OverMaster's Little Crummy Corner of Sub-Par Writing

[OverMaster]

"You're wrong," Hasegawa Chisame told Kakizaki Misa. "As a matter of fact, I've been confessed to by a guy once."

Negi Springfield and Tsunetsuki Matoi stopped eating immediately, and their heads sprang up to stare silently at Chisame. Not so silently in Matoi's case as a shrill JIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII began emanating from her.

Chisame rasped quickly. "I rejected him, of course! The guy was a real loser! It was last year..."

---

Chisame looked at the lover letter just placed in her hands and winced.

"N-No!" she said, shoving it back at the black haired boy, two years her senior. "I can't accept this, Senpai! I don't even know you!"

He looked absolutely crushed, pulling back and staring at her with widened, devastated eyes. "Oh, oh, okay...!"

---

"He gave up very fast, didn't he?" Shiina Sakurako observed, already finished with the main course and starting with the dessert. "He wasn't trying his best then. It's clear you weren't soulmates."

"No, obviously, they weren't!" Matoi huffed. "What a quitter! What a spineless jellyfish! Not trying and trying, to get the supreme prize that is Chisame-sama...!"

"If he'd done that, you'd be constantly trying to stab him right now!" Chisame growled.

"Oh, that guy?" Misa mused aloud. "Yeah, I think I know which guy are you talking about..."

---

"No," Misa said bluntly, handing him the parfumed envelope.

"But, but you haven't even opened it...!" the boy whimpered.

"I don't need to, I already have a boyfriend!" Misa said, folding her arms in indignation. "What kind of girl do you take me for?!"

He turned around, a broken shell of a man, and began walking away.

---

"Oh, so he doesn't have money," Kugimiya Madoka said while starting with her own pudding.

"How can you deduce that from such a short story?" Morisato Keiichi-senpai asked.

"I'd have accepted him and dumped Taisuke if he'd been wealthy," Misa said matter-of-factly.

"That, that's the kind of thing someone should be saying only for you to protest!" Itoshiki Nozomu-sensei argued.

Sitting by his side, Kaga Ai sighed sadly. "Ah, y-yes! I'm sorry to admit I also did a very bad thing by breaking his heart! A few months ago, shortly before I learned bout magic, he approached me as well..."

---

"S-S-Sorry, but I can't possibly burden you with such a troublesome person as myself!" Ai gasped, giving several steps back. "I'm sure you deserve someone better, whoever you are!"

"Please don't say that!" the younger student asked. "You're a wonderful person, you shouldn't be that harsh on yourself!"

"I beg you, don't become a liar for my sake!" Ai whined. "I couldn't ever forgive myself! I'm sorry! But you must forget about me! It shouldn't be hard! Sorry, I don't mean that you look forgetful or stupid, it's just...! I'm sorry, okay?!" she cried, turning around and running away.

---

"I'm sorry, whoever you were!" Ai yelled, raising her hands much like her beloved teacher. "I was a dirty liar myself! I told you that just because I didn't like you! I'm in despair! Being a liar who hides behind false concerns for others has left me in despair!"

Then she looked at Itoshiki and sobbed. "I'm sorry I stole your routine, too!"

He sighed. "Think nothing of that, but please don't make a habit of it..."

Kagurazaka Asuna rolled her mismatched eyes. "Ah, yes, that guy..."

"Did he propose to you as well, Asuna-san?" Sakurazaki Setsuna asked. "I hope you were mindful of his feelings. Casanova or not, it sounds like he always was respectful in his proposals and never pushed the matter after being rejected, and your temper can get the best of you at times, so--"

"Nah, it wasn't me," Asuna cut Setsuna's latest lecture short. "He proposed to Konoka."

Setsuna's eyes instantly flashed crimson. "You better kicked that fiend's ass hard..." she growled from the bottom of her throat.

"Setchan!" Konoe Konoka chided her. "Stop stereotyping Asuna like that! She's not my enforcer gorilla or anything like that!" She daintily picked her cup of tea up and sipped elegantly. "I can handle myself just fine. I kicked his ass myself."

"That's my Ojou-sama," Setsuna approved, relieved.

"He sounds like a chronic womanizer," Saber said with disgust, refilling her bowl of rice for the third straight time. "What a pitiful existence."

Somewhere in the Throne of Heroes, Gawain and Lancelot sneezed.

"Actually, I didn't feel he was bad when I rejectionated him," Suzushiro Haruka shared. "It's just that, well, there's something about him that is kind of repulsive, don't you think? There's something about him that tells you 'No, this guy couldn't ever possibly be' and makes you want to shove him away."

"Maybe that was Yukino-senpai standing behind you and whispering those words in your ear," Saotome Haruna guessed.

Haruka shrugged. "That might be it, but you felt it too, didn't you?"

"Yeah, well, I did," Haruna admitted.

Inugami Kotaro gasped loudly. "Four Eyes didn't give him the time of the day?! He must be damn hideous then!"

Yuuki Rito scowled and slapped the back of Kotaro's head. "What are you implying about Haruna-chan, you brat?!"

"No, no, he isn't bad looking either," Yukihiro Ayaka pondered calmly. "He doesn't look any worse than Morisato-senpai or Rito-san, and he's certainly polite and kind enough. But--"

"But he isn't a child, so you weren't interested," Asuna said rather correctly.

"Shut up, you!"

"What is that... young gentleman's name?" Negi asked. "It sounds like I should be aware of his activities, in the event any overzealous girl ever attacks him, or an offended boyfriend goes after him."

"Or girlfriend," Hakase Satomi pointed out.

"Right," Negi nodded. "I mean, if from our team alone, he's approached Chisame, Ai-san, Konoka-san, Iinchou, Haruna-san, Haruka-san and Misa-san, who knows how many others has he tried to romance?"

Chachamaru rasped very quietly while refilling Saber's bowl for her.

Satomi grew agitated in a second. "You too, Chachamaru?! Why didn't you ever tell me?!"

"His name is Aijo Rentarou," Chachamaru said very quietly. "I'm sorry, Mother, I was just created back then, and I hadn't yet fully assimilated my safety report protocols..."

"He proposed to you when you still were a newborn...!" an apoplectic Hakase cried.

"He had no way of knowing that..."

Misa hummed. "Rentarou, right. That's his name! I had forgotten. He's kind of forgettable like that. I wonder what is he doing now...?"

---

The 108 Girlfriends who Really, Like Really, I mean it, Man, Really Love You, Dude.

---

Chapter One: Wait, Weren't They Supposed to be 100?

 

[OverMaster]

The young man knelt before the altar, brought his hands together, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

"O Goddess of Love," he prayed. "Please, end my suffering. Allow me to know love at last..."

The temple was deserted at this time of the day, but for him and a shrine maiden sitting on the lower steps leading to the altar. She was very young, probably thirteen years old, and had red hair arranged in four pigtails that gave the impression of having an octopus sitting on her hair. Although wearing the red hakama and white robe shirt of a priestess on duty, she had set her bamboo broom aside and was currently watching soap operas in a portable TV.

"I'm sorry, Yamazaki-san!" a woman sobbed. "I'm so sorry! We can't be together because we... because we're siblings!"

"No! You're wrong, Mika-san!" a man declared melodramatically. "We aren't sublings... because my real father is Nabeshin, the Man from Stars!"

"Wow, what a plot twist," said the small miko, apathetically munching on chips from a Kira Poofs bag. "Who could've seen it coming..."

The young man sighed and kept on praying. "Since my earliest childhood, I've had this sensation of missing something. There's a huge feeling of absence in my heart, and it only grows bigger over time. I can't-"

"Would you terribly mind keeping it low?!" the girl said from below. "I'm trying to pay attention here!"

"This is the voice of my soul speaking!" he protested.

"Tell your soul to speak lower then!" the girl scolded him. "You do this every weekend, what makes you think it'll be any different now?!"

The boy groaned to himself and reassumed praying. "Please, please, please! I won't bother you anymore if you hear my plea! It's not a big deal for you, right? You're the goddess of love with almost unlimited power! This can't be difficult at all for you...!"

"Geez, right when she was about to stab him!" the girl growled, as her screen began filling with static. She began changing the channels back and forth. "C'mon, c'mon! I told Oneesama we should've contracted Netflix, this never happens with Netflix...!"

And then there was a large flash of light that somehow pushed the girl back, dropping her at the edge of the step. She helped herself back up blinking many times, and the boy also looked down, only to gasp in terror at the sight of a pair of long, lean, tanned female legs coming out of the television set.

"NANI SORE?!" he screamed, and somewhere in Honnouji Academy, Jakuzure Nonon sneezed. A full woman, shapely and curvaceous, with dark skin and long white hair, unmistakably youthful and vital but with the MILF aura of a mature temptress, pulled herself out of the set wearing a skimply black minidress and high heeled shoes. "Poltergeist?!"

The woman stood over the wearily sighing miko, dusting herself off. "Okay, if the Dark Agency sent you, please give me a sec to transform," the miko told her. "Hey, you, Loser!" she called upwards. "Think nothing of what'll happen next! We're filming a student movie!"

"Actually, I'm not here for you, but him," the tanned female said. "You're Shiho-chan, right? You know Skuld-chan, don't you?"

"Yeah..."

"Right. I thought so. Well, keep doing those things you're doing. I root for you and Tate, you know."

The miko nodded blandly. "That's good to know." She grew more interested. "Hey, can you give me an amulet or something that-?"

"Sorry, I told you I came for him!" the gorgeous woman said, merrily skipping upwards to stand before the paralyzed, huge eyed boy. "How do you do, I'm Urd, the goddess of love you were praying to! Pleased to meet you, Aijo Rentarou! Sorry, I guess I stalled this way too long!"

"Huh?!" Rentarou intelligently said.

Urd nodded. "You'll see, those love problems you've been having so far? I guess they're my fault, somewhat. See, in this world, there are two types of romantic love, that which has to be earned through hard work and constant pursuit, like the task and a half Shiho-chan has ahead of herself. That's the most common kind of passion by far."

"It wouldn't be so difficult if the wonderful goddess I have devoted myself to so much graciously gifted me with an amulet or charm to ensure my happiness as a reward for my hard work," Shiho said, having caught up to her and bowing.

Urd frowned, ran a finger over the altar, and presented its dust covered tip to her. "Sorry, sister, but you're on your own! Now listen, Rentarou-kun, the second kind, that is the special kind you'll see in sappy love novels and movies, the rare and valuable 'love at first sight', not to be confused by mere infatuations. Are you okay? You look a bit pale."

"You're a goddess who just popped outta a TV to address me directly!" Rentarou panicked. "Why aren't you flipping at this, is this a frequent sight to you?!" he demanded of Shiho.

"I've seen some shit," Shiho grumpily told him. Then she glared at Urd. "I'd hoped you'd be better than Skuld!"

"For that, you want Belldandy," Urd wagged a finger at her before keeping talking to Rentarou. "Don't hold this against me, kiddo, but the day I had to calibrate the red thread of Fate linking you to your soulmate, I was distracted by an important matter..."

"You were drunk?" Shiho guessed.

Urd stared at her angrily.

"Skuld's told me about you," Shiho summed up.

Urd threw her hands up. "I was just slightly tipsy, okay?! I've got every right to make my job easier every now and then! Anyway, after it was decided that you'd be one of those lucky souls with a Love-at-First-Sight soulmate somewhere, I kind of accidentally added two cyphers to the number of soulmates you'd have while punching the stats in..."

"I have no idea whatsoever what are you talking about," Rentarou confessed, his eyes now tiny.

Urd sighed irritably as Shiho shook her head. She grabbed the yelping miko by the back of the head and made her look into the boy's eyes. "Shiho-chan! What do you feel now?!"

"Disgust!" Shiho said without a hesitation. Rentarou flinched at the all too familiar admission.

"Precisely!" Urd let go of her. "Our Yggdrasil System, controlling the fates of humans, has to compensate the balance of luck in the world. So, since you were granted the boon of one hundred eight soulmates, you had to compensate by having terrible luck at love otherwise. But since enough time has passed without us correcting that error, it's time now to address it. I'm here to notify you that you'll start meeting your intended soulmates tomorrow."

"... 108?!" the boy squealed after a very long pause. "You really are filming a movie, right?! Or is this the Candid Camera webshow?!"

"You just saw her coming out of a TV barely bigger than my fist, Senpai," Shiho snorted.

"You can do all kinds of amazing feats with CGI nowadays!" Rentarou argued.

Urd frowned and slapped him across the head. "Stop drinking the officially mandated Kool-Aid already, son! Sheesh, no wonder the Mystery is in the decline...!"

Rentarou grumbled and rubbed the new bump on his head. "Okay, okay, I'll believe you! Sorry, Ma'am, I guess I should be thankful... or not! Look, I know I asked for better luck at love, but 108 is too much!"

Urd rolled her eyes back. "Just like a man, right? Once they get what they want, they start having second thoughts and complaining!"

Shiho nodded. "And they have the galls to call us complicated creatures!"

"I'm just stating the obvious, sorry!" the boy said. "If I understood you correctly, I've been made the soulmate to 108 different girls..."

"I never said that they'd be all girls," Urd cautioned.

Rentarou paled horribly.

"But for all I know, they could all be," Urd shrugged. "Finding out is part of the fun."

"You don't know who did you bind me to?!" the young man screamed.

"I was a bit tipsy, remember?"

"That, that goes beyond being just a bit drowsy!" Rentarou cried. "How am I supposed to decide out of 108 different people and break 107 hearts?! I'll be even more hated than before!"

"Look at the kind side, you're unlikely to ever meet all of them," Shiho said. "Many spend a whole lifetime without ever meeting their soulmates."

"No, that's just a saying," Urd informed them. "If you're a special soul bound by the red thread, you're destined to meet the terminal at the other end of it. You'll meet all of them sooner or later."

Rentarou took both hands to his head. "So I have to reject 107 people after all...! How could I do that to so many?!"

"Well, yeah, there's another thing," Urd rubbed the back of her neck uneasily, a gesture she'd picked up from Keiichi without noticing. "Being rejected by your soulmate drains your existence of the good karma and fortune you were granted, so if you reject them, they'll eventually die in misery and suffering, most probably in freak accidents and... have you watched the Final Destination movies? Something like that, those are their odds."

Rentarou and Shiho stared at her in appalled terror.

Urd lowered her head. "I'm sorry this all happened because of me. I'll try to help by-"

Shiho threw a sandal at Urd's head. Hard.

 

[OverMaster]

"Why are you wearing those stupid glasses?" his roommate asked him as they walked towards Monday morning classes.

"I don't want to make eye contact with any girl today," Rentarou confessed.

Saruyama Kenichi raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you finally got burned? Look, man, I understand, but you can't just give up on women forever. What are you gonna do, become a monk?"

"Maybe," Rentarou said. If he did that, perhaps he could ask the gods to spare his soulmates, whoever they were. He'd just devote himself to celibacy the way he'd devoted himself to finding a girlfriend, and surely, the divine beings would understand...

"Okay, even if you say that," Saruyama argued, "why are you worrying about running into girls? We study in the male wing, dummy!"

"Just in case," Rentarou mumbled, remembering Urd's 'I never said anything about them being only women' speech from yesterday. The last thing he wanted, after causing someone's death, was having a man falling in love with him. Well, other than Chris Hemsworth, but could anyone blame him?

"You're paranoid, not even Rito's got it that bad. Hey, Rito!" Saruyama waved at an orange boy also heading their way. "Get a load of this, Rentarou snapped so bad he doesn't even want to look at girls anymore!"

Rentarou blushed. "Please, not so loud...!"

Yuuki Rito looked back at his incoming classmates. He remembered the conversation about Aijo taking place yesterday in Evangeline's resort, the one where he'd chosen not mentioning anything about studying with that boy. "Huh? Oh, hey, guys. You know Sensei will give you a hard time over those, right, Aijo?"

Rentarou flinched and pushed the obscuring sunglasses up his face. "I'll tell him I'm hurt in the eyes, I don't know, I'll make something up!"

