The Simulacrum

"Are we clear on this?" I asked in a grave tone befitting the situation as I raised the photos I received from the Arch-mage and flashed them in everyone's direction. "If you see this woman, don't talk to her, don't fight with her... actually, just don't engage her in any way, period. Any questions?"

"I've got one," Josh spoke up a touch hesitantly. "What if she 'engages' us?" he asked, complete with air quotes.

"You run away and call me. If that's impossible, stall her and call me," I stated matter-of-factly. "Anything else?" For a second or five, the gang crowding my ravaged living room kept glancing at each other, but in the end they all shook their heads in unison. "Good. I'm glad we are on the same page."

I was just about to continue, but I was abruptly interrupted by the sound of a car horn coming from my front yard.

"The taxi arrived," Judy informed me, though I could figure that much on my own.

"About time," I grumbled while checking the clock on my phone. It was half-past seven in the evening, meaning I've spent roughly thirty minutes explaining what just happened to my living room to my hapless and exhausted friends.

After I ferried Angie over to give emergency first aid to Karukk, I took him back to the shelter and carried the rest of the team over here for an emergency meeting. Technically I could've done the same thing at the base, but that would've left no one here at home to teleport back to, so I decided to focus on explaining things to the gang first, and then I would have a separate meeting with Snowy's retinue, as they were the ones in actual, evident danger.

Not that it meant that I felt my friends were perfectly safe, mind you, so instead of letting them walk home, I arranged rides for all of them, even against their protests in some cases.

"Let's not make the driver wait longer than strictly necessary," I began as I headed towards my front door, which was already restored using some kind of 'utility spell' by Ammy, and the entire group followed after me. "This was a long day with some unforeseen ups and downs, wasn't it?" I wondered aloud as I opened said door, and the moment I looked outside, I was hit by an unexpected sense of déjà vu.

I walked up to the cab parked in front of my curiously well-kempt lawn (my pet theory was that the ninja maids were also into gardening), yet it was only when the cabbie rolled down the window on the passenger side that I recognized the source of the peculiar sensation from a few moments ago, after which all the tension drained out of my shoulders.

"I knew your voice sounded familiar! I never forget a tipping customer," the cabbie told me with a wide grin accentuated by a missing eye-tooth, his accent still as thick yet completely unidentifiable as the last time I met him after my late-night meeting with Snowy in the park. It happened more than a month ago, but he was quite hard to forget, and by the looks of it, I also left an impression on him. "Hah. It's a small world, ain't it?"

"You have no idea how right you are," I responded maybe a little too dourly, as he gave me a puzzled look in response.

I mean, what were the chances of running into the same taxi driver twice in a row like this? Not very high, I'd reckon. However, even during my first encounter with the man, I could tell that he was not just a run-of-the-mill placeholder. If the 'narrative' couldn't be bothered to make our classmates into anything resembling 'normal', just what were the chances of this guy being a random, one-time encounter? As far as I knew, he was the only cab driver in this entire city, poised to respond to us whenever we needed a ride. Hey, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've seen in this 'small world'.

Anyhow, the driver shrugged his shoulders and said, probably as an attempt at small-talk, "I see the little missy got over her rebellious phase."

I didn't quite get what he meant at first, but then I followed his gaze, which led me to Snowy awkwardly standing by the entrance. After finally realizing what he was hinting at, I let out a small chuckle and told him, "Yes. Let's just say I managed to remove the negative influences from her environment." I probably sounded just a tad ominous, as the cab guy suddenly became visibly guarded towards me. I ignored his reaction and handed over a hundred Jen bill. "Long story short: some unsavory types tried to break into my house. I'm a little worried about my friends, so I'd like you to take them home. This should cover it, keep the change."

"If you say so," he replied while pocketing the bill. "What's the address again?"

"They'll tell you," I answered him while gesturing the Josh-Angie-Ammy trio to come over. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other business to take care of."

Saying so, I stepped away from the car and looked towards the left, just in time to see a large, black luxury sedan turn around the corner and smoothly glide behind the already parked car in front of me. Of course, the reason I knew it was coming had nothing to with the playful spirits of convenient timing playing into my hands, but the fact that I had a mark on its driver.

"I still think I should stay here," Elly suddenly stepped up beside me and declared with just a hint of a pout on her lips.

"And I think you shouldn't," I answered without missing a beat, causing her pout to intensify by about thirty-five percent, give or take two.

After learning about what happened to my living room, she was very insistent about sleeping over, ostensibly 'just to be on the safe side'. While the notion of her being this worried about my safety was really, really sweet of her, it sadly conflicted with the fact that I was also worried for her safety, and I had already concluded that the safest place for her to be was inside her family mansion. It took a bit of coaxing to have her agree to call Sebastian over, but based on her sulky expression, I figured I wasn't entirely successful.

"Then stay in our guest room," she offered while earnestly looking me in the eye, yet I shook my head all the same.

"Can't do. I have to look after Snowy."

"She can stay too," she countered.

"My answer is still no," I told her, and after some hesitation I gently wrapped my hand around her waist and pulled her into my chest, then I whispered to her, "I told you, I don't think she poses a threat to me in particular. Just go home, relax, and we'll pick you up on our way to school first thing tomorrow morning."

"You promise?"

"Sure," I told her with a smile, and I thought about giving her a peck on the forehead for emphasis, but then I became aware of a certain irritating butler frowning in my general direction, so I decided to abstain for the time being and instead I told her, "How about you say goodbye to the others? I have a feeling your steward wants to talk with me."

