Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ My Unfortunate Whale Vision ❯ ONE ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter 1

Several years later my essay for Modern Japanese was read back to me by a furious Hiratsuka Sensei.

“And so it is that the frail moments of youth fade like a dying flower, and our national obsession with flowers makes so much sense. Youth is a lie because it is so brief, so ephemeral, and replaced so soon by the mediocrity that suffuses life in our country, the sameness, the dull aching repetition. In youth, you see things as new, not realizing that the colors will drain out, that the actions you’ll do over and over again will become sad noise, mere punctuation of your life, that the youth you try to remember will merely end up being a picked scab, fresh welling blood, and regret. Youth is a lie that the middle aged pretend was better, was worth remembering, is something other than a terrible yearning for something which will never return and wasn’t that great in the first place. As bad as it is for men, I can only suspect it is worse for the women, who will endlessly dream of their youth, back when they were pretty and knew nothing of life’s ugly truths, of the pains they’d face and the humiliations. I worry for my sister, and know the best I can do is offer a shoulder to cry on and hope she marries well. For so many of my female classmates, relishing their youth while attending our prestigious high school, marriage will be eclipsed by a career and professional achievements that will mean nothing compared to the wasted youth for a potential spouse. The cake is a lie. And youth is a flower that wilts, fades, dries up, and falls to the ground, forgotten.”

“Hachiman, what were you thinking when you wrote this?” There was a full ashtray by Hiratsuka sensei’s elbow on her office desk, a room shared with the other faculty who mostly ignored us both. Her histrionics they were clearly used to by now. They ignored me because I’m just another teenage boy getting yelled at by an aging Christmas Cake. Clearly, such things happened often. No wonder teachers are such infamous drunks. In my slit-eyed vision my sensei was rounder, jowled, wrinkled, and her perky breasts were fallen and flattened, her teeth and fingers stained by a chainsmoking habit and even her voice raspy. If I’m psychotic, my hallucinations are remarkably consistent. The woman she was now was right at the cusp of falling over the cliff, hitting the wall, falling out of the ugly tree and smacking into every branch on the way down. She was not appealing at all, and I was one of the few boys who was obviously repelled by her frantic clingy antics.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded. She was flushed, overweight, short, and single. Her personality was half the problem and went far to explain why she was single and would likely remain that way. Soubu is a school for academic achievement and a ladder school towards the better universities. We aren’t here to be pretty. We are expected to excel in our studies. In an anime, Hiratsuka Sensei would be sexy, thin, have large breasts, have panic attacks and be unexplainably single. She would probably drive an expensive foreign car without suitable explanation for how she could afford it on a teacher’s salary. Here in the real world she rode the bus and commuter train like everyone else. The bicycle I was so proud of for my daily commute was wrecked in the crash that took my lower leg bones and snapped them like twigs. So I ride the bus, too.

Oh, that’s right. She asked me a question. I suppose I should say something then. How to phrase this?

“Sensei, respectfully: You asked us to write an essay about a future we have not reached yet. Asked us to celebrate experiences we haven’t had, and I personally have no ability to describe. Are you asking us to create fantasy fiction rather than an essay of speculative philosophy? It appears that I have misunderstood your intent. Perhaps a more specific and concise explanation of your requirements would avoid such confusion in the future?” I asked her pretending to be curious rather than actually sarcastic. After all, if I make her angry, she’s just going to retaliate.

I learned that lesson years ago. Women love revenge. It wasn’t just Orimoto’s rejection, but her Betas and followers who attacked me after my public rejection. The petty bullying and childish attacks were just the motivation for intense study to escape the idiots in that school. There was less bullying here at Soubu, but it was just as insular and cliquish as the school I left. I arrived too late thanks to saving a dog from being run over. It just cost me a broken leg and a couple weeks in the hospital. I used the time to keep up on my homework assignments. Unfortunately the costs were significant and my parents are working overtime to help pay for my foolish moment of kindness. I was dealing with both their disapproval and the emotional panic attacks of my younger sister. Studying and personal improvement were my only escape from family problems.

