OreImo: My Little Sister Can't Be This Much of a Bitch

02

All these years and the food is still bland, I mentally sighed.

Yoshino—that is, mom—did her best, and I'm sure that by Japanese standards the food was wonderful, but I had lived on American food for one lifetime and the slop the British called 'food' in the second, and nothing could replace the food of my former homeland. And any time I tried to cook, I got complaints that whatever I made was too spicy or too salty—as though they still had working taste buds given the amount of wasabi the family aside from me consumed.

I mostly tuned out the conversation around me as I finished breakfast. It was more of the usual. 'Kirino this,' and 'Kirino that.'

"Kirino broke her record again. They say she might be going to a big tournament soon!"

Straight 'A's, perfect attendance record, and gainfully employed from age 14 to current day but no—no appreciation, I mused, shaking my head and excusing myself from the table. I was used to it by now, but that didn't mean I didn't resent it. A simple "good job" would have been enough, as far as I was concerned. A little acknowledgment of my efforts.

Right. Head out of your ass. No thanks for things that are expected of you. You're getting paid in grades and money, that's reward enough. …Fuck it, I'm moving out as soon as I graduate. Maybe see if Manami wants to room with me, if her parents will allow it. Ah, who am I kidding? Allow it? They'll start planning the wedding that day. Love her and them to death, but sharing an apartment is not the same thing as marriage.

The thought wouldn't leave my mind as I left home and meeting up with Manami for the walk to school only made it worse. "Hey, Manami," I asked, into a lull in the conversation after she finished telling me about a dream she'd had last night that ended up with her trying to eat her pillow, "what are your plans for after school?"

"Eh?" she asked, pushing up her glasses and turning a cute, hopeful look up at me with those eyes that were so close to my own shade of gray. "I don't have plans today, so I'm free if you want to…"

Chuckling, I shook my head. "That's not what I meant, but if you want to come over later and hang out…" I trailed off, leaving the invitation open and earning an enthusiastic nod and an "Mm!" in answer. "Okay then. But what I was asking was, what do you have planned for after we graduate?"

"Hmm," the mousy brunette put a finger to her lips, thinking on it a moment before turning to beam a smile up at me. "I think I would like to go wherever you go."

I nodded, seeing the school gates up ahead. "I figured as much. How would you like to get an apartment together?"

"Eh?!"

I smirked as the girl beside me stumbled and hurried to catch up. "Rent would be cheaper if we split it between two or three people," I explained. "Or is that too much?"

Manami shook her head quickly enough to set her glasses askew, then just as quickly righted them. "N-no. No! Not too much!" Biting her lip as she blushed, she added, "I'd like that. Did you have someone in mind?"

"Well," I murmured, thinking it over. "Maybe. There's always Saori, but she would be… dangerous. You know how she can be," I mentally snorted at that. Saori wouldn't last a night before molesting Manami in her sleep. Or me. Or both of us. Not that I'd turn her down. On the other hand, there's always… I hummed. "Yeah. I know a younger girl. She lives around here. She'll probably be entering as a freshman this coming year. She's… a bit difficult at first, but nice enough once she warms up to you."

"Like a kitty," Manami beamed.

"You have no idea."

Ruri flipped over to sit upright, turning an annoyed look on me. "Me. And Belphegor? Under the same roof? Are you trying to start a holy war?" Frowning, she asked, "When were you going to tell me this?"

I rolled my eyes. "As soon as Manami and I graduated. I figured neither of us would mind having a third roommate and you're generally easy enough to get along with. For all you complain, I doubt it'd start your 'holy war.' Spend more time with Manami. She'll grow on you."

Closing her eyes and leaning back against the wall, Ruri sighed. "I will think upon the matter."

"Admittedly, it may be cramped, depending on what we can afford," I warned. "And if you're still in high school, it wouldn't be fair to expect you to try to work some shitty part-time job just to help Manami and I with rent."

"That wouldn't bother me," Ruri shook her head. "We'll speak more on it later. How did you know where I lived? We hadn't actually met in person at the time."

I shrugged. "I did background checks for every applicant to the site, to make sure they weren't really men trying to infiltrate Saori's little haven—up to and including visits in person. If they used false information, they were asked to correct their account information. If they still didn't check out or if they refused, they were quietly banned. That's why there's a three day trial period on the back end that the users aren't aware of. I have to manually disable the kill switch on accounts before the system shuts off their ability to do anything but view mail from and reply to the admins."

"Paranoid," Ruri pointed out.

"Thirty-one." When Ruri raised an eyebrow, I clarified. "I've had to ban thirty-one people for attempted infiltration using falsified information. Twenty-eight men looking to find someone to date and willing to admit to it when confronted, one cross-dresser, one transvestite, and one pedophile. The guys looking for dates were referred to a popular anime/gaming dating website. The other two, their families were quietly informed of their hobbies, their accounts banned, and they stopped being my problem. The last was reported to the police. After a bit of work on my part. It's only 'entrapment' when the police do it. And before you ask, not some guy who thinks high school girls are hot—I'm talking about the kind of person you don't let near an elementary school because they own a nondescript white panel van."

