EDIT: Due to...various reasons, this is now a one-shot. I'm sorry to all those waiting for an update.
For non-manga readers, the surnames of all the characters are different as they are the ones used in the Junai novels. Kaoruko was chosen at random. She's one of Akihiko's cousins and isn't really important to the fic.
And now, onwards!
XX
"They're making it into a game," Akihiko said gravely, taking a long drag of his cigarette. "A dating sim to be more accurate."
He blew out a small ring of smoke in the direction of the ceiling of his apartment. Hiroki, for most part, sat on the couch opposite, utterly stupefied. Finally, after a whole minute of staring at the point between Akihiko's eyes, he managed some sort of response.
"…What?"
Akihiko reached for his ashtray. "Well, apparently the fans like Nakajou-kun and my latest Junai Egoist novels have created quite a storm. Personally, I think Romantica is much more - "
"Wait, what do you mean they're making it into a game?!" Hiroki snapped sharply.
"It's called Hiroki's Harem," Akihiko pulled a face. He really was not helping at all.
The muscles in the corner of Hiroki's mouth began twitching. "So….you're writing the script?" he asked with the utmost restraint the could muster after being told that not only would he be the star of some silly dating sim, but a BL dating sim of all things.
Even Akihiko frowned at this, obviously displeased that no one had demanded a Junai Romantica game yet. "I'm supposed to…but there's no way I could write about you and Misaki together! Not even if I was drunk!" he snorted. "When I mentioned it briefly to Kaoruko once, she had an interest in it so I'm letting her handle it."
"K - Kaoruko?" he stuttered. "You don't mean Usami Kaoruko? She likes BL? She reads that trash? No, wait! She's writing that trash now? Does she even know how to write? Why is she…" he trailed a way, utterly lost for words. Had he woken up in some perverse parallel universe where everyone was intent on screwing his life over repeatedly?
Of all people, why was Akihiko's cousin handling the script, which would no doubt ruin all his credibility as a person, as a man? Didn't she want to be a confectioner?
"Ah, I can run the scripts by you, if you want. Your input is always appreciated," Akihiko continued, as indifferent as always to his friend's despair.
"No thank you!" Hiroki snapped, slamming his teacup onto Akihiko's coffee table. Just as he had with those terrible trashy novels, if he ignored them and pretended that they did not exist perhaps it would somehow just disappear from his life.
Within two weeks of his secret meeting with Akihiko - since he would rather be damned then let Nowaki know what he had been discussing with his friend - a large package containing several scripts arrived on his doorstep.
XX
Hiroki's Harem
- Hiroki and Shinobu -
Nakajou Hiroki was born and raised in an upstanding, traditional Japanese household for a good three quarters of his childhood. When he finally come out into society, he emerged a fine, respectable man who threw books at people and had an unnerving obsession with pandas.
His life was a comfortable routine of eating, sleeping, working and reading. He earned just above the national average wage for men his age, consumed the exact two thousand five hundred calories per day as the government recommended, and bought the thickest dictionaries he could find to throw at his students, just to prove that the saying 'words can never hurt you' was false.
However, such blissful ease was not meant to last.
Hiroki rang the bell of his student's house twice before stepping back and patiently waiting for someone to open it for him. He heard shuffling and the sound of someone running down the stairs as he sighed. Whose bright idea was it to force teachers to give counselling to their students as well? He was not a damn shrink!
Eventually, the door opened and a teenaged boy with curiously light hair peered out. He was wearing a shirt that looked as though it had been slept in a pair of dark grey jeans which were threadbare and chaffed at the hems.
"Hello there, Shinobu-kun I presume, I'm Nakajou Hiroki," he said, forcing a smile. Who knew what kind of problems kids had these days?
"Ah," Shinobu opened the door wider to allow him in. "Nice to meet you."
Fortunately, the house was not as untidy as Shinobu's appearance. Hiroki was led to the main room where he was beckoned to sit on a strangely brown, lumpy sofa as Shinobu took a seat opposite.
He laid aside his briefcase, which was, incidentally, stuffed with panda porn as the normal kind no longer gave him the kind of kicks he sought. And this boy thought he was the one who needed counselling!
"So…would you like to talk to me about something?" Hiroki coughed.
Shinobu nodded glumly. Tilting his head to the sky, which was rudely being blocked by a smoke stained ceiling, he sighed and began recalling the incident which had turned him into the twisted individual he was today.
"Ah, I was born in spring, you see. My father met my mother at a Sadomasochist orgy where he was undercover in a blue cocktail dress going by the alias of Brenda - "
"Sorry, Shinobu-kun, could we skip the first sixty-five chapters of your life story and fast forward to the incident you wanted to talk about?" Hiroki interrupted, although he really wanted to know more about 'Brenda.'
"It started about three months ago," he sighed. "I was at a party. After a few hours, it came to my attention that there were lots of people passed out on the floor."
"You mean you didn't notice before?"
"When I inquired about it, it turned out they were on drugs," he continued, ignoring Hiroki's side-line comments. "The kids there wanted me to have some too. I didn't really want to get hooked but they wouldn't take no for an answer so, when they weren't looking, I stole a few cabbage leaves from the fridge and ground them up instead," he explained.
"And?" Hiroki prompted.
"…And then I was snorting lines of cabbage."
Before he could keep speaking, Hiroki reached for the nearest 'normal' book in his bag and lobbed a large, 1998 edition of the Oxford dictionary squarely between his eyes.
"Idiot! What if you die from an overdose of Riboflavin? How do you think your body's going to cope with all that excess vitamin C!" he snapped.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll just get shinier skin," Shinobu rubbed his cheeks thoughtfully.
