I was at the dinner table again.
Recent events have been tiring. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve been eating dinner with the fam more often.
I usually didn’t eat dinner with the fam—an ingrained habit back when the parents had to move out of the country for a while. It was just me and sis for a while, but sis was always stuck sulking in her room all-evening. I ended up being the one making our dinner, and I had to leave her plate on a tray at the foot of her door on most days. I just ate in my room watching animes that time.
Why the reminiscing? Well, I couldn’t help but remember just how boisterous it usually was when our parents were here. I swear, the moment they came back, sis was really happy about it, and it got so noisy during dinner that I physically couldn’t handle it. I ended up excusing myself from the madness most times.
Right now though, I’m starting to miss it. It was awfully quiet. The reason? My parents were staring at the reason.
“How old were you again?” mom asked.
“Oh~ I just turned 20 last May~” Yokoso-san replied. No, really, why are you here?!
My dad leaned over to me.
“Kaba-kun, three years older huh? That’s your type, huh?”
A spoon dropped on a plate.
“OLDER SIBLING PRIVILEGES, INVOKED!”
Sis was standing up with such determination in her eyes that I started wondering whether I should start taking her Ao’s Sibling Dynamics Theory into serious consideration—because I think I really need that kind of motivation in my life.
“O-Okay, but, sis, which privileges, exactly?”
I noticed that mom started having happy sparkles in her eyes right after I said that. What the heck was she thinking?
—Oho! Kaba-kun learned to demand specificity from others! Development, development! His education is coming together!
“T-That’s…”
Sis scratched her cheek, then quietly sat down and resumed her dinner.
No, I still didn’t know why Yokoso-san was here. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to find out.
“Fufufu~ Give me your son—”
“YOKOSO-SAN?!”
"“Oh my.”"
“…your son’s OTA~ With your permission, of course~”
After finishing her words, she shot me a mischievous look. D-Damn. Normally, Yokoso-san would be the one interjecting, then I’d be the one forced to complete my words for clarification. I didn’t think our conversational positions would be reversed like this…
By the way, OTA means “One-Time Authorization”. It’s basically a digital authorization letter, but with enough security that it’s much more effective to just kidnap and force the person at gunpoint rather than try to crack the codes that padlocked an OTA.
I didn’t realize that I was standing out of shock until she pointed it out.
“Fufufu, Akiino-youngest is jumping to conclusions, isn’t he? I didn’t think he’d be this excited~”
“Akiino-youngest? No, wait, that’s not—”
"“It’s okay, Kaba-kun, we will always support you.”"
“Older sibling apathy, invoked…”
There’s so much going on here…
I sat down first, unruffled my shirt, and cleared my throat.
“So. Yes. Yokoso-san.”
“Ufu?~”
“Why—uh—why do you need my OTA?”
“Oh, I thought I’d enroll us both in Katips-U~”
“I see…”
My parents’ and sister’s looks were rapidly alternating between me and Yokoso-san.
“Yokoso-san, you see, I understand the words individually, but…”
“Ufu, you haven’t realized it yet, Kaba-san?”
Wait, since when did this girl start calling me Kaba-san—wait, that’s not the problem!
“Yokoso-san, I’m not that smart, you know!”
Before I could say anything else, she unrolled a tablet from her sleeves.
By the way, flexible electronics has been a thing for 100 years already. Unfortunately, it also meant that…
“Then, let me give you an explanation!”
She started doing a presentation over dinner.
Yep, people can just pull out entire slide presentations out of more places and in more contexts than previously possible. The fact that they look neat and aesthetic was rather troubling, too…
On the tablet, there was a graph showing a line that was curving up. There was a completely horizontal dashed line just above where the curved line ended, and then another horizontal, but solid, line, far below the dashed line, and crossing the curved line at around half the height of the graph.
The higher line was labeled with Before Akiino, and the lower line with After Akiino.
“The revenue from my store and 132 micro-investments have netted enough to take good care of my savings. I could continue this way, however…”
"“However?”" the whole family joined in.
She pointed to the gap between the dashed line and the end of the curved line.
“…I still can’t afford—I mean, the risk is still too high to attend university with the meager amount of buffer I have.”
Now that I’m looking closely, the curved line was labeled Savings—so, basically, you just don’t have enough savings, is what you’re saying? But, no, yeah, I get you. As an ex-college student, I experienced brokeness 24/7. If I could do things all over again, I might have instead just gone to a technical school for a year and found part-time work and saved up for a less-broke experience. Probably would’ve taken the time to reflect on life a bit more, too.
“HOWEVER!”
"“However?!”"
She pointed to the solid line, the one that intersected the curved line.
“By availing ourselves of the financial aid package from the Harem Regulation Committee, the total subsidies can halve the required expenditures!”
Oh no. She said the strange thing.
I faced my parents, and they had a strange look in their eyes. They looked at me, then at each other.
—Otousan, she said the H word, didn’t she? It looks like we’ve failed in our son’s education.
—What can we do? We can only support him. Besides, this one seems responsible. Imagine having 132 micro-investments at 20!
—Just 132? No… Well, okay. Maybe. We can’t have too much responsibility in this house, can we?
—What do you mean ‘just’? I had ten when I was her age…
Mom suddenly had a disdainful look on her face. I can’t really tell what’s going on, but I somehow got the feeling that they were making telepathic conversation for a while there…
“And so, that’s why… Kaba-kun, take good care of me, okay?~”
…she went from Akiino-youngest to Kaba-kun in less than 5 minutes. What’s my life coming to?