"I see," Ruri murmured. "Continue."

"So pushy," I grumbled, earning a smirk in answer. "Fine. School was, well, school…"

Kicking off my shoes and changing into my house slippers, I made my way deeper into the house. Sprawled on the sofa and talking to Ayase by the sound of it was Kirino—perpetual thorn in my side. She abruptly shut up and her light blue eyes snapped to mine. "I'm home."

And just like that, she went back to ignoring me and speaking into her phone. Shaking my head, I made my way into the kitchen and cast about inside the refrigerator for something to drink. Passing over the carton of tea with a grimace, I found orange juice, poured a glass, and downed it before heading upstairs. I got halfway up them before remembering I'd left the juice sitting out. Dropping my bag on the stairs, I sighed quietly and made my way back to the kitchen. Or would have, had Kirino not come running out of the door to the other room and slammed into me, knocking us both to the floor and sending the contents of her purse scattering across the room.

"Excuse me," I said by force of habit.

"Watch where you're going!" the ginger growled as she began gathering her things.

"You're the one who was running," I pointed out, bending down to help her pick up her things and earning a swat at my hand for my trouble. "Fine, do it yourself. But if you keep slapping hands away like that, eventually people are going to get the right idea and stop offering."

"I can do it myself," she grumbled, quickly shoving her things in her bag. She moved to the door, swapping out her slippers for shoes and tossing out a quiet, "I'm going out," as she left.

"Bitch," I grunted quietly as the door closed behind her. I was about to head back upstairs when something under the table beside the door caught my eye. Bending down, I picked up the dvd box and examined the cover. "Stardust Witch Meruru? Ugh. Worst kind of moe magical girl trash," I shook my head. "Kirino, you've got shit taste."

Of course, there was always the possibility she'd borrowed it from someone else, but I kind of doubted it. As standoffish as we were from each other these days, I liked to think I still had an idea of the sorts of things my younger sister liked—and the pink, spakly vomit on the dvd cover fit the bill for Kirino's tastes.

Gathering up my bag and heading back upstairs, I considered the dvd in my hand. Well, I've watched worse, I mused. I had some time to kill before Manami got here from stopping by her family's house, so I could watch an episode and see what all the fuss was about. Especially since it was now plainly obvious that this was why Kirino had been so pissy about me helping her gather her things.

Karma is a bitch, but sometimes she puts out for me. When she's not trying to kick me in the nuts.

Dropping my school bag beside my desk, I turned on my laptop and popped out the disc tray as it booted into Linux. Opening the dvd box, I frowned at what I found inside. Make Love with Little Sister! – Limited First Edition. R-18.

My login screen chimed and I hummed. Quickly tapping in my password, I dropped the disc in the tray and set about running the contents under an emulator. An installer bearing the same name as the disc popped up, along with multiple warnings about this being an adult rated game. Sighing, I unmounted the volume and ejected the tray before slapping the disc back into the box. "Filth."

Footsteps coming up the stairs alerted me to another presence in the house and I realized I had been so distracted I hadn't noticed the front door opening. Civvie life has me slipping, I frowned. Quickly dropping the disc into my desk drawer, I opened my web browser and waited.

The door opened with no knock and once more, I contemplated getting a damned lock for it. "Kyosuke, are you studying?" Turning the chair around so I could see her properly, I spotted a mischievous look on Yoshino's face as she covered her mouth with a hand. I knew damn well she had tried to sneak up here and had barged in without knocking just to cause trouble. My mother was a troll. "Oh, did I come at a bad time?"

My brain-to-mouth filter failed completely and I responded with the first smartass comment that came to mind. "Nope, I was just doing some last minute research. Oh, by the way, Manami's coming over in a few. Do us a favor and ignore any strange noises you hear from my room, okay?" Yoshino's eyes went momentarily wide before she laughed. I raised an eyebrow at that and smirked. "You think I'm joking, but Manami wouldn't complain if I pushed her down."

"And if you did, I would say it was about time," the woman who was my mother in this new life smirked, crossing her arms under her breasts and leaning against the door frame. "Haven't you kept that poor girl waiting long enough? A man should take responsibility, you know."

"And just like that, I remember why I can't play that game with you," I muttered, earning a triumphant look in return. Our relationship was… strange at times. Sometimes, she acted as a mother should. Other times, Yoshino was more like an older sister or even a friend. Then again, I had been a strange child, even by Japanese standards—I had always been far too serious and mature for my age. I suppose she had simply adapted to that and treated me in a way we could both agree with.

"Will she be staying for dinner?" she asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

I considered it for a moment before asking, "If that's okay?" Yoshino nodded and I added, "I think we'll just grab dinner and bring it upstairs and watch a movie or something."

"That's fine, dear," Yoshino said, pulling the door closed as she left, before sticking her head back in for one last jab. "Oh, and Kyosuke? If you do push Manami-chan down, there's a box of condoms in the back of the medicine cabinet. And put a tie on the door would you?"

I sighed, palming my face. "Sure."

