Meetings Come When You Least Expect Them
“HOLY CRAP I’M LAAAAAAAAAAATE?!”
It’s eight friggin’ thirty!
There I was, sprinting at full speed down the road to my school, knowing full well that class had started ages ago. It goes without saying that I had a slice of bread in my mouth... I mean, really, I had a slice of bread in my mouth, but turns out it’s actually pretty darn hard to run like that. I ended up shoving it into a plastic bag, then chucking that into my satchel for good measure.
I suddenly became keenly aware that the only people who could hum a jaunty tune as they skip their way to school under these circumstances must be fictional. I’m just not carefree enough to have that sorta attitude, dangit! And if I were, I’d just skip school entirely! So I kept running, cursing those nonexistent, happy-go-lucky punks...until I came to a sudden stop.
“Haaah... Wheeze... Bleugh...”
Yeah, running to the point of exhaustion in the blazing summer heat sure is a great way to make yourself barf. I propped myself up on a nearby telephone pole, retching as I tried to catch my breath. Absolutely pathetic.
“Screw it... Maybe I should just ditch.”
In my exhaustion, my thought process took a turn for the logical. I mean, if I ditched school for the day, I wouldn’t have to force myself to keep running, right?
“C’mon, it’s just one day! What’s the big deal?” The tiny devil on my shoulder whispered into my ear.
“You shouldn’t be running around like this! You never know when a car might come speeding around the corner; it’s much too dangerous. You should go home and take it easy for today.” The tiny angel on my other shoulder offered an alternate opinion. Indeed, this could be the debate of the century brewing... Wait, huh? They actually agreed! Well, so much for that!
“Yup, time to play hooky.”
The moment I made the decision, I felt a massive weight lift from my shoulders. It’d be completely unthinkable for a puny little human like me to defy the will of my guardian angel-devil duo! They made the call, so there’s nothing I can do about it! I, Kunugi Kou, was a free man, and as such there was nothing to stop me from triumphantly abandoning the road to my school. Yes, this would be one small step for me, one giant leap for my journey towards habitual delinquency!
I mean, let’s be real here: the likes of me cutting school for a day isn’t gonna bring the whole of society to a grinding halt. You get further in life if you don’t sweat the small stuff and live in the moment! Probably. I was all ready to set off and enjoy the fruits of my freedom to the fullest.
“Kyaaaaahhhhhhh!”
Suddenly, a girlish scream rang out.
Three words (which I’ll write as an acronym for decency’s sake) popped into my head: WTF?
“WTF?”
I actually said it out loud, on account of it being just that unnatural a situation for me to get thrust into. This sort of comic-book-cliché development’s not supposed to happen to me! I’m an extra, for crying out loud, not the main character! Shouldn’t he be the one who runs into stuff like this?!
Unfortunately, reality’s a cruel mistress that doesn’t wait for you, no matter how much you wish for it. While I was frozen in shock, a girl burst out from a side street off to the right, just a little ways ahead of me. A beautiful girl. Yup, a plain old beautiful girl. A beautiful girl who had abject terror written all over her face, but a beautiful girl nonetheless.
I had a horrible feeling I knew what was going on. It was one of those scenes where an attractive young woman gets set upon by a rampaging hoodlum, and the random dude who happens to be nearby saves her, thus getting promoted to protagonist status. I figured that if I was right about that, this could very well be a heaven-sent opportunity intended to reward me for being so quiet and cooperative in my role as an extra.
But y’know what, God? Hate to say it, but I think you might be misunderstanding something here. I don’t want that promotion you’re offering me in the slightest. I happen to like my peaceful, quiet, dull-as-dirt lifestyle—in fact, I love it! I don’t want any big, crazy events. I wanna live out my life the same way that billions of people have done before me: by watching it slowly dribble down the drain in a state of complete, unremarkable tedium. That’s my wish, if you feel like granting it.
As a side note, putting a girl through something traumatizing enough to make her scream like that, just to give some extra a promotion? Dick move, God. You bumbling, balding blowhard.
So anyway, my apologies, random beautiful girl. God’s presumably the one who thought this development up, so it’s not really my responsibility, but I still feel like I should say sorry for the fact that I can’t do squat to help you out here. Assuming I’m reading the situation right, some really nasty delinquent’s about to come barging out of that side street after her. Most likely, he’s chasing her ’cause he’s been entranced by her beauty. There might even be more than one of them. That’s how these things usually go.
The thing is, extras who could actually deal with that sort of thing are pretty much one in a million. You’d have to be holding hidden depths of strength, or have learned karate via a correspondence course, or some other super special something-or-other along those lines. This was too heavy a responsibility for me to deal with.
