Chapter 8

Billy hunched over his desk. His room’s walls were covered with movie posters of big-busted, animal-eared anime girls, and shelves filled with action figures still in their boxes. He was working on his manga submission. His red hair fell messily into his eyes as he shaded the final lines of the squirrel girl. Her bushy tail flicked with grief, and her ears flattened against her head. She stood at the threshold of the catgirl’s modest wartime home. Both of them were widows now, their husbands lost in the roar of Zero fighters over the Pacific. The catgirl’s sleek form leaned in the doorway, her expression a careful mask of shared sorrow and quiet resilience. It was dramatic. It was good. If he nailed the contest entry, maybe this could actually go somewhere.

The door to his room swung open abruptly.

“Rose, don’t you ever knock? I could have been doing something,” Billy snapped, twisting in his chair to glare at his older sister.

Rose, or Roxanne when their mom was mad, stood there in the doorway like she owned the place. She was home from her first year of college. Her long black hair cascaded down her back, and her black tank top clung to her curvy frame. She wore nothing else but a pair of simple black panties that barely covered her. She’d been looking interesting lately. Still a pain in his ass and full of herself, especially since she had started to develop. Billy’s face heated instantly.