Welcome to the Hifuu Detective AgencySide Story: The Revolution of Usami Sumireko Chapter 1:The Revolution of Usami Sumireko
所属カテゴリー： Welcome to the Hifuu Detective AgencySide Story: The Revolution of Usami Sumireko
公開日：2025年04月25日 / 最終更新日：2025年04月25日
𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞
Hello again, readers. Today I begin my translation of a rather atypical companion piece to Asagihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency.' The story I'm about to present was originally a side story, a shorter little prequel novella which was printed and distributed as a promotional gift to anyone who spent enough money at the author's Comiket booth. It was written in 2015, the same year that the Hifuu Detective Agency series as a whole began, but in 2018, after the release of the ninth book in that series, this story was released for free on Longnovel's website. For that reason, I'm including it here and now.
As a promotional material for the Hifuu Detective Agency series, this story is a little odd. First off, it's not a mystery—there's no secret to deduce nor culprit to point the finger at, though it does have some interesting implications for the main series that may inform your views of some of the questions found there.
There are several other differences that make this story an odd choice to promote the Hifuu Detective Agency series though. It doesn't feature the same narrator for one, and it is mainly concerned with characters that still haven't appeared in the mainline stories at this point. Because it was not originally intended for serialization, the chapters are also of a more variable length than in the other books as well. It also has a slightly different tone than the main series —a little edgier, a little darker, with a lot of meta references.
As far as objectionable content goes, this story contains discussions of murder, sex and masturbation. All of it is very surface level though and would probably get a PG-13 rating at most.
It may not be the usual fare, but if you've enjoyed the series so far, then you'll probably like this too. With those comments out of the way, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrators. I hope that you enjoy the tale to come.
—
[𝐇𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐮 𝐂𝐥𝐮𝐛 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 - 𝐌𝐚𝐲, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓]
At last, the day has finally come to change the destiny of all mankind!
Starting today, I will begin my work to expose the stifling barrier that has been erected around the secret world and break through it, stepping into a bold, wondrous new way of being!
This new world is a mystery that has been sealed away from us by the lie we call 'science.' It is the final unknown frontier left in this drab scientific age. In this world, to which I will throw open the gates, illusions lost to this world still exist, as real as I am.
This boring, stuffy city of Tokyo will make a fitting ground zero for the birth of the new world, but it will not contain the whole of it. What begins here today will, in time, spread across the globe, opening a new world of dreams and fantasy to all the people of the world.
If I were 𝐾𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 standing on top of a motorcycle, I’d be shouting ‘this is the beginning of the Fantastic Century’ or something!
—
People have lost their taste for fantasy.
I suppose I should blame science, which violently cuts the beautiful tapestry of fantasy with the dull and artless knife of rationality. Nowadays all manner of fantastic events and supernatural occurrences are regarded as fiction or jokes, or worse—as pseudoscience.
In this world of science, dreams hardly exist any more. The year after I was born, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 marked the beginning of an endless, global 'war on terror' that has led to an endless chain of terroristic acts and brutal retaliations. When I was eight there was a worldwide financial collapse. These are the sorts of problems I have to deal with. Just four years ago an enormous earthquake and tsunami killed tons of people and unleashed a nuclear disaster on our country. But! The crisis us children of the new millennium face in having our dreams stolen from us is not caused by something so clear cut as those events!
Information is growing faster than ever. There's an endless sea of content on the internet constantly washing away all of our free time. Whenever anyone wants to know anything they can just Google it up and have the answer instantly. We learn everything, regardless of if we want to or not and as a result imagination and inquiry are dying.
'Santa might be real', 'The superheroes in sentai shows might be real', 'someday you might become a Precure.' These are the types of fantasies that are being swept away from us by this endless flood of information. In a world where the so-called ‘truth’ of rationality comes so easily at any time, no one can foster a proper appreciation for fantasy any more.
There is no Santa. A bearded old man and his reindeer couldn't possibly travel around the whole world in one night.
There are no superheroes. Transformation sequences, special attacks and giant robots are all impossible according to modern science.
I'll never get to be a Precure. There's no easy-to-identify bad guy responsible for stealing people's hopes and dreams who you can punch in the face to make the world a better place.
The wonder of our dreams continues to be murdered by logical thinking and Google search results.
Fantasy is endlessly being tossed aside. To maintain any hold on the wonder of illusion, one must discard the real world instead. Well, if everyone is determined to make fantasy and reality mutually exclusive, then I will choose to live in the realm of fiction. Every time.
And so, I ask you this: What if it didn't have to be that way?
Why can’t fiction and reality be on equal footing!?
No! If anything, fiction is clearly better!
Fiction is the home of dreams! Of hope! Of the future! How could reality possibly compare?
Adults laugh at the idea of a world of fiction. To them fiction is artificial and fake. They place more value in this worthless reality that has become our world, but really that's the greatest fiction of all! Can’t they see that?
Us children have no reason at all to cling to this world that holds nothing, neither hope nor dreams nor the promise of a better future for us.
Which is why there is only one option for children of the new millennium like me:
We must strive to make fiction and reality equal.
We must turn fiction into reality!
We must strive not only to make fiction a part of reality, but to have it replace reality altogether.
To do so is our only means to take back what was stolen from us. To claim our dreams, our hopes and our futures once more.
Our voices must be heard.
If the reality of this world has no place in it for fantasy, then that reality must be corrected!
Fantasy shall become reality and reality will coexist alongside fantasy. That’s how it will start. We must blend fantasy into this world and make it an equal part.
I know of a fantasy that exists in this world on the other side of a barrier. A fantasy that is truly the equal of reality. A fantasy capable of defeating this modern age, sealed away from us.
My intention is to release this fantasy from behind its barrier. To return fantasy from a world that has forgotten its joy.
This is where it all begins.
—
My name is Usami Sumireko. I was born on January 1st, 2000. I am 15 years old. I am a freshman at Higashi Fukami High School and the president of the school's occult circle, "the Hifuu Club." Let these names be forever etched into history. As the founder of a new world, one where the fantasy sealed behind the barrier becomes a part of our reality. As the creator of the Fantastic Century.
If my life can become the cornerstone of this new era, then I would be willing to die for this cause.
After all, this world holds no dreams, no hopes and no future.
An unknown barrier has been stretched around a world of fantasy. Lurking behind that barrier is a mesmerizing truth that I alone can release.
Gensokyo.
—
[𝐔𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐢 𝐊𝐚𝐨𝐫𝐮 - 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐌𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 — 𝐀𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐥, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑]
—1—
My stupid little sister thinks she's cute, but she's not.
