Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Voices In My Head Tell Me So ❯ EIGHT ( Chapter 8 )

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

EIGHT

 

The following morning I donned my summer clothes and fresh socks and joined the others for breakfast, then participated in morning events with the children, then lunch break and frolicking in the nearby river. It wasn’t deep, barely more than a wide stream, but the girls showed off their teenage bodies in bikinis, including Miura, sensei, even Ebina Hina was cute.

If only she’d get mental help she wouldn’t go to waste.

Which one do you mean?

All of them. Miura is fixated on a jerk. Sensei is neurotic. Ebina is a twisted homosexual with displacement anxiety.

Yukino appeared, wearing a ruffled front suit that made plain my original estimation of her size was correct. I was careful not to stare or make a big deal out of it. Yui looked delicious in her yellow bikini. She played with the other girls.

Don’t just sit here. Join them.

I stripped down to my swim trunks to take part. We frolicked together in the water for around twenty minutes before calling a break for myself.

Duty calls. Your protégé is over there.

I spotted what he was looking at and approached, then sat in the shade beside Rumi.

“So, I’m told that we’re alike,” I began.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she retorted.

“A few months ago I had no friends and school looked doomed to social outcast status, again. Does that sound familiar?” I asked.

She explained her situation haltingly. I listened, prying out a few details gently.

“Huh. And you’re applying to middle school elsewhere right?” I confirmed. She agreed.

“I can make new friends there, where nobody knows about my ruined reputation,” Rumi swore.

Yui and Yukino joined me, also seeing the girl in question. They sat in the shade listening.

“That might work. Do you still talk to people from third grade?” I asked her. She thought about it and shook her head no. Yui and Yukino looked thoughtful, trying to remember. Yui looked embarrassed, but Yukino grimaced. Hayama, I suspect. Their awkward history remained unpleasant to them both.

“Neither do I,” I answered. “Most people don’t. Most people in high school aren’t necessarily in contact with friends from Middle School unless they’re in class together every day. People come and go. You let go of them, make new friends. Most adults aren’t in contact with friends from high school. Maybe one or two, but that’s it. That’s around one percent, and that’s a rounding error in mathematics. It doesn’t matter. So lost friends in elementary school? You won’t care once you move on,” I explained haltingly. “You may as well make friends with other outcasts. They have their own problems, but you’ll learn to tolerate them, which just makes you stronger. Real life is full of outcasts, and patience is a virtue for a reason.”

The girls looked thoughtful.

“Get ready. We’re going to head back in an hour. Gather your things. And get a shower. This river water stinks,” sensei insisted.

We cleaned up in the camp showers, individually, and put on clean clothes for the trip back to Chiba. Once more we took the van, sensei driving. Komachi nodded off onto Taishi’s shoulder, drooling onto his shirt. I smirked at that, enjoying an English language 1980’s New Wave music mix on the car radio. It had MP3 data disc compatibility, something Shinji Ikari would have killed to have over his tragic MiniDisc player. Sensei sang along to the music, as did I.

Wouldn’t have figured you for an 80’s fan. Its decades before you were born.

I like the classics, I complained to the voice. Sensei belted out the squeaky voice of Cyndy Lauper Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

A couple hours of increasingly busy roads and freeways and rush hour traffic before we eventually reached the station complex near the school. Komachi was sleepy, so I carried her bag and my own while she leaned on my arm. Yui helped with the other arm to the train, her getting off a stop earlier than me and my sister. Minutes later our stop came. We exited, me carrying Komachi piggyback.

“You must have stayed up late talking to the other girls last night,” I asked her. She murmured, mostly asleep. I got us home, her getting piggyback treatment. I dropped the bags at the door and crouched to get Komachi off my back once in the door, which was a trick and a half to unlock.

“Wuzzat?” Komachi asked, noting the familiar smell of home and our cat greeting us. He meowed. I noted the bowl was empty. I poured him some kibble and refilled his water dish, which he drank eagerly before crackling into the kibble. I gathered the bags and carried them to the laundry room for washing, then gathered my sister and carried her to her room and put her to bed.

Watch her wake you up at 3 AM confused as to how she got home.

