Kai had her wait a little bit while he cleaned up his mess, then invited her up to his room on the second floor.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as she took a step inside.
This startled Kai. He thought he’d hidden everything he didn’t want a girl to find. Did he miss something? “Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What’s up?” he asked suspiciously.
Jun then pointed up at the wall scroll on his ceiling and happily noted, “I’ve seen that anime too!”
So she DIDN’T find the bad stuff... Kai heaved a sigh of relief. Then, he stared at the ceiling along with Jun. He had a The Ryuo’s Work is Never Done! scroll up then, back when the anime had just finished airing.
“The art style is pretty different from the anime, though. Is this what it was based on?” she asked.
“Yup,” he nodded. “It was a bonus that came with volume 7.”
It was an illustration of all five girls drawn by the legendary Shirabi. Veeery moe. The age of every single one of the pajama-clad heroines was in the single digits... AKA loli characters. Others might worry about a girl seeing something like this, but Kai was already completely numb to it. He was an otaku.
Jun didn’t seem to think anything of it either. In fact, she agreed: “Cute!” She was an otaku too.
“By the way, which team are YOU on, Kai?”
“Which ‘team’?” he asked.
Her question made a bolt of lightning flash across the back of his mind. You’d think she was asking which character was his favorite, if she was looking at a picture of the five characters and asking a question. But Jun intentionally phrased it differently, hiding her actual intent. She was asking which of the double heroines named Ai he liked better, which the author Shiro Shiratori created as foils: Ai Hinatsuru or Ai Yashajin!
Kai accurately grasped the finer points and context, and read between the lines of her question. “I’m Team Ten,” he answered confidently, referring to Ai Yashajin. This all happened in 0.8 seconds—lightning speed!
“I know, right?! I’m Team Ten too~”
“She has the most mature way of thinking even though she’s still just a kid. I thought the parts where she’s the one nitpicking the master were especially interesting. I wanna wife her. She can be kind of hopeless, but it really gets me right in the heart when she shows her weak side, like, clinging to Yaichi, I wanna wi—” As he gushed, overjoyed at having found a kindred spirit, he suddenly came back to his senses.
Yeesh, I blurted out some really gross things just now, didn’t I?! His regret and anxiousness over saying something he shouldn’t have around a girl made his heart thump wildly in his chest. He broke out in a cold sweat. This was not the time and place to be struck through the heart by Ten’s cuteness. However—
“I totally know what you mean! I just can’t when she refuses to ask for help right away~ She only does that because deep down she’s just a girl who wants to be recognized by the one she loves, and it makes me SOOO weepy~” Jun beamed as she nerded out, not disgusted in the slightest.
He suddenly wanted to high-five her. With the care only a virgin would bother with, Kai gingerly gave her a high-five so he wouldn’t hurt a girl. Though they only touched for a split second, Kai noticed Jun’s palm was silky smooth. He stared at his palm and basked in the afterglow without a second thought.
Then, Jun drifted over to his bookshelf. “Do you mind if I take a look?” she asked.
“...Yeah, of course,” Kai consented with hesitation.
Most of his collection wasn’t embarrassing for her to see, but—in the very middle—sat World’s End Harem and How to Build a Dungeon: Book of the Demon King, neither of which were 18+ but were definitely erotic. He’d drop dead if a girl found them. His life would be OVER.
Please don’t find them...! he prayed.
That very moment, he heard Jun let out a surprised “Ohhh!” and felt like his heart would leap out of his chest. “Wh-Wh-Wh-What’s up?” he asked yet again, in a very suspicious manner.
Jun pulled out one of the books in his collection and turned around to him. “You’ve got shoujo manga?! You like shoujo?!” she exclaimed, her eyes glimmering as she thrust a volume of Our Precious Conversations at him.
So she DIDN’T find World’s End Harem... Kai heaved a sigh of relief. He then joined Jun in front of the bookshelf. “I’ve loved the author ever since My Little Monster,” he said.
“There’s going to be an MLM movie soon, right?!” Jun said excitedly. “I’ve been reading the original to prepare! Who’s your favorite character?!”
“Hm, I think Asako might be my favorite out of everyone in MLM,” Kai replied.
“Asako RULES! She’s super-duper pure and determined and she cares so much about her friends! It’s really noble of her to be so strong-willed because of how badly she’s been hurt before! I wish I could be her friend! No, wait, I wish I could marry her!!” she rattled on before coming back down to earth. Then she suddenly looked away. “Yikes, I bet you thought I was being creepy just now,” she said, fidgeting uneasily.
“Noooo no no, I know what you mean! I TOTALLY get it! I love Sanae from Scum’s Wish too, but Asako has a different charm of her own!” he reassured her.
His desperate appeal to let her know that she had nothing to be embarrassed about succeeded, and her face lit up again. “I mean, don’t you think it’s creepy for me to be reading shoujo manga even though I’m a dude?!” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter! If it’s good, then who cares?!” Jun exclaimed.
The two of them high-fived again.
“I’ve only ever had guy friends, and none of them have ever wanted to talk with me about shoujo manga—”
“Me too! I’ve been so lonely!”
The two high-fived for a third time.
“Even though you’re a girl, Jun?!” he asked incredulously.
“My friends only read the mainstream stuff that gets made into movies,” said Jun. “I recommended the MLM author’s other manga and told them they were good, but all they said was, ‘Hmmm. Hmmm’! It kills me!”
“It’d kill me too!” Even more high-fiving.
“Oh, and even when I do talk to them about MLM, all they ever wanna do is talk about how cool the male characters are,” Jun continued. “They’re all like, ‘I wish I could get a hug from Haru!’ But when I say, ‘I wish I could smooch Asako,’ nobody gets it! They treat me like a huge weirdo! Same thing with every other manga!”
“Personally, I would LOVE to marry one of the female classmates from OPC—the girl with the long black hair! I wish she would look my way!”
“OH MY GOD! Kai, you understand!”
Kai and Jun went back and forth ecstatically, high-fiving one after another so many times that halfway through, they ended up just high-fiving multiple times in a row.
This was the first time they’d ever gotten this worked up over shoujo manga. It was a first for both of them.
✦ ✦ ✦
The world is so vast! Kai couldn’t help but think to himself.
Who knew he’d ever have this many interests in common with someone? Who knew he’d ever get along this well with someone? And not somebody of the same sex—someone of the opposite sex!
And what a miracle that of all the people in the whole wide world, he’d crossed paths with Jun!
Kai was touched, deeply so. Surely, Jun felt the same.