1. the rabbit, the senpai, and the manga club

The day I planned to confess to Sakura Hisui was the same as when she committed mass-kidnapping. None of us victims were surprised.

It was sometime after school, sometime mid-autumn, with the world turned silver due to off-season rain. At the other end of the table, the manga club president doodled what was either an amoeba, the French revolution, or a dog. Next to her, the vice president played on his phone.

I was the club’s third and final member. Like the janitor who occasionally sneaked in to read, I was actually doing club activities–analyzing manga courtship scenes, to be precise. For science.

Then Sakura Hisui–student council vice-president, consistent top scorer, self-proclaimed star athlete and possessor of a great ass–slammed the door open as though she owned the place.

Kawakami Aoko (president) sighed.

Yukimura Isami (vice-president) groaned.

Mrs. Hiyama (janitor) flipped a page.

I (background character) hunched behind the literary masterpiece that was Love Love! My first Love!?.

Sakura’s greeting was, “We’ve been chosen!”

Yukimura and Aoko exchanged glances, and the latter asked, out of moral obligation, “For…?”

“The other world!”

“Oh, um. That’s cool.”

Sakura slammed what looked like documents next to Aoko’s French amoeba dog. “Yup,” she said. “Sign them. Come on. Sign sign sign. Come on.” She violently tapped her finger next to the papers. “Come on.”

This failed to persuade the local authorities.

“Come onnn. Connie’s gonna look for other people if I don’t form a party soon. I personally recommended you guys please come on if you don’t the other world will–yes! Thank you!”

Aoko was too much of a coward to be mean, so she grudgingly took one of the documents, toyed with her glasses, and read: “Dearest warrior: you have been chosen to save the land of Korova. By signing this document, you agree to the terms and conditions of… ehh… anyway, it’s a contract to go to the other world, right?”

“Yup!”

“Very nice. We play tabletop role-playing games on Thursdays, so if you bring your friends–”

“It’s real,” Sakura said.

“Ah.” Aoko tried to exchange judgmental glances with Yukimura again, but he’d lifted his scarf to his nose and hunched over his phone. Translation: you started this, you solve it. She visibly grimaced. “So I just… sign?”

“Yup! Thanks.” Hisui rolled another form, then stuck it on Yukimura’s scarf. His cowardice was more layered; had she been an acquaintance and he would’ve shoved it back elsewhere, but since this was–almost certainly–their first interaction, he simply took it and bit back the insult.

As Sakura walked to my side of the table, I went back to Love Love! My First Love!?. Nothing to do here. Nothing to see here. It was one thing to like her and another to want to interact with her. Thanks.

But to Sakura Hisui, a leer might as well be a wave. “You especially should sign,” she said. To the ether, perhaps. “Ishida.” Never mind, she was talking to me. Fuck. She passively-aggressively slammed the paper on the table before me. “Sign.”

She also handed me one of the glitter pens Aoko had been using. Classy.

I almost dropped it when Yukimura asked, “Are you seriously signing that?” but then I realized he was talking to Aoko.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I kinda feel bad for her.”

“Just kick her out.”

“That’s mean.”

“And?”

And… Aoko had no argument against such ironclad morals. “Just sign,” she said.

This succeeded at persuading local authorities. Listening to these two was a perpetually esoteric experience. As Yukimura signed, he mumbled, “Let’s save the cow.”

“Um, what?”

“Korova means cow in Russian.”

It wasn’t as though she could confirm or deny this, so Aoko just kind of rolled with it. Speaking of which, I was not rolling. I was doing the opposite of rolling. Sakura continued to hover above me, oblivious, ignorant or uncaring of the concept of personal space. I’d just call her Hisui from here onward as an act of rebellion. “Hey, why aren’t you signing? It’ll be fun. You especially should sign. We’ll go on a date if you do.”

I found Hisui’s oblivious confidence charming. The side-eyed glances from Aoko, Yukimura and even Mrs. Hiyama just… bounced off her. Must’ve been nice. Meanwhile, I was busy trying not to choke on a proton.