Another book smacked him straight in the forehead.
"That's vitamin E, idiot!" Hiroki snapped, leaning over the length of the table to grab the boy by the front of his shirt. shaking him for all he was worth. "Quit, quit it now, you brat!"
"But cabbage is ten times more addictive than heroin!" Shinobu cried as his head bounced back and forth. "I can't stop!"
"Only the weak say that!" Hiroki declared as he released him with one final shove. "Give me a week with you and I'll make you kick the habit for good!"
Thus an entire week went by spent in the company of a cabbage addicted boy who talked about Fate as if they were on first-name terms and believed that capitalism was a lie, which would eventually give way to an autonomous collective as soon as people realised that their leaders were idiots.
Thus, Nakajou Hiroki experienced the extreme pleasure of wasting time at the taxpayer's expense by hurling dictionaries, yelling a lot and keeping the cabbage locked up in CCTV surrounded cabinets.
Eventually, through the harrowing process of rehabilitation, Shinobu successfully came clean. However, though no longer hounded by the urge to sniff cabbage, Hiroki found that he could not rid him of his disturbing attachment for them.
"Sensei, I want to thank you for everything you've done," he nodded gratefully as their week came to an end.
"No need. I told you I would, uh, get you off the habit," Hiroki waved a dismissive hand in the air, his eyes wandering over the fridge, which he knew was still stuffed with cabbages. At least Shinobu was not snorting them any more.
"Please let me show you my appreciation!" Shinobu suddenly cried, dragging him to the bedroom.
"S - Shinobu-kun?"
"I love you, sensei!" he declared so loudly the neighbours banged on the walls.
"I - it's not right! The PTA would have my head if they found out!"
Sure, Shinobu appealed to his shota-con tendencies but he was still one of his students and he was a responsible adult! He did all the things adults did; complained about kids, wished for the 'good old days' blamed the government and cursed immigrants for stealing the money he wasn't actually working to earn. An adult certainly wasn't supposed to do this and that with little kids!
"Then we'll die together!" Shinobu cried, clinging to him in a fit of mad passion. "It's romantic, don't you think?"
Hiroki had to quite honestly disagree with him there.
"You're a psychopath!" he snapped. "You keep this up and you'll end up a world-hated cereal killer!"
"It's not my fault, it's the Special K!"
"What have I told you about blaming things on the carbohydrates!?"
"But Kelloggs is the work of the devil!"
Pushing Hiroki onto the bed, Shinobu slid underneath it for a brief second. When he emerged he was holding a familiar yet dreaded vegetable in his hand.
"You're not taking that to bed with you, are you?" Hiroki's eyes widened upon seeing a whole cabbage in Shinobu's arms.
"Why not?"
"What for?" he cried, his voice spiking at an unusually high pitch.
Shinobu glanced at him coldly. "Do you have a problem with the cabbage?" he asked, his tone turning dangerously low.
"Of course I have a problem with the cabbage!" Hiroki angrily barked. "No one takes a cabbage to bed! Especially not when they're about to do it!"
"Cabbages need some love as well," the boy replied obstinately. "Or are you saying that vegetables aren't deserving of love? Are you admitting that you're a prejudiced, bigoted individual who discriminates against others on the basis of their preferences of flora and fungi?"
Hiroki withered a little beneath Shinobu's terrible rage. "Well, why a cabbage? If you have to bring a vegetable with you, why not something smaller? Like a tomato."
"A tomato is not a vegetable, it's a fruit!"
A migraine was working its way into Hiroki's head. "Look, just leave the cabbage somewhere and I won't protest."
"If you don't love the cabbage, you don't love me!" Shinobu cried, shaking his head adamantly.
"Shinobu-kun!"
"The cabbage is a part of me! Why can't you accept that? What can't you love me for who I am?"
For a moment, he was at a complete loss for words. "I… I'm a firm believer in monogamy!" he finally stuttered. "I refuse to have a threesome with you and a cabbage!"
"Monogamy!" Shinobu snorted contemptuously. "Don't be so conservative, old man!"
Hiroki bristled. "Well sorry for being old fashioned!" he threw his legs over the bed, marching for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Home!"
Shinobu left the cabbage on the bed and hurried after him, crying; "Wait!"
"You can stay with your precious cabbage all you want!" Hiroki snapped, feeling tears gathering in his eyes for some reason or other. Pointing a finger at the cabbage, he cried hysterically; "You can't see that bitch is coming between us! Fine! Be with the cabbage then, I hope it makes you happy!"
"Nakajou-sensei!" Shinobu yelled but Hiroki was already storming out of the bedroom and through the front door.
It began to rain as he slammed Shinobu's door shut and marched through the empty district. He had left his bag and his collection of panda porn there too but he did not feel like going back to collect it.
"Ah, this must be what it feels like to have a broken heart!" he sighed. Had he, somehow, at some point during their counselling sessions unwittingly fallen for the boy? Yet he knew that, in Shinobu's eyes, he would always come second to the cabbage.
Sighing, he trailed his weary way to the bus stop. He did not feel like going home. Maybe he would go to the park and throw rocks at punks. That always cheered him up.
As he stood by the post marked 'bus stop' someone held an umbrella over his head to shield him from the rain. He was about to snap at whoever it was and demand why the hell they were shoving an umbrella over his damn personal space when he was trying to angst and cut a tragic silhouette, when he realised that he recognised that face.
"Why so sad, Hiroki?" Takahiro smiled.
Aaand, it's Takahiro's time to shine next. I know, it makes no sense, that's half the fun. I haven't wrote crack in ages so I'm sort of warming up to it, things will probably get crazier as the chapters go on.