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"Liar," my little sister calls my name. Ah, no, that's not right. It's not my name, not yet. A title? It's already so well-recognized by the world that being called it again feels as fresh as being called by my full, real name.
"No, it's true. I don't have any other business in this house." The idea of "coming to play shogi with that old man" has a certain idyllic charm on paper, but if we actually played, I'd probably end up ramming a rook into his eyeball or making a knight leap (or be thrown) deep into his nasal cavity, dipping a toe into barbaric martial arts.
"So it's going to be a fight over my little sister, huh?"
"Huh?" The heroine regards me with open suspicion. Then, she moves away again, doing a flip turn off the wall like a swimmer. She's like a yo-yo, or maybe a dog that usually complains endlessly about being restricted by a leash, but once the collar is off and it's free, despite its joy, it doesn't stray too far from your feet. It lets me indulge in the illusion that maybe she's attached to me.
"Ah, right. Make sure you lock up properly."
"Huh? Because perverted ants will come rustling in?"
"Exactly. No, seriously, be careful."
"Oh, really. I'll do it if I feel like it."
Mm, that's a twisted way of putting it, but my little sister is the type who usually listens precisely at times like these.
"So, is that really all your business here?"
"......If you don't have any business, then," My little sister trails off. She curls her back, wiggling her big toe up and down vigorously. Ughh, she seems to be struggling to spit something out. I guessed what she was trying to say and voiced it. "Go home?" A fist landed on my thigh. Incorrect, it seems.
"What about that crazy woman? Isn't she with you?"
"Who are you talking about?" My little sister turns around while still sitting and glares at me up close.
"Have you gone crazy too, big brother?"
"Yeah." An affirmation.
My little sister's sharp gaze softens, and her eyes widen. It's rare for her to drop her stern expression as if caught off guard. As far as I remember, the last time was when she lopped off my hand near the wrist up in the mountains.
"I've been strange lately. That's why I came for you to fix me."
"...Or rather, you've been strange since way back," my little sister says, averting her eyes as if annoyed.
"That's true too. That's why, since way back, I've been kicked by my little sister and corrected!"
I, your big brother, you see... I was trampled on, crawled on the ground. Only then did I finally rediscover my own path and make it this far. So even now, I've been kicked a lot, and my head's all fixed.
"Thank you," I say, beaming with an extraordinary smile. This smile of mine is probably more overflowing with sincerity than when I said my farewell thanks to the host family after a two-week homestay. It was a portrayal with zero credibility, but perhaps my little sister felt something from it, as she looks down, hiding her blushing cheeks. That's right, that's right, being thanked so earnestly must be embarrassing, huh?
She really is my little sister, after all. The scene reflected in my eyes is worse than this morning, a jumbled mess as if melted by an organic solvent, but there's something on my lap that I haven't lost sight of.
"Won't you come live with me?"
I voice the suggestion that suddenly came to mind.
My little sister whips her head towards me so sharply, it's as if her neck was snapped by astonishment. Perhaps from the shock, the flesh of her cheeks was twitching. What, was this all it took to surprise her? My tongue, which remembers the sensation of my little sister's skin, couldn't possibly proclaim that it was a waste of a lick.
"Seriously?" My little sister's lips are trembling slightly.
"For realsies."
"Answer me seriously!" She digs her nails into my neck and starts to choke me. But that's weak; I'm used to that level of pathetic violence from dealing with Maa-chan. I won't panic even if my breathing stops. But why did I suggest something like this, I wonder.
At the point where I'm with Maa-chan, at the point where I'm Mii-kun. It's something that couldn't possibly happen.
If only Sugawara had a little sister, maybe there'd have been a chance to fudge things... ah, so that's it, huh? Crying for the moon. The remaining family huddling together, living happily. Nice.
For a guy like me, it's a dream, a fabrication, with just the right amount of dazzle. I've never once experienced it. Just letting my thoughts smolder in my imagination, unable to even approach its preciousness, makes my chest ache.
While I'm at it, can I ask for something I don't have right now? Someone, give me oxygen. "G'nna die," it was a suffocation that would soon be too late if I didn't appeal. Well, I don't mind dying, though. How about having more family I'm likely to meet after death? And yet, not a single one of them is beckoning me. Especially not my little sister's mother.
Maybe it's that, huh? A jinx where everyone involved with me dies, one after another. No, maybe not *everyone*; about half are still alive. A fifty percent survival rate, huh... If I were caught in a huge massacre from now on, and half were allowed to survive...
Who would I wish to stay alive, I wonder.
Meanwhile, my little sister, who had calmed down while clutching my neck like a keepsake pendant, lowers her eyes.
