Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Voices In My Head Tell Me So ❯ FIVE ( Chapter 5 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

FIVE

 

Next morning I found my sister relaxing on the couch nibbling a piece of toast with what was either grape or raspberry jam slathered all over it. Some was around her mouth, gluttony taking its toll. She was not dressed for school and the magazine she was laughing at had a seriously retarded article.

Uh. Looks like the Japanese version of Teen Vogue. In six years they’ll be advising teens on inappropriate celebrating of their first abortion.

That’s repulsive, I thought at my inner voice.

It gets worse. A few years after that they were pushing for transgender operations to sterilize gay teenagers, which is the same thing as the Nazis did, only these people used peer pressure to convince voters to make it into a type of government funded voluntary surgery, without parental consent or approval, and the survivors of the surgery, who didn’t suicide shortly after finding out its NOT like being a woman after all, would record testimony against those who conned them into the operations. None of them served time over their crimes against children, despite these being first world nations. The biggest perpetrators were the UK and its commonwealth.

You know, voice, I really hope you’re from an alternate universe rather than my actual future, because your world sounds like crap. Wait, you keep pointing out that Japanese hair colors are anime, like this is something you don’t have. So you ARE from an alternate universe. That’s… that’s a relief, actually.

Eh. I guess. We still see you as fiction, remember. Truth can be stranger. At least we know your sister is too smart to fall for that crap. Give her a napkin.

Why? I asked my voice.

She’s jammed.

Eh? Whatever.

“Better get dressed for school Komachi,” I reminded her.

“What time is it? Oh!” she yelped and started to pull off her clothes in front of me. I offered her a napkin.

“Wipe your face first,” I warned her. She took it confused. “You were eating toast?”

“Am I jammed?” she asked, wiping it off into a smear of red.

“You’re not an assault rifle,” I responded. The voice mimicked me at the same time.

I always liked your response there, it said.

I packed up bento for our lunches, pulled on my jacket and gathered my own bag. Ready. We headed to school, again illegally riding two-up on my bicycle and I noted three box trucks driving past over the speed limit, which the Chiba City Police force completely failed to notice. Almost like it was a conspiracy.

Here’s hoping you don’t end up in a world where it is wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon, then pretty much ignore romancing those girls and mostly power up like Hiratsuka on one of her Shounen Jump rampages. Or worse, a world with dragons, sarcastic white gods, people who punch like Fist Of The North Star, without the annoying yelping noise like an angry poodle, and you have to learn magic by practicing every day to magical exhaustion during your toddler years in order to expand your mana reserves. All to fight the Fisters and some dragons and a few monsters, while getting screwed over by bandits, con artists, and dealing with… well you wouldn’t be like that guy. You’re not a degenerate NEET.

What ARE you going on about? I complained mentally. I dropped off Komachi, who remembered her bag this time, and got back on my way to school, waiting for the racing trucks to pass FIRST, before entering any crosswalks on foot, pushing my bicycle.

Mushoku Tensei is going to be a very popular isekai show. Eventually around half of all anime will be cheap isekai shows. Some are good, like Mushoku Tensei (read the light novels) and some are terrible garbage that uses bullying to justify war crimes like the Japanese army in 1938 rape of Nanking. Which eventually lead to the US embargo on oil to Japan over all the war crimes. And then your roided up meth junkies declared war on the world and LOST, badly. After the war, Japan STILL refuses to admit it has a problem with methamphetimines, invented here, and depicts their abusers as Yankees in all anime, rather than admit Meth is a Japanese national addiction.

Are you trying to tell me to cut back on my coffee? I asked the voice.

No. I am venting. Sorry. Like most foreigners, I am baffled how a people who are generally nice and polite can go so wrong and yet come back to themselves. I do wonder if this is an upside to Buddhism.

Probably, I admitted to myself and him. So why get worked up about isekai?

They took over anime and most of them were pretty bad. They showed that the ugly side of Japanese men is still there, lurking behind the smiles. That violence may overtake your nation again, and it justifies continued military occupation of Japan, and warnings about rape and other dangers for tourists to your country. And despite all that, even seeing all these ridiculous hair colors, I forget we’re in an anime most of the time.

So what color are real Japanese people hair? I asked the voice.

