Osananajimi ga Zettai ni Makenai Love Comedy Volume 2 Prologue

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Prologue

I was awoken by a late summer’s ray of sunlight sifting through a gap in the curtains.

I opened my eyes slightly, glancing at the clock hanging on the wall as I lay sprawled on my bed.

9:03 am.

“–Crap, am I late for school?!”

But in the instant that I got up I realised that today was Saturday.

“Sigh… I panicked for no reason.”

Speaking of which, yesterday had been the cultural festival. Our school’s cultural festival was always held on a Friday, with the day after that deemed to be the beginning of a break.

Today was the first day of a three-day weekend.

I decided to nap for a while longer, dragging over the blanket which I had thrown up against the wall earlier, but the gears in my brain, which had been shaken awake momentarily, slowly began turning.

A chill ran down my spine. I kind of knew instinctively.

–That it would be better if I didn’t remember.

But as my alertness returned, inevitably so did my memories.

Don’t think about anything… Just go to sleep for now… That’s right, just…

“I love yooooooooooooooooou!”

………………… Ah.

I remembered.

I remembered for a moment, and in the end the rest of my memories came surging back like a flood.

“I’ve finally realised that you’ve been by my side all this time! I was saved because you were there for me! I’m sorry for all the trouble that I’ve caused you! I might continue to cause you trouble from now on, but you’re the person that I need!”

Oh no, oh no, oh no oh no oh no oh no.

Emergency. Emergency. Terminate all thought processes immediately. Terminate all thought processes immediately.

My mind was in a crisis. The situation could not be allowed to escalate any further. I enacted a complete embargo.

At any rate as long as I turned my mind to more enjoyable things… Oh yeah, I could play a word-chaining game¹ with the names of gravure idols!

Nice job, Sueharu! Great idea! If I could make it through at least ten people, I would probably be able to calm down!

We’ll start with “A”. Anzai Maaya… Alright, I’m doing well. Next is “Ya” then.

Ya… Ya…

“–No.”²

………………………………………………………………….Ahh.

See, I knew it. I knew it was a bad idea to remember.

To be reminded about these kinds of things, man…

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!!”

I dove onto my bed and buried my face in my pillow, yelling as loud as I could.

“You idiot, you idiot! God, I’m such an idiot! What the hell was I doing?! Why did I try to act all cool, just to get so magnificently rejected?! What am I supposed to do now?! How am I going to deal with this?! How am I supposed to act when I go to school on Tuesday?! Arghhhhhhh, there’s nothing I can dooooo!”

My head was giddy with incredible embarrassment.

I had really done it this time. I had screwed up royally beyond the point of having the luxury to think about whether the situation could be salvaged or not.

“Man, I really got too ahead of myself, didn’t I?! You got it into your head that if you beat Abe you’d have a one hundred percent chance of succeeding in your confession? You thought that because it was Kuro she’d definitely accept it? Idiot! Idiot! Look at how things turned out! What a clown I am! I mean, Kuro did approach me quite aggressively… or at least I thought she did… And she’s also always been so loving towards me… that’s why… I just… Ahhhhhhhhhh!!”

I banged my head against the wall. I did so repeatedly, ignoring the thumping it produced.

“I’m such an idiot! I’m a dull stupid moronic piece of crap dumbass! REEEEEEE!”

“Quit making a fuss so early in the morning, Sueharu!”

A voice came over from the house next door.

It belonged to the second-eldest daughter of the Shida family – Midori.

The Shida family stayed in the house next to mine. There lived the “Four Shida Sisters”, of which Kuroha was the eldest.

They were pretty well known. Their fame extended to not only amongst the neighbourhood, but over to the adjacent town as well.

It was rare in the first place to have four sisters in one family. It was rare enough to see four siblings, certainly rarer still for all of them to be girls. And if all of them also turned out to be cute, it would almost be a miracle.

And yet here that miracle had occurred.

–The eldest daughter, Shida Kuroha. A second-year high school student.

–The second daughter, Shida Midori. A third-year middle school student.

