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

The day I planned to get rejected by 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.

Then Sakura Hisui—student council vice-president, consistent top scorer, self-proclaimed star athlete and possessor of a great ass—slammed the door open with a characteristic lack of decor.

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. They'll 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 be des—yes! Thank you!”

Aoko was too much of a coward to be mean, so she grudgingly took one of the documents 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 grimaced. “So I just… sign?”

“Yes thank you.” 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 rammed it into her face, 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, yes thank you.

But to Sakura Hisui, a leer might as well have been a wave. “You especially should sign, Ishida,” she said. After I ignored her, she slammed the paper on the table before me. “Sign.” She also handed me one of the glitter pens Aoko had been using.

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 logic. “Just sign,” she said.

Listening to these two was a perpetually esoteric experience. As Yukimura obeyed, he mumbled, “Fine. Let’s save the cow.”

“The 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?” Hisui asked. “It’ll be fun. You especially should sign. We’ll go on a date if you do.”

I’d always found her dumb confidence charming. The side-eyed glances from Aoko, Yukimura and even Mrs. Hiyama just… bounced off of her. Must’ve been nice. Meanwhile, I was 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.)

If I signed now, it'd seem as though I’d done so because I wanted to go on those dates. However, I lacked the fortitude to ignore her until she left, and this might soften the inevitable rejection a bit, so I ended up enabling her, too.

Terms and conditions…

Saving the other world…

Lots of corporate word salad…

At the bottom left corner of the paper was a tiny paw print. What. 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, yanked the contracts from them just as violently. Once done, Hisui slammed the papers against the table. “Bam! Done. Connie? Hello?"

A deep, disembodied voice replied, “Hello.”

Then a green rabbit hopped into the room.

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

We just kind of collectively stared as a mammal with dark green fur leaped onto the table, sniffed at the air, regarded us with beady fuchsia eyes, and said, “Good afternoon. 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. “I—I can’t believe you did that to that poor bunny! What is wrong with you?!”

Hisui shrugged. “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—