Wait.
Wait a minute.
Where the actual flying pancake syrup was I again?
Something about… life?
Reality?
Akira freaking Suzuki?
Oh god.
Oh no.
OH HELL NO.
Yeah, I remember now.
I was mid-existential-crisis-level-999, wrapped in a cocktail of heavenly euphoria and volcanic-grade emotional diarrhea. A pure fusion of serotonin overdose and testosterone trauma. That exact moment where your soul ascends into the stratosphere but your dignity drowns in a toilet.
Ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls. People of the jury.
I, Ryuji Takahashi, full-time overthinker, part-time simp, licensed loser and currently malfunctioning main character, have been cursed.
Cursed not by a demon. Not by a witch. Not by some unholy pact I drunkenly signed in a past life—
—but by Akira Suzuki.
Yes.
That Akira.
That little son of a b— (this narration has been censored for your own protection and mine because if I say what I really feel, I might get struck by divine lightning mid-sentence).
Let me make one thing painfully clear. If we were the last two people on Earth during a zombie apocalypse, and my survival depended on being locked in a bunker with her for the rest of my sad little life?
Screw that.
I'd rather offer myself as an all-you-can-eat buffet to the undead. Bite by bite. Nibble by nibble. I'd sing "Unchained Melody" while they chew on my liver.
If the world was ending? If tsunamis roared across continents? If the earth split open like a microwaved burrito? If the skies fell and tornadoes rained down fire and frogs and flaming pickles?
I'd embrace them all. At once. Like a madman. With arms wide open.
Because THAT is still better than enduring the torturous, nerve-bending, pride-destroying aftermath of what the hell just happened with her.
I swear even HELL would reject me at the gates.
Lucifer himself would throw up his pitchfork and say, "Oh no bro, you're not our problem. Get back up there and suffer with the humans."
And Heaven?
Yeah, they'd reboot me just to laugh.
Bring me back to life just to watch me flounder like a goldfish in a frying pan.
Now.
Let's roll it back for those just tuning in.
I'm Ryuji Takahashi. Sixteen. Male. Emotionally unstable.
I belong to class A-1. Yeah. That's the top section. The elite. The supposed "smart kids" lounge.
Don't ask me how I got in. I don't even know what a hypotenuse is and I still get confused when people say "mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell." Like, cool? Good for it?
Anyway.
The real reason I got into this class?
Mikaela Sato.
Yep. Mikaela freaking Sato. The girl. The myth. The gentle goddess that my heart swore loyalty to since middle school. The one girl who made my pathetic existence feel like a poetic ballad sung by angels.
Back in middle school, she was in the special section—the academically blessed, IQ-off-the-charts geniuses.
I was in Section Z.
As in Zzzzz. As in we were all mentally asleep. Our homeroom teacher once asked us to draw a map of the world and I swear someone drew a banana.
We never talked. Not even once.
But destiny, drunk and possibly on crack, decided to shove me into the same class as her in high school. Maybe the gods pitied me. Maybe they dropped their divine pen and accidentally wrote my name in the honor class list.
I didn't care.
I WAS IN.
Now here's the real tragedy.
I am still a virgin. I mean, yeah. Not proud. Not ashamed either. Just… statistically consistent with my life choices.
This morning, I woke up. Did the usual. You know. Brushed my teeth. Took a shower. Opened the fridge. Realized we were out of eggs. Then—how do I say this politely—I went to "clock in for my private shift." You know what I mean. Solo jazz performance. Left-hand symphony.
AND YET.
Somehow.
Somehow by the universe's twisted sense of humor, I ended up in a romantic situation by the afternoon.
A romantic situation.
With Akira Suzuki.
Out of everyone in the entire goddamn world. Out of seven billion people. My first "cinematic love interest moment" was with the one girl who's been the single most destructive hurricane to my ego since birth.
Is this a comedy?
A tragedy?
A prank?
Am I dead?
Is this purgatory?
Is this fanfiction?
Hey, author, if you're reading this, I got a message for you: WHO HURT YOU?
Because I'm hurt now. Thanks.
What have I done to deserve this? Was it because I cheated on a math test in 5th grade? Because I once lied to my mom about feeding the cat?
Or is this karma from all the times I stared at girls' thighs during summer?
Okay, fine. I might have deserved a slap from the universe. But THIS? This is overkill.
This is nuclear-grade emotional warfare.
You ever try to scream internally while smiling on the outside? That's me. That's been me for the last several hours. My soul is peeling off like dead wallpaper in a haunted house.
Let's talk about Akira.
She's hot.
Yeah. I'll admit it. Objectively? She's fire.
But like… Chernobyl fire. Like "Oh she's beautiful, but she'll eat your pancreas while laughing" kind of fire. Not the cute romcom fire. This is final boss energy.
She's the type of girl who would probably insult you in five languages while simultaneously curing cancer.
And yet… AND YET…
She did something.
SHE.
DID.
SOMETHING.
I don't even know what happened exactly. It's like my memory glitched. Like some cosmic editor pressed "cut" on my consciousness and skipped to the part where I was reeling from emotional whiplash and short-circuiting like a wet toaster in a bathtub.
And get this—
I think I liked it?
NO.
NO NO NO NO.
WE DON'T DO THAT HERE.
This is not a harem anime. I refuse. I am a man of principle. Of loyalty. Of unshakeable love for Mikaela Sato.
Except now my brain is sending me flashbacks like it's an anime ending.
Slow-motion flashbacks.
Hair in the wind.
Akira's voice echoing in my eardrums.
Me internally screaming.
Oh god.
Oh no.
What if someone saw us?
WHAT IF MIKAELA SAW?
No. No, calm down. Breathe. Just breathe. You're fine. You're still sane. Probably. I mean, sure, you just swore to 67 divine beings that you'd never peek into a girls' bathroom again if someone woke you up from this nightmare—
WAIT.