–The third daughter, Shida Aoi. A first-year middle school student.

–The youngest daughter, Shida Akane. Also a first-year middle school student.

By a group of fans the four of them were called “The Four Beautiful Sisters of the Shida Family” or “The Colourful Sisters”, among other things, and were figures to be revered. As to why “Colourful”, it apparently pandered to the fact that all four sisters had one colour-related character in each of their names.³ The bluntness of it aside, I thought the connection was easy to make.

The room facing mine was Kuroha’s, with the rest of her sisters’ lined up next to it in order. Thus the room Aoi and Akane, the first-year middle schooler twins shared aside, if I went berserk in my own room it was plenty loud enough for Midori to hear from where she was.

Midori was the second of the miraculous “Colourful Sisters” – and as indicated by her rude language, she was far and away the crudest amongst them.

“You’re the noisy one, Midori!” I replied after running out onto the veranda.

I was honestly just trying to vent my anger. At the same time of course I also felt comfortable enough saying it knowing it was Midori who was listening.

“Whatchu say, Sueharu?! You saying I’m the one at fault?!”

Midori clenched her hand into a fist and shook it. The strength I felt from it far exceeded that of a girl’s. In reality her bicep was quite well-developed.

Midori was Kuroha’s younger sister by two years and a third-year student in middle school. She was the owner of a violent personality completely out of place as one of Kuroha’s sisters.

She was 170 centimetres tall, twice the size of Kuroha, and had athletic ability good enough to appear in the national summer tennis competition as a result of the power and speed she could leverage off her lanky frame.

The part of her appearance which people saw first was probably her boyish short hair. It fit her violent personality, and to me Midori was something close to a younger brother, but the truth was that – amongst the four sisters, Midori had overwhelmingly the largest bust. Thus no matter how tomboyish she was, I could never see her as a guy. By the sole virtue of being Kuroha’s younger sister, her features were also pretty well-arranged.

Even now, in the T-shirt and hot pants which made up her completely apathetic roomwear, her strong, beautiful legs and her prominent bust asserted unmistakably that she was a girl. In fact her style was too outstanding and her clothes really quite compact. She looked as if she were in the thick of puberty, like what currently fit her perfectly would soon be too small.

In my heart I wished to reject it, thinking “Hmmm, well, a middle-schooler’s unattractive body isn’t gonna bother a high-schooler like me, you know?”, but in reality she was a lot more fashionable than Kuroha was, a real temptress of the eyes.

Obviously to Midori I made sure never to say any complimentary words of that sort. For if I did the cheeky Midori would indubitably bring up and brag about them countless times afterward.

“Midori, you’ve really got a bad mouth. This is why you’re more popular amongst girls.”

As Midori’s now frozen gaze so uncomfortably revealed, I had just inadvertently used a forbidden phrase.

The above was a common complaint of hers.

“Being troubled by being more popular amongst girls than boys”.

She would on occasion also find love letters written by other girls in her shoebox. Strange, huh, considering how I’ve never had that experience before? Isn’t there something wrong with this world?

Or so I thought while realising at the same time that I should, well, show my magnanimity as the older person here, signalling out “Damn, I know,” – my understanding for her plight as I always had. And it was then that it became a fight. Life was so unreasonable…

“Sueharu! You bastard, you just said something you shouldn’t have–”

Midori began picking up and brandishing the tennis balls in her room.

I got down on my knees in a panic.

“Woah, Midori! I get it, I get it! I stepped over the line! I’ll apologise, so really please just give me a break for today!”

I had regained some presence of mind after playing around with Midori, but obviously not the same amount of energy that I usually had when sparring with her.

It appeared that in this state I had aroused Midori’s suspicions.

“What’s wrong, Sueharu? You’re not acting yourself.” She asked with an elbow propped against the window frame, as the tension went out of her shoulders.

“…Nothing, really.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that. Not when I’m asking because I’m trying to do you a favour by listening.”