She gave me a disappointed 'Boo,' in return (which kinda made me want to kiss her anyway, against my better judgment), but at long last she obediently walked over to Judy and Snowy. While she did so, I turned my attention to the foppish old butler walking towards me with a disapproving frown on his already irritating visage.

"It appears the head of the family wasn't joking about your relationship with the young lady. Oh, how far our noble lineage has fallen," he lamented while shaking his head.

"Very cute, old man, but I'm really not in the mood right now," I told him in a tone about as blunt as a toddler's plastic play knife.

"Oh, are you not?" he inquired with what I presumed to be a mocking little tilt of his head, but I took a deep breath and ignored his obvious provocation.

"No," I spoke with extra emphasis, then continued by telling him, "First, please convey my apology to Mr. Dracis. I'm afraid I won't be able to visit him tonight. If you are there, please also ask him when he would be available, so that we can finish up our business negotiations."

"You two are having business negotiations?" he questioned me again, this time in an audibly staler tone, as if he couldn't understand what I was saying.

"Yes," I confirmed with a sigh, not at all amused by his insistent provocations. "It's about creating a digital music distribution service platform, and no, I have neither the time nor the patience to explain what that means right now. Ask him if you're curious." Sebastian nodded tentatively, and he looked like he wanted to grace me with another of his typical comebacks, but I had none of it. "More importantly," I cut him off before he could even begin while covertly showing him one of the photos of a certain Japanese creeper. "Be on the lookout for her."

The butler was once again puzzled for a moment, and after taking a long look at the image he stated, "I guess I might as well bite the bait considering you went through all the trouble to secure my attention." Saying so, he snatched the polaroid out of my hand and raised it to his eye level. "Who is this?"

"I'm still working on the particulars, but in short: she is an erratic Japanese monster hunter with a talking sword and a weird obsession with slaughter." I paused here for a long second as I waited for the old man to stop staring at the picture and look back at me again, and when he did so I added, "I'm fairly certain she isn't one of the knights. She's more than a little obsessed with anything related to the Abyss instead, and shows little to no interest in your extended family. Still, she's entirely unpredictable, so I'd recommend you keep your distance for now."

Sebastian gave me a doubtful look for a second or two, but then it quickly morphed into a mocking smirk.

"Are you worried about my safety, boy?"

"Are you getting senile with age, old man?" I scoffed back while snatching the photo away from him. "If I'm worried about anything, it would be collateral damage. This is someone who kicked down my front door and trashed my living room in the name of 'helping'; who knows what kind of damage she could cause if she gets worked up again."

"Is that so? I'm glad to see that even you are capable of showing a spark of intellect every once in a while."

"Can it, you lousy old lizard. I told you I'm not in the mood."

I put the photo back into my coat pocket, yet for some strange and uncomfortable reason, Sebastian kept staring at me with eyes that appeared alarmingly curious. I ignored him, and since he didn't say anything else either, we quietly waited for the princess to say her goodbyes to the rest of the gang.

In the meantime, the other half of our group squeezed themselves into the taxi, and after I waved them goodbye, the cab in the front slowly rolled away from my driveway. Once the trio's ride rounded a corner and was out of sight, the princess also stopped delaying the inevitable and walked over to the two of us. However, instead of heading for the car right away, she sidled up to me first.

"Stay safe, okay?" she asked, though it felt more like a command coming from her.

"That's the plan," I answered with what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

My girlfriend gave me a hard look for a moment, but then her eyes quickly softened and, before I knew it, she rose to her tip-toes and planted a chaste and quite unexpected kiss on my lips.

"You better," she whispered after our lips parted, then once her soles touched the ground again she added, with extra emphasis, "If she tries to break into your house again, call me right away."

"You can be such a worrywart sometimes," I half spoke and half chuckled in response and I reflexively raised my hand to tussle the crown of her head, the smile on my face suddenly feeling much less forced than just a second ago. Then I finally realized the situation I was in and glanced over at Sebastian.

"What?" I spoke in a cold tone. Not because I wanted to hide my embarrassment, but just because I felt like it. That's all.

The old butler stared at me with an odd exression, but after a brief spell of silence he shook his head with an amused smirk.

"Nothing," he stated in a tone that meant it certainly wasn't 'nothing', but he probably found it more amusing to let me come up with my own interpretations behind his word. I, naturally, didn't play along with his game, so I promptly ignored his smiling eyes and gestured towards the car.

Elly was still a little reluctant, but she ultimately got into the limo and let the annoying butler drive her away. Once they were out of sight I breathed out a small yet heavy sigh and headed inside. While all of the above happened, Judy and Snowy both moved indoors, and by the time I followed suit, I could hear them moving around in the kitchen.

"Hot cocoa or tea?" Snowy immediately leveled a question at me the moment I looked inside the room, and it took me an embarrassingly long moment to interpret it and answer.

"Tea, please," I told her, and she responded with a huge nod.

"On it!"

While my sister was busy with that, I walked over to Judy, who was in the process of packing a familiar lunchbox with equally familiar bundles that no doubt hid sandwiches inside of them. At the end of the day, I couldn't restrain myself and asked, "What are you making?"

"Lunch for tomorrow," she answered absentmindedly while somehow managing to stuff even more food into the small box, a sight that would make any Tetris-enthusiast shed a single touched tear in appreciation.

Watching the two of them busy themselves like that kind of made me feel I was the odd man out, so after some consideration, I headed back into my living room. Since things were moving really fast, I didn't have the time to clean things up yet. After assessing the damage one more time, I piled up the unsalvageable causalities first.

