Book 1: Chapter 55: A Break Before the Tournament

Serra grabs Ryouta’s hand to stop him from leaving the apartment.

Ryouta turns around to face her. “Is something wrong?” he asks.

Cassandra is looking away. While they may not have come up with this plan together, Cassandra is worried about the exact same thing that Serra is. They share the same goal.

Serra holds her phone up to Ryouta after quickly tapping a message into it.

I’m sorry, I peeked through your door and saw you earlier. You looked like your legs hurt and like you don’t like wearing those braces, and I think I read you saying that you don’t like them too. You can just rest if your legs are hurting, okay? I don’t want you to push yourself for me. I’m happy just being with you, so please don’t put yourself through discomfort for me.

“Ah, you saw that,” Ryouta says, wanting to look away but not wanting to leave Serra unable to understand him even more.

She taps another message into her phone.

I understand if you’re mad at me for peeking when I know you didn’t want me to see anything. I’m sorry.

“Don’t worry about it. Sure, you shouldn’t have peeked, but I know what it feels like to be curious. Plus, you probably just wanted to tease me about this place being a mess. I doubt you were trying to be intrusive,” Ryouta says.

“I looked too. It sounds like she’s trying to take all the blame herself, but… I saw, too,” Cassandra says.

As tsun as Cassandra can be at times, she’s a good person.

Ryouta smiles over to her and closes the door to his apartment.

“Well, I already told you about my parents, so I guess I might as well tell you about my legs,” he says, walking into his room to grab the picture off of the counter before coming back into the living room and sitting on the couch.

He sets the picture down on the table for them to see.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Cassandra says.

“You’re curious, aren’t you?” Ryouta asks.

“I… can’t say that I’m not, but seriously, if you’re uncomfortable—”

“I’m not, promise. The secret is already out anyways.”

Ryouta uses sign language to the best of his ability in addition to saying, “That’s my mom, dad, and childhood dog. His name was Hero. I used to think he was a huge pain in the ass back then. I was always yelling at him, being mean to him, trying to kick him out of my room… I loved him, but I didn’t treat him as nicely as I should have. Oh, and the kid is me if that's not obvious.”

Cassandra and Serra are already fearing where this is going.

“I used to have a friend. Her name was Aiko.” Ryouta is too focused on the picture to notice Serra’s surprised expression. “We spent almost every day together after school. I never appreciated her just like how I never appreciated Hero. Anyways, uh, she liked to walk Hero, but Hero was too fast and strong for her. It was more like he was walking her instead of the other way around. She’d always have scrapes all over her arms and legs after walking him, but she still insisted on doing it again and again.”

Ryouta takes a deep breath.

“And then one day I really fucked up. I didn’t take Hero’s leash from Aiko when I should have. There were a couple of parents with their kid and dog walking across the street, and Hero was never really a big fan of other dogs – don’t get me wrong, he’d bark and get in their faces, but never attacked them. Anyways, he ran across the road tugging Aiko with him.”

Ryouta pulls his pant legs up. “This is what happens when an autotruck completely shatters the bones from your ankles to your kneecaps.”

“What about—” Cassandra cuts herself off.

“It’s fine. Aiko was alright, but Hero uhh, didn’t make it. He took the full force of the hit.”

“Why didn’t the fucking truck avoid you?” Cassandra asks, pissed off on his behalf.

“It’s not its fault. You know, the system installed in those things detects the best available option to minimize death. It was either swerve and hit the family on the sidewalk, drive straight into a girl and dog, or swerve into the streetlamp and put everybody in the truck at risk – it was a narrow street. There was another family in there too, so the system figured that just going straight through somebody crossing the road where they shouldn’t be would be the most ethical choice. Can’t really be mad about it, but between that and what happened to my parents, I hope now you can understand why I hate self-driving vehicles. Anyways, now I’ve got a bunch of metal screws and plates in my legs, and I need these damn braces if I want to properly walk around. The problem is that I hated them as a kid, so I never wore them which meant I never got used to them, so now they hurt to use more than they’re supposed to. Wouldn’t be so uncomfortable to wear them if I would’ve just dealt with it as a kid.”

Serra walks up to him and tightly wraps her arms around him in a hug.

He wasn’t getting emotional before, but now that she’s so tenderly embracing him, he is.

