Chapter 9 ~ The Amalgamation of Siblings

I looked over the chessboard and took note of where all the pieces were. My mind raced with all the different moves and states that board could end up in. None of the moves were a wining move, nor did they help to gain the advantage. While I continued to think about all the moves, my sister sat across from me with her knees hugging her chest and a book in her hand. She had been playing chess against me while causally reading a manga.

Picking up one of my chess pieces I moved it and accepted the outcome of the match for the ninth time. My sister did not look up from her book as she moved her final piece, bringing the game to a draw after 50 total moves had passed. The longest chess game ever recorded was Ivan Nikolic versus Goran Arsovic which had lasted for 269 moves and ended in a draw. Thanks to the 50 move rule, my sister and I had to simply be satisfied with outcome. Still, I was exhausted and even if neither of us showed it, I could tell my sister was about to pass out.

“It seems we will never end this stalemate between us,” I said as I leaned back in my chair.

“We have a big day tomorrow, Onii.”

“And yet we played a game of chess while you read sibling incest books.”

“I told you that was a different one. This one is wholesome siblings.”

“Pretty sure you told me one of them is a sadistic psychopath and they both kill people. Explain how that is wholesome, Rita.”

My sister closed her book and stood to her feet. She made her over to my bed and fell onto it without delay.

“I’m waiting, imouto.”

“I am tired, Onii. Besides, I tried to explain it to you before. The wholesomeness is about the relationship the two siblings have. They care about each other and try to help each other throughout their time together. It’s wholesome sibling slice-of-life.”

I tried to wrap my head around the concept of the story but from what my sister had told me, it sounded like a dark story filled with anything but wholesome sibling moments. Everything about it sounded like a two siblings that just kill people for pleasure.

“But the brother is a sadistic murder who clearly has a fascination with torture. How is that remotely wholesome.”

“Don’t be one of those people, Rin.”

I made my way over to my and laid down beside my sister. Staring up at the ceiling, I listened to her continue on about her belonged manga. Personally, from what I seen of it, I would not be surprised if my sister was in love with the brother who looked more like a feminine girl.

“Then please, explain everything from the beginning.”

My sister wrapped her arms around me and cuddled up to me. She was bordering on falling asleep.

“Well… you see… sibling… wholesome… they are… maids…”

Suddenly, my sister was no longer talking, her mind had completely shut down. Grabbing the covers, I threw them over her and carefully reached for the remote that controlled the lights in my room on the night-stand. Once the room was dark, I closed my eyes and thought about everything that we would have to do tomorrow – or rather in a few hours since we failed to sleep at a reasonable hour. While I tried to sleep, my mind continued to play back the game my sister and I play. This is something I we did, so much so that I was sure she was playing each move in her sleep at this moment. It was paramount of chess prodigies like me and her who were to partake in the World Championship Grandmaster’s Tournament overseas.

My sister and I had discovered the wonders of chess when our mother introduced us to it. According to her, she was at the grandmaster level but never official played in tournaments as she believed chess was meant to be fun. This is how my sister and I get addicted to chess. The two of us studied and learned everything we could about the game to the point that we neglected our studies for chess. Our mother surprisingly did not hate us or tell us to do better, she simply told us to enjoy what we loved. Doing just that, my sister and I practised everyday until we became good enough to enter various local tournaments and gained some money. It continued like this for some time until we managed to make a small chuck of income.

Everything changed though when cancer attacked our mother’s brain. It did not take long for her to die from the cancer. Apparently, it was as bad as cancer could be. While I did not completely understand, I know that is when my sister and I took our chess studies seriously. The two of us studied nearly eight hours everyday and played various games against each other. Every game we played somehow always ended in a draw. No matter how many games we played or swapped playing white and black, we always ended in a draw. When I played other players, I often won ninety-nine percent of the games, likewise my sister did the same.

It was about three years ago that my sister and I had entered into the world of grandmaster chess, playing in tournaments for large sums of money and against other grandmasters who my sister and I looked up to as we grew up. After the two of us achieved the grandmaster rank we still needed to be the champions. Of course only one of us could claim the title.

