Notes: Thanks for the kind response to the last chapter. To those concerned about the rating, I can only say that the M rating will be justified. It would feel very disingenuous to post this story as a T-rated story when I know that there will be M-rated content in the story.

oOo

Do-overs did not exist in life. There would only ever be one chance to write the perfect story. A person could only ever make one choice for any particular decision. The concept of resetting, of going back to a previous point in time to make a different decision has never existed in real life.

They only appeared in alternate routes of a visual novel. Or stories like do-over isekais; the ones where people reincarnated with their memories intact.

It was all wishful thinking on the part of otakus, fantasizing about how much better their lives could have been if they'd done something different. If they'd chosen a different path. If they'd said the right things at the right moment.

Source? Me.

Reality was often cruel. It was unforgiving of mistakes, and it was never kind to dreamers. I remembered, all the way back in junior high, right after Tsurumi-san disappeared, I'd spent months trying to readjust to life without her. Suddenly, I didn't have a crutch; a person to lean on and rely on to make me feel better when I didn't want to face the world. I didn't have an escape from the world.

I remembered wishing that I could have started over, done things differently, maybe confessed how I felt to her earlier. Hoping that maybe it would prevent her from leaving.

I remembered wishing that I could go back in time.

Of course, all of that turned out to be nothing more than dreams. I never saw Tsurumi-san again. There were even days where I wondered if it hadn't all been a dream, in the end. But the scars on my arms still remained. A gruesome reminder of the reality I lived in.

But what if that sort of thing did exist? I'm not referring to time travel. I didn't mean going back in time. I meant resetting entirely, starting over differently, living in a world where you had made a different decision?

What about parallel worlds? What if those existed?

What would the Hikigaya Hachiman of a different world be like?

In an alternate universe, would I have lived a different life?

And more importantly, if I'd confessed my feelings to Tsurumi-san back then, would I have been happy?

oOo

Yukinoshita Yukino drove me crazy.

In a lot of ways, mind you.

But the main issue that I had was that this girl was impossible to understand at times.

I'm sure you'll recall that I had quite the traumatic experience that first night of our Fukuoka trip, when I'd fallen asleep and woken up to Yukinoshita cuddled into my side. In those moments, I feared for my life and the wellbeing of all future generations of Hikigayas.

So I'm sure that it would come as quite the surprise to know that I wound up in that same situation again. Multiple times, in fact, on that same Fukuoka trip.

Take the second night for example. Operating under the impression that Yukinoshita would prefer the privacy of her own room, I'd booked two rooms at the hotel that we would be staying at. Everything had gone quite smoothly after our arrival, exhausted after spending a full day enjoying all the attractions that Uminonakamichi Park had to offer. We'd checked in, I'd given Yukinoshita her room key, and we agreed to unpack our belongings and freshen up before dinner. We went out and had a nice dinner, which Yukinoshita had even paid for! The food tasted even better to me, knowing that it was free food.

But the real trouble started when we got back to our rooms. We were in connected rooms, which meant that there was a door between us that, provided we didn't lock it, meant we could freely enter each others' rooms. I figured this would be the best bet in case either of us ran into any trouble. But I didn't expect this door to be used at all, really.

In fact, I fully expected Yukinoshita to lock the connecting door as soon as she returned to her own room after we'd said our goodnights out in the hallway. I'd flopped onto my bed and read a few chapters of the light novel series that I'd been enjoying on the train. It had been a rather long day, so I'd decided to turn in after only a few chapters, and fell asleep not long after I'd turned out the lights.

The next thing I knew, I'd woken up in the middle of the night. I wasn't sure what time it was, but it had felt fairly late into the night. I must have gotten at least a few hours of sleep. I blinked my eyes several times, still quite heavy with sleep, wondering why I'd woken up. Back during my junior high days, when I'd been dealing with the Syndrome, waking up in the middle of the night hadn't been that uncommon. I'd been worried that my scars would reopen, and I'd also had a few nightmares. Sleep was hard to come by back then. But ever since I'd put the Syndrome behind me, I'd usually never wake up in the middle of the night.