As soon as Yoshino's footsteps retreated down the stairs, I pulled the eroge in a dvd box from my desk drawer. Quietly opening my bedroom door, I slipped down the hall to Kirino's door and opened it. Once inside, I flipped on the lights and looked around for the best place to put the future blackmail material I'd found. Spying a stack of multi-colored sticky notes on her desk, along with a pen, I smirked. Peeling one off, I wrote a short note and stuck it to the outside of the box, right across the pink-haired abomination's face.

'You have shit taste in anime.'

Wondering if I should pull my punches a bit, I thought back to the incident in the hallway and decided against it. No, she needed her nose rubbed in it in the worst way. Another sticky note went into the box, on the game disc.

'Also, shit taste in eroge. I didn't tell mom and dad. You're welcome. -Kyo'

The doorbell sounded from below and I smiled. That would be Manami, I mused, dropping the dvd onto Kirino's bed and slipping back out to meet my friend.

Weight pressed down on the bed to my right and I frowned as I came swiftly awake. There was an intruder in my room.

A small hand carefully but firmly pried my right hand out from around Manami's hips—

"You slept with her?"

I sighed, resisting the urge to facepalm. "Ruri, Manami and I have been sleeping together for years." Ruri's blue eyes went wide at that and my lips twitched up into a grin. "But we hadn't had sex at that point, if that's what you're asking."

"O-oh," she murmured, looking away and twiddling her fingers in her lap. "Why not?"

I turned an amused look on her. "Where would we?" I asked, gesturing around my room. "I only recently installed a lock on the door. Before that, Kirino or my parents could have easily caught us. Mom had a bad habit of checking in on us in the middle of the night for a while. At her house, her parents and grandparents have been known to stay up late just to listen for creaky floorboards. I caught her grandmother peeking into the room one night just to check on us. The woman was disappointed she didn't catch us in the act, but seemed happy enough to see us spooning. Which is what we were doing when Kirino made her midnight visit."

"S-so you've never…" Ruri trailed off, shifting her gaze back to me.

"Had sex? Made love? Fucked?" With each term, the blush spread further down Ruri's pale neck and I smirked. "A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell." Almost as an afterthought, I added, "I'm not a virgin though, in case you're wondering." A thought occurred and I frowned. "For a while there, I was Schroedinger's Virgin. In a quantum state of both being a virgin and not at the same time. Twice over."

Ruri choked on a laugh before shooting me a glare. "Don't make me laugh when I'm annoyed at you."

"Well, if we're being honest, I've slept with Saori too," I shrugged, earning a deepening glare from Ruri. "It was work-related."

"How is sleeping with Saori related to your work?"

Grinning, and knowing it got on her nerves, I answered, "It is when you're trying to meet a deadline and need a place to go to get away from distractions. Have you ever been to Saori's house?"

Ruri frowned. "I can't say that I have," she murmured.

"Then I won't spoil the surprise. I will say she sleepwalks and gets handsy in her sleep." I paused a beat, considering it before a smile pulled my lips upwards. "And before sleep. And after she wakes up. Really, it's best to just accept that if Saori wanders into your bed at night, you're going to get felt up."

The smaller girl sighed. "Now I'm suddenly thankful I never agreed to spend the night with her."

I nodded. "You're just the right size for her to use as a human dakimakura. And she absolutely would."

"I didn't mean sleep, though. I meant," she paused before quietly saying, "making love."

"I know. It's complicated."

Ruri turned a deadpan expression on me. "Un-complicate it. But finish this part before you get into that. I don't like stories told out of order."

My hand snapped out and caught a small wrist as I heard the air parting from the coming blow. Opening my eyes, I glared at my attacker, only to find myself glaring into a pair of blue eyes under orange hair.

"Kirino," I hissed quietly, squeezing her wrist hard enough to let her know I was annoyed at the intrusion before letting go. "What?"

Shifting up onto her knees, the redhead rubbed her wrist for a moment as her eyes trailed over to Manami's sleeping form. Kirino and Manami had gotten into a fight—once. It was some time after the accident. Kirino being Kirino had said something that upset Manami, whose saintly patience had frayed for once. I forget what was even said, but I remember the results. Kirino hit Manami, I threw Kirino out of my room and refused to so much as acknowledge her presence until she apologized—to Manami, not to me—and Kirino never laid a hand on Manami again.

No, she kept her violence strictly between the two of us from then on.

"Come to my room," the ginger quietly demanded.

I glanced at the clock and frowned. "It's one in the morning, on a school night—when Manami is sleeping over. This had better be good," I warned.

Kirino rolled her eyes and padded softly out of my room. Gently disentangling myself from Manami's tee-shirt clad form, I followed in my little sister's wake, closing the door behind me. "What was so important?" I yawned, standing just inside the threshold of Kirino's brightly lit room in nothing more than my boxers and a tee-shirt—and Kirino was lucky I'd been wearing that much when she dragged me out of bed.

"You sleep naked?"

I turned an amused look on Ruri. "What? It's comfortable. You don't?"