Well, I say 'stupid little sister', but despite being three years younger than me and only in middle school, I don't doubt for a moment that she's smarter than I am. I'm not trying to humblebrag about her or disparage myself, it's just a fact.
Although she's only in her second year of middle school she could probably pass her entrance exams and outscore her slacker of a brother right now if she wanted to. By the time she graduates, she's sure to get into one of the most prestigious universities in Japan with a full scholarship, which is the sort of thing I could never dream of. That's only if some overseas school doesn't scoop her up first though, I guess.
Her mind is just too quick to be believed. Even as her brother I can admit she has reasonably good looks. As far as athleticism... she blows me out of the water, though I kind of suspect she may be cheating when she beats me. To put it simply, my sister is like Superman. Or, Superwoman, I guess? She's a genius, or a prodigy, or whatever the proper term is. My parents are immensely proud of her, of course, and despite the fact that she's younger than me, I can tell that she bears all of their expectations to continue the Usami family name, which has produced many accomplished scholars.
But she's just too smart. Scary smart. That's why she's not cute.
"Hey, has the sequel to this book been released yet?"
"I haven't even read that one yet! Did you finish it already?"
"Yeah, obviously. Have you got anything else interesting I can read?"
My sister, who was lying on my bed, reading through my light novel collection without permission, got up to rummage through the rest of my bookshelf. I had been watching a playthrough on Niconico Douga up until now, but I sighed and swiveled my chair around to face her.
"Don't you have anything better to do than lie around in my room?"
"It's spring break. Besides, you're just sitting in your room watching videos all day, it's not like I'm interrupting anything."
"And you're spending your whole day reading through 𝑚𝑦 bookshelf. You're a teenage girl. Don't you have cute girl things to do like going shopping with your friends or singing karaoke or something?"
"What friends? I'm stuck in a school learning boring, moronic facts, surrounded by boring, moronic students for at least the next two years. You don't know how hard it is to be a genius like me."
"If you're so smart then go do something brainy. Read a textbook or something."
"No waaay, textbooks are boooring. These light novels are better. They’re filled with every sort of fantasy someone living in the modern world could ask for. Reading just for pleasure is way more fun."
"Well admittedly, they are great works of literature."
"You’re the one who should be worried. If this is the only sort of stuff you read then you can’t really ever expect to be anything more than a normie."
"Shut up. What’s wrong with being a normie?"
"I suppose you’re right. The Great Sumireko is only made more impressive by the boring normality of her normie brother."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Well naturally geniuses look more impressive when they’re put next to normies. It’s like Mozart and Salieri."
"GO BACK TO YOUR OWN ROOM!"
She's really not the least bit cute.
She's always like this too. She never stops yapping and it's impossible for an ordinary person to argue with her at all. I may be her older brother, but as far as she's concerned, I'm just a convenient source of novels and manga. With a girl like her as my little sister, I’ve never once experienced the dignity one would expect an older sibling to have, not even when she was first born.
Sighing, I swiveled my chair back around to face my computer. It's my own personal desktop computer, a machine that was given to me as a gift when I first entered middle school. I've had it for five years now, and it's starting to get a little worn out. It has a functioning internet connection though, so there's no end of ways I could be using this machine to kill time. Already my parents have threatened to take it away if my grades don't improve, so I should probably be using it to study or do homework.
I turned my eyes back to the screen for a few seconds to continue watching my video but it had already ended. There was no sound playing and I didn't have headphones on. The door to my room always rattles when you open or close it, but after a minute or two I still hadn't heard a sound. As far as my senses told me, Sumireko should still be in my room.
When I chanced a glance over my shoulder though, there was no sign of her.
She's getting brazen again. And practically right in front of me…
I furrowed my brow as I looked over at my bookshelf. The latest entry to the series I've been reading is missing. She must have taken it with her. I still haven't read it yet. I scratched at my head as I got up from my computer and sprawled out on my bed.
I think I'm a pretty average guy. I've got a super-average, gender-neutral name, which I don't really like: Usami Kaoru. I guess it's better than some of the trendy new names that celebrities are giving their kids nowadays, I’m grateful that I was born to parents who gave me a normie name but I do wish that they had picked a name for my sister that didn’t look as much like mine when you write them both out.
Despite how similar the kanji for our names, 薫 and 菫子, might look, we're a pair of siblings who are nothing alike. I don't really look much like her and her brain is on completely another level.
But there's something else that separates us even further. I'm not talking about gender or personality and it goes way beyond our hobbies or tastes.
It's something in the nature of who we are: I'm a normal, average sort of person.
My sister is not. I think she has psychic powers.
—2—
What do I mean by that? 'Psychic Powers' is a pretty broad term. If I were to just say that much, it'd be like saying a picture of a page posted on Twitter is the same as a light novel or the way some parents refer to all video games as 'Nintendos.' My parents don't do that though. Do anyone's parents, actually? Maybe that's an urban legend.
Anyway, just off the top of my head, 'Psychic Powers' might mean any of:
• Telekinesis - the ability to move objects without touching them.
• Telepathy - the ability to directly read someone else's mind.
• Teleportation - the ability to move instantly between two distant points.
• Pyrokinesis - the ability to start fires just by thinking about them.
• Clairvoyance - the ability to see things that would normally be invisible.
• Psychometry - the ability to read thoughts and emotions from objects.
• Spirit Photography - the ability to store and retrieve thoughts and emotions in images.
• Precognition - the ability to predict the future.
These are the most common sort of psychic powers I've read about. If I think a little bit harder, there's also apportation, which is the ability to teleport objects rather than oneself, and 'Remote Viewing' is the ability to see distant events as they occur with the mind's eye. Really though, those two seem more like subtypes of the main categories I've listed above.
So, what kind of psychic is my sister, Usami Sumireko, then?
To be clear, Sumireko has never claimed to have any of these abilities, to myself or anyone else. The only person who really knows is Sumireko herself, and unless she confesses to me about it, I'll never be positive.
Even so, these are my conclusions based on my observations as her brother. I can’t guarantee that I’m correct. My sister hides her abilities well, but no one can keep their guard up all of the time. It's also possible that my sister might occasionally be showing me a glimpse of her powers on purpose, just to give me a hint.
—
First: Telekinesis. I'm almost certain my sister can do this, and quite powerfully. Once, while my sister and I were alone at home together, I caught her sitting in the living room watching TV. The TV changed channels and increased the volume without her touching the remote, which was on the table across the room. This shows that her telekinesis is capable of at least some level of precision.
