t became completely dark out as I w

t became completely dark out as I was reading my book.
One of my bad habits that take hold of me when I was in the middle of a big cleanup or tidying things up was my “oops, I started reading a book habit”.
Close call there… If what I was reading just now was a series, I would’ve found myself entranced in a reading marathon. And once I finished all the volumes, I’d end up spouting, “When’s the next volume coming out? Hurry up and do your job, author!”
I lifted myself up from the sofa I was laying down on and returned the book I finished reading back to the shelf.
With this, my big cleanup was all done. Nothing was actually tidied up, but whatever, I was done.
In life, so as long as you were unable to get rid of your past stains, then I had to say, ultimately, cleanups were an impossible endeavor and thus, meaningless. If life was the stain itself, then regardless of what you tried, you’d never see an end to cleaning up your life.
At any rate, since I was at least able to organize my bookshelf in my room, I made my return to the living room in triumph.
Only a few more days were left of this year.
Supposedly tomorrow was the last business day of the year for my parents. They had a lot of piled up work that needed to be taken care of so they were going to be running late tonight as well. For that reason, my mom had done her cleaning little by little as time permitted. Before long, the living room was neatly tidied up.
But in the neat living room, there was an individual sprawled out on the floor, emitting some kind of ominous aura.
It was my little sister, Hikigaya Komachi.
Her upper body poked out from the kotatsu and she was lying face down. Riding on her back was our beloved cat, Kamakura, who was grooming himself with his tongue.
“What’s wrong with you…?” I asked her on reflex, but there was no reply. It’s just a corpse…1 Oh, c’mon, Komachi, dying here of all places, a little pathetic, you know…
However, it looked rough having a cat on her back. It was almost as if she had been possessed by an earthbound spirit as she didn’t budge at all. On that note, I’d really like it if we could decide on whether an earthbound spirit cat was a cat, spirit, or a demon already, meow.
I made my way into the kotatsu while lifting Kamakura off of Komachi’s back and loaded him onto my lap. Kamakura kneaded my lap to get comfortable, drooped his head and flopped over, sleeping again. Sorry for the bad sleeping spot. Forgive me, meow ♪!
When I relieved Komachi of the weight on her back, she lifted her head.
“Ah, onii-chan…”
My little sister who was always adorable had the sinking, rotten eyes of a fish. Oh my, you’re just like your older brother! We really are siblings! So if Komachi’s cute and I was similar to her, then that meant I was cute! But, wait, those rotten eyes were seriously not cute. So if Komachi’s usual cuteness wasn’t enough to make her look cute, didn’t that mean I wasn’t cute, like, at all?
Anyway, this was the first time I’ve ever seen Komachi look so backed up against the wall.
“Komachi, you okay…?”
“No… I’m done for…” Komachi grumbled and buried her face into her cushion again. She then uttered a delirious mutter with a fragmented voice. “Must, get to cleaning… Gotta, throw away the trash… Need, to toss out onii-trash…”
“Calm down Komachi. The house cleanup is more or less done. Also, it ain’t that easy cleaning up your onii-chan. You’d better be prepared for the long haul.”
“Uuugh, as far as Komachi’s concerned, I just want you to get married off already…”
She gave me a disgruntled look, but there really wasn’t much I could do about that. That’s like on the same hurdle as trying to marry off Hiratsuka-sensei, probably. As if you could marry off a guy as bothersome as me… But this wasn’t the time to be setting up my defensive barriers. Komachi was the issue here.
For the most part, I had an idea as to why Komachi turned out this way. It was probably because of her exams. “Studying’s too hard”, “The mock exams went totally bad”, basically stuff like that.
Ever since Christmas had ended, Komachi had muscled through days and nights of studying, but with the New Year right around the corner, she was now out of steam.
Mumbling and sobbing, Komachi said, “Crap, crap crap…”
She then made a glance at me.
When I went quiet, Komachi shoved her face into the cushion again. She spoke with a muffled voice. “Sniff, uugh, I’m soooo tired…”
She then made a glance at me.
Man, she’s a freaking pain… However, I was a senior veteran onii-chan boasting fifteen years of service. It was times like these where I made sure to understand the right kinds of words to tell her.
“Well, you know. Just studying all the time is a bit constraining. It’s almost New Year’s Eve, so why don’t we take a breather and go somewhere far for our first shrine visit of the year?”
“Sure!” Komachi instantly answered and abruptly rose from her position.
It looked like I was spot on. Of course, since I was a professional onii-chan, that’s par for the cour