Chapter 3:

The Most Accurate of Portrayals

Why Get One Girlfriend if You Could Have ̶F̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶F̶o̶u̶r̶ ... Three?


Having arrived at the local park after school the next day, Aito pulled out his phone as soon as he'd confirmed no one else was there.

He opened up his messaging app of choice, and glanced down at a few lines he'd already read at least a dozen times, and could recite the contents of from memory.

First a message from Aito himself, addressed to someone he’d met mere hours beforehand.

“So, I know that stuff earlier was kind of sudden and all, but you up for a date tomorrow like we talked about?”

Next up, a reply from the person he had been messaging, a girl that according to the name displayed at the top of the screen went by “Ikazaki Koharu”. A response from a mere few seconds after the first message, a reply that had come faster than even Aito himself could have given or expected one.

“I suppose I would be willing to give it a try. Meet me at the park after school.”

Not the sparkling enthusiasm he’d hoped for, but also not outright rejection.

And that was it. The conversation ended after those three messages, Aito lacking the wit, courage, and most importantly time to write anything further as it was far past midnight, and his partner for the conversation most likely already satisfied. Leading to today, with Aito waiting in the park. It should be noted that it was “the” park, and not “a” park, because the town only kept shrinking year after year, and even at the start it hadn’t been big enough to support the construction of a second park.

Not of relevance whatsoever, but the thought kept Aito distracted and thus served its purpose. To help him forget if for just a moment that this would be Aito's first time out with a girl, first date, and maybe a few other firsts as well if things went well. A chance to do what he never had before but also a huge source of stress and anxiety.

And before he could think any further, the very girl he had been waiting for showed up right behind him.

“I don’t know if you’ve made any plans for today, but if you did, would you mind if we ignored them and went to the restaurant over there instead?”

Aito turned around in reaction to the voice coming from behind him, and was still stuck in place staring emptily in shock by the time the owner of said voice decided she’d had enough of waiting.

“Good, I don’t hear any complaints, so let’s get going.”

Downsides to the current situation: Aito found himself being pulled along rather forcefully, led by the hand in a rather hard grip, and all of this without time to properly think over even a single part of this whole chain of events.

Upsides to the current situation: At least Aito got to hold the hand of a girl neither he or his friend were related to for the first time in his life.

Overall a net positive.

Not much later the two found themselves seated in a restaurant that was, as may be expected from the earlier conversation, near the park.

Both of them waiting for the thing most people waited for at restaurants.

For the person sitting opposite them to start talking, saving themselves from the hassle of initiating the conversation.

And also food. But the food came a distant second.

“Why don’t you tell me something interesting about yourself?”

“...”

"Surely a guy confident four girls will want to date him at the same time, all without complaints, must have some interesting sides to him?"

At long last, Ikazaki chose to break the silence. A lucky break for Aito: he did not just not have to start the conversation, he could also easily answer this question, even if without much thought of what may follow.

"I mean, yeah. Of course I do.”

“So, tell me about those interesting parts of you.”

Ikazaki shot him an expectant look. Aito did his best to act unfazed, an oddly misplaced attempt at a smug smirk plastered on his lips in an effort to give off the air he knew a single thing he could say that would salvage the situation.

In truth Aito's mind remained blank, but he could tell he'd be letting his first ever date down if he accidentally exposed the fact that he had absolutely no interesting properties this early. If it only was later, after a few dates, then maybe he'd have a shot at working through the disappointment and keeping her by her side.

So he knew he should have said something.

But lacking both the smarts to instantly come up with anything believable, and the time to properly think things through, Aito remained silent. And it was so that a crushing silence fell upon the small corner of the room the two occupied, and the mood was ruined.

A part of Aito wanted to just run away and be done with it all. Unfortunately for him, no part of his partner was nearly as merciful.

"Should this really be that hard? You've been quiet for like a minute by now. I'm not demanding that you tell me something like, super extraordinary or anything. I just thought it would be nice to get to know each other a bit better. But just a bit, not too much. So, tell me something interesting about yourself, but maybe also not anything too interesting. There'll be no fun left for later if we run out of surprises already, won't there?"

Perhaps this request would have confused any ordinary person, in particular coming so near the start of both the date and conversation. But Aito, being no ordinary person, failed to notice the apparent strangeness of it, his mind still preoccupied with the previous demands and quite unable to fulfill any part of them. He could only stare down at the tablecloth in silence and hope something unexpected happening out of nowhere would come to save him. Which it would, but at the present moment he remained unaware of that fact.

Aito stared blankly ahead, by coincidence right into the eyes of the girl sitting opposite him.

"If you can't figure out what makes you interesting yourself, why don't I help you out a bit? Like, when you had the bright idea of asking four girls out at the same time. What went through your head when you decided you’d try that stunt?”

“I just thought it’d be cool.”

“Somehow that’s almost exactly what I expected.”

“That’s not the impression I got from what you literally just said before that.”

“I lied. People do that, sometimes. I’m no exception. So, tell me something else interesting. And just fyi, I got that line I said just now from a movie I watched last week. I found it quite intriguing, unlike you.”

“I don’t really think…”

"Or are you saying that there really is nothing remarkable about you? Nothing to make you worth anyone's attention, beyond a boundless sense of arrogance and an ego so overinflated it'll pop any minute? In that case, why don't you let me do the talking instead? I can't promise you'll like me, but at least I certainly am interesting."

And she certainly would have been, but Aito would never know that, the conversation interrupted by the sound of glass shattering and a medieval suit of armour with a gun taped to one hand jumping into the restaurant from the second-floor window (this ignoring the fact that the restaurant did not have two floors).

When it started firing said gun in the general direction of his date, Aito knew shit was about to get real.

And when shit gets real, you run. And make sure to say something vaguely kind of cool at the same time, just in case.

“There may not be many things I believe in, but I do have faith in one thing, and one thing only. My lung capacity! Which I’ll now use to run away!”

“...That line makes pretty much zero sense.”

That aside, he would have gotten away with his attempt at a mad dash to save his own life (and his own life only), if it wasn’t for… the giant robot, of course. Because no good date could ever be complete without a giant robot. A giant, twenty-meter tall metallic blue kind of human-shaped robot hell-bent on killing the fraction of humanity that had decided going on a date on this particular day would be worth the consequences, a task accomplished through the giant laser beams it fired from its hands, head, feet, and every other appendage it may or may not have possessed. And the giant rocket launcher strapped to both of its shoulders. Or maybe the hidden grenades stored around the stomach area, because of course it had grenades too.

After that happened, Aito thought he had seen it all. That surely, at this point there could be no more, nothing worse than what had come before.

Until he saw the demons.

And not just the demons. But also the vampires, the werewolves. The zombies.

And the giant death beam fired down from the skies above, at first obliterating everything in sight and soon after taking with it the rest of mankind and life on planet Earth.

Yet that, too, was not the end.

Because afterwards an alien tribe of giant kittens made their new home on Earth, and lived happily ever after.

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