There's also the way she cleans. When mom tells us to do chores and gets us to clean the house at the end of the year, my sister is super quick at it. She cleans behind desks and bookshelves that should take a lot of effort to move, despite the fact that she has scrawny little arms. If she was lifting furniture with her mind to clean underneath it, that would explain how she manages.
She and I went to Jingu Stadium to cheer on one of my cousins at a baseball game once. We were sitting in the stands together when a foul ball came flying towards us before taking an unnatural turn in midair and landing well behind me. If that ball had flown straight, it definitely would have hit one of us dead on. My sister had turned to me then and said "that was close" as if she were completely disinterested, but I'm almost certain she moved the ball using telekinesis.
There are also some stories which I don't personally remember very well but my mother told me about. She said that back when my sister was in kindergarten, poltergeist-like phenomena would occasionally occur in our house. In the bedroom where my sister used to sleep with my parents when she was very small, lights would sometimes shake, dresser drawers would open by themselves, and things would fly out of closets on their own. These events had apparently completely stopped by the time my sister entered elementary school, but I suspect that prior to that my sister had just been too young to properly control her powers.
Furthermore, even though my sister was an active child who liked to run around when she was younger, she never got hurt falling down. That's not to say that she's never tripped —she's actually fallen down the stairs several times because she was going too fast. She's always been miraculously unhurt though, never suffering so much as a scraped knee. My parents think that this is a sign of God protecting a genius prodigy, but I wonder if she might have been subconsciously shielding herself telekinetically. It may even be possible that she's able to fly using such a power and is arresting her fall a moment before impact. I wouldn't put it past her.
I understand that all of this is circumstantial evidence and I wouldn’t have any comeback if someone were to tell me that it’s all just in my head. But I'm not the sort of heartless person who would drop a potted plant on their sister's head just to confirm whether or not my theory is correct and even if I could definitively prove the matter one way or the other, I wouldn't. Sumireko has concealed these abilities of hers on purpose, and as her older brother, I wouldn't want to expose her.
I would be lying if I said I had never been tempted though. I've thought occasionally about what it would be like to have a famous sister with superpowers. I’d be able to brag about her all the time or even show up on TV. If my sister were to become famous for her abilities though, I think that would just make me feel even more worthless. By the time Sumireko was in kindergarten, my parents had already given up on me. I guess to my highly intelligent parents, the difference between my potential and my sister’s must have been obvious. Pinning all of their hopes upon my sister was the right choice though. Making the honor roll was probably the best I could ever hope for, but my sister is an actual child prodigy, leaving me with none of the dignity one might expect an older sibling to have. Personally, I see no reason to give my sister even more of a reason to feel special.
At any rate, all of my evidence is circumstantial, but there's a lot of it. After more than a decade of living with her, I'm nearly certain about this one. My sister is a telekinetic.
—
Second: Teleportation. This one too, I'm pretty sure my sister can do. Even her vanishing from my room just now may have been an example of this ability. My sister will sometimes use this particular power in an unguarded way around me. I can't help but think that she kind of wants me to discover it.
As before, all of the evidence I have supporting this belief is circumstantial, but there is a lot of it. I won't bother listing out every instance of it here. From what I've observed, however, it seems like there must be some pretty strict limits on how she can use this.
First, I don't think she can go very far. Probably not even as far as the distance between our house and her school. My sister is lazy and has few friends, but she still walks to school every day. If she could avoid that by just teleporting from here to there, I'm certain she would. Up until March of last year, my middle school and my sister’s elementary school were near each other, and I walked with her during that time. Ever since I started suspecting that she could teleport I've tried to follow her home occasionally too, and she always seems to be walking, though I guess it's possible that every time I was following her she just noticed me.
The most decisive evidence is an event that occurred two summers ago. We were at home on a day off from school when we got a call saying my father had collapsed at work and been rushed to the hospital. I was at home at the time and my sister was out playing. I rode with my mother to the hospital and she had me call Sumireko on her phone to tell her the news. She then pedaled her bicycle all the way to the hospital and met us there, exhausted and sweaty. If she had had the means to travel instantly, she definitely wouldn't have bothered doing that.
So, she can't go long distances. She can travel through obstacles though, like how she went from my room to hers on the other side of a wall just now. She can also bring with her anything she is touching, which makes it easy for her to steal books and other objects from my room. I'm sure if she wanted to, she could use such an ability to steal from stores or commit a perfect locked-room murder, but I've not seen any signs of her committing any crimes. That might mean that she’s using her powers responsibly, or it may just mean she's good enough at hiding the occasional theft that I’ve never ever noticed. I guess I don't have any way of guessing at what my sister might be thinking.
At any rate, I'm almost certain about those two abilities. She's also extraordinarily good at games like Concentration or Old Maid, which might be signs of Clairvoyance or telepathy, but that would be nearly impossible to confirm without arousing suspicion. Apportation is something she might have, but it would be difficult to tell that apart from telekinesis. As far as pyrokinesis, psychometry, telegraphy, or precognition go though, I've never seen any evidence of them. Of course, I can't rule them out either because it's much harder to prove that something doesn't exist.
In summary, from what I have seen, I think my sister, Usami Sumireko, can move herself and other objects without using her muscles or any sort of machinery to do so through the power of telekinesis. I think she can also teleport short distances. I intend to observe her further and try to confirm these theories, as long as I can do so without seeming like a creep.
My little sister is smart, selfish, and brash but not at all cute. I will need to be cautious to keep her from noticing me watching her, and I don't want her to think I have some sort of sister complex. Even if she doesn't respect me as an older brother, I still have my pride.
You may argue that I never had any dignity to begin with. Honestly, I guess that might be true.
—3—
I first noticed my sister had strange powers when she was in elementary school. She had always been smart for her age. By the time she entered elementary school, however, she seemed to have realized that she was special and that her specialness was something she would have to conceal. That’s why at first I thought she was just smart and arrogant.
I think not even my parents suspect that she's a psychic. They’ve certainly never spoken with me about it. Maybe they have a vague suspicion that Sumireko isn't exactly normal. At any rate, by the time she entered elementary school, my sister was already working to conceal her powers. Aside from myself and possibly my parents, I don't think there's anyone else who might know about her abilities. I can't know everyone my sister interacts with, of course, but I don't think she has any close friends. So, it's possible that I really am the only one who knows about this.
—
I don't know when exactly my sister's abilities awakened. If the poltergeist-like phenomena I mentioned earlier really were her fault, then she must have had these abilities since she was in kindergarten.
Just to be clear, I've never heard of any other member of our family being a psychic. My parents are both normal people. Regardless of the explanation, my sister is unquestionably some kind of freak.
