I came home as often as I could over the next three years, always for the Christmas and summer breaks, each time Teruko spoke better English and had more to tell me. She and her dog had become a familiar sight around Copthorne; everyone was used to seeing her walking Senshi at all hours. The boys at the boarding-school were especially interested; she was a beautiful girl, I had to admit, and had been invited many times to Tudor Court, the private club inside the school for the older 6th Form boys.
It had taken a couple of calls and a word with the headmaster to drive home that she was off-limits, at all times. Any hanky-panky or wandering hands and I’d personally kick the offender’s arse until his nose bled. As I had been a legendary, nay notorious prop-forward for the school’s rugby First XV, I was taken seriously. Everybody understood that crossing me when it came to Teruko would mean a brief experience involving extreme pain before everything went dark; sometimes belated big-brother instincts have their uses…
When I was home, she’d spend her time exclusively with me, always no more than a few feet away from me, shadowing me, almost haunting my footsteps. If I went to the corner shop, she’d insist on coming with me, slipping her arm through mine, or holding my hand tightly, like she was afraid I’d float away. Many a morning I woke up to find her huddled against me, wrapped in a quilt, fast asleep, Senshi stretched out snoring on the floor next to her.
When she was 18, Teruko decided that she wanted to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) in London, so Mum asked me if I would find her somewhere to live, as Goldsmith’s College, her university of choice, had only limited student accommodation locally.
I suggested she live with me. After I’d finished university, I had found a job with the Ministry of Defence DSG, the Defence Support Group, project-managing armoured-vehicle refits and maintenance. I had kept the flat in Lewisham I had been living in as a student for the previous two years as I was based at the Woolwich Arsenal, not too far from Lewisham.
Goldsmith’s College, part of univ London, was local to Lewisham, and it solved two problems; I could keep an eye on her, and it wouldn’t drain what money she had left from father’s estate to shell-out for student accommodation in London, always costly and difficult to find these days. So with little or no fanfare, I suddenly had my little sister sharing my compact two-bedroom flat on Lewisham High Street.
Mum had warned me that Teruko had a few… quirks, and she wasn’t overly body-modest, so I was advised to keep an eye on her (but not too closely!) and certainly not when she wandered around dressed in bugger-all.
We fitted-in well; she never dated, or brought boys over from uni, and I never brought girls back either. You’re hardly likely to meet many girls when you’re clambering around inside gutted Armoured Personnel Carriers or stripped-down Challenger battle tanks, so we mainly kept each other company in the evenings and at weekends.
Teruko was a good cook, and she enjoyed cooking for both of us, and we soon settled into an almost-married domesticity, although her habit of wandering around in a loosely draped towel or flapping-open bathrobe taught me to keep my eyes closed or concentrate on whatever I was doing in case I looked up and saw too much of what I really didn’t need to see at all…
She still sneaked into my room and huddled up against me at night, though, and I tried telling her it was inappropriate, much to her bewilderment.
“Jakku-san, what is wrong with big brother making bad dream go away? I feel safe with you, I like to hear you when you sleep, it help me sleep, too; what is wrong with that?”
As she was usually bare naked underneath the throw or quilt she was wrapped in, I felt there was every possible thing wrong with it, but I couldn’t explain to her because I couldn’t explain my point in a way she could understand; skin meant nothing to her; western notions of body-modesty were a bit beyond my ability to explain, other than to insist it was wrong for her to be in my room while she was naked, which only hurt her feelings.
Plus, had to admit, I was getting to like it, which worried me not a little — this was my little sister, for Chrissake!
And so it went on; I would see her out of the corner of my eye, bending over to take something out of the oven, her robe would flap open, and suddenly I’m unable to look away and catching an eyeful or 10 of her increasingly intriguing body.
Or she’d come out of her room to wish me good night, and slide down onto the sofa next to me to hug me, and I’d realise that under her short shorts she’d gone ‘commando’, and her baggy sleep top would slip down over one shoulder and all kinds of things would jiggle around. I began to argue with myself over whether she was doing it deliberately or was she really that unaware of the effect she was having on me?