"What brought this along?" Rito asked, the three walking together now.

Saruyama laughed. "Man, a lucky dog with two hotties like you wouldn't understand! It's obvious Rentarou would crack sooner or later, but I'm telling him that he should keep his chin high! Someday his big chance will come along!"

Rentarou was thinking of how to tell them that was exactly what worried him, when a much younger girl, far from her Elementary School grounds, came running by, making him shudder. "Rito, Rito!" she called out, holding a small bag in a hand. "You forgot your lunch at home!"

Rito blinked. "Oi, Mikan!" He looked into his schoolbag. "Dammit, that's right! Sorry you had to come all the way here..."

"Honestly, where is your head?" the little girl with the pineapple hairstyle chided him, handing him the bagged bento. "Please be more careful, I had to convince Nao not to eat it herself..."

Seeing a terrified Rentarou step back from Mikan, Saruyama frowned and yanked his sunglasses off. "Oh, for the love of-! It's just a kid, man!"

"N-No!" Rentarou gasped, trying to get them back. "Give me that, I'm telling you, I need them...!"

Mikan looked at him, distracted by his voice. "Huh? What's the problem?"

Rentarou froze in place as she looked at his face curiously.

He couldn't help but looking back, despite himself.

Their eyes met.

Time seemed to stop for a moment.

And then...

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

Somewhere in Mundus Magicus, Roronoa Zoro sneezed.

Mikan blinked and frowned. "So...?" she said.

"Nothing," Rentarou sighed with relief, taking his glasses back and putting them on. "I'm just a bit jumpy today, that's all."

"Huh, all right, sorry I asked. See you later, Senpais." Then she favored her older brother with a sweet smile. "I'll cook your favorite stew tonight, Rito!" she promised before leaving, feeling rather happy she had, all in all, lucked in when assigned a brother. It could have been much worse.

"Thank you, Mikan! Bye...!" Rito waved at her, then scowled at Rentarou. "Look, I don't know what's going on with you, but my sister's off limits forever, got that?!"

"Yes... and good thing..." Rentarou nodded.

Saruyama thought that was kind of lame as an answer. Himself, he wouldn't mind getting a crack at Mikan-chan in a few years.

---

Later that day, in classes, Rentarou panicked again.

"Your sensei's been diagnosed with that new terrifying civilization threatening new virus today and will be taking a leave of absence for a few weeks!" Fujimura Taiga commented casually, appearing at the head of the class much to Rentarou's horror. "In the meanwhile, I'll be teaching you homeroom since I had a few free hours left! So you'd better make that extra effort worth it, or else!"

Rentarou tried to melt under his seat as discreetly as he could, failed, and wondered why did it look so easy in Western anime.

"You all know me, I'm Fujimura Taiga, and I have no patience for lack of discipline or-" Then, suddenly, she stalker over to Aijo's seat quickly and seethed down at him, like a furious tiger. "Violations of the school dress code, no matter how minor they seem!"

She yanked the sunglasses off Rentarou's face, making him scream girlishly. "This kind of delinquent glasses is a no-no indoors, boy! Who do you think you are, Harima Kenji?!"

"No! No!" Rentarou said, trying to block his eyes with a forearm as all other students, including Yuuki, Saruyama and Ren, stared at him in mild disgust. "Please, Sensei, I need those! I have a weird eye condition! They call it a Medusa Syndrome! For everyone's best, I shouldn't-!"

"Then why aren't you with the school nurse!" Taiga roared, grabbing him by the chin and forcing him to look at her face. "Let me see! Why are you crying, for the love of God, aren't you a man?!"

She gazed into his eyes, sternly.

He couldn't help but looking back, despite himself.

Their eyes met.

Time seemed to stop for a moment.

And then...

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

Somewhere in Mundus Magicus, Roronoa Zoro sneezed. Again.

Fujimura-sensei dropped him with a sound of annoyance. "Your eyes are fine! These are confiscated because you lied to me!" she declared, sticking the glasses into her breast pocket and walking back to the head of the class.

Once again, Rentarou breathed much easier even as he heard his classmates whisper and snicker among them. Not that it mattered much anyway, since Taiga silenced them fast and started the lessons.

A much more relaxed Rentarou left the classroom hours after, thinking that maybe the goddess- if she was even that and wasn't just someone filming a movie after all- had fixed things through the day, or maybe she'd just been mistaken about his condition from the start.

He whistled as he left the classroom behind, Taiga barking at Saruyama and Rito, who were cleaning after classes as a punishment for accidentally groping her ass. Thinking about it, being unlucky at love wasn't that bad at all, compared with the chances of ending 107 innocent lives. He wasn't the Joker, for Kami's sake! Many people could lead fruitful lives full of love without ever marrying, like the Pope or, huh... Barney the Dinosaur?

This latest thought made him feel bad again, but he consoled himself by noting how unlikely it was for him to run into any women on his way back to the male dormitories. If Urd-sama's predictions had failed, then everyone around him should be safe. Who knew, maybe he'd even be able to look for his soulmate again with a clear mind.

But he had to stay his course and keep working hard for it. Love wouldn't just stumble into him like in a cheap romantic manga...

Rentarou, with renewed resolve in his heart, turned a corner around, almost leaving the building by this point, and walked facefirst into two girls who'd come to put posters for the School Festival.

 

[OverMaster]

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, I'm sorry!" Rentarou said, pulling himself up and offering a hand. "Are you okay... guys...?"

He was looking at what had to be two girls; he had spent a lot of time proposing to girls and he'd learned the hard way how to identify traps, crossdressers and male shapeshifters. He'd parted ways with Clayface on good terms, in case you were wondering.

One of the girls who definitely wasn't a Clayface was curvy and busty, with short light brown hair and a cute flower ornament in it. This one took his still extended hand and thanked him with a soft spoken, warm voice. "Ah, thank you, it's me who should be sorry... This girl here distracted me, I'm afraid..."

The other girl, who was slimmer and much less abundant of chest, had blonde hair arranged in twintails and was shouting a storm already. "I distracted you?! You were the one distracting me because you wanted to come this early! You're so desperate to see men that you... you... I told... you..." she trailed off, staring at Rentarou's face.

The other girl was staring at him as well.

He blushed, overwhelmed by the beauty of both rather different feminine archetypes conveniently featured before him, before the day was over.

Romantic music began sounding softly in the background, from the janitor's office where the man had just turned the radio on while reading To Love Ru obliviously.

Three hearts began beating louder and faster. Somewhere, a goddess smiled.

Rentarou realized this was it. He'd never felt this way before, not when rejected by Hasegawa-san, not when turned down by Kakizaki-san, not while approaching Uruka-chan, and certainly not when wetting his pants at the sight of Stephanie-chan turning in Clayface and then turning him down rather more politely than any of the other girls. It was a wholly different sensation, akin to having a sugar high while being kicked in the spine and being told you have just won seven billion yens in the lottery, all at once.

For a moment, everything else was forgotten and had stopped mattering. He only could think of how cute those two girls were, their small mouths slightly open, their gazes growing mildly vacant. The music hit a nice, subdued jazzy beat. The world was perfect.

And then the buxom girl let herself drop back to the floor, grabbing her foot. "Oooohhh! I'm afraid I have hurt my ankle! Would you please take me to the nurse's office?"

The other girl blinked, as those words seemed to have just snapped her out of her own spell. "Me? Why me? Bitch, just call one of your mom's thugs and tell them to come here and pick you up, I'm not y-"

"I'm talking to the nice gentleman here...!" the first girl said, giving out a strangled gasp and all but throwing herself onto Rentarou's leg, hugging it very tightly. "Oh, I beg you, dear sir, forgive my manners, but I'm rather frail...!"

"Ah, ah, of course, how could I refuse?!" Rentarou quickly helped her up again, supporting her against himself. "I'm a living disaster area! This is the least I could do for you, Miss..."

She sighed while placing her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes. "My name is Hanazono Hakari... Please let's go slowly, step by step, as I don't think I can move quickly like this..."

The other girl stared in shocked stupor, and then her mouth contracted into a terrible, teeth showing grimace, her face turning crimson and steam blowing out of her ears. She quickly let herself fall as well and shouted, "Hanazono, you weak pussy! Always depending on others! Look at me! I've splintered my leg and I'm not begging for any help!"

Rentarou panicked further, now looking at her again. "Ah?! You too?!"

"What, what is that to you?" the blonde huffed, looking aside. "First you ram into me with violent intent and now you feign concern?! Screw your help, I can drag myself to the nurse's office myself!"

Hakari nodded. "She's right, dear mister, we don't have to worry about her. She is strong as a bull, and nearly as smart..."

"No, please don't say that!" Rentarou told her, using the hand that wasn't holding her to grab the blonde's own hand and pull her up as well, delicately. The blonde's blush grew a softer shade of red, almost pink, but no less bright than before. "You're absolutely correct, I was only thinking of myself, oblivious to everything, and it's my fault you're hurt now..."

The blonde blinked, being held against him as well, opposite a pouting Hakari. "Ah, ah, yeah, well, you're right, but th-this isn't really necessary, I told you, it's not like I want your help or anything..."

"I'm Aijo Rentarou," he said, starting to move with them towards Mikado-sensei's office. "Please tell me if I'm moving in a way that is too brusque for you."

"I am... Inda Karane," the blonde said. "High School 1-D, we were here to put some posters..."

"We're doing an animal coffee for the Festival, you, of course, are welcome to visit us," Hakari said eagerly. "I'll reward y-your helpfulness giving you a free ticket..."

"Only one?! You've got money pouring outta your ears and you're only giving him one?!" Karane growled, reaching into a pocket and slamming two tickets on Rentarou's face. "What a cheapskate! You make me sick!"

Hakari frowned. The tickets slipped down Rentarou's face, and since he couldn't let go of the girls without making them fall- or so he thought at least- he had to catch them between his teeth, clenching a stifled, "Thaffk yyuh."

"Don't be like that, Karane-san," Hakari said. "For starters, you're troubling Aijo-san more than necessary! You can't be hurt from such a simple incident, you're much stronger than that..."

"Why would I subject myself to this humiliation if I didn't really need to?!" the other girl growled.

Hakari snifled tenderly. "At least show some gratitude to Aijo-san! He's bothering to help your minor injuries with the greatest care, and yet you only treat him rough and rudely!"

"I gave him two tickets already, what am I supposed to do, treat him to dinner?!" Karane snapped, then told Rentarou, "The Chao Bao Zi won't close for an hour, you know that, right? Let's go for a bite after I have my injury looked at, we'll talk about who pays later..."

"Oh, you are incorregible!" Hakari disapproved. "Don't believe a single word of what she's saying to stray you, Aijo-san!" she said, hugging his arm and pressing her bustline against his body. He hiccuped loudly.

"You're the one straying men away, again!" Karane seethed. "Always using your body to get your way! I'll bet you aren't even hurt at all!"

"I am! It's you who is fine as a fiddle!"

"I'm much worse off than you! You cushioned your fall with those cow udders of yours!"

"As a matter of fact, I'm in great pain, and I feel even worse when you yell at me like that!"

"You wanna talk about pain?! Okay, let's talk about pain! I feel like my damn leg's about to fall, but that's still nothing compared to the pain of hearing you yapping!"

"Pweese don't fffwight..." Rentarou said, still holding the tickets between his teeth. Then Rito and Saruyama appeared around the corner, and both girls tensed up.

Saruyama blinked, coming to a halt. "Ah? What's this? Rentarou, you sly dog! You finally did it...!"

The girls, as one, pulled back and backpedaled in terror, their attention fully on Rito now. "THE PERVERTED BEAST!" they screamed, pointing at him.

Rito sighed miserably. "Here we go again..."

Rentarou blinked as well, looking at the girls, who were both perfectly fine on their feet. "..."

They looked at him, both blushed, and looked down in shame. "..." they said.

Rentarou opened his mouth to speak, gently. "You shouldn't strain yours-"

"I'MSORRYGOTTAGO!" the girls said, and then fled the scene in a terribly embarrassed dash, instantly disappearing from sight past the hallways.

Saruyama stared on stupidly after their trail of dust. "... what the hell's the problem with them?"

Rentarou breathed sadly and spat the tickets on his own hand. "I'm going to kill them," he said.

Rito raised an eyebrow. "Eh?"

 

[OverMaster]

That night, while Saruyama slept, Rentarou sneaked out and sat on the edge of the dormitory's building. He looked through the starry night, towards the female dormitories, and remained silent, clearly troubled.

At one point, a voice startled him. "You already met the first one, didn't you?"

"GAHHH!" he cried, almost losing his balance, but thankfully Urd-sama grabbed him by an arm and pulled him back before he could fall. "W-Where did you come from?!"

"I'm a goddess after all," she handwaved the question. "What's wrong, Rentarou? It didn't work out?"

"No! No, it didn't at all!" he said. "There's two of them, actually!"

"That isn't bad," Urd said, sitting by his side. "It means that you're going to save some time on meeting them right from the start. You began with the right foot!"

He facepalmed. "I hurt them by being clumsy, and now they'll think I'm a weirdo who keeps perverted friends! They must hate me!"

"I see," Urd said blandly. She whipped out a cigarette, a lighter, and began puffing quietly. She had started with the habit as soon as Belldandy had been taken from them.

"How long does that curse take?" Rentarou demanded. "How long do they have left?"

"There's no way to know for sure," Urd said. "It depends on the person, and their life choices. It could be days. It could be years."

Rentarou pointed a finger at her, something that he wouldn't do normally as it would be rude. "You. I know! You'll go with them, and tell them what's happening, they have every right to know the truth..."

"Why don't you tell them yourself?"

"They'd think I'm insane!"

"Well, they'd think the same about me if I told them."

"You can prove you're real! Use your powers! This is your fault, so you owe us that much!"

"I know," Urd sighed. "But it's not that simple. Sure, I could tell them, and prove I'm a goddess, even though I'm not supposed to do that. But it wouldn't help. It's written that your soulmate must love you on the basis of what you are, and you must love them for what they are."

"What does that mean?"

"Rentarou, it won't work if they choose to be your partners just because they'd die otherwise. That's not what love is about. Your mutual love must come from deep within your hearts, and that needs more than the initial spark from the first sight. Love, whether at first sight or earned the harder way, must still be nurtured and raised just the same. If not, they'll still plunge into unhappiness, as they'll be pretty much forced into being with you."

Rentarou slumped, depressed. "Yes. I understand. But that's impossible! What kind of person would accept being in a relationship with 106 others? That's asking for too much from anyone!"

"Love can do anything, as long as it tries enough," Urd said very seriously, writing something on a piece of paper. She smiled and gave it to Rentarou. "I can't help you directly, but these people are experts of sorts on balancing several relationships at once without it turning sour... not yet, at least. They'll be glad to help, even if they don't sound like it at first. Go there tomorrow, after classes, and tell them Skuld's sister sent you."

He looked at the note. "Thank you... I guess. Look, sorry if I sound rude, I appreciate your warnings and explanations, it's just that- Ah?!" he gasped, seeing she wasn't there anymore. His head whipped around wildly in all directions. "She pulled a Batman?!"

And then he saw Urd climbing down the fire escape stairs. "Curses!" the goddess said. "Don't look at me now! You ruin the mystic!"

"Why don't you just teleport away?"

"I need a nearby turned on electric device for that! Or a mirror!"

"Then why don't you just fly away?"

"I could be seen! I'm supposed to keep my presence a secret!"

"Okay, but then why don't you-?"

Urd ignored him and quickly went down the rest of the stairs.

---

In the quietness of the bedroom she shared with Hakari, Inda Karane searched the Net in silence, cheeks flushed.

"I see..." she said to herself, for no good reason at all other than plot convenience. "So, if I find one of the four leaf clovers that grow around the World Tree and make a wish on it, my confession of love, if I had one, would be guaranteed to succeed..."

