Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Voices In My Head Tell Me So ❯ ONE ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

The Voices In My Head Tell Me So

[Oregairu]

By Terdwilicker

 

ONE

“Hachiman, what is this crap you wrote?” demanded sensei. She looked angry. She was one of those women who only really comes alive when she’s emotional, and usually it’s angry. For a woman under 30 she was still good looking, and her being single was a mystery.

Testing…test testing one two three. Hellooo. Can you hear me, Edgelord Hachiman!

Wonderful, I’m going crazy while my teacher is yelling at me about my essay telling youth to go and die because youth is a lie.

Ah, good. You can hear me. And apparently you speak English better than I realized. Or I’m thinking at you in Japanese. Can you think Lollypop? How about Linguine? Lettuce? Parallel? Logarithm. Legendary leisure landscape lord. Probably English.

My mind was empty in shock. It showed in my eyes.

Tell her you’ll rewrite it. Hurry.

“Um sensei. I think I hit my head,” Hachiman said instead.

Geh. You’ll regret that very soon. Around eight minutes.

“You’re not getting out of this. I’m fed up with your attitude, Hachiman. How is someone like you going to get along in this world the way you are now? No. It is time for corrective action. Come with me,” she demanded.

If you insist. Will you brush your teeth first? Smokers taste like ashtrays. Those hips look easy to grab, and our heights are close enough. As tightly wound as she is, it shouldn’t be too hard to make her pop.

She grabbed our hand and dragged us, no me out of my chair and out of the teachers’ offices and away through some hallways. School was out but there were soccer and baseball teams on the fields and the tennis courts. I heard badly played music from the end of a hallway which got louder as we climbed the stairs of the special wing, where several clubs met. Sensei knocked on a sliding door without a label and then wrenched it open sideways. It rattled loudly.

“I’ve brought you someone, Yukinoshita-san,” sensei announced.

Oh, here we go. Get a good look at this. The window open just so, the breeze exactly right, a sakura petal floats in and the beautiful girl lifts her gaze from a book of samurai-buddhist-monk poetry to stare at you and be disgusted. Take out your cellphone and turn on the camera app. You’ll want a picture in Three… two… one.

Sensei steps to the side to argue with some girl about knocking. I peer around her lab coat and stare. The window is open just so, the breeze is exactly right, a sakura petal floats in and the beautiful girl lifts her gaze from a book of poetry to stare at me and is disgusted. I’m holding the camera and recording video. She glares harder seeing the phone light, indicating the video camera is running. I turned it off then and dropped my phone into my pocket once more.

Good man.

I think a rude word at the voice in my head.

Ever feel like you’re being manipulated?

Like now? I think back at him. The voice is my voice, of course, and thinks thoughts that aren’t mine. Why did I have to go crazy now? I’d kept it under control since that Dark Flame Master incident.

“Those lewd eyes are creepy. I fear for my chastity!” Yukinoshita complained. People always measure me by my looks, but they rarely say so out loud. This is unconscionably rude.

In a few minutes she’s going to complain that people judge her on her looks. Stolen shoes, by other girls. Jealousy, yawn. How sad that makes her. Boo hoo. Poor little rich girl. And the tragedy here is she’s going to be your third friend in high school.

Third? Then who are the first and second? I asked myself, feeling mystified.

“He’s much too self-conscious to risk physical offense,” Hiratsuka sensei insulted me. “Your task is to change his rotten personality and make him an acceptable member of society. Hachiman, your task here is to assist this club in its activities until such time as I’m convinced you’ve properly changed,” sensei ordered. I sighed.

Ask her what’s in it for you?

“And why should I bother? What is in it for me?” I asked the teacher. This was a nuisance, and it would upset my sister.

Oh, yes. Komachi. I can’t wait. The second cutest sister in anime.

“Second?” I muttered under my breath. No way. My sister is the cutest in the world.

“You’re both aware of the concept of a contest? You shall compete with each other to solve the most problems and I’ll judge you with my own biases on who is the more effective and award the winner the right to ask the other to do one thing,” sensei decided. Annoying, and meant to be a challenge to my honor not to ask anything lewd, which of course is the first thing this princess thinks. More rude words come to mind.

Language. It’s not like that will ever happen. You’re stuck here, solving problems in your own special way, sharing space with a snow maiden with no friends. By the time the year is over you’ll be close like Komachi.

My sister takes off her clothes in the living room before jumping in the bath, I thought at my tormentor.