The smaller girl shook her head. "My sisters…"

"Ahh, right. No privacy," I nodded. Casting a glance at the bed, I hummed. "You know, you could when you sleep over tonight. I wouldn't mind."

Ruri blinked twice, blushing faintly as she considered the idea. We both knew the plan was for her to sleep over tonight since her parents were home and could watch her sisters and mine were out, which gave her a rare opportunity to spend the night away from home. "Perhaps," she murmured. "Or perhaps that could be part of your plan to seduce me—get me to lower my guard, leave myself defenseless, and then ravage me like some wanton beast."

I snorted softly at that. "If I wanted to ravage you, I'd push you down and do it. I have more self control than that."

"Then if I asked you to spend the night with me—" she blurted, and I could see from the way her whole body twitched she wished the words hadn't escaped, but now that they were out she wouldn't take them back. She was stubborn enough to own it now that it'd slipped past her lips.

I'd think you were trying to get one over on Manami, not that it's possible. Or that it'd matter, I did not say aloud. Instead, I shrugged. "I'm game if you are. Now, stop interrupting the story you asked for."

"Fine."

Kirino took a deep breath, but when she didn't move otherwise, I groaned quietly. "Right. I'm going back to bed. Hopefully we didn't wake Manami—"

"You found it."

It took a moment for my sleep-addled brain to catch up before I finally nodded. "Yes, I found your dvd box and its contents." I couldn't resist the follow-on attack. "Next time, maybe you shouldn't be so hasty to dismiss someone's help. Karma's a bitch like that."

Kirino glared before looking away and crossing her arms. "You said I had bad taste."

"No, I said you had shit taste," I deadpanned.

"It is not shit!" she retorted hotly, but managed to keep her voice down.

I shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat." Smirking, I added, "Which, in this case, is a river of shit."

"It doesn't bother you?"

There was a note of something like desperation in her voice and for just a moment, I remembered my sister as she was before. Before Kirino was a bitch, we had been close—damn near inseparable. She had grown on me. And in a moment of weakness, I stopped seeing the bitch she had become and saw the girl she had been—which may have colored my answer more than I'd have liked. "No. It's not my cup of tea, but we live in Japan and we have a high speed internet connection. I've seen weirder. What we have is a difference of opinion: I think your taste in anime and games is shit, yes, but I don't have a problem with it. If you enjoy shit, by all means, have at."

The girl before me frowned and asked, "So even if I had more, you wouldn't make fun of me?"

I rolled my eyes. Insecure much? Well, I suppose I have an advantage there. I accepted and owned who and what I was years ago.

"No." A teasing grin crossed my lips as I added, "Unless it's shit."

"It's not shit!" she growled.

"If you say so." I shrugged. "Well, if that's it—"

"Life counseling."

I blinked. "Say again?"

Kirino forced the words out in a quiet hiss. "I need life counseling."

This time, I did facepalm. I glanced at the clock on her desk and groaned internally. Maybe I can hurry this along a bit.

"Fine. What with?"

Kirino moved past me, to an empty bookshelf beside the door. Sliding it aside, I raised an eyebrow at the hidden door she revealed. She opened the door and this time, I did groan as I caught sight of what was there. "Y-you said you wouldn't make fun of me!"

"I'm not making fun of you," I sighed before beginning a mental tally and coming up with an outrageous number. "You wasted over three hundred thousand yen on that pile of junk."

Kirino glared, her fists twitching, but didn't move to strike at me. "It's not junk!" After a moment, she added, "And it was more like half a million yen. For the dvds. The games cost more."

"Jesus," I muttered under my breath. "Kirino, I'm going to save you a lot of trouble—and money—in the future. There's this magical thing called 'the internet.' On this interconnected network of computers, this 'world wide web,' there are sites you can go to find things. Some of these 'web sites' host things called 'torrent files,' which are collections of all your favorite anime, manga, tv shows, music, games, and pretty much anything that can be converted into a digital medium. These 'torrents' are absolutely free to use. That half a million yen? Could have gone towards something important—like a bike, or a car, or an apartment of your own."

"But piracy is illegal—"

"So is an underaged girl buying and playing adult rated games, technically—well, it's illegal to sell them to you. It's contributing to the delinquency of a minor." Or whatever the local equivalent was. Some morality law that basically meant the same thing. "The bigger evil is that you wasted money on physical copies of that stuff when you could've gotten it for free. Sure, I get wanting to collect figurines and things that can't really go on a computer, but the anime itself? And you have multiple copies of the same things!" I pointed at two boxed sets side by side. "The only difference between those is that one is a re-release with different cover art!"

"It's my money," she grumbled quietly, turning her head away guiltily.

I reached out and snagged her chin, forcing her to look at me. "When you're a grown woman with a family of your own, what will your husband say if you can't afford your insurance, mortgage, or to keep the lights on because you spent all your pay on anime and games?" Kirino jerked her head away and crossed her arms under her breasts. "It's a fun hobby, but don't let it give you bad habits that will screw you later in life. Habits like splurging all your money on shit you want but don't need because it's pretty."