“Two dates?” She asked.

Wow.

“Wow,” agreed Yukimura.

I was being perceived against my consent. I’d explicitly told Aoko not to do this, and by explicitly I meant writing it down after she kept harassing me into having a… conversation… back when she still thought I’d joined the club for reasons other than convenience. (That was also when she insisted on using each other’s first name as a token of our acquaintanceship. She got it right about twenty percent of the time.)

With the way things were going, it’d just look as though I’d signed because I wanted to go on those dates.

…oh, whatever. She’d just keep insisting if I ignored her.

I signed. We were all cowards in this club.

Terms and conditions…

Saving the other world…

Lots of corporate word salad…

…and a cat’s paw? Had she actually dipped a cat’s paw in ink to… no, surely not even Hisui could be that unhinged.

The sparkly pink ink hadn’t even dried when she slid the paper from under my hand and, judging by the way the other two reacted, she yanked the contracts off just as violently, whereupon she slammed the papers against the table. “Bam! Done! Now where are you, rabbit!?”

So it was a rabbit’s paw, not a cat’s paw, which had been stamped onto the papers to save the land of cow. How quaint.

A deep, disembodied voice replied, “Here.”

Then a rabbit hopped into the room. It was dark green (the rabbit).

…oh, so this was a nightmare. That made sense.

Hisui smirked. “See, Connie? I told you I had people who wanted to join. And to the rest of you–I told you it was real.”

We just kind of collectively stared as a mammal with green fur leaped onto the table, sniffed at the air, regarded us with beady fuchsia eyes, and said, “Good afternoon,” and then, “I am most thankful for your sacrifice,” and then, “I will be opening the portal now,” and then, “Is there something on my face?”

Aoko was the first to react; she stood up. “Sakura, I can’t believe you did that to that poor bunny! What is wrong with you?!”

Hisui waved her off dismissively. “I didn’t do anything. It was green when I found it.”

“Alas,” said the rabbit. “I chose green because you Earthlings call it ‘the color of life’. Should I have chosen blue?”

By this point, even Yukimura’s perpetually bored expression had given place to shock. Mrs. Hiyama’s eyes were moons.

“That’s fine,” Hisui said. “What’s done is done. At least these guys listened, unlike the student council…” Hadn’t she said she’d personally recommended us? “Just open the portal.”

“It’s probably one of those, um…” Aoko rubbed the leg of her glasses. “...alternate reality games… roleplay…. or am I dreaming…?”

The talking green rabbit with a jarringly deep voice began to float. And glow. And chant.

“Mass hysteria,” Yukimura proposed.

Moments later, the half-open club door turned the color of the rabbit’s fur, as did the windows. A swirl appeared within them, and the rabbit said, “Be my guests. Please abstain from jumping at the same time lest you fuse into an unfortunate creature. I’ll go last, for it must be me to close the gate.”

What looked like a giant matcha pudding began to seep into the room.

The rabbit sniffed at the air again. “Please don’t be afraid. It won’t hurt.”

Insane thing to say, but Hisui did not stay behind. Upon leaning close, closer, too close, she whispered to me: “I’ll go first. Could you please push the other two?”

No?

Not that it mattered; the matcha flan portal thing had covered all exits. It grew, invaded the manga club, and swallowed the small table at the entrance, the bookshelf, then–

“Eek!”

–Aoko’s chair, but not Aoko, for she moved away just in time. Unfortunately, Yukimura wasn’t as fast.

“Oh, my,” said the rabbit as the portal swallowed Yukimura. “I keep forgetting that magic is so unstable in this world… worry not, all items will remain on Earth except for what you wear.”

Hisui skipped into the portal. I would’ve expected Aoko to scream the name of her deceased…? Friend, or even her acquaintance, but all she did was mumble ‘this isn't happening’ over and over again whilst crouching until the green portal swallowed her.

After poor Mrs. Hiyama fell prey to the matcha flan as well, I figured that my time had come. I wasn’t scared, though. This was too stupid to be real, and it wasn’t as though I’d actually get teleported to another world the moment the portal–