Ex6-1. The Exorcist Sister and the Incompetent Little Sister

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/61/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

In a dim room, the clatter of a keyboard went on without pause.
The girl responsible wore a shapeless red padded coat and sat hunched, locked in a staring contest with three monitors in a row.
Her long black hair was a tangle. Thick black-framed glasses sat on her nose. Now and then a little laugh slipped out of her: “Nihihi.”

“When everybody moves just the way I want, yeah, that’s fun. Nih.”

She was still muttering that unsettling aside when a knock sounded at the door.
Almost in the same instant, without waiting for an answer, someone walked in.
The girl, who had been in such a good mood, let out an obvious “Haaah,” and glared at her sister, who was trespassing as usual.

“Sis… how many times do I have to tell you there’s no point knocking if you come in at the same time?”
“Oh, what does it matter? We’re sisters.”
“Ever heard of courtesy even among intimates?”
“Other houses are other houses. Ours is ours. So? How’s it going, Senri?”

The older sister—Shuri—ignored her younger sister Senri Shirogane’s protest as if it were nothing and asked with shameless composure.
She had come to Senri unusually meek, saying she had a favor to ask. Senri had agreed, and this was the result.
Out in the world, Shuri passed for a bright, kind person of character. Senri would have stated, without hesitation, that this was not the case.

“Tyrant, aren’t you. How did our sister even grow up like this.”
“Never mind that—just tell me! Are the vampire rumors actually spreading?”
“They are. I used every board and every social network, wrote copy that would bite depending on the venue, and posted at the right moment! A stunt like that would be impossible without a brain like mine.”

Ordinary methods would never make anyone believe the nonsense that a string of mass murders was the work of vampires.
Not even as rumor or urban legend.
But if you impersonated a crowd and flooded every channel in a short span, a few people would start to believe.
Then you deepened their conviction and turned them into new sources of spread.
By repeating that, Senri had succeeded, on her own, in circulating the vampire rumor.

“Yes, yes, very impressive. And you’ve covered your tracks?”

Shuri, who was hopeless with machines, had no idea what was impressive and let it slide.
Senri, of course, pursed her lips in dissatisfaction.

“Praise me more. It was a lot of work, you know?”
“You’re so capable. There, there.”

As she said it, Shuri ruffled Senri’s hair in a teasing way.
The hand was batted away at once.

“People with no knowledge always look down on advanced technique. Honestly. Anyway, I’m routing it through overseas servers so it won’t lead back. But do we even need to go that far? Even if you’re right and the culprit this time is a vampire, I’ve never heard of a vampire who uses the net.”
“Just in case. So you don’t get pulled into danger, Senri.”
“Sis…”

Senri was moved, in spite of herself, that her sister worried about her.
The feeling did not last.

“If you’re that worried, maybe you just shouldn’t have used me in the first place?”
“…”

The pointed remark silenced Shuri.
She seemed to think for a moment, and then—

“……Fufufu.”

She began to laugh, slowly and on purpose.

“Fufufu. Fufu. Fufufufufu.”

She kept up the theatrical laughter, patted Senri’s back a few times, and walked out of the room.
Apparently she had found nothing to say and was trying to paper it over.

“Fufufufufu…”

The laugh receded down the hall.
Watching her sister’s retreating back, Senri clutched her head and let out a long breath.
Shuri’s high-handed behavior was nothing new. No one understood better than Senri that getting angry was a waste.
There was nothing to do but give up.

“Well, it’s not like I’m not having fun, so whatever.”

She said it, and resumed her staring contest with the displays.
Later, when she started to leave the room for the bathroom, a bottle of juice was waiting outside the door.
Shuri’s idea of thanks, apparently.
“I’m cheap, getting happy over just this,” Senri thought, with a wry smile.

◇◇◇

 

Senri and Shuri were both second-years at the same high school.
Shuri, who belonged to an athletic club, left early for morning practice, so the two of them never walked to school together.
Once she was ready, Senri always watched anime or played games until the last possible minute, then left the house.
A two-story home in a quiet residential neighborhood.
Every morning on her way to school she looked up at it and thought, with a self-deprecating twist, that she would never be able to build a house like this. Then she headed for the station.
Along the way, a patrol car crept up beside her.
The window rolled down, and the upper half of a policewoman appeared, wearing a friendly smile.

