Like’ → Stepsister

“Hey, hey, Onii-chan.”

“Don’t call me Onii-chan.”

I gave my sister, who looked nothing like me, the same warning I had given her more times than I could count.

We had the same last name and lived under the same roof, so technically, there was nothing wrong with her calling me that.

But I hated being treated like an older brother by her—Yūha, my younger stepsister.

“Then, Rokurō.”

“That’s fine.”

When I nodded at the girl’s dissatisfied response, her expression darkened even further.

“Why don’t you want me to call you Onii-chan, Rokurō?”

“That’s because—”

I always changed the subject here. Dodged the question. Brushed it aside with some half-baked excuse I had made up.

—I wasn’t Yūha’s brother.

But she didn’t know that.

And I thought she didn’t need to know.

“Allow me to introduce her. This is my girlfriend—Nako Arakawa!”

“Nice to meet yooou.”

A man and woman sat across from me in a private room at an izakaya in the student district.

The guy was Keiji Nitta, a friend I had known since high school.

The girl was someone I was meeting for the first time, an attractive young woman wearing immaculate makeup.

Meanwhile, I sat alone in a space meant for two, desperately trying to preserve my sanity in the face of the unpleasant reality before me.

“Glad you came, Sabu. It’s on me today, so drink as much as you want and let’s talk.”

Keiji grinned from ear to ear as he handed me the menu. He had lured me here by saying he would treat me to dinner, but apparently, the real point was to brag about his girlfriend.

“Buying me dinner isn’t enough, idiot. Pay me compensation, you octopus.”

“Horse sashimi and fried octopus, got it. You still drink plum wine, right? Guess you could call it plum compensation.”

“You’re freaking invincible. And they don’t even serve horse sashimi here.”

Keiji casually turned every insult I threw at him into some stupid joke.

The woman beside him covered her mouth and laughed. I decided to believe she was only pretending.

“Damn right. I feel invincible right now. Man, it sure is nice having someone who cares about you.”

“Ehehe. Keiji-san, are you already drunk?”

“I only had one drink before we caaame.”

“Oh, honestly, Keiji-san.”

The two giggled together as they intertwined their arms.

…Uh, can I just go home now?

Nothing in the world tasted worse than eating across from a freshly minted couple. Especially when one of them was a longtime friend.

I had always believed that other people’s happiness tasted like mud, but when it was a friend’s happiness, it felt especially awful. It practically reeked worse than vomit.

Still, I was a mature and considerate person, so I graciously chose an appropriate topic of conversation.

“How did you two end up dating?”

“I’m glad you asked, my dearest friend!”

“You’re currently being demoted in my rankings, though.”

He had already dropped to the level of a mere acquaintance. Had this guy always been this annoying, or had getting a girlfriend made him worse?

“Yes, it all began at the tennis club’s welcome party. I tried to look cool by drinking too much, went to the bathroom to puke, and then came back—”

“That might be the worst possible opening to a story while we’re eating.”

“Well, drinking parties and puking are inseparable when it comes to tennis clubs.”

“Quit that trash club already.”

Apparently, groups with terrible drinking cultures existed in every era, and the tennis club Keiji belonged to was a prime example.

University tennis clubs were commonly shortened to “tennis clubs,” and most of them had a flashy, party-heavy atmosphere. Or so I had heard. Supposedly, there weren’t actually any genuine extroverts in them, just introverts who had reached their final evolutionary form and lorded it over everyone inside their tiny little pond.

“So I staggered back to the drinking party and saw Nako-chan sitting off to the side, smiling all by herself. It was love at first sight! I swore I’d win her over! Even if I had to abuse every bit of authority I had as her senior!”

“You absolute scumbag…”

The longer I listened, the more refreshingly obvious it became that he was human garbage.

Why was his girlfriend smiling beside him?

“Nako-chan’s shy, you see. She was pretty cold toward me when I first tried talking to her.”

“Probably because she didn’t want to talk to a guy who’d just been puking.”

“But I refused to give up!”

“You’re so creepy…”

“From that day onward, whenever Nako-chan came to club activities, I made damn sure I was there too! At drinking parties, I always secured the seat beside her! And even when I had absolutely nothing to say, I kept messaging her on LINE!”

“That’s called stalking.”

“And after all that, I finally managed to get her on a date, and eventually I confessed to her over LINE!”

“You chickened out right at the end?!”

He was trying to bulldoze past it with sheer momentum, but the bastard had gotten scared and confessed through LINE.

The more I heard, the less I understood how these two had actually ended up dating.

Not to be rude, but Keiji wasn’t particularly handsome or anything. He had brown hair that practically screamed “college makeover,” along with an oversized shirt and jeans. He looked completely ordinary.

And judging from everything I had just heard, his approach to romance had been a parade of every possible mistake. Any self-proclaimed dating consultant would probably faint on the spot after hearing this disaster.

What I couldn’t figure out was Nako.

She had been smiling fondly at Keiji the entire time, despite everything awful he had been saying.

She definitely seemed to like him, but this girl had a pretty dangerous vibe herself…

I tried picking holes in their relationship like that, but the positive—sexual—energy radiating from the couple gradually infected me too, and the alcohol only accelerated the process.

By the time I finished my third plum wine on the rocks, my mental defenses were pretty thoroughly destroyed.

