Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Voices In My Head Tell Me So ❯ THREE ( Chapter 3 )

THREE

Unfamiliar ceiling.

No it isn’t. This is the same ceiling as always. And do you have to quote Evangelion first thing in the morning? I asked my passenger.

Sorry. I’m feeling melancholy.

I gritted my teeth and got up, got dressed for school and descended the stairs to make coffee and start cooking breakfast. I could hear Komachi tromping around and then startled feet thundered down the stairs to look at me cooking, confused. I poured her a mug of coffee. She sipped it, then made a face.

“Bitter,” Komachi complained. She spooned some sugar and stirred it in. “So what are you doing?” she asked me after the coffee woke her up. I plated the food and placed it on the table.

“Eat. We have school after this,” I reminded her. I sat and ate while she joined me. I sipped my coffee without sugar and came to terms with the bitterness. Coffee is like life.

You mean life is like a low bush in a tropical rain forest that’s had its fruit picked, its flesh ripped away and the bean inside dried, sold, shipped thousands of kilometers, resold, roasted, packaged, sold again, taken home, ground up, and hot water is poured through it before being consumed for the drug high it provides to boring salarymen? Asked the voice.

If I could glare inside my own head I was doing so, right now. Yes, life is exactly like that.

“You’re making a weird face, gomichan. Is the demon trying to turn you to evil?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t be a long trip,” I snarked. Komachi humphed at me, then finished eating.

“It was good food, Hachiman. You should cook again,” she admitted. Then she rinsed, washed, and put her dishes on the rack to dry. She headed upstairs while I finished cleanup of dishes, pots, and pans. I was still clean enough for school, though I think in future I’ll cook before I put on my school clothes to keep down the smells.

Komachi appeared in her school uniform and I handed her a bento I’d made. My own and my school bag were ready to go so we set off with Komachi riding illegally on my bike to her school gate. For whatever reason, we were never stopped by police over what is technically a crime in Japan.

You live in an anime. Blue hair girl has blue hair siblings. That isn’t remotely normal, but nobody notices. This is an anime world. You are the harem protagonist. Also, watch out for box trucks. You might get hit and isekaied somewhere worse. Sword fighting only looks cool on tv. In real life there’s screaming, blood, and lots of stitches with a high chance of infection and gangrene. And no pain killers. Also, fantasy worlds do not have a bidet or toilet paper.

What is toilet paper? I asked the voice.

Sigh. Really? This is what you get living in a country without serious forests so no paper mills. You get robot toilets. I am never getting used to that.

“Bye niisan. See you this afternoon!” Komachi shouted and ran off. Then cried in shock and ran back to get her school bag from the bike basket. How often does she do that?

I pedaled on to Soubu several kilometers further into the center of town. I racked the bike and locked it up at my usual spot, then entered the school, changing shoes and making my way to the classroom on the second floor. My seat is midway down the first row, next to the wall. The opposite from the protagonist’s seat in nearly all anime. Second to the last on the window side, so they can look out the window and contemplate their place in the world, and how they wish something exciting would happen.

It really is weird to see this place from your point of view.

What do you mean? I asked the voice in my head.

In most respects, this is a classroom, like any you see in anime. Most of your schools were built using the same layout and end up looking identical outside and in, and this school is no exception. You have spastic female teacher who somehow isn’t fired for unprofessional behavior and too sexy to be single. That’s so generic, yet she exists here.

What, Hiratsuka sensei is generic? I asked the voice. You can’t be serious.

Try Hidamari Sketch sometime. There’s a bunch of teachers in anime just as weird and unprofessional and oversexed as she is. Be glad you aren’t going to Osai Academy instead of Soubu. That place is 90% girls and just turned co-ed, and most of the girls are lipstick lesbians. The teacher in that one seduces her male students, and the female students frequently make sexual harassing comments to the male students. The hero of that story ends up dating the accountant because the rest of the council are too weird. At least that was in the anime.

They broadcast a show about sexual harassment? I asked the voice.

Well, yeah. I mean, it was the girls doing it, so that’s comedy. If guys were doing it that would be Hentai or Ecchi, and wouldn’t be allowed until after 10 PM.

The future is a weird place, I thought at my passenger.

Future? That show came out last July. See if you can find a box set of DVDs for it. Or maybe bit torrent stream. It is worth seeing. Your sister would probably laugh too.

The voice started humming some kind of repetitive theme song, then some smooth jazz saxophone. Then the voice started to sing the lyrics to Yamato Nadesico Education, a song I did not know but soon did.

I am trying to study. Can you stop? I asked the voice in my head. It stopped.

The rest of class was fine. After school I went to club and found Yukino and Yui standing outside the clubroom door and staring inside, commenting on an intruder. Well, I asked my voice, what now?

You defeated Chuunibyo. Its Zaimokuza, and he’s still infected. He wants you to read his novel. He’s got three copies printed out. On paper. Its… well, let’s just say that his chuuni problem is not helping his writing. You’re a pretty good writer of essays, and will probably become a professional novelist or columnist in the future. Use your best judgement here.