Said pile consisted of two blood-splattered carpets, a broken chair, and a torn drapery. The coffee table also seemed to be a goner at first, but after I tried putting it back together, it turned out nothing was really broken, so I decided I would keep it. As for the sofa, I was torn on the issue, pun intended. The large gash on its side was unsightly, but Ammy swore that she had a magic spell that could fix it. Speaking of which, she had fixed my lock once when I was unconscious, and she also restored my broken door into a semblance of integrity as well. Maybe the class rep had a future in the maintenance industry?

Jokes aside, I was genuinely impressed by how she could restore broken objects with just a few waves of her staff and some eerie faux-latin chanting, yet when I tried to tell her that, she got really defensive all of a sudden. Maybe she really did have a complex about only being able to use utility spells and her golem? I decided I should focus on her a bit more during our next training session, as I smelled great untapped potential in those so-called 'utility spells'.

It was just about when my living room finally returned to a semblance of normalcy when the two girls came out of the kitchen, Snowy carrying a familiar tray with three gently steaming mugs on it. Since I just finished as well, the three of us sat down around my newly restored coffee table and silently drank our assorted beverages. It was… honestly, surprisingly cozy considering the circumstances.

As unfortunate as it was, someone had to break the comfortable silence, and so I did it by clearing my throat and addressing my girlfriend first.

"How long are you staying for today?"

"I have permission until nine," she answered between two sips from her drink.

"Good. If we don't finish, I suppose we'll continue on the phone as usual."

"Yes."

"Doing what?" came the awkward interjection from Snowy. She seemed genuinely curious about what we were talking about.

"Research stuff. It's just a thing we do," I told her, then after some contemplation, I continued with a question. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"Yes," she nodded in the affirmative without even bothering to listen to my request first.

"I'm glad to see you're eager," I told her with an appropriately brotherly smile, then I pointed at the doorway and told her, "Considering today's events, I really think I should invest in some heavy-duty security, and I couldn't help but recall those fancy barriers you set up around the school. Could you put something similar around this house?"

Snowy looked weirdly surprised by my request, but after glancing around the room for a few seconds she answered, "I… I don't think I can do that."

"You can't?" Judy asked in my stead, and my sister immediately shook her head.

"I-It's not that I don't want to, but I really can't! That kind of barrier... I could only make it work at the School because it's built on top of a junction of mana veins, so there was an abundance of ambient mana to draw on, and there is nothing like that under this house. A-Also, it was designed to only work for a few hours, and making it permanent would be... I don't think I can do it."

"By 'mana vein', you mean one of the ley lines, right?" Snowy nodded in response to my question, and I couldn't help but groan. It wasn't in response to the apparent lack of such power source under my house, but the fact that the more I've learned about the supernatural elements of this world, the more it felt like there were no unified naming conventions for them. It was a pain in the neck.

Snowy might have mistaken my exasperation over the annoyingly inconsistent terminology of this world for being angry at her and shrunk back in her seat, so I quickly told her, "Don't worry sis, I don't want you to do the impossible. If you say it cannot be done, then I'll believe you. Still, can't you do something similar? I don't need it to be impenetrable, just solid enough to prevent someone unwanted waltzing into my living room and making a mess."

"You mean, like… area denial wards?" she asked in an awkward voice, and after I gave her a tentative nod, her eyes suddenly got a really determined glint in them and she declared, "I can do that!"

I'm fact, she was so enthusiastic that I was afraid she'd jump to her feet and start working right away, so I hastily gestured for her to stay put and said, "Great! Let's discuss the particulars tomorrow. I was only curious if it could be done."

"Oh, okay," she agreed with a smile, and so we returned to the comfortable silence once again. This time it only lasted until Snowy finished up her drink, at which point she let out a satisfied sigh, placed her empty mug onto the table, and then addressed me with a soft, "Leo?"

"Yes?"

"Can I… also ask for a favor in return?"

"… Well, sure, but let's not make this into a checks-and-balances system. If you need help with something, just ask."

"I understand," she responded in the company of a considerably less certain expression, followed by her asking, "Could you take me to see Karukk? I'm worried about him."

I had no reason to deny her request, so I told her, "I think Angie fixed him up well enough, but I can see where you're coming from. Do you want to go right now?" She nodded right away, maybe even a little too eagerly, so told her, "Okay then. Call me when you're ready to leave."

"Thank you!"

With that, she instantly rose to her feet and headed towards the entrance, probably to get her shoes.

While she was out of earshot, I glanced at Judy and told her, in a low voice, "I'll meet you in my room. We have a lot of things to talk about."

My assistant raised her brows for a moment, which I interpreted as agreement. In the meantime Snowy came back, so we both left for the secret base without bothering with the magic closet, thus putting this short but much-needed downtime behind us.

"I'm back," I announced as I reappeared in front of my swivel chair and immediately dropped onto it. To her credit, my girlfriend sitting on my bed was only mildly startled by my unforeseen arrival. In fact, she looked more annoyed than anything else.

"You're late," she told me in her usual expressionless tone while overdramatically checking the time on her phone.

"I thought that if I was over there anyway, I might as well brief Brang and the rest of the Fauns. They… unfortunately took what happened here as a challenge, but I convinced them to stay away from the crazy huntress for now."

Judy seemed somewhat disinterested in my explanation, and instead she kept swiping on her phone until she finally found what she was looking for.

"Speaking of 'her'," she began, her voice even flatter than usual for some reason. "Did you manage to draw any new information out of her this time around?"