After a long moment, she finally nodded. "Fine," she quietly agreed. "I'll try to do better."

"Master Yoda says, 'do or do not, there is no try,'" I said, earning a quiet giggle at the Yoda voice. Now that I was done scolding her, I turned my attention to her treasure trove. It didn't take long for me to notice a pattern. Pulling out a box, I asked, "What's this?"

And so, Kirino went off on a tangent, showing me just how far down the rabbit hole her fetish—for that was all it could be—went. Finally, once she had a stack of games taller than she was, I shook my head. "All of that?" I pointed at them, "You could've just downloaded."

"But… but it's different when you have the box."

I rolled my eyes. "No, it's really not. Trust me on this. My collection is bigger—it just doesn't take up nearly as much physical space. Hard drives are cheaper than dvds." Sighing, I asked, "Why buy so many copies of the same thing?"

"As an offering!"

The sound of flesh hitting flesh was audible in the room and it took a moment for me to realize that it was my own hand that had made the sound against my face. "Kirino. Kirino, stop. You do not need a shrine to the anime gods. Throwing money at them will not make the anime better. There are some series you just can't save."

"You don't understand," she pouted. "I'm proud of my collection."

Shaking my head, I asked, "How did you afford all of this? There's no way your allowance covered it."

"Royalties, obviously," she smirked, digging out a magazine and passing it to me.

It was a fashion magazine that was a pretty common sight at supermarkets, convenience stores, and on stands around town. Flipping it open, I found various pictures of Kirino—smiling, laughing, and generally not being Kirino. She's actually kind of cute when she doesn't have the resting bitch face. And everyone believes the mask she wears, I mused, closing the magazine and passing it back to her. I made a mental note to immediately find out who her manager was and then go pay him a friendly visit. "Fair enough. If you want to sell your body, try to keep it at just this level."

"You're disgusting."

"No," I denied, "I'm a realist. Seriously, be fucking careful with this. A lot of girls get caught up by their agents and dragged from just modeling into porn. Trust me, the money is not worth the lifetime's worth of humiliation, diseases, drug addiction, or the sort of degenerate shit they'll have you doing. You want your future kids going on the internet to look up jerkoff material and accidentally running across their mom because they searched tags like scat, horse cock, gangbang, and so on?"

Kirino went silent, turning away before nodding. "I've heard the stories. I will," she said quietly. Sighing, she turned and asked, "So?" When I merely raised an eyebrow, she huffed out an irritated breath. "What do you think about my hobby?"

"Well," I began ticking off points on my fingers, "you have shit taste, you enjoy loli, and you throw your money away."

"But is it weird for me to have stuff like this?"

I turned a look on her that clearly said she was stupid. "No, Kirino. A girl your age enjoying loli eroge is perfectly normal and healthy."

"You don't have to use so much sarcasm," she muttered, suddenly finding the floor very interesting to look at.

Sighing, I shook my head. "Look. The anime? Not weird. The hentai and eroge? Very fucking weird." Kirino winced. "But it's your money to spend how you like—even if I don't agree with spending it on things you could just download. The problem comes in where other people are concerned. I'm your brother. I think it's weird, but I'm not going to judge you for it. I have my own bad habits and if you ever find out about those, I expect the same courtesy. Other people aren't me. If you 'come out of the closet' with the 'H' stuff, I can almost guarantee you're going to lose friends over it. They won't understand, because it's not for everyone. And let's be honest here—most people are idiots. Sheep at best. They'll believe what the media tells them—which is that hentai turns people into rapists and violent video games makes people murderers. But you seem like the kind of girl who cares a lot about what other people think," I lead, earning a nod. "Boil the frog."

"Huh?"

"It's an American term," I explained. "If you toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, he'll jump out. Toss him in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, eventually you have frog soup." Kirino pulled a face at the mental imagery. "What I'm saying is, tell someone you trust just a little part of it. Tell your best friend that you like anime and see how that goes. If they seem accepting, show them something tame and go from there. If they're not interested, they'll get bored quickly and from then on they're far more likely to pass off anything they see as 'more of that weird anime stuff' instead of something more dangerous. Don't mention your little sister fetish—"

"It's not a fetish!" the redhead hissed. "Don't confuse 2D and 3D! There's no way a little sister could love her brother in real life—"

I turned an unamused look on her. "Kirino." Her name came out perhaps a bit sharper than I had intended and she winced. "I'm not judging, but don't lie to me and certainly not to yourself. As far as I'm concerned, I do not care how you get your rocks off so long as it does not involve actual little girls or real child porn. Drawings are just drawings and words are just words, but pictures and video are a different animal. Understand?" When she nodded, I picked up where I'd left off.

"You have to be careful with this stuff. I can see already that you need rules for this. So, first: don't mention your little sister fetish to anyone, especially not mom and dad. Mom might tolerate it but dad will not—and I won't be able to bail you out of that one if he finds out. Second: hide your stash better, preferably somewhere outside of the house. You have money. Rent a storage unit somewhere and only keep what you're playing or watching at the moment in the house, and keep that in a different case. Third: do not have packages shipped to the house. Get a post office box. I don't care if it's day one release on a new game—avoid the temptation, because mom or dad could open your mail. Fourth: do not expose your power level in public."

