Chapter Text
The spring sunshine beams down from a clear blue sky, cherry blossom trees lining the road in clouds of pink, and before me rises the hallowed educational institution of Kuoh Academy. It’s a nice school. Very fancy, very classy. A uniform that’s a little ostentatious for my tastes, but it fits the vibe, and honestly it looks very cute on the girls so I can put up with wearing this weird ruffled shirt and long-tailed bow tie on account of the fact the girls have a more complicated but also more eye-catching uniform.
And there are a lot of girls! It used to be an all-girls school until a few years ago, and boys are still way in the minority here. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean they’re all ravenously starved for male company and appropriately desperate that even a chubby nerd like me can get lucky, but even with my preference for 2D women I can appreciate the view of my fellow students as we approach the school.
Though the view of the student council president hanging out just past the gates is a bit less welcome. Don’t get me wrong, she’s cute too, but… well, she just rubs me the wrong way. Never did well with authority types, and you can tell she’s one of those that takes the position super seriously, like she’s the one actually running the school. Even what she’s doing now, watching everyone come in as if to say, ‘welcome to my kingdom, I’ve got my eye on you,’ it all comes across as very tryhard.
“Shitori, good morning,” I still greet her as I enter, looking down at the short bespectacled girl through my own glasses.
“Onano,” she gives a curt nod in reply, adjusting her glasses and then dismissing me as her gaze turns to the next group of students approaching the gate behind me.
That’s it, I don’t slow down to chat or anything. We’re in the same year but different classes, so it’s not like we’re friends or anything. And that’s me, Jiro Onano, seventeen years old, third year high school student, and president of the anime club.
Funny to say that considering what I just said about authority types, but it’s not like the anime club was ever very hierarchical. Especially considering the graduation of my senpai and the other guy in my year having moved away to Hokkaido, I’m actually the only member of the club. I did put up a few flyers at the start of the semester, but it doesn’t seem like any of the new first years were interested in joining.
I end up milling around a bit after entering the school itself before heading to my classroom just a couple minutes before homeroom. While I’m not actively disliked by my classmates, I’m not particularly close to any of them either. I don’t like just sitting there by myself while other people are clustering up and chatting around me, or worse looking at me like I’m the weird friendless loser. But once class actually starts I can just keep my head down and focus on the lesson.
Or on the girl sitting in front of me. Rias Gremory is definitely the hottest girl in the school, and I overhear enough to know I’m not alone in that appraisal. While Akeno Himejima (sitting a few rows over) is also in contention, there’s just something magnetic about Gremory. Maybe it’s the hair? Such an eye-catching shade of red that draws the gaze to her, and then you’re further rewarded by seeing an absolutely dynamite figure.
I’m pretty sure Himejima actually has bigger tits, which is definitely admirable for a Japanese girl to defy stereotypes and beat out the buxom European princess, but there’s not much in it and there’s just something so eye-catching about Gremory that I’d still rate her as my best girl.
[5-14 Fate/Grand Order
Sub:Active Skills/Critical/Star Regen Up/Party
Jiro gains access to one of the skills from this page, chosen randomly.
Summer Mirage (B Rank): A skill that gets others involved in her trendy summer story. Since she decided this’ll be a one-time summer memory, her mindset has been sublimated into this skill.
Jiro and allies fighting alongside him are far more likely to strike weak points or otherwise inflict critical damage with their attacks. This skill also makes it more likely for others to get involved in his life and generates a ‘trendy summer’ mood to such encounters.]
Ahh, seeing the way her breasts squish against her desk as she leans over it, the way those subtle vertical lines of her shirt distort to emphasise the size and shape… mmmh, really could just zone out staring at those. It’s not like I’m one of those guys that tries to peep into the girls’ locker room, but there’s nothing wrong with admiring what’s freely put out there, right?
Oh shit, she’s looking back at me. I quickly avert my gaze, but I catch her smiling and so I awkwardly return it before she goes back to looking at her workbook and I suppose I’d best do the same. At least the desk obscured the chub I was starting to get from ogling her.