"Not as much as I would've liked," I admitted with an exasperated sigh in tow. I leaned forward a little and clarified, "I mentioned most of this to the others already, but just to reiterate: she's some kind of monster hunter from Japan. She has a hate-boner for anything Abyssal related, and she has a talking Japanese sword." I paused here to wait for Judy to stop typing, then once I had her full attention again I told her, "The keywords we should look into are 'Onikiri', 'Rinne', 'clans' and 'sentient weapons'."

"Which one of them is her name?" Judy asked a pointed question.

"The second one, I think."

"You think," she repeated after me.

"I'm about ninety percent sure, but I'm still not convinced that what she gave me wasn't some kind of ceremonial title."

"I see…" my assistant began typing again, and in the meantime I took a deep breath and prepared myself to breach the main topic. I just had to decide from which direction I should approach it.

"Judy, listen to me for a moment please."

"I'm always listening," she responded and finally looked up at me. I must've had a strange expression on my face, because she cocked her head to the side a moment later and asked, "Is there a problem?"

"You could call it that, yes," I answered as I closed my eyes for a moment, then I steeled my nerves, looked her in the eye again, and told her, "I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I might have, by a complete accident, left an… unnecessarily good impression on her."

All of a sudden my girlfriend's face got so frosty I could swear I was looking at a glacier. A scary glacier, with blank yet chilling eyes and a cute little frown aaand my analogy kinda broke down, didn't it?

"Please elaborate," she spoke softly, though her gaze made sure I realized it wasn't just a polite request but a demand. I decided to subtly roll my eyes at her theatrics and do just that.

"In short, I called her by what I presume is her first name without realizing it was a cultural faux pa, she got flustered, then I tried to touch her, at which point she got really flustered, and then she left in a hurry."

"You tried to touch her?"

"Yes. For Far Sight," I spelled out in a hurry.

"Oh, I see… So? Did you mark her?"

"Unfortunately, no. As I said, she literally ran away."

"I see," she responded a tad morosely before summarizing things by saying, "So you flirted with the woman who broke into your house, she was receptive, and now you don't know what to do. Is that the gist of it?"

"I wasn't flirting with her per se, but yes that's about it," I acknowledged her simplification, though only tentatively.

My assistant gave me a sideways glance, and then she looked away and let out a truly exhausted groan.

"I really can't let you out of my sight even just for five minutes…" she muttered under her breath, and while normally I would've protested, this time I decided it would have been counter-productive… but then she just had to add, "Please at least tell me you're not interested in her."

Now that was a comment I couldn't jolly well leave alone without any protests.

"Dormouse, would you please take this seriously? Would I talk to you about this if I was?"

"You talked about 'letting Eleanor down gently' in the past, and yet look where we are," she countered with a petulant edge to her words, and for a second or two, I was lost for words.

"Apples and oranges," I responded with a non-answer, in place of anything better. "Also, we are veering off-topic. Listen, the point I'm trying to make is that, dumb as it might sound, I might be in need of some anti-harem countermeasures."

"Oh?" Judy's eyebrows rose in surprise (just a little) and she looked me over from head to toe like I was a rare black sheep or something. "So you finally recognized that your constant flirting is a problem. Good, that's a step in the right direction."

"I don't think I'm flirting with anyone but you and Elly, but that's a point we are going to come back to later," I told her a smidgen indignantly. "No, the reason I ask is because I think we have to re-evaluate the world's 'genre' again."

"Again?" she repeated after me. "I guess you have a new hypothesis."

"Yes," I confirmed with a slightly more serious expression. "I believe we are living in a supernatural harem battle school life setting."

"… Isn't that something we already concluded?"

"Yes, but no," I told her as I straightened my back on my seat and gestured with my hands for emphasis. "The key is in the order of terms, and the word 'harem' in particular. Previously I thought it was the generic, extended love triangle kind, where everyone was pining for the same guy without entering into a relationship. I also thought that the harem shenanigans were just a carryover from the early school life period. However, in light of some recent developments, I realized that this world is just a wee bit too accommodating for straight-up polyamorous relationships for that to be the case."

"By recent developments, do you mean Eleanor's family?"

"Precisely," I nodded in agreement. "I originally thought their family tradition was just a quirk, but it might actually be an intentional precedent for polyamory."

"And by polyamory, you mean…?"

"The 'real' harem kind, where one person, in our case probably Josh, is supposed to be in a relationship with multiple love interests at once."

"So it's what you're doing."

"Yes, but on a bigger scale."

"I think I see what you mean," Judy mused while leisurely poking at her phone. "If we presume that this world had planned narrative that involved some form of polyamory, then it would explain why baking such a tradition into the Dracis family's backstory would exist; in order to support such a 'real harem', as you called it. It's a thought worth entertaining."

"Thank you, though I think you are being a bit too much of a reductionist again."

"It's my job," Judy stated while puffing out her chest for whatever reason. "Lately you've been trying to avoid looking at things from a meta-narrative standpoint, so I took it upon myself to do it instead of you. That's what I've been hired for in the first place. "

"I'm not trying to avoid it, I'm just too busy with the surface stuff to worry about the meta at the moment, " I grumbled, but then I closed my eyes, let out a deep breath, and said, "We are getting off-topic again. Whether there is a grand, pre-written plan to this world that pigeon-holes me in, or it comes about just from personal relations and random chance, I still need to make sure I won't accidentally start making annoying people get attracted to me."

"Fair enough," Judy said with a nod. "Self-awareness is the first step in self-improvement. How can I help?"

"First off, I want you to teach me how to be unattractive," I told her as unambiguously as I could, yet for some reason my words earned me a scowl from her.