I continued to allow my mind to drift into the world of dreams. Before long, I could hear the ungodly sound of my alarm clock. Reaching over to the night-stand, I turned off the ear screeching sound as my body nearly refused to more. My sister yawned as she cuddled up to me. Neither of us wanted to get up but we had to.

“Onii, five more minutes.”

“We need to get up, imouto.”

“Nya~ I don’t want to, Onii.”

Getting out of my bed, I stretched for a second and thought about what needed to be done. It was still dark outside and we needed to board our flight at 06:00 hours. There was a lot I needed to get done such as packing up my sister’s ‘porn’ books and making sure the house was clean. Looking over to my sister, she was still sound asleep curled up on my bed.

“If you do not get up, you will regret it, imouto.”

She continued to lay there, asleep in her own world. Pulling the covers off of her, she turned over in her sleep. Another yawn escaped her mouth. With a gentle shake, I whispered for her to get up. She did not wake up.

“All right, you asked for it.”

I knew my sister was ticklish in various spots on her body. Tickling her underarms was meant to wake her up so she would get to work on cooking for the both of us. It was a simple plan; yet, there was a problem. Like a flash of lightening, I felt the force of a truck taking me to a new world. I was on the floor, my nose in extreme pain and blood flowing from it.

“Damn it, imouto!”

“You have no one but yourself to blame, Onii. You know I’m extremely ticklish.”

“Still, you didn’t have to headbutt me in my nose…”

I laid there on the floor as I tried to stop the bleeding. My sister crawled over to me and patted my head gently.

“What did you learn, Onii?”

“That my little sister is extremely violent. I think you broke my nose.”

Like a nurse helping her patient, my sister grabbed a nearby cloth and pinched my nose.

“Is that—”

“It’s my sock.”

“That’s disgusting, imouto. Go get a tissue, please.”

“We’re out. Remember, you used them all, Onii.”

“Wait, you can’t blame that on me.”

The one problem of the two of us living on our own as that without our mother, my sister and I were fairly useless in the function of life. Calculus I could easily do at age ten but life was chaos. My sister did not fair any better. She was unable to do much by herself in life that was not a complex equation with an answer. For her, solving engineering or mathematical problems were child’s play; figuring out how to go to the store and buy tissues was too complicated in her mind.

“Can you take care of the cooking, please?” I asked as I removed her sock from my nose.

The blood was still coming out but I did not want to keep my sister’s sock against my nose. I did have a level of standards for myself. Many geniuses were seen as being unable to function in life, while this was not always the case, my sister and I were… borderline. We could interact with the world to some degree but we preferred to be isolated from it whenever possible. Life became harder when our mother passed but we somehow managed to survive. I wiped my nose to see if it was still bleeding and checked if it was broke. Luckily, it was not broke and just sore.

Standing to my feet, I looked over the messy state of my room. Chess books laid out on the floor, loose-leaf papers scattered throughout, various novels, mathematical books, science books and a figurine of the best two-dimensional girl who understood me, my room looked as if a tornado had blew through. Usually, my mother would either clean or remind me but since she was no longer of the living status, I had neglected to do any cleaning for about a year or two. My sister’s was worse.

Deciding to deal with packing up my sister’s books later, I made my way down to the kitchen to see my sister cutting a piece of bread with a single slice of ham on it. I wanted to say something but at the same time, there was no way I could speak as my cooking skills were non-existent. The best I could do was microwave frozen dinners or make a hot dog. Sitting down at the table, I watched as my sister served what she believed was a meal.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t even a sandwich.”

“Would you like to do better, Onii?”

Before I could bite into what my sister believed constituted as a sandwich, there was a knock at the door. I did not recall us expecting guests, especially at three in the morning. Making my way to the front door, I opened it to be greeted by a with a petite figure and dressed in a charcoal-grey sweater that fell loosely off her shoulders with a white frilly-lace short skirt and a pair of black thigh-high socks with matching high-heels. Her blonde hair was tied off on the left side in a ponytail that swirled slight with some volume to it.