That said, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I abandoned her without helping at all. If anything, standing back and watching a disaster like this play out in front of me without batting an eyelash would be pretty protagonist-ish in its own right. If I didn’t help her, odds were good she’d shout something along the lines of “Hey, why aren’t you helping?! What kind of person doesn’t help in a situation like this?!” and drag me into the mess against my will.
As such, I’ll have to fight cliché with cliché. Time for operation “Officer, over here!” It’s actually quite straightforward. Step one: call the cops. Step two: tell them where you are and what’s happening. That’s literally it. I mean, come on, she’s a delicate lady and this is Japan, a country of peace and tranquility. The odds of her getting knocked out and abducted before the police show up are super low, probably!
Meanwhile, while I was busy internally monologuing about my next move, the girl tripped over her own feet and face-planted right in front of me. It was such a painfully cliché development, it almost made me want to ask her if I could see the script.
“Umm, hey, you okay?”
My innocent bystander instincts kicked in and I talked to her. Crap! The girl looked up at me in shock, then flinched away at the sound of footsteps pounding down the side street after her. Those footsteps had me more confused than freaked out, though, namely because there was only one person’s worth of them. Judging by the weight of the impacts, I could tell that they were on the heavier side of things, and pretty darn slow too. She looked perfectly fit at a glance, so I had to wonder: couldn’t she just outrun her mystery pursuer? At the speed they were going, it wouldn’t be all that hard.
Of course, while I was distracted by all that nonsense, I missed my chance to A: call the cops and B: just run the hell away. That’s when, as if dispatched by the fates themselves to mock me for my carelessness...it appeared.
“C’mewe, pweddy wady! Wait foh meeeeeee!”
“Gyaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”
“Wha— Augh?!”
“It” was absolutely repulsive, and the slightest glance at it triggered my fight-or-flight reflex so hard that I kicked it back the way it came without thinking twice. This...thing was a butt-naked old man. I’ll spare you the gory details—take my word for it, you don’t wanna hear them, and I definitely don’t wanna talk about them. Let’s just say he was so potent an exhibitionist that just breathing the same air as him was enough to make me regret getting up that morning.
Come on, seriously?! This sort of scene calls for a street punk, not some freaky old streaker! The real world doesn’t have a filter to censor that crap with pixels!
Anyway, the sudden pervert appearance was such a completely unexpected development that I went and unleashed my golden foot of decapitation (capable of pulverizing the spine of even the most thick-necked boxer!) on him. As such, I figured it was time to scrap operation “Officer, over here!” and swap over to operation “Officer, he’s over here!” The actual process is exactly the same—just turn the desperation dial up to 1200%. That’s right, it’s time for 1200% courage mode. Just gotta bite the bullet and go for it...
“Ah, umm!”
“Wha—huh?!”
Caught off guard by a sudden voice, I reflexively hid behind a nearby telephone pole. I didn’t have the chance to look, but I was sure that the person talking to me was the girl the creepy pervert guy had been chasing after. Now, admittedly, I’d barely seen her face and I’d only really heard her scream up until then, but I still had absolute confidence in my conclusion. My evidence: we were literally the only people around at the time. Yeah, just call me Sherlock.
“Ah... Um, th-thank you!”
She sounded bewildered.
She wants to thank me? Oooh, okay, I get it. Yeah, I guess that’s the natural flow in this sorta situation. I’m her hero, after all. He wasn’t a street punk, but in a certain sense getting chased around by a middle-aged, overweight exhibitionist’s even scarier than the hypothetical punk setup, and I saved her by taking him out in one punch kick. A “thank you” or two could very well be in order here.
Hate to say it, though, but she’s wrong. I’m no hero; I’m a perfectly ordinary citizen, a man whose greatest impact on society at large is sucking up oxygen and spitting out carbon dioxide. In short, I’m nothing more than an extra. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t get any weird ideas about me, so I stayed hidden behind the pole and tried to let her down as bluntly as possible.
“My name’s not worth mentioning.”
“I, um, didn’t actually ask yet.”
Shoot, jumped the gun! Gotta say, though, I was surprised she had the presence of mind to call me out that quickly. You’d never think she was getting chased around by a pervert just a moment ago. Girl’s got grit.
“Sounds like you’re doing just fine, then.”
“Not really, no... I’m still shivering...”
“Oh, no worries there—so am I.” I stuck a leg out from behind the pole and shook it around. No reaction. Sort of felt like the temperature suddenly dropped a couple degrees, but I was probably just imagining it. “A-Anyway, I’ll call this in, so you should hurry on outta here. Sticking around for too long is just begging the cops to question you!”
