CH 167

Let me try to paint the worst possible scenario that I can envision.

For example, suppose my ideology is twisted and… I fall in love with Kururi Kurumizawa.

What would Shiho do then?

I can’t say it myself, but that girl is very fond of me. Moreover, the weight of her love is unusual.

Thankfully, she is very protective of me.

At the very least, I am aware that she thinks of me as special, to the point that she is obsessed with me and doesn’t want to lose me.

That’s why I didn’t feel like Shiho could ever cut me off.

I think that if Kotaro Nakayama fell in love with another girl ‘too’, she would accept even me as such…

That, in essence, is an acceptance of a harem.

If she, the main heroine, approves of it, then there is no turning back in my romantic comedy. I am sure that I will become a harem protagonist and develop a distorted story as it is.

And when I finish capturing Kurumizawa-san, another heroine will appear next… that heroine and add more and more members to my harem.

Just like Ryoma Ryuzaki, who was once a harem protagonist.

But that’s a scenario built on an absolutely impossible possibility.

Because I have no intention of falling in love with anyone other than Shiho.

I am not a person with the capacity to love other girls.

Only Shiho is special.

I don’t want anyone else.

I don’t want to fall in love with anyone else.

But I was worried that my beliefs might be twisted.

Now, my story is distorted in its trajectory.

Happy and calm as a sea, Shiho’s story… but in the opposite view, it is a boring, flat waste of time with no ups and downs.

What is required of a story is emotion.

The conflict, or the joy, the rage, the disappointment, the despair, the frustration, the awakening…, the catharsis comes as an extension of those great emotions.

That is why the person chosen to be the protagonist will undergo many hardships. It is only when they overcome these hardships, awaken, sometimes get hurt, and at the end of it all, attain happiness, that the story becomes emotional. Only then does a bad story become a masterpiece.

In order to do so, the god of romantic comedies holds up the unreasonable weapon of opportunism and hunts down the characters. Forcing reasons into impossible stories, making up past settings as if they were foreshadowing, and acting as if impossible plot points were the norm, they weave their tales.

Such was the case this time, too.

They made the element of Kotaro Nakayama’s “parents” into a foreshadowing, emphasized the past conflict of a mother, deprived me of my free will, and tried to accommodate a new heroine.

I can honestly think of any number of ways to resist such unreasonableness.

The easiest way is to ignore my mother’s words. All I have to do is deny Kurumizawa-san’s tutoring and the taking away of my phone.

My aunt would easily back off if I told her I didn’t want to do it. She is just being righteous to my mother and has no interest in my existence. She doesn’t care whether I’m unhappy or happy.

So, I don’t have to give it to her.

Ignore my aunt who is waiting for me with her hand out.

“…”

But I wasn’t given free will enough to do that.

The more I tried to resist,… the more I tried to reject it, the more my body became even more immobile. My throat was choking, my breath was choking, and my head and heart were filled with scenes from the past and the emptiness I felt at that moment.

<I don’t want my mother to be disappointed in me any more than she already is.>

I think this because I still cherish her as a parent.

I’m stuck in a stupid obsession, and as a result, I’m strangling myself and … what in the world do I want to do?

“… Give it to me.”

I don’t know.

A fog hangs over my intentions.

Suddenly, I felt dizzy. I stumbled forward and my aunt caught me.

“Oops… I sure got it.”

Then I realized that my phone was in my aunt’s hand.

Had I unconsciously reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone? Because I stumbled forward at the same time as I was dizzy, I held it out to my aunt …, and she took it.

–Take it back.

Someone interrupted me as I was trying to shout this.

There was no way to resist the presence of someone or something pulling strings behind the scenes, clouding my thoughts, blunting my will, and preventing me from saying anything.

It didn’t matter what position I was in.

Whether I’m a mob or the main character, … I’m always a puppet.

Because I am nothing more than a character.

Quietly, the story begins to move forward.

The romantic comedy from this point on is the worst-case scenario for me.

It was a romantic comedy route called “harem” which I detested more than anything else.