Considering sensei’s angry reaction to my essay on youth and its pitiful delusions, something of a hot-button with her, clearly, I should have been more generic instead of using this essay as an opportunity to vent about the futility of nostalgia. Hiratsuka turned her future jowls to me and glared through swollen eyelids, sucking on her cigarette like it owed her money. You know those fat corrupt aliens in Birdy the Mighty? She looked like one of those. The trope was more accurate than people liked to think.

“I’m not putting up with this again. No more Haruno nightmares, damn it. You know what? Come with me,” she demanded, storming out of the teacher’s lounge and I limped after her, my cane helping but also slowing me down. I wasn’t 100% yet. The doctors said I’d have some pain for weeks or months, but eventually I’d be fine, probably. Not that they knew for certain. Japan is known for its modern transportation system and bullet trains, not for its medical facilities or trained healers. For all we say about technology and modernism, we’re still a mostly-Buddhist nation and death is a blasé and accepted outcome for the people living here. One student with a broken leg is just another foolish weakling.

I hobbled after sensei and her fury. We eventually climbed a staircase into the special building, where the clubs were. She knocked on a classroom door then slammed it open. For a moment my eyes widened and I saw the current-her, merely chunky, thinner than her future, tense, and wearing that ridiculous lab coat. If you couldn’t see her future she was a relatively plain, ordinary Japanese woman on the verge of losing her looks. Then my eyes narrowed again and her future identity regained its solidity for me.

“I thought I asked you to knock before opening the door,” complained a girl’s quietly hateful voice. I peered around sensei and noted a fluttering shower of sakura petals drifting in the open window past a face of delicate disdainful beauty and an expression conveying distaste. She would probably be a beauty if she’d been thin rather than stocky with glasses, and lacked the painfully unpleasant resting bitch face, but we don’t live in anime world with characters designed by experts in their field. No, this was Japan, and we were dough-faced and overweight nerds. Pretty people were anime characters. Real Japanese school girls have skirts to their ankles, hate everyone, especially each other, and insist they are the prize to be cherished, then wonder how they got to be Christmas Cake after a few brief years of breaking hearts and stomping down on the competition. Loneliness is the future of most Japanese girls. That and buying cat products. I should probably invest my future income in mutual funds based around box wine/sake and cat food and toys. All these lonely women are going to spend. I may as well profit.

“What is that?” the girl complained, seeing me looking at her. To be fair I’m not a handsome man myself. And the cane isn’t helping my appeal to the opposite of sex, because men and women are really different, and when you’re ugly, merely defining yourself for being the other gender is insufficient to the true situation. I have negative sex appeal. Lots of Japanese have this. This explains why so many of us don’t date or get any play. And considering how unattractive most women are, I don’t have much but contempt for the idiots who DO sleep with ugly women. It is better to be a virgin than bed an ugly woman. Tell a virgin this and they’ll initially deny it, but show them pictures of the girl’s fat bitchy mother and read off the divorce and alimony statistics and they change their tune.

“I found a solution to your problem,” sensei announced, stepping aside. My eyes responded to the bright room and slid back to the usual slits, displaying the two women as they would be in future. Sensei was jowly, fat, and a bitch. The girl was thinner, eventually busty, and coldly furious. I pity any man married to that obvious bitch. I hobbled in further with my cane, noting the brightly lit room with its typical wall of windows and stack of unused desks contained a single table and folding chair, occupied by the girl with her book of samurai poetry and cup of green tea steaming by her hand. As girls went she was almost physically attractive, not to standards of most anime characters. Her hair was long and straight, her posture rigid, her porcelain doll looks typically perfect, to a Japanese standard at least. Other girls probably hate her for being pretty, compared to them. She’s flat as a board now, but in a few years her bosom would equal sensei’s real ones. But she doesn’t smile. And the resting bitch face is a huge turn off. This feels like a trap. How do I apply all I learned in Junior high to a situation like this?

“Hello,” I said politely, not introducing myself. She waited but I opted not to say anything further. She waited, growing visibly irritated at my breach of manners, eyes twitching and turned to regard sensei. Her resting bitch face was now an active bitch face. My vision showed me her future expressions carving her face with angry wrinkles and disappointment. What sort of man would want to wake up to that hostility?