"Together..."
"Mm-hmm." No, it's impossible. I can't bring myself to say, "You don't have to think about it so seriously."
Instead, saying "Opening!" I went in and gave my little sister's big toe a lick. Mmm, just the texture I expected. Immediately after jumping up, my little sister was already treading on the back of my head, seemingly with pleasure. As she ground her foot down, she put strength into her core and, in a slightly strained voice, replied to my suggestion.
"I'll think about it."
"Okay."
I see, I see.
Not that I've thought about anything else at all, kahaha.

"Mii-wii-kuun!!"
"Oh, oh, if it isn't Maa-tan."
"Choaaar!"
"Gebehh."
I took a blow to the solar plexus. A light Maa-chan Punch, along with a step-in, slammed into my sternum, and immediately after, a Maa-chan Kick aimed at a vital spot vanquished the villain (me). After dying once, by dying again, I was revived in the positive direction like a negative multiplier, and successfully managed to hug Maa-chan.
"Migiii!" Letting out such a strange shriek, as if expressing a hope to parasitize even my right hand, Maa-chan tried to spin like a top in my arms. As if I'd let her, I held Maa-chan tight, got scraped a bit, took an elbow, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The main point has shifted, but is there a problem?
"Maa-chan's the best!"
"Yeah-yeah!" As if to say, "Move your hands before your mouth," Maa-chan bashes my head from left and right. The number of blows is clearly about seven times more than the onomatopoeia suggests.
"What's wrong, Maa-chan? Are we playing married couple's quarrel?"
"Mii-kun's little idiot self has advanced to full-fledged status, so I'm co-rrec-ting you!!"
Immediately after we met up again, on the road in front of the apartment building, Maa-chan declared her unreserved "adjustment" of me.
"Did I... do something?"
"Ngyiii, don't play dumb!! Is there any greater idiocy than running off somewhere the moment we left school together?! From now on, Maa-chan must consider the practical application of a collar, much to Maa-chan's regret and indignation!"
So, it seems after she got home first, she was waiting for my return like an owner waiting for a dog that ran off during a walk. And with this act, which isn't so much educational guidance as it is similar to trying to revive wiring by shocking an appliance, she's 'correcting' me back into Mii-kun.
Kyaa, Maa-chan is so devoted.
Devoted, single-minded, beautiful, and a good cook. If you just pick out those elements, Maa-chan is too perfect.
"Are you fixed ye—t!" With arms flailing like a spoiled child, Maa-chan Land (currently under construction) repeatedly crashes its homemade Ferris wheel into my head. I felt my love for Maa-chan, including her poor control of her strength, rapidly intensifying along with the heat spreading out in a circle from being bruised. No, perhaps that heat itself is my love for Maa-chan. Love, pouring down like snow, melts and disperses my white haze, changing it into a red snowscape. Oh, it's got color now. Full color.
"Amazing, Maa-chan! You're the artisan who colors my life!"
I hug her tight enough to nearly break her hip bones and praise her.
"Nyaa? ..... I painted Mii-kun with colors! Maa-chan's drawing practice has borne fruit, hasn't it!" Maa-chan also presses her body against me, centering on my sternum that she just punched. For an idiot couple, moments of emotion comparable to the last scene of a Hollywood movie visit more often than the number of mites living on one's face; that's our daily life. In a way, you could say we're vermin to human society.
For people like us, if you took away such jokes, we'd seriously be thought of that way by all sorts of people, naturally. Hahaha. More importantly than that, I was relieved that Maa-chan didn't sniff out my little sister's scent on me. Maa-chan only carries her own things, and she doesn't seem to mind that I don't have a bag. But still, that setup—being waited for by a girl—faintly stirs my past. Taking advantage of that, a smiling girl crawled out from the coffin of my memories. In front of the shoe lockers at the gym, she had been waiting a little early for me, who had come timing it with the end of club activities, her hand...
"........." Ah, or, uh. Moans escape like bubbles from between my molars, which should have been clenched tight. I'm assaulted by a suffocating feeling, as if sinking to the bottom of the water, and a pain in my chest.
Disappear, I prayed. If you're going to appear before my eyes anyway, bring your physical body too.
"Yaay, let's go home!"
"Nyaa." We entered the apartment building, still hugging each other as we walked. My mouth doesn't speak for my feelings; it patches things up as it pleases. A good tendency. My mouth needs to be equipped with the function to deceive naturally, without my heart having to correct it as a lie each and every time. After all, I'm called a liar, so I have to polish my abilities accordingly. To the extent that I can deceive myself too.

