A luxury apartment.
The living room.
The two sisters sat facing each other on the sofa, and the silence stretched on for quite a while.
Facing her sister's scrutinizing gaze, Yukino Yukinoshita waited calmly. She knew her sister still had a great many doubts, but her answers were not going to change.
"Yukino, Lin-kun has already left—now you can tell me the truth!"
Haruno still couldn't accept it.
"What I said just now is the truth."
"I'm your big sister—do you think I'll believe that?"
"This is simply the fact."
"Given your personality, you ought to have made Lin Ye and Mai Sakurajima break up—there's no way you'd accept him dating Mai Sakurajima, and you didn't even try to stop it."
"I did stop it. I refused."
Yukino Yukinoshita calmly stated this fact. "But he wouldn't accept it."
"He won't accept it, so you just accept it?"
That was completely unlike Yukino's style too.
Haruno stared at her little sister. "Given your personality, since he refuses to break up with Mai Sakurajima and sever the relationship cleanly, shouldn't the next step be for you to break up with him and end things?"
In that instant,
Yukino Yukinoshita frowned slightly.
Some ambiguous memory was faintly stirring at the back of her mind, but she couldn't recall it.
"Yukino, he threatened you, didn't he?"
"No, sister. How many times do I have to say it before you accept it?"
She swept back her black tresses, her dark-blue eyes betraying a trace of helplessness. "In any case, the matter between him and me—I will handle and resolve it. There's no need for you to worry, sister."
"I'm your big sister."
Haruno had no intention of agreeing to this 'unreasonable' request of her sister's.
"Yes, you're my big sister—so what were you doing just now?"
Yukino Yukinoshita gazed back coldly at this sister of hers.
Ever since they were little, this sister of hers had loved to bully her, in every way imaginable; and now she was even being intimate and ambiguous with her boyfriend, her fiancé.
She even felt that as long as Lin Ye was willing, her sister would climb right into bed.
She had that premonition.
"Ahem, ahem, ahem—I was merely testing my future brother-in-law's self-restraint, seeing whether he'd do something to wrong Yukino. If he really were that kind of man, wouldn't it be better for Yukino to break up with him sooner rather than later?"
Haruno admired herself.
This reasoning—perfect.
And besides, if it could really lead Yukino to give up on Lin Ye, that would be an enormously good thing.
"Spare me."
Yukino slapped away the hand her sister Haruno had draped over her shoulder. "I'm going to take a bath. Sister, you can go home now."
"No—I'm staying here overnight tonight. If I leave, who knows, Yukino might secretly contact Lin-kun to come spend the night here."
"I wouldn't do it secretly."
"Oh, so you would contact Lin-kun, then."
Haruno's smile was radiant.
Yukino kept her composure, but inwardly a flush of bashfulness still surfaced—she'd been hit right on the mark.
She turned and headed straight for the bathroom.
In truth, she wasn't all that sleepy, but she didn't want to keep talking with her sister either.
'Splash, splash...'
Warm water poured over her body.
Yukino closed her eyes, savoring the comfort of this moment.
Mai Sakurajima.
Japan's hottest rising star.
She would defeat that woman.
It was just that,
deep in her heart, there was always a streak of dissonance.
'Knock, knock...'
"Yukino, I'm coming in."
"Sister, you... you can't—"
"Just as I thought, when Yukino bathes alone at home she still isn't in the habit of locking the door."
Haruno walked in, gazing at her little sister's lovely body amid the white steam, the smile at the corner of her lips growing ever more intense.
'Click...'
Haruno shut the bathroom door.
At this moment Yukino's hands instinctively covered her crucial parts, but in Haruno's eyes that only made her all the more enticing.
Without the least bit of restraint she stepped forward and reached out. "How nice!"
"Your skin is so smooth, snow-white all over, and your figure is so slender and willowy."
"It really is a waste, letting Lin-kun have you. As your big sister, I truly can't bear to part with you."
Yukino's face flushed crimson. She struggled a few times, but since she wasn't using her full strength, there really was no chance of escaping.