And hey, she didn’t glare at me or anything. She’s a nice girl, there’s no denying that! Also I kind of like that she’s running the occult research club. It’s a similar kind of ‘outsider’ thing as the anime club, although given her club has basically got the run of the old school building it’s clearly one that’s more beloved by the school than the anime club’s little room facing up against the baseball field. A girl with that kind of social cachet that’s into spooky stuff is just kind of charming, though.
The morning goes pretty normally though, it’s not until lunch when something unusual happens. I’m getting up to go to the cafeteria when Gremory steps alongside me from her own desk and asks, “Hey Jiro-kun, you’re still in the anime club, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” I answer, catching Himejima giving us a weird look from closer to the door. The two of them usually go off for lunch together, and this is certainly the first time Gremory’s decided to chat me up during lunchtime. Wanting to try and draw out the conversation myself though, I keep going even as my steps slow, “Just me though. Najakima and Tomoe graduated, and Ichiro’s family moved away, so place is kinda dead.”
“Oh, you’re all on your own?” her voice drips sympathy as she raises a hand to her mouth. “That’s so sad, I thought there’d be more anime fans in a Japanese school.”
That’s kind of adorable, I’m not gonna lie. “You a fan yourself, Gremory?” I ask, feeling my lips turn upwards. When she nods I decide to take a stab in the dark, “You seen Dusk Sister of Revenant?” it wasn’t terribly popular last season, but the occult theming might make it good for what I know of her.
“That’s the one with the jealous ghost, right?” she smiles as well, leaning closer and lowering her voice, “I thought she looked like Akeno.”
“Ara, who’s jealous?”
I feel a shiver. The good kind. Himejima just has that kind of voice. Gremory might be nicer to look at, even if there’s not much in it, but if I could just close my eyes and listen to one whisper in my ear, I’d have to pick Himejima. She’s sidled up alongside her friend and is looking at me with thinly veiled amusement.
“Well she was only jealous because she was a ghost and couldn’t touch anyone, she was definitely the hottest girl in the show by far,” I speak up, only belatedly realising that was kind of a stealth compliment to Himejima. I feel a little embarrassed, I’d just been talking like I would’ve done with my anime club buddies and it slipped out, I’ve never really flirted with a girl. Most girls at school turn their noses up at me or just ignore me, and these two have generally been in the latter camp as long as I’ve known them.
But Himejima seems pleased, pressing herself against Gremory’s side in a display that would seriously let one properly validate the fact she has the bigger boobs by being able to compare them so closely. “Well touching isn’t a problem for me at least,” she says with a breathy chuckle while I do my best to keep my gaze above the neckline.
“Haha, guess not!” I say, not really sure what else I could say in response that would be at all appropriate. In fact feeling a sinking sense of awkwardness I decide it best to quickly extricate myself from the situation, “Anyway, I better go before they sell out of curry bread at the cafeteria again,” I give a nod, which lets me sneakily dip my gaze down to sear that squish into the memory banks before backing off and fleeing the classroom.
I feel bad almost as soon as I’m out in the hallway. Should I have invited them to lunch? Invited myself to join them? They actually started a conversation with me, a friendly one! The two hottest girls in school at that. But hot or not, they are just teenagers like me. And Gremory likes anime, like me. Maybe there’s something there? I can try talking to her again… sometime. Maybe if I catch her with less people around?
It’s something to ruminate on as I get my lunch and then go find a quiet spot outside to eat it. Delicious curry bread. It really is, they don’t skimp on ingredients at the Kuoh cafeteria. I’ll definitely miss it when I graduate.
After eating and going back to class, Gremory and Himejima both smile at me before the teacher shows up and lessons start again. I also catch glares from the other few guys in the class, and some of the girls. Mean looks are nothing new for me, even if they seem a bit sharper today. Jealousy? Because I had a brief and awkward conversation with two of my classmates?
Well, those two are definitely put on a pedestal, even I’m a little guilty of it. But ultimately it really was just a brief conversation, with nothing else to show for it. And even those mean looks fade as people focus instead on their studies until the afternoon ends and we’re dismissed to leave behind the girls on today’s duty to go off to our various clubs.
