05: Did You F*ck Your Sister?

"Fuck! I'm late!"

When the alarm woke him up, Natsuo groggily rolled over on his bed and reached out to turn it off. However, the moment his heavy eyelids caught sight of the time, all traces of sleep vanished.

He immediately shot up from his bed in panic.

He had gone to sleep far too late last night. He stayed awake until he saw the first rays of dawn creeping through his window, and now he was paying the price.

"Why did no one wake me up?!"

Usually, his father would wake him up before leaving for work, but today there was no one to do it.

Did he spend the night "working hard" with his new wife and completely forget about his son?

Natsuo quickly scrambled through his clothes, splashed some water on his face for a quick wash, put on his school uniform, grabbed his school bag, and rushed out of his room.

Locking the front door behind him, Natsuo hurried toward the school.

Just a few days ago, he and his father had been living in their old house, which was more than spacious enough for the two of them. But the moment Natsuo agreed to his father's remarriage, the old man immediately pulled another house out of his ass. It turned out he had already bought a larger second hand house in advance and had been keeping it a secret all this time.

With how prepared his father had been, Natsuo was left speechless. He even began to suspect that the old man would have gone through with the marriage even if he had refused to give his blessing.

"I should find a suitable opportunity to move out. Even if I'm gone, he won't be lonely anymore." Natsuo scratched his head.

His naturally curly hair had turned into a complete bird's nest. Normally, it would take him quite a while to straighten it, but today he didn't even have time to eat breakfast, much less worry about his hair.

"Fujii-kun!"

As he crossed the crossroads, Natsuo suddenly heard someone calling his name. When he turned around, he saw a blonde haired girl running toward him, waving excitedly with a bright grin on her face. She held her school bag over one shoulder, and as she ran, her short skirt swayed dangerously.

But for some weird reason, or perhaps because of some mysterious invisible force, her panties never once flashed into view.

"Good morning! Pfft! Hahahaha! Your hair! Hahaha! Wha... what happened?!" The moment she reached him, the girl burst into laughter. She repeatedly slapped him on the back while pointing at his messy bedhead. "Did you oversleep?"

"Good morning, Kitagawa-san. I'm trying a new hairstyle," Natsuo lied with a perfectly straight face as he ignored her and continued walking forward.

This girl was his classmate. Her name was Marin Kitagawa, and she was what people called a gyaru. She dyed her hair blonde with pink tips and wore short, flashy clothes. Her eyes were dark pink, though those were just colored contact lenses. She also wore long pink artificial nails, and even her school uniform had been modified to match the gyaru style.

Seriously, nothing about her appearance was real.

"New style? Sure, sure! It really suits you. You look much cuter like this," Marin said with the same cheerful grin on her face.

She walked up beside him, reached out, and ruffled his already messy hair even more before puffing out her cheeks, "It's Marin! Marin-chan! Or Marin-sama, if you're feeling respectful!"

"Do you have anything to eat?"

Ignoring her complaint, Natsuo removed her invasive hand from his head and glanced at her school bag.

He was seriously hungry. Last night, he had stayed awake for no reason until dawn. At some point he had gotten hungry, but he had been too lazy to get out of bed and find something to eat.

"Nope. Want me to buy you something from the vending machine?" Marin shook her head before pointing toward a nearby vending machine. Without waiting for his answer, she immediately ran over to it.

"...Sure. Thanks," Natsuo replied, but she was already gone.

He watched her slender figure as she ran toward the vending machine, thinking that she really was beautiful.

Back when the school year had just started, the two of them were nothing more than ordinary classmates. They weren't particularly close, nor were they distant. Their relationship was exactly what one would expect between classmates.

That changed one day when Natsuo stepped in and saved her from a guy who kept pestering her to go out with him. The man was older than her, a handsome ikemen dressed in stylish clothes who looked like a college student.

Ever since he helped her, Marin had started hanging around him. She would walk to school with him every morning and walk home with him after classes as well.

She was always loud, clumsy, and way too touchy. At first Natsuo honestly thought she might have a thing for him.

The classic hero-saves-the-beauty moment, right?

He even got a little hopeful, thinking maybe this was finally his chance to get a girlfriend in high school. Thankfully, he never tried asking her out. It didn't take long to realize that was just how Marin acted with everyone she considered a friend.

In a sense, he had been friendzoned before he even had the chance to make a move.

Fortunately, Natsuo wasn't really in love with her either. Or rather, to be honest, he didn't even believe in love. He had never experienced that feeling of falling in love that everyone kept talking about.

"Here!" Marin ran back to him and handed him a bottle of orange juice and a piece of bread.

"Thank you, Kitagawa-san." Natsuo accepted them with a nod.

"Moo~! It's Marin!" Marin puffed out her cheeks as the two resumed walking.

"I'd rather stick with 'Kitagawa-san'. Who knows, I might get the wrong idea," Natsuo said as he unscrewed the bottle.

"The wrong idea?" Marin tilted her head in confusion, making her look rather cute. "Like what?"

