The soft murmur of slurping sounds filled the small, gradually warming room.
“Ahhh…,” came a satisfied moan after a time.
Ouyang Lian sat sprawled on a cushion, noisily devouring a bowl of seafood instant noodles in a manner so unladylike it resembled blowing one’s nose. Finishing her meal with an exaggerated sigh, she made a proclamation fit for a bearded, beer-bellied uncle:
“Nothing beats a midnight snack—it truly is the essence of life!”
“Can you please stop smacking your lips? And what would a teenager like you, barely in the double digits, know about the meaning of life? Do you think you’re some old lady who migrated here all the way from Hokkaido?”
The tatami floor was littered with evidence of a long gaming session, with two figures sprawled out in exhaustion at opposite ends of the mattress. In the center of the room, a custom-built rising compartment housed a mahjong table, though this had been hijacked by the lazy gamer, Ouyang Lian, and converted into a workstation for her Xbox.
“Shut up! Go eat your cheap beef jerky or something!” she snapped, her tone sharp but her foot feebly jabbing at my stomach like a pillow. Her soft heel poked at my side—it was more tickling than threatening. It was moments like this that I tolerated her disrespectful antics. After all, this little tyrant had just spent the entire evening getting wrecked by me at every game we touched. No matter the genre, no matter the character… how can a single word express the satisfaction of utterly destroying someone?
“Yeah, yeah…”
Lian’s room was surprisingly huge. Yet every time I walked in, it always felt congested somehow. Her bookshelves overflowed with reading material, stacked haphazardly with no rhyme or reason. And it wasn’t girly magazines or trendy knick-knacks taking up space—it was weekly issues of Shonen Jump and three series worth of the typical teenage boy’s shonen manga. The pièce de résistance? In one corner sat Frostmourne, its blade dulled by a layer of dust, and hanging on the wall was the gleaming silver blade of Wado Ichimonji from *One Piece.*
In a way, Lian was more of a shonen male protagonist than I could ever hope to be as an actual high school boy. She absolutely lived up to her flat-as-a-washboard figure.
Nonchalantly shoving some chips into my mouth, I glanced sideways at my "lucky little sister," who lay sprawled with her back to me, engrossed in a manga she had picked up last year—a particularly intense scene showing the Raikage and the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki going all out with their “Double Lariat.” She started to giggle, and when she reached the climax of the fight, she furiously began kicking the backs of her heels into my kidney as though her enthusiasm could transfer to me via repeated kidney taps.
I had to admit, I kind of liked hanging out with a girl who acted boyish. There was no uncomfortable awkwardness, no weird misunderstandings as there might be with a delicate girl like Bao Yu or a generational chasm when trying to reason with someone as high-and-mighty as Xu Xian. With Lian, there were no ridiculous moments of “Eek! Don't look at my underwear, big brother!” or that kind of nonsense.
For example, it wasn’t strange at all that, from my angle, I could clearly glimpse her belly button, framed by a loose tank top that revealed a bra clearly designed for a smaller girl… probably something Xiaoyu had outgrown a few years ago. I couldn't help but draw a mental comparison: it looked as utilitarian as an old suspension bridge.
That's just how it was with Lian—like hanging out with another guy. To be honest, I've always treated her more like a kid brother than a sister. That description feels far less complicated.
If some deity offered me the chance to pick a sibling to live with me, without hesitation I'd choose the sleepily yawning, stubborn little sister who was now scratching her foot. Sure, her body was slimmer than a daikon radish, and her personality was downright rotten, but there was just something endearing about her tiny, impish face. Not to mention, she was my ride-or-die gaming buddy!
Having a sister who's willing to game by your side adds a sense of male pride, of dominance—real “carrying your teammates” satisfaction. She’d play *NBA 2K,* *Street Fighter,* and even *Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball,* only to lose every single match and dramatically collapse like a defeated character, gasping for breath. How could any inflatable girlfriend compare to that?
“Why the sudden desire to go back to school?” I asked, stifling a yawn.
The rustle of turning manga pages stopped mid-motion. For a fleeting moment, I froze, startled. Was this careless little gremlin actually concerned about real-life matters? Did I hear her right?
“You’ve been dodging school for weeks,” she muttered carelessly, her eyes still on the pages of her comic, “and you even tried to make me promise not to tell Mom and Dad.”
“Well, people change…”
“Ohhh, is this about Nan Dongye-senpai?”
Girls and their terrifying sixth sense. Just when I start thinking of her as an overgrown little brat, she comes out of nowhere to nail me square in my exposed vulnerability.
Tick. Tock. The seconds dripped past like leaking water, from the VR console back to the computer, then the game console. Fun times always slip through your fingers—one moment it feels like after dinner, the next thing you know, it’s well past midnight.
“Failure!”
Lian slammed her manga closed, glaring at me like a strict teacher reading a particularly bad grade. “You moron, do you know that if you hesitate for even one second while chatting with a stranger girl, their affection for you drops by a point? And let’s not even talk about your chronic inability to say anything beyond snide comments! How the hell are you even going to ‘get the girl’ like this?”
Ouch… hard to argue with that, honestly. “In that case,” I muttered, shooting her a sidelong glare, “I’ll just stick to talking with someone I’m already familiar with.”
“Pfft, you wish!” she retorted, punctuating her words with another jab of her heel to my side. “So, why the hell didn’t you do as you said when you promised me to be a respectable big brother?”
“Why you little brat!” I snapped, glaring daggers at her. “And who taught you to talk to me like this? I don’t see you calling me ‘big bro’ or anything!”
And yet, no matter her gracelessness or acid tongue, somehow I continued to find myself forgiving her all over again. Damn it, this sister’s mouth really knew how to push my buttons.
