My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister - Book 9: Chapter 0

Out-of-season snow was falling outside the window.

“Now for the weather report. The temperature has been all over the place recently, but if this person catches a cold, you know the world must be ending. I mean, of course, our meteorologist Tanaka Alice-san.”

In the lazy time after dinner, a lively voice played from the living room TV. It was nearly 10 at night, so they were replaying the daytime news, meaning there was nothing new to see. The staleness of it all was extra strong for someone who spent so much time online.

“Hey, Ayumi?”

“Yeah, Onii-chan?”

I heard a crunching sound coming not from the TV but from my lap.

Yes, my cute little sister with black twintails (the ends of which were rolled up like dinner rolls) was lying on the sofa with her head in my lap. She had already had dinner, but she had a bag of salt and seaweed chips with her.

“Isn’t this, y’know, the opposite of how it’s supposed to work? If we’re doing a lap pillow, it should be my head in your lap, Zombie girl!”

“Oh, shut up. We believe in gender equality in this house.”

“Well, if you want equality, then lend me your lap! You’ve been doing this for a whole hour now, so this isn’t even about the principle of the thing anymore. My legs are going numb!!”

“You can blame Onee-chan’s long bath for that. Fuguu, how long is she going to make me wait!?”

Unlike my sweaty Zombie sister who loved going jogging in running clothes year-round, my sexy Vampire sister really seemed to enjoy her baths. When she didn’t have her night school to go to, she would generally stay in there for ages like this.

“You’re a girl too, so if you don’t like it, go take a bath with her.”

“You live in a dream world, Onii-chan. If you barge in on someone in the bath, you’re gonna get slapped even if you’re both girls. …You don’t actually think we join each other in the fitting room to help each other try on different outfits, do you?”

“Well, you should! Why even be the little sister to such a hot older sister if you’re not gonna take advantage of it!?”

“Fuguu!? You really do live in a stupid dream world, don’t you!?”

She sprang up from my lap and then seemed unsure if she should lower her head again or not. She childishly pouted her lips while dangerously close to me on the same sofa.

“Onii-chan, are your legs really that bad?”

“I could really use a break, yeah.”

“Fugu. Fine, then let’s swap.”

My eyes must have widened.

My wondrous little sister actually sat up on the sofa and then patted her lap.

Um, and to be clear, she hadn’t taken a bath yet, so she was still in her usual running clothes. Which meant she was wearing extremely aggressive shorts that left her thighs entirely bare, if you can believe it!

“Gender equality, remember?” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to reap all the benefits, so c’mon.”

“I wonder if it’s gonna snow today?”

“Stop looking outside, Onii-chan! This is embarrassing for me too, so just lie down already!!”

Ayumi had a bad habit of growing stubbornly self-destructive when she felt cornered, so she grabbed my hair and shoved my head down. Down where, you ask? Just a few miniscule centimeters away from a middle school girl’s crotch!!

I was lying face up, so I got a look at her upper body from a rare angle.

Hm, you really are short on curves, my sister. Although I can just about see your bra through the gap between your tank top and skin, so that hardly matters right now!!

That was when she reached out to the side and grabbed something. Then she brought it to her mouth.

I heard an odd crunching sound.

“Wait, um, Ayumi? Ayumi-san?”

“Man, there’s nothing quite like getting back to the basics after mastering something. Is there any flavor better than salt?”

“The crumbs! The seaweed and salt crumbs are falling on my face!! Hey, explain yourself, Zombie! I’ve never been so disappointed in a lap pillow!!”

“Since when do you have so much lap pillow experience, Sommelier Onii-chan?”

Ahem.

I mean, I have a lot of people who like this combination of kindness and superiority, like my sexy older sister or my handful of a stepmom. Not to mention the forehead glasses Class Rep next door who can seem harsh on the surface but is a merciful goddess on the inside.

My little sister, who loved to jog but also loved munching on chips after dinner, resumed watching TV.

“I wonder how long this snow is going to last.”

“Who knows. That depends on the cargo ship burning out at sea.”

My response there was not meant as a non sequitur. It was a proper answer to her question.

Meanwhile, the weather forecast continued on TV.

“Tomorrow’s weather will be more of the same: bright and sunny everywhere. But the temperature is going to drop off, so make sure to look after your health.”

“They aren’t talking about the snow,” said Ayumi.

“Because that’s beyond the scope of a weather forecast,” I replied.

Out-of-season snow was falling outside the window, yet my little sister was wearing skimpy running clothes. Well, that girl would wear shorts even in midwinter, but she was appropriately dressed for the weather today.

At 10, the weather forecast switched back to the news and they got to the top story.

“The rescue operation out at sea began three days ago, but waiting for the fire to run its course looks like the only realistic option. The Noble Ingot, a cargo ship registered with Panama, was carrying several raw materials used in the production of polyethylene. The heat of the flames has sent those material airborne as a thin fog, but as they cool in the air and harden, they fall back down like snow.”