So then the question becomes 'why her?' If she was blessed by God then I wish He could have been a bit more selective about who He was blessing. They say that God created man to be equal, but that’s a total lie. I wish He had given Sumireko’s brains to me instead. I can't begin to count the number of times that I've been studying for exams and sincerely wished I had her brains. Seriously, it's not even fair.
—
"I'm hooome."
"Welcome home, brother."
At the beginning of my second year of high school, they divided our class up into those wanting to study the humanities, and those pursuing the sciences. I chose the former, and I had already made a few friends in the new class they put me in, so despite the change in environment, I was in slightly higher spirits than usual. That’s why when I came home today, seeing my sister spread out on the couch, staring at her smartphone with a stick of pocky protruding from her mouth, I was immediately brought back to the reality of my day-to-day life. I sighed. You’d think she’d at least try to live a more interesting life. Someone with the sorts of powers she has could be living the exciting life of a light novel protagonist. Well maybe that wouldn’t actually be a good idea.
"Hey, Sumi..."
"Hm? What is it?"
"If you saw a middle school girl in the prime of her youth lounging on the couch on a day when she only has a half day at school rather than playing with her friends or doing anything else, what would your impression of her be? Genius prodigy or sad loser?"
"You're one to talk. You're here at home too. Haven't you made any friends in your new class?"
"Shut up."
I pulled a bottle of soda out of our fridge and poured myself a glass then headed up to my room. Sitting down at my computer, I pulled up a browser, setting this document aside for the time being. The channels I follow on Niconico had posted some new videos, including some 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 videos that looked interesting. I clicked a link and sat back to watch.
"Seriously, the first thing you do as soon as you get home is start watching Niconico."
My sister was right beside me, leaning over my shoulder and looking at my screen. I had neither seen nor heard her come in. Was it teleportation again?
"Shut up, little sis."
"You're a high school junior. Shouldn't you have a girlfriend or something by now? Are you going to end up as a pathetic NEET after high school who only exists to play online games and watch other people game on Niconico? Oh, wait. Is it already too late for that?"
"Shut up, you sound like mom. Besides, you're one to talk. Do you have even one friend at school?"
"Like there's anyone in middle school worth having as a friend."
This sort of arrogance is typical of her responses. She then turned to my bookshelf and grabbed the newest volume of 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝐻𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝐼𝑛 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 that had come out just the other day. She turned it over in her hand, looking at the covers on the jacket before opening up and beginning to read it in earnest.
"You really like the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 novels and manga but I barely ever see you play the games."
"The games are really hard! I like the manga because they have lots of details about the world and folklore and stuff."
"You probably just like it because Rachel is an older-sister type with big boobs."
"That's natural. All I have is an annoying younger sister, so of course I'd like an older sister-type."
"Yes, yes. I guess I should be grateful you're into big sister types and not little sisters. Or would you like it if I started calling you brooother deaaaar~?"
"Please don't. I don't have a sister complex. You're the one with a mind like a dirty old man if you're thinking that way. I told you before, I'm into yuri. I only want to see Rachel kiss Samantha."
"Don't remind me. You're still planning on going to that doujin convention next month, aren't you?"
"Of course."
She sighed. "Brother, please. For the sake of the family name and my sanity, don't get kicked out of a con for trying to buy porn doujins while underage. I'd die of embarrassment."
"SHUT THE HELL UP, SUMI!"
Of course there's no need for me to explain about 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 here. Everyone knows the series of doujinsoft side-scrolling action games that have amassed a dedicated following over the last decade. Every stage boss is a cute monster girl of some kind, or else a fairy, or some sort of real-world historical goddess. The player characters differ from game to game but they always include the series two protagonists, the shrine maiden and the witch. As the series protagonists exterminate the various monsters before them, each one they defeat is added to the girls' collections for their powers to be used in later stages. In short, the games were like if you had to play through dense, Mario-style levels as Mega Man while also having Kirby's ability to fly. Every game has its own unique gimmicks and overall the relentless waves of attacks you have to dodge at any given moment makes the games quite difficult.
Including the spin-off fighting games produced for the series, new mainline works in the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 series get released about once a year, which is pretty impressive for a doujin series, especially considering that there are also official novels and manga being serialized in commercial magazines at the same time. The author of the series is unusually generous when it comes to tolerating derivative works, leading to a vast proliferation of related doujin and other media connected to the series. I had first heard about the series through secondary works of this sort posted on Niconico back when I was in elementary school, but I've since read through all of the official manga and most of the original novels. Overall, I've been into 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for about five years now, which seems like a long time to follow something like this, but if I had more pocket money I still can't think of much I'd rather spend it on more 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 doujins and merch.
"Nowadays even elementary school kids are getting into these sort of monster-collecting games."
"Doesn’t that mean that 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 elementary school was also full of NicoNico otaku?"
"Yep. And there were a lot of guys who were 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 otaku like you."
"I only found out about the series when I was in sixth grade though."
"Most people aren't into 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for its connection to folklore like you are, though. Even if I try to talk to them about that sort of thing they never understand. They're all boring."
"Well you understand it. You should read the folklore thread on the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 boards."
"Why don’t you just look up folklore and stuff like that on Wikipedia? It’s fun, you know."
"I'm not trying to write a doujin or anything. But I do admit looking up the inspirations and stuff can be fun."
"You should make a doujin, brother. I bet you'd be good at it."
"I'm not going to do that. I can't even draw."
"You could write a doujin novel then."
I clammed up. The sad fact of the matter is that I had actually written a handful of fanfiction stories for the series back in middle school. I had posted them on a public forum where they were mostly ignored. The three meager comments I got on them were hardly favorable. If I could, I'd go back and delete them from the internet, but I'd long ago forgotten my password to that site.
Even now, I still have lots of ideas for fanfiction running through my head, but after the reception my previous efforts got, I don't have any plans to post anything. Maybe I should have posted those stories on my own blog page where they could have sat in silence, unseen forever, but putting them on a public archive like that just made it clear exactly how few people were interested in reading what I had written.
"We used to play together with stuffed animals, you and I."
"Why are you bringing that up?"
I thought back to when we were still children. It must have been almost seven years ago that we last played together like that, making up elaborate lives and backstories for some stuffed animals. Back then, my sister seemed so innocent that she had actually been cute, I thought, staring wistfully into the distance.
"You must have some talent for that sort of thing. You made up a whole bunch of stories."
It was nice of her to say, but she'd never seen the lonely fics I'd written collecting dust on the archives of the internet. I wasn't about to tell her about those though.
"Sumi."
"What?"
"You're just trying to get me to write some sort of embarrassing fic so you can blackmail me about it later, aren't you?"