No bet. She’s done that before, I replied to the Voice.

I started the laundry, and took a good soak in the furo, getting thoroughly clean before starting dinner. There were chicken thighs from a sale before the whole rush-to-camp event. They were just this side of turned, so I washed and marinated them in soy sauce and garlic to cover the smell and then simmered them with yellow onion, carrot and snow peas in pods, fresh from Chiba. You have to snap the ends off and remove the strings or they are really inedible. I prepped hot water for soba noodles, then started boiling them once the chicken was close to done. I heard Komachi thunk her heels on the floor of her room and stumble down the stairs, looking confused.

“How I get home?” my sister asked.

“Carried you. Dinner is almost ready. Wash your face. You’ve got bed hair,” I pointed out. Her ahoge had friends. She frowned at this news and headed for the bathroom. I set the table and put out plates of food and barley tea from the jug in the fridge.

“Thanks for the food,” Komachi offered, then dug in. It was good.

Your cooking has improved. Keep working at this and you’ll be able to impress Yui when you’re married and living together.

“This is good, niichan,” Komachi offered after a few minutes of eating. She dipped soba in the sauce that had developed in the chicken and vegetables, stirring it around and sucking it down. She gulped some cold barley tea and belched.

“Very good. Maybe not restaurant good, but better than Saize,” she offered.

“Thank you?” I accepted her praise.

“So you carried me onto the train, then from the station all the way home?” she queried. “What a good brother. I award you one hundred points.”

“And now that you’re awake, you can take a thorough scrub and soak in the furo. I need to clean up the dishes and hang up the laundry.”

She wandered off to clean her body and I cleaned the kitchen and stored the leftovers. They’d make good lunch tomorrow. When I finished hanging the laundry as the sun set I considered the last couple days. A few more weeks of summer break remained and then it would be Obon, and then school would restart for Fall.

Any suggestions what I should do for my college career? I asked the Voice.

That is a good question, and I shouldn’t decide for you, because there’s a lot of debate about what you should have done. The anime and novels end with your high school. The author said he might write about you in college if enough fans can get him a publishing contract.

Set aside the fictional aspect, Zvezda dude. Just help answer the question already.

Well, many people think you’d become a professional writer, though it is worth pointing out that most pro writers in Japan live poorly because the pay is terrible, even if the sales figures are good. If you write Oregairu as a light novel series based on your experiences as a pseudo-memoir it will probably sell for its brutal honesty. If you go to college that won’t make you better writer and will put you in debt, so don’t bother with college if you are going to write. If you mean to have a boring career like your parents and end up a salaryman, or worse an office temp like your author in my world, you’ll be unmarried, renting a crappy apartment, and write in your off hours.

Grim. What else?

There are relatively few who thought you should actually study the sciences. You have a gift for psychology, which is what you use when you solve problems unconventionally. A few suggest medical, dealing with patients.

So marrying a sugar momma is out of the question?

Hiratsuka Shizuka is nearing the end of her fertility, and she’d want to quit the moment she got pregnant to be a mother. That’s pretty much true for all women. Even Haruno would quit everything to take care of children. This is built in. Women without maternal instinct are so atypical they are treated as medical patients, either psychiatric or early onset of genetic diseases, including cancer.

Seriously? You think that not wanting kids could be cancer?

All women want kids. When a woman says she doesn’t, it is because she’s sterile and had miscarriages. She is lying about it. Never ask a woman if she has kids. Let her tell you first, just in case she’s barren. Barren women sue men over that, because they are insane. There’s considerable evidence to support this. Evolution is powerful stuff, overriding the brainwashing and feminist nonsense. Even with the 33% divorce rate in Japan, 80% of which are instigated by the wife, who gets half his money AND the house, and lifetime child support payments. With no proof the child is his in the first place. But for all that, women have kids. They just might not be the husband’s children.

Bitter much?

From you? That’s rich. As sweet as Yui is now, how will she feel about you in a couple years when you’re still in a small apartment and no hope of a raise at work? Will she get fed up and divorce you for the sake of the baby?

Even Yui?