“Damn it… I wanna do sexy stuff with a sexy girl too…”

“Sabu, don’t you want to become a man with a girlfriend too?”

“Professor Keiji… I want a girlfriend…!”

Two men having the absolute worst conversation while feeling absolutely miserable. Everything said in a private izakaya room was basically this level of garbage.

Keiji fiddled with his phone, then showed me a website.

“For a man like you, I recommend a dating app. Right now, for only three thousand yen a month, you can send unlimited messages.”

“And now the sales pitch begins.”

“Just hear me out, Sabu. Young people these days think that if you don’t have opportunities to meet someone, you should just use a dating app. Throw away those old-fashioned ideas, pay some money, and connect with women.”

“You really are a genius at phrasing things in the worst possible way.”

If I’d had one more drink, I would have assumed he was introducing me to a brothel.

“As long as you’re not too picky, even a piece of trash like you can find a woman willing to like you.”

“Want me to cave your face in?”

“It’s true that you’re trash, Sabu.”

“I’m not denying it.”

Keiji was a bastard too, but I was hardly any better for hanging around with him. In fact, when it came purely to being a scumbag, I might actually have been worse.

I glanced sideways at Nako, who was sleeping beside Keiji. Apparently, she was a lightweight, and she had been nodding off for a while now.

“Well, you managed to fool a nice girl into dating you, so take good care of her.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Heheh.”

His smug smile annoyed me, so I ordered the most expensive sashimi on the menu.

After parting ways with the lovey-dovey couple, I walked along the river on my way home to sober up.

For someone like me, who hated other people’s happiness more than anything, today had been quite the hellish experience. As if to reflect my devastated emotional state, a dating app had now been installed on my phone.

“I’m treating you today, so use the money you saved to buy a premium membership.”

Keiji had egged me on like that, and I had dutifully paid for it.

Dating apps operated on a system that was disadvantageous to men.

Getting to the point where both sides decided they wanted to talk—a “match”—was free, but if you wanted to exchange messages afterward, men had to pay. Women used it for free, while men paid three thousand yen every month. Don’t you think we live in a ridiculous world?

Advocating for women’s rights was important and all, but there were plenty of times when I felt men got exploited in their own ways too. Both sides had their problems. Everyone should just get along. World peace—that was what I wished for.

I had already paid for it, so I figured I might as well mess around with it.

I dug up a photo and set up my profile, then used the automatically generated self-introduction. After listing a few hobbies that seemed like decent conversation starters, all that remained was to spam “Likes” at random.

If someone returned the “Like,” a conversation could begin. You were free to stop whenever you wanted.

In other words, there was no downside to sending a “Like.” If you hesitated, send one. Send them until your fingers fall off. Don’t even look, just send them. That was Keiji’s teaching.

I decided not to investigate too deeply into why that guy knew so much about dating apps.

“Tap, tap, tap-tap-taap.”

Maybe because I was drunk, the simple task of sending “Likes” was surprisingly fun. It felt a little like popping bubble wrap, and I kept going until I hit the limit.

Apparently, women were in high demand on apps like these, so matches were hard to come by… but after sending this many, surely two or three would lead to conversations.

If I kept at it for a few days, I was bound to get a girlfriend eventually. Yeah. Of course I would.

Off we go toward a bright future.

That day, I was drunk.

That was why I failed to notice the mistake I had made.

The greatest mistake of my life—

Sending a “Like” to my stepsister on a dating app.

Yūha Sanjō had started using a dating app simply to kill time.

She had turned eighteen that spring, which meant she had finally earned the right to enter the world of dating.

And now, one week after she had started using it, she found herself facing the greatest confusion of her entire life.

“—Why did he send me a ‘Like’??”

It was time for her usual “Like” check, when she sorted through the flood of hearts sent her way in search of men who suited her tastes. And that was when she saw something unbelievable.

Mixed in among the countless random men was her own brother.

“His name is… Saburō………… Oh God, it really is him.”

Yūha Sanjō’s older brother, Rokurō Sanjō. His nickname was Saburō.

His name contained the numbers three and six, so people had originally called him “Saburoku,” which eventually transformed into “Saburō.” He had various other nicknames, such as “Sabu,” but Saburō was the one he personally preferred.

She checked the photo again, confirmed beyond all doubt that it was her brother, and recoiled in disgust.

“What the hell is that guy doing…?”

Rokurō didn’t live in the same house as Yūha anymore.

He had started living on his own two years ago, immediately after graduating from high school. They had lived in the same city ever since, yet they had not seen each other once. The man never came home for Obon or New Year’s either.

The fact that she was reuniting with her brother through a dating app rather than a New Year’s card sent a slight shiver down Yūha’s spine.

She sighed and was about to discard the “Like,” but then reconsidered. She decided to preserve it as evidence of one of his embarrassing past mistakes and took a screenshot. Then she checked his profile.

“He used the auto-generated one…”

She had been hoping for some painfully cringeworthy introduction he had written himself, but all she found was a string of perfectly bland sentences.

Disappointed, she scrolled down to the bottom. Just as she decided she was done with it—

“Achoo!”

She sneezed.

The movement made her finger slip. It touched a spot she had never intended to press.

The screen turned pink.

“—Ah.”

Her phone slipped from her hand. To Yūha, the sight seemed strangely vivid.

She had never intended to match with her biological older brother.