?" Her blank face told me she didn't. I felt my headache worsen. "Besides, the numbers and letters mean completely different things here. Letters in math are variables, they're placeholders for numbers you don't know and need to figure out. The letters in Chemistry represent elements, things with their own properties, and the letters tell you how many of each there are. Got it?"

She nodded, but there was still a somewhat blank look on her face. Good grief.

"Alright just give me the book, I'll show you how to do one." Her smile returned and she quickly handed me a book. I didn't even need to look at it this time to know it was wrong.

"The Chemistry book, Momo."

"Huh?"

"This is Physics." As Momo scrambled to find the book (as in, she ran back to her room to search for it, because apparently she didn't even know she had a chemistry book at home and it wasn't in the now disorderly pile on the table) I began to wonder just what sort of scatterbrained teacher failed to notice that his most famous student couldn't even tell the difference between math and science.

Momo was taking a while (no surprises there), so out of boredom (or something, I guess) I started looking through the worksheets. It'd been a while since I'd studied chemistry. I can't say I have any fond memories of the subject, but it wasn't that bad for me. My teacher praised me a lot anyway. I remember struggling a bit with some of the harder concepts and all of the formulas (and remembering molarity and molality and how chemistry had no morality…hmm I should tease Momo with that one if she gets annoying). But the stuff on the sheet was all balancing equations and drawing electron diagrams. I could do that stuff in my sleep…

…I think I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Momo was pulling me out of a daze by shrieking in my ear.

"What the hell, Momo!" I turned to her, half worried that something happened, but she was just standing there with the biggest sparkliest smile on her face. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"Onii-chan, you're the best! I love you so much! I knew I made the right decision asking you for help!"

…HUH?

I suddenly realized she wasn't looking at me but at the worksheets on the table and…why was there a pencil in my hand? Why were the worksheets completed beginning to end?

"…Oh," I didn't really know how to react to such a situation. How do you say, "I didn't mean to do your homework, but it was very easy and you were taking too long, and I was bored, and so on", while still maintaining an aloof dignified image?

"Did you find your book?" I decided to ask instead. She absently shook her head, eyes still shining in happiness. It was kinda creepy really. Isn't there some kind of limit to how…happy someone could look?

"Look, I only did it for you because you were taking too long, and I have other things to do," I snapped, "Sit down and get started on the next thing. You said you had something for English right? Get started, I'll supervise."

Momo sat down happily and effortlessly pulled out a notebook from the mountain of books on our kitchen table. She didn't even flinch when several things slid off and landed on the floor with a loud thud. Geez, it was a good thing our mother wasn't here, otherwise we'd be killed for this noise.

"Alright so there are these three passages here. Sensei said it's about three kids discussing their hobbies. I need to translate all of them from English to Japanese." She explained. I read over the paragraphs. They weren't too difficult, just a couple of words I couldn't recall off the top of my head. But hopefully she at least had a dictionary.

"Alright start translating these and just ask if you get stuck," I told her. There was no way I was going to do this for her. I wasn't even touching a pencil again. "But take your dictionary out. You are only to ask me for help if you can't find the word on your own." At this point, I was still willing to give my little sister the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she wasn't actually stupid, just extremely unmotivated. Maybe if she had someone watching her work and offering to help her (but only as a last resort!) she would actually do some studying on her own.

Momo's smile faltered a little, but since I hadn't abandoned her yet, she agreed to my terms. She translated exactly four words by herself before picking up the dictionary (which was one of the many things that wound up on the floor). I simply watched in silence as her frown grew exponentially while she thumbed through the little blue book.

"What's wrong?" I asked finally, as I could see she was nearing tears of frustration.

"Onii-chan, this word is not in here!" she whined and passed the opened book. The word she needed was "Expensive". The first thing I noticed was that had at least opened to the right letter this time. I started reading.

"Experte…Expertengremium…Expiabel…Explosionssicher…What the?" I didn't recognize any of the words on the page. Either my memory of English was completely wrong or something was very odd about this dictionary. I turned to the cover and seconds later smacked my head against the desk.