"Sister, that's enough."
'Smack...' came a crisp sound, clear and sharp.
Haruno had slapped a certain part of her little sister.
"Quite nice indeed."
"Sister—"
'Smack...'
Yukino got angry, got furious, and struck back too, choosing the very same method of retaliation.
But considering it was the bathroom, neither of them dared play too rough.
Slipping and falling would be no good at all.
In the end, Haruno scrubbed Yukino's back.
"It's been a long time since I scrubbed Yukino's back."
Yukino didn't answer.
"In a few more days, you won't need me to scrub your back anymore—you'll have Lin-kun to scrub your back, Yukino. How nice! How enviable!"
Yukino had known her sister would say something like this.
She still made no reply, letting her sister talk to herself.
"But Yukino, you have to take proper precautions. You mustn't agree to some of Lin-kun's willful demands—if you were to get pregnant, that would be bad."
"Sister—"
At this moment,
Yukino finally couldn't help raising her voice, her tone shaded with bashful anger.
Why bring up that sort of thing—she and Lin Ye hadn't so much as properly held hands yet, let alone that.
"A man, after all, can't possibly have no such thoughts—especially toward a pretty girl like Yukino. You two are still in a boyfriend-girlfriend and fiancé relationship; if he made the request, would Yukino refuse?"
"I'd refuse."
Yukino answered crisply and firmly.
But she knew that, in truth, her confidence wasn't all that solid.
With the relationship not yet there and the feelings not yet there, she could resolutely refuse.
But now the relationship was actually already there; and though the feelings weren't quite there yet, if Lin Ye really made the request, pleading repeatedly, she truly wouldn't be one to resolutely refuse.
"You—you're far too easy to read."
Haruno was helpless.
Once her little sister's body had fallen, the day her heart fell completely wouldn't be far off at all.
And besides, her sister's heart right now had already fallen about halfway.
Ten minutes later,
the two sisters lay on the bed.
The faint, fresh fragrance of body wash lingered in the air.
"Yukino."
"..."
"If your big sister advised you to give up Lin Ye, would you agree?"
Yukino closed her eyes, pretending she'd heard nothing at all.
"Haah."
A faint sigh.
At the very least, she'd thought her sister ought to ask a 'why,' but the result was not even a why—which showed just how deep Yukino's feelings for Lin Ye currently ran.
Haruno tugged at the blanket and closed her eyes as well.
Things having come to this, all she could do was look for an opportunity in the days ahead.
If—if it really wouldn't work, then... she'd help Yukino crush the other women, drive the other women away from Lin Ye. That was Haruno's last-resort method, the one she least wanted to use.
...
...
After Lin Ye left, he boarded a train heading for the station nearest his apartment.
'Clack, clack...'
The train ran on, the rhythmic sound rising again and again.
This hour was when Japan's office workers returned from late shifts or after group dinners.
The carriage was a little more crowded than usual, the air filled with a mingled smell of alcohol, sweat, and perfume.
Lin Ye stood off to the side, one hand gripping a handrail.
Not long after,
he felt someone draw close, and even tug at the hem of his clothes.
Hm?
He instinctively glanced over and immediately saw a girl with silver shoulder-length twintails standing beside him, head bowed, her hand clutching the hem of his clothes.
Who?
He didn't recognize her—but she was rather cute and pretty.
What did this girl want to do, though?
Surely she wasn't trying to steal something from him?
Looking at the girl's exquisite, doll-like little face, Lin Ye scanned around and at once spotted a man with ill intent standing two or three meters from the girl.
That gaze immediately made him realize something.
Clearly the girl's wariness had kicked in, and she'd taken evasive action ahead of time.
But wasn't she afraid of him?
He was a man too.
And what's more, he carried several sharp weapons on him, every one of them a powerful skill fit to make him the male lead of a hentai.
"Let's switch positions."
At the next stop, even more people would pour into the carriage.
If things were as he guessed, that pervert would surely take advantage of the chance to draw even closer.
