Story: Love Normal

Any sensible person would not want to be where I was right now. Sitting in Su's room, while the occupant was pacing around while wearing a labcoat, stethoscope... no trousers, I noted. As for myself? I was wearing one of Keitaro's shirts, for some reason, but was otherwise naked.

What...? It made sense to me! Unless you're trying to tell me that it was weird? No, not at all, there was nothing abnormal about it. Right? Right...?

"Alright Naru! Welcome to my laboratory, where we will be running some very simple tests today!" Su said, big smile on her face and fire in her eyes. Honestly, I'd kind of built it up in my head a little. What was this little wannabe mad scientist going to put me through? What twisted experiments. And then Su proceeded to do nothing but smile there, being her usual cute and precocious self. I sat there for about a minute and a half waiting for her to do something. Anything.

"Uh... what sort of tests are you wanting to run?" I asked.

"I dunno Naru, what sort of tests would you like me to run?" Su replied. "You see, I cannot think of anything that could possibly be strange about you, because you're completely and totally one hundred percent normal as it is! This makes it hard for me to think of a good test to run, as tests are looking for things that are abnormal."

R-Right, that would make things tricky wouldn't it? If - somehow - my very presence was making everything I did normal then it would be very hard for someone to do a scientific study determining what the hell was going on. So how best to proceed here...?

Aha! Of course! If Su couldn't think up tests, then I could do it for her!

"Tell me something you think would be weird," I said. "Then write it down."

"Okay doke!" Su chirped, then whirled away, zoomed off to get a pen and paper, then said - "It start raining bananas!"

"So that would be weird, right?" I said. "If it rained bananas that would be unusual?" Su nodded to both of my questions. "Okay! And you've written that down?" Another nod. Perfect! "It is normal for it to rain bananas."

"It sure is!" Su said with her usual bright happy face. "I mean, how else is anyone supposed to get their daily dose of potassium?"

"What did you just write down?" I asked. Su turned to read it, and frowned. "A moment ago you said that it was weird for it to rain bananas. Right? So? Now you think it's normal. That is pretty strange, isn't it?"

"Huh!" Su said. "I mean, that is strange - but obviously nothing to do with you, because you're totally and completely normal. You're normal. You're <i>normal!</i> Just like it's normal for it to spontaneously rain a specific kind of fruit! Hahahahahaha!"

That was not a normal Su laugh. It was as if the gears in her brain were straining and creaking, trying desperately to work - and struggling. Oh, how they were struggling. Two irreconcilable ideas were clashing in her head. Would she be about to see through it? Would she manage to pierce the veil of weirdness?

"Then again, it's completely normal for you to rewrite reality, so maybe you made it normal for it to rain bananas!" Su said. Noooo, that was so close! She'd normalised the abnormal! Back to square one! Urgh, how annoying!

"Alright, alright!" I put my hands up in a sort of surrender. "Fine, fine. Let's do something more hypothetical here. Let's say you had someone else that is not Naru Narusegawa, and you had to figure out some tests to determine why and how they were somehow altering reality around them and making things normal when they shouldn't be, what tests would you come up with?"

"Oh, that's simple!" Su said. "Hahaha! To start with, I would want to know the mechanics of how they changed reality. What is the trigger?"

"Doing things, or saying that something is normal," I immediately replied. "So, basically if the person does something, then it's normal. If they say that something is normal, it becomes so."

"I see, I see!" Su nodded. She scribbled some notes down. "While it's not strange that you would come up with a scenario like this, it is still quite an interesting one to develop! My next step would be figuring out how long they could do this, what the limits are, then figure out what's changed in their lives that has made it possible for them to -"

"Wait, wait," I interrupted. "How long I - I mean, this person could warp reality...? Why would you want to know that?"

"That is simplicity itself!" Su said. "That will help to narrow down the reason this has happened in the first place. After all, it must be a fairly recent development, or reality itself would become very strange."

"How so?" I asked, little realising the box that I was opening.

"Well, think about it like this," Su said. "If the world were to randomly change whenever someone says something is normal, it would all descend into total madness! It would be wild, it would be unpredictable, it would be utterly and totally manic! Oh, it would be positively dreadful!"