Which for me takes me on a winding route around the back of the new school building towards a sunken walkway facing out against the sports fields, several rooms lined up for various smaller cultural clubs. My neighbours being the literature club and the boardgame club on either side.
It feels kind of miserable entering the club room just by myself. There’s a few standees of various anime characters propped up against the walls, the projector setup we’d use to watch shows on, the desks we’d push together to sit around and discuss them, or read manga. A few shelves full of various volumes and DVDs and even ancient VHS tapes. The history of the Kuoh Academy Anime Club all laid out here, and it’s all come down to just me.
It’s funny to think when this was an all girls school there would’ve been girls holding this club together. Were they a bunch of rotten yaoi loving fujoshis, or just regular girls that like anime, like Gremory?
Naoko Watanabe had been the only girl in the club when I joined in my first year, I’d actually had a bit of a crush on her, but then she graduated and it was just a few boys, and now it’s just me.
Yeah, it does feel lonely. I can’t bring myself to put on anything to watch, and honestly if I’m just by myself it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just use the quiet to get my homework done, but I decide to look for something to read. Crouching over by the shelves, I thumb over old volumes of battle shonen and shoujo romances before I notice a few are sticking out a bit from the shelf past their neighbours, and won’t let themselves be pushed back in.
Pulling them free and snagging what’s jammed up against the back of the shelves, a slim little book with a cover proudly proclaiming, ‘My Quiet Little Sister Turned Into A Gyaru Cock Destroyer’ and a picture of a tanned and blonde girl giving a V sign with her tits spilling out of a leopard-print bikini.
I can’t help but laugh. It’s like finding hidden treasure!
It’s definitely not one I’ve read before, and with no one around to judge me for my reading material, I bring it over to one of the desks and sit down to read. Honestly, the girl’s way cute even in her quiet and ‘good’ phase as shown on the first page, the art’s great. And it only gets better as voyeuristic incest-baiting ensues...
[3-9 Blue Archive
Intact Crystal Haniwa
An intact crystal haniwa. It gleams with a suggestive pink shine.]
I’m just starting to get into when with a quiet thump an object suddenly appears on the desk in front of me. It’s clearly crystalline, like rose quartz or something, about twenty centimetres tall with a rounded shape and odd little bumps near the top. Or head, since there’s a face on it, as well as two arms sticking out on either side, one pointing up and one down.
“What the hell?” distracted from the doujinshi I reach out to heft the object up. Between the colour and the shape it makes me think of a sex toy, although the arms would get in the way…
“Excuse me, I’m coming in,” a voice announces as the door opens, causing me to jerk in surprise as Tsubaki Shinra, the student council vice president, lets herself into the anime club room. We briefly lock eyes before her own gaze dips to what’s in my hand and her eyes widen and her cheeks turn red, making clear I’m not the only one who thought this thing had a lewd connotation. “What are you doing with that?!” she shrieks after a moment of embarrassed recognition.
“I don’t know, it just appeared!” I blurt out back, setting it down on the table, its base seeming weighted for stability, and then I quickly flip ‘My Quiet Little Sister Turned Into A Gyaru Cock Destroyer’ closed face down, the back cover mercifully not having anything incriminating on it.
“That sort of thing shouldn’t be in a… I mean…” her tirade cuts off as like me she notices the arms and face, which change it from ‘totally a dildo’ to ‘weird looking statuette’. “Nevermind!” she huffs out, clearly thinking better of it and deciding to just move past the whole thing. “Onano-san,” she looks around the room briefly as if verifying no one else is present before focusing on me, “You’re now the only member of the anime club, correct?”
Oh.
I see where this is going. Why else would a member of the student council show up here? “Yeah… since Ichiro transferred out it’s just me,” I confirm, no way of hiding that.
“The school can’t support a club with only one member. This room could be better used as… storage, for one of the other clubs, and we can’t give a club budget when it’s just going to be one student’s pocket money. I’m afraid we’re going to have to disband the anime club,” she says crisply, and I just feel the strength leaving my body.