And you are commended for recognizing 100% cotton, easy wash cold. You’re not the only student with siblings. This ice maiden has an older sister who is famous for being good at everything, personable, feminine… and utterly fake. You’ll see when you meet her in a couple months.

“I need to message my sister that I’m going to be late home from school. She’ll worry and get mad otherwise,” I warned them both. I took out my phone, wrote a message and included the brief video on a whim.

“You have a sister? Older or younger?” asked the prim and proper princess.

“Younger two years. You?” I asked her.

“Older three years. She was the valedictorian and good at everything she ever tried,” complained the girl with obvious jealousy.

She’s also got a great smile and big boobs.

“Married or college?” I asked her. She frowned.

“What business is that of yours?” she asked suspiciously. This girl had a seriously penetrating glare. The JSDF could probably use that to replace its utterly useless missile trucks. Everybody in Japan had seen those Godzilla movies and the missile trucks never did more than piss it off, and then it would blow them up with its radioactive fire breath. It has to be the most dreaded job in our military.

“Nevermind then. What about you? What’s this club do?” I asked her.

“Can’t you guess from our surroundings?” Yukino replied. Sensei left quietly.

There is nothing to see but a table, a bunch of stacked chairs and student desks covering the back half of the room, a tea set and an electric kettle. She’s reading a book of poetry from the late samurai era, not sure which without reading the title. I have no clue. Voice? You seem to know everything.

It is called the Service Club. You’ll be assisting students with problems they can’t solve by themselves, mostly by teaching them how to solve them rather than doing it for them. Yukino likes the “teach a man to fish” metaphor. I suggest writing the Pratchett version of the board, said the voice, then explained the words. I wrote them on the board up high.

“Build a man a fire and he’s warm for a night, but light a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life,” said the girl with distaste, reading the English with ease. “Discworld if I’m not mistaken. Probably Men At Arms?”

That’s right. You should read it. Some of the better comedy in contemporary English.

“Yes. Are you a fan?” I asked her. She gestured to the book of poetry, so the answer is no. I shrugged. I pulled up a chair and sat down at the far end of the table. I considered what to do. Maybe if I ignore the voice in my head it will go away?

Fat chance. I am the second worst kind of isekai. At least I’m not a slime. You may as well do your homework.

Good advice. I took out my assignments and began working on them. The girl read quietly, flipping pages regularly. Every once in a while she would stop and look out the window, probably thinking about a poem or something. I went on with my homework. She is pretty when she isn’t frowning or insulting me.

“I know I’m pretty. People have told me so since I was a small child,” she said out of the blue. “When I was in school my shoes were stolen or hidden over fifty times. Forty of those times were by other girls. They were jealous of my looks and good grades,” she explained, then looked at me. I looked back.

See? Told you so.

“If you’re trying for sympathy, I will remind you that YOU judged me on my looks when I walked in here,” I pointed out. She blushed in belated shame.

“Sorry,” she said, looking contrite. I grunted. We went back to our private tasks. When the school bell rang, signaling the end of after-school events, we packed up and left, the girl locking the door behind her. I headed to the bike rack and pedaled stoically home on my trusty steed.

A steed is a horse. Did you name this? How about Molly, because it’s got round wheels? Get it? Round wHeels Molly?  

I sighed. It was going for rude puns in English. My inner voice is annoying. I got home after a not terribly long ride, around fifteen minutes, depending on traffic. I took off my street shoes and greeted my sister, who was staring at me in suspicion. I realized she was looking at my lips and neck, and sniffing me.

“You don’t smell like you got lucky, brother. So what’s the story with the pretty girl?” Komachi asked. It is disturbing just how adult her thinking was, considering she’s still in middle school. More than once, I worried about her peers and what she’s looking at online.

She’s not wrong. Also, she’s remarkably perceptive. I think her IQ might be higher than yours. She’s got a mind like you, but a gentler and more genki personality. Nobody stomped on her feelings. This is why women are different from men, one of several reasons. She’s like the opposite personality from Yukino, but just as perceptive. Interesting.

My inner voice is narrating again.

“What?” asked Komachi.

“I’ve had a psychotic break. I’m hearing a voice like another personality commenting on things and asking questions,” I said to my cute little sister. “He says you’re smarter than me.”

Komachi grinned. “Hachiman! You know I hate math,” she answered.

“Sure you do. So do I.”

“So this voice isn’t your superego, questioning your decisions and second guessing your choices?” she asked me, pushing me into my dining room chair. She served the food she’d been keeping warm on the stove and put some rice in a bowl for me.

“It’s more like an actual person,” I said.  

“Does it tell you to kill people or pray to devils?” she teased.