“U-Um, wait! What’s your name?”
I tried to guide the conversation to a natural conclusion, but she went and asked me anyway. And right after I failed miserably at using the “name’s not worth mentioning” power move too! Could her timing possibly be any worse? There was no way I could say it again; it was still on cooldown! She had me cornered—my only choice left was to tell her my name!
Or at least it would’ve been, but I’m a supporting character to the bitter end, and my name is genuinely not worth mentioning. Besides, being a hero and saving beautiful girls is a job for a protagonist. Love stories between beauties and beasts are well established at this point, but there’s absolutely no market or demand for romance between beautiful girls and stick figures.
Even supposing I gave in to my lecherous side and tried to get close to her, I know exactly how it’d turn out in the end. In the best-case scenario, we’d discover our values don’t match up, we’d drift apart, and eventually our relationship would naturally fizzle out. However, if I really screwed up, it’s totally possible she’d get stolen away by the protagonist! Sorry, but that is absolutely not my fetish, and there’s no chance in hell I’ll go anywhere near a situation that might lead me in that sorta direction. As such, there was really only one move available to me.
“Ayase Kaito.”
“Huh?”
“My name’s Ayase Kaito. Ayase Kaito, second-year student at Oumei High School, class B. I know I said my name’s not worth mentioning, but if you really insist, it’s Ayase Kaito. Blood type’s A, birthday’s September 23rd. That’s me: Ayase Kaito.”
I told her a name without turning around to face her, then took off without giving her the chance to react! A dashing exit in more ways than one, if I may say so myself! Look at me, everyone, I’m totally a protagonist! But the cool dude beating a hasty retreat isn’t me, background extra Kunugi Kou—it’s Oumei High second-year Ayase Kaito from class B.
For the record, that wasn’t some nonsense name I made up on the spot. On the contrary, I was actually really proud of myself for doing a good deed. After all, Ayase Kaito’s not an extra like me: he’s a genuine, bona fide protagonist. That girl never got a decent look at my face either. All she saw was the back of a guy wearing an Oumei High uniform. She’ll forget what my voice sounded like in no time too.
A sincere, courageous girl like her will no doubt take action in the most heroine-like manner possible. She’ll show up at class B, call out Ayase Kaito to thank him, and the case will be closed with everyone happy. If she really is one of the chosen heroines, then one look at his overwhelming rom-com protagonist aura is all it’ll take for her to fall hopelessly captive to his charms.
He may be one of those super cliché protagonists who just can’t take a hint, but he’s also a gentleman at heart, and I can’t imagine he’ll have it in him to say no to a beautiful girl coming on to him. And bam, just like that, a new heroine’s added to his roster, the girl gets to meet her hero, and my everyday life goes unchanged! That’s a win-win-win situation if I’ve ever heard of one.
I called in the assault while I fled, then headed off to my beloved Oumei High with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. That whole disaster was a lot to take in, especially first thing in the morning, but in the end everyone except the culprit came out ahead. Poetic justice at its finest!
“Gooood morning!”
I was about as hyper as could be, and let out the sort of loud and enthusiastic greeting I have absolutely never given as I slid open the classroom door. Nothing in this world can stop me now! Think you can get in my way?! Just try me, punk!
“...Good morning, Kunugi.”
“Oh, Daimon-sensei! Good morning!”
“Takes some guts to make an entrance like that when you’re as late as you are, huh?”
“As late as...? Oh.”
“Let’s step outside, Kunugi. Sorry, everyone, study hall for now. I’ll be right back.”
“...I forgot I was gonna ditch.”
Then she chewed the absolute hell out of me.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
“Are you sure you have a brain in that skull of yours, Kou?”
“Oh, shut it... And anyway, what’s with that old bag? What kinda teacher puts the whole class on hold to lecture someone?”
“Isn’t she a bit young to be an old bag? She’s still in her twenties, isn’t she?”
I was slumped over my desk, still in a state of shock from the lecture that ended up dragging on well into my lunch break... Or, really, in a state of shock over the fact that my random pervert encounter made me totally forget that I was planning to skip. I showed up at school completely unprepared.
Sitting nearby, sighing with exasperation at my antics, was the aforementioned Ayase Kaito. Handsome through and through, his naturally brown hair was impeccably styled and his charming smile made his good looks all the more striking. When all’s said and done, however, I never got the feeling he was one of those nationwide idol types who could catch the eye of literally anyone and everyone. No, he’s got that very specific sort of popularity that only attracts certain, specific people, all of whom happen to be jaw-dropping, head-turning beauties. In short, he’s the definition of your classic rom-com hero. He’s like one of those people who only goes for good-looking girls, only in reverse, I guess.
