Story: Love Normal

 

I clipped the earring onto my ear while watching Naru be upset, as normal, thinking nothing of it because of how typical it was. She was in a fairly usual paranoid mood today, which was definitely not out of the norm. She was watching Keitaro closely, as usual, and then raised an accusatory finger, just like she always did.

"No doubt about it! You're to blame for this!" she yelled at him. Oh, Naru! How funny and adorable that was. Every time she did it, like she did so often, so regularly that it was absolutely mundane by now. "You're corrupting us all somehow, doing something sketchy! Making Shinobu take part in bridal training classes? What even are those!"

"Nothing like what you think," I said, a faint blush tinging my cheeks. It wasn't as if she'd said anything strange, but it was a little bit suggestive when put like that. "Cooking, cleaning, sewing, managing a harem, that sort of thing!"

"Ah then that's not so - What was that last one again?" Naru stopped mid-sentence to course correct. Huh?

"Oh, sewing?" I said. "At first I used to prick my finger all the time, but -"

"No, no, harem management?" Naru insisted. "Don't you see how strange that is? Harem management! As if harems are common enough there'd be a class for it!"

"Eh? But harems are normal," I said - and all of a sudden the world trembled as a new norm settled into place. Harems were normal. For everyone around the world. Though really, the one that was most affected by this was Naru.

"Oh. You're right," Naru said. "Ah... Maybe I'm being silly...?"

That seemed to be the end of it. Naru had calmed down, which was pretty much expected of her, that was a common reaction once she'd gotten whatever was eating her out of her system. Now they could get down to the important business of -

"Shinobu, where did you get that earring?" Motoko asked all of a sudden, quite out of nowhere. Huh? My hand went up to my ear.

"Ah, I just found it on the floor," I said. Motoko was already making a beeline right for me. She grabbed my head, tilted it and stared long and hard at the earring. "Ah! Ah! Ah!" I yelped, waving my arms around in fright. What was she doing?! 

"You and Naru have the exact same earring," Motoko said. "Why did you put it on?"

The answer made me freeze completely. It had simply felt like the right thing to do. Why wouldn't I put it on? For some reason I just... did it, without thinking at all. I didn't know how to answer her. I didn't know how to address it. The mere attempt to think of what to say made my head spin around! Oh, gosh, I felt so dizzy all of a sudden!

"Motoko, don't bully her!" Naru insisted, grabbing at her arm, being protective just like always.

"No, hold on," Keitaro said. "I think she's onto something. I found those earrings just before getting here, and... Now that I think about it, everything's been a bit strange ever since! Girls, can you take those earrings off, please?"

Motoko held her hand out, and I dropped my earring into her outstretched palm. Naru struggled a bit more with hers, but Motoko seemed content for the time being. Instead, she turned her attention to Mitsune, who was watching from the side of the room with great interest, right before saying - 

"It's normal for Mitsune to do ten jumping jacks starting from the moment I finish this sentence."

Boom! Mitsune jumped into the middle of the floor and started doing jumping jacks right there in front of everyone. A sight which proved rather distracting for Keitaro, because Mitsune is quite an attractive woman with rather large breasts, and she wasn't wearing a sports bra right now.

You don't want me to paint even more of a picture than that, do you? Gee, come on, use your imaginations!

"Gotta get my sweat on!" Mitsune said. Her arms extend upward as they clap together, then sweep back down to her sides as her legs spring out and back in rhythm. Her casual tank top and shorts move with her, and her light brown hair bounces with each jump, slightly wild from the activity. Her face shows a playful determination, eyes narrowed in focus but still glinting with her usual mischievous charm, as if she's fully aware of how unexpected and out-of-character this burst of exercise might seem. But she isn't, of course. This is totally normal for her. Much like it is for everyone else.

