Reality Is Where You Find It

"Shibuya, why are we here again?" Murata glanced around nervously and continued leafing through the book.

"Because people hardly ever come into the new section of the used manga store, so fewer people will see us in the shojo section," Yuuri replied with stubborn logic as he quickly flipped through volume 27 of a manga with no discernible ending.

"This is true, but what I meant was, why are we in the Book-Off to begin with?"

"Research."

"Research?"

"Yes, research okay?" Yuuri sighed and launched into the detailed explanation he hadn't told Murata earlier. "The girl who sits behind me in class was talking to her friends about some old shojo that's been re-released in "pretty double volumes" about a girl who gets "sucked into the land of beautiful men". Then they started talking about how that's the plot of fifty percent of shojo manga, and naming as many as they could think of, so here we are."

"You really are desperate to get back to Shin Makoku, aren't you?"

"Yes and holding my breath in the bathtub doesn't seem to be working, so I wanted to see if these had any pointers. Damn, I guess in this one the girl just has to climb in and out of an old well." Yuuri sighed and took out the list of series his classmates had been chattering about.

"Yuuri, you do realize these are fiction?" Murata had to make certain of this fact.

"Murata, I get sucked down a toilet, a bathtub, a puddle, you name it, and wind up the demon world, where I'm king. Reading about girls who get sucked in and out of books or paintings or dating sims or what not seems perfectly reasonable. How's Fruits Basket coming?"

"There are no alternate universes, but one of the characters looks a lot like Gunter."

"Probably no useful information then."

Murata heaved a sigh. "I couldn't agree more."

"But you see, I am learning stuff. I'm learning that it all fits, except that I don't need a magical transformation broach. to turn into the Maou." Yuuri sighed, his expression troubled. "It should all work out in the end."

"How do you figure?" Murata asked, unenthusiastically picking up a volume with a girl in a school uniform riding the back of a unicorn.

"Konrad's miraculously alive and has a new uniform that's cooler than what he normally wears. In every case I've encountered, this means that he'll come back to our side just as soon as we get rid of the special mind control earring. You can tell he's already fighting it- he didn't kill me in the arena." Yuuri was truly trying to see the whole arena fiasco in a positive light. Konrad was alive, and Konrad hadn't killed him.

"It's possible Sir Weller is simply a traitor Yuuri- and his ties to the human kingdoms have to be as strong as his ties to Shin Makoku." Saying this was a bit like kicking a puppy, but the Great Sage couldn't allow the Maou to cling to ridiculous false hope.

"You've never met him, Murata. He couldn't be a traitor, he just couldn't. It doesn't work for him- he's the most honorable person I've ever met."

"It's the honorable ones you have to watch- you never know when they're going to be convinced that a really stupid solution is the best because it's the most honorable." Murata was speaking both from experience and extensive reading in the field of Shonen.

"But how could it be honorable for Konrad to betray us to Dai Shimaron? It's a mind control earring, I promise you."

Murata sighed, but did not reply. The mind-control-earring theory might have some merit, but it was also possible Sir Weller was simply being very stupid.

A/N: I was trying to write a real Dai Shimaron fic, I really was... and this little drabble was all I could come up with. Yuuri's thougts are very close to mine during the Dai Shimaron arc. And dammit, Konrad looks like so much better in the Dai Shimaron uniform- it's just not fair!

Book-Off is a real chain you find throughout Japan. In their much larger used section they have one very long bookshelf, with one side of shojo and one of shonen. After school it's always full of students in uniform, and you'll see guys reading shojo, but they'll have taken the volume over to the shonen side of the shelf. It's quite amuzing.