Behind her, in the upper bunk of the room, a pair of eyes went open and glowed silently in the dark.

"I mean, it's not like I have anyone to confess anything, and if I did, I still wouldn't believe that nonsense," the blonde kept on monologuing, giving brief little hiccups of excitement, "but all the same, what an interesting useless bit of trivia...! I think I'll go there tomorrow, just to see if people are really dumb enough as to search for those things! Y-Yes, I'll do just that...!"

The eyes glowed brighter, without Karane noticing them.

 

[OverMaster]

With a mixture of hope and uncertainty in his heart, Rentarou headed towards the address Urd-sama had given him, after classes were over.

It was fairly apart from the campus, downright into the mountain woods, and there were no bus routes taking one there, so he'd been walking for quite a while now. On his way, he passed by the World Tree, and couldn't help taking a look up to admire the majestic beauty of that Mahora landscape titan.

When he did, he came to a grinding halt. He'd just seen two specks crouching by the wide roots of the giant, apparently on their hands and knees, looking through the grass. Instantly, something in his heart told him those were the two girls, Hakari and Karane. Once again, he was overwhelmed by his feelings. Their beauty and charm, even from that far, overcame him, and he dropped all thoughts of heading anywhere but with them, to try and help them as best as he could.

Rentarou quickly moved up the stairs leading to the top of the hillside where the famous Tree rested… only to have a man blocking his way, as if just appeared out of nowhere.

He pulled back by instinct, as this man was carrying a large sword by his side and was wearing some manner of samurai cosplay. This wasn't completely unheard of in Mahora, where cosplayers and people filming strange fantasy movies out in the open weren't an infrequent sight, but after his meeting with Urd-sama, Rentarou had learned not to take such things lightly.

"Jesus!" the boy said, the mild swear taken from that time he'd spent trying to know Sister Shakti better only to fail miserably. "You scared me, Mister!"

The man smiled at him, and thankfully nothing happened when they made eye contact. He was very handsome, almost as much as Chris Hemworth, with his strong yet lean build and his long ponytail, but even so, Rentarou would rather not go there. For real.

"My apologies," he said. "I have been appointed the groundskeeper for this site. Normally, I wouldn't object to mere students to approach the Tree, but I have felt something unusual about you."

Rentarou blinked. "Ah?"

The man hummed, analyzing him with his stoic gaze while stroking his own chin. "I cannot say what is it, and you certainly aren't one of us, but all the same, I can tell you are not normal…"

Rentarou honestly had no idea what to answer to this. "Do… Do you know Urd-sama?" he asked at last.

"Urd?" The man paused, then shook his head slowly. "No. That name says nothing to me."

Rentarou, inwardly, breathed slightly easier. "Look, I'm just an average, completely normal student, so ordinary that I could star in a light novel or isekai manga, I only need a truck heading my way. Honest. The only unusual things about me are my Love Freak tendencies that have turned me into a campus laughingstock and that my roommate says I should go for therapy, but—"

The man gave a mild gasp. "What an anti Japanese stance, that of your roommate!" He stepped aside. "Very well. Then I see no reason to stall you any further. Go ahead with whatever you wanted to do, but be warned that should you attempt to have your way with the fair maidens above, I shall be obligated to intervene and slice you into so many thin pieces. You will see, I may be a heartless wraith, but I despise date rapists."

Rentarou sweatdropped. "I have no idea why you'd call yourself that, but I'm not that kind of man, bye," he said, and quickly moved past the weirdo.

Assassin sighed and sat down on the steps. "Now I'm glad I never got to attend school in my lifetime…"

"Why don't you move elsewhere?" Karane was telling Hakari angrily as both girls kept on rummaging through the grass. "You are ruining my search for truffles!"

Hakari groaned in mild annoyance, unearthing another truffle by accident and tossing it at Karane's face. "You can have this one too! Just remember, any and all four leaf clovers are mine!"

"As if! Karane cried. "If I find one, why should I give it to you?! They'd be all mine, to succeed at that love confession I don't intend to carry out!"

"Okay, but if I find one, I wouldn't let it to waste," Hakari frowned, ever diligent in her search. "I'd use it to ask Rentarou-kun on a date…"

"What a tramp!" Karane gasped, scandalized. "You already are on a first name basis with him!"

Hakari smiled. "Of course I am! Why to waste my time with the first stages of denial and pondering? My heart is a strong locomotive, steadily advancing towards the consummation of our passion! Life is too short, and I have to seize at this chance the God of Love has given me!"

"… H-Huh!" Karane said, looking over Hakari's shoulder. "Th-Then, if that boy were here right now…"

"I'd be completely honest and open with him and confess my feelings, naturally!" Hakari said happily. "Yesterday, I couldn't be as sincere as I'd have liked, but--!"

"Good afternoon, excuse me!" another, pleasant voice said, and Hakari stiffened. Her eyes swelled up. Her nipples hardened against her bra. "Are, are you feeling better now? How are your legs?"

Hakari rolled back and dropped onto her butt on the dirt, looking up in nervous shock at the awkwardly smiling Rentarou. "Ah! Ah, it's you, Aijo-san, I mean, Aijo-kun, I mean! What a happy, wonderful coincidence to meet again, and so soon…!"

"Were you following us since yesterday?" Karane squinted at him suspiciously. "What a creepy thing to do! No wonder you're friends with the Perverted Beast!"

"We… We aren't friends, I mean, we're classmates, but we aren't all that close…" Rentarou said, scratching his cheek. "He's not a bad guy, actually, but you know, just because you study with someone, that doesn't mean that you have to be pals…"

Karane and Hakari stared at each other, then at Rentarou. They nodded. "Yes. Yes, we know," they said in unison.

Rentarou smiled again. Ah! Their quirky behavior only made them so much more endearing! He crouched before them, tenderly helping Hakari to sit up on the grass. "I was just passing by and saw you from afar. Since you seemed to have lost something, I wanted to know if I could help…"

"I, I,I'm only looking for truffles!" Karane said. "It's just I don't have a truffle-tracking pig, so I brought Hanezono instead! I'm not looking for any four leaf clovers since I don't believe in superstitions, and I'm not interested on any, on any boys anyway! Much less you! I wasn't looking through helpful local rumors online because I can't connect with others and ask them myself! I only looked online for how to look for truffles! Got all of that?!"

Rentarou and Hakari sweatdropped.

Karane frowned. "Wasn't I clear enough?"

Rentarou sighed, blushing a little at such an earnest display of Tsunderism, and then crouched down. "I see! In that case, I'll help you look for truffles, but if I see any four leaf clovers, I'll give them to you anyway, since—"

"I am looking for four leaf clovers!" Hakari blurted out. "Because you're really, really, really, really and really good looking and helpful and caring and I'd like to ask you on a date, Aijo-kun!"

"...!" Rentarou said.

Karane's eyes had become perfect blank spheres.

Hakari facepalmed. "Oh dear! Blast the honesty of my heart! I wasn't supposed to say that until I found the clover…!"

Somewhere down the steps, a casual burst of wind blew a four leaf clover onto Assassin's face. He grabbed it casually, looked at it for a moment, and then crushed it between his fingers. "I have no use for something like this…"

 

[OverMaster]

It was late now, and everyone had left Evangeline Mc Dowell's woodland cabin already, except for Negi, Chamo the ermine, Chisame, Tsunetsuki, Hakase, Sora-san, Keiichi, Skuld, Makie, Yuuna and Ayaka, which I realize is still a whole damn lot of people. All of them were at the front porch with Evangeline and Chachamaru now, preparing to leave as well.

"You've looked antsy all day long, Sku-chan," Makie observed while pulling a jacket on herself. There was a cool wind blowing from the South, and it appeared it'd be a cold night coming. "What's bothering you?"

The young, black haired Norn stared into the distance, frowning. "I don't know. I've been feeling a disturbance in the Source since yesterday. A grating sensation of wrongness that I hadn't felt for a while…"

"It might be related to that young man coming this way," Chachamaru said calmly, her eyes glowing in a faint green shade as they scanned the narrow mountain road leading to the campus. "Since normally, nobody but us would dare coming here…"

Evangeline snorted out a corner of her mouth. "What, an intruder? I swear, if it's one of those foolish Masters trying to bring their War to my doorstep…!"

"It's Aijo-senpai," Chachamaru reported, even as the vague shape of a man appeared in the distance.

Keiichi blinked. "Aijo? That name sounds familiar…"

"Damn! It's the creep we talked about the other night!" Chisame said, as the man's figure came closer very slowly. It lurched more than walking, with the crushed gait of a living dead. "Did he learn we were meeting here?!"

"A stalker harassing Chisame-sama?! Unheard of! Inacceptable!" Matoi said, reaching into her hakama blouse and pulling a switchblade out. "He'll pay dearly for that sin…!"

Negi frowned and took the weapon from her. "This is confiscated! I thought we'd talked on this subject!"

"But, Negi-sama…!" Matoi lamented.

Aijo Rentarou did indeed come to them now, with fixed, haunted, dead eyes and the general appearance of someone who has lost every reason to live. He stared vacantly at Chisame, who was at the head of the formation with an angry scowl, and blandly said, "Ah… It's you…"

Chachamaru bowed. "Good evening, Senpai. Who are you looking for here? I'm afraid you have only two minutes to vacate these premises before I unleash my arsenal on you."

Evangeline blinked. "Ah? I always give intruders three minutes!"

Sora sweatdropped. "So Chacha-san is human too, huh… She still hasn't forgotten that…"

Rentarou lowered his head even further. "Urd-sama sent me to look for council here. Sorry, I never wanted to trouble any of you again, Chisame-san, Ayaka-chan, Karakuri-san. I… I don't feel too well…" he admitted, and then fainted facefirst on the dirt.

Negi gasped. "Ah! He died?!"

Eva hummed in mild interest. "Bring this piece of trash inside. He might have some interesting story to tell…"

"No!" Skuld shouted. "Don't do that!"

Eva glared at her.

"I mean, please don't do it!" Skuld said. "Urd is my other sister, the foul one! Nothing good comes from associating with her! Those evil vibes, I should've known!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do, let him catch his death from a cold out here?" Negi said, holding Rentarou by the legs as Chachamaru grabbed him by the arms, both lifting the young man and carrying him inside.

"YES!" Skuld and Matoi said, following them inside.

"I mean, Chachamaru could always just fly him to the nurse and drop him there!" Chisame argued, coming in next. "This time I feel like trusting Skuld, I don't want to deal with this guy ever again!"

Ayaka shuddered. "Why did he call me '-chan'? I feel so dirty…!"

"I have to say I don't like him either," Yuuna said, closing the formation as Keiichi closed the door after them. "I'd never seen him before, but there's something eminently hateable about his stupid geek face."

"Seriously? He looks normal to me," Keiichi said, leaning closer to examine the unconscious youngster Negi and Chachamaru had set on the couch. Having been turned off rather harshly after a couple of proposals himself, chiefly by Mishima Sayoko, he felt himself somewhat inclined to sympathize with this poor sap's story. "You girls normally aren't this bitter about men…"

Chisame rubbed herself up and down an arm. "I can't help it! He makes my stomach churn for some reason!"

Makie sniffed at him. "It's not that he smells badly or anything, it's just that…"

"I despise most of the human species, so I don't feel any different about him," Evangeline shrugged indifferently. Then she walked over to him and slapped him several times, hard. "WAKE UP, MORON! Make this amusing, or I'll just throw you outside to die in the wild!"

"… No, you definitely dislike him more than the average too!" Sora said. "You never treat anyone like that until they start talking back to you!"

Rentarou opened his eyes, making the girls wince and pull back, so only Keiichi, Chamo and Negi stayed close. "Where am I?" he asked.

"You're in Evangeline-san's house," Negi said kindly. From the stories the girls had told he'd been picturing this boy to be unpleasant and sleazy, but so far he seemed to be more pitiable than anything. "Take it easy. Why are you so… depressed? How can we help you?"

Rentarou sat on the couch and hid his face in his hands. "I've just killed two girls!"

Everyone in the room froze in abject horror, even Evangeline.

Matoi, without saying a single word, was the first one to move after a while, pulling out a second switchblade and leaping onto Rentarou.

Chachamaru barely could grab her in time.

 

[OverMaster]

Rentarou made a pause in amazement, before making a wide, shaky smile, eyes sparkling. "Why… I'm so honored! Hanezono-san, my answer is—"

"What, what are you doing, are you just jumping into his arms like that?!" Karane demanded of Hakari.

Hakari laughed softly, making Rentarou swoon. Such a beautiful, feminine laugh…

"Is there anything wrong about it?" she asked her roommate. "It's what I came here for, after all. You should be happy, we will now go out on our date and you can enjoy your truffles in peace…"

"He hasn't even said anything yet!" Karane pointed out.

"Of course I do!" Rentarou said in a hurry. Then he remembered, and he almost bit his tongue. "Ah! I mean-!"

Hakari smiled angelically and brought her hands together while Karane made a grimace. "Do you see, Ka-ra-ne-san? So strong is the power of my love that I didn't even need the clover after all!"

"That's what I was saying, that, that you don't need a stupid clover to…" Karane struggled to squeeze a moral victory out, at least. But suddenly that didn't matter at all. "I mean… Truffles… No, no, w-what I mean is… well…"

Hakari noticed a sudden change in her expression, going from that usual comical exasperation to almost looking on the edge of tears, and genuinely grew worried. "Karane-san? Are you-?"

"I don't care!" the blonde growled, pushing a hand ahead and shoving Rentarou back just as he tried to get closer to tell her something. "So what! It's just a stupid infatuation over a man you just met, I'm above those things! You won't last a week together anyway!"

"Karane-san," Rentarou said, "I… I'd like to tell you that…"

Hakari raised an eyebrow and grabbed him by an arm. "Aijo-kun?"

"Were you… were you intending to ask me out as well?" the boy asked the other girl.

Karane blushed harder than ever, and then socked him with a good punch to the face. Hakari gasped. "N-NO! Of course not! It's not like I like you or anything! Just go away with your new girlfriend for all I care! You don't owe me anything, right?!"

He rubbed his newly swollen cheek and doubted. This was a literal matter of life or death! "You're also lovely, of course, I wouldn't want to offend you by—"

"D-Dummy, why would you offend me when I've just told you I have no interest on you!" the shaking blonde looked aside, then pointed at the troubled looking Hanezono. "On the other hand, you ARE insulting her by showing interest on me after she asked you out!"

"She is right, Aijo-kun," Hakari said cautiously. "Did you come here for her, or me?"

"I came… for both of you, actually," he said, not finding anything better to answer.

The two girls stared at him, frowning.

He sighed. "In a perfect fair world, this wouldn't have to happen. But… Give me a break, please! We've just met! Let's take this easy and—"

"Okay, fine, that's a fair point!" Karane tossed her hands up. "So maybe we're rushing this! It's not like we're going to drop dead if you take a day to think this over, right?"

"Uhhhh… right!" he said.

Hanezono made a small frown, still holding onto his arm. "I suppose… But wait, you still haven't said you WANT TO date him!"

Karane mumbled between clenched teeth, then pulled out a pen and a small piece of paper. She hastily wrote on the latter and held it up, frowning and gazing at the grass. The paper read PLEASE DATE ME, YOU IDIOT.

"Um… Okay!" he nodded quickly. "That, that is-!"

"Aijo-kun!" Hanezono whined.

"Shaddap, I've thrown the gauntlet and you have to pick it up, on your honor as a woman!" Karane told her. She pointed at Rentarou. "One day! That's as much as we're going to wait for your answer! We hate wishy-washy men so you'd better have made your mind up by then!"

Rentarou deflated, realizing that fighting back now would only made everything even worse. "Okay…"

---

"… and?" Matoi asked.

"And then I left, feeling awful and very dizzy, and lost my way in the woods until I found your cabin," Rentarou said miserably.

"Okay, but where's the part where you murdered them and buried their bodies under the World Tree?" Matoi pressed on.