"'Power level?'"

I nodded. "You know those fat, hairy, smelly otaku you see occasionally? The ones carrying around waifu pillows in public?" Kirino nodded, making a disgusted face. "Yeah, don't do that. It's okay to go to cons or Akihabara and look around, even buy stuff, but not things that visibly tell others what you're into. The one exception is cosplay—especially if you're doing it right. Hell, you're a model, you wouldn't just get away with it you'd be promoting your name by doing it. Fifth: if you're going to watch or play something in the house, do it facing the door and with headphones in so you have time to close anything if someone pokes their head in unexpectedly."

I swear, Yoshino keeps trying to catch me looking at porn and she looks disappointed every time she doesn't get the opportunity to tease me about it. Sorry, but I learned to hide my bad habits two lifetimes ago.

"Sixth: lie. Lie your ass off. The best way to do this is to cop to a lesser evil. As I said, if you say you like anime, people will probably just brush it off. Always have a cover story for getting caught with something in hand. It was a mix-up at the store. You borrowed a dvd from a friend and they put the wrong thing in the box. You didn't realize that light novel was pornographic in nature because you were distracted by the cover art. Never, ever blame it on someone mom and dad—or whoever catches you—can question for themselves. That includes me. I won't take the heat for you. If you get caught with loli and act surprised, it'll be a case of, 'Well, Kirino is a good girl so I'm sure this is just an honest mistake.' If you get caught with loli and blame me, it'll ruin my reputation in ways it wouldn't for you—and that's before I throw you under the bus for it when, not if, I find out."

Frowning, Kirino asked, "So you're saying I should keep hiding it?"

"God, yes!" I nodded. "That's what I've been telling you. But if you're careful and you follow the rules, you should be fine." Seeing her downcast look, I sighed quietly. "Come to me if you have questions, or need help. I'll do what I can to help you keep it quiet, but as I said, I won't let you throw me under the bus if your friends or our parents find out—nor will I voluntarily throw myself under the bus to save you. You're not on your own, Kirino—but that doesn't mean you can get away with it Scott free if you get caught."

"You would help? Really?" When I nodded, a faint smile crossed her lips.

On an impulse, I reached out and mussed her hair. For just a moment, the Kirino I had once known smiled up at me. Letting go, I turned for the door. "Right. It's late, so I'm going back to bed. Don't wake me up again unless something catches fire, okay?"

The door was barely open before Kirino's hand caught the back of my tee-shirt. "More life counseling."

"I should limit you to one of those requests per twenty-four hour period," I grumbled. "What?"

"Play this with me," she demanded, picking up a box with a name that set my eyes to rolling.

I frowned. "Kirino, I get up at 5. I've had an hour of sleep and tomorrow—no, later today—if I get to bed and get to sleep right this minute, I'll be running on no more than four hours of sleep. Can it wait until tomorrow?"

Kirino frowned, turning away with a blush. "Please. I… I'd like an objective opinion."

I glared down on her long enough for her to squirm. "One hour."

"What?"

"I will give you one hour of my time. In return, I'm going to be cashing in a favor later. I have no idea what, but I'm sure I'll think of something."

Crossing her arms, the redhead said, "It can't be anything weird."

I rolled my eyes. Glancing at the game box, I considered it. It's one of her R-18 games. If I'm losing sleep over this, she's going to pay for it one way or another. Humiliation and my entertainment will suffice.

"Fine," I agreed, holding out my hand. "Gimme."

I was unsurprised when, after popping the game into her computer's disc tray, it didn't pop up an installer and instead simply ran the game. Further evidence she had played it before—and multiple times—was present in the form of save files. Shaking my head, I started a new game and began to speed read through, looking for the 'perfect' route—the route that, in other games, would trip the right flags to get the hentai scenes. Kirino's preferred method appeared to be to save-scum and explore every branching possibility, but I didn't need to do that—I wasn't interested in multiple branches and I wasn't a novice at navigating things like this. And, well, they were pretty intuitive if you were trope/genre savvy.

"Are you even reading?"

I paused long enough to turn an unamused look on her. I had spent countless hours learning to read and write a foreign language—Japanese was a fifth language for me, after English, Arabic, Russian, and Mandarin (the last three in my second life as part of my job). Learning the two written forms of it was a pain in my ass—to the point that I was still learning the more complex of the two, but then there were adults who were Japanese natives who read less of that than I did. There were over 50,000 kanji—I was doing good to know a third of them, considering primary and secondary schools here required students learn around 2,200. The fact that I had made a career of it helped in that regard, so hearing her talk shit about my ability to blow through this spit in the face of the work I'd put in and got under my skin like little else. "If you want an objective opinion, stop side-seat driving."

Kirino grumbled quietly under her breath but quickly shut up as I went back to the game. Twenty minutes later, I knew I'd struck paydirt when she began fidgeting. "U-um, maybe we should stop here."

