Familiar Stranger

Kanai leaned back and gestured with both hands, jabbing his thumbs in two different directions; Kazuhiro and Shoya both let go of me and ran off. A second later, the whole group was dispersed; they were fast.

I also didn’t want to talk to passerby or police. Taking a few breaths to try and still my heart, I walked back into the café. Maybe Yuu would let me sit in the back room.

“I’m sorry,” Sae said when I got back. “We didn’t know if we should call for help until you started shouting.”

“It’s okay.” My hair had fallen around my face. I retied my ponytail with my hands still clumsy and anxious. Sitting down in my chair, I pressed my hands to my face, taking a few more deep breaths. My adrenaline slowly started to dissipate.

“Well,” Yuu said, short and clipped. “You want something to drink?”

I had the distinct feeling that I’d fallen lower in her esteem. “...Sure.”

➽──────❥ ❀⊱༺♡༻⊰❀ ➽──────❥

I ordered a chai. I needed caffeine, but felt like too much caffeine or sugar would send my brain into overdrive and make me have a panic attack. So, a middle ground. I got the two girls the cute decorated drinks they wanted. They were a little expensive, at 900 yen each, so our total came out to 2,300 yen. After a moment of thought, I put down 3,000 yen and said “You can keep the change.” Tipping overtly was rude; but Yuu was strapped on money and didn’t care too much about social norms, based on the time I’d spent playing her. Maybe getting a little money would make her warm up to me a little.

A popup appeared in my peripheral vision. Money: -3,000 yen.

Yuu took the money. Another popup appeared. Love Points +1. Beginner Mission: 3/3 cleared. Hint Gained!

Huh, that really worked. Could I win her over just by emptying out my bank account?

Sae and Mae were chatting to each other, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to participate in their conversation. My brain was still spinning. I made myself think back to what I knew about the game. It really wasn’t that long or plot-focused. The drama came from the delinquent and gang-fighting stuff. The gang-fighting stuff came about if you couldn’t stop interpersonal drama. Yuu was involved in it because she knew Okuda Kazuhiro, because she lived in the neighborhood, and because she was going to romance one of the eight guys who were also involved. Well—there was one romanceable character who didn’t get into any fights and wasn’t really involved; I didn’t think, though I hadn’t played his route—but that wasn’t relevant right now.

Crimes-wise, Sakura Academy didn’t have a distinct group of people. Rather, the more delinquency-inclined boys would just throw down when it made sense. But Kanai’s group had a name—they were the Higanbana-gumi, the Red Spider Lily gang, and they went to different schools (Kazuhiro and Fuuji went to the same school, Kanai didn’t go to school at all). They were sometimes implied to have a few more people, but none of them ever showed up. I was pretty sure the main group was only the four I’d met. Konno Kanai was the leader, Shobu Tana was his second in command, and Takayama Fuuji was a senior member. Okuda Kazuhiro was their kouhai, a newer member and the one lowest on the pecking order. They were all eighteen or almost eighteen; maybe Kanai was nineteen. I didn’t really know much about any of them; well, I knew a little about Shobu Tana, who had featured a fair amount in Ryoya’s story. But each route only took about four or five hours to play. The stories were pretty focused.

Yuu came back and put the drinks on our table.

“We’re really sorry about that fight happening,” Mae said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Yuu said. Her eyes flickered over to me, then away again. A glance of blame, pretty much.

“I’m sorry too,” I said.

“You didn’t start anything, you just walked in. I’ve gotta acknowledge that at least.”

Fair, but frigid. I wasn’t feeling that one love point.

I looked at Yuu again, trying to imagine a world where I was attracted to her. She was an interesting person. I’d spent some time in her shoes. Sometimes, that had made me like her. Sometimes, I got annoyed at the actions she decided to take and the things the game had her say. I’d named her Rin and played her as if she was myself, but she had some of her own depth, too. That depth had sometimes interested me and often annoyed me because it wasn’t the same as who I was. So it went for all otome heroines, pretty much.

I couldn’t get myself to feel attracted to her by staring at her. It’s not like she was bad looking, just…not my type. And not my gender. I needed to get over my reluctance. I had a mission to complete.

“Miyazato-senpai’s staring at another girl,” Sae stage-whispered to Mae.

“That’s okay, we can stare at him staring at another girl,” Mae whispered back.

“Okay, I get it, chill,” I said.

“It’s fine.” Mae spun her straw around her drink. “I mean, you took the two of us out here, and you’re always nice to the whole fan club, we didn’t expect you to be serious and devoted to just us.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to be?”

“I wanna date you, Miyazato-kun,” Sae said.

I leaned forward, lifting her chin with two fingers. “You’re so forward…my girlfriend.”

“Aaaa you’re so handsomee,” Sae said, leaning forward and putting her hands on my chest.

“I have to go home, though,” I said before that accelerated any further.

“Awww…”

“You want one of us to come home with you—”

“Mae!”

“No, not today.” Ryoya didn’t really study or do homework so I didn’t add on an excuse. I just wanted to crash.

“Are you okay?” Sae asked. “After getting beat up like that.”

I touched my cheek, where Kanai had left a hot burning mark. “It wasn’t beating up. They didn’t succeed in hitting me much.” I lightly touched the bridge of my nose. It felt ordinary now, nothing left behind. I’d sworn I could feel that kiss sticking to me.

“You seem kind of off. How come you didn’t take down those guys?”

I shrugged.

“Makes sense why you wanna go home,” Sae said. “I’d wanna go home after that. Get well soon.”

“Rude,” Mae whispered to her.

“I didn’t want to be rude! Aah, Miyazato-senpai, forgive me!” She bowed her head in penitence.

