Nisenmonogatari Part 2 Read online

  “That’s my toothbrush,” she said.

  Indeed. I’d gone down to grab Karen’s orange-handled, fine-bristled toothbrush. I also remembered to bring toothpaste, which I was holding in my other hand.

  “Y-You don’t mean…” Karen looked uncharacteristically afraid, even a little green around the gills.

  Hm. She was quick on the uptake, all right. Being a wild-animal grizzled soldier, maybe she’d figured it out.

  I was hoping to surprise her, so I felt a little let down until she pointed a shaky finger my way and accused, “You’re planning on sticking it up my butt?!”

  ……

  I was the one taken by surprise now. I felt like I’d grown some gills before going green around them.

  What the hell went through that head of hers?

  “I should have known any brother of mine would be capable of cooking up something truly fiendish!”

  “Uh, this brother of yours wasn’t thinking anything of the sort…” She was overestimating me. I was nowhere near that level as a man.

  “Really? When some stalker was following around one of the girls in her class, Tsukihi came up with a similar punishment.”

  “I’m scared!”

  My little sister was absolutely terrifying! Well, yes, it did sound like the sort of thing Tsukihi might come up with! Karen, herself, tended not to think along those lines.

  “Not even Tsukihi struck on the idea of using toothpaste,” she marveled. “I knew you were in a different league.”

  “Hey, don’t lump me in with Tsukihi.”

  “I’m not. You’re in a different league.”

  “I’m in a different everything from her.”

  I was a little aghast. Tsukihi was a worse punk than Karen and could join a women’s biker gang. Her own brother certainly felt intimidated.

  “Maybe she went too far, but a coward who stoops to stalking girls has it coming, don’t you think?” asked Karen, her face somewhat serious.

  Given the vibes I was getting, I probably shouldn’t mention to her, for the time being, that Kanbaru used to stalk me.

  I guess this was more of my sisters playing at defenders of justice. My saying so would only elicit the usual rebuttal that it wasn’t make-believe, that they weren’t its defenders but justice itself.

  “A coward, huh? Yeah,” I assented, “I’m not gonna stick up for a guy who chases middle-school girls’ skirts.”

  “Oh, that reminds me. Tsukihi said she’s investigating another rumor like that.”

  “A rumor?”

  “Yup. Word is, some high school kid in our town likes to assault a little girl with pigtails from behind─he’s more a pervert than a stalker because he hugs her and touches her all over. There haven’t been a lot of eyewitnesses so who knows if it’s true, but if it is, he’s gonna pay for it.”

  “O-Oh.”

  Wh-Wh-Wh-What a pervert, I agreed, averting my eyes with all I had.

  Sometimes I forget that Mayoi Hachikuji isn’t some kind of otherworldly fairy that only Hanekawa and I can see.

  So there were eyewitnesses, if not many.

  Terrifying─our information society.

  Ubiquitous.

  “If some scumbag out there is sexually harassing innocent little girls,” Karen fumed, “I won’t leave it up to Tsukihi. I’ll get in on the action and rearrange the guy’s face.”

  “Ha…hahahaha. You two sure keep busy, huh? Tell you what, if you find out anything else, come straight to me. You won’t regret it.”

  “Look at you, getting involved for a change. I guess there’s a righteous heart beating somewhere in your chest, after all.”

  “But of course. Hahahaha.”

  “We’re getting off topic, though, aren’t we? If you’re not sticking it in my butt, then what the heck is that toothbrush for? What else would anyone do with a toothbrush?”

  “……”

  That was some kind of question. If we took it out of context, she was the real pervert. She’d have a lot to discuss with Kanbaru.

  However!

  Believe it or not, Kanbaru’s perverse imagination soared even higher! The spirit of that woman far outstripped pale words like “stalker” and “pervert”!

  Which is why I didn’t want to introduce them!

  “Karen, you mean you didn’t know? A toothbrush is a tool that many people use to brush their teeth.”

  “A-Ah. That does ring a bell.”

  “Of course, if we’re being sticklers, it’s also used to clean other things. Great for getting at those hard-to-reach crevices around the sink or tub, it…”

  Ack. I was getting off topic again. Since we were talking about Kanbaru, I couldn’t help but think of cleaning. Tomorrow was the fifteenth, so I needed to go help with her room as usual.

  “Koyomi, maybe a toothbrush is a tool you use to brush your teeth, but what’s your point? You’re not going to make me brush my teeth, are you?”

  “Right. I’m not.” I nodded. “I’m not making you…because I’ll do the brushing.”

  “…?” Karen cocked her head. The gravity of the situation still eluded her. “Um, I don’t get it… You’re gonna brush my teeth for me? Why? I mean, if you want to, I don’t mind…but how is that any sort of match?”