"Chief, you are really lucky I'm a generous person and I decided not to interpret your words as 'You are unattractive, show me how to be more like you'."

It took me an embarrassingly long time to respond to that, but when I did, I rolled my eyes so hard it almost made me dizzy.

"Come on Dormouse! Weren't we over this already? You know you are plenty attractive, so why would you even think that?"

"Am I?" She gave me an unusually sardonic look, then asked, "If so, then can you name my most attractive attribute?" I didn't even have time to open my mouth, but she already cut me off by raising a hand and declaring, "And you cannot say 'your brain'. You already used that card once."

"Oh please! Can we just stay on topic?" Her expression said she was serious about this, so in the end I gave up and told her, "Fine! It's your voice."

"My voice," she repeated after me, and I'd go as far as to say she was unreasonably surprised by my response.

"Yes, it's your voice. It's soothing and I like it."

"Really?"

"Yup," I told her with a reassuring smile. "So, can we go back to the anti-harem talk?"

"Might as well," she answered with a shrug, though I couldn't help but notice a tiny little smirk at the corner of her lips, so I figured everything was fine. "Where do you want to start?"

"First things first, I want to know what you think constitutes as 'flirting', so that I can hopefully stop doing it by accident."

"Hm," Judy let out a thoughtful sound and raised the corner of her phone to her lips. "To begin with, the biggest problem is that you have no sense of personal boundaries."

"I don't?" I responded in surprise, and she confirmed it again with a nod.

"You don't. You don't possess a shred of reservation towards the opposite sex. That kind of overly confident and casual attitude often comes off as you hitting on someone."

"Wait, hold on!" I stopped her in her tracks with my palm extended towards her. "You want to tell me that just being unreserved equals to flirting around these parts?"

"In your case? Yes," she told me with another nod. "You are tall, fit, and handsome. If you walk up to a girl, make eye contact, and then engage them in small-talk, everyone would think that you are hitting on them."

"Hold your horses again!" I stopped her once more, this time while massaging my temple. "So you want to tell me that, just because I'm conventionally attractive and not socially awkward, every time I talk to a member of the opposite sex, it could be interpreted as flirting?"

"It also has a lot to do with your informal attitude, but yes, that's the gist of it."

"… I'm pretty sure that kind of mindset is some kind of '-ist', you know?"

"I don't know what you are talking about. Also, you asked for my advice, so don't complain."

"Ugh, fine," I slouched my shoulders in defeat. "Anything else?"

"You are also way too direct with physical contact," Judy dealt me another blow with a tone that said it was self-evident. "For example, you said you tried to touch this 'Rinne' woman?"

"Yes, I did."

"Did you ask for her permission first?"

"Well… no, not explicitly," I admitted while absent-mindedly scratching the base of my neck.

"Can you explain to me what happened, in detail?"

"Erm… So, I need skin contact to mark someone for Far Sight. Are we clear on that? So, since she was wearing gloves, with only her face exposed, I had to touch her there without appearing as some kind of creep, so I thought I would do that thing where I casually step up to her and wipe a stain off her cheek, like in the movies, but when I tried to do that, she got really flustered and she ran away." In response to my explanation, my assistant gave a look flatter than the Maldives, forcing me to prompt her with a tentative, "What?"

"You said it out loud, and yet you still don't understand?" she asked me with a face filled to the brim with disbelief (full by Judy standards, I mean) and she expounded, "Chief, what you did sounds just like a cheesy scene from a shoujo manga."

"No, it doesn't," I denied on the spot.

"Yes, it does," she doubled down with a frown. "Imagine this from the point of view of the person on the receiving end." She paused here for a moment and continued with a low, husky voice, "Imagine that you are alone with a tall, handsome stranger in a room. Then, without any warning, he takes a step towards you. He looks you in the eye, and there is no threat or reservation in them, putting you at ease. Then he smiles and he gently reaches his hand out towards you and tries to touch your face while whispering sweet nothings…" At this point she abruptly fell silent, shuddered for a moment, and then she added, in her usual voice, "It sounds like a romance manga cliché, doesn't it?"

"When you put it like that, then of course it does!" I protested as all my suppressed indignation bubbled to the surface. "Since when are you an expert on shoujo manga tropes anyway?"

All of a sudden my assistant conspicuously averted her eyes and stated, "Research," with a suspicious amount of emphasis, then she quickly hid behind (for a certain meaning of the word) her phone and continued with, "Don't change the subject. The real issue here is that you have no concept of personal space and, combined with how overly familiar you are, it can make people think you are coming onto them."

My skepticism was wider and deeper than the Pacific ocean, but I also knew that there was no point in arguing about this anymore, so I soon gave up and concluded with, "Long story short, the first step in my anti-harem measures should be trying to be more conscious of women's personal space."

"Other than mine or Elly's, obviously," Judy corrected me.

"Obviously," I agreed. "That's for future encounters. What do I do with someone who may or may not have already developed an unwarranted infatuation on me?"

"I'd like to say you should just reject them outright, but considering your track record, that doesn't seem to work." I wanted to object, but then I thought about it and decided it wasn't a hill worth dying on. In the meantime, Judy was in deep thought, resulting in her suggesting, "How about passing her onto Joshua?"

"That… is certainly something that could work, but I don't think he would appreciate it."

"Then find someone else," she stated like it was an easy solution.

"Honestly, I'd be happy even if she would just leave the island. Some things about her just don't add up, and it bothers me." Judy looked curious, so I elaborated by telling her, "For example, she knew my face, and she even knew where I lived."

"I noticed that too," Judy agreed with me. "Do you think she stalked you?"