Then I heard the creak of the floorboards, indicating that someone was moving towards me. I was instantly alert, all of my drowsiness having disappeared in an instant. What was happening? Was I being robbed? Was this a murderer on the loose attempting to kill me?

I must have watched way too many Western spy movies.

But then, as the figure came closer and the light from the moon through the window shone onto her, I quickly realized that I was not being robbed. There was a small chance that I was being murdered, but I was hopeful that recent events had minimized those chances as well.

It was Yukinoshita that had slipped into my room. I couldn't see her face, which was cloaked in darkness. This meant that it was nearly impossible for me to determine exactly why she had decided to pay me a visit in the middle of the night.

Of course, those questions were quickly answered when she slipped into my bed.

That sounded far more suggestive than the reality of the situation. Absolutely nothing happened. But she did curl up beside me and, before long, her breathing evened out and it became quite clear that she'd fallen asleep.

Meanwhile, I was frozen in place, my thoughts racing at a million miles a second. What was going on? Why had Yukinoshita, who had just yesterday expressed how uncomfortable she felt sharing a room with a boy like me, suddenly decided to ditch her own room and sleep in my bed?

I couldn't get another wink of sleep that night. I mean, I doubted anyone could sleep in that situation. A gorgeous girl had just willingly crawled into bed with me. Simply thinking about the vast number of possible connotations for this was enough to keep me awake.

And this was Yukinoshita after all. Even if she was clearly more comfortable with me, I still needed to make sure that I didn't touch something I wasn't supposed to. I honestly thought that I'd gotten lucky that she hadn't done anything painful to me on account of the fact that my arm had somehow wound up between her boobs last time.

So yeah, sleep was out of the question. Which was pretty awful, because I was physically quite exhausted from the past couple of days. The only positive to a whole night of staring up at the ceiling and staying very, very still was that I got to catch Yukinoshita as she tried to slip away back to her room at the crack of dawn. The look on her face when she realized that I was wide awake was priceless.

The rest of the trip was more of the same. The next night, she didn't bother with the secrecy. She simply slipped into my room as I was preparing for bed. I opened my mouth to ask her why, but then thought better of it. She probably just didn't want to feel alone. I could understand that. And plus, it wasn't like it was unpleasant to share a bed with her. In all honesty, it was quite nice. I did manage to get some sleep that night. Although that might have been due to the fact that I'd fallen asleep while Yukinoshita had still been reading at the hotel desk.

And if I'm being honest, after I woke up without incident the next day, the only thing remaining that really bothered me was that I wasn't sure where we stood anymore. Yukinoshita and I. She'd never touched on it, during those nights in my hotel room. We'd only talk about inconsequential things if we talked at all; from reminiscing on whatever activity we'd decided to undertake that particular day to school-related activities to even the Service Club. But we never discussed anything important. We never really discussed what we were.

And so the trip ended without much fanfare. We enjoyed a few days of freedom running around Fukuoka, skipped Monday classes, and returned to Chiba on Tuesday. When the Shinkansen deposited us back at Chiba station Tuesday afternoon, it felt like an eternity had passed since we'd left. We took the local Sobu line and split up when Yukinoshita arrived at her stop. She turned down my offer to walk her home. I didn't insist, and that was the end of that.

It felt oddly lonely, riding the last few stops alone before I arrived home.

oOo

Komachi was filled with excitement. Apparently, she was convinced that I now had a girlfriend. I wasn't entirely sure how to tell her otherwise. After all, I didn't really have a counterargument to her point that I'd essentially spent almost a week running away from home with a girl to a faraway land. It sounded like a love story straight out of a fairytale.

I'd tried to say that nothing had happened on the trip, but Komachi had simply given me the "I don't believe you" look before reaching over and picking a strand of long raven hair off my shirt. I just gave up after that.

Afterwards, Komachi kept lecturing me about how I needed to "treat her right" and "start putting more effort into yourself" because apparently, having a girlfriend meant that my living standards had to be raised. I thought it was a load of bullshit but I couldn't exactly tell Komachi that.

