Chapter Text
Komeiji Rei was a mostly average-looking teenage boy, though he stood out a bit with his bright red hair and amber eyes.
He wasn’t exactly great at socializing, but he generally had good behavior. However what stood out was his uncanny ability to ace any test with little to no preparation, as if he already had the knowledge of a college student at a young age.
Still, it was a rather large surprise when he discovered he had been invited to be transferred to Chiba Academy.
The Chiba Academy.
The surprise was exacerbated when he found out Raiden Ryoma was the one who personally recommended him.
Rei didn’t know why he managed to garner the attention of the head of the Massive Electric Corporation, considering such attention wasn’t exactly easy to come by.
Though he had many questions, the prospect of studying at Chiba Academy was enough for him to ignore said questions and accept the invitation.
/////////////////////
Rei’s eyes darted across the classroom, seeing everyone look at him with some slight intrigue. He thought about dumping ice over his head to calm down before introducing himself.
“Hello everyone. My name is Komeiji Rei. I hope we can get along well,” he said before bowing. He could hear some murmuring, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it. He expected that he wasn’t going to fit in particularly well considering the circumstances, but he was used to being alone, and socializing wasn’t his strong suit anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to him.
The class teacher directed him to the only empty seat in the classroom, and he promptly sat down there. He could hear some more whispering and murmuring, but like before, he didn’t pay much attention to it.
“Komeiji?”
He turned to his left to see the heiress of the ME Corporation.
“Raiden Mei,” she introduced herself, her voice having a hint of elegance. “I hope we can get to know each other well.”
Rei didn’t quite know how to respond, so he simply nodded. They looked at each other rather awkwardly for a few seconds before wordlessly looking away.
He couldn’t deny that he found Mei attractive, however.
/////////////
School went on rather uneventfully. Nobody talked to Rei, which he expected.
It was now lunchtime, which was a great opportunity for him to realize he had forgotten to bring his lunch. He groaned internally before burying his face into the desk.
“Komeiji?”
Slightly startled, he shot up and turned to face Mei.
“Y-Yes?”
“I heard you say you forgot your lunch.”
Rei screamed internally, realizing he had voiced his thoughts out loud. “Yeah, I guess.”
Mei took her bento box and showed it to him. “You can have some of my bento if you want.”
He froze for a bit. “Uhm… nah, it’s fine. I wasn’t really hungry anyway.”
Mei smiled before shaking her head. “I insist.”
“No, no, please, you really don’t have to.”
This back-and-forth continued for about two minutes until Rei felt something stuffed into his mouth.
The class turned and looked in awe as they witnessed Mei stuff some crackers from her bento box into Rei’s mouth. Rei sat there wide-eyed, his mind failing to process what was going on. The crackers were delicious, but they were the last thing on his mind right now.
Mei realized what she had done and immediately withdrew her hand.
“A-Aah! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what got over me!”
“Haaahhhhh… haaa… aaa…” was all Rei could utter before falling to the floor.
“Rei!? Are you okay?”
Everyone else simply watched and whispered to each other as they watched Mei scrape Rei off the floor.
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//////////////////
Day 2 of school.
Rei sloppily put down his bag and tiredly let his head hit the desk. After that one particular incident where Mei impulsively fed him some crackers, he kept thinking about it and was unable to sleep, hence why he was so sleep-deprived.
But there were still more problems to come.
During recess, many of the boys in the class would surround him.
“Komeiji, how do you get so close to Raiden so quickly?”
“What did Raiden feeding you feel like?”
“Man, you’re so lucky that you get to be with the Queen of Thunder!”
“It looked like you two were dating.”
He didn’t understand why he was getting all of this attention. After all, the only thing he did was accidentally groan out loud about forgetting his bento box. It wasn’t like he could give any tips or anything.
He also had the sneaking and uncomfortable suspicion that they held Mei in high regard simply because she was the heiress of a large conglomerate.
/////
A tree.
A peculiar tree.
A peculiar tree that didn’t feel real. It felt imaginary. Yet here it was.
A tree that emanated a yellow aura, its branches cascading infinitely in every direction possible.
Each branch seemed to contain a different reality. A different world, a different timeline, perhaps. It looked like something out of fiction. Probably was.
He squinted at one of the branches, and he saw what looked like the world he was in right now, but with some small differences. Things shuffled around in different places with no explanation, other than that this was just a timeline where things happened a bit differently.
Some branches were short. When he tried to look at those, they seemed to reveal a destroyed world, one where humanity was rendered extinct for some inexplicable reason.
Others were long. Very long. Possibly infinitely long. He had gone to look at them, but they showed almost the same thing and they weren’t particularly interesting.
