Chapter 3: The Unwanted Harem Reunion Tour

The annual school festival was upon us. It was a time of joyous celebration, food stalls, and ridiculously high expectations for romantic developments. For me, it was supposed to be the perfect opportunity for my first official, capital-D Date with Rina. We had a plan: We’d hit the takoyaki stand, try to win a goldfish (and probably fail), watch the fireworks from the roof… It was a foolproof plan for romantic success.

But I had forgotten one crucial variable in the equation of my life: my former harem.

I use the term “harem” loosely. It was less a collection of girls vying for my affection and more a chaotic vortex of personalities that had somehow gotten tangled up in my orbit during my pre-Rina era. Now that Rina and I were an item, I assumed they had all moved on.

I was, of course, completely wrong.

Our date started out perfectly. Rina looked amazing in a simple summer yukata, and I felt ridiculously cool just walking next to her. We were just about to buy some candy apples when a voice boomed from behind us.

“Aoshi, my darling! Rina, my rival! I have found you!”

We turned to see Aomei, the drama club president, striking a pose that belonged on a theater stage, not in the middle of a crowded schoolyard. She wore a frilly, gothic Lolita dress that was wildly inappropriate for the weather, and her expression was one of exaggerated tragedy.

“Aomei-san,” I greeted her, trying to sound casual.

“Don’t ‘Aomei-san’ me, you fickle man!” she declared, pointing a lace-gloved finger at me. “I have come to test the bonds of your newfound love! For a love that cannot withstand trial is but a fleeting dream on a summer’s night!”

Rina, instead of being annoyed, looked delighted. “Oh? What kind of trial?” she asked, a mischievous glint in her eye.

This was not going according to plan.

Before I could object, Aomei launched into her "trial." It was a scene ripped straight from some cheesy historical drama she was obsessed with. She pretended to be a scorned noblewoman and I was the wandering ronin who had pledged his heart to another (Rina, the simple village girl). It was mortifying. She wept, she wailed, she delivered a three-minute monologue about betrayal and honor. A crowd was starting to form. Rina, the traitor, was playing along, patting my arm and saying things like, “Fear not, my brave samurai! Our love is true!”

I just wanted to melt into the pavement.

Just as Aomei was reaching her dramatic climax, another figure silently appeared beside us. It was Yuna, the quiet, perpetually sleepy girl from the science club. She was holding a half-eaten stick of dango.

“The probability of a relationship’s success is inversely proportional to the amount of public theatricality,” she stated in her usual deadpan monotone. She took a bite of dango. “Your current trajectory is suboptimal.”

“Yuna-chan!” Rina chirped. “Come to see the festival?”

“I was analyzing the structural integrity of the haunted house,” Yuna replied, unfazed. “The load-bearing beams are questionable. Also, your heart rates are elevated. It could be romantic excitement, or the early onset of cardiac arrest. The data is inconclusive.”

Aomei, her dramatic scene ruined, shot Yuna a glare. “You have no appreciation for art!”

“Art is a subjective and inefficient method of data transfer,” Yuna countered, finishing her dango.

And then, to complete the trifecta of chaos, my best friend Danawa jogged up, a stupidly confident grin on his face. He slapped me on the back, nearly sending me into a display of festival masks.

“Aoshi, my man! I saw you from across the way. You looked like you were in trouble,” he said, puffing out his chest. “Don’t worry, your wingman is here!”

“Danawa, I don’t need a wingman,” I hissed. “I have a girlfriend. She’s right here.”

He glanced at Rina, then back at me, a look of profound pity on his face. “Dude, that’s when you need a wingman the most! You gotta keep her on her toes. It’s all in the book.” He held up a tattered paperback titled The Alpha Bro’s Guide to Irresistible Game. “Chapter 3: The Art of the Neg. You gotta give her a subtle insult to lower her self-esteem and make her seek your approval.”

Rina’s smile turned dangerously sweet. “Oh, really? Please, Danawa, enlighten me.”

I grabbed Danawa’s arm, trying to drag him away. “He’s had too much sugar. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“No, no, I got this,” Danawa insisted, shaking me off. He looked Rina up and down. “That’s a… nice yukata. My grandma has one just like it.”

There was a moment of perfect, terrifying silence. Aomei gasped in horror. Yuna blinked slowly, as if processing a new, fascinatingly flawed dataset. I started mentally preparing my own eulogy.

Rina just laughed. A full, genuine laugh.

“Oh, Danawa, you’re adorable,” she said, patting his cheek condescendingly. “You tried. That’s what matters.” She then turned to me. “Your friends are hilarious, Aoshi.”

My perfect, romantic, foolproof date had officially been hijacked. It was no longer the Aoshi and Rina show. It was now “Aoshi’s Harem and their Chaotic Shenanigans, guest-starring Rina.”

The rest of the evening was a blur of absurdity. Aomei kept trying to orchestrate dramatic romantic scenarios, like having us "accidentally" get locked in the storage shed (we were in there for 30 seconds before a janitor let us out). Yuna would pop up at random intervals to offer strange, cryptic advice (“Beware the churro stand. The cinnamon-to-sugar ratio is unstable.”) or scientific observations (“Based on your pupil dilation, you are experiencing high levels of stress. I recommend blinking.”). Danawa, meanwhile, kept trying to feed me terrible pickup lines from his book to use on my own girlfriend, which Rina found endlessly amusing to deflect.

I was no longer a boyfriend on a date. I was a zookeeper trying to manage a pack of hyperactive, unpredictable animals. And Rina? Rina was loving every second of it. She wasn’t my co-zookeeper; she was the person selling tickets to the show. She encouraged Aomei’s drama, asked Yuna follow-up questions about her data, and expertly dismantled Danawa’s "game" with a smile.

We finally made it to the rooftop, just as the fireworks were about to start. Miraculously, we were alone.

“Well,” I said, letting out a long sigh. “That was… something.”

Rina leaned against the railing, looking out at the festival lights below. “I had fun,” she said, her voice soft.

“You had fun watching me suffer,” I corrected.

She turned to me, a real, gentle smile on her face. “Maybe a little. But you know, it’s nice. Seeing you with them.”

“Nice? It was chaos!”

“It was,” she agreed. “But they all care about you, in their own weird ways. It’s… cute.”

The first firework whistled into the sky, exploding in a shower of brilliant gold. It illuminated her face, and in that moment, all the annoyance and embarrassment of the day melted away.

“Still,” I said, moving to stand beside her. “I kind of wish it was just the two of us tonight.”

She reached out and took my hand. Her palm was warm. “Me too.”

Another firework burst, this one a vibrant blue.

“But,” she added, a familiar, playful glint returning to her eyes. “You have to admit, it was way less boring than just winning a goldfish.”

I looked at her, at the way the colorful light danced in her eyes. She was right. It was stressful, it was mortifying, and it was the furthest thing from my perfect, planned date. But it was definitely not boring.

“Fine,” I conceded, as a cascade of red and green lit up the sky. “But next time Danawa tries to ‘neg’ you, I’m not saving him.”

Rina laughed, squeezing my hand. “Deal.”