She also wrangled me into promising to "invite her over for dinner sometime". Honestly, I could make up some excuse about how I was listening to everything Komachi said because I felt guilty for disappearing without telling her where I was going, but in reality I just didn't know how to say no to my little sister.

Still, all this talk about Yukinoshita being my girlfriend really did lead me to wonder again, what exactly were we? How was I supposed to treat her when I saw her again? Was there supposed to be some sort of change?

All these questions swirled around inside my brain as I headed to school the next morning. So much so that I'd forgotten one slightly important detail.

I'd skipped three days of school.

The trouble started almost as soon as I entered the classroom. I'd arrived later than usual, reaching my classroom right before the bell to signal the start of classes was scheduled to ring. I was hoping that Sensei would be distracted with some paperwork or perhaps the other students in the class so that I could activate Stealth Hikki to its maximum potential and slink to my seat unnoticed. Of course, I knew that I was only delaying the inevitable with Sensei, but in true Hikigaya Hachiman fashion, the longer I could put things off the better.

At first, things seemed to be going well. Sensei was too busy lecturing Tobe on once again missing an assignment and I managed to slip by them without her noticing. Hah, take that Sensei! I've leveled up my Stealth Hikki abilities to the point where you won't be able to hunt me down anymore.

Then, disaster struck. I was mere inches away from reaching the safe haven that was my seat, all the way towards the corner of the classroom, when her voice rang out through the chatter in the classroom.

"Hikki! Where on Earth have you been?"

Suddenly, there stood Yuigahama Yui, with her arms folded beneath her quite prominent chest and an annoyed pout affixed to her lips, blocking my path to safety.

My face burned. Everyone had turned and was now staring at me like I was some kind of zoo animal. Oh come on! I was only gone from Friday to Tuesday! And nobody in the room except Sensei probably even noticed my disappearance. Oh, and I guess Yuigahama too, since she's confronting me about it first thing in the morning.

Like jeez, where did genki girls get all their energy from? I couldn't confront anyone before nine in the morning, that was for sure.

The sharp, impatient tapping of Yuigahama's foot brought me back to the present. I winced. She was clearly going to stand there until I gave her an answer.

"I…ah… see… err…sick? I was sick." I managed to finally stutter out a response and then winced at how terribly unconvincing it sounded.

Of course, I was spared the embarrassment of having to explain my very obvious lie to an annoyed Yuigahama when my feet abruptly left the ground.

Sensei had taken a fistful of my uniform and yanked me straight back to the front of the room.

"You'll be seeing me for lunch, Hikigaya. You got that?" She asked, staring me dead in the eye with the most terrifying smile on her face, as if daring me to refute her.

Fuck. And I was so close to making it out of this whole endeavor unscathed too!

oOo

"So Yukinoshita's okay now?" Sensei asked, tapping her finger on her arm as she sat cross-legged across from me on the couch in the teacher's lounge. It was just the two of us; most teachers apparently opted to take their lunch within their classrooms.

"I don't know if she's fully okay, if you know what I mean," I hedged. I was standing up by Sensei's seat, almost as if I were giving a report in class. My body was tense; I was fully ready to dodge any incoming violence.

"But she mentioned that all those negative effects of the Syndrome weren't really bothering her anymore. I don't know if you can really classify that as a cure. I don't even know if the Syndrome has a cure. I still have my scars after all these years but things are mostly okay. And while Yukinoshita's Syndrome doesn't leave any physical marks in the same way that mine did, I'm pretty sure that she wouldn't say that everything is completely fine now. But I can say with confidence that she is doing better."

Sensei eyed me with suspicion, and I raised my arms in innocence.

"You could ask her if you don't believe me."

Sensei rubbed her eyes tiredly.

"Whatever. I'll take your word for it. But do you know how much of a headache your little trip caused me? From Yukinoshita's parents to your sister, you probably removed a year off my lifespan."

"Err," I looked away, a little bit of guilt creeping into my conscience. I hadn't really considered that Sensei might be taking the full brunt of the questions about where exactly we'd run off to.