"I never did such a thing!" Rentarou gasped, horrified. "I left them perfectly fine, if still doomed because of me!"

"Then why do you say you killed them?" Makie asked.

"Makie-san, did you already forget the first part of his story?" Negi sighed. "If he rejects one of them, that young lady will suffer great misfortune and die…"

"That's right!" the older boy said. "And I've just entered a deal that will hurt at least one of them, but most likely both! They're roommates, so whoever loses will be constantly reminded of the fact! They'll make each other unhappy, and even if we get our relationship going, that's going to ruin it! They'll both suffer because of my indecisiveness, but deciding anything also leads to disaster! There's no way out! I'm in despair! This absurd, cruel situation has left me in despair!"

"Please don't say that…" Chachamaru said.

"Why? Do you see an alternative, a way I can make them happy?" Rentarou asked hopefully.

"No, what I mean is that you're stealing Itoshiki-sensei's beloved catchphrase," the gynoid said.

"Aaauugh!"

Ayaka looked at Skuld. "Does that surrealist story ring true, or is he making it up?"

Skuld shrugged. "The basics of it gel with the postulates of the Balance of Fortune and Misfortune in the Human Plane," she allowed. "And of course, it'd be just like Urd to commit such a careless mistake while failing to keep reports of who his soulmates are."

He threw himself to her feet. "Please help them out, Imouto-sama! I'll do anything!"

"What do you expect me to do?!" Skuld said. "I'm not a goddess of love!" She pointed at Negi. "He's a mage, ask him to brew a love potion for you!"

"I don't think that's going to help either since it'd only be a false love," Eva said, elegantly sipping from a cup of fragrant tea, sitting crosslegged. "It sucks to be you, Boya."

Negi frowned at Skuld. "Please, don't give my secrets away so happily."

Skuld waved a hand in circles. "Oh, you should've thought of how important your secrecy was before recruiting over half of your students for your pappy-searching crusade!"

"A… mage?" Rentarou blinked at Negi.

"An apprentice," Evangeline sneered. "A mere novice, still learning the most basic ropes of the mystery walk. A simple child, he cannot possibly help you, anymore than he can help himself…"

"Thanks for your usual vote of confidence, Master," Negi said dryly.

Eva got up with her small evil smirk on. "But I can help you," she told Rentarou. "If you beg me hard, long, and pathetically enough, I might be convinced to save those two harlots for you…"

---

To be Continued.

---

Next: Return of the Sakura Lane Vampire!

 

[OverMaster]

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is the creation and intellectual property of Nakamura Rikito, Nozawa Yukiko and Shueisha.

All other characters and franchises mentioned in this story are the intellectual properties of their respective copyright and trademark holders.

---

"You know that if the Dorm Mother catches us outside this late, she's gonna kill us," Karane groaned as the two girls walked through the cold darkness. Or the dark cold. Pick your poison. It's actually the same, anyway.

Hakari shuddered a little, holding her fists close to her chest and glancing in all directions. Her legs were cold, and she was starting to regret wearing a skirt that short tonight. "Forget the Dorm Mother! Don't you remember what used to happen around here, months ago?"

"I can't say I do," Karane said indifferently. "Anything I should care about?"

"The vampire!" Hakari cried. "A creature who attacked several students in the dead of night, leaving them in the hospital! I know a girl who knew another girl who dated the brother of a girl whose best friend was attacked!"

"That sounds like the telephone game," Karane scoffed at the ridiculous idea of a vampire in Mahora of all places. "I bet you that skank was just bitten by some dog!"

"I hope you are right!" Hakari sighed. "I'd hate to be assaulted at the middle of nowhere by a tall, dark, handsome spawn of the grave, wrapping his arms around me, hugging me tightly, and then sinking his teeth in my flesh, suctioning my body fluids and transforming me into his eternal bride!" She began panting vigorously, with stars in her eyes. "That'd be so exciting, I mean terrifying and hideous!"

"If you're that afraid, which I doubt since you sound about to cream yourself, turn around and hide under your sheets fingering yourself!" Karane told her. "Geez, you can't even settle for being a coward or a pervert! You have to be both at the same time!"

"What if Aijo-kun is the vampire?" Hakari asked, half scared and half thrilled.

"You're a Twilight fan, aren't you?" Karane said. "I never had a high opinion of you, but I never imagined you could fall so low!"

Hakari frowned and blushed. "How insulting! If you're going to be a Tsundere, you've got to show some dere every once in a while, you know?"

"I'M NOT A TSUNDERE!" Karane roared, and then stopped abruptly, eyes shining as she pointed ahead. "Ah! There he is!"

Rentarou, as a matter of fact, was indeed standing under one of several cherry tress flanking the lonely boulevard, looking at his wristwatch and wondering what was taking the girls so long. The e-mail they'd sent him asking him to come here at this time of the night had seemed rather insistent on punctuality. Then again, maybe the Dorm Mother had caught them while they tried to sneak out. Oh no! Who knew what kind of torture they were undergoing right now, maybe they were being questioned by Nitta while forced to hold full buckets on their heads and sitting seiza!

Rentarou was about to pull an Emiya Shirou and run towards the staff offices to pull a suicide rescue operation on nothing but a confused heart's hunch, when he heard Hakari's beautiful voice, and sweet sweet relief washed over him.

"Aijo-kuuuuuun...!" the girl ran towards him very happily, chest bouncing respectably with each step. She hugged him, and he welcomed the contact with a nervous smile. "Thank God you came after all! Just like you promised...!"

Karane walked to them and mumbled bitterly. "Don't be so glad just yet, numbskull! You're about to be rejected after all!" She glared at Rentarou with oddly reddened eyes. "Right?"

The boy gulped. "Um, you'll see, about that-"

"What, what is it?" Karane demanded, as her breathing quickened and Hakari nuzzled her face against Rentarou's chest.

"I've thought about this a lot, Karane-san," the young man said. "I even consulted a few of... my friends on the subject, and-"

"YOU TOLD OTHERS ABOUT ME?!" Karane cried out, dismayed.

"I didn't mention your names, I only told them that I'd met two lovely girls who were roommates and asked me to choice between them! But, the thing is, things are more complicated than they seem..."

"How are they complicated, you just choose one of us, not that I care since I'll be fine with anything you decide, and then Hanezono walks back home, or she calls a taxi, whatever!" Karane ranted, looking at the edge of a breakdown. "Don't tell us that you still can't decide!"

Hakari stopped rubbing herself against him and asked in a small concerned voice, "Is she... I she right, Aijo-kun? You... You can't make your mind yet? But it's a no-brainer!"

"Just like him!" Karane sizzled.

The boy took an extremely deep breath. Whatever Evangeline-san had planned to do, it was clear she wouldn't be showing up. So it all was on him after all. Just as well. This was his responsibility and he'd been wrong trying to pull others into his own problems.

He did his best to smile and grabbed Hakari by the shoulders, gently. He looked down at her eager face preciously bathed by the full moonlight, and said softly, "We have just met, but I already can tell you are two peerless girls, which anyone would be glad to call girlfriends. You are more than I deserve, I'm sure, and it'd be unfair for me to leave you hanging, or hurt either of you with a rejection, so..."

"Oh my God, you're going to reject us both for fucking fairness' sake, aren't you," Karane dreaded.

Hakari hiccuped in mounting fear. "Aijo-kun! Are you gay?!"

"It's not that...!" he said. "What I mean to tell you is that-!"

Then a much stronger burst of icy wind blew all over them, flipping Hakari's skirt up, and the girl shrieked while Karane, who had brought pants to the date, looked aside, following the loud sounds of large bat wings flapping nearby. She heard Rentarou gasp, and she followed his gaze upwards with hers. Hakari did the same.

The three of them found themselves staring at a voluptuous, mysterious blonde woman with very long hair and wearing a sulty black dress, standing on top of a lampost and smiling sensuously at them. Hakari crossed her legs together and repressed a deep moan. Rentarou moved quickly before both of the girls, instinctively shielding them with his body.

"I am the Messenger of Death, the Plague of the Undead traveling on dark wings," the stranger crooned, striking a dramatic outline against the disc of the Moon. "I am Dark Evangel, mightiest of all vampires. And you, witless children, are my latest meal!"

She jumped down on them, and there were two high pitched squeals.

---

The 108 Girlfriends who Really, Like Really, I mean it, Man, Really Love You, Dude.

---

Chapter Two: Return of the Sakura Lane Vampire.

 

[OverMaster]

"Oh my dear God," a visibly rattled Yukihiro Ayaka gasped, standing on a nearby rooftop with Negi and Asuna. "Hanezono Hakari! That's Hanezono Hakari!"

"One of your rich friends?" Asuna guessed.

"She's not my friend!" Ayaka said. "Her family is completely insane! Her mother is a vile creature of decadent habits that will not stop at anything to fulfill her goals, never caring if anything that burns ends up burning! Her financial power is so great that she even has accidental conquests! You'd have to go to Honnouji to find a worse mother spawning a more twisted daughter!"

Negi adjusted his tiny bifocals, surviewing how Rentarou grabbed each girl under an arm and, displaying sudden superhuman strength and speed in an explosion of adrenaline, ran away with them just as Evangeline divebombed into the spots where they'd been standing moments ago. "She looks fairly defenseless, however…"

"I never said that she was a fighter, just that she was twisted," Ayaka told her dear teacher. Below, Evangeline cackled her mad delight and began giving chase, floating above the ground and spending just enough speed as to stay shortly behind the terrified young man. "The other girl must be her roommate, Inda Karane-san, whom Hanezono-san frequently mentions to be an annoyance, a broad caricature of a Tsundere, and an annoying gorilla who is always overstepping her limits while complaining about everything."

Asuna grunted. "Man, I hate that kind of people!" They began moving along, following the chase from afar and jumping from one rooftop to the next. "Do you really think Eva's brainhaired idea will work?"

"If it doesn't, we're here to stop her before she goes too far," Negi said grimly, never taking his eyes off his Master. "I'm worried she may be enjoying this too much…"

"Nooooo! What gave you that idea?" Asuna said sarcastically, her Ensis Exorcizans well in hand in its giant paper fan form.

"Give it up, children!" Evangeline declared grandiosely, gathering black power in her hands and throwing it at Rentarou's heels, singing them with each blast, and making him squirm and struggle to keep up running. "You stand no chance against my power! I shall feast on your virgin blood tonight…!"

"Oh, great, so now you're sparing her?!" Karane yelled, pointing at Hakari.

"Sh-Shut up!" Hanezono shot back. "Does this look like a dog to you?! I was right, vampires exist and now she's going to take my purity with her big fat futa member!"

Rentarou blinked. "Excuse me?" he said, never stopping.

"I don't have a penis! Who ever heard of a female vampire with a penis?!" Eva blushed briefly, then threw a ball of dark magic that barely missed Hakari's head.

"Well, she may not be a dog, but she sure acts like a bi—EEEEE!" Karane shrieked, ducking her head as the next shot nearly decapitated her.

She'd just led them into a dead end flanked by brick walls. "Ahhh, you idiot!" Karane screamed. "Turn back! Take us back!"

"He cannot. Checkmate," the adult Evangeline smiled, landing on her feet behind them, her high heels clicking on the pavement. "Prove yourself as a hero to your women now, if you can, Lover Boy! Show me the strength of your heart or pay the price!"

"I knew it," Negi said, stopping by the last building in the last block, watching over them like a hawk. "It's a test of character, one of Master's favorite approaches."
"Eva's never half done things, huh," Asuna said. "Let's see if he breaks down or not…"

To his credit, Rentarou let the girls down on their feet gently, and then stepped before them, arms spread wide. "No! Do with me whatever you want, but you aren't touching them, no matter what!"
Eva chuckled and gave a step towards them. "Oh? And how do you plan to stop me…?"

"I abhor violence against the fair sex, but if necessary, I'm willing to defend them no matter what!" he warned.

The tall blonde laughed. "This is rich! How in the world do you intend to—"

Rentarou frowned, whipped something out of his pocket, and zapped Evangeline with it.

"Aijo-kun…!" Hakari gasped, hugging him from behind.

Karane lifted an eyebrow. "Okay. Now you've got my attention…"

Evangeline just blinked, unamused, no-selling the tazer's discharge. "Seriously? Is that the best you can do?" she told him.

Rentarou swallowed. "It's the best the tazer can do, but--!"

Faster than they could react, she grabbed him by the head and tossed him aside. "This isn't enough!" she roared.

"Aijo-kun!" Hakari panicked.

"Rentarou!" Karane cried, bolting past her roommate and rushing to the stunned downed boy's side.

Negi tried to lunge down. "She's losing control! I'm going to—"

Asuna grabbed him by an arm and held him back firmly. "No. Not yet!"

"But--!"

"Have faith on your teacher, Sensei," Ayaka said stoically. "This isn't any different to how she treats you."

Evangeline spun around to move towards Rentarou and Karane. "This is a hero's reward, a lesson you'd better take to the next life. You'll better give yourselves up, for—Ahhhh, what the hell?!" she screamed, as Hakari had just jumped on her to bite the back of her neck furiously.

"Yuuuhh wuun't huffft 'em, nononono!" Hakari screamed around her bite, trying in vain to chomp through the all too hard as steel skin. Her arms wrapped themselves under Eva's breasts and squeezed tight. "U'll buute yuuh heaff off iff nffeeded!"

"I'm the vampire here, not you, damn it!" Eva protested, flailing around while Rentarou and Karane blinked and stood back. She had dropped her magical defense shields for this farce as she never thought them necessary, but this definitely wasn't in her plans for the night. "Leggo! Or I'll smash your head against the--!"

"You won't do it!" Rentarou said, as he and Karane threw themselves against Eva's midsection, tackling her against the ground and bringing Hakari down with them. Hakari yelped even as Evangeline cursed her loss of balance. This was why she normally attacked barefoot! High heels were such a bitch! "I don't care if I die, I… YEEE!" he winced in pain, as the punch he'd just thrown on Evangeline's face had merely crushed his knuckles. "Are you made of stone?!"

Eva chuckled, shaking Hakari off and aside. "I'm the rock the sea crashes against, or however the quote went! I'm invincible! Unbeatable! I am the inevitable, I—"

"I AM IRON MAN, BITCH!" Karane said, swinging a leg up and closing Eva's mouth by the simple but efficient method of slamming it shut.

That was when the Vampire Witch went angry.

 

[OverMaster]

Tendrils of darkness exploded out of Mc Dowell's body, shooting themselves in all directions.

"Confound you, rebellious hellspawn!" the Mistress of Puppets bellowed, her eyes turning twin little pools of black in which crimson pupils swam. "I shall rip you apart piece by piece!"

Negi sighed, chanted his activation words under his breath, and jumped down, slipping out of Ayaka's grip. "She's lost it. I can't stand back anymore…"

After a moment, Ayaka groaned and leapt after him.

"No good deed goes unpunished…" Asuna mused aloud, and then swooped in as well.

One of the black tentacles wrapped itself around Hakari and yanked her far from Rentarou, the girl yelping as her breasts bounced in opposite directions. "Hanezono-san!" Rentarou jumped after her, grabbing Karane by a hand and pulling her along.

Karane let out a strangled scream of her own, and then kicked at one of the tendrils trying to pull down on her other leg. At the middle of it all, the buxom blonde stood seething, even as Negi, Asuna and Ayaka dropped on their feet right before her.

"Master, come back to your senses!" the boy teacher pleaded, raising his bandaged staff. "You will trigger the alarms…!"

Evangeline roared and swatted him aside like a fly.

"Negi-sensei!" Ayaka cried out.

"Ah, the kid teacher?" Karane gave a quick glance back, even as she and Rentarou struggled to pull on the thing squeezing Hanezono to free her. "What's he doing here…?"

"Hold on, Hanezono-san!" Rentarou begged desperately, exerting himself to his max. "Can you breathe?! Please try to squirm out!"