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra says.

“It’s nothing for you to apologize for, Cass Cass. My dad is the one who refused to just let them amputate my legs to give me prosthetics, and it’s my fault in the first place for not taking better care of Hero and watching out for Aiko. At least I was able to save her.”

“You saved her?”

“Yeah. Pushed her out of the way first. It was the only thing I managed to do right that day. Then her parents moved away since they wanted to keep her away from me, but she was always sneaking out to meet me, so they had no choice but to move. So, in the end, I still lost her.”

“I’m sor—” Cassandra stops when she remembers Ryouta is just going to tell her not to apologize again.

Ryouta reaches a hand up to pet the top of Serra’s head before lifting her off of him so that she can read his lips. However, as soon as he opens them, she lunges forward to hug onto him again.

Cassandra sits down on the couch next to them.

“Come on, we’re supposed to be going out and doing stuff. I thought boyfriends were supposed to take their girlfriends out on big and fancy dates?” Ryouta asks.

“Deal with it,” Cassandra says, scooting closer so that she’s pressing up against his side. “We can just watch TV.”

“But Serra's deaf.”

“Subtitles.”

…

Ryouta feels like an idiot for completely forgetting that televisions still have subtitle options. He’s only ever watched subtitled anime and that’s on his computer.

“Besides, I’m not really into all that going out stuff. I see enough people during work. I don’t want to go out and see even more on my days off,” Cassandra says. “Sorry if that ruins your plans you had. Plus you need to rest anyways.”

“Alright, alright. I surrender. I’ll admit I’m not really that big on going out either. I just thought it’d be what you two want,” Ryouta says.

“Well, I don’t really care for it, and I’m pretty sure Serra here is happy just being with us no matter what we’re doing, so I doubt she cares.”

“Happy being with us?” Ryouta teases.

“W-well, obviously! It’s… it’s not like you have her all to yourself.”

“So I get the tsun, and she gets the dere? That’s not fair.”

“Stop talking in terms I don’t understand… but I think I get enough of it.” Cassandra grabs his free hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders, allowing her to further cuddle into his side and lean her head onto his shoulder.

This puts her face right in front of where Serra is.

Cassandra sees Serra’s smug smile from knowing that Cassandra couldn’t resist getting in on the affection.

“Penguin, on,” Ryouta commands.

“You named your TV Penguin? Really?” Cassandra asks.

“Don’t judge me. I like penguins.”

It dawns on Ryouta that he’s sitting here, on the couch, with one girl basically straddling him and hugging him while another cuddles against his side.

Furthermore, these are two girls that he has only known for about three weeks in reality – six weeks in-game.

Is this normal? Is this too fast?

He doesn’t know the answer to these questions, but he does know that he’s enjoying it regardless of the fact.

Right now, even if he just finished opening up about a bunch of sad things, is the happiest that he’s felt in a long, long time. He can’t remember the last time he felt this warm inside – the last time anybody was able to make him feel this happy and loved.

Even if these girls don’t love him yet—he’s sure that they couldn’t after such a short time—he still feels loved.

Though, never did he expect to be in a harem with two perfect girls cuddling with him at once on his couch. He’s still struggling to believe that any of this is real.

“What do you want to watch?” Ryouta asks.

“There’s a baseball game in the stadium today, so that should be on right now,” Cassandra says.

“You like baseball?”

“Yeah. Something weird about that?”

“Just didn’t think you’d be the sports kind of girl.”

“I used to play it as a kid, so it’s the only sport I care about.”

While the two non-deaf people talk, Serra adjusts her position so that she’s lying down over each of their laps. She has her legs hanging down over Cassandra’s lap while her head hangs upside-down off of Ryouta’s lap.

When Ryouta looks down at her, he sees her bangs hanging upside down and revealing her forehead.

She is too adorable. Though, now he'll want to see her without any bangs over her forehead more often.

“Oh, Penguin, turn on subtitles,” Ryouta commands.

The subtitles pop up on the bottom of the screen and take up an annoying amount of space. While such a thing is distracting to Ryouta and Cassandra, Serra isn’t bothered at all.

And so, rather than take them out on an extravagant date like he originally planned to, the three end up lounging around in his apartment until it’s time for dinner.