We went up to the third floor in the elevator in the first-floor hall, waltzing down the corridor towards our room. In front of the room. The sound of a nightmare, making me want to run away. Inside the room, the phone is ringing. I was driven by the impulse to stop Maa-chan's hand as she took the key out of her bag, but if I thought about it calmly, nothing would be wrong, it would be fine, so I thought I should just accept it and thrust forward the foot I had drawn back. I kicked the door. My big toe hurt like hell. Maa-chan's eyes are wide too. I'm also becoming round (my back, that is).
Maa-chan unlocks the door, and we enter the room. Kicking off our shoes, Maa-chan and I head for the living room. For some reason, Maa-chan is also quickening her pace, trying to overtake me. It's fun, like a race. In reality, it's not fun at all. I moved forward with the force of someone fleeing.
I burst into the living room and, stretching out my hand from the side, snatch the receiver that Maa-chan was about to pick up. It was like the offense and defense in beach flags. While confirming out of the corner of my eye that Maa-chan was pouting, I put the receiver to my ear. I greet the caller in silence.
The back of my throat felt like it was torn apart, overflowing with the pain of dryness and the taste of blood.
"Ah, you finally picked up. Man, that took a while. I've had the line connected for two or three hours since noon. You guys surprisingly go to school properly, huh? I'm impressed."
"Knowing full well that at school you're either treated like air or, at best, like a boil, you still go. Are you guys masochists? Or are you practicing blending in normally like that?"
".........You know. It's been like this for a while, but... what do you mean by that?"
"Whaddaya say!?" I tried to make my hearing go distant, just like a shojo manga protagonist. I figured it was a crucial moment, and if I didn't deliberately ignore it, the rom-com serialization would end, wouldn't it? While I was at it, I tried to make the phone distant too by slamming down the receiver. I pulled out the plug. "Clang!" I smashed the phone against the wall. I'm an amateur at judo, but my phone-throwing skills are inherited from Koibi-sensei. "Owahh, Maa-chan, the phone!"
With this, this phone won't ring anymore. It was too much trouble to explain to the person on the other end of the line that there's no point in continuing their malicious acts towards someone like me, who's far too unfazed by anything, so I showed them with my actions. He'll probably be able to live meaningful days from now on, but I decided to be humble and say no thanks are needed.

I protected my Earth. This isn't a time to rely on others to protect it. The phone couldn't say a peep.
"Trrrrrrr," "I guess I'll have to say it myself."
"You're still being an idiot!!"
"Trrrrrrr," I was forced to make a sound closer to a pigeon's coo than a clock's ring, as I received today's second face-crushing Maa-chan Punch to my visage. The sound of my cheekbone cracking deviated greatly from normal standards, making a catastrophic noise. But since my bond with Maa-chan hasn't been destroyed, there was no problem at all, yaaay.
"Mii-kun, you cheater! You silly cat, easily fooled by a thieving vixen!"
"Eh, there's no context before or after, ssu." When I let my sentence ending slip like that, I suddenly, desperately wanted to die. Hahaha, just kidding.
Maa-chan puts both hands on her hips, puffs out her chest with a "hmph," and confronts me.
"Maa-chan sees through everything! That was a call from Mii-kun's affair partner, wasn't it!"
"You've been watching too many daytime suspense drama reruns, Maa-chan."
"The fact that you broke the phone is undeniable proo-f! Now, fix the phone and let Maa-chan talk to that person! I'm gonna snip-snip 'em!" Gushi-gushi, her fingers make a gesture of crushing something in her palms. I look down at the phone. Copper wires from the cord are poking out of a tear in the coating, and the receiver is broken near the middle. It's probably impossible to fix. In human terms, its internal organs are spilling out. No, I don't have the skill to reassemble a person whose organs have spilled out and who has lost their ears and mouth. I really do specialize in breaking things, after all. Maa-chan is also a healing-type destruction angel, so the two of us are rather unbalanced.
So, here, like flipping through a script, I go through my memories. ......Right, right, I think we're supposed to go out for dinner after this. Just like 'yesterday.' "Shall we go out to eat?"
"No con-text!" Ga-ahn, she brings her palm down on my head. "But I'll go."
Maa-chan grabs my wrist. Her nails are digging right into my artery. I prayed for them to really sink in, as if it were someone else's injury I was hoping for. But Maa-chan's healthy-colored nails, which I had neatly manicured at the hotel last week, are rounded and have moved away from drawing blood.
"When we go out to eat, I'm gonna puni-sh your cheating, so be prepared!"
After tossing her school bag into the corner of the living room like the phone earlier, Maa-chan glares at me.
"I'm devoted to Maa-chan and Maa-chan alone."
