Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ My Unfortunate Whale Vision ❯ FIVE ( Chapter 5 )

“Why is he here?” demanded Yukinoshita. She was angry, obviously. She was often angry. I think it is possible that life has not been living up to her expectations. My hallucinations continued to show me the ugly people in the world. The upside of this is I’m not fooled by the transitory. People will become who they are for most of their lives. We’re just pretty a short time. Like the sakura blossom my country is so obsessed by, we bloom, we wrinkle, we fade, and we fall. That is life. The arrogance of youth is thinking the brief moment between puberty ripening you to full reproductive health and the rapid decline are somehow delayed by feelings. Because feelings matter. Hah!

“I want to talk about literature,” I answered.

“You can talk about literature with me,” Yukinoshita reminded.

I stared at her.

“I want to talk modern literature, not pretentious samurai poetry,” I clarified. “That’s why I invited Yoshiteru here. He and I understand modern literature and can converse on the topic.”

“Then why is SHE here?” demanded Yukino, gesturing to Ebina Hina and Miura. Drills was silently glaring at Yukino, presumably the one Yukino was upset with, though Ebina was actually there on my invitation. Despite her BL obsession, she was also a fan of modern literature and still appreciated modern tropes and rules of fiction today. And was well read. Yoshiteru and Ebina were getting along well, right up until she started fountaining blood while describing BL she liked. Then he visibly leaned away and raised the plastic trashbag shield he’d made with tape and a meter stick which roughly intercepted the spray of blood from her nose. Based on splatters nearby, this was not the first time. The shield technique worked pretty well to keep most of his clothing clean, though I noticed droplets soaking into the tops of his school shoes. To my eyes, Hina was fat and demented, with a future cat farm and Pet Food Express membership. Miura, beside her, was all secretarial spread and wrinkles, probably sun damage, and the consequence of giving up tennis once she got married and had a child to blame for slacking off on exercise. I’ve tried widening my eyes briefly, but her resting bitch face is seriously off-putting. Yuigahama retains her cheerful disposition despite rolls of fat and jiggling thighs in her future, and big puffy cheeks. She likes sweets, and once she passes her teen years that Sophomore Spread will be a life-choice she cannot get rid of.

Honestly, even if this is entirely my brain damage from that car accident making my delusion permanent, it is certainly fantastic repellent. Think of all the work I won’t need to do to pay for a house and a wife’s kids. Not my kids because I would have no idea if they’re mine or not. She gets to keep the house after she divorces me, but I have to keep paying the mortgage. That’s the sort of thing you get if you buy into the ephemeral and temporary looks of a high school girl’s charms. She’s going to get fat when she’s got a ring. She’s going to turn mean when boys stop staring. She’s going to resemble an American sofa sooner than later: stained, smelly, and overstuffed, sagging and somewhat broken. I tried to ignore what I saw so I could focus on what matters. Fiction.

I don’t have to deal with women’s future weight gains, cheating, and divorce settlements, because women are repellent pigs. I can see it so I don’t want any. And since I don’t want any, I don’t have to own a house or worry about my money being stolen by an ex-wife and her divorce attorney. I don’t need to work long hours. I can work just enough to keep my cost of living for one person: me. Life can be good. And it is only good because there’s no woman to ruin it for me. If only I wasn’t stuck here. As long as I treat this as study hall, I can cope with this abuse to my senses. Or talk literature with the other two people who actually care about it. And all I have to do is distract myself from constant horniness and never fall from grace into a baby-trapping slut’s retirement plans.

“Can we call this association Genshiken?” Hina asked.

“Good one. How about the Society For the Study of Modern Visual Culture?” I countered. Hina laughed, and Yoshiteru chuckled. “We’ll go with that one.”

“Eh? What’s that?” asked Yui, interrupting her social media cellphone tapping to communicate with actual people in the room.

“It’s Genshiken,” Yoshiteru replied. He’d built up a tolerance to Yui’s gyaru, since she was relatively nice and a lot less angry or intimidating than most women at our school. Miura was glaring.

“I heard that. They’re the same thing,” she hmphed, turning her nose up.

“Oh? Are you familiar with Genshiken, Miura-san?” I asked Drills.

“Maybe. Possibly. Three seasons,” she admitted.

“Do you read light novels?” I asked her, curious.

“I passed the tests to get in, just like everyone else,” she dodged the question.

“So probably no. How about manga?” I asked her.

