Imouto o Yogoshita Kioku (妹を汚した記憶) Review

Kikuzakura is a beautiful girl, with pretty pink hair, fair skin, and a sweet smile.

She doesn’t remember her original surname. She doesn’t even know who her parents are. For as long as she can remember she’s lived with her grandmother.

“Grandmother” is only the woman who took her in, not real blood relation. Kikuzakura has asked her many times:

“Where are my mom and dad?”

Grandma always smiles, strokes Kikuzakura’s head, and says slowly:

“You’re still young. When you’ve grown up, I’ll tell you.”

Time flies. In the blink of an eye Kikuzakura is an adult, eighteen years old.

On her eighteenth birthday, after they finish the cake, Grandma gives her a present. The little box is heavy, and she can’t tell what’s inside.

Kikuzakura wants to tear it open right away, but Grandma stops her.

“After the cake, tonight, in your room. Look at it slowly, by yourself.”

Grandma’s expression is full of a kind of helplessness… as if there’s something she can’t say.

Kikuzakura nods…

…………

An autumn night, cool breeze blowing. Kikuzakura sits at the desk by the window and opens this Pandora’s box.

Inside is a notebook… the paper between the layers has already yellowed a little, but the cover is thick enough that the contents should still be fine.

She lifts the first page. Tucked inside is a photograph: a pink-haired woman holding a baby, smiling at the camera.

Kikuzakura understands. There’s news of her parents in here, and the person in the photo is her mother.

She keeps flipping. It’s a diary… a story from the past, unfolding before Kikuzakura page by page.

…………

April 15

I have a secret no one knows… I defiled my own little sister, Aka.

I’ll never tell anyone this, so I can only write it in a diary.

It happened when we were very small. Back in the countryside, Aka was only six. She always liked following me around, completely off guard, always climbing up and down, flashing her panties, and through a slipped shoulder strap her nipples would show — sometimes it made me feel something strange.

Soon that strangeness turned into a special feeling.

Much later I remembered what that feeling was… it was desire.

I started getting aroused by my own sister… it was terrifying, but I couldn’t control it.

Finally one day the chance came. Aka, me, and her friends were playing hide-and-seek. I hid in the storehouse, a storehouse nobody knew about. Luckily, Aka was there too.

The two of us hid there, and no one could find us…

The storehouse was hot. Aka started sweating, and so did I. Aka’s small body suddenly smelled so sweet…

Then I felt my body moving on its own… I started hugging Aka, then lifted her skirt… pulled down what was underneath…

Finally I stroked myself fast, and in front of Aka, shot out my fluid…

I can’t forget the look on Aka’s face when she saw me…

Afterwards I made an excuse and fled the countryside for the city, and I never wanted to go back. I was afraid of seeing Aka again.

Afraid Aka would tell someone what happened…

May 1

Didn’t sleep well today. Had the nightmare again, the day in the storehouse…

Because a letter came from my parents. They want me to come back home…

Don’t want to go back…

May 2

Tomorrow I go back to the countryside. I’ll see her again. I don’t know if she still remembers me, remembers the things I did…

What if it comes out? Will the police take me away?

May 3

Got back to the old home today. Saw Aka again. Aka is the same as ever, but she’s grown a lot.

Still so cute, and still clingy with me. I also saw my cousin, and Aka’s friends — all grown up.

Aka doesn’t say a single word about that thing from the past… so she’s forgotten…

Good that she forgot… good that she forgot…

May 4

Aka said today she wants to go see the cosmos flowers with me. That was Aka’s favorite flower when she was little.

Aka talked about how, when we were kids, I used to play with her in the cosmos field, and said she still remembers every word I said back then…

Does that include the storehouse thing too?

She remembers??

May 5

It’s over… it’s over…

Aka remembers everything after all…

Today Aka said she wanted to play hide-and-seek, and told me to play it the way we did when we were kids…

And somehow I hid in that storehouse again, and Aka was there too…

Then Aka actually brought up that thing from back then herself, and she said… she wants to do it again…

I lost my reason again…

It’s over, it’s over…

May 6

Is Aka in love with me?

She doesn’t hate me, even after what I did to her… she keeps going along with me…

Am I dreaming?

May 7

Aka and I did it…

My first time, and hers too…

Aka seemed to be in a lot of pain, but she was happy too. So was I…

I’m so glad Aka didn’t reject me. She likes me too.

May 8

Aka is more than I imagined…

She’s started demanding I do it with her regardless of place or time. I feel like I can’t keep up.

Aka’s desire is intense, even though she’s younger than me…

Hard to imagine a little girl having such intense desire.

Was she disguising herself from the very start?

May 9

Aka told me she’s grown up, and told me she got her period long ago.

This is really bad, because Aka is of age, and if we keep doing this, she’ll get pregnant.

If Aka gets pregnant, everything comes out. Won’t my parents break my legs?

No no no no…

May 10

Aka says she can’t leave me.

She says she wants to be with me. I couldn’t hold back, and did it with her again. Several times.

I asked Aka, “What if you get pregnant?”

“If I get pregnant, I’ll just have it!”

Aka laughed…

She’s supposed to be my sister. How does she have zero bottom line…

How could you possibly have it!

May 20

Haven’t written in the diary for days…

These past few days I’ve just been doing it with Aka… doing it right after meals, doing it when we wake up, in the toilet, in the fields, and in that storehouse we share, doing it…

Endless, day and night…

I feel like I’ve become a sex machine… and so has Aka.

Don’t know if that’s good or bad…

June 21

Got word that I should be going back to the city soon… I told Aka, and she took it calmly instead…

Aka said she’d see me off that day…

Is Aka really okay?