Black, pretty much. Very dark brown to black. A few ainu have blonde hair as a recessive gene, but that’s even rarer than red hair, also a recessive gene. 99% of Japanese are black haired. All these colors you see, in my world, would require expensive and destructive dye jobs, with peroxide, and dark roots would show in a week. Saki couldn’t grow hair that long if she peroxided every week and redyed her hair. It would break from the chemicals and she’d be bald after a month or two.

But Saki has long beautiful blue hair.

Blue! Blue-grey! That color does not exist in humans in the real world. Yet here we are and I can’t stop thinking Kuroi-pantsu and what is underneath it being blue-grey instead of black. And then wondering if Yuigahama is also a case of carpets matching the drapes.

I don’t think my relationship with Yui is quite ready to investigate that personal detail.

Not yet.

I arrived at school, did my chaining duty and climbed upstairs after the usual series of events. Sensei showed up soon after, and waited for the bell to ring before matching the seating chart to the students. She glared at me, lifted my work visit form and waved it, shaking an angry finger and signaling a teacher conference at break time. I sighed.

Let’s see. That would be the To Work Is To Lose essay on my work visit form? My voice inquired.

Yes. I don’t understand why she hates my writing so much.

You mean you can’t understand why antagonizing a marriageable woman on the topic of being a lazy househusband would bother her at all when she works sixty hours a week, a third of which is unpaid, and owes a pile of money for an Aston Martin Vantage on a teacher’s salary in her final year of education at this school? And she’s worried about students she’s invested time and energy into turning out like Haruno.

Who? I asked.

She who must not be named. Yukino’s evil elder sister.

Is she more frigid than the younger version?

No. She’s friendly and personable and has big boobs she presses on men she likes and gets well into your personal space in a fun and sexy way.

Sounds terrible? Really? This is evil somehow? I asked with incredulity in my mind. Sensei was going on about historical fiction, and the natural tendency of victors of conflicts to insure the defeated were always shown to be evil and wicked, rather than just people with opposing viewpoints, or more often, people who worked for the stuff they were protecting from bandits with historians on the payroll. Really, the corruption across history.

Haruno is terrible because she makes people like her, and she’s… well, you’ll see. You’ll meet her eventually. I think I want you to make up your own mind about her.

Now you’re giving me agency to make up my own mind, after all the warnings and commentary on so many other people? I complained with exasperation.

I’m sure you’ll cope with the expectations placed upon you.

Wonderful, I sighed internally. I continued with class, taking notes as needed and pondering my essay, and considering a re-write. I got started on it as sensei wandered off topic into discussing the current economy and how it prevented a real recovery of the Japanese economy through overpriced rental real estate and essentially denied affordable housing near most employment, via greedy landlords who sold homes but not land, so could raise rent any time she wished. Japanese homes were often abandoned for this reason, as they depreciate due to terrible building standards and no owner maintenance. While this was true, and probably interesting, I was wondering how I should deal with my sensei’s hurt feelings over my work. Eventually class break started and I glumly followed sensei back to the teacher’s office, where she lit up a cigarette and glared at me, reading the words of my essay at me. It was only two paragraphs but I think I could have worded that less confrontationally.

Start with an apology, my passenger suggested.

“Uh, sensei, I realize now that I have been somewhat aggressive with my reasoning for my desired work visit. On reflection, I think I’d like to visit a robotic factory, since as a Japanese man I understand my future is either worthless paperwork accomplishing nothing, or tending to robots and filling hoppers for the robots who do actual work. Assembly work is all robots now. I am already aware I lack the preferred facial features of a customer service or hospitality worker, so retail, sales, and any customer facing jobs are worthless to me. You’d agree with me on that, correct?” I verified, cutting off her diatribe before she could start. She smoked, staring at me, before handing me a new form to fill in. I did so. I bowed, left, and found a bathroom to relieve myself.

No paper towels. No way to dry your hands. Third world nation, my inner voice complained as I wiped them off on my handkerchief, like all good Japanese girls and boys.

I returned to the classroom in time for our math professor to arrive and begin his lecture on polynomials, because I’m going to need to know that in my many job opportunities as a hopper slave in some factory making widgets.