“Some series I follow,” she muttered. “Full Metal Panic. Heavy Object. Pumpkin Scissors. If Her Flag Breaks. Is The Order A Rabbit. Ben-To. Hentai Prince And The Stony Cat. Gate. Nisekoi. Mushibugyo.”

“That’s a fair number of current releases. You like manga a lot. Would you like to join our discussion, Miura-san?” I asked, promoting her from Drills to a real name. When you die, you get to have a name.

“Okay. Ebina, scoot over,” she requested, and pulled up her chair. Yui and Yukino continued to just stare at the four of us. We started talking about manga and light novels in the context of realistic versus fantasy worlds.

“I mean, I get that Full Metal Panic is sometimes realistic, but the slapstick really comes out in the anime, and manga, but far less in the novels. The novels are more like the James Bond novels, totally serious. It’s like the Afghanistan arc, or how that world has a post-collapse civil war divided China, between north and south, and warlords in the west and certain coastal cities. It’s a direct consequence of the Whispered technology affecting force multipliers for those who have the mecha and stealth tech and those who are target practice,” argued Yoshiteru.

“Sure, but even Heavy Object isn’t purely realistic. Something that size has ridiculous inertia, and would never be mobile out of the water, and we already have things called ships. The agility of the mecha and the magical lighthawk wings in FMP? That’s a great Tenchi reference but seriously breaks realism for the rest of the series,” objected Miura. It’s probably because she likes sports that she’s so interested in war manga. I can sort of see why the heroine of Full Metal Panic would appeal to her. They are both bitchy women, even if Miura is caring towards Ebina. Ebina is all about the Gundam. She loves that Gundam BL.

“What about the classics those shows reference? Between Gundam and Nadesico and Warhammer 40K, aren’t these purely derivative?” Ebina pointed out.

“Slayers was derivative from Forgotten Realms and Lodoss War, and Louie the Rune Soldier references Lina Inverse at several points because it is in the same setting, just centuries or thousands of years later. For all that, the individual shows were each important, and pay respect to the programs that they copied. For all we know there will someday be a light novel that’s derivative of Louie in a similar world, with equally incompetent sidekicks, most of them female because female adventurers are funny.”

“You mean like if the main character were a largely incompetent mage, like Louie, and they have a mage who only knows one really explosive spell, like Lina Inverse, and a knight who can’t hit anything, and a healer who is a total dingbat, like Melissa? Only more of a dingbat but also good at her job when she remembers to do it?” Yoshiteru suggested.

“I mean, sure. I guess that could work if people totally forgot about Louie,” I admitted.

“But Rune Soldier is such a classic. That would never be forgotten. Anime fans aren’t that shallow,” insisted Ebina. I looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked.

And so it would be a few years later that the Konosuba books which largely simplified and copied Rune Soldier became best sellers and a decent anime.

The following day we met again.

“Have you seen Ouran High School Host Club anime?” Miura asked.

“Sure. Years ago. It’s very good. The characters are really interesting, even if the art is a particular style,” I admitted.

“Do you think Haruhi actually thinks of herself as a boy?” Yoshiteru asks nervously. It was Ebina who responded with an exasperated sigh.

“Nope. She’s just indifferent to appearances. She’s going to Ouran to get into law school, so everything she’s doing away from her studies exasperates her, which is why she’s so often angry. She wants to study so she can get into law school on a scholarship. And she can’t do that if she’s wasting time pretending to be a pretty-boy in the host club. Ouran is really frustrating, from a BL perspective. It’s all so obvious that there’s no challenge shipping boys.”

“Haruhi is not really interested in sex compared to her drive to be a lawyer,” I agreed after some thought purging the BL comments from my short term memory. “Even if being a lawyer is ostensibly evil.”

“She thinks there are good lawyers. That’s so cute,” giggled Ebina. Her fat face squeezed beneath rolls, hiding her eyes.

“Hayato’s parents are lawyers,” complained Miura. Her wide thighs flowed over the chair, swollen and jiggling. I resisted the urge to make whale noises.

“That explains… so much,” I answered after a pause. “Does he actually believe that people should meet halfway when the other side is all wrong? Half wrong is still wrong, and all wrong meeting halfway isn’t half right. It is still all wrong. Its logic. This isn’t complicated,” I complained.

“What about when you think you’re right but you’re actually wrong?” Miura asked.

“So now you’re asking about the Confidence problem?” I confirmed.

“Confidence problem?” Miura asked back.

“It’s a type of unconscious bias, from critical thinking. The idea that you’re right because you’re thinking it, so anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Western politicians do this all the time, then wonder why they are denounced by moralists,” I observed.