"No," I shook my head without even entertaining the thought. "I think someone's pulling the strings from behind the stage and set her up to meet me."

"Who?"

"My money's on Lord Grandpa, but I have no evidence yet," I replied, then after a beat I added, "More on that later. For now, let's focus on this Rinne woman."

"If you just want her to leave, you could try and resolve her subplot," Judy posited. "In my opinion, the narrative introduced her as part of a subplot related to the stray Chimera on the island. If you find it and get rid of it, then it would conclude the plot, and then she would leave the island."

"While that's hypothetically sound, we still don't know enough about how the narrative works and how much it influences things," I countered. "It's just as likely that removing her reason to be on the island would cause another reason to pop up to keep her around." I paused here for a second, and a small grunt later I added, "Not to mention, I think this entire 'subplot' you are talking about is probably all tied to Lord Grandpa, and going after the Chimera just to get rid of her makes me feel like I'm playing into the hand of the old man…"

"Do what you want, so long as it doesn't result in another girlfriend. Or sister."

"Ouch, Dormouse," I whined with a frown. "You're really grumpy this evening, you know that?"

She stuck her tongue out at me, which was both kind of cute and kind of uncanny at the same time, because the rest of her face stayed as deadpan as usual, and I couldn't help but stifle an amused little chuckle as a result. I glanced up at the clock and noted that we still had a lot of time left before Judy would have had to go home, so I asked her, "Do you have anything else to add to this topic?"

"There's a lot to be said about potential subplots and the narrative, but those aren't for now," she spoke half-heartedly, but her fingers suddenly picked up pace as she began flipping through her notes, then her eyes suddenly flashed with what I presumed to be excitement and she declared, "I have another topic we should discuss though."

"Really? What is it?"

My assistant turned her phone my way, showing off some kind of diagram, and then she explained, "I have compiled a preliminary power-level ranking."

"… You were serious," I muttered with a deadpan voice, and she gave me a firm nod in return. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't in the mood for this, but for some inexplicable reason she seemed to be really excited about the subject, so I let out a small sigh and gestured for her to speak up. "Very well, you have my attention for now."

"Since I had nothing better to do while you had your fun bullying Joshua and the Fauns, I decided to interview everyone and try to figure out the combat rankings of the people we know, for future reference." She fell silent for a long while at this point, and I was just about to ask her to continue when my phone buzzed. I picked it up from the computer desk and found a new email with an attachment in my inbox. Unsurprisingly enough, it was the same diagram she showed me just a few seconds ago. In the meantime she got up and stood beside my chair while she waited for me to open it up, then she said, "The rankings you see here are based on the interviews, my own observations, and my educated estimates of how much each of the participants was holding back during the sparring matches. You can also find yourself on the list."

"I see…" I began and then immediately raise a single, surprised brow at the name on the top of her list. "Snowy is number one?"

"Yes," she confirmed with a smirk, apparently amused by my reaction. "If you tap on her name, you can see that she has very high scores in mobility, offensive capabilities, and utility. Her skill score is also above average, with only her defense being sub-par."

I gave her a skeptical glance, but then I followed her instructions, and when I tapped on her name, it actually brought up a pop-up page with one of those hexagonal skill diagrams you would see on a game character's wiki page.

"… I would be lying if I said that I wasn't impressed by this, but… when did you even make it?" I asked the obvious question, but it was like water rolling off a duck's back.

"If we consider her sigils and the general combat performance she showed during her battle with Eleanor and the school incident, I think there is no doubt she is currently our strongest combat asset."

"You are using words that are scaring me a little," I whispered as I closed the pop-up page and looked at the second place, and it made me raise my bafflement-brow once again. "Elly is the second?"

"You sound surprised," Judy said as she leaned even closer, as if to get a better look at me. "Did you expect you would be second?"

"No, actually. I expected Brang would be."

"Not a chance," my assistant honest to goodness scoffed at my response. "Eleanor is leagues above him."

"I can't help but recall her getting her shapely posterior consistently handed to her by Brang though," I murmured, earning me another scoff.

"You should not consider the results of a sparring match as a clear indicator of power levels," she told me with such certainty I was momentarily tempted to believe her. "Eleanor was holding back a lot during today's training in order not to cause any harm to your Faun friend. She never used her claws, nor her beam attack, and after interrogating her, I'm fairly certain she would also win in a contest of raw strength if she was serious."

"Really?" I glanced between her and my phone a few times, and she responded with a satisfied grunt. I scrolled down and raised my brow for the third time in a row and the question, "What am I doing at the third place?" involuntarily escaped my mouth.

"Is there a problem with that?"

"Yes! I mean…" I scrolled down the list and back up again before I explained to her, "I kinda get why Josh is at rock bottom. Angie being above the class rep, I can also understand, with her combination of healing and ranged firepower. I also get why Brang is above them on the rankings, but why am I above him?"

"Look at your stats," she prompted me, and I did so. "Your mobility is excellent, you have high scores both in skill and utility, and, most importantly, the Faun said you are better than him."

"He did?! Wait, when did you even ask him? I thought you were afraid of him."

The corner of Judy's left eye suddenly twitched in a very, very conspicuous display of… something, and then she told me, "I asked Neige to be the messenger between us. My point still stands."

"No, it doesn't," I protested while closing the unnecessarily detailed diagrams.

"You realize that you took on the entire Faun squad and won, right?"

"That doesn't count," I grumbled as I waved in dismissal. "They are mooks."

"Come again?"