Negi was already pulling himself back to his feet, but Eva had caught Ayaka and Asuna by their throats and tossed them on him, pinning him under their combined weight. She stomped towards the other three with ease, and then grabbed Rentarou by the neck and lifted him like a puppy. "You should have given up on them…!" she hissed inhumanly.

"No! Please no!" Hakari scrambled across the ground, even as the tendril relaxed its grip and she could more or less free herself with Karane's help.

"Hey, leggo of him!" Karane shouted. "What's your big problem?! Take me if you want! Come on, I can put an actual fight!"

Those eyes full of long simmering hatred settled on her, and Karane trembled, but still held her ground stubbornly. "How little you know…!" Evangeline told her.

Rentarou coughed, trying to yank her fingers off with his. "I swear, if, if you do anything to them…!"

"Why do you care?" the vampire snorted. "Why should you mind if they die? You just met them! Fool! Do you really think that a moment's infatuation could ever translate to a life's love?! True love doesn't exist! Much less a variety born from a whim that--!"

A blast of electricity hit her in the back of her head, and she growled, looking back at a newly arrived Chisame, who stood with her magical scepter raised and pointed at her. Behind Chisame, Chachamaru held a large assault pulse rifle, and Matoi had several small throwing knives in each hand.

"That's enough, Eva," Chisame said sternly while Negi, Ayaka and Asuna fell in line with her. "Saber-san, Emiya-senpai and Setsuna are on their way here. And the Headmaster is only one call away…"

"Call everyone, as many as you want," Evangeline challenged her. "I won't let go of this worm until he has given his answer! Why would he—"

"I love them!" Rentarou said.

"Eh?" Karane said.

"Them?" Hakari echoed him.

"I don't mind if it's stupid, the heart wants what it wants!" Rentarou said. "And often, in life, you must go on what it tells you, and bet your future on it! That's a decision I'm willing to take! I may have just met them, and they might be a handful, but even now, somehow, I know they're worth it, everything I can give! I'm sorry for you, if you haven't ever felt that way!"

"How dare you…" Eva began.

"Because it's the most pleasant sensation I've ever felt!" Rentarou barked. "From the bottom of my being, I can tell they're the ones for me! As sure as my heart beats in my chest, as sure as day follows night, I know I can make them happy, just like they make me happy, even now! Right now, I'm feeling more alive than ever before! I couldn't die happier, than knowing I give my life for their sake!"

Hakari blushed and tightened her legs, feeling herself damp down there. "Aijo-kun… No! Rentarou-kun!"

"R-Rentarou…" Karane stuttered, blushing even more.

Evangeline took a long, terrible pause, staring grimly at his face and then spitting on it. She let him go, so he fell on his butt coughing, and then looked at the two female Senpais. "What about you? Do you love him back, then?"

"I do!" Hakari said without hesitation. "I do, I do, I couldn't ever imagine I'd ever like a boy this much! He's perfect! He's so dreamy! He's so, so, so--!"

Ayaka leaned confidently towards a somewhat uneasy looking Negi and whispered tenderly in his ear, "He's nothing compared to you."

Negi blushed and rasped. "That, that's okay, it's not like this troubles me…" he said, but now he felt better regardless.

"As for me… I…" Karane spoke, somewhat stilted, and then sighing, "I don't hate him!"

Eva frowned. "That's not enough."

"I don't hate him much! I don't hate him a whole lot! I don't hate him at all! I'd never not hated any boy as much ever before, as I don't hate him right now!" she stumbled on her own tongue, face beet red, before saying in an explosion of courage, "As a matter of fact, I think I even like him!"

Chisame grimaced. "Oh my God, how disgusting…!"

There was a long, long silence, while Rentarou only looked at Karane and Hakari in fascinated silence.

Then, the moon was covered by a thick bunch of clouds, and Evangeline's body shrank into that of a child wearing a dress too big for her, which slipped off her leaving her only in tiny black panties. Her eyes returned to their usual green hues. "You have passed the test," she said emotionlessly. "Congratulations, you will live to see another day."

Hakari gawked at her, and then collapsed back with a massive nosebleed.

"Oh my God," Asuna told Ayaka. "She's another you!"

"HEY!"

 

[OverMaster]

This was the first time Rentarou had ever set foot on a female dormitory.

Negi-sensei and Evangeline-san had gone to the Dorm Mother to argue with her beforehand. Shortly into their discussion, Evangeline had taken the other woman away and, after a quick heated exchange Rentarou couldn't quite understand from the other side of the staffer's office, Eva had emerged smiling and dusting her hands off while the bespectacled woman huffed furiously.

"It is done," the tiny terror announced, satisfied. "Let's get you inside."

They'd taken him, Karane and Hakari to Negi-sensei's living quarters, where Hakase, Yuuna and Skuld already were waiting for them, Chamo perched on Skuld's shoulder.

"Okay, what's all of this about?" Karane asked. "Who the hell are you people?"

"What's your relationship with Rentarou-kun?" Hakari said. "Don't tell me... you arranged all of this with them, did you?" she asked Rentarou, quite nervously.

He sighed. "Not exactly. I had no idea they'd do this, and I just met them yesterday myself..."

Skuld cleared her throat, put a fist on her own chest, and declared with airs of great dignity, "I am Skuld, Goddess of the Future..."

"And she's the goddess of what?" Karane pointed at Evangeline.

A vein bulged on Skuld's head. "She isn't a goddess! She's just a vampire witch!"

"No matter how you put it, that's not something one would ever call a 'just'!" Hakari argumented.

"Well, she is a goddess," Rentarou said. "Odds are her power greatly surpasses even Evangeline-san's..."

Eva scoffed, walking over to the fridge and pouring herself a Coca-Cola. "Hah! As if!"

Hakari blinked. "A goddess is less powerful than a vampire?"

"What guarantee do we even have you're a goddess?" Karane put her fists on her own hips and leaned ahead, glaring at Skuld's face. "Okay, I can't argue against the witch anymore, but why don't you show us your powers before we do anything else?"

Skuld scowled and her bulging vein twitched. She opened her mouth wide and shouted right on Karane's face. "YOU IDIOT...!"

Moments later, Karane sat looking into a hand mirror Chisame had given her, and tried vigorously to wipe the word 'IDIOT' in large letters all across her own face. "Okay, okay, I admit it, you're the Goddess of Writing Insults on People's Faces! Geez!"

Skuld was talking with airs of great dignity belitting her small stature again. "My miscreant sister Urd is responsible for your situation," she told the trio. "Being careless at her job, she accidentally tied all of you together with the mythical Red Thread of Love and Fate. Normally, any given person is meant to have only one soulmate, but in your case... well..."

"Oh dear," Hakari gulped, once again pinching herself to verify she was indeed awake, and also because she liked being pinched. "Ah, but surely that can be undone so Karane-san can go on to live her own life as happily as someone with her temper ever could?"

"Why aren't you the one to walk away from us?!" Karane protested.

Ayaka looked at Chisame with mild concern. "Is that how we look and sound most of the time?"

"God, I hope not..."

"I'm not sure, that's not my specialty," Skuld confessed. "Look, we're already doing enough by telling you all of this, okay? We aren't even obligated to help you at all!"

"Your help almost got us killed tonight!" Karane said. "What was this meant to do, show us that Rentarou is a good, brave man?"

"I don't think this attack was necessary for me to notice that," Hakari said, "although I'll admit Karane-san would have needed a wake up call as strong as this one..."

"Furthermore, why isn't that sister of yours telling us all of that herself?!" Karane demanded of Skuld.

The Norn shrugged. "I have to assume she doesn't want to see me face to face anymore, and the feeling is mutual. We have had a fallout since our other sister... disappeared."

"Oh..." Hakari said quietly. "Yes, I can sympathize. It happens all the time. A noble, responsible member of a family goes away, and a selfish, irresponsible relative ruins all of the family dynamics..."

"Pretty much," Skuld nodded. "Anyway, being tied together as you are, you are left with a choice; you can try to manage together until we find a solution, or you can break apart in your own separate directions and risk the karmic backlash resulting from such a move."

"I'm not going to forfeit my promising future with Rentarou-kun now that it has presented itself!" Hakari said, glomping Rentarou's arm.

Rentarou gulped, noticing that so far, Skuld had said nothing about the death clause. Subtly, the young goddess gave him a placating look, and he understood that Ala Alba wouldn't push the issue just yet unless absolutely necessary.

"What do you want in return for your 'help' with this?" Karane asked instead of answering Skuld's dilemma. She squinted her eyes suspiciously.

"Money won't be any issue!" Hakari reassured them. "I can make any donations you want me to pay your pagan church, no matter where in the world it's located!"

"I'm a goddess, I don't have any need for money!" Skuld acted offended.

"I could use some new shoes and a mountain bike, I've been thinking of taking on extreme biking," her roommate said.

"Be quiet, Yuuna!" Skuld scolded her.

"One doesn't need an economic reward to do something for others," Negi started to lecture. "Good actions are their own reward, as the wise saying goes."

The two visiting girls stared at him.

"Okay, forget the vampire and the goddess, you are the most unbelievable person in this room," Karane said after a moment of this.

Chisame gave a single, dry, humorless laugh. "Tell me about it...!"

"Think of this as a test period, to see which one of you can stay permanently as Senpai's girlfriend," Ayaka suggested, which Rentarou felt adverse to as a first impulse, since he liked them both the same, and this would probably just urge them to compete against each other, which could get ugly. But then he realized that it'd be selfish from him to just two-time them in the long run. Perhaps Ala Alba were correct and they should just treat this as a chance to know each other better, until a way out could be found and they could settle for a normal relationship, leaving the other girl(s) free to pursue their own happiness in their own terms.

It wasn't like they had to engage and marry right now, was it?

So he tried to smile. "Y-Yeah, that makes sense... We won't achieve anything by losing our heads over it, right? Let's take this step by step, enjoy the days as they come, and I'm sure that eventually, things will sort themselves out on their own..."

I really hope so, at least! he thought.

Hakari and Rakane were too busy staring daggers at each other, sitting at opposite sides of him, to fully notice what he was saying, however.

Chamo sighed. "I don't like meddling into other people's affairs, kid, but you've got a real uphill battle in your hands here..."

Both girls stopped glare-fighting and gasped at the small animal. "Your rat speaks, too?!" Karane yelled.

"I'm not a rat...!"

"Debatable," Chisame said.

 

[OverMaster]

Several days later, after classes, Rentarou sat on a bench by the park, between Hakari, who was happily eating a melon bread, and Karane, who was just pouting.

That SOS Brigade President weirdo and her handsome sycophant walked by before them.

"So, are you telling me that the Festival never ends up coming along just because Kyon is too afraid of what could happen in it? That coward…!" Suzumiya Haruhi scoffed, never paying any attention to the trio.

"He's unconsciously afraid of how his life might be changed, but we really shouldn't be discussing this in the open…" Itsuki said, and the trio didn't pay them any attention either until the duo was gone.

"Hey, Rentarou," Karane said, blushing since the boy's arm was resting on her shoulders.

"Yes, Karane-chan?" he asked.

"You know what happens when boys and girls start dating, right…?"

Hakari choked on her latest mouthful. "K-Karane-san!" she stuttered. "Not just yet! I, I, I'm not ready to be a mother…!"

Karane tossed her schoolbag on Hakari's head. "Idiot! Pervert! I mean, I mean, I mean a kiss, nothing more nothing less!" She began twiddling her fingers together while looking away from them. "N-Not that I'm in a hurry to be kissed by you or anything, Rentarou, it's just I took pity on you and I wouldn't want you to feel inadequate as a man!"

Rentarou blinked. "Oh, wow, Karane-chan, are you already willing to take that step? I have no problems, naturally, but I thought—"

"I'm not an immature Tsundere in denial over any feelings or anything!" Karane shouted.

"Right," Hakari said, primly wiping the small chunks of melon bread she'd just splattered all over her own face. "I have to say, Rentarou-kun, I wouldn't mind a chaste, pure, little innocent first kiss, stuck down all the way to the bottom of my throat through passionate, torrid, long drawn Frenching…"

"That's the complete opposite of what a virginal first kiss should be!" Karane protested.

"Okay, but here's a problem…" Rentarou doubted, scratching his chin.

"It's okay if you're an inexperienced kisser, that only speaks of how you saved yourself for our predestined encounter!" Hakari said. "I haven't ever kissed a man before, so we are even, and we can learn together through lots and lots of practice!"

"No, that's not it," he said. "It's just that, if you're both interested…"

"I told you I'm not interested on the kiss itself, I just want to save you from those feelings of male inadequacy, m-moron," Karane mumbled, head low.

"… which one should I kiss first?" Rentarou mused, troubled.

Both girls stiffened on the bench.

"W-Well!" Karane said after a moment. "Like I said, I'm not that interested, which doesn't mean I'm not interested on you, and I'd like to think I'm a fair person…!"

"Oh, so I can kiss him first? Thank you, Karane-san!" Hanezono jumped onto the chance.

"… but I was the one to come up with the idea, and that's part of the fairness too!" Karane continued, shoving Hakari back from him through the gentle method of shoving her hand on Hanezono's face and pushing hard. "Besides, my purposes are selfless so I've earned a little bit of selfishness!"

"It's not selflessness if you do it to score selflessness points to start with!" Hakari protested.

Rentarou thought about it. "Okay, how about this?" he asked, pulling a coin out of his breast pocket. "I learned this from an American friend, they call it the Harvey Dent method. You flip the coin, picking tails or heads beforehand, and if it lands tails, you shoot a man through the head, if it lands heads, you spare his life…"

Both girls stared at him in horror.

Rentarou shook his head. "No! Sorry, it wasn't like that! It's been a while since I was described it…!"

"W-We know how a simple heads or tails decision is reached, you baka!" Karane said, seizing the coin and turning it over in her hand. "Huh, so it isn't tricked…"

"Why would I use a two-faced coin?" Rentarou asked. "That'd beat the whole purpose of leaving it to random!"

Karane sighed, handing him the coin back. "Never mind. It's just that one never knows. I choose heads."

"I wanted to be heads, but okay, I'm not going to nitpick," Hakari said. "Please flip it, Rentarou-kun! I can't wait any longer…!"

"You've just waited a week just fine!" Karane told her.

Rentarou breathed deeply, summoned the Goddess of Love in his thoughts, and tossed the coin. "Alea jacta est!" he said.

The coin flew through the air, giving several turns and twists as they all stared at it with great tension…

And then it landed…

Stuck on a crack of the sidewalk, standing perfectly straight and vertical.

"…" Rentarou, Hakari and Karane said.

Then they shared a nervous laugh.

"Ah, well, no big thing!" Karane said. "Even I wouldn't get upset about this!"

"Right, right!" Hanezono said. "You just need to pick it again and do a second flip, right, Rentarou-kun!"

"Of course!" he said, standing up. "I'll do that right n—"

Then a magpie, attracted by the sun shining on the coin, swooped down, quickly took the coin in its beak, and flew back upwards just as quickly, becoming a twinkle in the sky.

"…"Rentarou, Hakari and Karane said.

"Do you have any more coins?" Karane asked.

Rentarou patted himself all over. "I think I spent all of my money buying you guys lunch! I'd have to head back home…"

"I never carry cash on me as everything is paid through Visa, Master Card, and Lex Card," Hanezono confessed. "You…?"

Karane smiled. "You're in luck! I just remembered I always keep one on me for emergencies such as this! O-Okay, I pick heads again…!" she said, preparing to toss.

"One moment, please," Hakari grabbed the coin, then turned it around, revealing it to be two-faced.

Karane gave a short apologetic laugh. "To my credit, I didn't try that from the start! I gave you a fair fighting chance at first, so I've earned a--!"

Hakari threw Karane's schoolbag back on her face.

 

[OverMaster]

"You need help again!?" Evangeline asked incredulously, sitting crosslegged on the porch of her cabin. Her arms were folded, and Chachamaru stood dutifully behind her, in her maid outfit. "You guys just have to develop your own agency, or else the angry schizo reviews will start raining!"

