My Fated Partner Was My Wife’s Sister

Chapter 1.1

Title: I found my destined girlfriend

—-Half a year passed.

The apartment I manage “Maison du Shanghai” is in the Yokohama ward in the Kanagawa prefecture. It is in the town of Yamashita, the so-called Chinatown of Yokohama—It’s Japan’s largest Chinatown, actually. In Yamashita, there are as many food stalls lined up as there are stars, and there are quite a few loud Chinese restaurants as well. It’s always so lively and so crowded, which makes it sometimes feel suffocating.

“Heeeyy, how you doing–?”
As I was cleaning things up in front of the apartment, a woman who had the stature of a young girl called out to me.
“…..Shihan. It’s really been a while, huh.”
Yen Shihan. As I mentioned before, she is one of my closest friends. Though she was Chinese by lineage, she had both been born and raised in Yokohama. She was my childhood friend who loved ramen more than her family’s Chinese cuisine.
“The last time I met you was at the marriage ceremony, so, what, it’s been half a year?”
Half a year ago, we went to our friend’s wedding. I had met my ex-wife, drowned myself in alcohol, trespassed into a hedgehog cafe, and inconvenienced the already-busy police.
—-And, before I realized, Yen Shihan had completely disappeared from this street.
“Just where have you been all this time?”
Shihan lived in room 201 of “Maison du Shanghai.” For some context, behind this place is a Chinese restaurant. Because of this, if you hang your clothes on the veranda to dry, they get smelly. However, that also leads to this place being the cheapest place around, which is why Shihan lives here. She had suddenly disappeared, so the rent had piled up; There were a bunch of things I needed to talk to her about.
“…….Hm…”
She swung her pigtails around a bit and laughed.
“How ‘bout we eat for now.”