Natsuo took a sip of the orange juice, turned to look at her, and answered bluntly, "Like asking you out."

"Ehh?! Ehhh?!"

Like an overheated kettle, Marin's face instantly turned bright red. She let out a series of flustered squeaks as though her brain had completely stopped working. She froze in place, wildly waving her hands in front of her like a scarecrow, "W... What!? Wha... what are you saying!? I... I..."

"Hurry up. We're already late." Natsuo calmly took out his phone, snapped a picture of her, then slipped it back into his pocket before urging her to keep moving.

For some reason, he felt like he had forgotten something important the moment he picked up his phone.

'I'll check it later in class,' he thought.

"..." Marin simply nodded and followed him. This time she was rather quiet. The two of them didn't speak for a while. Maybe she was still thinking about what he had said.

"What would you do if you suddenly had a stepbrother?" Natsuo asked while taking bites from the bread. "This bread is delicious, by the way."

"A stepbrother?" Marin put a finger on her chin, thinking deeply about his question. Suddenly, she reached out with one hand and snatched the orange juice bottle from him, downing the entire thing in one go.

"So refreshing!"

Because of what he had said earlier, she had somehow felt thirsty all of a sudden. She wiped the juice from her chin and answered him, "It depends if he's older or younger, but it sounds nice. I can have someone to chat with and complain to at home."

"Is that so?" Natsuo muttered. Then, he suddenly realized something.

"My juice! You drank it all!"

"I bought it with my money, so it's mine!"

"You gave it to me! That means ownership changed!"

"It's in my hand, so it's mine! If you want juice so badly, buy your own!"

"Cheap stake!"

"What did you say?!"

...

"Yo! Rare to see you show up late."

The moment Natsuo stepped into the classroom, Yuuya turned around in his seat with a grin. His eyes gazed at Natsuo's messy hair.

"Also, that's some crazy bedhead."

"I woke up late," Natsuo replied as he split off from Marin, who was already heading over to her group of friends. He made his way to his own seat, still looking half asleep.

Yuuya Masaoka was a good looking guy with blond hair and a flashy style. At first glance, he looked like a total playboy, and honestly, that impression wasn't wrong. He really was one.

The guy changed girls more often than he changed his clothes.

"Pfft!" From the back of the classroom, Marin chuckled. Didn't he say earlier that he was trying a new hairstyle? What a terrible liar!

"How diligent. I can't even come to school until my hair is properly set. I can't risk my image," Yuuya said as he leaned back in his chair.

"At least you have your priorities straight," Natsuo said as he sat down and pulled out his phone. He was just about to check the notifications that had been constantly buzzing when his other friend came running over.

"Hey guys!" Kazuyuki held up his phone with a grin on his face. "Kuwano from class 2 sent me a LINE message during homeroom. He said they got a transfer student!"

Kazuyuki Kine was a lot like Yuuya. He had the same carefree personality and that typical playboy look, mostly because he actually was one too.

"Oh, who is this? Natsuo?!" He looked at Natsuo with an odd face.

"..." Natsuo didn't bother answering. He was too lazy for that.

"For real? Is it a dude or a chick?" Yuuya asked as he stood up from his seat.

"Chick! Sounds like she's pretty good looking too," Kazuyuki said with a grin that any man could understand.

"I gotta see this!"

Yuuya immediately stood up and headed toward the door.

"You guys can go."

Natsuo was too lazy to care about some random girl. His mind had already returned to the chat group. Earlier, because he had been in such a hurry, he completely forgot about it. When he grabbed his phone, he had only quickly taken a picture without checking the notifications.

Now that he finally looked, he saw a long string of messages.

[+99 messages.]

'I can't believe I forgot about something this important!!!'

Natsuo wanted to slap himself. The chat group was the very thing that had kept him awake all night because he couldn't believe it was real, and yet after waking up, he had somehow completely forgotten about it.

"Are you gay? You're coming with us!" Yuuya wasn't having any of it. He and Kazuyuki grabbed Natsuo and forcibly pulled him out of the classroom.

"Hey! First period is about to start!"

"We're just going to sneak a peek!" Yuuya and Kazuyuki said at the same time.

"Alright, stop! I'm going, I'm going!" Natsuo finally relented. Once they stopped dragging him, he followed along with them while looking at his phone.

Kana: [@Natsuo, did you fuck your sister?!!!]

Kana: [Answer me, Sister Leveler!]

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of messages, but Natsuo's eyes locked onto the first few he saw.

His face instantly turned pale, his eyes widened in disbelief, and he roared, "What the fuck?! How in the flying fuck did she know?!"

"What's wrong? Did you cheat on your imaginary girlfriend?" Yuuya was startled by his sudden shout and looked back at him.

"Whoa, what's with that crowd?!"

The next classroom was right beside theirs. When the three of them reached the door, they saw a bunch of students gathered around a girl.

"Rui?" Natsuo finally lifted his head from his phone. His eyes landed on the girl in the center of the crowd, and he immediately recognized her. It was his new stepsister.