"Mm."
The silver-haired girl agreed outright and switched places with Lin Ye.
Now the girl was in the corner, with Lin Ye blocking the space in front of her,
so that no one else had a chance to approach the girl.
"Tsk..."
The man Lin Ye suspected clicked his tongue, showing his displeasure, while the gaze he turned toward Lin Ye brimmed with anger.
This was displeasure directed at Lin Ye—
as good as stating it outright.
So this was the rumored train molester.
Unbelievable.
He really could run into one.
But considering he'd already met several hentai heroines, encountering a train molester was really the most normal thing in the world; if anything, it would be strange not to.
"You're dead..."
The man very carefully made a throat-slitting threat gesture at Lin Ye.
This brazen?
That was the first thought to surface in Lin Ye's mind.
Generally speaking, men like train molesters tend to live unsatisfying lives in reality and don't have much nerve—they only act on the sly and don't dare to confront anyone head-on.
But now this fellow had even struck a hard-line, murderous threatening pose.
Lin Ye hadn't originally intended to get involved, but now that the man's threat had landed right on his own head, he decided he needed to do something.
Send him in first!
Let this guy learn just what he weighed—did he really think that because Lin Ye looked young he could be bullied however one pleased?
Don't make me laugh.
If it were some other male high-school exchange student, he really might have swallowed the insult—but he was different.
He was a Strange Player, a master of superpowers.
Dealing with a fellow like this was a breeze.
The silver-haired girl beside Lin Ye had also noticed the man's threatening gesture just now. Her heart trembled; she worried for Lin Ye, and felt all the more that she'd brought him trouble.
But constrained by her temperament, she just hugged her shoulder bag, pursed her lips in silence, and watched with her eyes.
'Tap...'
Lin Ye lifted his leg and took a step.
This action drew startled expressions from both the girl and the man.
The man in particular was somewhat flustered—clearly he hadn't expected that Lin Ye, far from being afraid, would aggressively come right up to him.
Just like that, it was his turn to panic; instinctively he wondered whether Lin Ye had some backing and real strength, otherwise how would he dare step forward to retaliate.
'Tap, tap...'
In just two steps, Lin Ye arrived at the man's side.
The man's eyes drifted away, his legs instinctively wanting to leave, yet for some reason he held his ground.
Mustn't lose the standoff of momentum.
That was his thinking.
But Lin Ye merely held onto the handrail and did nothing.
This left the man puzzled—this guy hadn't come for him after all?
Then...
All at once, his eyes lit up as he looked at that cute silver-haired girl in the corner.
Could this be a signal for him to go, and then...
At once, the man's eyes flashed with a gleam.
He felt he'd probably run into a kindred spirit, and this kindred spirit...
He met Lin Ye's gaze.
An inexplicable force made his eyes go hazy, while a faint murmuring reached his ears.
Having done all this, Lin Ye nonchalantly and naturally returned to his original spot.
Meanwhile the man stayed where he was, head bowed, leaning against something.
The train reached the station,
and the passengers waiting at the platform filed in one after another.
As people entered, the scene grew crowded.
The man was inevitably bumped.
The head-bowed man suddenly lifted his head, his eyes glinting with a sheen.
"Who's the molester—"
"I'm the molester!"
"Where are the women? I want to find a woman..."
Sentence after sentence rang out in the noisy carriage,
and in an instant,
the carriage was left with nothing but the man's deranged ravings.
Under the astonished gazes of the many passengers, he even grabbed his own clothes with both hands and began ripping them apart.
At this moment,
several young women in the carriage screamed out.
"Aaaah!"
"A pervert!"
"Police—call the police, quick!"
"There's a pervert molester here!"
...
After briefly backing away, several male passengers chose to band together and subdue this pervert who was still madly stripping off his clothes and baring his body.
"Don't look."
Lin Ye reminded the girl beside him.
This made the silver-haired girl immediately withdraw her gaze, though her inner curiosity didn't diminish in the slightest.
A perfectly normal person—how had he turned into this?
