Story: It's Fate

There was a note on his desk. Why was there a note on his desk? Eito sighed as the last minute of school ticked over. He hadn’t dared try to read it in class. He was in hot water as it was, no need to turn it into steam. All he could do was hide it in his pocket for later and hope it wasn’t something important. Instead of thinking about that, his mind went to his remaining instructions, not his next one but the one immediately afterwards: “After leaving school, throw the contents of your pocket at the first group of three girls you see.” Well. He hadn’t actually <i>had</i> anything in his pocket until just now. So, apparently it was supposed to be the note. Which he should probably read before throwing it because it was addressed to him and that would be the polite thing to do, and -

Oh, goodness. He felt dizzy. Almost like he was going to -

“Gah!” Chise yelped. “Watch it buster! You’re in my bad books as it is without falling into my - Just, just cut it out already!”

“S-sorry!” Eito mumbled. The other students were filing out. It was a funny thing. They were chatting away as if nothing was strange, some casting a glance at him. Or at Chise’s breasts. Though he was hardly the sort to indulge in such things, there was a part of him saying, <i>“Damn!”</i> that made him feel a little bit guilty whenever it piped up, which was usually whenever Chise’s chest came into eyeline.

“Stop saying sorry all the time,” Chise replied, sounding just about as annoyed as whenever she said that. “Honestly. I don’t know what you were thinking taking responsibility for that.”

“I thought it was really brave!” Koemi piped up. “Flying in like that out of nowhere was a shining example of brave aviary!”

“You call that a joke?” Yoko interrupted. She flicked a strand of hair out of her eyes, then stuck a confident hand on her hips. “Sorry, sweetheart. Leave the joking to people with a brain in their head. I hereby challenge you to a joke - Hey! Bring her back!”

“Chise!” Koemi whined. “Let go of my ear! Stooop it!”

Eito watched the three girls leave the classroom in a renewed state of befuddlement. He actually kind of wanted to see how that turned out, but then again he wasn’t entirely sure of what had just happened in the first place. As it was, only he and the teacher were in the room now. Just like it would be for the rest of the week. Soon enough, the teacher departed as well. This was no reprieve. If he tried to leave and the teacher found the room in any kind of mess… Well. There were worse punishments than cleaning duty. For example, he could be transferred to the dreaded “Room 13.” The very thought sent a chill down his spine. Only the worst of the worst wound up there…

So all he could do for the time being was get down to business and clean up this classroom before leaving. Two more instructions today. At the very least he could read this note from whoever it was. Teacher wasn’t around. It would take maybe five seconds. So he pulled it out and -

<i>“Don’t let her plans make your friendships drift apart! I love you.”</i>

Pretty short note, and pretty insane as well. Whoever wrote it was obviously in a hurry. Too much of a hurry to make any sense of anything. Who exactly was this supposed to be referring to? Whose plans? Was this supposed to be some kind of love note? All he could do was shake his head in dismay and get back to work. Maybe he’d be able to work something out if he kept busy? He could only hope.

But in the meantime… As according to his next instruction, he had a phone call to make.
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Being dragged around by the ear is not, by the way, a pleasant experience. Especially if the person who is doing so knows how to go about it. Firm grip of the earlobe was obviously an issue, but also location and angle had to be considered. Make the very idea of resisting the grip or trying to squirm out of it seem even less comfortable than the grip itself. In the end everything - <i>everything</i> - boiled down to science! Yes, the exclamation point was necessary. Where science! is involved, it is always necessary.

“Let me go!” Koemi repeatedly whined. The first time hadn’t worked. The hundredth probably would. “Let me goooo!”

Chise looked behind her. No sign of Yoko. Doubtless off scheming on her own terms. At the very least she could now breathe a sigh of relief.

“Do you know how close that was?” Chise demanded. “You do know what happens to people that try to compete with Yoko, don’t you? Need a reminder about the soup strainer story when someone bet they could make tastier soup than her?”

Koemi sniffed and rubbed her ear, more focused on the pain than the hypothetical pain she would have endured if Yoko had delivered that challenge. Honestly! If Koemi had come close to winning that contest then Yoko might have tickled her into a coma while yelling “Who is funnier now?! Huh? Who is funnier now?!”

Besides which. They needed to get away from a certain boy who was behaving mysteriously for no seeming rhyme nor reason. Knowing him, he’d meet up with them whenever he got around to cleaning that classroom. They were, of course, forbidden from offering assistance for such a punishment, so they really didn’t have much of a choice but to take advantage of this situation. They needed a battle plan, and to that end Koemi was shepherded inside Chise’s home.

“Did you notice anything weird about him today?” Chise asked before Koemi could blubber about her twisted ear. “If we’re going to work out what’s up with that boy, we absolutely have to compare notes.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Koemi quietly said. “Actually. It’s more like everyone else is behaving odd around him.” She giggled a little. “You know, it’s funny? Saito even talked Yoko into believing the two of us were competing with her for Eito’s affections.”

