Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ My College Romantic Comedy Was Wrong, As I Expected ❯ My College SNAFU: 3 ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter Three

 

It was the day of the project video shoot. I went to the media lab and found the camera was ready. I was in a hurry and headed off with its weight on my shoulder. Saki joined me without being asked, a large bag over her shoulder.

“Hey Saki. Good morning. I’m going to do a group project. It’s going to be pretty busy.”

“That’s fine. I’m coming.”

“Not that I’m objecting, whatsoever, but it’s going to be all day. Is that going to be okay?”

“I am prepared. I have to defend my territory from that Thieving Cat,” she muttered more quietly.

“Riiight. Cats. Okay. We’re heading for the train station, taking the train a stop down and then setting up there together. We’ve booked three actresses from the performing arts track. Or rather one of them from that track and her grandmother and little sister have agreed to help. She’s getting screen credit and points in her degree requirements.”

It was a blustery day, with scudding clouds, wind and a 30% chance of rain. And this was the best weather from the week. Arriving at the station I found the Redhead tsundere who hates me from Intro to Visual Arts and is rumored to be the illegitimate child of the sensei, only not too loudly because she hits anyone that says it. I have no idea who started that rumor but I suspect Haruno, because she has been here for a week stalking me and appearing suddenly. I am unable to find or remove the LowJack software from my phone so she just turns up. It’s like having my own sexy ninja. This also, unfortunately, has made Saki very angry much of the time, and paranoid. I admit to being dense at first, but it is possible she may like me. She’s been to the house, met my roommates, was scandalized by our living conditions and the huge windows and the fabulous view and has come over to study with me while I am typing up my novel, has brought fruit slices and cooked stir fry vegetables for dinner, making sure I eat some so I don’t die of Ricketts or Scurvy. This is the sort of traditional investment a woman makes in a man she wants to keep, first by keeping him alive. If more women did this the birth rates in Japan wouldn’t be so low.

I am not letting this go to my head. Oh no indeed! She’s lovely and wears modified clothes which are both fashionable and ahead of the curve while still being functional and not a terrible joke like most of what you see from Paris and Milan. And she says so often, and leaves her magazines around, usually on the floor when I need to get up to the use the bathroom in the night and I slip on their glossy pages and sometimes get papercuts or trip. But I guess I can live with that.

Its when Haruno visits that things get dicey. If Saki is there she won’t leave until Haruno does. When she gets a call from the sporting goods store for emergency sewing work, she has to go or lose the hourly stipend for being on call, and also the work she’d get for the job on top of that. It’s a two-fer. I have to actually work at my job. When I leave, the both go, my roommates tell me, except when Haruno sleeps on my futon to surprise me when I get home. I have to say, finding a willing woman in your bed when you’re exhausted and smell bad from work and need a shower is not very nice after all. I am totally let down by all those sitcoms. I should be grateful. I should be horny. I am instead dead tired and annoyed. I once made the mistake of falling asleep next to her and she did nothing but sleep beside me. I woke in the night utterly frightened because her hand weren’t wandering inside my clothes. She wasn’t performing acrobatic sex acts on me in my sleep. She wasn’t doing any of that. She was sleeping in a totally carefree and trusting way. It made me paranoid. And it made her smug. And aggravated Saki, who tried the trick, only with a lot of wandering hands and groping of me and shy blushing in the night. It was a different kind of aggravation. She’s every bit as inexperienced as I am. I really don’t know what other people go through in their first romance in college, but there were more fits than starts for me.

Anyway, we got to the site and I delivered the camera to Kyouya, who worked with Aki to set it up and get all the settings right and the correct lenses and filters and shading over the lens. They shot video of a passing train, and with the three actors with different trains. They shot out of sequence, sort of. It was still the little girl in the morning hours, the actual actress around noon, and the grandmother in the afternoon. It was enough, and we managed to cleanup and put things away and get under cover before a thunderstorm hit and dumped three inches of rain.