“Why are you two not packed and dressed already?”

“Greetings to you too, Miss Ashihime.”

“You two needed to be up, dressed, packed and ready to go,” she said as she adjusted her glasses.

“We have exactly three hours. There is no rush—”

Without warning, Miss Ashihime let herself into the room and made her way to the kitchen. She was without a doubt a woman that both my sister and I feared. After our mother died, Miss Ashihime looked after us from across the street. To say she was our neighbur was only partily true. Our mother had a romantic relationship with Miss Ashihime for a few years. That was until she moved. While they remained in touch, the relationship between them had been more akin to friends – and the occasional partaking of ‘adult playtime’. I recall reading the messages between the two of them and wishing I could delete it from my brain. My sister decided to turn every text into a story; yet, she never published the book.

“What the hell are the two of you eating!” Miss Ashihime yelled.

“A sandwich,” my sister said as she took another bite of her food.

“That is not a sandwich. You two need real food and a bath. Go bathe, I’ll fix you two breakfast.”

“But we only have one—”

I started to remind her that we only had one restroom with a tub but she apparently forgot.

“Bathe, now.”

Without skipping a beat, my sister and I rushed up the stairs to the restroom and locked the door behind us.

“The foot princess is mad, Onii.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that. You know she hates that nickname. I prefer not to die, thank you very much.”

The nickname we called her was due to her ability to use her feet for various activities throughout her life. She was able to cook, clean and eat all with her feet. It was a talent that was honed by her family lineage which were skilled gymnasts. They were known for using their bare feet and toes for completing everyday tasks. Of course it was a bit disgusting to most people and before long their family just opened a gym. While Miss Ashihime was a skilled gymnast, her true love was for chess.

Miss Ashihime was a proficient grandmaster chess player by the time she was fourteen and even played a few games against my mother from the stories I heard. The two of them had a heated rivalry during their young days before becoming what could be described as enemies to lovers.

“Onii, let’s bathe together.”

My sister was unzipping her black hoodie before I could process what I was looking at. A pink pair of underwear with black lacy trim. Any normal guy would have lost their cool at the sight of a pale flawless beauty, I did not care about any of that though.

“Aren’t we a bit too old to bathe together, imouto?”

“You’re never too old, Onii.”

“I beg to differ on that.”

As my sister started to remove her bra, she had a smug expression on her face. I knew that look. It was something she did when she was ready to get into a debate with me over a topic. This was something we always did rather we agreed or not to facilitate discussion and critical as well as logical thinking.

“Is that so? At what age is too old than, Onii?”

“Too old for what, exactly? Context is needed.”

Without realising it, both my sister and I had stripped down, exposing our bodies to each other. She continued to provide the context while I scrubbed her hair with shampoo.

“For the age of sibling bathing. Who dictates the cut off age? As an example, a mother bathes with her child while he is growing up.”

“Until the child is able to not drown themselves. So that would be the age of reason.”

“But at what age would that be, Onii?”

“By definition, the time of life when a child begins to distinguish right from wrong.”

“But at what age does that child reach this stage and is thus too old, Onii?”

I continued to think about what my sister was asking as she washed my hair. There was nothing inherently wrong with her logic as human’s have different cognitive abilities with some maturing faster than others. It was possible for me to give a range of ages but this would not satisfy my sister.

“It varies but let’s say on average at age six.”

“And who is to say that a child develops a logical reason throughout at that age. For example, what if the child lacks the understanding of right and wrong, such as a psychopath.”

“I think you’ve been reading too much of those porn books, imouto.”

I entered the bath as my sister sat down in the opposite corner.

“It’s not porn, Rin. I told you it’s a wholesome story of siblings just be adorable together.”

“I thought they get killed and sent to a new world then engage in sibling incest.”

“You’re mixing up the books, Onii.”

“I’m sorry I can’t keep up with your porn obsession. You have that wholesome siblings book, the creepy incest one, another one on magical girl dreams or something, and that one with war and torture.”