“This is Hikigaya Hachiman, of class 2F. He’s having socialization issues and needs assistance pretending to be a human being,” sensei quipped sarcastically. I eyed her without saying a word. Why bother answering such a provocation? Her sly look revealed her taking joy in revenge. Typical woman.

“Really. Is this a Service Club request?” the girl asked. She hadn’t introduced herself, I notice. Unsubtle retaliation.

I leaned on my cane with both arms. Neither woman moved to get me a chair, despite my obvious pained expression. So typical. It is interesting how in stories, women are nurturing and kind, yet in reality they are merely selfish and hostile. Their treatment has everything to do with your own looks. If you’re handsome, tall, and rich, they act to get your attention, pretend to be nice, invite you out so you can pay for their meals and drinks and drag you to a love hotel and “you don’t need a condom, it’s a safe day” and make a play for baby-trapping you in court. If you’re the 80% of men who are merely average looking, you are invisible to women and treated the same as any piece of fallen litter. Gomi, trash, something to avoid. And that was my whole life since rejection in Junior High. Since Orimoto lied about “can we just be friends”. We never spoke again.

It is probably for the best, considering she didn’t get into this school; she wasn’t smart enough. I am this smart. My entry test results put me in the top 10 students of my year, but missing the first two weeks meant I was downgraded from the international class to 2F. I suppose that was a good thing, since I wouldn’t be sharing a classroom with this porcelain doll. I’d seen the other girls in that class and every one of them was a bitch. I would have hated being there.

Sensei huffed at us. Her imaginary jowls wobbled.

“This is Yukinoshita Yukino, Hachiman. You will be attending this club until I am satisfied you have changed into a proper human being able to live in the real world.” I crooked an eyebrow at this pretentious statement. Sensei was being a villain. I wonder if she realized this? She’s a woman so probably not. Self-awareness is not a trait women generally possess. Narcissism is far more common, and that’s on the Psychopath scale. So much for Empathy, another one of those lies propagandized in mainstream media. It’s like “women love men”. That is a lie. You can tell by all the divorces. Women need men to have babies, and use men for their money until they stop being convenient doormats that overlook their cheating. If men ever recover control of the Japanese government, they will push through mandatory paternity testing which will destroy the lies of women across our country. NTR isn’t the most popular sexual fetish in Japan for nothing. It’s also the preferred activity by housewives everywhere. And office ladies, and probably single mothers.

“You didn’t like my essay that fit your vague requirements so now you expect me to waste my afternoons in this room rather than study for university entrance exams? So rather than experience good memories, you intend to hamstring my future. Apparently my cane isn’t enough damage for you, sensei. What is this Service club anyway?” I complained, the pain in my leg getting to me. Damn those stairs and damn these women. Typical.

“This is the Service Club. It is our duty to assist fellow students with requests that help them fulfill their wishes,” began the megane-doll, this Yukinoshita.

“That sounds stupid. Why?” I interrupted.

“If you give a man a fish he eats for a day. But if you teach a man to fish,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

“He still won’t be able to pay his rent,” I finished for her. Her look was black. “What’s your point?”

“The Service Club exists to assist students in being able to help themselves. We don’t do it for them. We show them how.”

I looked at the earnest formal expression of the girl, then turned to sensei.

“I really don’t care. The students in this school have done nothing for me. I think if I were to join a club it would be the Literature Club. I actually care about literature.”

“You’re joining the Service Club until I say differently. Every school-day until final bell at four. Try anything and I fail you.”

I stared at this woman and wondered what my options were. She was demented, obviously. But the other teachers didn’t care, and would do nothing to stop her vendetta against me. Jealousy and revenge are driving forces in female psychology. This isn’t even a secret. They bragged about it.

“I’m going to study.”

Since neither woman had the empathy to help, I pulled a chair from the stack, placing it at the table and began the process of extracting my laptop, then running the power cord over to a nearby floor outlet under a brass plate.

“Ahem,” grunted the girl. I ignored her. My laptop booted up and I entered my password, then logged onto the school wifi network with my student ID account. One of the upsides of Soubu is they weren’t criminally behind the times for technology, like most of the schools in Japan were. Then again, Japan tended to be behind the rest of the world by around ten years, sometimes more. It came from being an insular society which punished innovation and rewarded obedience. It is very easy to become a rebel in Japan, and even easier to be punished for it. Guilty until proven innocent.