Her legs move quickly, a little more gracefully than one might expect, though not without some humour—her movements might be a bit exaggerated, as if she’s half-joking even as she commits to the exercise. Each jump lands lightly on the tatami floor, with the occasional creak of the old dorm house. Mitsune’s breathing might be picking up, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, but it’s clear she’s enjoying herself, her usual carefree attitude shining through this lively, spontaneous display.

"It's normal for her to stop now," Motoko said, and Mitsune flopped right into the nearest seat, breathing heavily from the unexpected exertion. "That proves it. These earrings are to blame!"

"Eh? How do you figure?" I asked. I hadn't seen anything strange, you see.

Motoko pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's normal for you to realise the earrings are to blame for reality warping."

Oh! Oh! Of course, of course! It really was the earrings wasn't it? It seemed so obvious in retrospect.How strange that we hadn't noticed it until now!

"Wait... Wait a minute..." Naru said. "Here, hold this for a second..." She gave Keitaro the earring she'd been wearing - and then started to cluck like a chicken, tucking her arms into her armpits and waving around her elbows.

"... Oh no, Naru's finally lost it!" Mitsune quipped. The poor thing! The stress of the reality warping had finally broken her!

Oh, but then she grabbed the earring again - and did exactly the same thing. "Buck, buck bawk! Is anything about this strange?" We answered her with empty stares. "So that's how it works, then! These earrings make anything the wearer does normal, and those earrings can make anything you say is normal, normal!"

We all gasped in shock at this surprising revelation. Incredible! Thanks to Motoko's careful observation, we were able to figure out something like that! Naru grabbed the earrings right out of Motoko's hands and held them aloft, staring a hole right through them.

"In which case," Naru said. "It's totally normal -"

"Ah!" Mitsune interrupted, snatching the earrings right out of her hands. Which was such a normal thing to do that I was starting to worry that it wasn't normal - but of course, it must be! This was Mitsune we were talking about, after all! She's just plain like that. "Naru, dear. Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Is what a good idea?" Naru asked. "Returning reality to normal? Making it so that everything's undone?"

"Hrm, that's what I mean!" Mitsune said. "If you've been using these without realising it, then our sense of what's -" She stopped cold for a moment then put the earrings on a nearby counter before continuing. "Normal is going to be all messed up. How do you know that we all have the same sense of what's normal and what's not?"

"We could always use the older tapes," Motoko offered. "That is how we noticed in the first place."

"Yes, but will that be enough?" Mitsune asked. "We won't catch out every little detail of what's different, right?"

There was a kind of logic to that. All that we would be doing is resetting everything to our own new norm. Honestly, it was pretty inevitable that whoever had those earrings would abuse them. It was obvious, if you really thought about it. Therefore... What could we do? What was the best way to sort this out?

"I can take those to my family," Motoko said. "With their help -"

"Nah, new plan" Mitsune interrupted, snatching up the earrings. "It's normal for me to have the earrings, and it's normal for us to be in a hot and heavy harem! Except for Suu and Shinobu, 'cuz they're too young for that sorta fun! It's normal for those two to accept that the rest of us are in a harem, and not want to change that."

"Darn!" Suu chirped from the corner of the room, where she was tinkering with a gadget. "I was looking forward to the harem shenanigans we would get up to!"

You can see the raw power of the earrings when it's put like that, can't you? Naru was already grinding her butt into Keitaro's crotch. Then again, she was always the one that wanted on his dick the hardest out of all of us.

"Well, when you put it like that..." Motoko mused. "We might as well leave things as they are. Mitsune should be able to keep the earrings safe."

"Hehehe... I'll put them in my drunk safe, to keep them out of my hands!" Mitsune cackled. "So? Who is up for an orgy to celebrate? Let's gather in the landlord's room, and have some fun!"

Indeed, the four of them filed off excitedly, leaving myself and Suu to take care of everything else. Ah, they looked (and very soon sounded) like they were going to have an awful lot of fun together. One might think that was the end of the story, now that we knew the earrings were responsible, and we knew to be careful about them, but -

As if things would be anything like that simple in the Hinata Dorms. This mess was far from over.