Explanations and Summaries
In response to my earnest request, I received complete silence.
Could it be that she had run off, thinking I was some sort of creep?
Fearing such a possibility, I raised my head. There, I witnessed the sight of an extremely flustered girl who was struggling to make a coherent response. Wasn't her delinquent facade completely destroyed at this point?
Well I guess that's the normal reaction when someone you don't really know that well suddenly asks if they can stay over at your house for the night. If some strange girl I didn't know asked me that, I am sure I would be panicked and flustered too. I would probably be suspecting some kind of prank, expecting to be ambushed by a group of friends hiding behind the corner who would then laugh off the whole thing as a joke. Wait, was that normal?
While I was musing to myself, the girl pulled herself together and finally formed words with her mouth. "...Wh-wh-what did you just say?"
Hm? I guess she did think it was a joke after all? But it really wasn't. In all seriousness, I desperately wanted to stay over at her place tonight. No one was around the corner waiting to ambush her and announce the whole thing as a prank. In the first place, it would be problematic if anyone saw what we were doing here.
So I repeated my request, this time while looking at her straight in the eyes. "I'm serious! Please, can I stay over at your place tonight?"
I guess she still didn't believe I was serious, as her actions just became even more flustered. After some struggling to regain control, she voiced another word. "...Wh-wh-why?"
"Well... erm... well..."
I looked down at the ground and tried to reorganize my thoughts.
...Where do I even begin? Even though I had a few days to think about how to phrase the problem, nothing sounded like the right thing to say to her in response.
It all began when a certain underclassman of mine met a certain little sister of mine. Now if it was a certain overly polite pervert with lesbian tendencies and a certain colossal martial artist with violent tendencies, there wouldn't really be much of a problem. [1] No perhaps it would still count as a problem in a different meaning. But those were not the people I had in my life.
Instead, the people I had were Isshiki, a certain foxy troublemaker with a tendency to drag me around to solve her various problems, and Komachi, a certain scheming manipulator with a tendency to help others drag her elder brother around. A truly dreadful combination. When they first met and immediately hit it off, I had carelessly ignored a horrible foreboding feeling that I received from the looks in their eyes.
Looking back now, my peaceful loner lifestyle had been set on a course straight towards destruction ever since that happened. Why did I ever allow these two to meet?
At the start of the school year, my little sister had happily invited my underclassman to stay over at our house. Normally, I would be vehemently opposed to having anyone from school even step foot inside my house, but if she was here as my little sister's guest, then I had no right to complain. Well, not that I didn't try and get shut down immediately anyway.
Then, my underclassman came to realize the existence of an incredible advantage. Normally, since she didn't own a bicycle, she would have to experience a long and troublesome commute between her home and her school every school day, and such a commute would of course include long amounts of tiresome walking and standing activities.
However, if she stayed over at my place, she could get a free ride to school on the back of my bicycle. Normally that was a privilege that was reserved for Komachi, but my little sister seemed hell-bent on sticking Isshiki together with me, so she had happily relinquished that right without any second thoughts. And thus Isshiki accepted the offer to stay over. Indefinitely.
Now she was practically living in our house. I had no idea what our parents were thinking, letting an unrelated teenage girl live over at the house of a teenage boy. Well no, I guess my own parents were overjoyed... they finally had two respectable children. And these two respectable children got along with each other so well I was starting to suspect that I didn't actually belong in this household. A-re A-re? Could it be that Isshiki was my father's illegitimate child, while I was an adopted son? [2]
But those concerns weren't relevant. The main problem was that my alone time effectively came to an end that day. For 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I was subjected to an endless stream of "Senpaiiii! I'm in trouble!", "Seeenpaii! Come over here for a bit!", and "Seeennpaaiii! Please help me with this!"
To make matters worse, my underclassman had picked up certain very bad habits from my little sister. Such as using my old T-shirts as a dress, or walking around the house in her underwear. I didn't think much about those habits when Komachi did it, but when it came to Isshiki...
...Suffice to say it was pure undiluted poison for the mind. I could no longer relax at home. Heck, I could feel my face heating up and turning red just by remembering about those incidents.
But back to the situation at hand. The flustered, stuttering, ex-delinquent girl was still waiting for me to offer an explanation for my absurd request. A simple non-verbal reddened face was definitely not a sufficient summary for what took at least 8 paragraphs to describe in my mind.
