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“Mom! Yu’s awakened his magic sight! This calls for sekihan rice to celebrate!”

“Oh, dear. I don’t know quite what you’re talking about, but if that’s a good thing, sekihan rice is what we’ll have.”

Yuichi nearly spat out his breakfast miso soup.

No, I’m okay. No one really does that outside of anime and manga.

His big sister, Mutsuko, had made a big production to him about how he couldn’t tell anyone about his sight — what if a secret society came after him?! Yet apparently, she saw nothing wrong with telling their parents.

He glared at her, willing her to stop talking about it.

Mutsuko grinned back at him, clearly misinterpreting the gesture. She didn’t get it at all.

Mutsuko was just entering her second year of high school, the same high school Yuichi would be attending starting today. People said she was good-looking, though Yuichi, being her brother and all, couldn’t really confirm or deny this.

Her hair was long and held in place with a variety of metal hair clips. To the casual observer, they just looked like barrettes shaped to resemble knives, but she always bragged that they were real blades made from Damascus steel.

Her build was slender and her chest was modest, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She always said that having a big chest would just get in the way, and it sounded like she really meant it.

His mom was very easygoing, so the talk of magic sight didn’t bother her. She probably didn’t even know what “magic sight” was.

Yuichi checked his father’s reaction, but he was focused on his newspaper, occasionally taking a bite of food. He didn’t seem especially interested in the conversation.

Yuichi’s little sister, Yoriko, was enjoying her breakfast as if everything were normal. Mutsuko was always saying weird things like that, so she barely seemed to notice.

Yoriko would be starting her second year of middle school today. Unlike Mutsuko, who paid little mind to her appearance, Yoriko was very concerned with looking pretty. Her long, black hair suited her very well, and she took very good care of it. She wouldn’t dream of afflicting it with bizarre ornaments like her sister did. Her face resembled Mutsuko’s, but she had a serene air about her, and as far as womanly proportions went, she already outstripped her.

The talk of magic sight continued. Yuichi looked around the table, and let out a sigh. Maybe he should have done more to get her to keep her mouth shut. He thought back to the incident of the night before.

It had been after midnight. Yuichi had rapped softly on the door to Mutsuko’s room.

Their parents and their little sister would all be sleeping soundly by that time, but he knew Mutsuko would be up late doing some weird thing or another.

The door opened right away and Mutsuko stood before him. She was dressed in pink pajamas, staring at Yuichi in confusion.

“Yu? What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Um, there’s something I wanted your help with...”

“Sure thing! You’re gonna tell me about your collection of big sister fetish games, right? Don’t worry, I don’t mind a bit!” Mutsuko puffed out her chest.

Yuichi had no idea where she’d gotten that idea from, but she sounded extremely proud of it.

“That’s not it!”

“That’s the only reason a young man ever visits his big sister’s room in the middle of the night! I’ve seen it in anime!”

“But this isn’t anime, it’s real life.”

The comeback lacked the force of his convictions. What he was about to ask her was the opposite of realistic.

“Anyway, quit standing out there and come inside so we can talk, okay?” Mutsuko beckoned him inside.

She still had her kotatsu out, though the heater underneath the low table was unnecessary here in early spring. They both walked up to it and took a seat.

Yuichi hadn’t been inside Mutsuko’s room in a long time. The sight of it being even more cluttered than it used to be left him feeling slightly drained.

He picked up a pamphlet from the table. The title was “Bulletproof Abs.” The cover featured a blown-up image of a set of abs. They certainly looked like they could deflect bullets.

Yuichi began doing some basic clean-up on the books scattered haphazardly across the tabletop.

King of Grip Strength, King of Joints, The Complete Bajiquan, Why Didn’t Masahiko Kimura Kill Rikidozan?, The Science of Releasing Your Internal Power... those titles and more got swept into a neat pile at the edge of the kotatsu. He just couldn’t stand sitting at a messy table.

But sorting out that one minor mess didn’t change the deplorable state of the rest of the room. The most obvious bits of clutter were the weapons strewn all around.

There were lots of Chinese weapons: guandao, emeici, chain whips, meteor hammers, miaodao...

For Western-style weapons, there were quarterstaffs, crossbows, main gauches...

For Indian weapons, madu and a katar...

There were Japanese-style weapons, too. Manri-gusari, jutte, shurikens, and even katanas. The fans seemed a little feminine, at least, but they were made from steel... in other words, more weapons.

Yuichi had known that she had weapons, but not that she had so many, nor that she left them lying around out in the open like this. The paranoid question of what would happen if someone stepped on one began to gnaw at him.

Still, it wasn’t like the room would be appropriately girlish, even if you ignored the weapons. The floor was a mess of winding cables and mysterious circuit boards. There was a line of what looked like lockers piled up against one wall, filled with flickering machines. And even setting those aside, there were the masks, the paper talismans, and the altar, all with purposes unknown.

Yuichi pushed it all out of his mind. If he let himself dwell on it, he’d never stop.