We left the classroom, swapped indoor shoes for outdoor ones at the lockers, and started home. The volume of looks aimed at us was as crushing as it had been in the morning, and I could not relax.
“By the way, Ryouya — what were you stressing about?”
“I missed almost two weeks, and now I have no idea what’s going on in class.”
“Yeah, that tracks. You were holding your head in your hands during math and physics, weren’t you?”
“Wait — how do you know that?”
“Because I was watching you the whole time during class.”
“No no, you’re supposed to be paying attention to the lesson.”
The image of Reona watching me for hours straight from across the room was — I am not going to lie — slightly horror-genre.
“Anyway, at this rate I’m gonna get drafted into supplementary lessons over summer break. I’d like to do something about that, but I can’t think of anything.”
“Then I’ll teach you. That should be enough to get you past failing grade territory.”
“What?!”
I was startled by the sudden offer from Riona. Wasn’t she busy studying for her own finals? Did she really have time to spare for tutoring me? While I was puzzling that out, Reona started up cheerfully.
“Riona’s been ranked first at our school since the day she enrolled, so she’s a perfect fit. I’m not great at anything except English myself, so I always have her teach me too.”
“Teaching Ryouya is no big deal.”
I’d already had a vague impression of Riona as the smart, intellectual type — apparently that impression was correct.
“So leave it to me.”
”…You really sure?”
“Mm. I want to be useful to you, Ryouya.”
When I asked one more time to be sure, that was her answer. Watching the exchange from the side, Reona broke into a beam.
“All right — decided. There’s not much time before finals, so let’s start today.”
“Wait — today?!”
“Strike while the iron is hot, right?”
“Let’s go to Ryouya’s house, then.”
It was way too sudden, but seeing Riona that fired up made saying no impossible. The three of us walked a while longer and arrived at my house.
“I’m home.”
“Onii-chan, welcome ho—… eh?!”
Mio, who’d apparently gotten home first, came out to greet me — and the moment she saw the two people behind me, her face froze in a perfect mask of disbelief.
“Hi there. We’ll be borrowing Ryouya-kun for a bit.”
“Excuse the intrusion.”
“Sorry, this is sudden, but we’ve got visitors today.”
”…Onii-chan, come here for a second.”
Mio, freshly rebooted, dragged me by the hand into the dining room.
“What is going on?! Why are the Amaki idol twins in our house?!”
“They — they insisted on coming.”
“Onii-chan, I’d heard the story about you saving Reona-senpai and Riona-senpai from the stabbing, but the idea of them actually coming to our house is — I cannot process this.”
“Honestly? I am the least able to process it of anyone here. Anyway, leaving them alone in the entryway is rude — I’m going back.”
Mio still looked like she had more to say, but I went back to where I’d left Reona and Riona.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It’s fine, we showed up on you out of nowhere. — Oh, but we haven’t introduced ourselves to Mio-chan, have we? I’m Tsurugi Reona, Ryouya-kun’s classmate. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Riona. Nice to meet you.”
“I-I’m Yagami Mio, Onii-chan’s little sister. Pleased to meet you.”
Mio looked stiff with nerves. For the record, Mio attends Amaki Middle School, the junior-high branch of my school, and the Tsurugi sisters are apparently famous over there too. Plenty of students at Amaki Middle look up to them — and Mio is one of them.
“Mio-chan, you’re so cute.”
“Mm. Hard to believe she’s Ryouya’s sister.”
“We want her to be our little sister.”
Reona and Riona had apparently taken a liking to Mio. Mio’s face softened in pleasure.
“Don’t go stealing my sister.”
“Sister probably isn’t on the table, but if you marry Onii-chan you can be sisters-in-law!”
“Hm. Excellent plan.”
“Right then. Let’s go pick up a marriage registration form from the city office. Write mine or Riona’s name on it and we’ll file it on the way back.”
The three of them were riffing wildly off each other and I was developing a headache. Setting aside the obvious — we’re all too young to legally marry anyway. And, like, deciding marriage on those grounds is a lot. There were a thousand things I could’ve objected to, but I was already tired, so I said none of them.
“Now that we’ve gotten properly acquainted with Mio-chan, let’s get to the actual point: studying.”
“Oh — you actually remembered.”
“Obviously. Nee-chan and I came here specifically for that.”
We moved to my room and I let them in. The sight of girls in my familiar bedroom was disorienting in the extreme.
”…First time in my life I’ve had girls in my room. Kind of unsettled.”
“Oh wow, really? Then Riona and I claimed another one of your firsts, didn’t we.”
“At this rate, all of Ryouya’s firsts are going to belong to me and Nee-chan.”
I really don’t think someone like me has firsts of any particular value, but. While I was thinking that, Riona pulled something out of her backpack.
“I want to gauge your current level, so try this. It’s a homemade mini-test I put together — five subjects, pulled from the material we’ve covered since second year started.”
“Wait — when did you have time to prep that?!”
The decision to study together had been made literally an hour ago at school, then we’d come straight here. There was no logical window in which she could’ve prepared it.
“This was originally for classmates who struggle academically. I happened to have it on me.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
“Riona’s number one in our year — people are always asking her to tutor them.”
“Anyway, take this and finish it in one hour.”
“Got it.”
———
For anyone who read the old version: Mio’s character has been substantially reworked.
The brother-complex trait is gone, and she’s now a second-year middle schooler instead of a first-year high schooler.
The reasons: in the old version her positioning was awkward and tricky to write, plus the originally planned ending had her landing in a place readers might have found divisive — so I bit the bullet and changed direction.
As a result, the hostility she previously directed at Reona and Riona has been swapped out for admiration, and accordingly the summer-vacation episodes will differ from the old version.