  She looked so dumbfounded.

  Heheheh. Knowing that her aloof expression wouldn’t be on her face for much longer filled my heart with joy.

  “You and Tsukihi both get your hair cut at a salon, don’t you? Me, I get queasy about it. Having some stranger touch my head makes me weirdly tense.”

  “Well, I see what you mean. I wouldn’t want to get my hair cut by a stylist that I don’t know.”

  “Psychologically, people aren’t comfortable having their hair touched by anyone not close to them. I bet some girls would even rather be touched on their bodies than on their hair.”

  Hachikuji was like that.

  Once, when I grabbed her pigtails and pretended I was steering them like a Harley Davidson, she got really angry at me, even dropping her usual polite diction. I’d never seen her in such a rage… My regrets were still a fresh memory.

  “Yeah…so?” asked Karen, a touch of wariness in her voice. Unable to see where this was going, she was feeling anxious. Her vigilance was second to none.

  “It’s a matter of touch─a haircut is the simplest example, but I could give others. Would you ever trust a non-professional to perform a full-body massage on you? It’s that sort of thing.”

  “That sort of thing…”

  “Brushing one’s teeth is that sort of thing,” I said, though I didn’t know why I was speaking deliberately like I was giving a lecture. “You seem unperturbed, but having someone brush your teeth isn’t a common experience. Unlike a haircut or a massage, it’s something you can usually manage yourself and do take care of on your own.”

  I was saying this to someone who’d be chopping off her own ponytail a few hours later, but obviously I had no way of knowing. How could I have seen that coming?

  “Let me break it down, Karen─getting your teeth brushed by another person is going to feel incredibly creepy. If you can keep yourself from freaking out for five minutes, you win. I’ll introduce you to Kanbaru. But if you make a peep before the five minutes are up, I win, and I won’t introduce you to her.”

  “Haha!”

  Faced with the rules and conditions, the match that I laid out, Karen laughed─like she was relieved. Actually, it was more of a snort, as if the wind had just been let out of her sails.

  “Wow,” she said, “the way you were making such a big deal of this, I was starting to get scared. Now I’m kind of disappointed.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah, bring it on. I don’t want to imagine having my teeth brushed by a total stranger, but my own brother? I can do this. Are you sure you won’t be the one to give in first, humiliated that you’re brushing your sister’s teeth? I gotta say, there’s nothing you could do to me that I’d find embarrassing.�
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  Well, lookee here. She thought she was dealing with an amateur.

  “……”

  Keheheh! She’d fallen into my trap! Even her arrogant tone was music to my ears.

  I knew full well that she was impervious to shame. How many years did she think I’d been her big brother?

  In fact, I became her big brother before she was even born!

  “Sure,” I consented, “if I break first you win.”

  “Yeah? I don’t know, it seems like a really easy challenge for getting to meet Kanbaru-sensei. I almost feel bad. You could’ve picked a bigger hurdle. You’re so KY.”

  “KY?”

  “You can’t read the air.”

  “Ah”─kuuki yomenai─“I’ve heard that one before.”

  “How about SF for ‘a bit mysterious’? I wonder why.”

  “What a grandmaster…so far ahead of his times.”

  That wordplay, sukoshi fushigi, belonged to Fujio Fujiko. It was more than a bit mysterious, but enough of that.

  “Let’s begin,” I said. “Sit there.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Karen plopped herself down on the bed willy-nilly, sending her skirt flipping up in a mess. Maybe she wasn’t used to wearing one, and the hem was also too short, but clearly skirts weren’t meant for her, I thought as I sat down next to her.

  Like best friends.

  I added a small amount of toothpaste to the brush, twisted my body in her direction, and placed my left hand behind her head.

  “Say ‘ahh.’”

  “Ahh.”

  I had her open her mouth and inserted the toothbrush.

  Now then.

  Time to experience the terror that was Kanbaru-sensei.

  Take comfort in knowing that none other than Kanbaru’s fetishistic sensibility was your downfall!

  “Gh…mphh?!”

  Karen finally seemed to grasp the danger she had stumbled into approximately a minute into the match.

  Her expression shifted. Well, make that quaked.

  I’d never seen a face look so alarmed─and ecstatic.

  “Mm…mmph, g-grk?!”

  Now she understood.

  Too late, Karen-chan.

  The match was on.

  Yes. My talk of hair salons and massages had been misdirection. Getting your teeth brushed is on a different plane.

  We’re talking about fiddling around in your mouth.

  Not outside, but inside your body. Not the surface, but underneath.

  Let’s not sugarcoat it. The truth is that it generates pleasure.