By some bizarre turn of events I ended up getting close enough to a guy like that to call myself his best friend. In other words, I’m not just an extra: I’m an extra with the Best Friend attribute, one of those characters who just barely clings to the bottom ranks of the popularity polls by a hair’s breadth! Yes, it is I, the protagonist’s best friend-wingman-sidekick-extra!
“Anyway, we’ve got more important things to talk about! What’s this I hear about you and Kotou Tsumugi getting all flirty-wirty with each other first thing in the morning?!”
“‘Flirty-wirty’?” Kaito retorted. “We were just walking to school together, same as always. We’ve known each other for ages and her house is right next door; it’s totally normal.”
“Oh, really? Then what’s this I hear about you holding hands, huh?! Huuuuh?!”
“She hugged me and I folded my arms, that’s all.”
“Whaddya have running through your veins, punk?! Ice?!”
“Blood, actually.”
“Ah, right, yeah. Fair enough.”
His sound rebuttal was like a brick wall dropped in the path of my argument, and I plopped back down into the chair I’d enthusiastically jumped out of. Incidentally, Kotou Tsumugi was the class next door’s resident Madonna (dated reference, but it still works) and Kaito’s childhood friend on top of that. You’d think a person in her position would end up in the same class as him, but apparently she and mister pokes-holes-in-my-argument over there are both hopelessly unlucky in that respect.
“Ayase-kun.”
And, surprising absolutely no one, yet another girl showed up to talk with Kaito. I probably don’t even have to bother specifying that she was beautiful. She had silky black hair that reached down to her waist, and the sharp look in her eyes gave her a pretty strong-willed sort of impression. That’s right—it’s the top batter of every played-out rom-com, the super-sadistic, verbally abusive honor student heroine (who also happens to be a huge loner): our fair lady Kiryu Kyouka!
“If you talk with garbage, you’re liable to pick up its stench.”
“Say what?!”
The pile of garbage occupying my seat—that is, me—stood up, full of determination and sending said seat clattering backwards. I may be an extra, but I have the right to fight back when I get unilaterally and unjustly bad-mouthed! Hell, I’d fight back whether or not I had the right—standing up to injustice is a man’s destiny!
“Hmm?”
“Never mind!”
Scrape, plop.
One glare later and I judged the fight I was picking as unwinnable, quietly pulling my chair back into position and sitting down like nothing happened. My chair must be pretty shocked about all the standing up and sitting down I’ve been doing today. Anyway, the afternoon break’s a time for eating lunch, not getting into brawls. I’ll spare you this time, Kiryu.
“What? Got something to say to me?”
She slammed her hands down onto my desk and glared at me. Have I mentioned she’s intimidating?
“I’m sorry...”
I couldn’t take the pressure and reflexively pulled a five hundred yen coin out from my wallet, sliding it across the desk in a show of apology.
“That’s just pathetic...”
Kaito let out an exasperated sigh, but he had it all wrong. I wasn’t being pathetic at all! I was just a little bit freaked out and decided to let money do the talking! Okay, yeah, it’s pretty pathetic when I put it that way, but there was still one point I had to make perfectly clear.
“Hey, you’d better not look down on me! I’ll have you know that’s all the money I have to my name! You’ve got my life savings up for ransom here, so I don’t wanna hear you calling it pathetic!”
“I don’t want your spare change.”
Spare change?! She’s the one who picked an undeserved fight with me, and when I valiantly offer up everything I own to settle the matter, she has the gall to call it spare change?!
“I’m so sorry; please forgive me...”
Not even ransom money could get me out of it, so I had no choice but to apologize like a normal person. Kowtowing on the ground would get my uniform dirty, so I pressed my face into my desk in a deep bow instead. Also, she said she didn’t want my five hundred yen, so I stowed it back in my wallet. Phew.
“C’mon, Kyouka, let it go. Let’s go get lunch, okay?”
Kiryu was practically seething with irritation, but Kaito cut in with a smile to calm her down. Now that’s a protagonist move if I’ve ever seen one. Keep it up, dude, you’re killing it!
“...Fine, then.”
Considering how quickly she went along with his suggestion, yeah, she’s gotta be a heroine. Even if she had a bad attitude about it. Would’ve been way better if she hadn’t opened her conversation with Kaito by giving me crap, of course. And speaking of which, how long is she planning on glaring at me? Making it really hard for me to get out of here, Kiryu.