"Which mouth is saying that!!" Mugiii, Maa-chan grabbed my cheeks with both hands and pulled.
Hahaha, how awful. Even though I'm relatively devoted (you can pretty much consider that a synonym for perfect).
Maa-chan will probably keep doubting Mii-kun's love like this, unconditionally, from now on too. Well, that's the right way. Because, you know, it's not real.
Including the power to classify realizations as things unseen.
Maa-chan really is smart, isn't she? I want to learn from her too, no lies anywhere in that.

I hate this town. I can't imagine what goes through the head of anyone who likes it, but in the first place, I've never even met such a person. I'm sure I won't have the chance to meet any characters who proclaim they like the town in the future either.
Why do I hate this town? Maybe I'll be asked about it in a job interview during my job hunting in the future, so around now, I should probably try to summarize the reasons to a level where I can talk about them off the cuff.
So, with that said, let's thoroughly badmouth the town I was born and raised in.
Reason number one why I hate this town. It's inconvenient for dates. In fact, this is so all-encompassing that a reason number two is almost unnecessary. In a place where you can't even expect any kind of shop to exist within a three-hundred-meter radius of your meeting spot with your girlfriend, what are you supposed to start doing? "Shall we just walk for now?" you might say, and it's fine to leave the spot with her, but then walking truly becomes the main theme of the date. And if you get desperate and suggest walking all the way to the foot of the mountain you went to on a school trip and riding the ropeway, you get yelled at like, "If you're prepared to let a bear eat me, your companion, in the mountains, then go right ahead, ssu!" Even if I point to the mountaintop and suggest we can meet a hermit, she'd confront me, poised as if to dig with a rice paddle or something, saying, "If you're prepared for me not to be able to eat mist for three hours, then try and make me climb, ssu!" My girlfriend loathed insects, and if a dragonfly so much as looked like it might hit her face, she'd rampage as if the world were ending and challenge it head-on. Usually, the dragonfly would flee, and she'd win by default.
You did it, Nagase! ........ I mean, my girlfriend. Who the heck is Nagase? That one doesn't even have flesh in this world anymore.
" " I'm shouting something in reality, but I don't pay it any mind. Those words don't reach into my warm delusions. But I won't take a break either. I'll keep simmering it down. Simmer it down and scorch the town at the bottom of the pot. Let the town burn too, hacked up, toyed with, like a corpse whose vocal cords snapped from all the screaming, unable to even utter its final words.
I mentioned I had a girlfriend who hated bugs. But why did someone like that fall for a worker ant like me? I can only think that fate hated her and decided to harass her. Or should I interpret it as "there's no accounting for taste"... or perhaps a comedy born from a flaw in human aesthetics?
When she herself learned about the relationship between "me" and "that shitty old man," I wonder what she made of it. She probably realized then that even if you tear the past to pieces, it crawls back out like an earthworm.
Even now, it's like I'm constantly having my flesh torn at by it.
Not that it matters, though.
I mean, she herself ended up in pieces, you know! Buried in the ground, will she crawl back out? Who would wish for that? Could I accept her if she regained life with only her bones? Well, actually, reflecting on myself, I think I probably could. She wouldn't be able to talk with just bones, so our interactions would be mostly physical contact. Giving and receiving lap pillows on a femur as hard as stone, wouldn't we be awkward? The bones, I mean. It's dangerous for an amateur to imitate chiropractic work, but that's about the only way I'd have to convey my affection to her. After all, she wouldn't have ears or eyes. No, in the first place, could I even be sure those bones were hers?
It's not like we had a shallow relationship, but we weren't exactly on terms where we'd gaze intently at each other's bones. I missed the one and only chance to see them through to the end.
Hehehe, but there is a way, you know. If I have her peel an apple, I can tell in an instant. It's unclear how bones without muscles would move fingertips, but if she's a skeleton person overturning worldly common sense, extending her shield somewhat to her fingertips should be possible. Then, she'd chip the blade of a fruit knife with her hand bones.
Hahaha, same as ever, Naga...... Ah, right, what were we talking about?
Ah, right, the reasons I hate this town. So, it's hard to go on dates. There are no places. So if I take her to a batting center, she gets upset. She hated fishing ponds even more because of the procedure of using bugs as bait. It gradually became fun to tease her, so when I invited her to go bug catching under the pretext of returning to our childhood innocence, she'd say, "I-i-if you tease me that much, I'll call Itsuki, ssu! Itsuki's fine with bugs and stuff, ssu!" That doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Other than that, eating donuts at the station after school, continuously drinking barley tea at her house, reading manga together, listening to music with one earphone each, licking her shoulder, licking her ear, touching her hair... memories are packed in so tightly they could cause a heart attack, and my chest and nose feel stuffed.
