Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Hedgehog's Duet ❯ Hedghogs Do It Carefully ( Chapter 1 )

The Hedgehog’s Duet

An Isekai story

Once, I was a hero. Once, I faced my fears. Once I got into the goddamn robot. There was terror. There was pain. There was complicated relationship drama. There were daddy issues. There were mommy issues. And in the end of all my struggles I crawled from the sea of red goo, Asuka beside me and thought: I’m supposed to repopulate humanity with her? Right as I was reaching for her throat to strangle her a stranger appeared. He was Japanese. He was a high school student. I can tell because of his uniform. And he said to me:

“Come with me if you want to live,” and offered his hand. So I took it and left a ranting Asuka to her own devices and moved on. This is an isekai story, but it is not the conventional sort. Rather than a story of adventures and saving the world after a life of dullness, I leave that adventure behind and begin a life of dullness I dreampt of for the last year.

My name is Ikari Shinji, and I am in modern Japan. My savior, it so happens, is a modest student with squinty eyes often mistaken for a low ranking Yakuza. He’s got a smile that makes women shudder, and not in the good way. Despite this, he has two serious girlfriends, and they know about each other. I am not jealous. I want a quiet life. He says that women gang up on you, and its only because he’s so busy he can get any peace and quiet. I used to doubt that, but I’ve seen enough pictures in his messages… oh, yeah. We exchanged LINE IDs, so we stay in touch. He did two really nice things for me. The other is why I’m finding a bit of peace in my life. I have a girlfriend. A shy, sweet, musically talented guitar playing girlfriend. She’s got a WePipe channel, and it’s popular. More than 30,000 subscribers. We are both high school students, and she’s even shyer than I am, which is really saying something.

On arrival in this world we learned my ADAT player had died from Red Goo contamination in the electronics, so Hitori bought me a phone and my entire playlist fits on the memory card. My ADAT is in a shrine in my apartment. I light incense for it monthly and pray for its safe rest. It earned it, after all I’d been through in Tokyo 3.

In this world I only listen to classical music, Beethoven and Brahms are my favorites, though I also like Bach’s Cello Suites. All those variations are fun to play. So many of them, and so many ways to express myself. At Hitori’s suggestion, she helped me setup a WePipe account and loaned me her older web camera and microphone so I am able to record and upload sessions of myself playing. As a complete nobody in this world, I allow the camera to show my face. Hitori is so shy she hides her face on all her videos. I have some views, but a single thin and pale boy playing a cello in front of a camera is hardly noteworthy.

Hitori is in a band. It is named Kesshoku Band, which is a pretty weird name. It means Zip Tie. I attend her concerts. I have met her band mates, three nice girls, and the elder sister of Ijichi owns the club where they play most often. They practice, and when they play Hitori has to struggle with stagefright. She has a video of her first concert there, played from inside a large cardboard box. Sometimes Hitori just has to find a quiet dark place and hunker down. I generally go to her then and hunker down with her. I can relate to her feelings of being overwhelmed. This world is so big. There are so many people. The Earth I came from had only ten million people left. This one is over seven billion. That’s a lot of feelings, communication, problems, relationships, and noise compared to what I was used to. It is also a lot of foods and ingredients I did not have in Tokyo 3. You can get bananas here. I do miss Pen Pen though. I hope he’s gone to a better place. Or maybe he’s swimming around, since he probably didn’t melt like all the people. Maybe he’s keeping Asuka company.

Hitori has a nice family. Her parents are thrilled that she has me for a boyfriend, and they approve of my slow and gentle approach with her, being there through her panic attacks and overthinking and anxiety. I do relate. She’s far worse than me, though to be fair I panicked when evil angels taller than buildings were attacking like Kaiju. They don’t have those here. Except in movies, for fun. To think that Gojira is just a fun movie for a Saturday afternoon matinee, with your date and popcorn and cold drink. Something to kill a few hours and hold hands together in the dark. Perfectly safe and knowing when you exit the theater you can step out into the normal bustle of late afternoon or early evening Tokyo, cars and people everywhere and the only thing burning is the street food vendors offer from Izakaya. It is a peaceful world. I don’t talk about it much with Hitori, because I do not think she is ready to understand things. I am a veteran of a war, after all. And we lost. The world was destroyed. All the people melted. Instrumentality was a nightmare. Here are all these people, and here I am free to be myself, alone, and able to hug my girlfriend and be separate beings. I don’t need to know every thought. I don’t have to guess her mind and I don’t want to know everything. I’m just there for her.

Hitori has a little sister. She is very funny. She mocks Hitori pretty often, just saying the embarrassing things out loud. I think maybe little sisters are supposed to do that. Not that my own sister did, but she was a lot more mellow and thoughtful.

Sometimes Hitori and I get ambitious… with our music. We try to accompany each other. She can strum and pick and does a decent version of Bach on a different octave from me, keeping tune as I play, and we’ve recorded together. That one did poorly on my channel, but got her usual number of views on hers. Many odd comments, including some wondering if I was her boyfriend. Another time I tried to play my cello to several of the parts of their playlist and was soundly downvoted by the girls. They said it is the wrong image, and it is hard to maintain their tempo. They aren’t wrong. When I play their songs alone I tend to play the bass part slower and more steady paced, with flowing notes rather than sharp. That got some views on my channel, oddly enough.

I write to Hachiman, my rescuer, every week or so. Sometimes it takes a few days for him to reply, but I’m patient. I send him video links and pictures of Hitori and I dating together, walking around Tokyo, and he says he likes the look of us as a couple. I think he may be right.