"Please don't insult our beloved readership, they're all good fans and have given us their support," Rentarou said very seriously. And then, "We just can't decide whom should I kiss first. I met them at the same exact time, so…"

"Kiss them following the alphabetic order," Eva suggested.

"Yes! Yes! That's just fair and just!" Hanezono Hakari nodded.

"No! No! What do mere letters have to do with any of this?!" Inda Karane protested vehemently.

"What a bother!" Evangeline shook her head. "Then, age before beauty, as they say. The older one of you will kiss the boy first."

"We were born the same day," Hanezono shared.

"Huh?" Eva said.

"That's wonderful! Are you serious?!" Rentarou beamed with joy. "That's a sign from above that you're meant to be together! Just like Asterix and Obelix!"

"Okay," Eva said after another moment, "but surely, one you was—"

"We… We were born at the same exact time, too," Karane shared uneasily.

Rentarou brought his hands together, exuding happiness. "That's even better…! Truly, we are soulmates!"

Eva scowled. After thinking for a few moments, she snapped her fingers. "Ah! If you were born far apart from each other, then technically, the time zones…"

"In the same hospital!" the two girls said as one.

Chachamaru raised an eyebrow at this extremely unlikely development.

Rentarou floated around, having an apotheosis of delight. "There's no doubt anymore, anywhere in my heart…!"

Evangeline facepalmed. "I'm sure this contradicts your canon and eventually we'll receive strongly worded comments about this too, but whatever makes your joke work, right? Then we'll have to do it the hard way…"

Rentarou stopped floating and suddenly appeared sitting between his girls, without dropping by like a dead weight, just sitting there from a moment to the next. "What do you mean, Mc Dowell-san?"

"GAH!" Karane shrieked. "How did you do that…?!"

"It's the power of Love…!" Hakari gushed.

"We're going to build a death match race set for you to compete," Evangeline lectured. "We will tie the boy at the end of the course, and the first one of you to reach him will claim his lips for herself."

"Eh? W-Wait a moment, Evangeline-san!" Hakari said. "That doesn't seem too fair!"

Karane smirked. "Oh? Unsure now because I've always outdone you at PE?"

"Yes! I mean, no!" Hakari denied it. "It's just that, well, think of Rentarou-kun! I doubt he'll want to be in bondage… sweating under the sun… his shirt clinging to his chest… and… uhhhh… exhibited like an objectified victim waiting for his princess… to reach him… and plant… a long, loving first… kiss… on his lips…"

She began panting fervently, with pink hearts in her pupils, and Rentarou blinked. Chachamaru gave a step back in silence, and Evangeline hummed to herself.

Karane frowned. "Um, does that mean that you'll do it or—"

"I'LL TAKE IT!" Hakari cried. "I'm sure that the Power bestowed upon me by Love will make me triumph no matter whaaaaaat!"

"But, Senpai, are you okay with this?" Chachamaru asked Rentarou.

He smiled. "Yes! If they're both pumped up for it, who am I to oppose? It should be a good chance for them to bond closer by having some good clean fun!"

Chachamaru and her Master looked at the girls, who were staring into each other's eyes over Rentarou's shoulders, a stream of crackling electricity connecting their pupils.

"All right," Evangeline said at last. "Chachamaru, call Hakase immediately, tell her Hanezono's got a designing job for her, and that she'll pay her richly…"

 

[OverMaster]

Eleven years ago:

Two little girls sat before a television, moving their heads slowly to the tune of a jazzy song.

"Daring duck of mystery, champion of right," they sang along together. "Swoops out of the shadows, Darkwing owns the night… Somewhere some villain schemes, but his number's up…"

Then they felt the large shadow of their father loom over them from behind.

"Aoi," Toshaka Tokiomi's voice called out, "what is this nonsense our daughters are partaking in?"

His wife, ever ethereal as a fairy in human figure, walked closer from where she had been knitting. "Oh… Oh, that. I, I was sent some tapes from Mundus Magicus, and I thought there'd be no harm on—"

"Who sent them?" the tall man asked, frowning while walking over to the TV and turning it off.

Aoi lowered her head. "Kariya had them brought over…" she confessed. "It seems this show is very popular over there…"

He struggled a moment with the infernal thing he couldn't understand before managing to pull the film out. "You cannot waste your time rotting your minds with this drivel!" he scolded the children. "If you have got the time for this, you might as well occupy it with your studies!"

Rin lowered her head while Sakura edged behind her, looking for her protection. "Yes, Father…"

Tokiomi paused for a moment before setting a hand on Rin's head. "This is for your own good," he reassured her, in a softer tone than before. "Everything I do is only done for your sake."

"We know, Father…" Rin replied, still just as humble.

A few months after, Sakura was gone. So that was the last time they could watch the show together.

And then…

Tohsaka Rin sat up on the bed, waking up with a start. "Ah!"

Next to her, Sakura stirred, opening her purple eyes slowly. "Neesama?" she gave a tiny yawn. "What is it…?"

"I just remembered, Sakura," Rin said. "I finally understand how I could have summoned Vigilante…"

This, of course, mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

Still, it was nice to know, at last.

---

Fate and all related elements and characters are the creation and intellectual property of Nasu Kinoko and Type-Moon.

All other characters and franchises mentioned within this story are the intellectual property of their respective trademark and copyright holders.

---

Fate: Unequally Blade Works.

---

Chapter Five: Magical Ruby.

 

[OverMaster]

"I… I really don't see the point of having to wear this!" Karane said, blushing as she emerged from a dresser wearing the tight ensemble of hot short pants and a belly-showing top, dark blue and sporting a white wing emblem on the chest. "Come on, this isn't a professional competition!"

"What are you complaining about? You look great in it!" gushed the long haired awful girl named Saotome Haruna who had forced her into wearing this. She crouched down before Karane and patted her hips several times, almost drooling. "All firm muscle in all the right places, but without overdoing it! Woo-hoo!"

Karane kneed her in the jaw, forcing her to stagger back with bulging eyes. "Hands off, skank…!"

Hakari, wearing an identical uniform and stretching up like a mischievous cat, chuckled. "Ufufu! Karane-san, why are you so antsy even when you're complimented? You should be honored your kind of figure is appreciated!"

Karane grimaced, looking at Hakari's large breasts nicely restrained by the top, her nipples vaguely outlined against the spandex. "This, this isn't the kind of appreciation I came here for…"

Evangeline approached them, wearing black shorts and the shirt with black and white stripes of a referee. "Your yearned appreciation waits at the end of the course with Boya, Despair and Morisato, Inda," she told Karane. "Just remember, the two of you will have to stick to the pathway without ever deviating from it! No shortcuts, and no sabotaging your rival either! Other than that, anything goes!"

"I feel so stupid," Karane said, being led by Chachamaru to the start of the course. This was a plain looking spot of grassy hillside, overlooking the valleys of Mahora Academy. There was a long stretch of road ahead, but there were no obstacles yet, at least not until the path entered the nearby woods, past which anything was anyone's guess. "And where are the rest of your buddies? Finally had better things to do than meddling into the lives of others?"

"My not friends will be handling the obstacles, making sure to test you while also babysitting you so you won't be hurt," Evangeline explained while Chachamaru pointed at two starting points marked '1' and '2' respectively. Just to piss Hakari off, Karane took Spot Number One. "That means they might attack you here and there, but against my advice, they won't be going all out…"

"You still want to kill us for some reason, don't you?!" Karane snapped.

"Don't take it personally, Eva-chin is that way with everyone!" Haruna laughed, taking a position by the duo and raising a trick gun. "On your marks!"

Both older girls sighed and assumed a position to start a sprint.

"Nice…" Haruna stared fixedly at the girls' lifted asses for a moment, then shouted, "Set!"

Hakari and Karane squinted, shared a piercing glare into each other's eyes, and held their breath for the big moment.

"GO!" Haruna yelled, shooting the gun into the air, and then both Senpais began running ahead.

Like expected, Karane, being more naturally athletic, took an early lead. Hakari was not exactly a slouch either, much less when spurred by her necessity to take Rentarou's lips, and soon was closing the distance dangerously. Haruna, Evangeline and Chachamaru watched them cover the whole distance towards the thick forest rather quickly, and then they vanished from sight into nature's unknown.

"And then they never were seen again…" Evangeline said with a shake of her head.

Haruna giggled and gave her a mock punch in the arm. "Oh, don't be like that! You know, I think I'm starting to like those two! They're really spirited, the girls could learn a few things from them, especially for Hanezono-senpai…"

"Excuse me for saying this, Saotome-san, but I highly doubt she will ever even entertain the thought of having an illicit tryst with you. She is too devoted for that…" Chachamaru said.

Haruna pouted. "Oh, don't be a wet blanket, Chacha-chan! If not her, someone in that group of 108 is bound to click closely with me…!"

Somewhere else, while longing under the sun in a beach chair and wearing a tiny white bikini, Hanezono Hahari sneezed.

 

[OverMaster]

"Are you sure you're feeling well, Aijo-san?" Negi asked, sitting at the end of the course with Morisato, guarding Rentarou, who was tied to a pole. "We always could loose your binds..."

"No, thank you, but I'm fine, really," Rentarou said with a patient smile. "If I'm going to play this role, I should do it correctly!"

Then he looked at the man in a traditional white and gray hakama, hanging by his neck from a branch of a close tree. "Aren't you ever worried about him ever dying for real?"

Negi sighed. "We're working on that..."

Keiichi heard something in the distance, and stood up to look into the woods with a set of binoculars. "Ah, they already began! They're entering the forest right now. Really, Evangeline-san should have told us..."

"Seriously? Let me see! Let me see!" Rentarou asked eagerly.

Keiichi gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm not sure you could see anything from that angle. Why don't we just untie you already?"

Rentarou thought about it. "But I gave my word...!"

Negi sighed again, and brought a card to his forehead. Rentarou looked on, interested. "Chisame?" the boy teacher asked. "Where are they now? Uh huh. I see..."

He glanced back at Rentarou. "They're clearing the first set of obstacles right now."

"Oh, the trap pits, right? What if they fail and fall into one, they could hurt themselves..."

"Aijo-san, you checked the pillows at the bottom five times, and there's a magical healer at hand!" Keiichi said. "Calm down already or call the contest out!"

"I don't want to be a widower even before our relationship begins for real!" the younger man defended himself. "Anyone would feel the same way!"

"Point granted," Negi allowed. He touched his forehead with the card again. "Chisame, Aijo-san wants to know if- Oh, they are sorting the logs already? That's good to know..."

Rentarou bit on his lower lip. "Oh! The logs!"

"They are cardboard logs after you banned the real ones!" Itoshiki reminded him.

Rentarou blinked and looked up at him. "How can you talk with a rope squeezing your throat?"

"Ventriloquism is one of Itoshiki-sensei's many talents," Negi replied for him.

"You are too kind," Itoshiki said. "Far more than a infrahuman like me deserves..."

Negi kept speaking through the Pactio card. "Yes. Yes, he's taking it well so far. Yes, I think we should cancel this, too. But you know Master... Oh? It's Asuna's turn now? Well, hopefully she'll go easy on them and-"

There were two loud shrieks coming from the woods, and Rentarou's eyes flashed. "My girlfriends!" he gasped.

A moment later, a blur ran past Keiichi and Negi.

The two youngsters looked at the pole, now without any boy tied to him, and surrounded by snapped rope scattered across the ground.

"Huh," Negi said. "Good thing it was Master herself who tied him, or else we wouldn't ever hear the end of this..."

"That guy is really scary," Keiichi said. "But I've got to admit it, he's got... I don't have the slightest idea what he's got, but it sure is something else, all right!"

 

[OverMaster]

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Asuna said, sitting around Evangeline's large table with Rentarou and his girls, Eva, Setsuna, Haruna, Chisame, Keiichi, Skuld and Yuuna. Itoshiki-sensei was currently hanging from a rafter of the ceiling. Konoka stood by Rentarou, healing a very thick two-story bump on his head, and Chachamaru was patching the scratches and bruises on Hakari and Karane's faces.

"You tell me about it," Skuld said. "The whole action scene happened off panel, what was up with that?"

"It saved the author some hassle, I suppose," Setsuna mused, still upset at me because I never write any good swordplay scenes for her.

"Well, that perfectly nice death course isn't going to go to waste," Evangeline decided. "I'm going to use it as your next training grounds, after I personalize some of the traps and make them more lethal, I mean challenging."

"You people are freaking nuts!" Karane said. "Now look at us, we're back at square one!"

"There's no point to all of this hassle, let's just decide it with a coin flip," Keiichi said, pulling a coin out of a pocket.

"It's not going to work," Rentarou warned him.

"How could a simple coin toss fail?" Morisato said. "Pick, girls, heads or tails?"

Karane groaned. "Heads…"

"Tails," Hakari sighed.

"Then, as an impartial third party, I flip…" the young mechanic said, and the coin flew through the air, spinning several times…

… only to end up falling through a small hole in the floor and plummeting into the basement below.

They all looked down. "…"

"I will go retrieve it," Chachamaru said, heading downstairs.

A moment later, she returned with a subtly somewhat troubled look on her face. "A mouse took it in its mouth and ran away with it before I could see the result. That is… strange, since we never had mice here…"

"You would be amazed at the amount of ways a coin toss can go wrong," Hakari said. "I never had an idea…"

Chachamaru was staring at the hole in the floor. "I'm sure that wasn't there yesterday either…"

"I have an idea," Haruna said.

"No!" everyone else, but Rentarou, said.

"At least hear me out first!"

"What is it, Haruna-san?" Rentarou asked, right before Haruna put a cloth around his eyes and tightened it. "Hey, what's up with this?!"

"Eva-chin, please take us to the darkest room you have," Haruna asked the owner. "That should settle this!"

"Next time you call me that, you will die," Mc Dowell warned, nonetheless standing up and leading them into the same basement Chachamaru had just returned from. Haruna grabbed the female Senpais by an arm and pulled them along to follow, despite their protests. Sighing to himself, Keiichi took Rentarou by a hand and guided him down, too. "I am 'Lady Evangeline' to you."

She took the group to a small closed room in the basement and opened it with a literal skeleton key, as it was made of bone and looked it. "This is my terrible dungeon of tortures, from which nobody has ever escaped…" she intoned ominously.

"There are brooms everywhere! This is a vulgar broom closet!" Asuna pointed out, squinting through its darkness.

"Shut up!" the little blonde growled. "Why would a broom closet be as big as this?! Keep up with the insolence and you'll be locked up here forever, too!"

"Wh-What's with that 'too'?!" Karane shrilled while Haruna blindfolded her as well. Hakari looked on, interested. "Ah, no! No no no no no! I'm not going to walk blindfolded into someone's secret basement s-sex dungeon away from civilization! That's some real Darwin Award crap right here!"

"Oh, shut up!" Eva said while Chachamaru blindfolded Hakari more gently. "What has, so far, given you the impression I'm the type unworthy of trust?"

"There are so many ways to start with that, I don't even know how to!" Karane yelled.

"Master, I know this is your house, but I'm still your teacher and I still have a legal obligation to keep all students safe," Negi told the vampire. "If they don't want to do this, I'm not going to stand for it."

"W-Well, if it's the only way to decide Rentarou-kun's first kiss…" Hanezono gulped, "Then I'm going along with it! I always could find my way through darkness…"

"I'm not gonna lose to you!" Karane said. "What, are you trying to play chicken with me?! I'm twice as brave as you or—YIIIIIIIIII!" she said as Haruna grabbed her and made her spin in place several times, displaying a lot of strength for a nerd.

Rentarou exhaled, starting to turn around in place himself. "Please hold on, girls, and forgive me for all of this. I'll do my best to make sure your kisses are worth your efforts…"

"If, if I get kissed second, then please make it twice as good!" Hakari said, being made spin by Chachamaru, and after all three of them were sufficiently dizzy and disoriented, Chachamaru simply shoved them inside at once, without a single word, and quickly locked the door after them.