That was pretty funny. Chise and Koemi shared a laugh about that. They laughed, they laughed, then Chise bonked Koemi on the top of the head, grabbed her in a headlock and roughly rubbed her knuckle against her friend’s crown.

“And. Why. Didn’t. You. Say. Something. Sooner?!” Chise asked, purely in the interest of academic advancement. “You know how that girl gets in a contest! She gets so wrapped up in it that she defies all reason and employs the very contest against them! When she plays tennis, she strikes the ball with the strength of a titan right at her enemy’s most sensitive areas! When she enters a spelling bee, she tattoos letters on their faces! You’re talking about a seduction contest?! That psycho will probably try to seduce us with BDSM, then go on to try and claim Eito!”

It sounded like a bush outside sneezed, but since Chise knew that was scientifically impossible she simply ignored it and continued giving Koemi the most thorough noogie science! had ever recorded.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Koemi continued to whine. “Jeeze, Chise! That’s a really harsh assets-ment of the situation! No! No more noogie! I don’t want to buy any noogie!”

“Actually, I was thinking more of an Indian burn,” Chise sneered. She tapped her foot and tried to calm down. Okay. Let’s think this through rationally. She had, through no fault of her own, found herself in competition with the competitive psycho in the swim team. Honestly, it was just a good thing that she hadn’t thought to try drowning anyone. This was an unwanted complication to say the very least. Eito’s bizarre behaviour would be impossible to investigate, and even if that wasn’t a factor getting extricated from this situation was an absolute must!

Right about then, her phone rang. As it was designed to do, naturally. Chise rolled her eyes and strode forward to pick it up, but in the process of crossing her own living room she forgot to take into account a certain factor like, say, her enhanced breasts. Some might have called it ironic what happened next, but they would be incorrect. Irony is something that occurs against expectations: For example, a person’s attempt to prevent an event actually causing the event to occur when it would not have otherwise. In this instance it was not ironic that Chise’s enhanced bust caused her to slightly lose balance and while straightening herself out from the slight stumble accidentally activated the device which caused her enhanced bust in the first place, causing it to fire out through the window and strike the person (Yoko) eavesdropping from outside, causing their chest to undergo a similar alteration to Chise.

To repeat: The above was not in the traditional sense ironic. Merely… Poetic.
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“You’re <b>sure</b> he’s still in there?”

Sae stared at Michiko really, really hard and tried to will the girl to burst into flames. When that didn’t work, she pulled out the device showing their target finally putting away the last of the cleaning materials and preparing to leave. Just to be on the safe side:

“Target location for the last hour has been his classroom,” Sae began. “During this time he engaged in standard classroom cleaning practices. The only aberrations were to look at a note, stuff it back into his pocket, then retrieve his phone from a bag and make a call.”

“I see…” Seiko said. Uh oh. She was pressing her finger against her forehead. Time for another - “I see… He is marching down the corridor, lost in thought. A giant octopus inexplicably appears in midair, he wrestles it into submission and it becomes his loyal ally. When he arrives and realises we’re from another school swim club, he bolts before we can get anything out of him.”

Another “reliable” prediction from the would-be seer. “Why is she here?” Sae asked. “On a mission like this, it is best to minimise to only necessary personnel. I know why I am here. I know why you are here. But Seiko?”

“Seiko is carrying our weapons, dummy!” Michiko very nearly yelled. “Her weapons of choice will have Mister Eito talking in no time! So long as she follows my instructions, he’ll be putty in her hands!”

“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” Sae whispered.

“Not particularly,” Seiko replied. “But… I think it has something to do with using body language to channel arcane arts that turn men into clay.”

“In other words, you don’t know what she’s talking about either,” Sae said, sadly shaking her head. “I have a bad feeling our operations leader has not given us all of our mission objectives.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“Of course I trust her! But unless we know all the parameters of the mission, how can we efficiently carry it out?!”

“Uh, excuse me?” said a timid male voice. Damn! They’d been bantering for so long that they’d not noticed him leaving the school grounds! The boy took one look at them, and nodded his head as if counting them off. At which point, for reasons that left all three speechless, the boy took out the paper he had stuffed into his pocket, hurled it directly at them, then ran off without uttering a word.

“Well,” Michiko grumbled. “That went smoothly! Playing hard to get, is he? I’ll show him! Nobody can escape my matchmaking! Nobody!”

Sae decided to ignore the tirade, and instead peered over Seiko’s shoulder at the crumpled paper and the message it contained. No doubt some coded message with a hidden meaning that could forever alter the outcome of the upcoming swim meet!

1. Eito meets up with Chise and Koemi, who decide to grill him on what the hell is going on.
2. Yoko is discovered cursing up a storm outside the house.
3. Eito encounters someone else on the way home.
4. The girls from Public School No. 3 give chase and corner Eito.
5. Something else