But what remained the same between all of these branches was a strange, purplish-pink essence. It looked a bit like the Honkai. He did not have much of an idea of what it was or its effects, but considering that the destroyed environments observable in all of the short branches were drowned in said essence, it probably wasn’t something good.
But there was something else.
A branch that stood out. A branch somehow more peculiar than the tree itself.
It was colored blue instead of yellow and looked more disorderly than the other branches as if it had been forcibly grafted onto the tree itself. The tree seemed to reject it, the trunk seemingly trying desperately to remove the scourge that was forcibly grafted onto it, yet it for some inexplicable reason could not.
He tried looking into it.
...
He saw himself.
He wondered if he was staring into the world he was in.
Curious, he tried to look further beyond in the branch, only to suddenly feel like he had been hit in the head with a large blunt force.
The image of the tree slowly faded into the darkness.
…
…
“Rei! Wake up!”
It felt funny. Or rather, it didn’t feel like anything at all. Was he dead? Did something straight out of an anime happened? Or maybe-
A splitting headache crashed his train of thought as his vision returned to him.
“Rei! You’re awake!”
He blinked a few times to clear up his vision before groggily looking around. He seemed to be sitting on the floor against the wall. As his vision cleared, he noticed that Mei was sitting right next to him, a hint of worry combined with slight relief written on her face.
“M… Mei? Wha… What happened?”
“You fell over and hit your head on the floor.”
So that’s what happened.
…What was that tree-like thing I saw?
Why did I see myself in it?
“Are you feeling okay? Is anything wrong? Do you need to see the school nurse?” Mei continued asking him.
“Y… Yes, I’m fine, I only have a headache. I think I’ll pass on the visit to the school nurse,” Rei said with a slight smile.
Despite that, the teacher insisted he go, and he also told Mei to help bring him there.
/////////////
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A month later
/////////////
Mei noticed that Rei, unlike many others in the school, did not care about her societal status, but in a good way.
Many of her classmates would approach her, trying to befriend her, but she could see that they were trying to get close to her due to her being the heiress of the ME Corporation. Rei, meanwhile, simply saw her as Mei, and his behavior around her felt more… genuine.
It was the first time she felt like she had a genuine friend who was there for her, and she was grateful for it.
It felt nice.
…
But she still didn’t know why it warranted her inviting him to her home.
She screamed internally at herself for hours on end after she impulsively blurted that invitation to him, and what’s worse was that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him that was a mistake, and she couldn’t bring herself to say no after Rei, whose face was furiously red, said “yes”.
She hoped to God that nobody else would see them in her room, lest they get the idea they were dating.
While the two tried to study for an upcoming test together, instead of studying, they ended up staring blankly at the cover of a chemistry book while trying their hardest to not take a glance at each other and also trying to not accidentally stumble into less… appropriate thoughts.
Both of them seemed to fail horribly as their faces turned infinitely red.
After a few hours of sitting very still with nothing productive done, Rei decided that he should take his leave considering it was getting late.
Definitely not because he felt like his heart was about to jump right out of his chest from how fast it was beating.
He was about to say goodbye when fate decided it would be a great opportunity to reenact a horribly cliché trope in romcoms.
He tripped over and accidentally sent Mei to the floor with him.
He ended up right on top of her.
Their faces were close. Too close, to the point where they could feel each other’s breath crashing into their faces.
A very, VERY awkward moment of silence passed.
Then they both screamed.
Rei immediately shot back up and quickly blurted “IMSOSORRYIMSOSORRYSORRYSORRYSORRYIMSORRY” before bolting out of the room and the mansion as a whole.
Mei meanwhile seemed to have passed out on the floor from the shock of it all.
/////////////
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Both Rei and Mei buried their heads into their desks, still recovering from what had happened yesterday. They did not dare to speak to each other or even take a peek at each other.
Unfortunately, this was picked up by everyone else in the classroom as “evidence” that they were obviously dating but were too shy to show it.
During recess, when both Rei and Mei ran to opposite corners of the school due to their still-lingering embarrassment, they would be barraged by questions constantly, usually about their relationship status. After all, the heiress of the ME Corporation being in a relationship with someone was a big deal.
While Mei would just keep denying it until recess ended, Rei resorted to running away instead, which did not work out so well considering that the others would keep chasing him so they could ask him for “relationship advice”.
It took a few days for Rei and Mei to stop furiously blushing when seeing each other, and thankfully by then, the gossip had died down just enough for them to be granted peace during recess.
One of their classmates in the meantime had to move away, and she had originally sat in the only other seat that was right beside Mei.