“Is that your way of trying to get somebody to open up to you? You really do have none of the qualities required of a counselor. At times like these you have to be like Kuro and–”

My blood pressure skyrocketed as I said it. I had been so strongly affected even though I had only said her name. I really was something else.

“…Go on.”

“…I’ve said enough. It doesn’t matter, right?”

“Sigh∼∼∼∼∼∼”

Midori gave an ostentatious, bloody long sigh.

“Big Sis Kuro’s been acting strange since yesterday, and so are you. Did something happen?”

“…Not at all.”

“…………”

Midori’s gaze was cold.

What, that was a perfect acting job, you got a problem with that?

“Hm, well whatever. I’m always the odd one out when it comes to these kinds of things anyway.”

“What are you sulking about?”

“I’m not sulking!”

“You are.”

“Tsk… Screw this!”

She shut the window with a slam and left.

“What’s her problem?”

Please don’t react in a way that I can’t comprehend. As it is my mind’s already messed up and I no longer understand girls, so if I can’t understand even you then I’ll truly be too lost and confused.

As I sighed and turned away from the veranda, returning towards my room, a voice came from behind me.

“Erm… Big Brother Haru.”

“Aoi-chan, is it?”

The face which appeared in replacement at the window belonged to the third daughter, Aoi.

A first-year middle schooler, Aoi was the older twin to the youngest daughter Akane.

On the whole she was delicate and slender. At 150 centimetres she had a fairly small stature, but one still just a little taller than Kuroha’s. Kuroha’s depression at being overtaken in height by her had been tremendous indeed. But in terms of bust size Kuroha still won handily, so for Aoi… greater things were to be expected of her in the future.

Extremely neat twintails of black hair fell to her hips. She was the most feminine amongst the four sisters, with a hobby of sewing and a passion for sweet things, cute clothing and dolls.

“Is it true that nothing happened…?”

It seemed like she had heard the earlier conversation.

“Like Big Sister Midori said, Big Sister Kuro’s been acting weirdly since yesterday and I’m a little worried… And from what little I’ve heard earlier, Big Brother Haru, so have you…” Aoi said with tears welling up in the recesses of her large eyes.

“Please, tell me anything if I can help. I might not be able to do a lot, but I’ll do as much as I can so…”

My cheeks softened unconsciously at her heartfelt consideration.

She was extremely kind. Too kind in fact, to the point that neglecting herself had become a habit and also a cause for concern.

She was a younger sister-like younger sister, one variety of the ideal younger sister. That was my impression of Aoi.

“Thanks, Aoi-chan, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll have to do something about this myself…”

I was pathetic for causing a first-year middle schooler to worry. Knowing she would listen to anything sincerely made me want to talk to her, but even so I obviously couldn’t let her hear about the love-related complications between her “actual sister” and the “big brother she got along well with from next door”.

Yikes. When I thought about it that way, matters of love, when entangled or inflamed, were nothing to be joked about.

“I see…”

Aoi looked crestfallen. She had apparently gotten the wrong idea that she couldn’t be told because she couldn’t be trusted. She was an incredibly virtuous girl, to the point where one would be hard pressed to find anything in her resembling a fault. Yet she also had a low opinion of herself, and a tendency to conclude that she was to blame when anything went wrong.

I thus spoke up.

“Thanks for your concern, Aoi-chan. Honestly, you’ve already helped me out a lot by just talking to me. So don’t look so sad – in fact, you should be proud.”

“No…”

Aoi adorably clasped both of her hands tightly in front of her chest.

“I’m… No, we’re the ones who’ve been saved, Big Brother Haru. You always cheer me up, and I think you’re very dependable.”

Seriously, this girl… She was sincere, cute, noble and innocent. All those things appealed greatly to my protective instincts. Talking to her healed my heart and made me willing to do anything for her.

“Sigh, you really are a good girl, Aoi-chan. Wanna stay with me instead?”

I had rooms free, and she could stay in one of them as my adopted younger sister.

Aoi appeared troubled briefly before immediately breaking out into a cute, bitter smile.