“What about thinking you’re right because you are right?” Yukinoshita butted in.

“That can still be unconscious bias. Being right is not necessarily a requirement for bias. The related problem, which we see depicted in fiction is inherent corruption of power, and how morality slides into degeneracy through compromise. The Hayato method is already showing this flaw, one that’s heavily documented through history. If you meet halfway, you become half wrong. Keep doing that and you’ll be mostly wrong most of the time, at which point you’ll gain the hatred of those you oppose or corrupt to be like you. Evil that makes copies of itself, another popular trope in modern fiction,” I answered.

“You so casually describe the fate of nations,” complained Yukinoshita. Yui looked stricken over this exchange, but seemed unsure of the concepts described, or why they mattered. I knew, of course, that Yukinoshita was also the name of the Chiba Prefecture’s diet representative.

“Edgelord princess,” snorted Miura. Yukino glared at the gyaru.

“It isn’t funny,” rejected Yukinoshita, adjusting her glasses with anger. “Father is trying to balance a number of interests and protect as many companies and jobs in the prefecture as possible.”

“All for votes, in order to retain power,” reminded Miura in a sing-song voice.

“Do you really think some new face will have the connections to protect Chiba? Or will they run this prefecture into bankruptcy? Ignorance and greed would only return us to the bad old days when our ports were the setting for cheap fight movies with Sonny Chiba. Back when actual Yakuza were kidnapping and ransoming or murdering people? Because that’s what used to happen here thirty years ago. If it wasn’t for the mass arrests of known Yakuza, we’d still be a corrupt laughingstock today,” objected Yukino.

“If it was that terrible everyone would leave, the businesses would close, the neighborhoods would empty of good people,” Miura stated. “It’s a story we’ve seen in many places.”

“Yes, yes they would, and the big companies would leave, the jobs would go, better schools like this one would close, or downgrade by accepting lower quality students and more general instruction, and any universities that stayed would require higher tuition fees to pay for security, and likely some of them would also close. All the progress made since 1985 would be rolled back if Father wasn’t in charge, negotiating, getting concessions and offering connections between interests,” Yukino insisted.

“What would you do if your father lost his election?” Miura asked.

“I think that would depend on the circumstances,” Yukino answered,” And it would be pointless to speculate without those being known.”

I shrugged. Women are survivors. They’re always further down the civilization ladder because they are often in survival mode, not thinking about the future, only about what they had to do between now and their next period, or maybe the end of the year if they’re particularly wise. Even my kind little sister was like this, losing perspective and becoming more feral, more like all the grown women, finding what they could get right now and not worrying about the future at all. Yuigahama was clearly thinking about not going to college and getting a husband to support her, or failing that, running a flower shop because she won’t have to learn how to cook if she does that. I’ve long leaned away from women who like The Language Of Flowers book from America. It was translated into around fifty different languages and I’d made the mistake of reading it out of curiosity.  The narrator was an appalling person, a slut and drug addict, similar to the idiot backpacker who failed to hike the Pacific Crest Trail while trying to detox from heroin and random slut-sex. American women are probably the worst people in the whole world. And they have more rights than women anywhere else in the world. Ironic, right?

“Everything in life is about circumstances,” I muttered, injecting my inner thoughts into the debate between two angry women who disliked each other. Hina’s eyes swiveled back to me, narrowing.

“Care to explain?” demanded Miura.

“Random events can change your path. Discovering hidden talents. Learning what some things mean to you, different from others. Finding you are having a different perspective on solving a particular problem from the crowd, being the nail that sticks up and opting to dodge the hammer rather than just take it like everyone else. Luck matters. Chance is real. Circumstances happen. A random accident or badly timed news could end Yukinoshita-san’s political career, putting his family in disgrace with him, leading to a completely unanticipated life for Yukino. Hayato’s family might fall from grace as well, leaving the district or even Japan for foreign parts where their knowledge was still valuable. Would he still interest you if he lived in Hong Kong or Taiwan or Seoul?”

“No,” blankly answered Miura.

“No? Not even if he’s The One?” I asked her.

“Stop it, Hikki,” warned Yuigahama. I raised an eyebrow at her, noting Miura shaking. I backed off. No need to poke the bear.

“Circumstances,” I simply stated. “Are the bane of failed plans the world over, the balance of history. Circumstances.”

Club ended with a lot of hard looks at each other, and at me for having the temerity to summarize a complex issue. Women are always angry. Who they are angry with is merely circumstance.