"Onii-chan?" Momo asked concerned, "Um…d-don't worry about it. Let's move on to something else."

I'm not worried about "it". I'm worried about something else right now, and trying my hardest not to explode into a fit of laughter and-or rage.

"Momo, read the words on the cover," I grumbled out, not lifting my head.

"Oh, uh, D-Deutsch zu Japanisch Wörterbuch. Is that right?" She asked. Her pronunciation was awful but that was beside the point right now.

"Very good. Now what does the word "Deutsch" sound like to you?"

Momo thought about it. I turned my head slightly so I could see her face. "Deutsch…Deutsch…Doits—Oh!" Comprehension finally dawned on her. See, my sister isn't so hopeless…yeah right, it's too late to think that now.

"This is a German dictionary isn't it?" she asked meekly.

"Yes."

"Oh."

After a brief silence, she followed my lead and smacked her head against the table. Well, I'm certainly glad we're on the same page now.

"Momo, give me your phone," I said with a sigh. I couldn't use my own because it was connected to my computer which meant that Ene would jump in (without permission) and I was actually enjoying not having her around. Don't get me wrong, I was still bored as hell, and Momo is annoying, but I really preferred dealing with only one of my daily grievances at a time.

As soon as she passed me her phone I said, "I don't trust you with this by yourself. When you need to look up a word, tell me and I'll search it for you. Deal?" She smiled meekly.

"Deal."

And so her English homework was finished. It took forever with her questioning me every three seconds, but I kept my end of the bargain and looked up every word she asked for. I didn't translate anything for her otherwise, and sure enough, eventually, she got her English homework done on her own.

It was actually very satisfying for both of us. It got her motivated enough to at least try to tackle a few of her other assignments on her own, with me solely as backup if she got stuck. It was…nice.

It really had been too long since I'd helped anyone with their homework, and I kinda missed the somewhat proud feeling you get when the person you're helping finally gets it, even a little.

I'd like to say we finished her homework after that with no problem, but as I've said at the very beginning, the Universe hates me.

Only history was left.

It was past lunchtime, there was only one final assignment left to do and both of us were pretty energized to get it over with.

"So Momo, what do we have to do for history?"

"I need to outline a chapter in my book. The section on the Seven Years War." She handed me a small thin book with a very inconspicuous dust jacket that read "Seven Years Itch War." Somehow the title or the fact that I was holding a tiny pamphlet rather that a comically heavy book wasn't a dead give away. I opened the book…

"KISARAGI MOMO! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?" I slammed that thing down on the table full force, my face red as a tomato. Momo stared surprised. She grabbed it and only looked at one page before her own face matched mine.

"Ah! O-Onii-chan! You…you weren't supposed to see this!" she squeaked out flustered. Oh good, thank God for that. Why did she even have something like that!

"Um…well…you see the other day I overheard this really cute girl with fluffy hair talking to her friends in the park about this series she likes, where um characters are like personified countries or something. I thought it'd be interesting to read and…um," she took a deep breath, "IpickeditupatastorenotrealizingitsadoujinshiandaverynotsafeforworkdoujinshiatthatbutitwasreallyinterestingsoI—

"Enough," I interrupted her quick rambling before she ran out of air and collapsed. I think I got the gist of what she was saying. I was pretty amazed though.

Never mind that my little sister bought a 18+ doujinshi at a store while looking for ordinary manga (what idiot sold a obviously under-18 kid smut anyway?), never mind that she put a dust jacket over it to keep others from seeing it (perfectly reasonable course of action), never mind that I ended up scarring my innocent virgin eyes with it (shut up!)…

…but the fact that my little sister mistook a thin doujinshi for a history book?

I couldn't take it anymore. The situation was just so absurd that I burst into side-splitting, tear-forming, unprepared-people-freaking-outing laughter. I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard, let alone laughed at all.

From the look my sister was giving me, I bet she thought I lost my mind.

Maybe I did.

Like I said, I think the Universe hates me. But moments like this are almost worth it.

Thank you for reading.

Kiki, this is for you. I hope it made you laugh, or at least smile :)