WAIT WAIT WAIT.
This IS real.
THIS IS HAPPENING.
OH GOD.
OH SH*T.
I'm gonna pass out.
I'm going to spontaneously combust like a vampire in daylight.
How am I supposed to face anyone tomorrow?
How am I supposed to look Mikaela in the eyes when my soul is already halfway to the underworld?
I need a plan.
I need a reset button.
I need a black hole to swallow me whole and spit me out in a timeline where this never happened.
Better yet—
Someone just kill me.
You there. Reader. Yeah, you. The one who's been enjoying my pain for five straight chapters. You wanna help a guy out? Grab a shovel. Dig a hole. Bury me alive with my regrets and a pillow.
You know what?
Screw it.
If this is my arc, then let's get this over with. Bring on the heartbreak. Bring on the cringe. Bring on the utterly humiliating future where I'm known as "that guy Akira Suzuki possibly confessed to or cursed or hexed or kissed or whatever that moment was".
But I swear.
I swear on my honor.
I swear on my cheap secondhand school shoes.
I will find a way out of this narrative nightmare.
I will rewrite my destiny.
I will—
Wait.
My phone just vibrated.
Oh god.
It's her.
"Let's talk. After class. Don't run."
…
Welp.
Guess we're doing this.
If I die tomorrow, tell my story.
Tell them Ryuji Takahashi lived. He suffered. He got played.
But he never once peeked into the girls' bathroom.
Not once.
…
Okay maybe once.
But I was seven.
And there was a hamster.
DON'T JUDGE ME.
Anyways,
Okay. Deep breaths. This is it.
No more excuses. No more cowardly detours. Time to be a man. A full-grown, mature, composed man!
...Okay, let me rephrase that. Time to be a somewhat decent human being who can look a girl in the eye without turning into a malfunctioning toaster oven. Yeah. That's more realistic.
I pounded my chest like a gorilla hyping himself up before war.
Let's go!
No more hiding in bathroom stalls during lunch! No more staring at her from behind the vending machine pretending I'm debating between cola and orange soda for ten straight minutes!
This is the real deal!
Sure, I still occasionally wet the bed. ONCE. Okay, maybe a couple times. Alright, fine, semi-regularly. But you try holding it in after dreaming you're Niagara Falls. Not easy!
Sure, I still sleep with the lights on because I swear there's a demon raccoon in my closet that whispers Latin at 3AM.
And yeah, I might scream like a seagull every time I see a clown. But that's called having trauma, thank you very much.
Still, none of that matters now.
Because today… I face destiny.
"So um... Suzuki... You like me that much?" I said, mustering a grin that looked more like a sneeze mid-freeze frame.
And that, my dear friends, was when the universe tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "Big. Mistake."
Time froze.
The birds stopped chirping. Clouds stopped moving. I swear even the wind held its breath.
Suzuki blinked. Once. Twice.
Then she tilted her head like a possessed anime doll.
That's when I felt it.
Heat.
No. Not just heat.
Have you ever opened your oven, forgotten you had your face close, and got punched by a blast of volcanic hellfire?
Multiply that by a thousand.
No—by a billion. With tax.
The sheer aura she radiated was blinding. I saw it. I saw her glow. Golden. Fierce. Like someone summoned a sun goddess and gave her caffeine and a grudge.
Her eyes weren't just angry. They were glowing with something ancient. Something cosmic.
Was this the birth of a supernova? No. This was the rebirth of Akira Suzuki, the rumored demon queen of Class 1-A.
"I was joking," I tried to say.
Tried.
Because what actually came out was more like, "Sorr—umm—-ghhkkk."
And then—
SLAP!
The world spun.
My ears rang.
My cheek burned with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.
She slapped me. She actually slapped me!
Oh god. Did I just destroy her heart? Did I make her cry on the inside?
Am I the villain of my own romantic comedy?
I dropped to the floor, knees first like an anime protagonist about to confess defeat in front of a final boss. No. Scratch that. I didn't drop. I collapsed. Like a folding chair with one leg too short.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please don't destroy me! Please have mercy, your goddessness! I am but a lowly worm! I beg for my life and possibly a retake on that line!"
I was groveling. Hands splayed out. Face nearly kissing the hallway tile. Hoping, praying, bargaining with every deity I could remember from school religion class.
Then came the yell. The thunderous roar of a woman scorned and mildly confused.
"YOU LITTLE—DAMN IT!! YOU'RE NOT—YOU'RE NOT HARUKI SHINOMURA!!"
…Huh?
Wait.
Haruki Shinomura?
The vice president of the student council?
That tall, princely guy with perfect posture, a 4.0 GPA, and the aura of someone who drinks herbal tea and actually enjoys math?
My brain did a quick backflip, landed wrong, and pulled a hamstring.
She… she thought I was Haruki?
So she didn't like me.
She liked him.
Part of me breathed a sigh of relief. I mean, thank God I wasn't the emotional target of that nuclear explosion.
But another part of me—the romantic idiot in my chest cavity—let out a tiny squeaky whimper.
Ouch.
Even the baddest girl in school never had eyes for me.
I stayed lying on the floor. Emotionally flattened like a pancake under a dump truck of regret.
Sad me.
Pathetic, lonely, tragic me.
Still, if there's one thing anime has taught me, it's that when the world punches you in the gut, you clench your teeth, dramatically flick your bangs back, and stand up with style.
So I rose.
Wobbly.
Dignified.
Noble.
Like a knight who knows the dragon just ate his horse but still chooses to duel anyway.
I faced her.
Looked her in the eye.
And then I did what any logical, reasonable man would do in this scenario.
Alright.
Screw this.
RUN!!!