If you’re lucky. The war with China is only 13 years away. North Korea lobs nuke missiles over Tokyo in 2022.

Why? I asked my voice.

They wanted to negotiate nuclear blackmail from the United States over the protection treaty for Japan by demonstrating they could nuke you with their missiles.

Do they have a working nuke? I asked.

Well, back then it was unclear. Some said yes, some said no. Those who knew wouldn’t tell, and those who told didn’t know. Then again, this is an anime world. If not for the cigarettes, Saki is almost a Yamato Nadesico, only with the yankee snarl when she wants to use it. Same as Miura, actually. A blonde Japanese girl, with ringlets. Exactly as does not exist in the real world.

As far as I am concerned, this place is real, and both are real Japanese girls, no matter what you think.

The voice sighed at my outburst. It actually thought *sigh* at me.

As you say. This is real to you. And I’ll remind you that in this universe, in this place, you are the romantic lead in a high school romantic comedy.

Yuigahama was passing notes to Miura and Hayama during class. I ignored this. She isn’t my girl yet. Probably.

She has a kind personality and a good attitude and she has decided she wants to either run a flower shop, a pastry shop, or be a bride, not go to college and focus on a career nobody will care about when she’s 30 and lonely. Nope, this one got enough clue to understand important things early enough to save herself from a terrible fate. If you teach her how to cook she’ll only get more valuable as a wife, the voice teased. And she already likes you.

Why do I feel like you’re steering me away from something? I asked the voice.

Well… in the novels you sort of end up not quite with Yui and not quite with Yukino, and sort of maybe willing to consider trying to date them, maybe.

Could you be any more unclear? I objected.

Blame the author. He wasn’t clear either. An entire season of anime to discuss whether you were going to get serious or not.

Wait. Anime. You mentioned that before. Not just novels or manga, but anime? My life was anime. Was this comedy OVA direct to video or broadcast?

Broadcast. Pretty good market share domestically. Very popular overseas too. American teenagers know your struggles with sarcasm and ugly eyes. Way more shippers for Yukino and Miura and even Ebina over Yui or Saki for some reason. I never understood that, actually. Yukino finds you interesting and likes arguing, but being male we don’t confuse arguments with sexual interest. That’s a female form of madness, and explains a lot of divorces.

Ebina? The blood fountain Yaoi fangirl obsessed with BL? That Ebina? I asked, horrified.

It’s mostly the BL fans that like that perverse pairing. That one and with Saika.

The Boy. I mean, yes, he’s effeminate and cutesy. I guess. But so is Yui and she’s actually a woman. So Ebina and these BL fangirls in your universe think I somehow fit with her? That’s crazy.

BL fangirls disgust everyone, everywhere, and they are the same everywhere. They would be rapists if they had a penis. Everybody hates them. Especially gay people.

That’s a pretty harsh appraisal of someone else’s hobby.

They were big players in the civil war in my country, including massacres and use of weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations for the crime of not supporting their goals. It was bad, by the end. Many war crimes were committed by their members.

Okay, your universe is hellish. I got it. What about in my real world, where girls have blonde or blue-gray hair, and red is the new orange?

Oh, right. Well, I guess I should explain the next task for the Service Club. Due to the form for the work visit, some of the cliques can’t all go together, so there’s some infighting and a chain mail text message is floating around claiming Hayama’s clique are thugs with poor morals.

Let me guess. You know who is doing it, and why. You know everything, after all.

Correct. If you observe when Hayama isn’t present, you’ll recognize the answer right away. At lunch Hayama left and the answer was staring me in the face.

After school I went to club prepared to deal with the problem. I wrote the problem on the board, and the answer, and the solution. Hayama showed up after Yui did and I pointed to the board when he arrived, not bothering to say anything. He stopped his lame excuses and just stared. Read it again. Stared a bit more. Looked at me. Open and shut his mouth. Thanked us and left.

“Hikki, what is all that?” Yui finally asked. Yukino was massaging her aching temples and glaring at me.

“You got a text message making claims about how nasty Hayama’s friends are.”

“Hey, how did you know?” Yui complained. I pointed at the board, point two.

“Why are you saying you know who did it, but don’t say?” Yui asked.

“The person responsible knows that I know. That’s the important thing. And finally, the solution.”