“…Ooh, Big Brother Haru… You’re always joking around.”

“I wasn’t, though.”

Well I was for about ninety percent, but for the remaining ten I thought it would be pretty good if the above actually materialised.

“…I’m overjoyed at your invitation, but I’d feel sorry for the people who want you, Big Brother Haru.”

“Sigh, now this is what I’m talking about. Telling me that there are ‘people who want me’ even if you’re only trying to be polite… Midori could learn a thing or two from you, Aoi-chan.”

“Die, dumb Sueharu!”

“Woah, you were listening, Midori?”

The window next to Aoi’s suddenly opened and from it came Midori’s rude voice.

I rose to meet the new challenge immediately and in response Aoi smiled bitterly. I didn’t notice her jealous-looking eyes.

*

“Woah, you were listening, Midori?”

Lazing on top of her bed in a daze, hearing Sueharu’s voice come from outside snapped Kuroha wide awake.

She had been eavesdropping nervously at first but… her dissatisfaction had gradually accumulated.

As Sueharu’s presence finally receded and peace returned to what lay beyond the windows, Kuroha violently threw the pillow she was holding with all her might onto the floor.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!!”

She resisted strenuously the urge to open the window and yell, channelling all her rage into her fists. She punched her pillow repeatedly.

“Ooh, Haru, you idiot! You idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot! This is all your fault, Haru! If you had just accepted my confession from the start, then none of this… Ooooooh!”

She wasn’t sure whether she should be angry or cry.

Only that all her blood had collected at the top of her head, that her cheeks were flushed, and that her face was hot enough to make her giddy.

“I won! I unmistakably won! I was completely victorious! So why… why am I… what am I going to do?! How am I going to face Haru?! Oooooh… I wanna die I wanna die I wanna die!”

Kuroha hugged her pillow and rolled back and forth on top of the carpet.

“Big Sis Kuro, what are you doing?!”

She pulled on the door as she spoke, but it got stuck on the lock. To act without thinking beforehand was without a doubt very Midori-esque… but her presumptuous action only added to Kuroha’s wrath.

Kuroha glared at the door, then threw her pillow at it.

“Midori! That’s enough, please go somewhere else!”

She could probably gauge the extent of Kuroha’s anger by the pillow hitting the door. Midori’s voice grew tight.

“Yikes, you’re getting angry at me instead? You really are in a bad mood.”

“If you’re going to complain, Big Sister has no reservations about beating that personality of yours into shape, you know?”

“Alright, I get it! Tsk, seriously, first you, then Sueharu, what the hell is going on…”

Midori left while complaining under her breath.

After making sure Midori’s voice had faded into the distance, for some reason all tension left Kuroha.

“Really, what am I going to do…”

She fell back onto the carpet bottom first with a thud, dragging her pillow towards her and embracing it tightly to her chest to stem her unease.

“I went too far trying to get back at him……”

Feelings weren’t meant to be controlled.

At that moment, up until the very moment she had been confessed to, Kuroha had planned on accepting it. But revenge had swayed her heart, and in her mind she had arrived at the same conclusion.

She had loved him, after all. If she rejected him, she didn’t know if their relationship would sour.

But in the heat of the moment – she had.

The more she thought about it coolly, the more it seemed she had overreacted.

If she wanted revenge, she could have given him a thorough tongue-lashing, for example, or gotten back some other way, after she had accepted his confession and they had started dating.

If she had gotten back at him while the two of them were alone, at worst she could have apologised, saying “Sorry. In return I’ll do X,” and they would have had the luxury of working out some kind of exchange.

But now that wouldn’t do. Her rejection of him at the Confession Festival had been too severe. There was really no way she could take that back. “Sorry, it was a joke,” wouldn’t cut it at all.

“Oooooh, I’m so stupid…… I can’t blame Haru for this……”

She had completely self-imploded. The explosion had been so spectacular it had caught herself, her target and a third party in the blast and blown them all away.

“Won’t time go back…?”

She naively looked at the date shown on her phone.

