Which Yan Are You?!

The kiss from Misaki… more like everything about her, caused Akio to forget about the biker thugs from before. And now, he had aimlessly run right into their cone of vision, re-sparking the confrontation.

“YOU KIDNAPPED MY STELLAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

Akio immediately bolted in the other direction. But with no speed on his side now, it was a simple matter of flooring their vehicles and circling around their prey on foot.

Fuuuuuuuuck meeeee. I can’t even die by the thighs of a hot girl!

An image of Misaki flashed before him. He was definitely going panic crazy if that was his definition of hot, intentional or not. Yet, he was willing to admit that it was looking quite preferable to what these thugs would do to him.

The bikers suddenly dispersed, leaving one to rush forward with a bat. The passing swing flew just over Akio as he instinctively ducked.

But another burn of rubber followed up, and before Akio recovered his stance, a solid crowbar smacked into his legs. He flew into the air, the sky whizzing. A sharp pain followed on the back of his head, having struck pavement.

“End of the line, brat! No one’s gonna risk their neck to save ya.”

A bat came down and whacked him in the stomach. Akio could taste vomit in the back of his throat. He curled around and tried to roll away, only to be struck again.

No one would, would they?

He had no friends. His parents barely cared enough to ship him to the next town over. Childhood friends were a lie. Teachers and police were too busy waging. That girl over there, probably just came over to laugh-

Akio’s eyes widened. Her back was to him, and he was looking right up her skirt. A familiar set of thighs said hello. She was standing in between him and the thugs.

It couldn’t be! Haibara?

The thug hitting him waltzed right around her with a smug grin and a lick of his lips. He tapped the bat on his shoulder, poking his head right into her space. He shot a jeering look that seemed almost silly since he had to look up. That lasted all of a split second before her fist slammed so far into his face that it could’ve been mistaken for a butthole now.

The thugs instantly moved into a mob mentality as those with weaker wills did, smacking their weapons on the ground to sync up a combined assault. Five of them rushed one tall schoolgirl. It seemed one-sided, but only if the look of sheer confidence on her face was ignored. Misaki kicked the bat on the ground up, snatched it, and sent a shockwave forward from just cutting the air.

For a moment, it seemed like nothing happened. But then, they all clutched their chests as if their lungs had collapsed. Dropping to the ground, they shuffled backwards like crabs, fear evident on their faces.

Akio crawled around to her front and instantly felt like doing the same.

If he could characterize the expression of imminent doom – the crazed, teeth baring grin on Misaki would come pretty close. Her limbs had morphed into a grotesque bulging of raw strength. Blood dripped down the side of her head due to a bruise above her temple. She had stepped mid-swing into a hit meant for him.

Despite that, her eyes had glazed over with ecstasy. It was hard not to say that she used this situation as an excuse to go wild. With slow strides forward, she tapped the end of the bat on the ground to signal a countdown to her arrival. It didn’t look like things would end without bloodshed.

Her first victim got a bat to a raised arm, the bone snapping cleanly in an attempt to protect the cowering head. The second and third raised a weapon in response, but those were ripped clean out of their hands with a single swing. A foot to the stomach sent each flying into dumpsters in some back alley. Numbers four and five abandoned their fellow members, crying louder than their engines could haul them out of there.

Misaki stared down at the very first thug, the one with a caved-in face. Several teeth were gone, and his nose had flattened. He could do nothing else being unconscious, but that didn’t stop Misaki from standing over him menacingly.

She tossed away the bat and drew her switchblade, tasting it to savor a sharper form of revenge.

Akio didn’t know what came over him. The next thing he knew, he had latched onto her, holding the wrist from striking downward. He didn’t give a damn about his attackers, he really didn’t. But something felt very wrong about what Misaki was doing.

She robotically moved forward to knife the thug, even as Akio gripped her by the joints, hoping to pull her back.

His feet slid back. It was a losing battle if it came down to strength, maybe even technique. Akio was hardly someone that would wuss out on a fight, but Misaki had shown why she was someone to be feared.