“Yo. Looking half-asleep again today, Senri.”
“Kana… thanks for your hard work. Fwaaah…”
“That’s a big yawn. Lack of sleep is the skin’s natural enemy, you know.”
“I’m fine. I’m still young.”
“The reckless stuff you do when you’re young catches up when you’re grown. They say the earlier the better for everything.”
“Yeah, well, it’s catching up with you a little, Kana.”

When Senri said that, Kana’s expression stayed the same; only her eyes changed.

“…I’ll shoot you, you know.”

Not a line one expected from an active officer. If a superior had been present, it might have meant immediate discipline.

“Ahahaha. Nice cop joke. So, Kana, what’s going on with that murder case?”
“Hm? Ah, the one where only men are dying. I can’t talk investigation, but it’s basically what they’re reporting on TV.”
“So they don’t know anything.”
“It isn’t that we don’t know. We know, we just can’t understand. The perpetrator approaches the victim, wrings the upper and lower body apart with bare hands, and vanishes on the spot. How does that even happen?”
“Maybe you should call in a great detective. The kind with an adult mind and a child’s body.”
“You watch too much anime, Senri. Detectives who swear on their grandfather’s name don’t exist in real life. That’s why I’d almost rather they just told us the culprit was a vampire. It’d be easier on the nerves.”

Kana’s words put Senri in a slightly better mood.
The rumor had reached the police as well.
She had spread that much information alone. A sense of accomplishment welled up.

“You mean that rumor?”
“Yes. There’s talk even inside the station that it might not be just a rumor.”
“Don’t tell me they found evidence?”
“Evidence… well. Don’t repeat this, all right? It hasn’t been announced yet.”

Weren’t you not supposed to talk investigation? Senri sniped inwardly.
But it was valuable information. Better to listen quietly than to needle her and put her in a sulk.

“Someone connected to one of the dead men—a woman—was found collapsed near the scene.”
“Attacked by the culprit? But I thought the victims were all men.”
“They don’t know why she collapsed. But there was a mark on her neck, like something had bitten her.”
“Like she’d had her blood drunk.”
“Right. But the woman herself had no particular abnormalities. If anything, they say she seemed in good condition. In the end it only added more mysteries.”
“…”

Senri fell into thought.
Until now she had not believed in vampires. Learning that such a victim actually existed made her suddenly afraid.
She understood well enough that her sister was not simply shouting “vampire” at random.

It was hard to take in all at once, but the Shirogane family was said to be a line of exorcists, generation after generation.
They possessed the power to drive back the demonic, and eyes that could see it.
Only one person, however, could inherit that power.
So from childhood Shuri had seen ghosts, yokai, and other strange things, and their mother had as well.

In the midst of that, Senri alone had been left out. She could see nothing and touch nothing.
Their mother had seemed to dote more on the older sister, and in fact it was always Shuri whom people liked.
Perhaps because of that complex, Senri had at some point stopped going out much, and had begun to want to deny the occult.
Her talent for information work might have come from the same place.
—That said, if asked whether she disliked her sister, the answer was no.
On the contrary: she loved her sister and her mother, and that was why she hated the self who could not stand on the same ground.

Senri’s present situation aside, Shuri had asked her to spread information about vampires “to restrain their movements,” most likely because she had actually seen one.
And Shuri and their mother were still preparing to destroy the vampires.
Of course, only family knew that.
Even Kana, the neighborhood older-sister figure who had looked after them since they were small, surely did not know that the Shiroganes were such a peculiar house.
And even if they told her, Senri did not think she would believe it.

“Senri. Do you have any idea about this?”
“…No. Nothing at all. If I knew, I’d already have told you, Kana.”
“I see. That’s fine, then.”

It could not be helped, but lying still hurt Senri’s chest.
Whether she noticed or not, Kana looked at her with a little worry.

“Senior, we should get going.”

The junior officer in the passenger seat called to Kana.
They were on duty. They could not idle any longer.
And Senri, too, would miss her train if she did not head for the station soon.

“Sorry, Senri, talking your ear off on the way to school. Let’s talk next time when I’m off.”
“You live close. You could come over for dinner now and then, you know.”
“Ahaha. We used to eat together a lot. At my age it’s a little harder to drop by. But if I’m invited, I’ll come.”
“Please do. Mom and Dad and Sis will be glad. See you later.”
“Yeah. See you.”

Kana gave a small wave, closed the window, and drove off.
Watching the patrol car shrink in the distance, Senri started walking again.