The average number of divorces per person in Japan is five. Average. Some have more. Yukino will probably go through half a dozen divorces with her charming personality. Even Haruno will end up divorcing multiple times. She’s too much to handle for most men, and she’s too overtly promiscuous for any high status man to put up with her running around. Sensei is near the end of her youth and about to hit the wall, where her looks go and wrinkles appear. No man will want her. Any potentials will wonder how many men she’s been with, and if she’s even capable of loving a single man anymore. Her ability to bond is probably gone. The more partners, the worse this is for her.

So what about what I should do for a career?

Psychiatric medicine or author. Talent versus poverty-happiness and eventual divorce. Either way, really. Doctors don’t stay married either. Too much pressure, and Japan doesn’t believe in paying for mental health care because they pretend there’s no problem here. You’d have to go overseas to work.

Where would I go?

Argentina is addicted to psychotherapy, which is pretty much paying someone to listen to your problems in a semi-formal setting. It’s a con there. But you need to speak Castillian Spanish, and I speak English so I can’t help much. Also, Argentina keeps bankrupting itself and ruining their currency every couple years, so their economy is worse than Japan.

Not Argentina. Where else?

Australia speaks English, and they have socialized medicine. It is hot there, and absolutely everything is trying to kill you, except the sheep. They’ve had an influx of communists and muslims, both of which are attacking the working class Australians so they’re close to a vicious civil war. In the world I came from they’d had that and information from that continent was untrustworthy. Rumors of gun running, Chinese invasion, and death camps, not sure who was running them. Some of those factors are already in place.

Sounds awful, but also probably part of your messed up anime world, not mine.

Hopefully not. Still, while the USA, Canada, and UK all speak English, their own troubles are escalating. There’s going to be a civil war in the USA in a few years, Canada goes full Nazi, and the UK is about to make its own population a minority in favor of Nigerians and Iraqis and various muslim immigrants, which leads to civil war there, and it was very vicious in my world. The factors are compelling reasons not to go to any of them.

So what does that leave me?

Write self help books here. Learn enough psychology to cover specific topics and get famous enough to hit the lecture circuit. That pays well, much better than publishing. It is similar to why bands sell albums and still go on tour, because tour concert tickets are where the money is. Same with lectures.

Ugh. Really?

Well, what do you think you’re doing when you figure out some teeny-bopper problem? That’s a very targeting form of psychology. Even Rumi’s problem was psychology.

Is there anything else?

Ever thought about writing women’s romances? You’d have to write from her point of view, because that is what sells.

What, like Motoko Aoyama?

Oh, so you read Love Hina. Her character arc was the most interesting in the manga. In my universe the author ends up on the Diet as the conservative party leader in 2022.  

Love what? What are you talking about? She revealed her real name a couple years ago.

Are you kidding me? Look up Keitaro Urashima, archaeology department, department of antiquities, Molmol collection, Tokyo University. Right now. Look it up.

I typed it into my writing PC because entering all those search terms on my phone is ridiculous. I stared at the links.

Okay. So this world has both demons and magic, which explains how I can be here. And a way to get out of here. Motoko has the ability to banish demons, spirits, and ghosts. You can send me onto the next world, and be free of my annoying comments forever.

Really?

She’s your best bet. Tell me you wouldn’t rather be alone with Yui on your first time together.

Okay, you’ve sold me, Voice.

I wrote out a message to Urashima sensei and requested an introduction to Aoyama-san for an exorcism of a non-hostile spirit.

 

The train trip into Tokyo and the various transfers to Todai, including the security gate for a visitors pass, sadly necessary due to incidents of violence in the area. The security of the antiquities building was particularly good, including a bomb scanner like the Americans used since 9/11. Molmol had some civil war and territorial disputes resulting in very active assaults on their prince and princesses, one of which was Keitaro’s former housemate and close friend, Kaolla Su.

See the camera near the ceiling with the eye symbol on it? That’s Su Tech. It means she’s been here, and there will be more of it around.

And?

Her engineering projects were ten years ahead of the rest of the world and that was when she was twelve. Imagine how smart that makes her.