Back then, she was alive, smiling at me, earnestly dealing with trivial worries, enough for us to forget the sins we'd committed. It was a happiness close to being overwhelmed with emotion, one where, though averting our eyes, we didn't see the misfortune existing at one point. A happiness with a different perspective from the happiness I feel with Maa-chan now. Perhaps that happiness, which might have been 'ordinary,' allowed us to be close without even piercing a red string through our pinky fingers.
It did fall apart, in reality. But just when I'd started to hope that even if it broke off once, even if our sins were exposed, maybe we could start over as friends and build a relationship, fate snatched away salvation, sent me a live commentary of her death, tore apart the defective blood vessels of my heart, and knocked me down into a daily life like endlessly turning a Rubik's Cube with one piece missing, and " "
Ah, it powered down for me.
Thank you, our Traumaman. I'm always in your debt. If you weren't around, the me of 'now' would probably have become a person running around town chopping people up. But that's the 'current' me. If the 'past' me had truly never met you, a different me might have been strolling through town with friends. Without ending up hating the town to this maddening extent.
"Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot"
That's enough, isn't it? Memories are bullying me, Sensei. Please change my seat or let me drop out of school.
Now then, the second batch of reasons why I hate this town. Since I made a grand declaration that a second round wasn't necessary, I had no choice but to employ a little trick in my counting method. I actually thought about adding an R or S to the first round. That's a liiie.
There are people in this town. Even in a place so remote and with too many fields that it feels like a waste of land if you don't bury people instead of crops, a surprising number of humans are lurking. It's not as bad as a prefecture whose capital city doesn't even have a movie theater, so the population is around three hundred thousand. They're swarming all over the place. Even if I killed one person a day, the town's population, though temporarily decreased, would probably start to grow again gently and develop. If I wish for the extinction of humanity, I can't go the steady route; I have to bet on a long shot for a one-shot reversal. Alright, next summer, I'll go to the local sea for nature school and head deep into a cave with fifteen people... Ah! We don't have a local sea.
Setting aside the setback to my plan for human extinction, I hate people. It's not that I'm scared of them; it's that I have to kowtow to their common sense, and my own attitude when doing so makes my skin crawl. So, nobody get involved with me.
The image of humanity pointed to by my memories is that of an enemy. In the records that a person like me refers to, it's all scenes where humans are depicted merely as enemies. If I were to visualize this stuff and release it to the public, I'd probably be criticized for having a one-sided view of things. That's why experience is no good. Experience has the potential to ostracize those who don't share it. With things 'as they are,' perfect empathy cannot be achieved.
That's why our brains can think. Besides being a system for accumulating records, they're equipped with a function to spin out fantasies. On the reverse side of reality, we paint dreams.
And the accumulation of those thoughts makes me take actions not based on records. That's what it means to have fallen in love with her. Come to think of it, the phenomenon of me being attracted to the opposite sex, or rather, to a human, can be said to be the first time I 'succeeded' in 'letting my guard down' since undergoing special training to fall into misanthropy underground.
No, in a way, Koibi-sensei might have been my first love... precisely because her name is 'Koibi' (Love Day)! No good, the person who said it can't even understand what the 'precisely because' refers to in a nutshell. Besides, if I confessed something like this to her or Natsuki-san, I'd definitely be teased. I intend never to speak of it for the rest of my life.
Scattered. Just how frayed are my thoughts? My attention is diffuse, and my eyeballs, which look like they belong on a cow's severed head, have absolutely no composure. Perhaps this inability to calm down is a type of defect I have. Just by standing, I doubt the ground beneath my feet; I've become skeptical of the world and unstable. Maybe my little sister, who can't stay on my lap, has similar symptoms.
That someone like me could entrust myself to her lap pillow for over an hour—I revere that now, after all this time.
Even though I loved her that much.

Why did I throw away that cell phone so easily?
It was back in March of this year, when the commotion with my little sister happened. At that time, in my haste to get to Maa-chan, I had lowered the priority of all other matters to the bare minimum. And then, I threw away my cell phone.
The history left in that email inbox and outbox was a treasure. Memories that preserved the footprints of a relationship bordering on a miracle, born from coincidence and fate's harassment. In English, it's 'memory,' and since there's a lot, it's 'memories.' I tossed that onto the roadside and have ignored its value until now.
And now, having lost the root, I'm pathetically regretting the branches and leaves, after all this time. Something like that doesn't matter. I don't want to regret it. Because I don't want to increase the number of people who regret anymore.