Still, I had the feeling that letting others know that an unrelated teenage girl was currently living under the same roof as me would have many undesirable consequences in the long run. Wasn't there some way in which I could keep this a secret?
I looked back at the girl whose name I had yet to remember. "...Do I have to say it?"
I didn't think it was physically possible, but it seemed my response just caused her to become even more flustered than she already was. Her face had already turned completely red. I guess the stress was getting to her. I really shouldn't be putting so much pressure on someone who wasn't feeling well, but this was my only hope. If I didn't get some alone time soon, I would probably reach my limit and do something I couldn't take back.
Certain unhealthy images and the phrase "Take responsibility okay?" popped into my mind, causing the shade of my face to become closer to that of the girl who finally spoke.
"Well... no. B-But... why me? What about Yui and Yukinoshita?"
"No... those girls are..." I scratched my head while wondering how to explain it without exposing the fact that Isshiki was currently living in the Hikigaya household. I did consider staying over with either Yuigahama or Yukinoshita, but there was a fundamental problem with that idea.
"...Those girls are friends of-" ...wait. It would probably be a bad idea to mention Isshiki here. Yeah, the main problem was that Isshiki had become great friends with Yuigahama and Yukinoshita. At the very least, those three were far closer to each other than I was with any of them. Thus all Isshiki had to do was ask them to let her stay over as well, and my plan would instantly go up in flames.
Naturally, that meant I had to ask someone Isshiki wasn't close friends with.
The last time, I had tried to stay over at the Zaimokuza household. It didn't work out since Isshiki just brazenly barged in while silencing Zaimokuza with a death glare before dragging me out of the place. That was just as well, since the overwhelming amount of chuunibyou materials in the Zaimokuza household was causing memories of my own dark history to resurface... to the point where I was almost thankful when Isshiki appeared. [3]
I didn't want to impose on Totsuka either. That and staying over at Totsuka's would probably be far more dangerous than staying at home. I would probably become an adult immediately before being dragged off to a prison somewhere for sexual assault.
...Then again... wouldn't that be worth it? I could get some alone time in a prison cell after all. And if it was Totsuka, wasn't everything else irrelevant? Who cares about consequences at this point! Plus if it was Totsuka, he might not even resist...
...
Hah! Not good, I almost lost to my delusions there. My face had turned completely red thanks to those mental images, but it seems the girl I was talking to didn't notice.
In summary, I had simply used the process of elimination to remove the options from my very short list of acquaintances, and finally arrived at the last entry on the list. I.e. the girl I was facing right now.
While trying to hide the signs that I had been thinking of Totsuka, I finished my sentence. "I-In any case. It has to be you. No one else would work for me."
The girl stopped fidgeting. Her face was still red, but it seems that she had somehow accepted that all of this wasn't just some prank and thus calmed down somewhat. That said, she still looked somewhat hesitant, so I pressed further by repeating myself. "I am serious about this. In my eyes, you are the only one!"
It was sad, but being a loner meant I only had a few acquaintances, so I truly didn't have anyone else to rely on other than this girl whose name I couldn't even remember.
The girl opened her mouth. Finally, the moment of truth. Whether I ended up in a prison or remained myself rested upon the words that would come out of that mouth.
"U-Un. I understand. You can stay over."
Oh. That went surprisingly well.
[1] Nisemonogatari reference.
[2] "A-re?" is one of several Japanese equivalents for "Eh?"
[3] "Chuunibyou" is... well you should probably just watch Oregairu season 1 episode 2, 8man explains it there way better than I can. "Dark history" is just a common way of referring to the period of time when one was suffering from chuunibyou.
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews so far. While I write this story, I'm starting to find that most of my ideas seem constructed for the sole purpose of making the reader scream "Did he just-?!" or "Why the heck would you do this?!"
So if any of you have a similar reaction, please share in a review to let me know that the ideas are working XD.
(Also, I apologize for the short chapters in most of my stories. I usually come up with the main ideas for the plot in point form somewhat easily, but then have a lot of trouble trying to expand them into prose. I'm using these stories to try to work on that. Feel free to let me know how I'm doing, and where I can improve.)
P.S. jminator: Wish granted. XD The next chapter will take a while though.
Author's Note 2: Erm... I've been informed that some of my shipping bias might be showing through, so I'll make this clear:
I swear that I will not turn this story into an Iroha x 8man pairing. The main heroine of this story will continue to be she who cannot be named.