"Yeah…uh sorry?" I said.

Because I was looking away from her, I moved too slowly.

Her fist connected right with my solar plexus, albeit with substantially less force than I was used to.

Of course, it was still more than enough to knock me on my ass.

When I looked up at Sensei, she was smirking at me.

"I'll let you off easy since you were helping someone else. But if you start making skipping school a habit again…"

I scrambled to my feet.

"Absolutely yes ma'am!"

I scurried out of the room as fast as I could.

oOo

I didn't look back after leaving the teacher's lounge. I didn't want to tempt fate with Sensei after all. Plus, I still needed to eat lunch. Komachi had been understandably upset at my random disappearance from home, and so I had to make do with my own lunch today. Thankfully I'd had the foresight to stop at a Lawson's on the way to school.

I decided to head to the roof. Even though the steps at the front of the school remained my favorite spot to eat lunch, the rooftop was far closer to the teacher's lounge. And considering how there should be no wild Yukinoshitas crying on the rooftop, I headed up fairly confident that I'd finally get some peace and quiet.

Of course, I quickly learned that wishing for such luxuries usually had the opposite intended effect.

I decided to take a detour to the vending machines. I deserved something sweet after that teacher meeting. Wallet-chan was fairly low on HP after Fukuoka, but I had enough for a drink or two.

It was just after I'd grabbed my usual can of MAXX coffee and was headed for the roof again when I quite literally ran into her.

Yuigahama Yui.

The Popular Genki Girl.

The Cookie Menace.

And someone who, to be quite honest, also confused me to no end. Although that wasn't necessarily the case only a few weeks ago.

Because the thing was, I thought I knew Yuigahama Yui. Of course, I knew of her long before we became classmates at the start of this year. But I thought I knew the type of person she was. I'd classified her as simply another member of the popular group, of the riajuus that I had made it my (secret) mission to fight. And I'd been right up until the moment she, seemingly out of nowhere, pushed her way into my life once more.

But now? Now I'm wondering if maybe I've made a mistake.

See, the first time I remembered seeing Yuigahama Yui was her frantically chasing after her dog, just as it had broken free from its leash and sprinted onto the busy roadway. It had happened on the very first day of high school. And of course, being the idiot that I was, I managed to save her dog from being turned into roadkill by a passing car, at the cost of a shattered leg. The doctors said that I was lucky to be able to walk after the accident.

Now, saving someone's pet is generally considered a very good deed. If this were a romantic comedy, Yuigahama would probably be throwing herself at me for the rest of my high school career over this random act of kindness. Of course, since my life was far from a romantic comedy, nothing really came from that incident, which suited me just fine. I never really expected anything to come of saving her dog anyways. We ran in different social circles and, at the time, we didn't even know that we'd be attending the same school. So it wasn't like I expected anything from Yuigahama Yui. In fact, I was already pretty happy that she didn't try to make some big scene to thank me for what I did when I finally returned to school. All that would've done is draw a bunch of unnecessary attention to me. And after everything that happened with the Syndrome, the last thing I wanted was attention, where people might be able to find out about my scars.

So I'd basically put the whole dog incident down as simply an event in the life of Hikigaya Hachiman. And I'd labeled Yuigahama in my mind as just another one of the popular girls. Our interaction was a part of the past, a small blip on my otherwise smooth path to lonerdom. And it would have remained that way except somehow, Yuigahama and I crossed paths again. And it wasn't really in our classroom. Sure, we were classmates, but we hadn't exchanged a single word with each other all year long until…

Well, until Yuigahama came to the Service Club asking for help making cookies.

And that was where the confusion started. Suddenly, instead of mostly ignoring my existence as she had been doing up until now, it was as though a switch had flipped and she was taking extra notice of me. It wasn't even just the event that had occurred this morning when she'd caught me trying to sneak into the classroom unnoticed.

Throughout the morning classes, Yuigahama just watched me. I could feel her gaze on me almost at all times. I confirmed my suspicions too; I glanced surreptitiously at her a couple of times and every time I found her just staring at me with an unreadable expression on her face.