“Kaitooo! Let’s have lunch!”
And with impeccable timing, a certain empty-headed bundle of energy barged into the classroom. More of a “cute” than “beautiful” sort, she’s the type of girl people always describe as being like a tiny, adorable animal: Kaito’s childhood friend, Kotou Tsumugi (who I’ve already introduced, so that’s out of the way). She’d made a habit of showing up in our class every afternoon to eat lunch with Kaito like the heroine she is. Side note: supposedly, Kaito’s sister handmakes his lunch for him. I swear, that guy has a sister complex. (Yes, I’m jealous.)
“Ah, Kiryu-san!”
“What is it, Kotou-san?”
Kotou finally noticed that Kaito was with Kiryu, and gave her an ever so slightly sharp glance. Being rivals in love, the two of them don’t exactly get along the best. You know what they say about women’s battles, probably.
“Man, Kaito, you never cease to impress.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“Right, exactly.”
I chatted with Kaito as I stood up. Not to join their little conversation circle, of course—I was going out to buy lunch at the school store. Or, rather, using that as a pretext to blow this Popsicle stand.
“Just don’t go overboard, ’kay?”
“Seriously... Overboard how?” Kaito replied with one of his usual incredibly vacuous remarks, as befitting a super-dense protagonist.
I left him and his pair of heroines behind and wandered out of the classroom. Two heroines is plenty to keep a conversation going, so even if I stuck around, I’d only be good for generating white noise, which, y’know, isn’t super helpful when you’re trying to have a conversation.
After all, I reiterate: I’m nothing more than the wingman sidekick of the protagonist, Ayase Kaito. I have a bit of a role to play—every once in a while I’ll get super jealous of him, or make comments at his heroines that just barely fall on the safe side of the sexual harassment line—but when all’s said and done, I’m fundamentally an extra. Excessive interference with his business is forbidden. This is definitely not me being negligent! It’s just one of those times when you get the most work done by not working at all, I swear!
I arrived at the school store, still not totally sure who I was trying to excuse myself to a moment before. I can’t say for sure if it’s because we have a resident protagonist in the building, but my school’s store is exactly like the ones you see in every cliché rom-com ever written: stupidly crowded literally every single day. A veritable mob of students swarmed the counter in a desperate battle for their day’s bread. Come on, people, it’s called “lunch break” because you’re supposed to take a break, not because you’re supposed to break someone’s face! I’d probably be better off going to a convenience store than subjecting myself to this bedlam...
“GRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”
Next thing I knew, I was screaming like a maniac as I dove into the crowd. Wait. What?
My body’s...moving on its own?! Don’t tell me the power of cliché’s compelling me to act?!
Swept up in the vortex of hungry high schoolers, I let out a battle cry, reached out as far as I could, and somehow managed to grab a single sandwich. At the exact same moment, I chucked the five hundred yen coin I’d been carrying towards the register! Witness my ultimate technique: catch and release!
“Heh, keep the change.”
“Here ya go, three hundred yen.”
I blinked, and was suddenly holding three hundred yen. Is that cashier lady some sort of monster?! W-Well, whatever, this is fine. In the end, I got my bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich (BLT for short. Bet you didn’t know that one, right?) at list price. Time to hustle back to the classroom.
“Hmm?”
As I turned away from the school store, I happened to catch sight of a particular girl.
“Uwuu...”
“Uwuu?!” Did she seriously just say “uwuu,” and does she realize how ridiculous it sounded?!
She was a beautiful but incredibly petite girl—so small, in fact, I almost thought she was an elementary schooler—and she was shrinking back from the mayhem blocking her path to the school store. For a second I thought she might’ve gotten lost and wandered into the wrong school, but since she was wearing our uniform, I was forced to conclude that she was a genuine high schooler. Best I could tell, she’d been hoping to buy lunch but couldn’t manage to break through the human wall standing in her way.
I felt sorta sorry for her, sure, but in the end I decided to ignore her. The biggest pity of all was that the person who happened to notice her was an extra like me. If Kaito were here in my place, he’d probably hold out his sandwich with a smile and say something like “you start from one end, I’ll start from the other, and we’ll meet in the middle.” I, on the other hand, am just not that generous!
Grooooowl.
“Hmm?”
Just as I was passing in front of her, I heard what sounded sort of like a stomach growling. It was pretty distinct, and pretty darn loud too. I was just distracted enough to stop in my tracks, and the tiny girl shot me a look, blushing furiously. She must’ve heard that careless “hmm” I let slip out.
“Uwuu...”
