The morning of the Tech-Fest dawned bright and painfully clear, a perfect day for the public unraveling of my life. The campus was already a living, breathing creature, teeming with thousands of students and visitors, the air buzzing with excitement and the smell of takoyaki from the food stalls. It felt less like an academic festival and more like a rock concert where the main acts were circuit boards and 3D printers.
"Ready to change the world, one quantum bit at a time?" Nami asked, her eyes sparkling with an energy that I simply could not match. She was wearing a faculty-issued polo shirt and a relentlessly cheerful smile that seemed to be powered by its own small fusion reactor.
"I'm ready for this day to be over," I grumbled, carefully setting up the interactive display that was the centerpiece of our booth. It was a holographic projector that visualized electron spin states, a project I had poured dozens of sleepless nights into. It was my baby, and it was about to be put on display in the middle of a war zone.
For the first few hours, things were surprisingly, deceptively peaceful. We fell into a rhythm that was both comfortable and efficient. A group of students would approach, their faces a mixture of confusion and intrigue. Nami, with her disarming charm, would greet them and explain the 'why'- why quantum computing was the future. Then, I would handle the 'how,' breaking down the impossibly complex ideas of quantum entanglement and superposition into digestible metaphors involving cats in boxes and coins spinning in the air. We were a good team. Nami was the friendly, accessible user interface, and I was the quiet, powerful processing core.
"You're really good at this," Nami said during a lull, after I had successfully explained quantum tunneling to a group of literature majors by comparing it to a character walking through a wall in a video game. "You don't sound like a textbook. You make it make sense."
"If you can explain something to my sisters, you can explain it to anyone," I said without thinking. The words just slipped out, a product of years of conditioning. It was true. I'd had years of practice simplifying everything from advanced calculus to network protocols for them.
"See? All that family chaos is good for something," she teased, gently bumping my arm.
I almost allowed myself to relax. In this little bubble, surrounded by academic posters and the low hum of my projector, I felt a sense of normalcy I hadn't realized I was craving. I was just Takeshi Kitamaki, an engineering student, nerding out about science with his smart, funny project partner. I wasn't an idol's brother. I wasn't an object of sisterly obsession. I was just me.
But, of course, the peace could not last.
I felt their presence before I saw them, like a change in the atmospheric pressure. The general, ambient buzz of the crowd around our booth shifted, its frequency changing. It grew louder, more focused, coalescing into a single point of attention. Then, a path parted in the sea of people, and my three sisters walked through it, their celebrity aura slicing through the mundane campus atmosphere like a hot knife through butter.
They were in their "disguise" attire, which consisted of designer sunglasses, fashionable hats, and clothes so stylish they might as well have been wearing signs that said "We Are Famous, Please Stare." Any attempt at subtlety was a catastrophic failure. They didn't blend in; they created a gravitational field that pulled all eyes towards them.
"Onii-chan! We found you!" Ayumi sang out, waving as if she were on stage. She immediately broke formation and rushed to the booth, throwing her arms around my neck from the side in a hug that was both affectionate and deeply performative. "We came to support you! Now, explain everything to me! What's a quantum?"
The effect was instantaneous and devastating. Dozens of phones were suddenly raised, the lenses like a hundred unblinking eyes, snapping pictures of the bizarre scene. Ayumi Kitamaki of Mikuyi, hugging a random, unimpressed-looking student volunteer at a science booth. I was no longer a person; I was content.
Hina and Izuwa followed at a more measured, tactical pace. Hina gave Nami a smile that was a masterpiece of polite warmth, but her eyes were like high-resolution scanners, taking in every detail of the situation.
"Nami-chan, it's so good to see you again," Hina said, her voice smooth as silk. "This all looks so impressive. You and Takeshi-kun must have worked very hard."
"Hina-san! Thank you for coming!" Nami replied, her composure impressively solid in the face of the sudden celebrity onslaught. "We were just explaining the basics of quantum superposition."
"Fascinating," Hina said, though her attention was clearly not on my holographic display. She positioned herself next to Nami, engaging her in a conversation that was, on the surface, a friendly chat. But I knew Hina. It was a subtle interrogation, a series of carefully crafted questions designed to assess Nami's character, her ambitions, her relationship with me.
Meanwhile, I was trapped in Ayumi's suffocating quantum physics lesson. "So," she said, pointing a dainty, manicured finger at a diagram of an electron orbital. "If I don't look at it, it's everywhere at once? Like, when I close my eyes, are you in my room and also in the kitchen at the same time?"
"That's… not quite how it works," I sighed, trying to gently pry her arm off me without causing a scene. It was like trying to detach a very cheerful, very strong limpet.
Izuwa, ever the observer, leaned against the side of the booth, scrolling through her phone. She didn't say a word, but her silence was louder than the surrounding crowd. I could feel her watching everything. She watched Hina's polite grilling of Nami. She watched Ayumi's suffocating display of public affection. And she watched the growing swarm of onlookers, a small, knowing smirk on her face. She was enjoying the chaos she had no doubt anticipated.
The situation was drawing more and more attention. My classmates from other booths were staring, their mouths agape. They knew me as the quiet, serious guy who sat in the back and always had the right answer. Now, that guy was the center of attention for the nation's biggest idol group. My carefully crafted anonymity was being torn to shreds and set on fire before my very eyes.
A guy I recognized from my programming class, Kenta, edged closer to the booth, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Dude," he whispered to me, his voice filled with awe. "How… how do you know Mikuyi?"
Before I could formulate a lie, a non-answer, or simply pretend to be deaf, Ayumi leaned in, her cheek pressing against mine, and answered for me. "He's my wonderful, amazing, super-genius big brother!" she announced to Kenta, and by extension, to everyone else within a twenty-meter radius.
A collective gasp went through the nearby crowd, followed by a frantic buzz of excited whispers. The secret was out. Kenta's jaw dropped so far it nearly hit the pavement. Nami, who was still expertly handling Hina's polite third degree, shot me a look over Hina's shoulder. It was a look that perfectly conveyed a mixture of profound pity and sheer amusement.
My bubble of normalcy had not just burst; it had been nuked from orbit. I was no longer Takeshi Kitamaki, engineering student. I was now 'Mikuyi's Big Brother'. I looked at my sisters- Ayumi, beaming with possessive pride; Hina, maintaining a serene but watchful calm, her mission accomplished; Izuwa, smirking at the beautiful destruction she was witnessing. They hadn't just come to "support" me. They had come to reclaim me, to publicly brand me as part of their world, whether I wanted it or not. And as the flashes from dozens of phone cameras reflected in Ayumi's sunglasses, creating a blinding strobe effect, I knew my quiet, peaceful university life was officially over.