Chapter 12:

The Friendliest "Friend"

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


After two not so long weeks, the day had come. The second to last day before Aito would lose the bet he’d made, and the last he could use to win it if he played his cards right.

With three girls already in the bag (metaphorically, of course, Aito didn’t have a bag with him), and only two people left but also only the one chance to win them over, at this point winning and losing both seemed possible. Sure, things had gone well with the three so far, but something about not having any leeway left until the deadline nagged away at the back of his mind and led to an ever-present anxiety that he really rather would have come knocking some other day instead.

The morning of the lastest-ish-y day, Aito found himself at an aquarium, looking down at the map he’d been handed back at the entrance and pondering whether he and his date should proceed forward, left, right, diagonally upwards to the right, diagonally downwards to the right, diagonally upwards to the right or… whoever designed the place didn’t seem to take into account the fact that real people would need to walk through the building at some point in the future.

“Riku, I honestly have no idea where we are or where we’re going at this point, so I’m letting you choose where we go next.”


“Are you seriously going to load all the work off to me again?”

“You call going to an aquarium work?”

“Nah, but I’m going to take every chance I get to nag on you for what you did to me exactly one week, five days, and some amount of hours ago.”

“I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have made you do something like that for me and I was being way too arrogant. I get that now.”

“Whoa, are you seriously the same person I’ve been friends with all these years or did you get replaced by an alien while I wasn’t looking?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re a friendly alien then.”

“Yup, as friendly as they come. But seriously, which way are we going?”

“...Let’s just pick a direction at random.”

“Then I call left.”


“Why ask if you’re just going to make the choice yourself anyway?”

“This way I could at least make sure you don’t have a different opinion that I’m totally ignoring, right?”

“Wow, you put some actual thought into this.”

Aito had, in fact, put a lot of thought into it. Having to wait several days since his previous date left him with precious little to do that didn’t just make him feel restless about the fact that he wasn’t doing anything that served to help his progress towards his main goals, so he instead did the one thing that didn’t just make him feel like he was wasting time until his next date: preparing for the very same next date.

“By the way, Aito, I have some things I feel like I should probably apologise for too.”

While the two of them walked in the direction Aito had chosen, Riku chose the moment to say some things of his own.

“So, I’m glad you seem to mostly be happy with things turning out the way they did. With the girls I ended up selecting for you and stuff. But I kind of think there might have been a flaw in my methodology when I chose them. I only realised this afterwards, but since I went around asking people just around when school ended… well, I did ask everyone I could find, but it’s possible some people could have had time to sneak home before I could get to them. In particular if they saw me running around like a madman asking a bunch of random girls to meet on the rooftop for a chat with my friend, without any further explanation.”

“Dude. You could just have explained it to them and that whole thing would have sounded way less creepy.”

“Aito, you’re like the last person I want to hear actual good logic that shows why I’m wrong from.”

“Too bad for you, because I actually thought about things since then. It’s almost been two weeks, you know?”

“Still don’t want to hear it, so you can feel free to shut up about that stuff and think more about ways to entertain me. You’re supposed to make me have fun, right? It is a date, after all.”

“Yeah, sure, sure. But we both know you’re always having fun when you’re with me, so I honestly don’t really feel like I have to try that hard.”

“Wait, man, seriously? You’ll try hard for strangers you’ve barely even met before but you won’t for me even though I’ve spent ages with you?”

“If anything it’s the other way around, our relationship is special enough that I’m sure you’ll understand me no matter how much I mess things up.”

“Wow, you’re actually getting kind of good at this smooth-talking thing.”

“I know, right?”

“And with that, I think you just ruined any credibility I saw in you a moment ago.”

“Guess I’d better start earning it back then. You want me to make you have fun? FIne, I’ll do exactly that.”

“Yeah, bring it on! Where do we start?”

Prepared as ever, Aito pointed to a tank that blocked the way forward for the two of them, something his decision to take a left brought them to.

“That thing in front of us. I say that’s where we start. You see it?”

“I’m not blind, so yeah, I see it.”

“Is that a fish in there? What do you think, Riku?”

“Dude, that’s a turtle.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. It could be a tortoise.”


“Yeah, but that’s still not a fish.”

“I mean, I don’t know, it could be-”

“Maybe you don’t know, but in this case I absolutely can say with certainty that whatever that is, fish is not it. Maybe you’ve gotten a bit better at dating, at least from a very particular very squinty perspective, but there’s so much other stuff you don’t know and I genuinely have no idea how you even do it a lot of the time.”

“I do know some things, you know. Like that thing over there, that’s a ladder.”