It was the 16th of September, a Saturday. The cultural festival had definitively ended.

“I guess not, huh… Oooooh, what am I doing…?”

Time passed melancholically.

After being depressed and alone, the first emotion that came to her was anger.

“If that losing dog hadn’t been around, none of this…”

She was a prideful coward who couldn’t even make conversation with Sueharu in class despite always sneaking glances at him, yet also a vixen who continually and stealthily made passes at him in the background. Ever since Kuroha had found out that she had been the reason why Sueharu had rejected her, she had thought her extremely bold for daring to cross her, and resolved not to ever forgive her.

The present situation clearly worked in Shirokusa’s favour.

Having rejected Sueharu’s confession, Kuroha could not hope for them to get along as they had used to. On the other hand, Shirokusa had since learned the important truth that “Sueharu had liked her in the past”. Indubitably she would now go strongly onto the offensive, putting Kuroha on the defensive while necessitating that she come up with a plan of attack from a completely different direction.

Also – with Sueharu’s acting prowess now resurrected – came the potential for new headaches to arise.

Kuroha hugged her head.

“What am I going to do…”

The circumstances were adverse and truly fearsome. It was a situation of her own making, but one which made her want to pray to God.

“But… I can’t lose.”

Kuroha stood, turning her eyes towards the photo board hanging beside her workdesk.

Of the photos there she picked one, innocently taken in school when she had been a student in the lower grades of elementary school. Kuroha’s mother had taken it on an open day for parents to visit – a picture of Kuroha, then a grade representative trying to gather the class, and Sueharu, who was acting in support, both of them laughing together.

Kuroha stared fixedly at the picture, before turning red-faced and hugging it dearly to her chest.

“–Because I love you.”

*

“…Hm?”

In the middle of a massive bed covered by a canopy, Shirokusa awoke.

The momentum of her sitting up caused the shoulder straps of her gown to slide off. Shirokusa smoothed out her negligee while in a daze. It felt extremely pleasant caressing the white lacy frills which made up her dress-style negligee which appeared translucent under light. It had also since become a habit of hers to use the feeling of lace as a tactile stimulus to wake herself up faster.

“… My Suu-chan doll…”

Shirokusa had always had a propensity for low blood pressure, and difficulty getting up after sleeping. What her non-functioning brain wanted before anything else was her Suu-chan doll.

She had privately asked her maid to make one six years ago after Sueharu had stopped coming to her house. The momento had at times borne the brunt of her anger, others, her affection, and after going through multiple rounds of upgrading and repairs, it was now the high school version (Suu-chan Doll ver. 5) which had just been completed about a week prior that Shirokusa spied beside her pillow and pulled towards her.

Shirokusa took the “Suu-chan doll” in her hands, stretched herself out and held it aloft.

“He was really so cool…”

For the first time in six years she had watched the Nyuu-kun dance live. It had even come with the song.

Having matured into a high schooler, his movements had become more dynamic and cooler than before.

“Suu-chan was so cool, and now I too have become his equal…”

Not illusorily, but in reality, the person whom she had admired and pursued all this time had appeared close by.

And now, she had become not merely just an admirer, but a professional novelist as well. In other words, she could probably say as much that she had become someone worthy of standing by his side.

The pride and joy she experienced from that could be called arousal, and in that instant Shirokusa felt that all her hard work thus far had come to fruition.

“Suu-chan…”

Shirokusa enveloped the head of the doll with both her hands and carried it slowly towards her.

Her target was its lips. She brought hers towards them–

“I –– liked you.”

But stopped just before they touched.

“Ooooooooooh…!”

Liked, liked, liked…

Shirokusa got up into a sitting position on her bed and held the Suu-chan doll aloft – before bringing it down again without subjecting it to abuse.

“Waaaaaa! Suu-chan, you idiottt!”

Shirokusa cried large tears, wailing loudly like a child.