"Hour isn't up," I deadpanned, carefully hiding my smirk as I clicked through the options. A moment later, as I'd suspected, we were treated to the game's 'adult content.' What I did not expect, however, was what I saw reflected in the monitor screen where I'd been surreptitiously spying on Kirino behind me while I played. The ginger sat frozen, a blush creeping up her cheeks as I paused on the first still and considered the options given to me by the game. Her lips parted, the bottom one sucked between her teeth where she began to worry it gently.

"Hm," I hummed quietly before selecting the next option. The screen advanced and I caught motion from the corner of my eye. Where Kirino had been sitting on the bed and hugging a pillow to her chest, I saw her right hand release the pillow and slip behind it. A moment later, her eyes went half lidded and she shuddered slightly as she sucked in a quiet, shaky breath.

"Well?" she asked, doing a damned good job of keeping her voice level and in the familiar bitchy tone I'd become accustomed to. "Pick something."

Watching her from the corner of the screen, I slowly advanced through the options available. This was not what I had planned. I'd get to the 'good' part, she'd freak out, I'd advance a panel or two, and she'd kick me out—effectively ensuring she'd never bother me to play this filth with her again. Instead, I feel… like I'm being taken advantage of. Ugh. Well, it was my own damn fault for playing her mind games. I should have known, the same rule applies to idiots as it does to perverts: never try to fight them, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

By the time I finished the scene, the hour I'd offered her was up and Kirino sat flushed, breathless, and shuddering on the edge of her bed. Giving her a few moments to collect herself, I advanced a bit further through the game before finding a good point to save. "Hour's up," I announced quietly.

"W—" Kirino swallowed around what must have been a suddenly dry throat. "What did you think?"

I think a psychologist would have a field day, I did not say aloud.

"Honestly? The protagonist is a generic faceless guy designed for optimal self-insertion, but in doing so you lose the feeling of connection you get when you have a fleshed out character. Considering his name is the name you choose when you start the game, this is intentional—if this were a book, the story would be told in second-person 'you.' The sister in question was moderately cute, as far as art went, but otherwise generic—twin tails and black hair don't exactly stand out. The plot was absolute shit. Seriously, with all those factors combined, I've read better doujins that made me feel more for the characters than this did. Then there's the sex."

Kirino, who had been drooping under my criticism, perked up. Seeing that made me want to crush her spirit for making me feel dirty for having played it—and worse, for her using me for a cheap thrill. "Like the rest of the game I've seen, it was generic. Don't get me wrong, missionary is great, but this girl was what, nine? Her brother was ten years older and had to weigh at least two and a half times what she did. Missionary would crush her, and not in a good way. With that large a size difference, some form of cowgirl would be optimal. Smaller girls with larger boyfriends tend to prefer it, unless they also happen to find being taken by a larger partner exciting—there are plenty who do.

"Of course, there's the penetration itself. At nine, the female body is not physically ready for intercourse with an adult. Popping her cherry would have destroyed her. Forget blood from her hymen, I'm talking potential permanent damage no matter how gentle her 'onii-chan' is—especially given the stated length and girth of his penis, which was so far above average that I suspect the artist or author has a micro-penis and this is compensation. Average penis length for a sexually mature man?" I held out my hands roughly five inches apart. "Average vaginal depth for a sexually mature woman?" I closed the gap to four inches. "But it can stretch to double that at times. However, this," I held my hands eight inches apart, "inside of this," down to three inches apart, "would not be comfortable for anyone involved. The mechanics of it are all wrong. The world would have to run on hentai physics for it to not hurt someone."

Kirino frowned. "That's all you're worried about? The physical mechanics? Insert Tab A into Slot B? What about suspension of disbelief—"

"It's kind of a big fucking concern when it's physically impossible," I countered. "Aside from that, there was no point at which I felt the plot justified him sleeping with his sister. She's nine, Kirino. She cannot legally give consent, whether she wants to do it or not. There were no special rules, laws, or circumstances in play that would justify it—such as 300 year old loli vampire, different world, or even something as simple as a dying wish. What you just witnessed was sexual abuse at best, rape at worse—by the legal definitions, which do not care if the people involved love each other. Leaving legality out of it, it still wasn't there in the plot. Where was the buildup? The romance? Her slipping into his bed and making him breakfast was not reason enough to have sex."

"But they do love each other!"

I turned an unamused look on her. "Kirino, do you know how many times Manami and I have slept together?" The redhead glared and turned her head away. "Enough that I've lost count. We've been friends for years. We genuinely like each other—maybe even love each other." Kirino flinched at that, but I pressed on. "Do you want to know how many times we've had sex?"

"No."

"Too bad," I growled. "None. Not once." Kirino's sky blue eyes found mine, incredulity painted on her face.

That was actually a lie at that point in time, but she didn't need to know that.

"What do you mean, a lie?"

"Sit back and let me unreliably narrate this story, would you?"

"No! If you're going to narrate, do so reliably!" Ruri griped. "Did you or did you not?"