He wasn’t even sure why he was trying so hard, particularly for a girl he had just met. Especially a girl that could down right murder him. He could just slip away and ignore it all. They were no longer his business since they couldn’t bother him anymore. But as he held onto Misaki, he knew couldn’t do that. He scoffed at the thought that a kiss would win him over so easily. He hadn’t given up that much of his pride.

“Haibara, stop!”

Akio forced his way in front of her, hoping to snap her from the rage. But then, he saw her eyes.

They were deep. Dark. Unforgiving. They felt a bit familiar whenever Akio looked at himself in the mirror, trying to practice his lines but ending up gnashing his teeth at his failures.

Her eyes held a spite in being unable to hold back her actions… just like how his words went untamed. It was a sense of loneliness among peers.

“Haibara, enough!”

Of course, words went to deaf ears. But that didn’t discourage him from trying again. He mustered up everything he knew about her, finally coming up with a dumb idea, maybe even crazy considering the circumstances.

But that was all he had to go on.

Using everything to pull Misaki’s knife hand to the side, Akio let go with the other hand and grabbed the back of her head. With a deep breath to prepare mentally, he pulled her down for a kiss.

It was messy. Their teeth collided at first. But eventually, his lips snapped over hers. Akio stared into the vortex of mixed emotions that flooded her eyes as she fought to register his bravado.

For a moment, Akio thought he got through to her. Her body twitched and she started to relax. His grip relaxed in response, but that had apparently been a mistake.

Misaki took that moment of lowered guard to wrap her arms around Akio in a bear hug, with the knife unfortunately still in her hand.

“MWRRHRHRH!!!”

Akio’s scream of pain was muffled by Misaki kissing back in earnest. At the same time, blood dripped down his back. There was nothing he could do as all leverage had been taken from him. He could count the seconds as a lack of oxygen and blood made the darkness in his eyes flood from the edges.

This was what he asked for, apparently. When the thugs had nearly killed him, Misaki came to mind. It was a slightly better way to go, wasn’t it? In the arms of a girl…

v

Akio sprung up from his bed, heaving in short, panicky breaths. The familiar softness of his sheets, the wall of random trinkets and posters that lined his bedroom – in an instant, his mind reasoned with him that it was all a dream.

However, the pain in his back was the one outlier that said otherwise.

No, no, no! It’s a dream! All a dream! A twisted, somehow weirdly horny dream where getting offed by some yandere is somehow sexy!

Akio would swear off those eccentric indie simulators, sandbox games that let you do pretty much anything for laughs. It was probably karma for considering twisted, shallow revenge at those who bullied him.

“Good morning, Akio-kun.”

“Sonovabitch!” Akio nearly leapt from his bed and yeeted himself straight out the window. After all, someone from his dream was there when she shouldn’t be.

“You shouldn’t be moving so much yet. You’ll rip the stitches I did for you. It was the least I could offer for braving my temper tantrum.”

Akio felt around under his shirt, and sure enough, he found medical dressing over thread that held together a tender wound. He turned to look at Misaki, who had a bandage around her head which looked far worse. Before he could point at it, she perked up at his gaze.

“Ah, this. It’s nothing much. Just a bat to the head. Nothing less than the great Sadaharu has a swing strong enough to take me out, and he’s an old man now.”

Baseball facts aside, Akio shivered at how Misaki simply shrugged off any blow less than a pro batter. But then again, being in this situation felt like brain damage.

“Aren’t you talking funny, Haibara?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Akio-kun? This is how a proper girlfriend should converse, is it not?” Misaki added a smile to highlight her point.

“G-Girlfriend? Since when? How? With you?”

In an instant, Misaki’s face was in front of him. She was hunched over the bed, trapping Akio under her.

“Are you dissatisfied? Are you dumping me after a few kisses? Oh my, what can I offer to change your mind?” There was a faint crack of deadly aura leaking from her.

Akio looked down to see the ends of the sheets bunched up in her hands, like she could bundle him up as garbage tossed out the window.

“N-No, of course not! I was just surprised! You scared me to death! You were all rough and tough before. N-Not that I minded that one bit! I just didn’t expect the rumored yankee to show a softer side, that’s all!”

