morning she was in casual attire—short pants and a tank top—with an orange apron on top of that.
Looking down at her older brother, who had not moved since falling on the floor, Nagisa put her hands on her hips in exasperation.
“Hey now, wake up. Still sleep-deprived? Did you study for your test till dawn? You mustn’t make so much trouble for Ms. Minamiya. Don’t slack off on extra lessons. If I see your name posted on the staff room billboard again, it’s going to be so embarrassing! Ah, geez, and I
told
you to get those uniform trousers off and put them on a hanger!”
As Kojou listened to his little sister’s ceaseless complaints, he rose sluggishly.
Perhaps he was biased in his thinking, but Nagisa was a capable little sister. Her looks were quite adorable, and her grades were up there, too. She was skilled at all varieties of housework.
But there were flaws of course. One was that she was a clean freak to the point of illness, a demon of disposal. The other was the avalanche of words.
Anyway, Nagisa spoke a lot. It wasn’t that she did it to
everyone
, but against family with forgiving hearts, she showed no mercy. He didn’t feel like he could win a verbal spat with her, ever.
The one saving grace was because of Nagisa’s guileless personality, she rarely had an ill word to speak about others, but when she
was
angry it was quite terrifying. Back in junior high school, when Yaze had inadvertently let her see he had a porn video on him when coming over to play, Nagisa gave him enough of a tongue-lashing in her fit of rage to turn him gynophobic for a while.
As Kojou was remembering that, absentmindedly gazing out of the window…
“—Hey, Kojou-kun, are you listening?!”
Nagisa switched to rapid-fire yelling. Kojou hurriedly corrected his posture.
“Yeah, sorry. What’d you say?”
“Geez…! I said, a transfer student.”
Nagisa pursed her lips, perhaps out of annoyance that her older brother hadn’t heard her story.
“…Transfer student?”
“Yeah. Our class had a transfer student come since the start of summer break. A girl. Yesterday, Ms. Sasasaki introduced her when I went to school for club activities. She came for formalities before transferring, Ms. Sasasaki said. She’s this really cute girl. There’ll definitely be rumors about her even in the high school, really soon, I think.”
“Huhhh…”
Kojou ignored that with a cold shoulder. However cute she was, she was a middle schooler. And his little sister’s classmate. Totally outside of Kojou’s field of interest. However…
“Hey, Kojou. Did you do something to this transfer student?”
“Huh? What the heck?”
Kojou asked back incredulously at Nagisa’s sudden question.
What could he have done to a transfer student before she’d even transferred? However, Nagisa seemed displeased somehow, looking back at her older brother with a serious expression…
“I mean, she asked about you. Once I introduced myself, she asked me if I had an older brother. What kind of person he’s like, and stuff.”
“…Why?”
“That’s what I wanna know. I was sure she must’ve met you somewhere before…”
“No, I don’t think I have any younger acquaintances, but…”
Kojou crossed his arms and sunk into thought. He had a vaguely unpleasant premonition.
“So, what’d you tell her?”
“Well, I did kind of properly explain things, some true and some not.”
“What?!”
“Kidding, I spoke only the truth. Like about the city we lived in before moving here, your school grades, what foods you like, the gravure idols you’re into, about Yazecchi and Asagi-chan, and then about your big heartbreak story from middle school…”
“Geez… Why’d you have tell all that to someone you’d just met?”
“Er, well, she’s cute?”
Nagisa said it with an unapologetic tone. It was the answer he’d expected. Even under normal circumstances Nagisa was tempted to speak to anyone at all, which made the protection of