I followed an intern through the labyrinthian corridors to a large office with a number of artifacts that had been cleaned up and catalogued, with small plaques explaining their origin and cultural identity. One of the items was an ornate hand held fruit juicer. Three people emerged from an office and regarded me. Two women, one foreign, one in a kimono, and a man who stood like he knew martial arts, all of them curious but wary.

She’s here. And that’s him, and Aoyama. She’s filled out. Most fans think she should have been the wife. Well the ones that don’t think it should have been Kitsune. You should bow. Aoyama is a clan head, and Kaolla Su is still a princess.

I bowed.

“Hello. My name is Hikigaya Hachiman, and I request your help. For the last six months I have been possessed by a spirit from the future, and he knows things, enough to prove himself right and is a genuine entity.”

“Tea?” offered Aoyama Motoko. She poured me a cup and pushed it across the table to me, watching carefully. Keitaro observed from his seat, while Kaolla Su fiddled with a camera on a tripod.

Ask if I can speak to them.

What now? Why?

The tea is poisoned. It will probably exorcise me with the first sip. I won’t be able to say anything after that because I will be gone. So ask, please.

“The spirit wishes to speak to you before he is exorcised by this tea,” I said.

They winced at the deception.

Please repeat the following, word for word, Hachiman.

I see you brought the Hinata Blade, from the Annex. Keitaro, Kitsune was the Promise Girl. She kept quiet for Narusegawa’s sake, and out of love for you. She was the only girl your age that was healthy enough to be around you to be the promise girl. It has to be her. Motoko Aoyama has loved you since not long after you arrived, and wrote all those novels. That is public knowledge now, but give her a child already. Devotion deserves reward. Kaolla Su, it is nice to meet you. You’ve grown into a lovely woman. Keitaro, give Kaolla a child too. Maternity may curb her destructive urges. Get her to make cheap desalination and stop a dozen wars in the future. It would triple the number of inhabitable coastlines. Oh, and there’s a big earthquake coming in the spring March 11, 2:46 PM, a 9 pointer that shook six minutes offshore in the Japan subduction zone near Fukushima, with a big tsunami. The tsunami was taller than the sea walls predicted, around 10 meters. More than ten thousand dead and the reactor breaches. See if you can prevent the worst of the damage.

That’s it.

Thanks for loaning me a view of your life, Hachiman. Take care of Yui and your cute little sister. Okay. I’m ready for eternity.

I sipped the tea. The room went white and I fell backward. Sometime later I blinked and was able to see again.

Voice, are you there?

Voice?

Blessed silence.

“Did it work?”

“I don’t sense the entity anymore. Strange a ghost would warn us of future tragedy in order to prevent it.”

“Should we go for official channels or leak it to the usual place?”

“I’m thinking we drop a word in the ear of the Tokyo Agricultural University underground sake bar,” the man suggested. “Quite a few big names go there.”

“If it helps I am friends with the daughters of Diet leader Yukinoshita-domo,” I offered, slowly sitting up. My stomach hurt and I tasted blood.

“Here. You’ll want this to counter the effects,” offered Aoyama with a small sake cup. It smelled of nothing so I drank it and it stung my mouth. The fuzziness in my brain went away as time passed, along with the pain in my stomach and what I realized was a very fast heartbeat.

“So what was it like living with a ghost in your head for months?” she asked. She was close, and very lovely, sort of like Sensei, if Sensei did advanced martial arts and kendo.

“It was strange. Not bad, but strange. He was friendly, said he died in a car crash and found himself in my head instead of going into the expected big light at the end of the tunnel. I did establish he was from an anime world, and knew an awful lot about my life, often commenting and warning me of things before they happened.”

“So it was time travel?” confirmed Kaolla Su.

“Possibly. He said he came from a future in common with ours, but not exactly the same.”

“So it is possible there will be no quake, or it will happen at another time or day?” she sighed.

“I don’t know. It was the first I ever heard about it.”

“Was he ever wrong?” Keitaro asked.

“Well, not that I can remember. He did say that my life is a romantic comedy and I’m the protagonist of it all.”

“Sounds familiar,” answered Keitaro. “You should rest another hour before you go home. Where did you say you’re from?”

“Chiba. I’m from Chiba.”

 

THE END