Two years of memories watching shows, reading manga, chatting with fellow nerds all in this room. All to be shut down under my watch. So what, the board game club can use the room as an oversized closet?
“I mean, we might still get more members?” I say weakly, because I have to try.
She looks at me with something I’m not sure is pity or disgust. “We’re a month into the school year, everyone’s already signed up with the clubs they want,” she tells me.
“There might be a transfer student?” even I can feel the desperation in that one. And it’s enough to make her attitude land firmly on disgust from what I can tell.
“This isn’t one of your animes, you know that’s not going to happen,” she says coldly.
My shoulders slump at the brutal reality of it. “Yeah, I know,” I agree. If she’d ambushed me with this at the start of the semester I’d have fought against it more, but she’s right. It’s been a month. A month of coming to this quiet room and sitting by myself for an hour or two before going home. That alone has worn me down to the sad truth of the situation. The anime club is dead.
She seems to relax some herself. She probably was expecting a fight. Instead though she and I catalogue the club’s belongings so it can all be stored for either a future renewal of the club or to be donated somewhere. Of course I can’t just take it all home with me, there’s no rewards for presiding over the death of a club.
I do manage to sneak that hentai doujin into my bag while her back is turned at least. Which doesn’t help at all when we later find another hidden treasure. ‘Revenge Hypnosis On My Bully’s Mom’.
“This- this is- I’ll be confiscating this! I mean, destroying it! What kind of filth is this?!” a red-faced and sputtering Shinra blusters as she leafs through it, and I lean a bit closer to read over her shoulder.
“Well I mean, it’s pretty old. Definitely before my time… nice art though, they really do draw them… plush,” I opine, doing my best to sound like a polite art critic and not a sleazy porn aficionado.
She whirls around, which looks quite dramatic with her ultra-long hair, and glares at me. “We should have shut down this club years ago,” she declares, earning a glare back even as she closes the comic and puts it aside so she can continue inventorying the more acceptable manga volumes taking up most of the shelves.
The two of us finish up, no doubt thinking bad thoughts about each other, before she comes back to the weird pink statue. “Is this meant to be an anime character or something?”
“No, it just… appeared today,” I answer, deciding not to get into how it literally appeared out of thin air. Like I heard it land on the desk, like someone set it down rather than falling from the ceiling. But she’d just think I was crazy if I tried to belabour that, so just assume someone mysteriously left it in here.
“Well… I suppose you can put it in the lost and found?” she ventures.
“I was thinking maybe check with the occult research club. I mean, it looks kind of eerie, doesn’t it?” I counter.
Surprisingly she agrees with, “It does seem to have a strange energy…” which makes me give her a second look.
“Really? You feeling it’s aura or something, Shinra?”
She glares at me again. I’m used to those kinds of looks from pretty girls though. “In any case, we’re done here. Have everything boxed up and ready to move out by the end of the week.”
That hurts more than the glare. Going over everything had actually been kind of fun. A little trip through the history of the anime club. But that history’s ending now. I just slump as she leaves, taking a look around before shoving the weird statue into my bag and heading home. I can try showing it to Gremory or Himejima tomorrow, be a nice excuse to talk to them if nothing else.
Home, such as it is, is a quiet apartment within walking distance of Kuoh Academy. My dad lives and works in Tokyo, and mom’s been out of the picture for years. I’ve got an aunt and uncle in Kuoh that live close enough to check up on me now and then, but as a mature and responsible teenager I’m mostly left to fend for myself.
If the dream of going to a school with such a lopsided gender ratio had borne out, having my own apartment would’ve made for some incredible high school years, but I’ve never even brought a girl home once.
[4-15 Dead or Alive
Mizong yi
A style of Chinese kung fu characterised by deceptive movements and intricate footwork. Due to the roll’s strength, Jiro becomes an expert practitioner, equivalent to a grand master. This does not come with any physical conditioning, but he knows how to work within his own limits.]
It was later in the evening when I was settling in to entertain myself with fantasies involving two of my classmates when I was suddenly derailed from thoughts of Himejima and Gremory’s symmetrical docking with a startling realisation.
I know kung fu.