In the backstreets of Chinatown, there is a worn down restaurant known as “Yellow Dragon Arbor.” That was the shop that we went to. Among the items on their menu, what was most popular was their Chinese porridge, which was known for its really good clam base. It was gentle on the stomach and perfect for breakfast.
“I went to NY?”
“What?”
“New York. I wanted to become a Broadway star, but I missed the noodles here so I gave up.”
Is this idiot actually serious?
“I didn’t have enough money to make the trip back, so I spent half a year working at a jazz bar. I finally got back today.”
She’s just as crazy as always.
For the time being, we sipped our cups of 250-yen Chinese porridge and had a toast to our long awaited reunion.
Being able to drink beer in the morning is one of the best parts of being at the bottom of society.
“I mean didn’t you just forget? I did actually tell you, you know?”
“When?
“Right after the wedding. While we were drinking at Noge. And while we were drinking at Bentendoori. And while we were at Yamashita Park drinking the alcohol that we bought from the convenience store.”
Did we actually drink that fucking much? I gradually began to remember what had happened.
“I was drunkenly talking about my dreams and stuff. I said that I was going to fulfill my childhood dream of going to America—”
“Oh.”
That’s right. I remember.
“—I recall thinking that ‘hedgehogs are tragic because they end up hurting everyone they love’, which lead me to go searching for one, trying to find one to hug.”
That day, I had come to the conclusion that a hedgehog’s dilemma was too pitiful, which made me go crazy and bawl for most of the evening. Damn, I’m an idiot. If I was going to do that, I should’ve at least made it about porcupines. Even for me, this is quite a piece of dark history. I shoved the memory as deep as I could into my heart.
“How about you? What have you been doing this past half a year?” Shihan asked. I nodded.
“It’s been the best half a year ever.”
“Did you finally get circumcised?”
“Screw off.”
I showed Shihan my smartphone screen. On the small display there was the chat history of me and H. N. “Towa” having a sweet conversation. Shihan tilted her head.
“What’s this? Ohh, it’s a dating app. You’ve finally gotten over your divorce, huh. That’s great, isn’t it?”
“That’s not all it is though.”
3 and a half years ago, I had gone through a divorce with my beloved wife. Ever since then, I had been scared of having a real, intimate relationship with any other woman, and I had been running away. I thought that I would never meet my “fated partner.” However, I had finally been able to face the present.
“—I actually got married!”
For a second, Shihan seemed completely taken aback.
“Th-, that’s incredible. It’s a bit fast…..But I guess that’s how it is when you’re actively searching for a partner. Is she cute?”
“Don’t know.”
“What?”
She stared at me. Her eyebrows were incredibly furrowed.
“Recently, blind marriage has become a thing. Did you know that?”
“Don’t really care. Also, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Outside of phone calls and messages, neither of us have had any contact with each other. We haven’t actually met before. We’re only having our first meeting after we send the marriage registration form in.”
“Wait-wait-wait-wait-wai–”
Shihan dropped the chopsticks that she had been holding.
“Are y~ou fuck~ing cr–azy?! Are you actually marrying someone you haven’t met once in your life?!”
Well, I could understand her surprise. I could also understand why she was concerned. I had thought hard about this decision before making it, and I knew that it was a pretty strange and unconventional choice. Even now, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t scared at all. But–
“Towa is my ‘fated partner!’”
—H. N. “Towa.” We had coincidentally met each other on a popular dating app, and we had hit it off right away. We both felt like we were destined for each other. Over this past half a year, we talked to each other each night, and we sometimes kept talking until we saw the light of day. There was this feeling that we shared an amazing bond together, even if we hadn’t met before. This person was the only one for me. I was confident in that.
“Well, even if that’s the case, I still think you should meet in person at least once before you get married.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that. Towa said that she wouldn’t settle with anything less than a completely blind marriage.”
“What?”
“She said that she wouldn’t meet me until we were married.”
Shihan slapped my shoulder.
“That’s definitely a scam.”
“No, no, that’s definitely not the case!! She’s just a shy, reserved person!”
As we were stirring up a fuss, the door to “Yellow Dragon Arbor” opened up. Although Yokohma’s Chinatown is a popular tourist destination, only the regulars of the store would come at a time like this.
“Oh! Yen, you came back huh! It was lonely without you!”
Princess-like blond hair growing down to her waist, a qipao with a slit going all the way up to her thighs, and a pair of blue eyes—An exceedingly suspicious fortune teller gave us a friendly smile.
Her name was Ringate Akatsuki Hohenheim. She, the inhabitant of room 401 of “Maison du Shanghai,” proceeded to happily move right beside us.
Shihan stared right at her face, looking quite fed up.
“Rin. You’re still wearing qipaos? It stinks of cosplay AVs so please stop.”
[TLN: AVs=Adult videos=porn]
Ringate was a British college student studying abroad here in Japan. There were all sorts of rumors about her. There were rumors that she was a member of the Roma family lineage, rumors that she was a genius mathematician, and even rumors that she was a survivor of an ancient underground civilization. It was anyone’s guess as to which one of those rumors might possibly be true.
Ringate sat down and pointed straight at me.
“Using these fortune-telling dolls I will predict your destiny–Today, you will meet your fated partner!”
“Ac– Actually!?”
Despite her predictions seeming very suspicious, they were often quite on the mark. She had built up quite a large reputation in Yokohama’s Chinatown. In the corner of my eye, I could see Shihan shaking her head and looking quite fed up.
“Actually, I’m meeting my wife for the first time today. We promised to have dinner this evening.”
“Kyaa–! You’re finally meeting her! Nice, Daigo! Congratulations–!”
Shihan, who had been completely shocked just a second ago, suddenly awoke from her trance and grabbed onto the edge of Ringate’s qipao. Ringate, whose underwear was about to be exposed, flushed bright red and quickly ran away, choosing to hide behind me.
“Hey, Rin. Did you just say ‘finally?’ Does that mean you knew? You knew about this stupid blind marriage crap? You knew about the dumb stuff he was doing, and you didn’t stop him?”
“I mean it’s really romantic! Swearing an oath to a girl whose face you don’t know, a girl who you are only tied with through your soul! That’s the true meaning of love!”
Shihan looked even more dumbfounded than she had all day.
“Daigo, so what happens if someone who looks like Toriyama Sekien’s Nurarihyon shows up in the seat next to you.”
[TLN: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Suuhi_Nurarihyon.jpg%5D
“What’s important is the feelings! As long as she loves me, I’ll put in all my effort and love her for the rest of my life!”
“……Just how much of a straightforward idiot are you, dumbass–”
Shihan looked awfully shocked, but I could hear her chuckle faintly.