I looked from Yui to Yukino and took a deep bracing breath.

“Stand back. I’m going in,” I warned them. Yui’s eyes shone with hero worship, but Yukino looked disgusted, as usual. “Careful Yukino. Make that face too often and it will freeze that way.” I opened the door before she could squawk an insult in return and stepped in.

“Zaimokuza, are you posing in my clubroom?” I interrupted him. The breeze blew stacks of paper around onto the floor, and sakura petals floated in. It was not very dramatic because Zaimokuza is a fat guy with white hair wearing a trench coat, not a cute girl reading poetry.

“Hachiman! My brother in arms! My only friend. I have need of thee!” he exclaimed three times in four sentences. It was cringe.

You know, you should totally introduce him to the Ghost in the Shell TV show. He’s got more than a passing resemblance to Batou. On the other hand, even working out isn’t going to fix his personality… but it might attract girls.

“Is it something to do with all these papers blowing around?” I asked him, ignoring the commentary. And now I am picturing Zaimokuza with little round glasses and a flattop buzzcut haircut laughing offering natural oil to an AI pedatank. My brain hurts.

Don’t blame me. Maybe you should mention it. The future is more like GITS than many other shows. More flying drones and Socialist propaganda and vicious brushfire wars and flashmobs and IEDS in relatively peaceful places, all to make a political point. The collapse of China is only fifteen years away, and that civil war had EMP proliferation, the end of the internet, and mass starvation. It was Project Mayhem at the global scale.

What on Earth are you going on about? And stop interrupting, I complained to my passenger.

“Ah you have immediately ascertained my purpose, as you often do, my comrade at arms. This is my novel. I have printed out three copies for review by the Service Club, after speaking to the sensei of language and fury, Hiratsuka. Please, can you assist me in my endeavor?” he pleaded. The girls decided now was the time to enter our club room. Yui was hesitant and immediately latched on behind my back, pressing her oppai into me. It was a very nice feeling and nearly distracted me into a higher plane of existence. Her head near mine I could smell her breath as she peered over my shoulder, barely, by standing on her tip-toes. This unbalanced us both so I froze, having a moment of uncertainty. Voice, you said she’s my number one love interest?

Yes. Believe me now? Women always know where their boobs are. They don’t press them into people by accident. This is very much on purpose. She wants you to feel this.

Wow. My mouth felt dry, probably from nerves and my eyes weren’t seeing much at all as my brain rebooted.

“Hikki?” giggled Yui a second time. “Are you okay?”

“Just…*gulp*… just thinking,” I managed.

“Maybe not thinking very much,” she teased. She backed away, taking her distractions away as she retreated. I regarded her grin and blush. So cute.

Well, that never happened in the books or anime. I think the cookies event has caused new event flags. Good job, Hachiman. The Yui Route has been activated. Isn’t she adorable? Wouldn’t you like to come home to that cute girl every day?

Yes. Yes I would, I admitted to myself, staring at her adorable and sexy features.

Yukino was ordering Zaimokuza to pick up the mess of papers, giving Yui and I the side-eye glare while we were having a dramatic romantic moment of awareness.

“There are websites that will read your stories. Why are you here?” Yukino asked him, not amused by this request.

“They are unbearably harsh and won’t take the time to understand the context of my efforts,” began the excuses from Zaimokuza. I turned to glare at him.

“You were afraid to post this?” I stated clearly.

“The internet is relentlessly harsh,” he complained.

Of course it is. When you write garbage, someone will call you out for it. There’s a good reason that most conventional writing standards are the ones that publish for money. Focus on story and characterization, not gimmicky prose techniques and bad grammar, complained my inner voice.

“Zaimokuza, is it possible that you are abusing language to try and copy a bunch of different popular series without making the effort to write believable characters or plausible story?” I asked him. He turned his face away to lie.

“I… I thought I should stand out from the crowd. It’s an unconventional method. They don’t understand,” he tried to explain.

“And you thought that two high school girls and your only friend would be kinder than people who are actually interested in your efforts?” I asked him, accused him really. I looked at a random page from the floor. “This grammar is terrible. Where’s the descriptions of the location? What does this sound and smell like? Writing the five senses is a lot harder but more rewarding that shouting English phrases like spells. If English was magic, America would be the most powerful nation on Earth,” I pointed out.

America is the most powerful nation on Earth. For now.

“America IS the most powerful nation on Earth,” Yukino agreed with me in evident glee. I sometimes forget she spent part of her childhood there and speaks the language fluently.

Dammit.

“You use a lot of difficult words,” commented Yui beside me, also looking at a page. Zaimokuza winced, yelping like he’d been shot by an arrow.

“So what shows did you rip off?” I asked him, giving him a penetrating look. He collapsed dramatically.

“Clean up your mess. Think hard about improving yourself, and learn to write correctly,” ordered Yukino. I nodded support of this.

Needless to say, Zaimokuza was sent packing and I was able to sleep well that night.