 

◇◇◇

 

“Vampires, huh.”

Senri muttered it the moment she entered the classroom and sat down.

“Oho? Has Lady Senri at last awakened to the occult?”

The one who approached was Senri’s friend Saya.
Shoulder-length black hair with a slight natural wave, thick glasses, and freckles on her cheeks.
Taken together with her speech, she was a typical otaku girl.
That she was not the fujoshi sort was perhaps the only mercy.
Her small stature and small-animal face were decent raw material, if only the makeup could be sorted out—or so Senri thought every time she looked at her.

“Wrong. You know about it too, don’t you, Saya? That rumor.”
“But of course. The cluster is all aflutter with the topic. Though there are also rude persons who say the sources look shady.”

That the source in question was Senri, sitting right in front of her, would never occur to Saya.

“However, if only men die and women remain unharmed, those unharmed women may already have become vampires themselves.”
“Why would that follow? Maybe they only care about men, drink their blood, and kill them.”
“I thought as much and looked into it, but there are said to be no such traces on the men’s corpses.”

At present, all sorts of information of uncertain truth was flying around the net concerning the victims.
The condition of the corpses was one of the less credible items, and Saya was not a girl who believed rumors lightly.
Senri did not know where this “occult cluster” of hers got its information, but with this many dead, it was entirely possible that one or two details about the bodies had leaked.
And besides—Senri had just heard from Kana about the wound left on a woman’s neck.

“A vampire who targets women calls to mind Sheridan Le Fanu’s famous novel Carmilla. Though in that case, those who were drunk from did die.”
“Carmilla… I feel like I’ve heard that.”
“In your case, Lady Senri, perhaps from a game character?”
“Now that you mention it, there was an enemy character by that name… and she was a vampire.”
“In short, that is the original. A beauty who steals hearts at a glance, even of the same sex, and, put crudely, beguiles young women and takes them as her own. If this vampire is using a similar method to approach women and turn them into companions—”
“Then…?”

The ominous delivery made Senri swallow.
Saya confirmed that she had been drawn in, then grinned.

“Then it would be a yuri paradise of beautiful girls flirting with one another!”
“…”

Senri fell silent and stared at Saya with a sour face.

“Ah, just once I should like to behold it! It is a tale with which this one has no connection, but I wish to see it, to burn it into memory, and if fortune smiles, to be permitted to photograph it!”
“…You’re going to get divine punishment one of these days.”
“If this much invited divine punishment, the occult cluster would be wiped out entirely! Hah hah hah!”

Saya laughed with her hands on her hips.
But it was not only her. For the other students, and for Senri herself, a murder case happening somewhere unrelated was someone else’s affair.
They lived today with the groundless conviction that they themselves would never be involved.
And they believed that tomorrow and the day after would be the same.

 

◇◇◇

 

After school, Saya had occult research club and Shuri had kendo, so Senri, who belonged to no club, usually went home alone.
She could have joined the computer club, but flocking together to do things was not her style.
She walked alone across the dusk schoolyard, glancing with a faint, resentful eye at affectionate couples passing by.
Just as she reached the school gate—

“Senri! Wait a second!”

She heard Shuri calling her, stopped, and looked back.
Even here by the gate, the kendo hall’s shouts were faintly audible in the distance.
Practice was not canceled, and it was rare for Shuri—who at school, at least, passed as earnest—to skip.

“What’s up, Sis? Finally bored of kendo? Or tired of wearing the honor-student skin at school?”
“You… can’t you understand a sister’s wish to walk home together once in a while?”
“Nope. Don’t get it. What about club?”
“I told them I had something to do and got the day off. I’ve arranged to meet the woman who got caught up in that case.”

The two of them fell into step and kept talking as they walked.

“The one with the wound on her neck?”
“Oh, you knew about that too, Senri. Yes, her.”

Senri frowned.
She had only just heard that sort of talk from Saya this morning. Was it really safe to meet her?

“What’s with that scared look?”
“Is it all right? I was talking with a friend today. People who get their blood drunk by vampires get turned into vampires, she said.”
“…That’s unexpected. So you were worried about me.”

Senri had not been conscious of it at all.
Which meant she had been thinking of her sister from the heart.
Oh no, her face said, as she covered her mouth with her hand.

“Thanks, Senri.”