Whichever it was, she was slowly cooking me, keeping the heat turned up to just the right degree, and I was unsure I wanted her to turn it down again; I was actually beginning to enjoy the flashes, the innocent (?) tease of her loose and almost-indecent nightwear, and her seeming blindness to the effect she was having on me.
It all came to a head (for me, anyway) when I walked out of my room very early one Friday morning, naked, half-asleep, and bursting for a pee. My morning glory was throbbing painfully, seven inches of uncontrollable flesh pulling me out of bed and into the bathroom with my eyes half closed and gummed up with sleep, no other thought in my mind than to drain the snake and flop back into bed.
I stumbled into the bathroom, to stand rooted to the spot, wide-eyed and stunned at the sight of my beautiful 18 year-old sister in the open shower cubicle. She was naked as a jaybird and soaking wet, towelling her hair vigorously, with all kinds of interesting bits jiggling around and glowing pinkly at me. I was literally frozen to the spot, erection suddenly even harder, my need to pee completely forgotten. When it came to feminine curves, either Teruko was atypically Japanese, or her Caucasian genes had kicked in, because suddenly there were more curves in view than a Swiss alpine switchback. I finally realised that my cute little sister was in fact tall, 5’8″ or so, beautiful, incredibly well put-together, and wasn’t really that little…
I was the first to move, my hands trying to cover-up what would have needed a potato-sack by now, my erection not even slightly affected by my own shock and embarrassment; if anything, it grew even harder. She, on the other hand, just looked me up and down, then down some more, and smiled happily.
“Not worry, Jakku-san, it normal!” she smiled, and passed me a towel, a small face towel, so hardly adequate to cover the stubbornly swollen evidence of my reaction to her. As I couldn’t get it around my waist, I resorted to holding it in front of me and backing away, for all the world like a clothing-optional matador, only this time, the big horn was on my side of the cape…
The whole time, Teruko had made no move to cover herself; in fact, she turned away as if the matter was forgotten, displaying the most magnificent bum I had ever seen, and I cursed myself for looking, no, ogling it as I (slowly!) shuffled backwards out of the bathroom. I knew then that I was going to hell for staring at my gorgeous sister’s fabulous bare arse (and that’s how I described it to myself; my gorgeous sister’s fabulous bare arse. Oh yes, I was definitely going to burn, if I’d been a Catholic I’d have been catatonic with fear by now…)
Once safely out of the bathroom, I scuttled (really) back to my room to put some clothes on and talk sternly to my raging erection, who’d seen the rabbit and now wanted a bite, at the same time trying to get the image of her naked, wet, stunning body, with her long fair hair hanging wetly down her back, and her nipples and other things jiggling around delightfully as she towelled her hair, out of my head.
When I heard her leave the bathroom and close her bedroom door, I managed to wrestle my unruly erection into submission and finally took a pee, and only then, with some semblance of balance returned, could I venture out to knock on her door.
“Imoto, when you’re dressed, can we talk please?”
Her door opened, and I immediately turned my back and shut my eyes, although a large part of me wanted to check out if she was still naked…
“What is matter, Jakku-san? What you want to talk about?” I heard her say, and I could swear she was grinning at me, I could hear it in her voice.
My mouth was dry, but I still managed to croak out a reply. “Imoto, I want to apologise for… for walking in on you while you were… were…”
“While I was in shower, Jakku-san?” she interrupted me. “Not necessary, you did not know I was there, I apologise to you for making you embarr… what is word?”
“Embarrassed,” I supplied. I always spoke carefully to her, avoiding idiomatic English, which she still had a problem with.
“Teruko, you are a very attractive young girl, and you did not embarrass me, but I apologise if I embarrassed you, walking in on your privacy. Because you are a young lady, and to protect your modesty, could you please in future wear more clothes around the house; if people see you wearing few clothes, they might think wrong things about you…”
She tapped me gently on the shoulder.
“Onii-san, why you turn your back on me? Have I offended you?” she asked me in a soft voice, and I could hear the tears waiting. “I apologise for offending you, I did not mean to, please do not be angry with me!”
When I didn’t turn around, mainly because I’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to not think of her naked, and had another raging hard-on as a result, she whispered “I am so sorry, Onii-san!” and I heard a sob before her bedroom door slammed.