The silver-haired girl's curious gaze fell upon Lin Ye. Out of her own sixth sense, she instinctively felt this matter was connected to the man before her.
But how had this man done it?
Coincidence? Or some kind of superpower?
All at once, the silver-haired girl's interest was piqued, blinking with a star-like, curious expression.
The pervert was subdued, but he still didn't stop.
In the end, upon reaching the next station, he was carried off the train, taken over by the train staff, and would eventually be handed over to the police arriving on the scene.
The train carriage returned to normal.
The occasional lowered voices were discussing the matter of the pervert molester just now.
Japanese trains really do have pervert molesters appear, and quite a few molesters really have been caught and sent to the police station; but one like today's, who you could say hadn't managed to do anything before self-destructing and getting subdued, was truly a first.
'Clack...'
'Clack...'
The train slowed gradually once again,
and the broadcast sounded the chime announcing the stop.
The silver-haired girl stood up.
She had reached her station.
Only, she didn't head straight for the carriage door. Instead she walked up to Lin Ye and reached out to tug at the hem of his clothes.
"Hm?"
Lin Ye let out a puzzled sound.
The silver-haired girl was a little timid, yet also somewhat resolute. She tugged at the hem of Lin Ye's clothes again.
Lin Ye saw the girl's lips move, only there was no sound—as faint as a mosquito's whine.
Fine then!
Though the girl hadn't said it outright, he understood her meaning all the same.
She was asking him to get off together with her.
He and the girl were total strangers, meeting for the first time today; he could simply ignore her. But how to put it—he'd already lent her a hand just now, and faced with the girl's plea for help once more, he didn't want to refuse.
"Beep, beep, beep..."
The chime warning that the doors were about to close sounded.
"Let's go!"
Once Lin Ye spoke, the silver-haired girl immediately walked briskly out the carriage door.
The two of them quickly arrived on the platform.
"Lead the way ahead! I'll see you home."
Clearly, because of what had happened in the carriage just now, the girl had developed a fear of the outside world.
The only thing Lin Ye found strange was why the girl had come to him, had sought him out.
Was it because he looked kind-faced?
Lin Ye couldn't help touching his own cheek.
His tender high-schooler appearance really did give people a sense of being kind-faced.
Otherwise, if he looked fierce and menacing, no one would dare approach him—that molester just now probably wouldn't have dared rashly make a throat-slitting threat either!
Coming out of the train station,
Lin Ye trailed half a step behind the girl, following along.
The silver-haired girl wasn't the least bit wary of Lin Ye, glancing around to fix the direction as she led the way ahead.
Looking at the girl's back, Lin Ye felt that this girl being targeted probably wasn't a coincidence either.
It was precisely because the molester on the train thought she was meek and easy to bully that he'd chosen her as his target—though the girl won out by her alertness, noticing it in advance and immediately leaving to find him for help.
But her sense of trust toward him, a stranger, really did give off a feeling of being easy to deceive.
Under the cover of night,
the silver-haired girl walked along the side of the street, occasionally glancing back; noticing Lin Ye following, only then did she continue forward with peace of mind.
After walking for about seven or eight minutes,
the two arrived before a private residence.
The residence wasn't new, but it won out by being clean and tidy.
At this point Lin Ye spoke up. "Little girl, aren't you worried that I'm a bad person?"
He felt it necessary to make her aware of the dangers of society—not to think he was safe, not to think that just because he'd offered help she could trust him wholeheartedly.
The silver-haired girl tilted her head, her eyes holding the tiniest bit of confusion.
"If I were a bad person, you'd be in danger."
"..."
But she was still, to some small degree, a little nervous, a little afraid.
"So, don't easily trust just anyone."
"You're... a good person."
At last,
the silver-haired girl spoke up.
Her voice was very pleasant, soft and gentle, with that little-sister sort of feel.
Lin Ye could only slowly type out three question marks in his mind.
With you being like this, do I have to play the bad guy for once?
"Sorry, I'm a bad person—a heinous, unforgivable villain, a super scoundrel feared by all mankind."