"Even if they take the blindfolds off, they won't be able to see a thing," Eva smiled, folding her arms. "And even if they call out, it'll be difficult finding their way in the dark."

Konoka pinched her nose. "And it should be difficult to find each other through smell. Forgive me for saying this, Eva-san, but that room stinks so much!"

"I'm under orders to keep it stenchful as befits a torture dungeon. Sorry for offending your sensibilities, Konoka-san," Chachamaru bowed.

"I feel tempted to suggest that we head back up, bar the basement down, and forget about all of this, going on with our lives," Chisame deadpanned.

There were some sound gasps coming from the inside, and then the loud, wet noise of lips crashing together in a saliva generous smack.

"Oh dear!" Negi blushed. "So soon…?!"

"Well, it is a small broom closet," Skuld said.

"Torture dungeon…!" Evangeline growled.

The sounds of frantic, passionate kissing only grew up, over several moments, and Haruna's ahoge twitched excitedly. "Oh, woo hoo! That's some good stuff…!"

"I have a bad feeling about this," Setsuna confessed.

"Me too," Chisame said. "Any moment now, there'll be a—"

There was a loud sound of crashing, a man's yelp, and Negi, already nervously on the edge, darted ahead and pulled the door open.

Some light was thrown inside, and everyone blinked at the sight of Rentarou on the floor, rubbing his head after crashing against a wall. A couple of steps away, Karane and Hakari were hugging tightly and French kissing each other, cheeks flushed, until Karane finally seemed to notice the soft mass of large breasts mashing against her semi-flat chest.

Karane pulled back quickly, yanked her blindhold off, and then stared in horror before giving a shriek that rattled the whole cabin.

Matoi grabbed Chisame and ran for cover upstairs before anyone could even ask "Ah! You were there?!"

 

[OverMaster]

"What a disaster," Rentarou sulked, standing at the edge of the rooftop of the male wing's main building, and supporting himself on the rail. A whole day had passed, but the issue was still brewing heavily in his mind. "They must be angry at me, so there's only one way out…"

"N-NO!" a voice cried out desperately. "Rentarou-kun, don't jump!"

He blinked, turning around just in time to be tackled down by Karane, while Hakari, who had been the one just to scream, stood by the stairs with a frantic look on her face. "UUUUUFFFF!" he said as his head hit concrete and his eyes bulged out.

"Y-You idiot, why were you gonna throw your life away?!" Karane bawled against his chest. "You took all the wrong lessons from Despair-sensei?! If you want to kill yourself, why wouldn't you call me first, moron…?!"

"Kuh-Killing myself?" Rentarou said, spots flashing before his eyes while he sat up, rubbing his head with a hand. Karane wouldn't stop clinging to him, rivers streaming from her eyes. "Why would I kill myself when I have the two most wonderful girlfriends in the world?"

"Ah?" Hakari said. "What were you going to do then?"

"The only thing I could, of course, which is going to talk things over with you…"

Karane froze, then pulled back blushing and putting her fists on her knees. "D-Do you see, Hanezono, you imbecile? I told you he wouldn't be THAT dumb…!"

"How did you girls make it into this building?" Rentarou asked while helping Karane to her feet.

"We're still putting posters, remember?" Hakari said. "Your roommate said you came here, so… Well… Rentarou-kun, we discussed this all night long, and we reached an angreement… on the matter of what to do o-over our first kiss with you…"

"Angreement?" Rentarou repeated.

"Yeah, it means that first we were angry at each other but then we reached an agreement," Karane nodded. "Y-You can… I mean… W-We are going to… That is… Y-You tell him!" she ended up yelling at her roommate. "You're better at those talking to people thing!"

Hakari sighed, closed her eyes briefly, and then told the boy, "Rentarou-kun, you can kiss both of us at the same time."

"Eh?" he said. "But, that would mean…"

"W-W-We have kissed already, so that ship's sailed already!" Karane blushed even brighter, staring aside. "For our sake, we're willing to do it again, just once!"

"Yes, just this once!" Hanezono said.

"Because we didn't enjoy it or anything!" Karane added.

"Definitely not!" Hakari angreeded.

"But, but, but it wasn't completely ill-feeling and nauseating e-either, so if it means taking this weight f-from you, we can do it again!" Karane summed up.

"As long as we get to kiss you as well while doing it!" Hakari finished.

Rentarou paused. "Are you really, really, really, really, really sure that's what—"

"WE ARE!" the girls yelled at him at once.

Rentarou sweatdropped. "I simply had to ask…!"

Karane balled a fist up and brought it close to his face. "What, what, are you doubting the sincerity of our word? That'd piss me off! I'd beat you up! Or is it that you're having second thoughts and we disgust you now because you saw us kissing as if we were lesbians, which we aren't?! Or… are you thinking… that we are forcing you…" Suddenly she melted into a nearly tearful deredere again. "Oh, oh, oh dear, we ARE forcing you, aren't we? We are the worst, especially me, I'm strongarming my own boyfriend with threats of violence…!"

"What? No!" He grabbed her by the shoulders. "You aren't telling me about anything that I wouldn't want to! I'm so incredibly lucky, I just couldn't believe me good fortune, that's all!"

"So you will do it?" Hakari asked hopefully.

He smiled and extended a hand towards her. "We will!" he promised.

Hakari gushed with delight and skipped over to them. "Rentarou-kun! You're the best boyfriend in the world…!" she said, grabbing him and Karane and pulling them in for the kiss.

Karane stuttered. "W-W-Wait, idiot, not so fast! Gimme some time to prepare! As a matter of fact, maybe we shouldn't UMMMPPHH!" she finished as her mouth was mashed against those of Hakari and Rentarou at the same time, and her legs wobbled under her.

Suzumiya Haruhi was climbing the stairs up. "This is the ideal place!" she was telling someone who was marching behind her. "Here we can signal the aliens, the atmospheric conditions are ideal, and—and—"

She stopped, pausing to look at the three students Frenching each other in a torrid three way as one of the girls fondled the other two, and then she began to walk back and down, without being noticed at all. They were in their own happy world.

"Forget it, Kyon," she said very dryly. "Someone came first and found a better way to signal for them."

"Then what do I do with the flare pistol?" a masculine voice asked.

"Don't make me tell you where you can stuff it!"

So that was how Aijo Rentarou got his first kiss.

All in all, there are worse ways to start.

---

To be Continued.

---

Next: A Trip to the Library… and you Know Who that Means!

 

[OverMaster]

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is the creation and intellectual property of Nakamura Rikito, Nozawa Yukiko and Shueisha.

All other characters and franchises mentioned in this story are the intellectual properties of their respective copyright and trademark holders.

---

If you have read previous stories set in this universe, you should know about Library Island by now. It was a large library built on a small island in a huge lake by Mahora Academy, easily accessed through a stone bridge built two centuries ago. It also was one of the best stocked libraries in the Eastern hemisphere, holding relics centuries old, including dozens of volumes containing arcane knowledge and hidden in secret underground chambers.

This morning, Rentarou, Hakari and Karane were visiting said older and approaching the front desk where Saotome Haruna was working as a receptionist.

"Ah, guys, good morning!" the younger girl smiled at them, at which Karane predictably reacted grunting and averting her gaze. "Good to see you've worked everything out!"

Rentarou nodded. "Indeed we have, Saotome-san. How are you? We came for books on-"

"Oh, you haven't met my two best friends yet, have you?" Haruna pulled two smaller girls into the frame. "This is Ayase Yue-chan and this is Miyazaki Nodoka-chan, and they both work here with me, as fellow members of the Library Exploration Club!"

Hakari smiled and nodded. "That is wonderful, and it's nice to meet you, Ayase-san, Miyazaki-san. Do you know where-"

"Eeep!" cried a thin, petite girl with dark hair and large dark eyes, around Rentarou's age and still holding an open book in her hands, as she also was pulled in by Haruna.

"And this is Shiomiya Shiori-senpai!" Haruna kept on talking a storm, making sure to place the trembling, suddenly cowering Shiori between herself and the young man. "She's our fourth member, well, Konoka-chan also helps out every once in a while, but don't you think she's very cute?"

Hakari and Karane frowned as Rentarou looked at Shiori's timid face. Those huge Bambi eyes looked back in fear, and although he found her very cute, there was no strong reaction like that he'd felt with his girlfriends. Haruna noticed his lack of reaction and, somewhat disappointed, shoved Shiori back off panel while the two girlfriends sighed in relief. "What kind of books are you interested on, Aijo-senpai?" Haruna asked, talking more evenly now.

From a nearby table, a classmate of Rentarou, a skinny handsome boy with dark brown hair and glasses, looked up from the PFP galge he'd been playing instead of reading the stack of books set by his side.

"We wanted to read books on the history and psychology of polyamory, for completely academic and not at all personal reasons, wink wink," Hakari said.

"Oooohhh!" Haruna grinned. "Good to see you are interested on resorting to the actual books for that kind of knowledge, but that info is also widely available in the Internet, you know?"

Hakari clenched her teeth. "Yes, but any web search on those topics mostly yields just cheap pornography, and naturally, as wholesome people with no deviant interests, we wouldn't stand to be exposed to such things..." she said patiently.

Karane huffed and rolled her eyes back.

Haruna took a pensive pause. "I see. I see! Well, we have to work the front table all day long, but a new member of our association will ably assist you!" She clapped. "Shizuka-chan! Come here a moment, will you?"

Another girl peeked out from another a gigantic bookshelf, and then quickly moved closer, also holding a thick old tome in her small white hands. She had very long light brown hair, not all that well combed and giving her an extra layer of adorableness, combined with her diminutive size, barely any bigger than Evangeline's in her child form. She looked like a lovely living doll, and then, when she stopped clumsily by the others, Rentarou gasped quietly.

The new girl looked up at him as well, with very round and big innocent eyes a beautiful shade of light hazel. She made a very, very faint sound that almost could have passed for a gasp too.

Tiny angels shaped like caricatures of Haruna, Nodoka, Yue and Shiori appeared around them, flying in circles while holding Cupid bows, and the rest of the world briefly stopped existing. The sensation was quite different from those he'd experienced when first seeing Hakari and Karane, and yet it also was completely the same.

This shock hitting me to the core... he thought, feeling as if the universe was reshaped around him in a wonderful, pleasurable surge of goodness and warmth. Is she my soulmate too...?!

Still sitting at the sidelines of The World Only God Knew, Katsuragi Keima watched on and softly sneered out a side of his mouth.

"Such terrible writing," he spoke to himself. "This is why 3D can't hold a candle to 2D..."

---

The 108 Girlfriends who Really, Like Really, I mean it, Man, Really Love You, Dude.

---

Chapter Three: Never Judge Covers by their Books, Whatever that Means.

 

[OverMaster]

Usagi's Unusual Morning.

"Good morning!" she beamed her family a bright smile, as she sat at the breakfast table. "Boy, I'm hungry! I am... I am... What are you looking at?"

Kenji, Ikuko and Shingo kept on staring at her in shock before her father pointed at her and cried, "Who... Who in the world are you?!"

Usagi looked down at herself and winced. "Oh, that's right. I was so tired, I didn't transform back before sleeping...!"

 

[OverMaster]

Haruna had to notice this as well, since the next thing she did was to clench a smile and gently shove the paralyzed Shizuka towards Rentarou. "Shizuka-chan, I want you to show Senpai here all the books we have on the subject he's looking for!"

Before the much shorter girl could do anything but nodding shakily, Haruna turned towards Nodoka, grabbed her by a shoulder, and directed her towards Hakari and Karane. "As for you, Nodo-chan, please assist Hanezono-senpai and Inda-senpai as best as you can!"

"But, but Paru, I'm on frontline duty today, too…!" the girl with the thick bangs obscuring her face (no, not that one. We won't be seeing that one just yet. Please be patient) said.
"Our first duty is to help any and all students in need, Yue and I will cover you!" Haruna said.

Yue raised an eyebrow. "What about Shiori-senpai?"

"Why, she'll be helping Senpai here, of course!" Haruna laughed, grabbing the yelping Shiori by a hand and pulling her towards Keima's table, where she blushed very deeply and seemed to shrink a few sizes down. Satisfied, Haruna dusted her hands off. "Well, what's everyone waiting for? Do you want me to handle the boys myself?"

Sharing very quiet, yet distressed gasping hiccups, Shizuka and Shiori immediately took each respective boy by a hand and led them away, taking off into different hallways lined up by impossibly tall shelves full of books of all description.

"Are, are we just going to let her wander all alone with him?" Karane gulped, her eyes fixed on the way Rentarou had taken. "I mean, not that I care or anything, why would I be that insecure, but…!"

Nodoka sighed and began guiding the duo in a third different direction. "It'll be fine, Shizuka-san may seem shy, but she's actually rather able…"

"That… That is what we're fearing, actually," Hakari said, following her reluctantly.

"What books did you say you were interested on, Senpai?" Nodoka seemed to ignore this last remark, stoically leading the way.

"Polygamy," Hakari said bluntly.

"What? No! Cooking!" Karane blurted out. "C-Cooking, that's what she meant! It's just that she's dyslexic! Why would we want to read anything on perverted topics like kissing a boy and each other at the same time while the boy's prime to gather a harem, that's just ridiculous! We want to learn how to cook better, um, not to make said boy happier, but, but- We want to open a restaurant!"

Hakari rolled her eyes. "Love is also about being honest with your feelings, you know!"

"I understand," Nodoka said with noticeable aplomb. "Books on polygamist cooking, then." She stopped by a shelf and began pulling books out. "These might help. How to make your shared man happy through Okonomiyaki by Saotome Ukyo, Advanced Harem Cooking by Urashima Shinobu, Principles of Polyamorous Cuisine for Dummies by Tohno Kohaku if you feel you aren't ready for complicated recipes just yet…"

Hakari blinked. "Are they illustrated?" she dared to ask.

 

[OverMaster]

Meanwhile, Rentarou was chuckling nervously while following Shizuka, who was hugging her book tightly against her flat chest. "Wow, Saotome-san sure has an overwhelming personality, doesn't she…?"

Without looking back, the girl pulled out a small notebook and opened it on a certain page, showing it at Rentarou over her shoulder.

He leaned closer and read aloud. "You must give the aggressive and hostile aspects of yourself constructive ways of expression through assertiveness, determination, self-assuredness, boldness, mental toughness, decisiveness, learning how to articulate one's feelings, speaking directly, forcefulness, and sport. -― Laurence Galian."

He sweatdropped. "Ah, ha ha, yes, that is a very wise thing to say…"

Once they were all alone, she stopped, turned around, and showed him another page of the notebook, this one reading a simple What would you be interesting on reading, Sir?

"Oh, you'll see, I want to read about…" Then he kept on looking to this cutely gorgeous face, so full of vulnerable innocence, and felt like he couldn't ask her about anything like a man marrying several women at once. Not yet, at least. He decided to instead asking for what he truly felt in his heart when looking at her. "Happy fantasy stories! Something fanciful and inspiring, with a strong, spirited message! And happy endings! Stories of romance persevering in the face of all odds…"

The girl's face brightened, and she nodded very quickly. She pointed at another line that only read Wait here just a minute, please and then sped off, turning around a corner.

A few moments later, she returned pushing a cart easily bigger than herself, and in this cart there was a pile of books twice as tall as the cart itself, despite of which she seemed to have no problems pushing it at full speed, grinding to a screeching halt before him.

"Th-That was fast!" Rentarou commented.

Will these suffice? read the next line the small girl pointed at on her notebook.

"Yes, yes, thank you very much!" he nodded. Then, after a moment of doubt, he asked carefully, "Sorry if I'm intruding where I shouldn't, but can't you speak…?"

She looked down, contrite, for a moment. And then she pointed at a paragraph on another page. My apologies. I just happen to be incredibly bad at making conversation.

"I see…"

If you want me to, I will just call someone else.

"What? No! No!" he waved his hands before himself. "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to say I minded! This is just fine, I actually think it's very cute! I mean…"

The girl blushed, looked down, and pointed at another token go-to annotation. Thank you.