Just all at once, suddenly knowledge bloomed into my head. My understanding of fighting mostly borne of stuff from anime and video games along with a little bit of karate I’d done in elementary school got completely superseded by new knowledge and instincts. Ways to move my body, how to draw strength from my core, methods to distract and disorient an opponent before going in for a powerful kick.
It was insane. I felt like I must have gone insane, how could someone just suddenly know something like that? But the knowledge all felt sure and certain inside my head.
I stand up from the futon I was sitting on, the motion smooth and sure, legs bending under me and then straightening without needing to lever myself up or grab anything for support. Dressed in just a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt I look over the apartment’s tatami floor, it was only really one room with a kitchenette against the front wall, but it was big enough to move around in.
I move the table up against the wall to clear the space in the centre, and even walking towards it felt different. My footsteps almost gliding, rather than my usual lumbering gait. I take a deep breath then, and kick.
My foot arches up high and I hold my balance on the other. There’s a slight twinge in my hamstring, the tip of my toe perhaps at the height of my nose. I wasn’t flexible enough to go further, but… I feel like I could, if I just pushed the kick that bit extra anyway, at the expense of probably straining something.
I lower my leg. The motion controlled, not simply feeling it drop as my endurance and balance gave out. More kicks follow. Punches too. I move around the room, like I’m doing a kata in a martial arts movie, shifting my stance constantly to put the best amount of force behind every blow. Everything flowing like water, the showy motions of wuxia kung fu rather than the choppy and regimented blows I remembered from those introductory karate classes.
After five minutes though, I’m out of breath, my arms and legs already feeling sore. I might know kung fu, but my body couldn’t keep up with the knowledge.
“How, though?” I ask aloud, looking at my own hands. Doughy and fat-fingered, curling into fists and then stretching out again as I stare down at them. Thinking of the other strange thing that had occurred earlier, I go and retrieve that weird statue from my bag, sitting down on the floor and staring at it as if it would offer answers, as if I might feel the ‘strange energy’ Shinra had mentioned.
The strange goofy looking face on it just stares back at me emptily, with no answers.
Still, it had just appeared out of nowhere. And… kung fu knowledge had similarly just came into my head. Out of nowhere.
What was the common factor? There had to be a connection.
And there was. I was starting to get ‘excited’ when this thing appeared. Just like I’d been doing moments ago. Could that really be it? I’d been distracted enough with my newfound knowledge that my boner was gone, but…
Well, ‘My Quiet Little Sister Turned Into A Gyaru Cock Destroyer’, this is what I saved you from Shinra for. That other one surely got introduced to the nearest shredder back at school after all.
And the art is certainly just as arresting as it had been when I read it earlier, hormones are roused, blood flows, and… well, that’s it. My dick’s hard, but nothing supernatural has occurred.
Be a waste to not use a perfectly good stiffy though, so… well, it’s the privilege of an only child to get off on this kind of incestuous porn without any conflicting feelings about real world relations. A good time was had, a tissue was soiled, and everything cleaned up neatly afterwards. Actually my arm feels even more sore now though, that extra bit of effort after the martial arts practice perhaps having pushed myself a little too hard.
I feel like I should try and get in shape. It’s an urge that arises now and then, usually when there’s a fun sports anime airing, though I always lapse back into sedentary habits. But it would be a waste when I actually can fight. And… well, lots of other anime has taught me that when someone starts awakening mysterious powers, danger and battle quickly enter their life. Is that what’s going to happen to me?
Questions for tomorrow. For now I settle myself into my futon to sleep…
[2-15 Bible Black
Kaori Saeki
A black magic enthusiast with a talent for fortune telling, this version of Saeki has not yet experienced the events of Bible Black, but owing to the high power roll her magical abilities are well developed. Despite not having been corrupted by Kitami, her morals are still dubious.]
And I wake up, feeling a weight pressing down on me, hearing a feminine noise of confusion as my eyes blearily open and find themselves met with a pair of violet eyes staring back down at me, a curtain of blonde falling down past my cheeks, and my morning wood digging up against softly giving thighmeat.
It seems my call to adventure has arrived.