We meet again, uwuu. Is that even a real noise? Are there actually any living organisms on this planet that make that noise? In any case, if I just ignored her and walked away after getting noticed like that, I’d look like some sort of monster. I’m picturing a front-page exposé in the school newspaper: “Local Student Abandons Starving Child; Shunned by Society.” You never know when the media might be lurking around the corner and looking for a scoop.
“Hey, shorty.”
“Wh-What do you want...?”
It felt like my only choice was to say something to her, so I did, but she stared down at the floor and replied in an incredibly meek tone of voice. Man, now it looks like I’m bullying her!
“Want this?”
I dangled my BLT in front of her and her eyes shot right back up again, locking onto it as I waved it back and forth. Not gonna lie, it was pretty funny. She was starting to drool too.
“Y-You mean I can have it?!”
“Hah! As if, moron.”
“Whaaa?!”
Save those expectations for the protagonist. You really think there’s such a thing as a free lunch in this world? Oh, the naivety!
“Not for free, anyway. Four hundred yen and it’s yours.”
“Wha?! B-But those cost two hundred yen in the store...”
“Hmm? What was that? Got a problem with the price? C’mon, you want it so badly you can practically taste it, right? I’ll be just fine eating it myself if you don’t, y’know? C’mon, you want it? You want it?!”
I flaunted the sandwich, waggling it right in front of her face. Somebody definitely whispered, “Wow, what a dick” behind me, but not my problem! You people were all perfectly happy to ignore this starving little pipsqueak a minute ago, so get off your high horses and stuff your hypocritical nitpicking where the sun don’t shine!
“Uwuu...”
Yup, she uwuu’d me again. I guess that’s her special move. She was tearing up a bit too.
“I wanna buy it...”
She sounded really, really reluctant, but she timidly pulled out four hundred yen. (Side note: it’s pretty weird to say that you “want” to buy something when you’re actively in the process of buying it.) But business transcends all borders! Even if you talk like a weirdo, a deal’s a deal! This is true righteousness! Witness me, onlookers!
“Sold! Here you go, shorty.”
“Thank you... Wait, huh?”
The runt blinked in confusion. Most likely, she’d felt the cold, hard coins that I slipped into her hand under the sandwich. The three hundred yen that the lunch lady forced on me, that is.
“Keep this between the two of us, ’kay?”
She hesitated, but I forced the sandwich into her hand. I mean, come on, as if I could take money from an elementary schooler! Just ignore the part where I came out a hundred yen ahead!
My lunch was lost, but I kept my cool and walked away. The kid looked dazed, like she didn’t quite understand what just happened as she kept glancing back and forth between me and the small change in her hand. I decided to make my exit nice and quick while she was still processing the situation.
“Hey, hold up.”
But the lady who manned the school store had other ideas. Apparently she’d sold out while the child and I had our exchange, and now had too much time on her hands for her own good.
“Smooth moves, kid.”
“I was just too embarrassed to do it normally.”
I was so surprised that she saw through me that I spit out the honest truth before I could stop myself. I’d been trying to make a show of it, but apparently I really suck at ad-libbing! The whole thing turned out pretty nonsensical in the end. Holy crap, the shame!
“Well, aren’t you a plain ol’ mister nice guy? I had something special tucked away for myself, buuut I think I’ll sell it to you instead,” she said as she set a bread roll on the counter.
“Are you an angel, lady?!”
“...For four hundred yen.”
“Are you an extortionist, lady?!”
I bought it. That afternoon, I was reminded once again: you can never trust a salesperson.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
School’s out! What a wonderful ring those words have to them! I have no clue who coined the phrase, and I’ve always sorta wondered what it would mean for school to be “in,” but the point is that it always lifts my spirits right the heck up. I guess this is one of those feelings you can only appreciate during adolescence, huh? The older you grow, the more you lose that special spark. It’s tragic, really.
“Hey, Kou, doing anything today? Wanna come over to my place?”
“Me go!”
Me + Kaito = best friends! We + play = fun, fun!
Kaito invited me over to his house after homeroom, and I immediately agreed to go. This is totally normal for us—we hang out all the time. I have my doubts, of course. I mean, if he has the time to hang out with me, wouldn’t he be better off using it to hang out with a girl instead? But on the other hand, the way he never gets tired of me’s part of what makes him so charming, and part of what makes me want to root for him so much. As a general rule, I never turn down his invitations. Not like I have any other obligations, for the most part.