I gestured vaguely. “Yeah, sure, it’s fine.” I was mimicking how Ryoya acted again—and pretty well this time I thought. “I’m gonna head out.”

I was too tired to try to seduce Yuu at that point. The two girls let me go, waving goodbye and calling out flirty platitudes.

➽──────❥ ❀⊱༺♡༻⊰❀ ➽──────❥

I’d assumed I’d know where Ryoya’s house was for the same reason I knew where the coffee shop was: the in-game map. I’d forgotten that you couldn’t go to Ryoya’s house on that map. He lived further away.

I walked a little ways towards the train station and sat down, taking out Ryoya’s phone.

It was an older model, an iPhone 8. The screen flickered on; his lockscreen was some old painting, and his notification feed had a million different messages from girls. I didn’t know the password, but decided to go for it and typed in 0818, Ryoya’s birthday.

0818 didn’t work. So he wasn’t the kind of person who set his own birthday as a phone password. But what else would he set it to?

“Status window,” I whispered. I’d earned that hint earlier.

Love Points: 1

Drama Points: 1

Misfortune Points: 1

Money: 6980 yen

There wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. Unless… “Show items.”

An items list came up in front of me, listing all the stuff I already knew was in Ryoya’s bag. He was a hoarder, honestly… At the bottom of the items list, there was something that wasn’t just in reality. A listing said Hint (x1).

I could use it for the cell phone. I could also use it for a million other things. I shouldn’t use it for the cell phone yet. Should I? I could end up in another violent situation, where I’d need information to escape with my safety. I could also use it to understand how to romance Yuu better, with that mission hanging over me. But being able to get into Ryoya’s cell phone would give me all of his contacts, all of his saved information, his photos, any personal notes he took, and so forth. I would also then have a cell phone, which would be great for me as someone born in the Internet generation, who had never done a school research project without going straight to Wikipedia.

Before doing anything, I tried Yasutoki’s birthday, which was Children’s Day—0505—Yuu’s birthday, as I’d set it—1124, which was also my own birthday—though that didn’t make much sense as Ryoya hadn’t met her in this universe, not to mention that her name being Yuu instead of Rin meant this world didn’t match my settings; 1234, and 4321. After that last one, the phone screen shook and told me that it wouldn’t let me try again for fifteen minutes.

I flipped through the sketchbook, but it wasn’t filled out yet. The first six pages or so had doodles of things around school; teachers as they lectured; a section labelled Train with drawings of a few different passengers. He was good, loose pencil strokes coming together into clear images. In the corner of one of the pages was a sketch of a young girl, chin-length hair framing her face and the wind blowing a few loose strands of it to the left, making her skirt billow and the ribbon on her collar flutter. I paused for a second on that drawing. It was given more care than some of the others. Her face was carefully drawn in a realistic style; her dimpled round cheeks, the shadow above her chin, the shape of her nose, were all neatly marked out. She looked a little sad.

I realized who it was.

The phone password is going to be her birthday.

But I didn’t know her birthday.

Having the phone password would be important and useful for the future. I sighed and said quietly, “Use hint.”

A new popup appeared on top of the status window. Are you sure?

Don’t make me put it off more! I internally complained. “Yes, I’m sure. Tell me Ryoya’s phone password.”

0417.

April 17th.

I couldn’t put it in yet because of the fifteen-minute delay, but I knew he had to take the train; I knew that from the game, and the train passenger drawings had further confirmed it. So, I walked to the train station. There were worse places to hang out.

It wasn’t as big as one like Shinjuku or Shibuya Station, but it was still big enough to have shopping and restaurants. Several of them were closed, though. Empty walkways stretched out before me, twisting around pillars and disappearing down stairs. I met my own eyes in a darkened shop window. A beautiful guy looked back at me. Clear skin, symmetrical nose, luxurious wavy hair. A reddened bruise was forming on my cheek. Did Ryoya look tired, or was that my imagination? I looked down at my hands. They were neat and tidy, well-cut nails and skin that was taken care of. I was wearing a couple rings; for style, I guessed. On the side of two of my fingers were small black marks from drawing with an ink pen.

Ryoya?

No response. I’d really replaced him. That was creepy. Was he still alive somewhere? Maybe he would come back after I made it out of this world. I liked him. In his romance route, I’d felt like I really got to know him. I didn’t want him to be dead.

Maybe he had never really existed, and this world had appeared the day I arrived. That was the day the game started, in any case…it made sense for the past around it to be a blank. If he was never alive, he couldn’t’ve died. That was a nice idea.

Mulling it over wouldn’t do any good. I wandered around the station a little. There was a bookshop; I considered going in, before deciding that (1) I wanted to save money, and (2) Miyazato Ryoya in the shoujo and BL sections of a bookstore was even weirder than Matsuda Rin in there. Instead, I went into a clothes store and wandered around looking at everything. I liked clothes probably more than the average guy, but I usually just wore jeans and a hoodie. Now that I was in Ryoya’s body, though, the idea of dressing him up felt kind of fun. He would look good in anything.

I killed fifteen minutes like that, then left the shop and typed 0417 into his phone. It opened for me.

The homescreen was a simple default background. Aside from the basic apps like clock, calculator, wallet, weather, and so forth, he had Line, Instagram, Tetris, and a simple platformer game. They were all arrayed without using app collections, with his camera, settings, and web browser at the bottom. I flipped to the next page. There was a collection labelled “unused”. In that collection was the game Fate/Grand Order. I stared at it for a second. If you’re not playing it, why not delete it to free up storage space…

I was in the body of a fascinating guy.

I went into Maps and picked the destination called Home, then started walking, following the directions.