"Aww, my brother knows me so well. That's a sign of a healthy sibling relationship right?"
"Don't admit something like that so happily!"
As Sumireko laughed at me, I could only sigh in response.
Hello again, readers. Today I begin my translation of a rather atypical companion piece to Asagihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency.' The story I'm about to present was originally a side story, a shorter little prequel novella which was printed and distributed as a promotional gift to anyone who spent enough money at the author's Comiket booth. It was written in 2015, the same year that the Hifuu Detective Agency series as a whole began, but in 2018, after the release of the ninth book in that series, this story was released for free on Longnovel's website. For that reason, I'm including it here and now.
As a promotional material for the Hifuu Detective Agency series, this story is a little odd. First off, it's not a mystery—there's no secret to deduce nor culprit to point the finger at, though it does have some interesting implications for the main series that may inform your views of some of the questions found there.
There are several other differences that make this story an odd choice to promote the Hifuu Detective Agency series though. It doesn't feature the same narrator for one, and it is mainly concerned with characters that still haven't appeared in the mainline stories at this point. Because it was not originally intended for serialization, the chapters are also of a more variable length than in the other books as well. It also has a slightly different tone than the main series —a little edgier, a little darker, with a lot of meta references.
As far as objectionable content goes, this story contains discussions of murder, sex and masturbation. All of it is very surface level though and would probably get a PG-13 rating at most.
It may not be the usual fare, but if you've enjoyed the series so far, then you'll probably like this too. With those comments out of the way, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrators. I hope that you enjoy the tale to come.
—
[𝐇𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐮 𝐂𝐥𝐮𝐛 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 - 𝐌𝐚𝐲, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓]
At last, the day has finally come to change the destiny of all mankind!
Starting today, I will begin my work to expose the stifling barrier that has been erected around the secret world and break through it, stepping into a bold, wondrous new way of being!
This new world is a mystery that has been sealed away from us by the lie we call 'science.' It is the final unknown frontier left in this drab scientific age. In this world, to which I will throw open the gates, illusions lost to this world still exist, as real as I am.
This boring, stuffy city of Tokyo will make a fitting ground zero for the birth of the new world, but it will not contain the whole of it. What begins here today will, in time, spread across the globe, opening a new world of dreams and fantasy to all the people of the world.
If I were 𝐾𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 standing on top of a motorcycle, I’d be shouting ‘this is the beginning of the Fantastic Century’ or something!
—
People have lost their taste for fantasy.
I suppose I should blame science, which violently cuts the beautiful tapestry of fantasy with the dull and artless knife of rationality. Nowadays all manner of fantastic events and supernatural occurrences are regarded as fiction or jokes, or worse—as pseudoscience.
In this world of science, dreams hardly exist any more. The year after I was born, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 marked the beginning of an endless, global 'war on terror' that has led to an endless chain of terroristic acts and brutal retaliations. When I was eight there was a worldwide financial collapse. These are the sorts of problems I have to deal with. Just four years ago an enormous earthquake and tsunami killed tons of people and unleashed a nuclear disaster on our country. But! The crisis us children of the new millennium face in having our dreams stolen from us is not caused by something so clear cut as those events!
Information is growing faster than ever. There's an endless sea of content on the internet constantly washing away all of our free time. Whenever anyone wants to know anything they can just Google it up and have the answer instantly. We learn everything, regardless of if we want to or not and as a result imagination and inquiry are dying.
'Santa might be real', 'The superheroes in sentai shows might be real', 'someday you might become a Precure.' These are the types of fantasies that are being swept away from us by this endless flood of information. In a world where the so-called ‘truth’ of rationality comes so easily at any time, no one can foster a proper appreciation for fantasy any more.
There is no Santa. A bearded old man and his reindeer couldn't possibly travel around the whole world in one night.
There are no superheroes. Transformation sequences, special attacks and giant robots are all impossible according to modern science.
I'll never get to be a Precure. There's no easy-to-identify bad guy responsible for stealing people's hopes and dreams who you can punch in the face to make the world a better place.
The wonder of our dreams continues to be murdered by logical thinking and Google search results.
Fantasy is endlessly being tossed aside. To maintain any hold on the wonder of illusion, one must discard the real world instead. Well, if everyone is determined to make fantasy and reality mutually exclusive, then I will choose to live in the realm of fiction. Every time.
And so, I ask you this: What if it didn't have to be that way?
Why can’t fiction and reality be on equal footing!?
No! If anything, fiction is clearly better!
Fiction is the home of dreams! Of hope! Of the future! How could reality possibly compare?
Adults laugh at the idea of a world of fiction. To them fiction is artificial and fake. They place more value in this worthless reality that has become our world, but really that's the greatest fiction of all! Can’t they see that?
Us children have no reason at all to cling to this world that holds nothing, neither hope nor dreams nor the promise of a better future for us.
Which is why there is only one option for children of the new millennium like me:
We must strive to make fiction and reality equal.
We must turn fiction into reality!
We must strive not only to make fiction a part of reality, but to have it replace reality altogether.
To do so is our only means to take back what was stolen from us. To claim our dreams, our hopes and our futures once more.
Our voices must be heard.
If the reality of this world has no place in it for fantasy, then that reality must be corrected!
Fantasy shall become reality and reality will coexist alongside fantasy. That’s how it will start. We must blend fantasy into this world and make it an equal part.
I know of a fantasy that exists in this world on the other side of a barrier. A fantasy that is truly the equal of reality. A fantasy capable of defeating this modern age, sealed away from us.
My intention is to release this fantasy from behind its barrier. To return fantasy from a world that has forgotten its joy.
This is where it all begins.
—
My name is Usami Sumireko. I was born on January 1st, 2000. I am 15 years old. I am a freshman at Higashi Fukami High School and the president of the school's occult circle, "the Hifuu Club." Let these names be forever etched into history. As the founder of a new world, one where the fantasy sealed behind the barrier becomes a part of our reality. As the creator of the Fantastic Century.
If my life can become the cornerstone of this new era, then I would be willing to die for this cause.
After all, this world holds no dreams, no hopes and no future.
An unknown barrier has been stretched around a world of fantasy. Lurking behind that barrier is a mesmerizing truth that I alone can release.
Gensokyo.
—
[𝐔𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐢 𝐊𝐚𝐨𝐫𝐮 - 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐌𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 — 𝐀𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐥, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑]
—1—
My stupid little sister thinks she's cute, but she's not.
Well, I say 'stupid little sister', but despite being three years younger than me and only in middle school, I don't doubt for a moment that she's smarter than I am. I'm not trying to humblebrag about her or disparage myself, it's just a fact.
