My Little Sister Suddenly Confessed to Me, but What Am I Supposed to Do by Dating My Little Sister?

Chapter 5: My First Date

Even if you call it a Saitama aquarium, it’s basically in Tochigi.

It’s about an hour and a half away from our house in the suburbs.

We discussed whether it would be bad to leave the house together all dressed up on a Sunday and decided to meet up at Omiya Station instead.

Naturally, I didn’t want to keep Shiori waiting—I was worried about her getting hit on, or hit on, or hit on—so I decided to head out first.

I’d been agonizing over what to wear since the day before, eventually leaving the house in jeans, a shirt, and a hoodie—trying my best to look at least somewhat put-together. Ugh, I want to be more fashionable……

It’s a cliché, but seeing me head out looking a bit nicer than usual, Mom chimed in.
“Oh? Did you finally get a girlfriend now that you’re in high school?”

“No, I’m just going to hang out with a friend,” I said, trying to dodge the question.

“Wait, you actually had friends?”

Mom…… you too……?

I thought about firing back a complaint, but my “girlfriend” is my sister, and today is our first date. Even if it’s just me and Shiori, I still feel a massive amount of guilt toward my parents.

Therefore, without confirming or denying (though I do have a few friends, so it should be a denial!), I gave a half-hearted reply—“Ahaha, well, maybe a few……”—and left.

I arrived at Omiya Station and headed toward the meeting spot.

I thought about the information center or the “Mame no Ki” statue, but in the end, I just went with the front of the ticket gates.

“I got here a little too early.”
I tapped away at my phone, mentaly putting together a plan for the day.

After a while—
“Did you wait long? Onii…… Yuu……-kun?”

A floral one-piece dress that screamed springtime, a yellow cardigan, hair braided and pinned up under a beret, and red fake glasses……

Who is this?! Who is this super-cute girl…… Oh, it’s my sister.

“Uh, is that a disguise?”

“Onii-chan, how meaaan! Is that the first thing you say to a girl who dressed up for you?”

“Ah, sorry. It’s just, you got so cute—I mean, you’re always cute…… ah, no, I mean……”

I scrambled to follow up, completely flustered.

“Mm…… thanks.”

Shiori turned bright red and looked down. Seeing that, I turned bright red and looked down too.

Then, noticing the tepid, knowing stares from the people around us, I spoke up.

“Shall we go?”
“Yeah.”

And so, our first date as brother and sister began.

A few train transfers and a final bus ride later. We could have reached Ikebukuro in no time, yet we came all the way out here……

Besides, it’s kind of…… well, it’s a humble little aquarium.

No dolphins, no seals. The exhibits were mainly focused on river fish. It seemed like the kind of place used for local kindergarten and elementary school field trips……

Honestly, I didn’t understand why Shiori wanted to come here.

The two of us looked through the tanks once and headed outside.

There was a pond outside where they sold fish food for the koi.

“Onii-chan, can I feed the koi?”

“Of course.”

Watching Shiori smile as she fed the fish, I suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu.

Wait. I’ve been here before.

I walked over to stand beside her and looked at the pond, about to ask if we’d come here a long time ago.

“You know, we all came here together when we were little,” Shiori started talking nostalgically as she sprinkled the food.

“Oh, sorry. I just remembered.”

I apologized to her, wondering why I hadn’t realized it from the start.

“It’s okay. Back then, I was really little and wasn’t that interested in the fish, so I was watching the pond from out here. But I got bored, so I was playing with your handheld game, Onii-chan. Then a koi splashed really loudly, and I got startled. When I moved closer to the pond, I dropped the game console inside. I was crying because I thought you’d be mad at me, but then you came up behind me and said, ‘I’m just glad it was the game and not you falling in, Shiori.’”

“Oh, yeah. That did happen.”

Actually, after we got home and Shiori wasn’t looking, I cried my eyes out about it.

“You’ve been so kind to me since then—no, even before that…… you were always so kind.”

“Well…… I am your big brother, after all.”

“Yeah. My Onii-chan…… the most important person to me……”

Shiori looked down. Crap, I don’t know what to say.

My sister and I stood by the pond in silence……

Unable to say anything, I stared at the water for a while until Shiori looked up at me with those upturned eyes.

“Um…… Onii-chan. Um, I…… I……”

Whoa, what’s with that intense look? Her face is red and her lips are trembling slightly.

This is bad, this is bad, this is bad.

She looked up at me, closed her eyes, and said it!