“The end result would be classified as a microplastic,” said another reporter. “In this case, they are smaller than 0.5mm, but the point is that the small pieces of plastic cannot naturally decompose and thus remain after the precipitation ends. There is much concern about the effect on the local environment.”

“On the other hand, the out-of-season snow has been a hit on social media, so some online commentators are speculating this will mean a boost to sightseeing.”

“Unlikely. The microplastic snow gets tangled with high-voltage power lines and transformers, so it can cause shorts when it melts. They have already stopped the trains for that reason and who can predict when ordinary power sources and traffic lights will go out or malfunction. You could try to drive down there yourself, but what if they shut down the roads and you’re stuck there? That would be tragic.”

“If you live nearby, please think twice before trying anything rash. This is an emergency. If you pay the affected area a visit and the roads are shut down, you might have difficulty finding somewhere to stay.”

That about summed it up.

Ayumi peered down into her bag of chips directly above my face.

“I wonder what’s going to happen.”

“It’s hard to say.”

“This was the last bag and mom and dad can’t come home thanks to the train situation. Fuguu, I really have a bad feeling about all this.”

The situation was a lot like when a city’s functions were reduced or paralyzed due to volcanic ash.

But unlike with volcanic activity, there was no pressing threat to our lives. The cargo ship fire itself might have been considered a disaster, but the problem was not that fire out at sea. The problem was the “unmelting snow” that continued to silently accumulate. Everyone was just kind of watching it happen because the government was not setting up shelters or anything like that. Even the news didn’t mention anything about disaster relief funding.

“What’s going to happen to us?” asked Ayumi.

“Again, it’s hard to say.”

We were awfully relaxed for knowing so little about our own immediate futures.

According to Maxwell, the problem was how new a threat microplastics are.

In the world of law, the Basic Act on Disaster Management defines a disaster as damage caused by a list of certain natural or human causes, or the causes given in an official Cabinet Order. That means a disaster does not have to be natural in origin. A dam breaking or a forest fire started by a cigarette butt qualifies as a disaster. As long as it fits one of the dangers already viewed as a risk, the laws would kick in for natural and manmade disasters alike.

Sending out rescue teams, the JSDF, or whatever else was all based on that thought process. The adults could all point to the law allowing them to take action and know they were doing everything by the book.

But that left a large loophole.

A truly unfair one.

“If the type of disaster isn’t mentioned in the law, it doesn’t officially count as a disaster and there is no government support. If this was ordinary sand or ash, they would apparently have already sent some macho men in camouflage to help out.”

“Fuguu.”

“Our city is free to do what it can on its own, but to be honest, there’s only so much a single city hall can accomplish. Without outside assistance, I bet the most they can do is unlock their big warehouse and hand out cup noodles to everyone.”

But it was unknown how long it would take for this new microplastics disaster to be officially registered in the law. Time seems to slow to a crawl when I try to watch those Diet broadcasts and it’s hard to keep track of what they’re even talking about.

“Then what about the police?” asked Ayumi. “We have rescue teams inside Kukyou City, don’t we? I mean, it’s a disaster prevention city.”

“As a general rule, they can’t say no when you need help.”

“And we need help now!”

“But what happens when every single person in the city calls them at once? One family asks them to shovel the snow from their walk, one family asks them to knock the snow from their roof, and another has a newborn baby or a bedridden grandparent. There’s no way they can prepare an organized evacuation like that. They’d spend all day just listening to everyone’s complaints.”

Once again, they would have a set plan in place for an earthquake or a flood, so they might have gotten the shelters set up fairly quickly then.

But with this, we weren’t going to die right away, so everything was running so much slower.

The overly diligent police officers would be stuck doing odd jobs all day and the less diligent ones would have started to pretend they couldn’t hear all those requests. If they put on their uniform and went out on a patrol in their police car or bicycle, they would never make it anywhere before being overwhelmed by requests.

It was like we had slipped through the cracks.

Like society had been intentionally and carefully designed to not affect the human heart like this.

“What’s Maxwell saying?” asked Ayumi.

“…”

“She isn’t just gathering search results, right? You might waste it on making the Class Rep do virtual swimsuit dances all the time, but Maxwell is a disaster environment simulator. Fuguu, what does she have to say about the snow?”

Yeah, that’s the thing.

I really wished Ayumi had stopped asking after I chose not to answer. The worst thing at a disaster scene was to throw in uncertain information that would only spread a vague anxiety and dissatisfaction. That tended to bring the place to the boiling point in no time flat.

Even I wasn’t sure how to respond to Maxwell’s answer:

“Sure. There is an 85.5% or higher chance that this is an intentional attack.”

How was I supposed to pass that on?

It would only lead to a panic.

“The most likely targets are Mrs. Yurina, since she led Absolute Noah, or you, since we know the unknown force using the name JB is targeting you. The overall scope is unknown, but they may have begun a new game.”

We didn’t know much about JB.