We got the camera returned to school after uploading all the data onto Kyouya’s computer and both he and Aki worked on it together for the next few days, assembling it. Nana did the narration using my script, and she used voice tuning to tweak them into different ranges to make them sound more like the ages involved. It was good. Really good once it was finished.

Haruno turned up, observing, and Saki would come and go, doing homework with me while I wrote. Sometimes Haruno would sit on my other side, just observing like a cat that’s caught the canary.

Their dynamic of outright hostility had simmered into some kind of understanding I wasn’t privy too, but probably something along the lines of ‘don’t ruin his life while you pursue him or you will lose’ kind of thing. So they vied for attention and some kind of decision and I didn’t choose one of them because I’m busy, and kind of a jerk, again. I like each of them. They have likeable qualities. Both are beauties. And the attention and affection are, unfortunately, genuine. I can’t just reject them for toying with me. Haruno was too clever for that. Her way of flirting seems to be her natural style, very much about attention and daring. Saki was reserved, careful, sensitive and sweet. She was also supportive and useful to have around. She was proving her case as wife-material in traditional roles. I couldn’t see Haruno as a woman who would darn my socks, but I could see her replacing the island vacation girl in the backless swimsuit for that resort company, the one who drags your hand into the pool and sensual fun. That was Haruno. She was laughter and sensuality and bedtime joy, or promised such anyway. She was going at my pace, not trying to scare me off. The ice water had been more effective than a metaphor to ‘cool off’. It had actually done so. Alas, both women are waiting on me, and their sexual tension was extreme. And I was still writing.

The day we showed our final films to the class for peer assessment was a kind of high pressure show and tell. There were some cringe films. There were some pretty good ones. There was another similar to ours, but only because it was at a nearby station, with a totally different concept. Our film showed. It was well received, but we only came out third. There was room to improve.

I was satisfied, but Kyouya was convinced we could have done something to improve it.

“It’s only the first project. The limited time meant we were going to be struggling to keep it within that strict time limit. The short stuff is even harder to get right.” He agreed this was pretty true.

“And even though we didn’t defeat your tsundere redhead, we still beat all those other teams. I say we celebrate with sukiyaki and my love triangle guests.”

“I am almost appalled that you can say that with a smile on your face, Hachiman. It’s shameless.”

“Says the guy with the love tetragon,” I replied, pointing back. He and Nana had been working shifts at Lawson together, alone. I worked the alternate nights alone, which suited me fine. We all discarded expired milk and chicken salad sandwiches which were guaranteed food poisoning. I made sure to wash my hands after doing that job, to keep from getting salmonella poisoning.

“Well, okay. Sukiyaki sounds great. With all the extras like mushrooms and some thin beef and birds nest noodles. The cheap kind.”

“That’s fine. We all work for a living. Except Haruno. She doesn’t work for a living.”

“What does Haruno do?” asked Aki. “Other than stalk you in an admittedly pleasant way.”

“She was in college when I knew her sister, but I think she graduated already. Not sure what she studied there. I think it was science of some kind.”

“Haruno,” I said slightly louder. “What did you study in college?”

“Meta materials science,” she answered from behind the column where we were sitting. She appeared like a ninja, stepping over the railing and joining us with a grin.

“Waterproof hydrophobics, in particular. It’s a whole field of cutting edge science. I wanted something to confuse old men when they tried to flirt with me.”

“Does that happen a lot?” asked Nana, looking green at the idea.

“It’s the family business. Daddy’s in the Diet.” They stilled at this announcement. I shrugged.

“Is Saki some kind of foreign princess?” asked Aki, wondering if there was some kind of balance of power here.

“Her brother is going to marry my sister. We went to high school together. She’s one of the people who will still speak to me.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

“I’m not a princess. Not even a Yakuza Princess. Stop asking. People keep asking me that, eehhh?” she snarled, leaning hard into the aneesan accent.

“You’re scaring the normals,” I cautioned her. She sniffed in disdain.

This would only add to her reputation.