Although she's only in her second year of middle school she could probably pass her entrance exams and outscore her slacker of a brother right now if she wanted to. By the time she graduates, she's sure to get into one of the most prestigious universities in Japan with a full scholarship, which is the sort of thing I could never dream of. That's only if some overseas school doesn't scoop her up first though, I guess.
Her mind is just too quick to be believed. Even as her brother I can admit she has reasonably good looks. As far as athleticism... she blows me out of the water, though I kind of suspect she may be cheating when she beats me. To put it simply, my sister is like Superman. Or, Superwoman, I guess? She's a genius, or a prodigy, or whatever the proper term is. My parents are immensely proud of her, of course, and despite the fact that she's younger than me, I can tell that she bears all of their expectations to continue the Usami family name, which has produced many accomplished scholars.
But she's just too smart. Scary smart. That's why she's not cute.
"Hey, has the sequel to this book been released yet?"
"I haven't even read that one yet! Did you finish it already?"
"Yeah, obviously. Have you got anything else interesting I can read?"
My sister, who was lying on my bed, reading through my light novel collection without permission, got up to rummage through the rest of my bookshelf. I had been watching a playthrough on Niconico Douga up until now, but I sighed and swiveled my chair around to face her.
"Don't you have anything better to do than lie around in my room?"
"It's spring break. Besides, you're just sitting in your room watching videos all day, it's not like I'm interrupting anything."
"And you're spending your whole day reading through 𝑚𝑦 bookshelf. You're a teenage girl. Don't you have cute girl things to do like going shopping with your friends or singing karaoke or something?"
"What friends? I'm stuck in a school learning boring, moronic facts, surrounded by boring, moronic students for at least the next two years. You don't know how hard it is to be a genius like me."
"If you're so smart then go do something brainy. Read a textbook or something."
"No waaay, textbooks are boooring. These light novels are better. They’re filled with every sort of fantasy someone living in the modern world could ask for. Reading just for pleasure is way more fun."
"Well admittedly, they are great works of literature."
"You’re the one who should be worried. If this is the only sort of stuff you read then you can’t really ever expect to be anything more than a normie."
"Shut up. What’s wrong with being a normie?"
"I suppose you’re right. The Great Sumireko is only made more impressive by the boring normality of her normie brother."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Well naturally geniuses look more impressive when they’re put next to normies. It’s like Mozart and Salieri."
"GO BACK TO YOUR OWN ROOM!"
She's really not the least bit cute.
She's always like this too. She never stops yapping and it's impossible for an ordinary person to argue with her at all. I may be her older brother, but as far as she's concerned, I'm just a convenient source of novels and manga. With a girl like her as my little sister, I’ve never once experienced the dignity one would expect an older sibling to have, not even when she was first born.
Sighing, I swiveled my chair back around to face my computer. It's my own personal desktop computer, a machine that was given to me as a gift when I first entered middle school. I've had it for five years now, and it's starting to get a little worn out. It has a functioning internet connection though, so there's no end of ways I could be using this machine to kill time. Already my parents have threatened to take it away if my grades don't improve, so I should probably be using it to study or do homework.
I turned my eyes back to the screen for a few seconds to continue watching my video but it had already ended. There was no sound playing and I didn't have headphones on. The door to my room always rattles when you open or close it, but after a minute or two I still hadn't heard a sound. As far as my senses told me, Sumireko should still be in my room.
When I chanced a glance over my shoulder though, there was no sign of her.
She's getting brazen again. And practically right in front of me…
I furrowed my brow as I looked over at my bookshelf. The latest entry to the series I've been reading is missing. She must have taken it with her. I still haven't read it yet. I scratched at my head as I got up from my computer and sprawled out on my bed.
I think I'm a pretty average guy. I've got a super-average, gender-neutral name, which I don't really like: Usami Kaoru. I guess it's better than some of the trendy new names that celebrities are giving their kids nowadays, I’m grateful that I was born to parents who gave me a normie name but I do wish that they had picked a name for my sister that didn’t look as much like mine when you write them both out.
Despite how similar the kanji for our names, 薫 and 菫子, might look, we're a pair of siblings who are nothing alike. I don't really look much like her and her brain is on completely another level.
But there's something else that separates us even further. I'm not talking about gender or personality and it goes way beyond our hobbies or tastes.
It's something in the nature of who we are: I'm a normal, average sort of person.
My sister is not. I think she has psychic powers.
—2—
What do I mean by that? 'Psychic Powers' is a pretty broad term. If I were to just say that much, it'd be like saying a picture of a page posted on Twitter is the same as a light novel or the way some parents refer to all video games as 'Nintendos.' My parents don't do that though. Do anyone's parents, actually? Maybe that's an urban legend.
Anyway, just off the top of my head, 'Psychic Powers' might mean any of:
• Telekinesis - the ability to move objects without touching them.
• Telepathy - the ability to directly read someone else's mind.
• Teleportation - the ability to move instantly between two distant points.
• Pyrokinesis - the ability to start fires just by thinking about them.
• Clairvoyance - the ability to see things that would normally be invisible.
• Psychometry - the ability to read thoughts and emotions from objects.
• Spirit Photography - the ability to store and retrieve thoughts and emotions in images.
• Precognition - the ability to predict the future.
These are the most common sort of psychic powers I've read about. If I think a little bit harder, there's also apportation, which is the ability to teleport objects rather than oneself, and 'Remote Viewing' is the ability to see distant events as they occur with the mind's eye. Really though, those two seem more like subtypes of the main categories I've listed above.
So, what kind of psychic is my sister, Usami Sumireko, then?
To be clear, Sumireko has never claimed to have any of these abilities, to myself or anyone else. The only person who really knows is Sumireko herself, and unless she confesses to me about it, I'll never be positive.
Even so, these are my conclusions based on my observations as her brother. I can’t guarantee that I’m correct. My sister hides her abilities well, but no one can keep their guard up all of the time. It's also possible that my sister might occasionally be showing me a glimpse of her powers on purpose, just to give me a hint.
—
First: Telekinesis. I'm almost certain my sister can do this, and quite powerfully. Once, while my sister and I were alone at home together, I caught her sitting in the living room watching TV. The TV changed channels and increased the volume without her touching the remote, which was on the table across the room. This shows that her telekinesis is capable of at least some level of precision.
There's also the way she cleans. When mom tells us to do chores and gets us to clean the house at the end of the year, my sister is super quick at it. She cleans behind desks and bookshelves that should take a lot of effort to move, despite the fact that she has scrawny little arms. If she was lifting furniture with her mind to clean underneath it, that would explain how she manages.