And I couldn't for the life of me figure out exactly what had changed.

Anyways, running straight into Yuigahama was not quite as painful as you might expect from running almost full speed into someone. Yuigahama was quite a bit shorter than me, so her head kind of bumped into my chest, which didn't really hurt that much. Meanwhile, her…uhh… assets also did an excellent job of cushioning the impact between us. So other than getting the wind knocked out of me for the second time within the last half hour or so, nothing else really happened.

"Ow!"

"Ouch! Hey watch where you're… oh it's you Hikki."

"Err… Yuigahama," I responded awkwardly.

"What are you doing here?" She asked. "Aren't you supposed to be with Hiratsuka Sensei?"

"Oh we already had our talk."

"Oh! Perfect! Then did you wanna walk back to the classroom together?"

"Uhhh," I hesitated. If I headed back to class now, it'd be right in the middle of lunch break. I usually tended to avoid those; I didn't have anyone to eat lunch with and awkwardly eating lunch alone at your own desk was quite possibly the most humiliating way to spend lunch hour. I'd quickly learned that even pretending like you had a friend in a different class and leaving for the entire break period was still preferable.

"I kinda… have a friend in a different class that I was gonna eat with."

"Oh! You're going to go eat with Yukinon?"

"Yeah I- wait what? Yukinoshita?"

Yuigahama nodded. "Isn't she the friend you were talking about?"

"Uh, n-no not really."

Yuigahama looked genuinely taken aback by my words, as if she had been sure that Yukinoshita and I were going to eat together. She fiddled with her phone strap nervously.

"Really? You and Yukinon… you're not… together?"

"Whoa! No way, Yuigahama. I mean, you know how Yukinoshita sees me. I don't even know if she considers me a friend, let alone… that."

"I see…" Yuigahama said quietly. "Then who else are you going to eat lunch with? I've never seen you hang out with anyone else."

"Urk-" I choked on a mouthful of coffee, and began coughing furiously. Seriously, what was with this girl? If I wasn't Hikigaya Hachiman I'd have thought that she was stalking me!

"I didn't mean it like that, Hikki!" Yuigahama hurried to reassure me. "I'm sure you have people from other classes that you talk to! I was just surprised because I've never seen them and I was curious who they were."

"How do you know all of that?" I managed to gasp out, even as I was trying to gather air into my lungs.

Now it was Yuigahama's turn to hem and haw.

"I just… see you around sometimes. You know, like today. So I was curious."

I sighed inwardly. It seemed as though Yuigahama really wanted an answer. I didn't care that much for my dignity, so I let my shoulders slump.

"Okay fine. I wasn't telling you the full truth. I was going to go eat lunch somewhere alone."

"Alone?! Why would you want that?" she sounded shocked, as if she couldn't understand how I, how anyone, could eat lunch alone.

"In fact, why don't you just eat lunch with me?"

I'm sure that Yuigahama considered it the right thing to do. I could even be convinced that she meant it; that she really did want to eat lunch with me.

But therein lay the problem with nice girls. Nice girls were nice to everybody, but they also assumed that everybody around them was nice to each other. They couldn't fathom how people could simply just not like each other.

And Yuigahama was certainly a nice girl. Which meant that, in offering to eat lunch with me, she likely never considered how it might feel for me to sit down at a table with all her friends.

I politely turned her down. Or well, I tried my best to, at the very least.

"It's fine Yuigahama. I'm happy eating lunch alone."

"No way," she protested. "I'm not taking no for an answer!"

"But Yuigahama, your friends…" I trailed off, wondering if there was a nice way of saying I disliked them.

"Ah! Is that the problem? They're all really nice, you know? Once you get to know them at least. I know Yumiko can be a little prickly on the outside but she's a real softie at heart, promise!"

"...Sorry Yuigahama. I'd rather just eat lunch as per usual, alright?"

She pouted, but I wasn't going to budge. "Mouu, fine. I guess there's no changing your mind."

I breathed a sigh of relief. The conversation had really been getting uncomfortable.