“And you have all those two-dimensional girls under your bed, hentai Onii.”

After a few minutes of rambling on, the two of us exited the bath and threw on some towels.

“I still think those books are ruining your brain,” I teased.

“And that’s why you’ll never get a girlfriend, Onii.”

“If the two-dimensional world existed I could.”

“Don’t lie, Onii. No girl would want you, even if we were isekai-ed to another world.”

“I mean, it’s not real. When we get hit by a truck we just die.”

“I think it could be real, Onii.”

“You read too many of those books.”

“Let’s make an agreement then, Onii.”

“Okay, if another world truly does exist, I’ll prove to you I can get a girlfriend.”

“All right and when I prove you wrong, you have to forever dress like a girl.”

I knew the possibility of another was impossible. My sister and I had seen a large number of animations which involved a person dying by a truck and being reincarnated to another world, usually a fantasy world. Of course they were all just forms of entertainment, nothing more.

“It’s agreed then.”

After finishing our bath and getting dressed into more comfortable clothes. I went with a simple red tee-shirt and pair of black shorts. My sister decided to go with a pink tee-shirt and black shorts with a matching hoodie that was a size too big for her. Making my way down the stairs, I was greet with a wonderful aroma that filled my nose. It was the smell of a smokey flavour that nearly everyone knew. Sitting on the dinning table was a large meal, a feast fit for a harem of six girls or more.

“You made all this—”

“—for us?”

Miss Ashihime smiled as she placed the last plate on the table. The spread consisted of bacon, eggs, toast, along with orange juice and various other foods. It was amazing to see all the food before me and much better than eating a simple sandwich which was only a slice of ham with single slice of bread. My sister and I sat down at the table and thanked Miss Ashihime for making the food before helping ourself to everything we could shove down our throats.

“Once you two finish, get dressed. After that, we drive to the airport. You two remember the fundamentals, right?”

“As if we could forget the basics of chess,” I said as I downed the bacon.

“Give us some credit, foot princess.”

I felt the air shift from light-hearted to an eerie tone of dread and death. Even if I was not looking at her, I could sense Miss Ashihime was going to kill us. This was our last meal.

“Rita dear, what did you call me?” Miss Ashihime asked as she held a knife in her hand, a sadistic grin causing my sister to freeze in fear.

“I… uh…”

My sister had dug her own grave and I was about to be forced to join her.

“Please, forgive her, Miss Horiko Ashihime. She is just so excited about the tournament that she just could not help herself.”

Miss Ashihime’s laugh was evil. No other words could describe the sound that rang throughout my ears. She was truly a demon.

“Oh, no need to worry you two. I completely understand.”

Something told me that she was going to punish us for what my sister said.

“Now, finish up and go get packed and dressed.”

I feared the worse since Miss Ashihime was telling us to get dressed. After finishing up the meal, my sister and I headed back up stairs to get everything packed. In the back of my mind I could still hear the evil laugh of the witch who was likely to curse us. Packing up a few clothes and a book or two on chess theory, I looked over to see my sister laying on my bed and reading more of her books.

“Imouto, you need to pack too.”

“Just pack my bag for me, Onii.”

“Or… and hear me out on this… no.”

My sister pouted and sat up from bed, sitting on the side of my bed she stared at me with a deadpan expression.

“Mean, Onii-chan.”

“Say what you like, you’re still going to pack your bag yourself.”

I watched as my sister sat down on the floor and slowly crawled over to me in a seductive matter. She unzipped her jacket as she moved extremely close to my face. Wrapping her arms around my neck, I could tell what she was trying to do.

“Nii-nii, por favor ayúdame a empacar.”

“No, now pack your bag.”

I could not help but feel superior as my sister pouted, annoyed by the fact that I would not help her pack. She made her way over to the door and stuck out her tongue. Somehow, I found it kind of cute. Without another word, she left to her room. There was about a sixty-nine percent chance that she would just throw all her books into her bag. I sighed and continued to pack up my bag. Once I had everything, I made my way to my sister’s room. Opening the door, I was greeted with the sight of my sister laying on her bed reading a book.