All of a sudden, I didn't want to say or do anything anymore. Madness. Right. That's what would result, huh? It's funny. That realisation sort of cleared the mind a bit. It almost sent me into a meditative state, where I was calmer, more contemplative, and more -

"Keitaro Urashima!" I yelled. "That boy! It's since he showed up that things have been weird! Ooooh! I should've known something was up with him! I bet he's been playing us from the start for his own perverse ends! Why, I oughta pound him right this second!"

"After you give him a lapdance, you mean," Su added. Well, yeah. Obviously. I'm not a barbarian or anything, I absolutely do have to give him a lapdance first. But - Oh! I couldn't help but wonder what sort of sinister machinations he had in mind for me, or for the world at large! I was determined, in that moment, to put him in his rightful place once and for all!

<hr>

You know, it's really, really difficult to study when two hot girls are grinding their butts on your lap at once. Competing with each other, trying to hip bump each other off. Especially when one of them was completely naked.

"Alright, Keitaro. Have you seen anything weird going on lately?" Mitsune asked while grinding her boobs right into my chest. She's not got a small bust either! My balls felt like they were about to burst from all this stimulation! "Out with it, something's telling me you know something."

"Well yes, as a matter of fact I have!" I replied. "A whole lot of people have been behaving very strangely around me lately! All sorts of weird and bizarre behaviour, but everyone acts like it's completely normal!"

"Is that so?" Mitsune asked pointedly. "Like what?"

"Like girls groping a guy's junk as way of greeting," I said. "It's not normal! That's not normal at all! And since when did girls have to help guys go to the bathroom?! It's completely..."

I trailed off, realising that both Motoko and Mitsune were giving me a look I hadn't seen since this whole thing started. They were looking at me like I had said something weird. Huh? That was kinda weird too, wasn't it?

"Then this proves it," Motoko said, shifting over to let herself dance in Mitsune's lap. Oooooh, oh, two girls at once, that's actually kinda heavy! But there was something extra hot about a girl giving you a lapdance while she'd being given one as well! "You must have been under some manner of curse, that has mysteriously resolved itself."

"It seems a little too soon to say that's true for sure," Mitsune said. "Maybe it moved on to someone else?"

"That is also very possible," Motoko nodded, then kissed Mitsune right on the mouth. Hot! Very, very hot! "We should consider the possibility that this curse has moved to another resident."

"Uh... Then that would mean... Someone we can't think of anything weird about, right?" I offered. Oh. Oh! That was it, actually! Yes, that should do nicely! "Yeah, that seems like the best idea, right? If we can think of at least one weird thing about someone, then it can't be them!"

The logic seemed flawless. Um, let's see...

"It's kinda weird that you're going around naked all the time," I said to Motoko. Who blushed, and turned her nose up, but also made no effort at all to hide her body from my eyes. "And... I don't feel like I know Mitsune well enough to know anything weird about her?"

"She has an unhealthy habit of getting drunk in the afternoon," Motoko said, cold as ice. "That is not normal behaviour."

"Says you!" Mitsune stuck out her tongue. "Ah, but if you think it's weird then I guess that means I'm not cursed? What about the others? Like Shinobu?"

Shinobu...? Well, she was sitting in the corner of the room taking dutiful notes on Mitsune and Motoko's lapdancing technique. Which was kinda - Oof, was there any need for her to twist her hips like that?

"It's not Shinobu," I said but decided against explaining why. As for Su -

"It's not Su," all four of us said in unison. No further elaboration was required. It simply wasn't Su. And that fact made us all feel extremely grateful.

"Um... Auntie Haruka does take badly to me calling me auntie, that seems kinda strange? A little bit?" I offered. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. "As for Naru..."

I drew a blank. I couldn't think of a single thing unusual about Naru at all. She was just... a pretty girl who happened to be attending the same cram classes as me. She was the first person to behave strangely around me, I'll grant, but that's to be expected because everyone was behaving weirdly around me. So I couldn't even call that abnormal. Naru was normal. Naru was perfectly, absolutely and totally normal.

...

"Can you girls think of anything weird about Naru?" I asked the two girls giving me a lapdance. They shook their heads. Then the headache started. It felt like my brain was being pulled in two directions at once. There was nothing weird about Naru, which meant she was probably cursed. Which was weird, but Naru wasn't weird, she was normal. Which went around and around in circles until - "Then I guess it can't be her, after all, if there's nothing weird about her that's kinda weird, so Naru cannot be cursed."

We all let out a sigh of relief, as if a tremendous pressure had just been taken off.