  In other words, it feels good.

  Brushing your teeth is such an everyday act that you become accustomed to it and don’t notice─I hadn’t thought about it, either, until Kanbaru pointed it out to me.

  Yet it’s a stern fact.

  Caressing a delicate part of your body with fine bristles can only feel good. When it’s someone else doing it to boot, can anyone possibly keep it together?

  Karen had guts. She didn’t bend to pain or humiliation.

  She was a masochist, you could say. A total, utter masochist.

  Which is exactly what made pleasing her, indulging her in this way such an effective means of breaking her spirit.

  Tenacity felled by pleasure! Pride bowing to indolence!

  “Ng-gh…nmmphh!”

  As I focused on a spot behind her molars and scrubbed where tooth met gum, Karen reacted in a most sensitive manner. Her body started to twitch and convulse.

  Her eyes seemed about to roll back.

  This was getting scary in its own way…

  It was my first time trying this, but the great Kanbaru-sensei certainly lived up to her name.

  Don’t hate me, Karen. I’m doing this for your own good!

  You don’t want to meet the woman who came up with this crazy idea!

  “Ng-gh…huph, huph, huph. N…gh, ahh, ahhh…”

  Unfortunately─I had miscalculated.

  I’d failed to account for just how gutsy Karen Araragi was. Not even pleasure could break this Gutsy Frog.

  I thought she wouldn’t last two minutes, but she was gritting her teeth─well, she couldn’t since I was brushing them (another reason your body went limp), but she withstood my strikes, my strokes, my pampering.

  This whole girls’ manga-like situation of being pleasured by her older brother must have felt really naughty to her, and yet… Hmph, not bad, Karen. Not bad at all.

  She was inspiring me to try harder.

  I (even though it was a little out of bounds) began brushing her tongue.

  The underside of her tongue, to be precise─that part of the body was pretty much exposed muscle.

  “Karen, you’ll feel so much better if you just gave up─correction! Give up and it won’t feel so good anymore!”

  She was in tickling hell. There was no way she could endure this.

  Another minute was the most she could take!

  “Uh oh… Hold on?!”

  In fact, the one who couldn’t take another minute─was me.

  I guess Kanbaru figured it was too obvious to mention, but there was a serious pitfall in this match (which probably wasn’t how she thought of it in the first place).

  I’d focused on the psyche of the brushee and rushed into this without stopping to consider the very important matter of how I, the brusher, would feel.

  It was a huge blunder. One I wouldn’t, couldn’t recover from.

  “Aaah… Pheuuu. H-Hnkk!”

  ……

  Holy shit!

  Karen’s moaning gasps were making me feel all funny inside!

  My heart was thumping faster!

  Her every reaction was getting me worked up!

  What was this complex feeling, like we were breaking a taboo?!

  Knowing that I was pleasuring my own sister felt so immoral!

  Each audible scrape of the toothbrush, every frothing of paste in her mouth, began to feel less like cleaning Karen’s teeth and more like polishing my own soul.

  Was I satisfying myself the most by brushing someone else’s teeth rather than mine?!

  Was I so happy to be of use?!

  Is this what my schoolteachers call “service”?!

  Okay, probably not!

  This was bad. Even the streak of drool spilling from the corner of Karen’s mouth, something I would usually just find gross, was instilling a strange sense of affection!

  If I didn’t stop working the brush immediately, something terrible might happen─but even though I knew that, knew that this was wrong, my hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Like some sort of automated machine (an electric toothbrush, even), it refused to stop.

  If anything, its movements grew more ferocious. The more I focused, the worse it got.

  Karen’s convulsions, likewise, intensified─she was clutching the bed sheet firmly in her hands, I guess because she couldn’t grit her teeth, but that still wasn’t enough to keep her body in check.

  And her face had turned crimson red, like it was about to burst into flame.

  “Holy…” I said, without meaning to. I managed to swallow the words just in time─but the ones that almost escaped my mouth surprised even myself.

  Holy. She looked so cute.

  I’ve fulfilled my position as Karen’s older brother for some sixteen years now (The number includes the time she was in our mother’s womb, by the way. That’s what I was getting at when I said I’ve been her brother since before she was born─I wasn’t being rhetorical), but I never found her so cute before.

  Earlier, it was only because she’d been threatening me that I praised how she looked in a skirt. No, I mean, it was just a slip of the tongue, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her she was cute now─but I couldn’t retract having thought so.

  Once the data leaked, you couldn’t retrieve it.

  Holy.

  Holy, holy, holy.

  This was insane.

  Was Karen always this cute?
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  Wait… Wait a sec…

  Was my little sister actually the cutest girl in the world?