"Mooks? You know? Minions, goons, henchmen, small fry…"

"That's not an argument," Judy cut me short with a huff. "Also, according to both Eleanor and Neige, they wouldn't have been able to defeat them as easily as you did. In fact, I believe that if you had a real weapon, and didn't try to fight your opponent head-on, you are potentially the most dangerous person in our group."

"And I think you are just biased."

"No, I'm not," Judy denied with an imperceptibly puffed-out cheek. "Listen Chief, you might not have the raw power of Eleanor or the numerous spells and abilities of Neige, but you have a unique, out-of-context power set. Your ability to freely teleport and your precognition might look unassuming at first glance, but they are incredibly effective. All you need is a way to deal damage, and you—"

"Wait, wait! Hold on for a second!" I cut her short as her monologue suddenly reminded me of something. "So… you are saying that I have a game-breaking set of powers that is easy to underestimate because they are not flashy?"

"Yes. Just like how you underestimate yourself," my assistant confirmed my words, defiantly crossing her arms in the process.

"And apparently I'm attractive and my natural behavior somehow appears seductive to the opposite sex."

"I don't know how it relates to the previous question, but yes."

"Oh my god," the words slipped out of my mouth before I knew it. "Judy, you might want to sit down before you hear this."

"Okay," my assistant responded immediately by sitting on my lap. Normally I would've pointed out that I didn't mean it quite so literally, but I decided to let her have her way, and instead I took a deep breath.

"Judy…" I began, my voice exactly as grave as my recent revelation demanded, and I told her, "I think I might be actually turning into a battle harem protagonist…"

"Do you have your school supplies?" I asked my newly minted little sister as we stepped through my front door.

"Yes," Snowy replied and hefted her bag on her shoulder.

"Spare key?"

"Got it," she declared after taking a keyring out of her coat pocket and playfully jangling it in front of me.

"Emergency app?"

She blinked at me, then she hurriedly put away her keys and fished her phone out of another pocket. Less than three seconds later, there was a loud notification blaring from my phone.

Last night, after I took Judy home, I downloaded one of those 'stranger danger' apps onto her phone. With a press of a single virtual button, the application sends an emergency signal to the parent app on my phone with the ID and GPS location of the sender. The latter was useless to me, but it was still an essential safety net I planned to install on everyone's phones.

I turned off the alarm and pocketed my phone with a supremely satisfied grunt, then I locked the front door and we headed towards the first stop of our morning commute. We were actually a little early, but Snowy turned out to be an early riser, and since I promised I would pick Elly up on the way, I figured heading out a little ahead of schedule was the prudent thing to do.

Our first destination wasn't the Dracis estate though, but Judy's place down the street around the corner. Snowy was in high spirits and she had a spring in her steps as she walked beside me. It was probably because of her enthusiasm that we arrived at my assistant's doorstep in record time. Even so, we didn't have to wait for long, as Judy walked through the front door just a few seconds after we arrived, followed by her familiar, absurdly youthful mother.

"Good morning, Dormouse," I greeted her, then I flashed a smile in the other woman's direction and added, "Good morning, Mrs. Sennoma. You look great as usual."

Hearing my comment, my embarrassed girlfriend ineffectually elbowed me in the side, but I only chuckled at her expense. Serves her right for making fun of my dramatic revelations the day before.

In the meantime, Mrs. Sennoma let out a charmingly girlish giggle and told me, "Oh, you flatterer!" while dismissively waving a pasta spoon in my direction. "I've heard you were sick, Leonard. Do you feel better now?"

"Thank you for the concern, ma'am, but as you can see, I'm fit as a fiddle," I answered her coyly while striking one of those silly bodybuilder poses, which earned me another poke in the side and a stream of tinkling laughter from the woman at the front.

She soon stopped though. To be precise, it was when she noticed the white-haired girl quietly standing by my side.

"Oh? Who's the cutie?" she asked while leaning forward with her hands on her knees, which inadvertently emphasized her rather generous bust. I wasn't looking or anything, but Judy still elbowed me in the side for the third time. Speaking of her, I had no idea why my dearest assistant was so conscious of her appearance. If she inherited just half her genes from her mother (which was kind of a given, now that I thought about it), she should turn into quite the looker in a few short years.

Future expectations aside, I was asked a question, so I gently pulled the hapless Abyssal girl to the front and replied, "I believe you haven't met my sister yet. Her name is Neige," I pushed her forward a bit more and added. "Come on Snowy, say hello."

"U... Um..." she stuttered for a moment, and I was afraid that she might accidentally lapse into her vamp persona, but thankfully she quickly collected herself and said, "G-Good morning... uuu... miss?"

"Aaaaw!" Judy's mom cooed with a dopey smile, but before she could say anything else, my assistant pushed her back into the house by her shoulders.

"Stop bothering them, mom. We have to go or we'll be late for school."

"Oh, okay," she agreed with a slightly disappointed bend in her lips, but then she quickly bounced back and graced us with a fittingly motherly smile and said, "Have fun!" while waving at us with her random cooking utensil still in hand.

We returned the gesture (though in our case without any props) and after exchanging a few more pleasantries we were on our way again, with Snowy on my left and Judy on my right.

"Let's pick up the princess next," I posited, earning me a disinterested shrug from Judy. I figured she might be pouting, so I sneakily grabbed hold of her waist, pulled her closer, and whispered, "Guess what? The ninja maids worked overtime last night," right into her ear.

My assistant looked puzzled at first, but then she gave me an extra deadpan look and replied, "Is that really all you wanted to tell me right now?"

"More or less," I answered with a grin as I let her go.