"But I'm still eating lunch with you!" She declared right afterwards.

What?

"But you just said…"

"You were basically saying that you didn't want to eat with my friends right? Well, that's fine. We can just go to where you usually have lunch. You don't mind eating with me right?" She looked up at me all doe-eyed, as if a rejection would hurt more than anything in the world.

I sighed. "Fine. Let's go eat."

oOo

We had to take a short detour back to our classroom, on account of the fact that Yuigahama needed to grab her lunch, as well as give the drinks that she'd bought from the vending machines over to her friends. Typical riajuu social behavior, or something along those lines. This was made even more apparent when it took Yuigahama ten minutes to explain to her friends where she was going for lunch and why she didn't want to eat with the group.

This, by the way, was why riajuus were amongst the greatest evil on the Earth. I couldn't imagine having to spend even a second justifying what I wanted to do to someone else. But apparently, meeting the social obligations of a clique required more time than a Yukinoshita lecture. No small feat.

At any rate, once Yuigahama had finally convinced the rest of her group that she really couldn't stay for lunch for the day and that she would absolutely "make it up" to everyone some other day, we finally set off from the classroom. There wasn't much time left to eat either.

I honestly had half a mind to ditch Yuigahama. It'd probably make both of our lives easier. She wouldn't have to deal with her friends' complaints and I wouldn't have to figure out how to be a sociable person. But every time I thought about leaving her behind, the image of her staring up expectantly when she asked if she could eat lunch with me popped into my head.

In the end, I felt too guilty to ditch.

"I'm sorry, Hikki," Yuigahama spoke up suddenly as we headed up the stairs together.

"Huh? What're you apologizing for?"

"I made you wait, didn't I? And now we probably won't have enough time to finish lunch."

"You know, Yuigahama, I didn't expect it to be that hard for you to choose to eat lunch away from your group. But from what I heard of your conversation, it didn't sound like it was your fault, so you shouldn't apologize."

"But-"

"So do you always just listen to whatever Yumiko and the others tell you?"

"N-not really!"

"Really? Then why couldn't you just choose to eat lunch somewhere else today? It is your choice right? You're not being forced to spend every waking second with your friends?"

Yuigahama hit me with her bag, although it didn't have very much force behind it. I grimaced as I headed up the last flight of stairs to the rooftop.

"Mou Hikki. You know it's not like that. I just don't want to make anyone upset."

Things fell silent between us as I thought about what to say, absentmindedly opening the door leading to the rooftop and settling down in my favorite spot with a nice view of the entire Soubu High School campus.

I'd seen Yuigahama's sort of behavior before; this sort of pandering from those lower on a clique's totem pole towards those higher than them. From my observations, it never ended well for the person doing the pandering.

"The thing is Yuigahama, there's nobody in the world that can please everyone. It's impossible. You shouldn't even try. You can't make everyone happy."

"I know that, okay!? I know that really well."

Yuigahama was staring down at her feet, and her normally cheerful features were twisted, as if someone had inverted her personality.

"I'm not like you or Yukinon. You guys sort of exist in your own world; you're completely comfortable with being who you are and you won't change yourself even if other people don't like you. I'm not as strong as you, okay? I want people to like me. I want to be friends with everyone. I want… I want you-" She trailed off, looking in every direction but mine.

"...Sorry," I said quietly. I didn't know what exactly I was apologizing for, but it simply felt right. It felt like I had missed something important.

Her right hand reached out; her fingers closing around the fabric of the sleeve of my uniform.

"Yuigahama?"I asked. "Are you okay?"

I couldn't see her face, but I heard her take a deep breath. She refused to look at me, a far cry from the Yuigahama that I had come to know.

"Can you… can you stay with me, here? Just like this? For just a little while? Please?"

At that moment, I didn't think too much about her request. I just leaned against the wall of the rooftop and let Yuigahama rest her forehead against my arm. It wasn't as though she was asking a whole lot of me, I thought. I was okay with keeping her company for this lunch period.

I just didn't realize that it'd wind up being a whole lot longer than that.

oOo