“Ah, I see.” She went back to full-pleasantness mode.

S-Scary!

Akio wasn’t sure how to deal with such polar extremes. Was it part of Misaki’s normal personality, or had she gone through a sudden change of heart? The way blood continued to dye her bandages seem to hint brain damage again.

“I admit that I am fairly new to this concept of dating. But that’s why I took the liberty of investigating your room for your preferences. I needed something to occupy the time while nursing you through the night.”

“You went through my stuff?”

Akio’s heart sank. Misaki’s gaze glided over to his personal computer.

My stuff??? OH HELL NO! I don’t have it password protected!

Akio’s panic caused him to awkwardly stumble out of bed and the room to shake, just enough for the screen to turn on. It displayed a schoolgirl standing amid a pile of gruesomely mutilated bodies. An expression of crazed release was plastered on the character’s face, an obvious villain that had reaped her revenge against her targets.

Misaki turned toward Akio, who had a stiff expression like he had just tried to swallow the blood of the slain along with his guilt. Regardless, she flashed a beautiful expression at him… beautiful until she opened her eyes. It didn’t take an expert to recognize something terribly off about her.

“So that’s how you like your girls… Senpai.”

That last word was like hell had reached down from under his bed, ripped his spine straight through his ass, and proceeded to lasso him into the depths.

“No, no senpai! Not with that tone, please! Aren’t you an upperclassman to begin with?”

“Akio-kun?” Misaki did a head tilt, but with such an expression, it might as well have been one of those creepy dolls with their heads snapped wrong. A knife held behind her back would complete the image.

Akio scrubbed his eyes to purge them, firmly overloaded by the situation before him. Misaki had discovered his guilty pleasure of killing a bunch of mobs to let off steam. Why couldn’t it have been a normal game? Or even one of those Musou ones where his preferences could be waved off as some period drama edgelord. Of course, it had to be with a yandere character. Of course, it had to be by a girl that could seriously murder him.

“Kill me now…”

He could feel Misaki standing right before him, digesting the squeak of his inner thoughts. A pair of hands curled around his neck and squeezed, tight enough to cause discomfort but not fully blocking his ability to breathe.

Akio looked up at Misaki, who was smiling like a child wringing a stuffed animal. He was not the accepting parent type that would just go ‘how cute’ and shrug it off. But then again, he couldn’t. Freaking. Move.

“I knew it. That’s the kind of play you like. Now, I know. I’m the only one you can be satisfied with.”

Misaki pulled back her grip, letting her hands dance up to his cheeks, now drawing circles on them. They moved up further, brushing back the bangs of his hair. And then, she stood up and walked over to the door.

“Too much excitement is bad for your recovery. We have plenty of time for more going forward.”

With a click of the door open and closed, Akio was left with an eerie silence that was only disturbed by the beating of his own heart. A paper bag would have been helpful to calm his breathing, but he would just get it damp from cold sweat.

In the span of a single day, he had nearly run over someone, gotten killed several times, been kissed and kissed back, and fell into the most ridiculous relationship with the town’s craziest girl, Misaki Haibara.

And on top of that, she had hit her head and took on a yandere persona based on a misguided read of his hobbies. He was now regretting all his life choices ever. He looked around his room.

What else did Misaki dig into?

He was afraid to find out. Something told him that it wouldn’t take long to know. His gaze fell back on the door she had waltzed out of.

“Wait, how the hell did she break into my apartment? The door’s a number lock, and there’s no way she could have found out as I just met her yesterday!”

“I climbed up to your balcony,” a muted voice echoed.

Akio nearly jumped out of his skin. He ran up to the balcony, slid open the door and found Misaki sitting there with a wave.

“It’s the fifth floor! And why are you-”

“A yandere is good at stalking, so I’ve read. But since you found me, I’ll make my escape.”

Misaki swiftly leapt over the rail, causing Akio another heart attack as he ran over to look down. To his surprise, she nimbly pounced from ledge to ledge, making it look like child’s play to cover the height.

Akio could only sink to the ground in realization.

It had probably been just as easy for her to climb up with him in tow.