Vol 1 Chapter 2 – Love is Always a HurricaneThere’s No Way a Guy Like That Exists

I met him at a specialty card game shop.

The new school term had just begun, and I had just turned in my part of the manuscript.

I’d slipped out of the club room to avoid the inevitable harassment from the other members—”Help me, President! I’m at my absolute limit, sire! If you don’t help, I’m gonna pinch your big ol’ nipples, ya hear me!”—and decided to stop by the card shop in the station’s central plaza to soothe my soul.

That’s when I saw a rather large person standing there.

He had the air of someone debating whether or not to go in.

He was probably two heads taller than my 140 cm, so I’d guess he was around 180 cm.

He was wearing the same high school uniform blazer as me, the only difference being that he wore slacks, not a skirt.

It was a man. A rare sight.

Well, it’s not like they’re rarer than pandas, since about one in twenty people are men. You see them about as often as you’d see a tanuki in the countryside. But seeing one in a card game shop, at least, was unusual.

“…”

He just stood there silently.

He was a big guy, sure, but he wasn’t blocking the entrance.

I could have just walked past him, but in that moment, I decided to work up a little courage.

What should I do? Maybe I should just forget it.

Just as he made a face like that and turned to leave…

“Are you interested in card games?”

I called out to him.

Was my voice trembling? It probably was, a little.

I was nervous.

The only times an otaku like me had ever spoken to a boy were for purely functional reasons.

At most, it was picking up an eraser for the boy next to me in class.

Aside from that memory from elementary school, I’ve had zero contact.

It’s not like I have a father, anyway.

I’m what you’d call a test-tube baby, one of the many “children of artificial insemination”, which isn’t all that uncommon in the world.

Sperm, which has been washed and concentrated, is injected into the uterus in line with a woman’s ovulation cycle.

That’s how my mother got pregnant with me.

Even if our country allows polygamy, there just aren’t enough men to go around.

Now that science has advanced, the government provides sperm from sperm banks to unmarried women and offers living assistance as a countermeasure to the declining population—but, well, whatever.

My personal story isn’t that important.

“…I’m not just interested, I play them. Online, that is.”

He answered.

His gaze fell on me.

Being looked down upon from such a height made my heart pound.

I managed to get my next line out.

“You play online? So you’re a player on Arena, then. Is this your first time playing in person?”

“A first time… well, yeah, it’s my first. That’s right. It’s my first time since being born. Yes.”

His words were vague.

It sounded like it was his first time, but something about it felt off.

It was almost as if he was saying he’d played before he was born, but that couldn’t be right.

I decided to interpret it as him feeling it was strange to call himself a first-timer when he’d spent countless hours playing online.

“Pardon me for asking, but it looked like you were about to leave?”

“Well, yeah. I wanted to play, but I don’t own a single physical card, I don’t know the etiquette of playing in person, and there’s no one here anyway… so I was wondering what to do. I always imagined card shops would be a lot more bustling.”

“Ah, I see.”

The inside of the game shop was indeed deserted.

There were about 40 seats, but not a single person was using them.

Even if you play nonstop online, the types of cards available online and in real life can be different.

“Do you know which cards are legal in the current environment—in Standard?”

“Yes, I looked that up beforehand, just in case.”

“I see, I see. You know, it’s just a bad time of day.”

My heart wouldn’t stop racing.

I’ve always been confident in my public speaking; people around me think I can talk my way out of anything.

I’m the one who got our four-person club (a doujinshi circle, really) officially recognized by the school.

And not just any club—our otaku club, the “Modern Culture Research Club”.

So, so…

So what does any of that matter?

My heart wasn’t just pounding; it had turned into an eight-beat berserker.

He said it was his ‘first time since being born’ playing a card game.

Well, this is my ‘first time since being born’ having a real conversation with a boy!

“This isn’t exactly some back-alley tavern filled with unemployed slackers all year round. The player base is mostly students and working adults. People usually gather for tournament events on weekends, or after 7 p.m. on weekdays.”

Don’t stutter, don’t be subservient, don’t blush!

C’mon, me!!

Activate Skill: “Witty Banter”! Activate Skill: “Fast Talker”! Activate Skill: “Poker Face”!

I explained all this while thinking such nerdy things.

He looked with sad eyes at a poster on the wall.

It listed the event schedule.

“…Weekdays are a no-go, then. My mom gets mad if I come home late. I have an eight o’clock curfew. Eight o’clock.”

“Then yeah, weekdays are impossible.”

He sighed.

Isn’t it a bit overprotective for a 15-year-old boy to not be allowed out at eight at night?

That’s what his expression said.

Hmm, I wonder.

I mean, we don’t live in some barbaric age where men get dragged into dark alleys and assaulted or kidnapped, so it’s not like he’d be attacked by a woman just for being out at seven.

But if I were a mother, and I’d given birth to a son, I’d be worried sick.

I don’t think his mother is being overprotective.

“I have an eight o’clock curfew, too, because of dinner. All parents are overprotective.”

Besides, my house is pretty similar.

In my case, it’s just that we have a rule about eating dinner together.

My mother is a businesswoman, and she’s adamant about cherishing family time, even if it’s just for dinner.

As her daughter, I want to respect that.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Was I able to ease his frustration, even a little?

The thought alone was enough to calm the eight-beat berserker in my heart.

Hey now, this conversation isn’t flowing too badly, is it? Huh?

The berserker inside me even offered some advice.

Keep it up, me.

“If you’d like, shall I be your opponent?”

“I don’t have any cards. Do they sell starter kits here?”

“Oh, that’s okay, I have two decks with me. Excuse me!” I called to the clerk. “May we borrow a space?”

After getting permission from the clerk, we borrowed a table.

We sat down, but even seated, he was tall.

He took off his school blazer, leaving him in just his necktie and dress shirt.

Whoa, this guy is ripped.

Is he a pin-up model or something?

Some idols are skinny, but I prefer the muscular type, so he was more my taste.

It was… appealing.

If I had to name my favorite part of a man, it would be his hands.

His thick palms, which surely came from daily strength training, took the deck from me.

Despite saying it was his first time, he expertly drew cards from the deck and began to turn over the sleeved cards.

“May I see the decklist for a moment? It’s hard to form a strategy without knowing what’s in it.”

“Of course.”

Please, look as long as you want.

Do your best, my deck.

I don’t know what you’re doing your best at, but withstand his gaze.

“It’s an aggro deck. Seems easy to use.”

“It’s a type of deck that can end the game in just a few minutes.”

My brain felt like it would boil over from excitement and overthinking in the next few minutes.

But anyway, this was a game.

I just had to focus on the game and somehow keep the conversation going.

I prayed that as long as we had a shared hobby, we could somehow communicate.

“Ah, my apologies. Before we start.”

He said what he should have said from the beginning.

He looked intently at the name tag sewn onto my blazer’s patch.

From that, he could at least make out my last name.

“I’m Kajiwara. Ichirou Kajiwara. It’s a pleasure to play with you, Takahashi-senpai.”

Being called Takahashi-senpai.

In that moment, with just those words, my heart throbbed intensely.

A gust of wind blew past.

It was the storm of my youth.

There’s a line from a legendary manga I love.

—Love is always a hurricane.