He smiled at her. "Would you please help me out to select a few, so I can take them back home?"

Her face brightened again oh so wonderfully, even though the redness of her cheeks, and she nodded again. I would love to!

They sat together at a table, and began pulling books from the pile. "What's your full name, Shizuka-san?"

She held up her ID card. It read Yoshimoto Shizuka and listed her as a first year, having been born the 8th of August.

She's even younger than I expected… a mildly troubled Rentarou said while cracking one of the books open. Will this really be okay…?

"Age doesn't matter when love is true and honest," whispered Haruna's voice, as the busty girl spied behind Rentarou, peeking through a shelf, from its other side.

"Ah!" he gasped. "Weren't you supposed to be at the front desk?"

A mildly upset Shizuka timidly threw one of the books, passing over Rentarou's shoulder and hitting the moment-ruiner in the face with unerring accuracy.

"Wah, Shizuka-chan!" Haruna wailed. "That's no way to treat a book and you know it better than anyone…!"

 

[OverMaster]

The End of UQ Holder.

The members of the organization looked back at the last few chapters and what had become of their manga.

Jinbei looked at Juuzou. "Hey, you can cut any concept of anything, right?"

"You know well that I can. Why to even ask?"

"Can you please cut the concept of this shitty manga already, so we can be put of our collective misery at last?"

"I'll be glad to," the dark skinned man said stoically, drawing his blade out and doing just that.

THE END.

 

[OverMaster]

Shiratori Yukina looked at her roommate, later that evening.

It wasn't strange that Shizuka acted distracted and faraway in her own world while reading, but she almost never smiled while doing it. Now, many would often accuse Yukina of being selfcentered, but much like Misa, deep inside she really cared for those few who actually could call themselves her friends, and so-

"Have you found a boy you like?" the girl with short reddish brown hair asked abruptly, looking up from her smartphone and making the other girl in the room start gagging in her saliva.

Well. Thank you for sort of helping me prove my point, Yukina-chan.

"You're welcome!" Yukina told the narrator peppily, and then addressed her roommate again with a wry smile. "I've hit a bullseye, haven't I? Oh, Shizuka-chan! That isn't anything to be ashamed of!"

Shizuka blushed, hid her face in the book, and made Yukina wait patiently, with an unwavering smile on her face.

Finally, Shizuka left the book aside, reached for the nightstand for her notebook, and flipped through it. After realizing she didn't have an entry for this kind of situation, she hastily wrote it herself and held the pages up for Yukina to see.

"Ooohhh, that handsome?" Yukina said. Well, she doubted he could ever be as handsome as Tsukomo-oniichan, but if it made Shizuka happy... "Then you have to do your best for him!" She grinned and wagged a finger. "I'll help you with a little makeover, okay?"

Shizuka's eyes opened a whole lot, and she was left even more speechless than usual.

She had a bad feeling about this...

Meanwhile, in his room, Saruyama snored in the lower bunk while Rentarou sat by their window, reading one of the books Shizuka had recommended him.

'Circlet Love Story'! he sobbed silently inwardly as he read. I had misjudged you from the reviews! You aren't merely a cheap power fantasy self insert romance, you are so moving...!

It was a love story between Princess Io and her guardian knight in goblin slayer armor, Kamacle, who fought against all manners of threats and villains for her sake. It was so, so much better than the anime adaptation! He also would have to check the video game one of these days...

"Don't give up, Kamacle!" Rentarou wiped a few manly tears off as he reached the end of the book. "I know you can do it! No matter what everyone in the court thinks! My heart is with you...!"

Saruyama drowsily lifted his head from the pillow. "Dude, you're still reading that? Tomorrow's a school day!"

Rentarou closed the book and sighed sadly. "End of Volume One! I have to read the continuation ASAP!"

Saruyama turned around on the bed. "You really have gone nuts. Is this what actually getting game does to a guy? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Rentarou pumped a fist up. "I'll see her again tomorrow! And we'll read the continuation together!"

"What's this 'tomorrow' you're talking about?!" Saruyama said irritably. "You mean later today! It's three A.M. already, you weirdo! Go to sleep, for fuck's sake!"

"I don't know if I'll be able to sleep after having so much excitement..." Rentarou confessed, eyes wide open.

Saruyama kindly helped him by knocking him out with a thrown lamp to the back of his head.

It's good to have friends who care!

 

[OverMaster]

"Gonna return that book already?" Karane asked as she and Hakari followed Rentarou into Library Island, later that afternoon.

"Yep, I already finished it but not the others, and I've gotta return one before being lent the continuation," her boyfriend said. "You guys really should borrow it too, it's great!"

"I'll make sure of it then," Hanezono smiled pleasantly. "Truly you are a man of great culture, Rentarou-kun!"

He chuckled awkwardly while they made it to the front counter. "Do you think so? W-Well, I've always liked books, but… but…" He trailed off, his gaze laying on Shizuka, who was attending the main desk today and had been dolled up, rather nicely combed, and her makeup subtly but remarkably accentuating her beauty. Yukina had made a good job, what, did you think she'd made her look like a clown? "G-Good morning, Yoshimoto-saaaaaan…"

The other two girls stopped behind him, then, after a few moments of pause, shared a weary sigh.

Shizuka looked back at him, shyly, and then gulped and showed a fresh annotation on her notebook. Good morning. Did you like it, Aijo-senpai?

"Oh yes, quite a lot! I already finished it and I'd like the second part, if you won't mind!" he smiled, gently setting the tome on the desk.

Shizuka smiled back, and showed him an excerpt of a review she'd copied. "A remarkable enough effort from a first time author, this book MIGHT just mark the start of a decently competent mainstream career. While the story lacks a strong dramatic spine owing to its escapist, carefree nature, the motivations for the main characters are understandable and solid, and the setting shows a certain amount of potential that would be greatly explored in the hands of a LeGuinn or Scarlet." –Fukawa Touko, The Tragedy of Genocide Jack.

"Oh, that's high praise from the likes of her, indeed!" Rentarou noted, enthusiast. Shizuka nodded rapidly.

"By the way," Rentarou said, pink hearts fluttering out of him, "what did you think to your hair? It's very fetching…"

Karane rasped loudly into a fist. "Rentarou! Aren't you gonna introduce us?!"

"Huh? Oh, yes, naturally!" he blushed, embarrassed. "You only met saw her briefly yesterday, but I got to speak with her for a while. This is Yoshimoto Shizuka-chan, an authority of books of all fields, and these are Inda Karane-chan and Hanezono Hakari-chan…"

"We are Rentarou-kun's girlfriends," Hakari said with a self assured smile.

Shizuka's eyes grew very, very, very open, and very, very, very, very round.

Rentarou nodded, since there was no point on hiding any of this and he'd never be ashamed of his girlfriends. He still braced himself, because while unavoidable, this was probably about to get kind of ugly. "I know that might sound kind of strange to some, but…"

There was a thud as Shizuka's back hit the floor.

"GAHHHHH!" Rentarou gasped. "SH-SHIZUKA-CHAN!"

From a nearby table, a tall woman in blue jeans and a tight black sweater remarking her large bust looked up from the book she had been absorbed into. Behind opaque glasses, her eyes briefly shone with subtle interest. Extremely long light purple hair, tied back into a ponytail, snaked behind her, almost reaching the floor.

Medusa hungered for mana a weak Master couldn't supply, but the area was tightly watched over lately, and she hadn't been able to bite a girl for days. However, surely nobody would find anything strange about a fainting damsel appearing drained and weak on her bed.

Watching in silence how Haruna and Yue emerged from around a hallway and helped Rentarou carry the unconscious librarian away, the quiet woman moved with stealth befitting an Assassin, making her way after them without Hakari and Karane, who were closing the formation, noticing her.

 

[OverMaster]

A Gut Feeling.

Beryl Gut sat before his computer, sipping his coffee, and began checking his e-mail.

A message coming from a Matou Shinji caught his attention.

It only read Dear Beryl-san, I'm not the most hated Fate character anymore. Thank you!

Beryl blinked. "I thought that was Zouken?"

 

[OverMaster]

The girls surrounding her took a look at the book passage she was pointing at.

"What?" one of them asked. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Can't you talk?"

"I, I, I can," Shizuka stuttered, "it's just that-"

"Then why don't you just do it?" another classmate asked. "Does it hurt or something?"

They wouldn't understand, of course.

"My opinion is," Arai Chie-sensei was telling Shizuka's parents now, "that you should take her to a specialist. She doesn't answer to treatment here, so there must be a deeper issue at hand..."

"No, absolutely not!" Shizuka's father had said. "If word gets out that my daughter is a mental case, we'll fall in disgrace...!"

Back at home, her mother was scolding her after spanking her. "Why must you do this to us?!" the woman demanded. "After all we've done for you!"
Shizuka shuddered and kept on staring at the floor.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" her mother demanded. "Do you know why you don't make any advances? Because you don't want to! If you only left that damn book aside and tried to speak, you could do it! You just refuse to, because it's easier for you!"

Shizuka tried to apologize, but only a garbled sound came out her throat.

"Enough! Speak! Speak! Speak!"

"I, I, I am...!"

"Why do you insist on being such a creepy child?!"

---

She opened her eyes widely and found herselg staring at the ceiling of that small room at the back of the reception, where they'd sit to eat lunch and dinner while on duty.

Someone had pulled a futon out of the emergency closet and set her on it. Looking around, she saw Aijo-san, Paru, Nodoka, Yue, Shiori and... Aijo-san's two girlfriends... all sitting on the floor, surrounding her.

"Thank God you're okay," Aijo-san breathed out. "You scared us for a moment...!" And then he made a pause. "Because you are okay, aren't you?"

Shizuka pondered this for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

Haruna sighed, standing up and pulling a jacket on. "That's great to know. Look, I'm not getting any reception here so I'll have to go look for Ako-chan myself. Inda-senpai, Hanezono-senpai, I'd like it if you could come with me."

"Eh? Why us?" Karane asked.

"Who is this Ako-san you are talking about?" Hakari inquired.

"A friend of us who works at the nurse's office. I'd also like to talk with you for a moment, Aijo-senpai." She motioned at the boy to come along, and he obeyed quietly after another worried look at the strangely still Shizuka. Haruna closed the door after the four of them, then told Rentarou very seriously, "Listen, as you can see, Shizuka-chan is kinda frail. I should've told you this earlier, but she was getting better lately, so I thought that-"

"Why don't you just use one of those magical cards to call her over?" Karane asked.

"Ako doesn't have a Pactio," Haruna said, "and we couldn't use magic before Shizuka-chan and Shiori-chan, they don't know about it."

"Why did she react that way?" Hakari asked. "She..." She looked at Rentarou, who blushed and lowered his head. "She and you, right...?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I mean, I should have made it clear to you before, too..."

"What is done is done," Haruna said. "Right now, the last people she'll want to see are you two girls, but you," she pointed at the boy, "she needs to see that you haven't done this to her on purpose, just because you're a careless dork."

"I'm a careless dork," he admitted contritely. "But I'll do my best to make up for it!"

"Send Shiori back to the frontlines, Yue and Nodoka will help you out, stop you before you mess up again if necessary," Haruna instructed, beginning to herd the two older girls away despite Karane's protests. "Try to explain things as best as you can until we come back, and remember... all that is at risk here."

Rentarou gulped loudly. "Of course!"

"At risk?" Hakari said. "It's just a broken heart! It'll hurt, of course, and it's awful she has to go through with this, but she'll recover, just like-"

Haruna blushed for once and pulled her along, biting her tongue. "Put yourself in her place before downplaying it!" she demanded, and before long she had stormed away with them.

Rentarou stood there for a moment, silently contemplating what he hadn't wanted to dwell into yet.

Haruna-san is right... If I reject Shizuka-chan, or any of the others, she... they...

He tightened both fists by his sides and trembled impotently, closing his eyes.

How can I claim to love them if I can't even protect their lives?!

But there was no time to feel sorry about himself, he decided, so he sniffled tears back, turned around, and returned to the small back room, closing back after himself.

Appearing from thin air where Haruna had stood moments ago, and edging ever closer to the door, the tall shapely woman shifted into a tight black minidress with tall boots, and a thick blindfold replaced her glasses.

 

[OverMaster]

Shiori was sent back outside, and Rider let her pass while briefly shifting into her invisible astral form. The less people she would be detected by, the better. After the girl as out of sight and hearing, the Servant leaned against the closed door and listened.

Inside, Shizuka gestured at Nodoka with a hand. It took the older girl a moment to realize she was asking for her notebook and pen. Nodoka quickly gave them to her. Then the even shorter girl began writing.

These arrangements are pretty much like the ones you have with Negi-sensei, or am I wrong?

Yue gagged in her saliva as Rentarou sweatdropped. It was Nodoka, actually, who answered calmly. "No, Sensei has no actual girlfriends yet, he's too young for that."

Still, it is clear from Haruna's words...

"H-Haruna is always exaggerating a lot!" Yue coughed. "S-Sensei's closest associates are just too enthusiastic, that's all!"

I see...

"Besides," Nodoka added quietly, "I'm not part of those who are interested on him, not anymore. I... I have grown interested on another," she confessed with a small blush.

Shizuka raised an eyebrow. She didn't know about that, and for once Paru hadn't ever commented on the subject either, at least not in her presence.

I'm sorry for overreacting. That, of course, is no business of mine.

"No, don't say that!" Rentarou told her. "It's me who should apologize. On behalf of Hakari-chan and Karane-chan, too. They can be too direct at times."

Shizuka began writing something else down, and it was then that Rentarou truly realized how shortly into the notebook her annotations had gone yet. It was clear that even through this method, she rarely communicated directly with others.

It's not my place to judge you, or being scandalized by you. I'm too strange myself, far more than you.

"We are the way we have to be," Rentarou said. "If you truly want to change, then by all means you should do so, but it should be your own decision. You shouldn't be pressured by what anyone would think."

"We don't think you are strange, Shizuka," Yue said.

The long haired girl gave a long, but very soft sigh.

I know, and I'm thankful to you for it. But I cannot escape the fact I can't and shouldn't stay like this forever. I'm just being childish.

"Oh, no, you are very mature," Rentarou said. "For starters... you didn't react by hitting me or anything..."

I did hit Haruna yesterday.

"That's Haruna-san, nobody could blame you," Rentarou smiled, and after a moment of blinking surprise, Shizuka had to let out a tender joyous sound.

"Ah, so that's how you laugh!" he said. "It's a very pretty laugh..."

Shizuka blushed and raised the notebook enough as to cover her face, but not exaggeratedly so. Yue and Nodoka smiled too.

Shizuka wrote something else in a hurry and showed it to him. I'd like us to be friends, if you won't mind.

"I'd love to," Rentarou said.

Noticing something that had been left unsaid and probably should have been said, Shizuka blushed again and added, in a hurry, I'd like to be friends with your girlfriends as well!

He nodded. "I'm sure they'll be just as happy!"

Then he reached over and gently stroke her hair, marveling at how silky it felt between his fingers. "I'm so glad you are feeling better now."

She nodded. Sorry for worrying you. Would you like more books? We could read them together...

Nodoka tensed up for some reason, glancing back over her shoulder. "Yue," she said. "Behind me."

"Huh?" Yue said, right before the door was kicked in and down.

 

[OverMaster]

Spice and Lone Wolf and Cub.

She arrived from the West, a mysterious presence in a dark purple kimono, with long brown hair trailing behind her.

She would travel in silence across the cold wastelands, always pushing a small cart. And in the cart, there was a small child with wolf ears.

She would mean death for anyone who crossed her. Those who would threaten her daughter would receive something far worse.

Merciless. Distant. Inhuman. That is how those left in her wake would describe her, through the years, as her cub grew and became a legend of danger in her own right.

Behind them, they would leave a name, perhaps the reason behind their never ending travels.

"Lawrence..."

That is, at the very least, the story I have been told.