ATID-622 The Sorrowful '穴モテ' Sisters - Tina Nanami

About this work

Is there a pair of “sisters” living in the town where you live? If you try to recall, you can probably find one or two pairs right away. In adolescence, haven’t you ever seen such sisters and wondered about them? If you are a man you might think about it even more strongly. What is the relationship between two women who grew up and live together? In this story’s sister pair there is also a discord that outsiders cannot perceive. The younger sister Miyu has carried an inferiority complex toward her sister Nanami since puberty. That’s because their mother constantly compared Miyu to Nanami and kept scolding her: “Compared to your sister, you are—” was always the mother’s refrain. Because of that, Miyu became unduly conscious of Nanami, and that awareness gradually turned into hatred. The sister never directly scolded or admonished Miyu; in a sense it was Miyu’s one-sided self-consciousness. Even so, from puberty into the age of courtship the hatred smoldered in secret and steadily multiplied. This story begins from there. Now: “穴モテ” — or “hole-mote.” The men around her relentlessly come on to “me.” They flirt and pester her to the point of annoyance. (Am I really that attractive? Am I so sexually enticing as a woman that they can’t leave me alone?) She convinces herself she’s popular. But to those men she’s exactly the kind of convenient woman who, if flattered and pampered a little, will readily sleep with them. Plainly put, she’s a sex object. Yet she herself doesn’t notice. Other women may see her as a cringey woman. Still, some women, while vaguely aware that others see them that way, deliberately play that cringey role. They don’t want troublesome romance, they don’t want relationships based on dependence on men or to be led around by men; they want a frank, detached arrangement and to live only through casual physical relationships — they want to be an “independent woman.” Such women do exist: those who intentionally play the穴モテ woman. Now for the question: are the sisters in this story literally穴モテ, or are they pretending? What do you think?