Aito pointed to an object placed a few steps to the right of the turtle/tortoise exhibit to help clarify his intentions.

“Technically true, but, more precisely it’s a stepladder.”

“Does the difference matter?”

“I would argue it does, but man do we have more important things to discuss either way so I will let it slide for now.”

“Like what? We’re here to have fun, sure, but aside from that?”

“Aito, you’re supposed to be the one convincing me, not the other way around.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get around to it. But right now it seems like someone else wants me for something.”

A single chime from Aito’s pocket indicated the arrival of a notification, and taking his phone out revealed he’d gotten a message from someone closely related to the person next to him.

“A message from someone or just a random notification?”

“Something from Mio. …Fuck. She’s saying she can’t make it today. And will be busy tomorrow too. Wants to reschedule for next week.”

“Wait, you two hadn’t gone out yet? You were planning to take me and her out today?”

“Yeah, but you first. Then her in the evening today because she claimed to not have time any other day or time.”


“That doesn’t make sense though, she’s totally not been busy from what I’ve been seeing.”

Spurred on by Riku’s comment, Aito mobilised all the mental resources he could muster, formulating one horrifying conclusion most people would have arrived at days earlier.

“By the way, what were you busy with before today? I was thinking being preoccupied is pretty unlike you. Usually you’d always have time for me.”

“You can blame Mio for that. She asked me to do stuff the other days this week and I figured the exact day of our date didn’t matter too much.”

“Oh no.”

And so the pieces fell into place.

Mio set things up so Aito wouldn’t be able to win his bet, relying on her to be the last piece of it and thus putting her in charge of the outcome.

“I’m an idiot. I should have asked why you couldn’t the other days. Or at least bragged about the progress I was making so you’d know I hadn’t gone out with your sister yet. Why the hell didn’t I even do that?”

“Dude, I have way less of an idea what you’re talking about here than you seem to think I do, so fill me in, alright?”

One filling in later, and Riku seemed way less concerned, or triumphant, or really less everything than Aito would have expected.

“Ah, cool.”

“I was expecting you to at least react in some way. At least say something other than just ‘cool’, please.”

“Eh, it barely matters anyway, does it? Just lose the bet and go on a date with her next week like she promised. Maybe you lose the bet, but you still get a date out of it.”

“Dude, it might not matter to you, but for me it’s basically a matter of life and death.”

“It’s not that important. I’m not going to make you do anything that bad, man.”

“But what if you let Mio choose like last time?”

"Hand it off to Mio? Aito, there’s no way I'd do that again. I literally only did that because you were being kind of rude to me before that and I wanted to show what it felt like. I wouldn’t do that again.”

"So you weren’t just being mean to me because you felt like it?”

“Of course not.”

"You're not the laziest ass to ever grace the surface of this planet either?"

"Dude, I was trying to be nice to you.”

“You’re the one I made the bet with in the first place, dude. Why do that if you were trying to be nice?”

“Dude, one stupid bet doesn’t mean I can’t be nice to you.”

“There’s way too many dudes in this conversation, dude. Even I can barely keep track of who’s who anymore. And seriously, it doesn’t matter that much who wins or loses..”

“Too bad for you, Riku, but I have no such problems. And, yeah, you’re right. But Riku, you do realise I’d be a lot more upset about me losing the bet than you are considering how, like, you’re the one that directly benefits from me losing?”

“I know. Which is why I can fix it just as easily.”

“Alright, you have my interest now.”


“Aito, let me get this straight. Are you saying I didn’t before?”

“It’s a figure of speech. So no such thing! So, what is this you were saying about solving all my problems?”

“Well, that bet we made? I’m calling it off, since you’d have lost anyway, and for reasons you couldn’t really do anything about in the first place. It wasn’t even meant to be that serious in the first place, you know?”

“It wasn’t?”

“That’d just have been stupid. And hey, my sister is home right now and quite a lot more free than she claims, so why don’t we go pay her a visit? Aito, what do you think?”

“I think that sounds great. But before that.”

Seeing the very same friend he’d lived in deep fear of the previous two-ish weeks stand up for him led Aito to some realisations. It was time to stop beating around the bush and be straight about things.

"Will you go out with me?"

“Aren’t we already out?”

“Yeah, but that’s because of the bet we made. I was thinking that it’d be neat to continue even afterwards. Give it a proper try. You know, dating? You up for that?”

“Of course I would be! Whoo, just thinking about it makes me feel pumped! But now? I think we have someone we need to go pay a visit. Let’s go, Aito.”

“That was… easy.”

“Maybe I’m just easy. But man, let’s just go already.”

“Yeah. Let’s.”

muishiki
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Koyomi
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