Speaking of after-school pastimes, Kotou’s in the cooking club. Given that she didn’t show up in our classroom the second the bell rang, I figured she probably had club activities keeping her busy. Kotou and Kiryu aside, I know of two other heroines/candidates for Kaito’s affection. One of them’s an underclassman on the track team, and the other’s the president of the student council. Their traits all fit the heroine template to a T, but most of them are pretty much always busy with their various activities. Kaito, meanwhile, isn’t in a club at all, and has an awful lot of time on his hands as a result.
Seeing as he’s the protagonist and all, part of me thinks that he should start up a weird, dubious club (that could only exist in a rom-com like this) and invite all his heroines to join it with him. Considering that they’re all working their hardest in their various clubs and activities, though, pulling them out to join a new one feels like it’d be detrimental to their characters. Worst case, they could lose all their heroine-esque charm!
And besides, rom-com clubs always end up being about sitting around and chatting over snacks, or running around and flirting with each other while supposedly helping people who come to them for advice. What kind of school would approve a club like that in the first place?
In short: the heroines are all busy, so it’s totally natural for me to end up with the golden ticket to Kaito’s house. QED. Note: Kiryu Kyouka went home on her own the moment the bell rang. Seriously, what’s her deal? Get your act together, girl!
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
“Heyo, comin’ in!”
I stepped into Kaito’s presumably empty house. Both of his parents were living overseas for work, leaving their entire two-story home for Kaito and his younger sister to share. Sure, it’s as trite of a setup as setups can be, but it’s also awesome, so you won’t see me questioning it.
I end up at his house pretty often, but somehow I have yet to ever actually meet his sister, who’s one year younger than us. Apparently she goes to the same school as us, and since she’s part of the student council, her name crops up every once in a while. Her name might be Hikari, or something? I know you have to get the top score in the entrance exam to get into the council as a first-year, so I figure she’s gotta be an honor-student type. Since we’re in different grades, I’ve never had the opportunity to come into contact with Ayase the Younger at school, and her student council work tends to keep her there past the time I leave when I go over to his house. As far as I know, we’ve never even crossed paths.
“Up for a game?”
“Works for me.”
Kaito passed me a controller and loaded a popular racing game up on his TV. We do all sorts of things when we hang out—sometimes we stop for food on the way home, sometimes we just laze around and chat, sometimes we read manga together, sometimes we play video games... Totally mundane stuff all around, really. Incidentally, his game console’s set up in his living room, and his couch is stupidly soft. Seriously, this thing’s comfy as hell; I love it.
“By the way, y’know how we’ve got tests coming up soon? Been studying, Kaito?”
“Eh, a bit.”
“Yeah, tests have never really freaked you out, huh?”
“I guess. I mean, Renge-san always helps me study for them.”
“Say what?! You mean to say you’re being taught by the student council president of our beloved Oumei High and the heiress to the Myourenji Corporation, Myourenji Renge?!”
“That was a weirdly expositional way of putting it... And besides, you always show up to our study group too!”
“Irrelevant!”
“Hey! Hands off my controller, you cheater!”
Kaito’s kart fell to the back of the pack. There was just one flaw in my brilliant strategy, though: I couldn’t pay attention to my own controller while I was screwing with his. I got dragged back with him, and we finished neck and neck for last place.
“No way... Were you aiming for this all along, you monster?!”
“Come on, man, you self-destructed and you know it.”
“I want a rematch!”
Kaito poured salt right into the wound, and I shot him a death glare as I set up another round. But, before I could finish, I heard the click of the living room door opening.
“Kaito...?”
It was a girl’s voice. She sounded a bit gloomy, somehow, and the second I heard her, I felt my heart skip a beat.
“Oh, is that you, Hikari? You’re home already?”
Kaito looked surprised to see her. She really must be his sister after all... But no, surely not. It couldn’t be.
“Ah...”
The girl, Ayase Hikari, noticed me. Her eyes widened, and I’m pretty positive I looked exactly as shocked as she did.
“Oh, right, I guess this is probably the first time you two’ve met, huh? This is my friend, Kunugi Kou. Kou, this is my little sister, Hikari.”
“...Hello.”
“I knew it—you’re the guy from this morning...”
Part of me wanted to ask if her mom never taught her how to reply to a polite greeting, but in that moment, I didn’t even have it in me to be flippant. It really wasn’t the time.
“This morning? Did something happen?”
“He, um, sort of saved me.”
Her explanation was, in a word, concise. She probably didn’t want to talk about the details, and who could blame her? I mean, she was the victim of a brutally disturbing attack by a creepy old flasher, of all things! Her uniform was pretty wrinkled, so I figured she’d gone right home after the incident, collapsed into bed out of pure shock, and slept the day away. Yet another trope to add to the pile... I mean, it’s not entirely unexpected, yeah, but jeez...
