Breaking the Trance

"Alright, crisis averted!"

I throw my hands into the air while leaning back from my desk. The chair creaks under my weight as I force it to hold me with only two legs, but I don't care.

The sound of running water provides an almost calming background noise as I gather together the now completed assignments. As the only person to have ever used the shower prior, I never realised just how loud it is. However, this is a small price to pay for my sanity. Step one of getting Mira into the shower by herself was a success.

"Finally some time to relax…"

I slouch back in my chair and stare at the off white ceiling. Between running around town and dealing with chores, I haven't really had the time to collect my thoughts. The tentative plan has always been to just figure it out as I go, but that will only work for so long. I need something more concrete.

I glance at my phone sitting at the corner of the desk.

"I mean, that would be the easy solution…"

Handing off the human-sized problem to somebody else would definitely make life easy for both Mira and me. I promised to take care of her, but it doesn't necessarily have to be me. As long as she has her needs met, it doesn't matter who becomes her 'guardian'. Imagine a high school student trying to take care of a girl about his age.

Thanks to the peace and quiet of my solitude, my reason begins setting in. After a deep breath, my brain formulates the desire to throw myself out the window in shame.

"Wait, I'm doing something crazy, aren't I!?"

If anything, it's ridiculous that I even considered trying to live with a complete stranger, and a girl at that. Whenever I see her face, some kind of justification puts itself in front of my eyes and obscures my common sense. I always resolve to do whatever it takes for her, but that isn't like me at all. There's no way I would simply sit back and allow some random person to warp my entire life. Sure, I enjoy having her around, but that shouldn't have dominated my judgement.

Suddenly, a sharp pain in my head almost knocks me unconscious. Some kind of noise, if I can even call it that, is applying pressure to my thoughts and is blurring my vision. I shut my eyes as tightly as possible and grind my knuckles into my head.

"Remember Noa, you have no friends, you're not good at anything, and you have no life."

These words sound painful even when I'm the one saying them, but they are all I have to anchor me down to reality. I have to recall all that is and isn't possible.

"You're not some kind of great guy that could put someone else before yourself. You can hardly take care of yourself properly."

I'll gladly help out the one friend I do have if he ever needed it, but nothing to the extent of embarrassing myself multiple times in front of another girl and a guy probably twice my age. Just remembering everything I said to Stella, Mark, and even Ange makes me want to flop onto a pillow and scream. Honestly, just having visited the woman's section of a store should have incapacitated me.

The smiling visage of Mira appears front and centre in my brain and attempts to push this negativity away. Everything is worth it if it's for her. I can't seem to disagree with that sentiment even if I wanted to, but that only serves to emphasise this feeling that always sits in the back of my mind. More than anything else, there is one thing I can't lie to myself about, especially when she looks up at me like that.

"I'm not good enough to take care of her!"

The pressure ceases with a sound of shattering glass. I frantically turn towards the window thinking that it's broken, but everything is perfectly normal. The glass and even my reflection in it are exactly the same as always. However, I feel something different in my head, like somebody turned off the music that I'd become accustomed to listening to in the background. The sound of the shower has also stopped, but the shuffling of clothes confirms that I haven't been dreaming. At least, not dreaming in the usual sense.

What I do notice in the window is a flock of pigeons seemingly watching me from the tree a short distance away from the apartment wall. The sun has long set, but I can still make out their forms amongst the leaves. When my vision focuses on them, they all fly away as if spooked by some stimulus.

"What's wrong, Noa?"

The door to the bathroom opened without me realising and the rabbit has now entered the living space with a towel in her hands.

"Ah, nothin—AH!"

I feel my heart stop for a few moments at the amount of skin visible to my eyes.

The young girl has a pair of blue shorts that cuts off really early and leaves a majority of her thighs glowing in the light. Her top isn't much better as a white tank top that seems purposefully cropped to keep some of her stomach visible. She didn't even pull up her shorts all the way on one side, so her blue underwear is peeking out both there and in the gaps of her loose top. To make things worse, she still has the ribbon around her neck that was initially intended as a rabbit collar.

I feel my blood running wild and attempting to burst a vessel in my nose. How was I able to survive seeing her without anything on?

My heart is beating far too quickly for me to continue watching as she dries her hair on the couch.

"W-What are you wearing!?"

"Hm? Noa was the one who gave me these?"

"No, that's impossible!"

I know that she wouldn't lie to me, but it's still unbelievable. There's no way that I would have actively handed her something that revealing. I can hardly handle watching women in swimsuits on TV, much less a cute girl sitting in my own living room. Even if we assume that it was my choice, I should have predicted that I wouldn't be able to stay calm with her like this. Sure, these are the clothes she would likely enjoy the most given the overall comfort, but that shouldn't be enough for me to make such a clear blunder.

I crouch down behind the couch such that only her blue hair is visible.

"Mira…I need you to change into something else."

"Huh? Why? These clothes are so comfy."

"Don't worry about it, just change!"

I shuffle to the dresser and reach for the bottom drawer, which had been recently converted into a space for Mira's clothes. As I pull the drawer open, my eyes are blinded by the small fabric folded neatly by my own hands just earlier this evening. The floor shakes slightly as I fall back onto my rear.

"Noa, you're acting weird."

Mira peeks her head over the back of the couch like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"No, I'm actually perfectly fine. If anything, something was wrong with me before."

"I don't get it…"

Her perplexion follows me to the bathroom, where the room is still nice and toasty. I need some way to calm myself down.

"Let me wash my face…"

My hand drifts towards the faucet.

"Ah…"

My finger bumps into the cup holding not one, but two toothbrushes. One is the plain white brush you often get for free at the dentist and the other is a blue one with white flowers all over the handle. The light impact shakes the cup and causes one of the brushes to slide around the lip towards the other. The mere existence of the second one is enough to keep my heart going at max speed, but watching the two on a course of cross contamination completely derails it.

"Stop right there!"

I managed to halt the motion just in time before the collision. It's just Mira, so it shouldn't have been a big deal, but my body insisted that I had to stop it at all costs.

"Fine! I'll wash it all away!"

Maybe I'm just fatigued. Surely all of the choices I've made these past two days will start making sense after a relaxing shower.

After some preparation, I'm below a stream of warm water in the tub. The tension in my muscles slowly disperses and the whole world seems to disappear. All problems really can be solved by washing them down the drain.

"That's nice…"

With my face being peacefully rained on by the shower head, I grab the shampoo bottle and apply a small amount on the palm of my hand. However, something feels off, or more specifically smells off. Instead of the rather irritating lavender that already doesn't seem to fit with an adolescent male, an overwhelmingly sweet fragrance of roses exudes from my hand. I check the bottle in my hands and find a white and pink bottle of women's shampoo purchased specifically for Mira.

The bottle falls to the ground and reality finally dawns on me. I'm actually living with a girl.

"Nope, I can't do this!"