"Maybe. But if I'd told her that we had, it would have only encouraged her idiocy."

With a sigh, Ruri conceded the point. "Continuing on."

Ruri glared, but nodded. "Very well."

"What? But you're always together!"

"It'll happen when, and if, it happens—not before. We're not in a hurry and we've got more history, more between us, than that," I gestured vaguely at the screen behind me. "The plot just isn't there for me when compared to that, and it cheapens any relationship the characters may have developed later in life. It's a shit game. Zero of five stars. If you're going to make me do this again, make sure the next one is better, okay?" I sincerely hoped that telling her off like this—brutally dissecting one of the things she obviously loved most with my criticism—would dissuade her from future attempts.

For a while, she sat there on her knees simply staring at the floor—having broken eye contact at some point. Finally, she looked up and met my gaze again, this time with a determined expression, and I knew that hope was in vain. "I'll find a better one, then," she nodded.

Pushing up out of her chair, I stretched and yawned. "Well, bed time. Good night, Kirino," I waved as I turned to walk away.

Small, warm hands caught my right hand in hers just inside the threshold. "Thank you for not making fun of me. And for listening," she said quietly, and I nodded. "Good night."

Her hands released mine and I escaped into the hall, Kirino's door closing and her light turning off behind me. I was halfway to my own door when I realized something felt off—the palm of my right hand felt suddenly cold. Pausing, I turned it over and in the pale moonlight slipping in through the windows, I found a streak of shiny wetness across my palm.

No, I denied what my eyes were telling me. Bringing my hand up, I carefully sniffed the streak on my palm. I would recognize the smell anywhere. Kirino, you bitch, I nearly growled, detouring to the bathroom and washing my hands. When I was finished, my hands smelled of soap and melon, but I couldn't tell that myself. The scent of Kirino's arousal still hung heavy in my nose and wouldn't let go.

Turning off the bathroom light, I made my way back to my bedroom and slipped in behind Manami. She shifted, turning around fully to wrap her arms around me and bury her face in my chest. Her borrowed tee-shirt—one of mine—had ridden up, exposing her plain white cotton panties where the sheet had slipped off. "Kirino?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," I nodded, pulling her closer, my right hand slipping back to cup her smooth, warm ass through her panties. Manami practically purred and melted in my arms at the contact.

"Her sense of timing sucks," Manami yawned. "I've been waiting for you to get back for over an hour."

I nodded against her hair. "I know. Sorry."

"Nn," she shook her head, rubbing her face against my chest as she did. "Try to sleep."

I shifted and pulled her in closer as she drifted off and set about trying to get what sleep I could before my alarm went off. When it became clear that I was too keyed up, too irritated to sleep and the tension had yet to leave my body, Manami wriggled in my arms before deciding to take matters into her own hands.

Ruri's blue eyes blinked as she studied me. "Kirino made you play an eroge."

"Yes," I nodded.

"And masturbated herself to orgasm while you did."

Another nod. "Yep."

"And then marked you with her scent."

I rolled my eyes. "Mhmm."

Something seemed to click for her and an annoyed look crossed her face. "When she knew you would be returning to Belphegor momentarily." She paused and I waited, sending her an expectant look and willing her to continue to the logical conclusion without having to spell it out myself. "She knew that it was very likely Belphegor would catch her scent on you." As the final nail in the coffin, she added, "You gave her time to make herself presentable. You spent at least a few minutes speaking with her. It would have been long enough for anything on her hand to dry. That it was wet means it was fresh, and that it was warm enough that you didn't notice when she took your hand means she collected it as soon as you turned away."

"Right on all counts, detective Kuroneko," I nodded.

"And yet, Manami did not ask what happened, despite the fact that you were clearly agitated." Frowning, Ruri made a leap of logic and added, "And aroused."

"Partially my fault," I admitted. "I should have just quit the damn eroge instead of trying to get one up on Kirino." With a quiet sigh, I added, "She's my sister, but at times, I forget that. The part of me that's already lived and died twice just sees an attractive young woman close enough to my own age. It can be frustrating."

Ruri closed her eyes and huffed out a quiet, annoyed breath. "If I had been in your position, I don't know that I would have shown such restraint. I would have surely either killed her or pushed her down. Possibly both. You couldn't have been blamed for either, at that point." She paused to consider something, before asking, "And you didn't take the opportunity with Manami?"

"Oh, I wanted to," I admitted. "And Manami would have gladly let me."

Humming quietly, the part-time loli-goth turned her inquisitive gaze on me. "I feel as though there is something about your relationship with Manami that you have neglected to mention. No, won't mention. But it seems as though you want me to discover it for myself."

"Perhaps," I shrugged. "However, detective, if that's so then you're going to have to collect evidence and build a case yourself. I know how much you love a challenge, and a mystery."

"It's a case, then." Frowning, Ruri nodded. "I accept. However, I will only find evidence if you go over everything. Next was our first meeting with Kirino, was it not?"

"Yeah. But maybe I should start with some background, so you understand why Kirino is so pissy about that."

"Fine. Do tell."