“No, though it seems to have a little foreknowledge,” I complained.

“Like what?” she asked me.

Ask her if she’s friends with Kawasaki Taishi.

I asked her. She blinked.

“How’d you know that?” she asked squinting. “Have you been into my phone?”

“No, but the voice knows stuff like that,” I sighed.  

Kawasaki Saki is the big sister of Taishi. She is the girl with the slightly blue-grey hair and sits in the middle of the classroom. Also, Saika is a boy, not a girl. Don’t get confused about that. No homo!

“Huh. Well, the voice says that Kawasaki Saki is a girl in my class and she’s Taishi’s big sister.”

There’s a younger sister too, very cute. In elementary school. Name is Keika. They all have that bluish grey hair. Saki spends all her spare time looking after them. Oh, and tell her to internet search on scholarships instead of working at a bar late at night. It’s important.

I pondered. That’s a lot of specific information.

“Uh. The voice says the little sister is named Keika. She’s in elementary school. They all have bluish grey hair, and it wants me to tell Saki about scholarships and not to work at a bar till midnight,” I repeated.

“So you’ve got a demon or something in your brain. Figures your attitude would get this way. I’ve read books about this. It’s always useful and helpful information and then it gradually takes over your soul. Did you pick up a blackened foreign coin? Something you don’t like to put down and keep in your pocket?” she asked me. I sighed.

Blackened Denarius? Really? This isn’t Dresden Files. Tell her she’d know if you were a wizard because of the Soul Gaze.

“Have we ever soul gazed?” I asked my sister. She stared into my eyes for a good minute. Nothing happened.

“So no calls to the White Council,” she decides out loud.

“What?” I asked.

She’s better read than you. But then, so am I. Dresden Files. Put it on your to-read list. Three through eight are the best ones. It goes downhill with nine onwards. This is why you should read full novels and stop wasting time with the light ones. Even if they sometimes produce good stories. I wonder if Mushoku Tensei is published yet? It’s going to be years before the anime and manga come out. And Aya Hirano got blacklisted last year. Pity. No more Haruhi Suzumiya. She gets replaced by several different seiyus, including the one voicing your sister when your life becomes an anime.

“What?” I gasped at the voice.

You are the protagonist, the lead male, of a popular romantic comedy. You, with your ugly eyes and dark comments have several serious love interests. And you just met the fourth one today, though many consider her first.

“I need to sit down,” I despaired.

“You are sitting down, oniichan,” reminded Komachi. I looked. Yes. I was sitting down. I drank my tea with a shaking hand.

“Bad news? Do you have cancer?” she asked, cheeky brat. Wait, do I?

Not during the course of the story. You’re starting to enter your popular phase, which happens to most men at some point in their lives. Chads like Hayato are in it for most of their lives, unfortunately, so you get dependent bitches like Miura hanging around, and don’t get me started on his fan club in the lower years. The women you attract are far more interesting. Three of them are already in your classroom.

Three? Who? Wait, what are Chads?

Chad is a generic term for an irresistible-to-women alpha male who sleeps around like a maniac and never gets married unless he really wants to, and even then he cheats. Most STDs are caused by Chads. Many women still sleep with him. They are often rich, but they mostly are the most manly-men you can imagine. The term gains popularity in the future, around ten years from now.

“Apparently the voice in my head is a time traveler,” I said. Komachi brightened.

“Ask it for lottery numbers,” she suggested.

Nope.

Prime directive? I asked it.

Don’t know any. Why would I? I’m not even from your country. Do you know foreign lottery numbers from ten years ago?

“No such luck. The voice says I’m a romantic lead in a popular story,” I told my sister, wincing. She grimaced at this claim.

“If this is just another delusion with Dark Flame Master in it, I’m calling Mom,” she swore.

She really is cute. And really loves you. You probably turned out this well because she’s around to keep you rational.

“The voice says you are a good influence on me,” I told her.

“That’s a really weird thing to say for a demon. Maybe I can get you a charm to banish evil spirits at a shrine,” she said out loud. I realized my food is getting cold so I finished it off.

Japanese food is really bland. It is made with care, but are you allergic to seasoning?

I don’t want indigestion while I sleep. I have school tomorrow, I thought at my inner voice. So who are the girls interested in me?

Two women, three girls. You’re going to be interacting with one you sort of know already, tomorrow. Get your rest.

I hugged my sister briefly, offered to clean up the dishes. When I was done I showered, brushed my teeth, and went to bed, exhausted. My dreams, despite bland food, involved playing chess with someone lecturing me on international politics.