She and I went to Jingu Stadium to cheer on one of my cousins at a baseball game once. We were sitting in the stands together when a foul ball came flying towards us before taking an unnatural turn in midair and landing well behind me. If that ball had flown straight, it definitely would have hit one of us dead on. My sister had turned to me then and said "that was close" as if she were completely disinterested, but I'm almost certain she moved the ball using telekinesis.
There are also some stories which I don't personally remember very well but my mother told me about. She said that back when my sister was in kindergarten, poltergeist-like phenomena would occasionally occur in our house. In the bedroom where my sister used to sleep with my parents when she was very small, lights would sometimes shake, dresser drawers would open by themselves, and things would fly out of closets on their own. These events had apparently completely stopped by the time my sister entered elementary school, but I suspect that prior to that my sister had just been too young to properly control her powers.
Furthermore, even though my sister was an active child who liked to run around when she was younger, she never got hurt falling down. That's not to say that she's never tripped —she's actually fallen down the stairs several times because she was going too fast. She's always been miraculously unhurt though, never suffering so much as a scraped knee. My parents think that this is a sign of God protecting a genius prodigy, but I wonder if she might have been subconsciously shielding herself telekinetically. It may even be possible that she's able to fly using such a power and is arresting her fall a moment before impact. I wouldn't put it past her.
I understand that all of this is circumstantial evidence and I wouldn’t have any comeback if someone were to tell me that it’s all just in my head. But I'm not the sort of heartless person who would drop a potted plant on their sister's head just to confirm whether or not my theory is correct and even if I could definitively prove the matter one way or the other, I wouldn't. Sumireko has concealed these abilities of hers on purpose, and as her older brother, I wouldn't want to expose her.
I would be lying if I said I had never been tempted though. I've thought occasionally about what it would be like to have a famous sister with superpowers. I’d be able to brag about her all the time or even show up on TV. If my sister were to become famous for her abilities though, I think that would just make me feel even more worthless. By the time Sumireko was in kindergarten, my parents had already given up on me. I guess to my highly intelligent parents, the difference between my potential and my sister’s must have been obvious. Pinning all of their hopes upon my sister was the right choice though. Making the honor roll was probably the best I could ever hope for, but my sister is an actual child prodigy, leaving me with none of the dignity one might expect an older sibling to have. Personally, I see no reason to give my sister even more of a reason to feel special.
At any rate, all of my evidence is circumstantial, but there's a lot of it. After more than a decade of living with her, I'm nearly certain about this one. My sister is a telekinetic.
—
Second: Teleportation. This one too, I'm pretty sure my sister can do. Even her vanishing from my room just now may have been an example of this ability. My sister will sometimes use this particular power in an unguarded way around me. I can't help but think that she kind of wants me to discover it.
As before, all of the evidence I have supporting this belief is circumstantial, but there is a lot of it. I won't bother listing out every instance of it here. From what I've observed, however, it seems like there must be some pretty strict limits on how she can use this.
First, I don't think she can go very far. Probably not even as far as the distance between our house and her school. My sister is lazy and has few friends, but she still walks to school every day. If she could avoid that by just teleporting from here to there, I'm certain she would. Up until March of last year, my middle school and my sister’s elementary school were near each other, and I walked with her during that time. Ever since I started suspecting that she could teleport I've tried to follow her home occasionally too, and she always seems to be walking, though I guess it's possible that every time I was following her she just noticed me.
The most decisive evidence is an event that occurred two summers ago. We were at home on a day off from school when we got a call saying my father had collapsed at work and been rushed to the hospital. I was at home at the time and my sister was out playing. I rode with my mother to the hospital and she had me call Sumireko on her phone to tell her the news. She then pedaled her bicycle all the way to the hospital and met us there, exhausted and sweaty. If she had had the means to travel instantly, she definitely wouldn't have bothered doing that.
So, she can't go long distances. She can travel through obstacles though, like how she went from my room to hers on the other side of a wall just now. She can also bring with her anything she is touching, which makes it easy for her to steal books and other objects from my room. I'm sure if she wanted to, she could use such an ability to steal from stores or commit a perfect locked-room murder, but I've not seen any signs of her committing any crimes. That might mean that she’s using her powers responsibly, or it may just mean she's good enough at hiding the occasional theft that I’ve never ever noticed. I guess I don't have any way of guessing at what my sister might be thinking.
At any rate, I'm almost certain about those two abilities. She's also extraordinarily good at games like Concentration or Old Maid, which might be signs of Clairvoyance or telepathy, but that would be nearly impossible to confirm without arousing suspicion. Apportation is something she might have, but it would be difficult to tell that apart from telekinesis. As far as pyrokinesis, psychometry, telegraphy, or precognition go though, I've never seen any evidence of them. Of course, I can't rule them out either because it's much harder to prove that something doesn't exist.
In summary, from what I have seen, I think my sister, Usami Sumireko, can move herself and other objects without using her muscles or any sort of machinery to do so through the power of telekinesis. I think she can also teleport short distances. I intend to observe her further and try to confirm these theories, as long as I can do so without seeming like a creep.
My little sister is smart, selfish, and brash but not at all cute. I will need to be cautious to keep her from noticing me watching her, and I don't want her to think I have some sort of sister complex. Even if she doesn't respect me as an older brother, I still have my pride.
You may argue that I never had any dignity to begin with. Honestly, I guess that might be true.
—3—
I first noticed my sister had strange powers when she was in elementary school. She had always been smart for her age. By the time she entered elementary school, however, she seemed to have realized that she was special and that her specialness was something she would have to conceal. That’s why at first I thought she was just smart and arrogant.
I think not even my parents suspect that she's a psychic. They’ve certainly never spoken with me about it. Maybe they have a vague suspicion that Sumireko isn't exactly normal. At any rate, by the time she entered elementary school, my sister was already working to conceal her powers. Aside from myself and possibly my parents, I don't think there's anyone else who might know about her abilities. I can't know everyone my sister interacts with, of course, but I don't think she has any close friends. So, it's possible that I really am the only one who knows about this.
—
I don't know when exactly my sister's abilities awakened. If the poltergeist-like phenomena I mentioned earlier really were her fault, then she must have had these abilities since she was in kindergarten.
Just to be clear, I've never heard of any other member of our family being a psychic. My parents are both normal people. Regardless of the explanation, my sister is unquestionably some kind of freak.
So then the question becomes 'why her?' If she was blessed by God then I wish He could have been a bit more selective about who He was blessing. They say that God created man to be equal, but that’s a total lie. I wish He had given Sumireko’s brains to me instead. I can't begin to count the number of times that I've been studying for exams and sincerely wished I had her brains. Seriously, it's not even fair.