Absolute Noah was a secret organization led by my stepmom Amatsu Yurina which had tried to build a giant ark that would allow us to survive the cataclysmic Calamity. I had seen hints of JB’s presence ever since the incident related to Archenemy Echidna who had led to the fall of Absolute Noah.

The first person to actually use the name JB was the thin young man behind the previous incident that had started in a broadcast tower and even gone to outer space.

But he was killed in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, so he probably hadn’t been working alone.

It was a group.

They apparently had a giant server system created by gathering together junk plus a military-grade simulator called Freischutz, but I had no idea what they wanted or who they were. I didn’t even know if they were a human organization or an Archenemy one.

I only knew that JB was unhappy with the current world and they were after me instead of my Seven Deadly Sins stepmom, my Vampire older sister, or my Zombie little sister. And not just as a hostage to get to any of them through me.

“…”

My stepmom, Amatsu Yurina, was actually the Archenemy Lilith, putting her on a mythical level, but she was stuck outside of the city. Since she was able to stay there, whoever was behind this attack must not have seen her as a target.

That meant the target was me.

It was terrifying to think the entire region had been swallowed up in an attack only meant for a single high school boy.

And as ridiculous as that might seem, this was no laughing matter. JB had done this before. They had flooded Tokyo, prepared a giant spaceship, and altered a god all to make a move on me.

The JB I had seen had been shot to death by another identical-looking JB in a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department holding cell. I don’t know if that was his twin or if it was a 3D mask or what.

But anyway, this being an attack was only a prediction made by Maxwell.

It would be hard to convince anyone else of the danger when I only had a simulation to go on.

Even I still found it hard to believe. Maxwell had narrowed it down to either me or my stepmom, but this was a big city. Even if this was a malicious attack rather than an unfortunate accident, it felt like there had to be more target candidates than that.

…Of course, I knew that was just the denial talking.

“It might be hard to imagine with the lack of an obvious explosion or flash of light, but if things remain as is, Kukyou City will entirely cease to function within a week. I have repeated the calculations 107,072 times already and the results are indisputable.”

The geography and climate made this city extremely disaster prone, so disaster prevention researchers and security companies had moved in to take advantage of that.

Yet the entire city was going to fall apart so easily?

Maybe it was like coming into contact with a brand-new disease you had no immunity for.

I didn’t know if this was a manmade disaster targeted at me, but it was true there were people out there who were none too fond of me.

And they had previously gone as far as bringing down the country’s largest broadcast tower, sending the JSDF after me in a flooded city, and launching me into space.

The city would cease to function after a week.

We had just reached the end of the third day.

What if the situation worsened and the police and fire department ceased to function? Wouldn’t it be easy enough for someone to use that as cover to kill me?

“User, you must make a decision. The game has already begun, so any delays will only allow the damage to spread.”

I was not a hacker.

My friend Anastasia liked to call me one, but those skills were only what I had learned to build Maxwell.

Was I really going to use them here?

I knew these skills were dangerous, but was I going to use them before a clear enemy had come into view, like I was launching a preemptive missile strike?

Wouldn’t that make me no different from that group that could manipulate the weather, remade gods into their pawns, and used a simulator for evil?

“There sure is a lot going on today,” said Ayumi while leaning back in the sofa and letting me use her lap.

I looked up to see the newscaster quickly reading through a new paper passed in from the side.

“We just received word from the Unified Traffic Center that all highways and other roads in the Kukyou City area will be closed due to the effects of the microplastic ‘snow’ produced by the cargo ship accident out at sea.”

First the trains and now the roads.

“That’s all land routes cut off.”

“Fugu. Even for trucks? What are the convenience stores going to do?”

The naval routes were blocked by the burning cargo ship and the firefighting boats surrounding it and the airplanes had been stopped much earlier. Microplastics that would get in everything and then melt when exposed to heat were the last thing you wanted near an engine.

So with the roads closed, the city was closed off.

There really was nowhere to run.

[Crawler Search] Microplastics [The Words You Need!]

There is no strict definition, but it refers to extremely small plastics. Instead of being intentionally manufactured, they are created when littered plastic bags, containers, straws, etc. are broken down by weathering, friction, and other causes. In recent years, it has been discovered they accumulate in animals’ bodies after being orally ingested, but their threat is much greater with the environment Kukyou City finds itself in now.

Before the term microplastics was widely known, some countries and defense companies were using them for the R&D of widescale nonlethal weaponry they hoped to use to “safely suppress” a large city or military facility. They are easy to produce and can be spread over a wide area using a missile or bomber and the small plastic pieces would work their way deep inside electronics to short out the circuitry, transformers, and power generators for electrical and communication systems. They were hoped to be a cheaper and safer alternative to detonating a nuclear bomb outside the atmosphere to make use of the electromagnetic pulse, but the cries of protest about the effect on the environment ruined their image as a “safe and nonlethal weapon” and the projects stalled.

Iron sand and wood chips were proposed as alternative candidates, but iron sand can be oxidized when stored improperly and wood chips can be broken down by microbes. Either one would have been difficult to store in the tons required and presented a risk of overheating or combusting.

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