July 1

Aka saw me off. Silent the whole way…

At the station, the train came.

I got on, and Aka suddenly grabbed my hand. She wouldn’t let me go…

What should I do? Pull her hand away? Or let go of her?

The diary cuts off here… it looks like a lot of pages were torn out after that…

Kikuzakura keeps flipping, and sees what’s on the pages after…

X month X day

I brought Aka to the city… it looks like the two of us eloped, more or less.

I wrote home saying I’d take care of Aka, told them not to worry, and in the end they accepted it.

Aka and I were busy in the city for a long time, and finally settled down.

Life was hard, but happy. Aka said when she grows up we’d get married. I thought that was a good idea…

X month X day

Today I took Aka and little Sakura back to the old home… that field of cosmos flowers is still there.

That’s Aka’s favorite flower. The other one is the cherry blossom, so Aka named our daughter Kikuzakura, also called little Sakura.

Aka was laughing so happily in the flowers with little Sakura. I took this beautiful photo.

May this moment last forever.

The diary finally ends…

Kikuzakura is a little shocked. Her father and mother were brother and sister?

But then where did they go?

She keeps flipping. There doesn’t seem to be anything new after… just as she thinks that, a lot of pages fall out of the diary.

They’re diary pages too, but with no dates filled in. They look like they came from the part that was torn out…

“Maybe the answer is in here.”

Kikuzakura chooses to keep reading the story…

X month X day

Today Aka said the two of us doing it all the time is too boring, and suggested something fresh…

She proposed that she lure our cousin to the storehouse, and then I force myself on the cousin…

“Isn’t that rape?”

“Relax, cousin likes you. She’ll be thrilled.”

In the end I gave in. After all, men… have all had thoughts like that. It’s not my fault.

X month X day

Just like Aka said, the cousin didn’t resist. She struggled at first, then realized it was me and started enjoying it.

She seems to especially like being abused. We tried all kinds of things, and it was really exciting…

X month X day

Aka and the cousin — two girls is already more than I can handle. The two of them eat away at my body like black holes.

X month X day

Aka got pregnant… and she doesn’t care at all. She just keeps making me do it with the cousin.

Doing it in front of her — just thinking about it gets me excited.

No more writing. I’m going to do it with the cousin again…

Kikuzakura’s eyes go wide…

What kind of story is this…

Too bad the continuation is gone. What comes next is another fragment of the diary.

X month X day

I’m going back to my hometown again…

I remember Aka’s disappointed face at the station last time.

Even so, I’ve kept in touch with Aka by phone. Aka sounded happy on the phone. I think I must have smoothed things over pretty well.

A few years ago I went back and did so many… things with Aka, but that’s all in the past. Aka won’t mind anymore, right?

X month X day

Aka has gone mad…

The first thing I saw when I got back to the village was her, in that field of cosmos flowers…

She was laughing crazily, lifting her skirt. A phone was stuffed inside the skirt, buzzing nonstop…

She was calling my name, her wet panties showing… saying she was waiting for me to come back…

The villagers say she’s gone mad…

I think she really has gone mad too…

What do I do…

Kikuzakura is confused again… Didn’t father take mother to the city? Did he or didn’t he?

She flips to the last page…

There’s nothing more…

How are those torn-out pages supposed to be ordered? Kikuzakura doesn’t know either…

She walks out of the room and sees Grandma sitting in the living room, as if she knew she’d come out.

“Finished?”

“Finished.”

“Anything you want to ask?”

“My parents… where on earth did they go?”

Grandma sighs…

“I don’t know either. That diary is all there is…”

“You never met my parents?”

“No. When I took you in, you were an orphan…”

“My parents… were they a brother and sister?”

“Maybe. Maybe not…”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll understand once you’ve read the diary…”

Kikuzakura doesn’t understand. She’s read the whole diary… she really can’t find any more information…

In the end she decides to go see her parents’ old hometown for herself…

…………

When she reaches that countryside, Kikuzakura is even more shocked…

There’s no field of cosmos flowers here, no village either. Just ruins…

“There used to be a village here. Then there was an earthquake… the village was destroyed, and everyone moved away…”

A passerby explains it that way…

Did her parents die in the earthquake? Kikuzakura is full of doubt…

She pulls out the diary and flips through it again… and unexpectedly, in a hidden pocket on the last page, she finds a piece of paper…

It’s a new diary fragment…

X month X day

I came back to the city from the countryside…

Because staying in the countryside was torture…

I didn’t dare face Aka. I kept remembering the things I’d done to her.

I feel guilty. I really am guilty…

The day I left, Aka saw me off, and asked me something that meant a lot: “You really can’t remember? You really don’t think it’d be better to just keep going like this?”

Keep going like what? Is this Aka’s punishment for me? Keep torturing me like this?

I ran away…

X month X day

I can never go back to my hometown…

There was an earthquake back home… I lost contact with my parents…

Including Aka…

I went back to look. The earthquake was terrible. Nothing but ruins…

I couldn’t find my family, including Aka…

I don’t know if they’re dead or alive… I hope they’re okay.

X month X day

I dreamed last night… I dreamed of Aka…

In the dream it was that storehouse again, and in the storehouse it was me and Aka, and the two of us did all kinds of things.

I don’t feel ashamed of this dream anymore, don’t feel it’s shameless. I think it’s beautiful…

Because this dream is my last memory of my sister…

The diary stops dead, and Kikuzakura looks lost…

She doesn’t know what to say, or what she should say…

Silently she closes the diary and leaves this place of trouble…

By the roadside where Kikuzakura walks, a single cosmos flower is in bloom.

(The end)