—
"I'm hooome."
"Welcome home, brother."
At the beginning of my second year of high school, they divided our class up into those wanting to study the humanities, and those pursuing the sciences. I chose the former, and I had already made a few friends in the new class they put me in, so despite the change in environment, I was in slightly higher spirits than usual. That’s why when I came home today, seeing my sister spread out on the couch, staring at her smartphone with a stick of pocky protruding from her mouth, I was immediately brought back to the reality of my day-to-day life. I sighed. You’d think she’d at least try to live a more interesting life. Someone with the sorts of powers she has could be living the exciting life of a light novel protagonist. Well maybe that wouldn’t actually be a good idea.
"Hey, Sumi..."
"Hm? What is it?"
"If you saw a middle school girl in the prime of her youth lounging on the couch on a day when she only has a half day at school rather than playing with her friends or doing anything else, what would your impression of her be? Genius prodigy or sad loser?"
"You're one to talk. You're here at home too. Haven't you made any friends in your new class?"
"Shut up."
I pulled a bottle of soda out of our fridge and poured myself a glass then headed up to my room. Sitting down at my computer, I pulled up a browser, setting this document aside for the time being. The channels I follow on Niconico had posted some new videos, including some 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 videos that looked interesting. I clicked a link and sat back to watch.
"Seriously, the first thing you do as soon as you get home is start watching Niconico."
My sister was right beside me, leaning over my shoulder and looking at my screen. I had neither seen nor heard her come in. Was it teleportation again?
"Shut up, little sis."
"You're a high school junior. Shouldn't you have a girlfriend or something by now? Are you going to end up as a pathetic NEET after high school who only exists to play online games and watch other people game on Niconico? Oh, wait. Is it already too late for that?"
"Shut up, you sound like mom. Besides, you're one to talk. Do you have even one friend at school?"
"Like there's anyone in middle school worth having as a friend."
This sort of arrogance is typical of her responses. She then turned to my bookshelf and grabbed the newest volume of 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝐻𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝐼𝑛 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 that had come out just the other day. She turned it over in her hand, looking at the covers on the jacket before opening up and beginning to read it in earnest.
"You really like the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 novels and manga but I barely ever see you play the games."
"The games are really hard! I like the manga because they have lots of details about the world and folklore and stuff."
"You probably just like it because Rachel is an older-sister type with big boobs."
"That's natural. All I have is an annoying younger sister, so of course I'd like an older sister-type."
"Yes, yes. I guess I should be grateful you're into big sister types and not little sisters. Or would you like it if I started calling you brooother deaaaar~?"
"Please don't. I don't have a sister complex. You're the one with a mind like a dirty old man if you're thinking that way. I told you before, I'm into yuri. I only want to see Rachel kiss Samantha."
"Don't remind me. You're still planning on going to that doujin convention next month, aren't you?"
"Of course."
She sighed. "Brother, please. For the sake of the family name and my sanity, don't get kicked out of a con for trying to buy porn doujins while underage. I'd die of embarrassment."
"SHUT THE HELL UP, SUMI!"
Of course there's no need for me to explain about 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 here. Everyone knows the series of doujinsoft side-scrolling action games that have amassed a dedicated following over the last decade. Every stage boss is a cute monster girl of some kind, or else a fairy, or some sort of real-world historical goddess. The player characters differ from game to game but they always include the series two protagonists, the shrine maiden and the witch. As the series protagonists exterminate the various monsters before them, each one they defeat is added to the girls' collections for their powers to be used in later stages. In short, the games were like if you had to play through dense, Mario-style levels as Mega Man while also having Kirby's ability to fly. Every game has its own unique gimmicks and overall the relentless waves of attacks you have to dodge at any given moment makes the games quite difficult.
Including the spin-off fighting games produced for the series, new mainline works in the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 series get released about once a year, which is pretty impressive for a doujin series, especially considering that there are also official novels and manga being serialized in commercial magazines at the same time. The author of the series is unusually generous when it comes to tolerating derivative works, leading to a vast proliferation of related doujin and other media connected to the series. I had first heard about the series through secondary works of this sort posted on Niconico back when I was in elementary school, but I've since read through all of the official manga and most of the original novels. Overall, I've been into 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for about five years now, which seems like a long time to follow something like this, but if I had more pocket money I still can't think of much I'd rather spend it on more 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 doujins and merch.
"Nowadays even elementary school kids are getting into these sort of monster-collecting games."
"Doesn’t that mean that 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 elementary school was also full of NicoNico otaku?"
"Yep. And there were a lot of guys who were 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 otaku like you."
"I only found out about the series when I was in sixth grade though."
"Most people aren't into 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for its connection to folklore like you are, though. Even if I try to talk to them about that sort of thing they never understand. They're all boring."
"Well you understand it. You should read the folklore thread on the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 boards."
"Why don’t you just look up folklore and stuff like that on Wikipedia? It’s fun, you know."
"I'm not trying to write a doujin or anything. But I do admit looking up the inspirations and stuff can be fun."
"You should make a doujin, brother. I bet you'd be good at it."
"I'm not going to do that. I can't even draw."
"You could write a doujin novel then."
I clammed up. The sad fact of the matter is that I had actually written a handful of fanfiction stories for the series back in middle school. I had posted them on a public forum where they were mostly ignored. The three meager comments I got on them were hardly favorable. If I could, I'd go back and delete them from the internet, but I'd long ago forgotten my password to that site.
Even now, I still have lots of ideas for fanfiction running through my head, but after the reception my previous efforts got, I don't have any plans to post anything. Maybe I should have posted those stories on my own blog page where they could have sat in silence, unseen forever, but putting them on a public archive like that just made it clear exactly how few people were interested in reading what I had written.
"We used to play together with stuffed animals, you and I."
"Why are you bringing that up?"
I thought back to when we were still children. It must have been almost seven years ago that we last played together like that, making up elaborate lives and backstories for some stuffed animals. Back then, my sister seemed so innocent that she had actually been cute, I thought, staring wistfully into the distance.
"You must have some talent for that sort of thing. You made up a whole bunch of stories."
It was nice of her to say, but she'd never seen the lonely fics I'd written collecting dust on the archives of the internet. I wasn't about to tell her about those though.
"Sumi."
"What?"
"You're just trying to get me to write some sort of embarrassing fic so you can blackmail me about it later, aren't you?"
"Aww, my brother knows me so well. That's a sign of a healthy sibling relationship right?"
"Don't admit something like that so happily!"
As Sumireko laughed at me, I could only sigh in response.
Side Story: The Revolution of Usami Sumireko 一覧
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