Kenji was hiding out in his anti-feminist fort—which was really just a couple of chairs, a bed, and some quilts—when he heard an unfamiliar knock at his door. No one ever came to visit him, save for Hisao, and these knocks were slower than Hisao's sharp, deliberate knocking. This made him warier than usual; was the feminist uprising finally beginning? Rolling out from his fort, he got up and called through the door. "Who's there?"
"Rin Tezuka. Tezuka Rin. You can call me Rin," spoke a calm voice from the other side. Kenji's brow furrowed in confusion. This voice was completely alien to him, but he could have sworn he had heard it before. While he stood there, puzzling over the strange voice, it spoke again. "Are you going to open this door?"
Rin Tezuka? Kenji remembered no such person, and his heart stopped beating for the briefest of moments. Obviously, this Rin Tezuka character is a SPY! Not just any spy, but…and he shuddered to think of it…a FEMINIST SPY! Oh, shit, the feminists were onto him! He didn't know what he'd do, he had never thought this far ahead.
"How do I know you're not a feminist?!" he demanded furiously, glaring hatefully at the door as if the door itself was an undercover feminist spy. He wasn't going to let this stranger into his secret base without good reason. That would just be inviting the feminists into his safe haven.
"Wait, hang on…you gave me a password…Honey…muffin? Honeymuffin." Incredible. This Rin knew his secret anti-feminist password that he only gave to those who he deemed cool enough. Hisao wasn't cool enough; he was always hanging out with those Student Council feminists, probably giving them key info about Kenji's M.O. Kenji couldn't believe he had forgotten that he had given someone else his password.
"Hang on," he began to work on all the locks on his door, about five or six, but with his poor eyesight, it might as well be ten. He swung the door open to reveal…a dude? It couldn't be a girl, he had short, red hair and a boy's uniform. "Sup, dude?"
"Hello," Rin greeted him, a look of boredom on her face. Not that Kenji could tell with his poor vision. He stepped forward and began to scrutinize his guest up close. He didn't remember seeing Rin before, but this person had to be cool. He gave Rin his sacred password. She didn't seem bothered by him invading her personal space. As he examined her face, she spoke again. "I was bored. So I came here. I saw a cloud."
Kenji surprised her with a reply that seemed more alarmed than a simple cloud warranted. "A cloud? What's so special about a cloud? Was it a feminist cloud?" Kenji barked out, looking worried. Man, if the clouds were turning into feminists, they had no hope! His eyes widened in terror and he crawled back into his fort at once.
"No. Just a cloud. What's wrong with feminists?" She was now sitting under his fort, looking over at him with curiosity. She had seen him around school before, but this was her first one-on-one interaction with him. He was kind of weird, but she appreciated his eccentricities. It was refreshing to talk to someone as weird as herself. "Did they give you a problem in the pants?"
Kenji stared at her in surprise. He had no idea where that question had come from and it took him a minute to recover from the shock. "I…what? No, feminists can't touch me! Feminists are evil and trying to usurp man! They're gonna take away my supreme baller status!" He wrung his hands nervously as he said all of this.
Rin offered him a solemn and sympathetic look at this last exclamation. She didn't understand what 'baller status' was exactly, but it sounded like something Kenji was very much attached to. "Baller status?" She raised a quizzical brow as she repeated the phrase, hoping that he would further explain.
He took a swig from the whiskey he had sitting beside him. Rin wondered how she didn't notice the bottle before, but chalked it up to her own inattention to detail. If she was really expecting an explanation, she would have been disappointed by his reply. "Yeah! No one balls as hard as Kenji!"
"If you say so…do you think all women are feminists?" she asked politely. She wanted to better understand his warped point of view. "If all women are feminists, then are all men in support of your cause? If it's like that, then feminists will take over, because there's less men than women on the planet."
Rin should have known better than to attempt to use logic with him, for Kenji spit out the whiskey he was about to swallow and stared at her incredulously. He seemed even more agitated that he was before. "You're right! We're all doomed! It's only a matter of time!"
She offered him a placid smile. There wasn't much she could do to calm him down, but she could reassure him that she still wanted to be his friend. She said the only thing that she felt would alleviate his fears. "Unless some women aren't feminists. I'm not a feminist."
This confession struck him as an odd thing to say, especially after he made clear that only women could be feminists. "Of course, you're a…" Kenji remembered there was an armless girl in class 3-1. He pointed an accusing finger at her, shaking in anger over being deceived so easily. "YOU'RE ONE OF THEM! YOU'RE A GIRL! FEMINIST SPY! I saw right through you! With my SHAMAN'S EYES!"
"No…I'm not a feminist," she protested. She moved away from him ever so slightly in case he lashed out at her. Her plan to help him calm down only seemed to upset him further. Rin was beginning to feel like she was saying entirely the wrong things. "I'm…I'm just Rin."
Much to her relief, Kenji seemed to calm down slightly at these simple words. His body seemed to relax until he was no longer shaking. His grip on the whisky bottle loosened. His eyes were no longer the size of saucers, but he did seem to be as wary as he had been when she first knocked at his door. "Well…I-I guess you're cool…But you'll never be as baller as me…"
"Wanna teach me how to be ballin'?" Rin's smile widened. She was relieved that she was back to square one, maybe she could start over with him. She wanted to be able to spend more time with him in the future, she found his unpredictable behaviour more fun than everyone else's boringly standardised interactions. "It could be fun."