Whether she knew or not, Shuri smiled with innocent brightness.
She put both hands behind her back and leaned in, peering up. Looking at that smile, Senri’s face went hot all at once.
She looked away without meaning to.
She had to hide the grin threatening to break out.

“Nffufufu. It’s been a while since I saw that face of yours. You really are cute. You’ve got a charm I don’t.”
“I do not.”
“You do, you do. I’m not talking about the surface. I think your smile has the kind of appeal that can truly move people.”

It was not flattery. Shuri meant it.
She knew Senri’s complex.
Having no power, and therefore being the only one left out—from childhood a faint wall had been built in Senri’s heart that way.
But that power had been a complex for Shuri as well.
If she had not had it, she would not have been summoned to the main house’s tiresome gatherings.
If she had not had it, she would not have been required, even as a child, to behave like an adult.
If she had not had it—she could have done what she wanted, the way she wanted.
Being put in the kendo club was for that reason too.
In the modern world, almost no yokai or apparitions survived, and still, to preserve the main house’s authority, an exorcist shrine maiden had to be strong.
Shuri did not need any of that.
She only wanted to live ordinarily, as sisters, as parent and child.
When her spirits sank, she sometimes vented to their mother.
And their mother always said the same thing.

“Grow up, Shuri.”

In other words, their mother did not think of Shuri as a child.
She was valued, but because the main house required it.
Senri, on the other hand, could keep a proper parent-and-child distance.

“…I think it’s unfair, the way you can say things like that so easily.”
“If it’s unfair, then so is how cute you are, so we’ll call it even.”

Looking at Senri’s face, which had gone even redder, Shuri was in excellent humor.
For a while after that, Senri stayed silent until her temperature returned to normal.
When she had finally calmed down, she was the one who changed the subject.

“Hey, Sis.”
“Hm?”
“At home you’re sloppy, and your personality isn’t that great, right?”
“I will refrain from denying it. But I think you could have put that a little more kindly.”
“The way I see it, that side is the real you.”
“Ignoring me… Well, maybe so.”
“So if we hadn’t been a special family, would you have been like that all the time, instead of switching yourself between outside and inside the way you do now?”
“…”

Caught off guard, Shuri could not speak.
Ah. So they had been thinking the same thing—she felt keenly, once again, that they were sisters.

“If so, we might have been famous at school as a pair of good-for-nothing sisters.”
“Nihihi. And at home we’d just lie in the kotatsu and not move.”
“That’s plausible. Actually, when Mom isn’t around, that’s pretty much how we are now.”
“Now that you mention it… but we don’t get to experience both of us getting scolded by Mom at the same time anymore, do we?”
“No…”

In front of their mother, Shuri at least had to be a respectable person.
They were never scolded together.
A gap appeared.
Born of the same people, raised in the same house, and yet an unbridgeable difference.
And if asked whether that difference made anyone happy, Shuri could say clearly that it did not.
It would be better if it did not exist.
For Shuri, for Senri, and for their mother.
Their father, who was always smiling—as a son-in-law adopted into the family, he did not interfere much in main-house matters, but if they could have an ordinary household, he would surely think nothing could be better.

“…S-Sis?”

Shuri realized she was holding Senri’s hand.
They had come some way from school, but students heading for the station were still around.

“I was just thinking you weren’t wearing gloves in this cold.”
“Then take some out.”
“Did you mind?”
“No… I don’t care either way. But you being close with a useless little sister like me—better if people don’t see that, right?”

Not “I don’t want to be seen,” but “better if people don’t see.”
The difference in wording was slight.
But—

“I don’t care what people think. To me you’re a sister I’m proud of. I want to show you off, and I simply wanted to hold your hand. Is that not allowed?”
“We’re not in elementary school… honestly.”

Even as she said it, Senri squeezed her sister’s hand in return.
She isn’t honest, Shuri thought, but that’s what’s cute.

Where family and the main house were watching, it could not go this way.
The two of them had to be different.
If the eldest daughter, who had inherited the rightful power, was not the superior one, Shuri would be told her effort was insufficient, and their mother that her raising had been poor.
In a sense, that also meant the second daughter had to be inferior.
They were not permitted to be equal.
For whose sake, and for what.
Thinking did not produce an answer. It had been decided somewhere beyond the sisters’ reach, and to resist would not end well.
Then at least, in places those eyes did not reach, they could be the same—simply sisters.
They boarded the train like that, and until they arrived at the door of their house, they did not let go of each other’s hands once.