“I… made you fall in love…! I worked hard, and made you fall in love with me…! And yet… and yet… Suu-chan, you cheater! You liked me, so why did you turn to some other girl instead?! Why couldn’t you be satisfied with me alone…?! You moron, you moron, you moronnnnn!”

Shirokusa’s room was about thirty square meters⁴ large and well-soundproofed. But of course if she cried loudly it would be noticed by anyone in the corridor outside.

Word travelled quickly, and soon there was knocking on her room’s large Western-style door.

“Shiro, it’s Papa! Is something going on?”

“…………”

Even to her respected and beloved father there was no way she could show her crying face, thus Shirokusa chose to ignore him.

“Hm! No response! This is bad, Shiro could’ve passed out from a stroke! Quick, bring the master key!”

“In truth I considered that possibility, so I have it right here.”

“Well done! Shiro, Papa’s coming!”

“Oh no no no no.”

Too emotionally preoccupied to find the words to stop him, Shirokusa was in a panic.

At any rate she could not allow the door to be opened. If it did her father would discover the Suu-chan doll which had been made in secret from him, and so too would he see her reddened eyes and immodest negligee.

“–Nooooooo!”

“Shiro! Papa’s– Oof!”

On the spur of the moment Shirokusa threw the electronic dictionary placed at her bedside just as her father opened the door!

The dictionary hit her father squarely in the head, and he passed out while still in the hallway.

Shirokusa returned the maid’s cool gaze.

“…Sorry. Could you please make up some random excuse for Papa?”

“…Understood, my lady.”

Silently apologising, Shirokusa re-locked the door. She then picked up the Suu-chan doll she had promptly thrown aside earlier, staring at it firmly.

“Suu-chan, you’re an idiot–”

Dolls couldn’t respond, but for some reason there was something that made her feel fulfilled.

“–But I still love you.”

Of course there was no reply, but she knew that she was blushing.

“I haven’t lost yet. I’ll show that I can take Suu-chan’s heart back from that thieving cat. For strangely enough, she was the one who taught me how.”

Kuroha had once been rejected, yet she had continued fighting and made Sueharu fall in love with her. In other words, it was possible to make the other party fall in love even after being rejected.

“Besides, I wasn’t rejected! I made him fall in love with me! It’s just that that thieving cat who’s just a little closer to Suu-chan used her dirty methods to lead him by the nose!”

Yes, yes, Suu-chan wasn’t at fault. That thieving cat was. There was no mistake.

But–

“How should I look when I meet Suu-chan…?”

How did Suu-chan feel right now? He had liked her before, but not at all any more? That wasn’t the case, was it? If Suu-chan’s love for her was a hundred, then his for that thieving cat had become about a hundred and one only “temporarily”, right? If so, if she rounded up they were pretty much equal anyway, and after taking into account his latent affection for her and the meaning of things in the greater universe, et cetera, wasn’t it a clear victory for her then? So it would be no trouble for her to turn things around then, right?

It seemed like she still had a fairly good shot. But thinking about how Suu-chan had once fallen in love with her–

“This is so embarrassing…”

Her face flushed, and she felt like she wouldn’t be able to show it properly to him. She felt like it would eventually burn into a crisp.

On the other hand, thinking about how Sueharu now liked that thieving cat the most made her conversely angry enough to want to slap him.

“Oooooooh…!”

She began crying once again.

Shirokusa hugged her Suu-chan doll from behind, pressing her cheek against the back of its head.

“Suu-chan’s an idioooot… And I’m an idiot toooooo…”

Her voice proliferated and dissipated like ripples of water within the confines of her extravagant room.

From the doll of course there was no reply.

–And thus for the three of them, Tuesday began.

---

¹ As some of our more experienced readers would have guessed, this is shiritori.

² Kuroha’s infamous rejection of Sueharu towards the end of volume 1 is delivered as “–Yada.” in the original text, hence the joke here. It doesn’t work so well in English though.

³ In order of age, Kuro = black, Midori = green, Ao = blue, Aka = red.

⁴ Converted from 20 jo, or the size of one tatami mat. For you Americans, that’s about 323 square feet.