“Ahem,” grunted the girl again. She’d been doing that noise every couple minutes since I got started on my laptop. I ignored her. I heard a groan from the sliding door, probably sensei leaning against it getting increasingly angry. She probably thought I’d talk to this precious flower. Fat chance.

I opened my word processor and started an essay for my science class, one on biology of an animal I admired. I was tempted, thanks to the disdain I’d just received by the sensei and her issues, to write about bears being loners and phrasing it to piss off unmarried women but I decided that was just asking for it. A wise man would not poke the bear. I wrote about badgers instead, digging a den, living quietly eating whatever it found, being largely immune to animals that try to attack it, and capable of fierce defense when annoyed. It’s still a metaphor, but it was more on topic to the point of the assignment.

“Ahem,” grunted the girl again. The door slid open a couple inches. I kept working, ignoring both women. I looked up information on Badgers and included details on habitat, lifespans, and territorial range. How they shared territory with hedgehogs in England, but managed to get along in their overlapping habitat through mutual respect.

“Ahem,” grunted the girl again, trying to get my attention once more. I ignored her. I rechecked spelling and edited the wording and order a bit before I was satisfied. I saved the document and went onto the next assignment, ignoring the throat clearing of the girl sitting at the same table. She obviously wanted to tell me off, but what would I gain from interacting with her? What is there to say, after all?

Sensei stared through the crack in the door, her glinting evil eye completely ignored by my own equally evil glare. Eventually the final bell rang and the door slammed shut, heels stomping away as sensei stormed off. The girl sharing the room with me for the last hour glared at me sourly, saying nothing. I packed up my laptop, wound up the cords and put my things into my bag, standing with my cane, noting most of the prior leg pain was gone. Sitting for an hour had helped. I still need to make it to the bus stop. Chiba City is a big place. It even has a monorail. I bowed briefly to the girl and exited the room without a word. She glared at me, but I ignored it. As I hobbled down the passageway heading for the stairs I heard her slide the door shut and fumble with the keys to lock it. Fine, just fine.

It was a short time later I was waiting for the bus and a few minutes after that I boarded with my student pass and headed for the transfer station. A change to another bus, and eight stops later I was only a few blocks from home. My leg was hurting by this point but I hobbled onwards.

“Ta dai ma,” I announced, getting an answer from Komachi in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, looking angry. My sister is usually silly, but angry happened every month since she started puberty four years ago. She’s in her final year of junior high and studying for high school entrance exams, including Soubu. She was following in my footsteps, but it might turn out okay. She’s my sister. She’s smart. And she smiles enough to avoid the resting bitch face that curses most Japanese teenager girls. She also exercises enough to avoid being fat, though I am sure that will come by the time she’s twenty-five and start to resemble our mother. There’s good reason the Christmas Cake rule in Japan is “marry by 23 or be Christmas Cake at 24”. This is because the general rule is Japanese women lose their looks and value early, at 24, and if they aren’t married by then have proven their low value and will end up with a cat and become a bitter alcoholic spinster. My sensei is a prime example of this.

“I’ve been assigned to attend a club.  They don’t seem to do anything so I did homework while I was stuck there. I will have to attend every day after school, but I plan to make it study hall.”

“You could have messaged me, jerk,” she complained, obviously upset with worry. Komachi may be the best little sister in the world. She was certainly mine. Despite her goofy moments playing cute, she’s determined to be independent, and this runs contrary to her bouts of emotional neediness. Ever since I came home crying from the Orimoto disaster she’s worried about me, and the bike accident only renewed her worries, sharpening her from mere concern to panic attacks. It seems I’ve caught her in the midst of one. I wonder if she’ll be like this with her future husband? Or if her emotions will prevent such a thing from getting that far. Will Komachi’s emotional surges prevent her finding happiness with a man? It wouldn’t be the first time. Japanese women are fiery, so I’ve noticed. And they tend to grow sideways after marriage. If you don’t want a beach ball bitch for a wife, don’t marry.