“Good morning,” the class teacher began. “As you may all know, Hikari has left Chiba Academy, and this class now has an opening for a new student.”
A certain white-haired girl rushed into the room, nearly tripping over in the process.
“HI!”
Her shrill voice made Rei feel like he had gone deaf.
“I’m Kiana Kaslana! Nice to meet you all!” This was followed by her attempting to do a pose but failing horribly and falling over onto the floor.
Needless to say, this was a rather unorthodox way to introduce oneself on the first day of school.
Mei chuckled a bit from her antics, while Rei used up all of his concentration to resist the urge to cover his ears to not be rude.
“Oh boy,” he internally groaned as he watched Kiana sit in the seat next to Mei.
/////////
Lunchtime, again.
Kiana shuffled through her bag for a few minutes, her movements getting more frantic until she grabbed the bag and turned it upside down out of desperation. Her notebook fell straight onto her face, causing a few classmates to snicker.
Still, she had no luck.
“Come on!” She pouted. “I forgot my lunch!”
Mei, hearing this, decided to help her out and share some of her bento with her. She held out her bento box to her, and Kiana’s eyes immediately lit back up again.
Mei smiled. “I’m not particularly hungry today, so you can have some of my bento-”
She snatched the box from her hands.
“…if you want.”
Kiana excitedly opened the purple bento box and started drooling at the sight of Mei’s cooking, and without hesitation, she started eating.
Mei and Rei watched in horror as Kiana proceeded to consume the entire contents of the bento box within 30 seconds.
“It’s sooooo gooood!” she exclaimed with her mouth still full.
She then proceeded to return the now-empty bento box to Mei with zero remorse for what she had done.
Rei nudged Mei before slowly handing over his bento box to her under the table. “Uhm… Mei? You can have my bento if you want…”
“N… No, you don’t have to, Rei.”
“I insist.”
Mei sighed as she took his bento box.
“Wow! Mei-senpai, you still have more? Can I try so-”
“NO!”
“Aww.”
/////////
“Rei?”
“Hm?”
“Can you help me out with my homework? I still don’t quite understand how to do it.”
“Sure thing.”
…
As Rei was busy explaining to Mei how to write the ionic equation for iron reacting with dilute hydrochloric acid, they were interrupted by the voice of a very particular girl.
“Wow!”
Before they could react, they were suddenly squeezed together.
“Mmmfph!”
“You look so cute together!” Kiana expressed with her eyes sparkling in excitement. It seemed she had forgone thinking about the implications of what she was saying.
“Eh!?” Rei and Mei blurted together, their faces getting redder by the second.
“Hmmm…” Kiana thought for a moment before a light bulb lit in her head. “Aha! I think you two should marry!”
An awkward silence filled the air.
…
Mei somehow gathered the courage to utter a single word.
“M-Marry?”
Kiana nodded enthusiastically.
“Uh-” Rei faked a cough before continuing. “It’s too early for tha-”
“HUH??” Mei gasped.
“You don’t like him?” Kiana asked her, seemingly unaware that she was wading into extremely dangerous territory.
“I-I mean, I-I guess I d-do like h-him a bi-”
Mei realized what she had said a bit too late.
Rei at this point was on the verge of passing out.
“WHAT?!”
“HAH?”
Kiana pouted. “Then there’s no excuse for both of you! You-”
“Uhiforgotsomethingimportantineedtoleavenowsorryokaythanksbye!!!” Mei then ran out of the classroom, covering her face. She was glad nobody else was in the classroom, or it would’ve been catastrophic.
She hoped to God that Kiana wouldn’t run her mouth, or she would have a lot of explaining and denying to do.
“HEY!” Kiana yelled before giving chase.
Meanwhile, Rei just sat there, his mind still short-circuiting from what had happened. He tried his hardest to not imagine what it would be like being married to Mei.
…
…
Unfortunately for him, he simply couldn’t resist.
The married couple sat together on a rooftop, admiring the full moon in the sky that shone with a soothing white light.
“The moon is beautiful tonight, isn’t it Rei?”
“Of course it is.”
He thought for a moment before continuing.
“But I know something- no, someone who is more beautiful.”
“And who may that be?”
“Of course it’s you, Mei. Who else would it be?”
The pair faced each other, smiling, before leaning towards each other, their lips almost touching.
“I love you, Rei.”
“I love you too, Mei.”
…
Rei’s train of thought was interrupted when he found himself on the classroom floor.
His embarrassment continued to rise as he realized what he had been daydreaming about, and he simply resigned to curl up into a ball and stay like that until his face turned less red or when recess ended.
Still, one thought lingered in his mind.
…Do I like her?
Maybe… Maybe I do.