“Announce you are going to join another group for the visit, on your own,” she read. “And that will fix things?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“But how do you know Hayama will do that?” she asked again. This time Yukino answered.

“See point Two. Knowing implies the possibility of telling others. It is blackmail,” the political girl said, both disgusted and impressed at the simplicity of the answer.

“Hikki, that’s kinda… I mean yeah, it solves things, but why did… oh,” she said, understanding now why Hayama was the one behind it all.

She isn’t dumb. She’s not as smart as you. Many people in this school are not as smart as you, pointed out the voice.

Yukino is, I disagreed mulishly.

Yes, Yukino is as smart as you. So is the student council president, and sensei, and your little sister, and she who is not to be named. They’re all as smart as you. They are your peers. That does not discount the value of Yui as a woman and potential wife. She’s smarter than Orimoto, and she’s also genuine. A feature I know you like.

And she has big boobs.

Yes, she also has big boobs. A smiling wife is a lot easier to get along with than an angry one like Yukino would be. Her standards are so high, and she’s so obsessed with dominance and power that she’s going to be disappointed by all men. She kinda likes you a bit, but you still aren’t handsome enough for her, and her tiny rebellious streak won’t extend to interfering with her ambitions. This is why, in the end, Yukino is wrong for you. Enjoy the conversation, by all means. Savor the arguments and petty spiteful insults she throws at you like darts. And when you meet She Who Will Not Be Named, you’ll see the contrast.

What do you mean I’m not handsome enough? I complained.

You kinda look like Pan San, which she likes and finds amusing and curious, but curiosity only takes you so far. You’re not a big league hitter or famous economist or business tycoon her parents would approve of at a dinner table full of the wealthy elites of Chiba Prefecture.

I simmered down and when the club period ended I went home, finding Komachi making dinner there and hugged her.

“Thank you sister. For being here for me,” I said, not entirely sure why but I was sure I wanted this to be said right now. She looked at me curiously, then grinned and urged me to get a bath while the furo was hot. I did. Dinner was good, and homework didn’t take too long.

The following week we did the field trip. Yui and Hayato were with me, along with Saika. We visited the robotics center a few blocks from the school, close enough for a short walk there. I ended up holding Yui’s hand, which she liked, and we observed the machines working, and the technicians filling hoppers with parts, or running calibration testing on the arms to insure they worked properly, adjusting any failures back into the right tolerances. It looked like a really boring job. And the machines were loud.

At the end of it, Yui held my hand and steered me away from her other friends, who announced they had reserved a room at a local restaurant and were ordering food and drinks. She smiled, waved them off and we found ourselves looking out the enormous windows at the center of Chiba City. It was busy, rush hour having begun, and there was bumper to bumper traffic, taxis, and buses.

“Hikki, can I ask you something?” Yui said carefully.

Here we go. Don’t ruin this for her. She’s everything better than Orimoto, the genuine Nice Girl™.

I nodded.

“When I saw you get hurt saving Sable from being hit by a car, I was really impressed that there are boys that still act like heroes. I came to your house afterwards and gave your sister candy for you. I wanted to meet you properly. When I found out you were in my class I was super embarrassed, because I didn’t know what to do, but you didn’t approach me and you seemed really alone, and you had this creepy laugh. Lately you’ve been kind of weird in a different way, like you look off into space and go through all these expressions. And maybe that’s just something you do. Komachi said you’re kind of that way. But you still saved my dog and got hurt. So now we spend time together every day after school and I can kind of see how you do things, and it’s kind of amazing how you can think so far ahead like that. The way you solved this rumor problem with three sentences; that was cool. I thought people only did stuff like that in detective shows on TV. What I’m trying to say is that I like you Hikki,” she finally declared. I looked into her serious brown eyes and her orange hair and wondered if this is a face I’d like to wake up to every morning.

By all that’s holy, yes!

What should I say? I asked my inner voice.

Kiss her, you fool!

So I kissed her. She was a little shocked at first, but then returned the kiss, face bright red and hot against my face.

“Okay. Go out with me, properly. Meet my family. I will meet yours. Let’s go on dates,” I finally said. She tasted like bubblegum. She took my hand again.

“Okay Hikki.”