As Lin Ye spoke, he made an exaggerated gesture and abruptly made as if to lunge at her, frightening the girl into stumbling back again and again.
'Eeyah!'
Her foot tripped,
and the silver-haired girl, losing her balance, screamed out.
But just as she thought she was about to fall to the ground and take a hard, painful hit, she found the pain was slow to come—a pair of sturdy arms had firmly caught her body.
"Tha—"
"Thank you."
The silver-haired girl spoke, her voice tinged with a hint of timidity and bashfulness.
"Be more careful."
Lin Ye shook his head.
Frightened by a single scare from him—this girl really was too naive, too simple.
"Mm."
She let out a soft "mm," stood steady, and straightened her clothes.
"All right, hurry on upstairs! If you don't go back soon, your parents will worry too."
But the girl didn't step away; instead she stood rooted in place, head bowed, her expression suffused with a streak of sorrow.
"What's wrong? Are your parents not home?"
He had another guess, but that guess—Lin Ye hoped it wouldn't come true.
"Mm, they're not home."
"They'll be back in a couple of days. Just bear with it these few days."
Lin Ye was, on the contrary, relieved.
"They'll never come back."
But the girl's new words dragged Lin Ye's mood right into awkwardness.
His guess was probably true after all.
The girl really had lost her parents.
"Sorry."
The silver-haired girl shook her head.
And so, the silence lasted a full minute, before Lin Ye spoke up once more. "Go home first and rest well. Forget what happened on the train today. If you run into something similar in the future, do as you did today—get away, and shout out boldly."
"Mm-hm, I understand. I will."
"It's getting late, so I'll head back now."
"Your number."
She seemed unwilling to let Lin Ye simply walk out of her life.
"Little girl, asking a man for his phone number isn't a proper thing to do—it could give people the wrong idea."
Lin Ye smiled faintly, taking the initiative to crack a joke.
"Your number," she insisted.
"Your name, then asking for my phone number—at the very least you should introduce yourself first."
The silver-haired girl thought for a moment, then slowly spoke. "Sora."
"Hm?"
This pronunciation—it sounded familiar.
Looking at the exquisite features of the girl before him and the silver strands of hair drifting in the night breeze, an image faintly surfaced in Lin Ye's mind.
"What?"
He focused intently.
"Sora Kasugano."
Lin Ye: "..."
His mind exploded.
Some information about this girl rapidly surfaced in his head.
Sora-chan!
A hentai heroine!
No, wait—that anime doesn't really count as hentai, does it?
Mm, it's a mainstream title, but the plot can rival a hentai.
Lin Ye remembered that in the original work the parents had also passed on—so what about Sora-chan's twin older brother?
"Do you have any... siblings? None?"
Having come to his senses, Lin Ye switched to a different way of asking.
The silver-haired girl was first stunned, then lowered her head again. "Together, an accident..."
So that was it.
Brother Haru had passed away as well.
"Only I... survived."
Lin Ye understood.
An accident—probably a car crash. The family of four went out and met with an accident, and in the end the parents and the older brother died, leaving only the daughter, Sora, to survive all alone.
For this girl, it was absolutely an enormous blow.
Living alone in this world,
the once-lively home left with only her.
How could she possibly not be sorrowful and lonely?
Lin Ye felt a pang of pity for this girl.
"No relatives took you in?"
"No."
That single word drew a strong reaction from the girl.
From those few words alone, Lin Ye sensed the girl's dissatisfaction and loathing toward her relatives.
"They... wanted to seize the house..."
Just a few words, and Lin Ye's mind filled in the scene of relatives fighting over the family property and the compensation money.
A huge sum of compensation really is apt to stir up disputes—but could a girl who wasn't yet an adult protect it?
Still, looking at the girl's situation now, living in this private residence, things should be all right.
Lin Ye thought it over and decided to contact Haruno and have her help look into it.
And as for this girl,
an idea surfaced in Lin Ye's mind.
How about... making her his little sister?
...
...
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