“He did? Nice work, Kou, thanks.”
“Nah, no biggie.”
Man, you’d almost think I was bad at talking to people! Normally I’d be all, like, “What sayeth thee?! Doth this lovely maiden truly be thine kin, Lord Kaito?! Verily, hers is a face that could launch a thousand ships; I might swoon from the shock! I beseech thee, O brother of an angel, grant this humble peasant thine sister’s hand in marriage! Forsooth, forsooth!” or something to that effect, but I wasn’t in even close to a jovial enough mood for that sort of act.
The girl from this morning was Kaito’s sister, of all people! In other words, the instant I declared myself to be Ayase Kaito, she—that is, Ayase Hikari—knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was lying. I was absolutely mortified. Like, I’m talking condemned-criminal-being-led-up-the-gallows levels of horror and shame, here! Not that I’d even know what that feels like firsthand.
“Thank you very much for this morning, Kunugi Kou-senpai.”
She wasn’t flustered enough to forget the name Kaito introduced me by, at least, and thanked me politely with a deep, formal bow. I happened to notice that her back was totally soaked with sweat.
“I-It’s cool.”
Yeeep, this is bad. This is all sorts of bad. “Little sister” is an absolutely valid attribute for a rom-com heroine. They hold a social position unconditionally next to the protagonist from the moment they’re born, and they’re super effective against the protagonist’s sense of self-respect, fostering an irresistible urge to protect them under all circumstances!
Moreover, with Japan’s birth rate absolutely in the pits thanks to the economic slump and the nation effectively operating under a self-imposed one-child-per-family policy, little sisters are gradually becoming more and more of an endangered species! No doubt about it, a little sister would be an indispensable addition to Kaito’s rom-com harem. The fact that they’re related by blood makes it a forbidden relationship, sure, but that just ups the odds that she’ll end up being a tsundere on top of it all!
All that said, if the protagonist’s little sister ends up getting to know his background character of a best friend without the protagonist around to mediate, it’s very possible that bloodthirsty readers could slut-shame her to hell and back, and send her plummeting in the popularity polls! Don’t even get me started on how bad it’d be if they ended up in a hero/heroine relationship after the extra saved the sister from a rampaging nutjob (a nut of such unparalleled talent, he’s taken his nuttiness and made a career out of it). Yup, no choice; gotta push those two together... Ahem, ahem!
“Whoops, just remembered! Got stuff to do! Bye-bye!”
My thought process was a jumbled mess, and I found myself excusing my way out of the situation before I knew it. I was pretty sure that I’d successfully pulled the wool over their eyes with that bit of ridiculous fast-talking. Pulling a move like that’s supposed to be the protagonist’s special privilege, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Granted, I only ended up in this unnecessary and incredibly awkward situation by claiming Ayase Kaito’s name to trick his sister, but if I didn’t smooth it all over with a bit more trickery on top of it, I knew for a fact that the problem would spiral horribly out of control.
But then—
—Hey, Koh. Would you mind meeting up with my sister sometime?
—Your sister?
—Yeah. I told her a bit about you, and I guess she wants to meet you in person now.
“Ugh!”
A vivid image—a scene from long ago—flashed through my mind, and it felt like something was trying to crawl its way up from the depths of my heart and into my throat. I clasped a hand over my mouth without even realizing it. Glancing over, I found Kaito and his sister both staring at me in shock.
“Whoa, hey! What’s wrong, Kou?! You’re super pale, and you’re sweating like crazy...”
“It’s nothing! Later!”
I practically fled the Ayase household, sprinting down the street until I stumbled upon a park. I dashed into the public restroom, slumped over a toilet, and puked my guts out.
—Hee hee! You certainly are a funny person, Koh.
I gasped and heaved for breath. What the hell am I doing? She’s not her. She’s nothing like her. She’s another little sister, and that’s all. Why the hell am I freaking out like this...?
But, for whatever reason...the memories flooded back. I ran away. I tried to forget. I thought I had forgotten, long ago, but they wouldn’t stop. That’s not me anymore! I’m nothing! I’m a totally average, pointless background character who only exists to be someone’s best friend—I’m just an extra! I’m like the parsley you push off to the side of your plate and never bother eating!
—Koh, please...care of...brother...
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
I screamed. All I could do was scream. Whether it was a howl of remorse, of terror, or rage, I couldn’t say. It was a deluge of pure, incoherent emotion, overflowing from my mouth without end.
Suddenly, a sharp crack brought me back to my senses.
I’d shattered the toilet seat with my bare hands.