“You could have at least gotten dressed.”

“You could have just agreed to pack my bad, Onii.”

Silently, I packed a few clothes and books in my sister’s bag while she continued to read her book. Once I was finished I looked over to my sister.

“I’m going to go get dressed. Make sure you do the same.”

Leaving my sister’s room and entering mine, I stripped down and began to change into a nicer outfit. A simple white tee-shirt with a black unbuttoned overcoat and black cargo pants – paring it with black ankle-length socks. Once I was dressed and ready to leave, I made my way back over to my sister’s room. There was a chance that she was dressed but also a chance that she was not. Opening the door, I was surprised by what I saw.

My sister was actually dressed in a black top with a matching large oversized coat and a red pleated skirt. She had just finished putting on a white pair of stockings and stood to her feet. Twirling on the ball of her foot, she stuck a cute pose.

“Nyan-chan~”

“Was that supposed to be cute?”

“Come on, Onii. It was cute.”

I coughed for a moment.

“Let’s go, imouto.”

After gathering up our bags and a spare travel chessboard, my sister and I made our way downstairs to be greeted by the devil herself.

“Rita, since you decided to make that comment during dinner, the two of you are going to jog all the way to the airport,” Miss Ashihime said with a smile.

I could feel my heart stop. She was not joking. Being a physical education teacher at one point in her life, she always tried to keep me and my sister physically active. It was something both my sister and I despised.

“B-But Miss Ashihime—”

“No buts! Get your shoes on and let’s go, go, go!”

Looking over to my sister I gave her glare of death. This was all due to her mistake. With a sigh, I put my shoes on while my sister did the same.

“You’re going to jog in heels?” I asked as I looked over to my sister.

She had a pair of pink running shoes along with a the pair of white high-heels that had little pink bows on them.

“They are cute, Onii.”

“And they will hurt.”

“But they’re cute.”

“Again, they will hurt.”

My sister pouted as she crossed her arms like a child.

“I don’t have any other cute shoes so it’s either these or I just go without shoes.”

“Don’t blame me when you die in the street.”

We both followed Miss Ashihime outside with our bags strapped to our backs. The jog through the city streets was quiet as the dawn was starting to creep over the horizon. An hour long jog to the airport was murder to two out-of-shape shut-ins that spent their time sitting down and playing chess. Our flight was actually a private plane that could seat a few passengers. The plane was small but did have a built in chessboard table. It was as if the plane was made for me and my sister. As I seat down in one of the chairs my sister collapsed into the chair.

“I’m going to die, Onii.”

“I told you.”

“Massage my feet, Onii.”

“You made your bed, you sleep in it.”

My sister refused to move from her chair. I was unable to move as my body continued to thrive in pain. Every part of my body was screaming from head to toe.

“Feel free to rest you two. We have a long flight ahead of us,” Miss Ashihime said as she sat down in a chair opposite of us.

After an hour of rest, my sister and I began to set up the chessboard in front of us. It was a welcome sight to see a magnetic board that allowed the chess pieces to stay in place. The two of us played a game as another hour passed. I was fully engrossed in the game with my sister. Looking over all the moves and the state of the board, it was possible I could beat her for the first time ever. For a moment, the plane started to shake. I paid it no mind believing it just to be turbulence. The sudden feeling of my stomach sinking threw me for a loop.

Looking over to Miss Ashihime, it was clear she did not know what was happening. Another violent shake made me start to wonder what the pilot was doing. As I looked out the window, I noticed the plane was slowly heading downwards. Before I could ask Miss Ashihime what was going on, the plane quickly started to spiral down forcing various things to fly through the plane’s interior.

“What the hell is happening?” Miss Ashihime asked, hoping to understand what was going on with the pilot.

The plane continued to descend at an alarming rate.

“Hey, Onii.”

“Yeah?”

“If plane-kun ends up killing us and we get taken to a new world, remember our agreement.”