It wasn't a Joke though. While the damaged furniture remained unchanged, all the bloodstains and dirt were cleaned off both the floor and the carpets I initially threw aside. I kind of hoped that the ninja maids were also into furniture renovation, but I suppose it was too much to ask for.

While I explained this to my still peevish girlfriend, plus I made her download the previously mentioned emergency app, we reached the neighborhood of the Dracis mansion, and even from a distance I could see the princess impatiently pacing up and down in front of the gates. More alarmingly, she wasn't alone.

"Son!" Papa Dracis greeted me with his usual, boisterous voice, and I couldn't help but notice his wheelchair-bound wife subtly rolling her eyes at his exclamation. Not only were they there, but Sebastian, Melinda, and even the two weird twin maids were crowding in front of the driveway. I felt a headache coming, but I returned his greetings with slightly less gusto.

"Good morning," I addressed them at once as my eyes swept over the group, then I added, "I'll be honest here: I'm feeling kind of weirded out by this reception. What's going on?"

The Dracis patriarch let out a hearty chuckle and replied, "Our princess spent the entire morning tense as a piano wire waiting for you, so we decided to look after her to make sure she doesn't snap!"

"Daaad!" Elly protested with a nasal voice, but her father only let out another deep, affectionate chuckle in response.

In the meantime, Melinda rolled the sharp-eyed mother of the household over to my side, and she immediately leveled the question, "Did someone really break into your house?" at me the moment they arrived.

"News travel fast, it seems," I muttered while sending a meaningful glance at the princess, then I replied, "Yes, they did. My living room got turned over, but no one got hurt."

"Was it one of the accursed knights?" came the next question the moment I finished my previous sentence.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure yet, but I personally don't think so. I'm running a background check on her, just to be safe, and once I've got a definite answer, I'll inform you."

"Good man," she... approved, I think? Anyhow, after nodding to herself, she pointedly glanced at Snowy, who was for some reason hiding behind my back, and she curiously asked, "And who might she be? She smells... like the Abyss?"

"She's my sister," I told her with my most harmless smile, and when she raised a critical brow in return, I hastily added, "Freshly adopted."

Lady Emese looked like she really wanted to say something, but she didn't get the chance, as all our attention was drawn to a certain blonde dragon girl stomping her feet and loudly declaring, "Daddy, you... You nincompoop!" with a beet-red face.

After delivering this most serious of insults, Elly turned on her heel with a loud huff, linked her arm with mine, and began to forcefully drag me away.

"Err... Goodbye and have a nice day, I guess?" I mumbled uncertainty while waving with my free hand, which must have looked really comical, as Papa Dracis let out a hearty guffaw that made all his previous laughs pale in comparison. After the initial confusion, Judy and Snowy quickly followed after me, but it wasn't until we were no longer able to see the mansion that the princess finally stopped pulling me, though she didn't actually let go of my arm.

"My dad can be such an idiot," she grumbled in a whisper, making me raise a brow in puzzlement. I admit, I wasn't really paying attention to the two of them after her mother engaged me, but I didn't remember anything coming out of her father's mouth that warranted such a response. I was almost tempted to ask, but my train of thought was quickly derailed by Judy firmly stepping up to me and grabbing hold of my other arm without asking.

More amusingly, since both of my sides were quite literally taken, Snowy was momentarily flustered and unable to decide where to walk, ultimately settling with falling in line next to my assistant. It felt a little weird to walk like this, but it definitely wasn't unpleasant.

We were already in the neighborhood of the school by the time I found Josh and Angie on the road. I would've liked to wave towards them if my hands weren't occupied, but before I could get annoyed about this, Snowy got their attention in my stead by raising her hand high over her head and calling out, "Mooooooorning!" in a chirping voice.

What can I say? Apparently little sisters aren't just cute, they are also really convenient.

Jokes aside, once they noticed us, the childhood friend duo made their way over to us post haste.

"Hi, Lili. Hi, Judy. Hi, Elly," Josh greeted each of the girls in turn, then he finally looked at me and added, in a decidedly wooden voice, "Good morning, Casanova."

I let out a tiny scoff and told my friend, "Sorry pal, but I do have two pretty girls clinging to me. You really need to up your ribbing game if you want to get a rise out of me now."

Josh clicked his tongue with the face of a man who just bit into the world's soured lemon, a picture made even funnier by Angie barely managing to stifle her giggles at his side.

"Morning, guys," the Celestial girl greeted us a last, her eyes still smiling with schadenfreude.

"Hi, Angie. Did you sleep well?"

"So-so," she responded while twisting her hand back and forth, then she and Josh fell in line beside us as we all continued our commute as usual.

"This is weird," Joshua suddenly spoke up with a conflicted expression on his face.

"What? Walking in a line like this?" Angie spoke while looking over our group, but Josh quickly shook his head.

"No, I mean..." he paused, seemingly lost for words as he looked at the steadily approaching school grounds, then he finally spelled out, "In the past week I was almost kidnapped, I learned that I have superpowers, and I trained in how to use those superpowers against a scary goat-man... and now I am walking to school like everything was normal. Isn't that weird?"

"Not really, no," I answered him while simultaneously greeting the always dependable (and frowning) armband guy. "You shouldn't compare your boring, peaceful days against the crazy ones. You should just savor them while they last."

"Savor them?" Josh repeated after me with an odd light in his eyes, as if he just heard something really profound. I wondered what he was thinking about for a second, but in the end I decided it probably wasn't important.

Like that, we began yet another boring, peaceful, blissful school day, and for one, I intended to follow my own advice to the letter.