7 This is the Side Character's Fight - Part 2

After practically flooding the entire walkway, Shin's mother handed us some towels to dry off.

We wiped ourselves down for a little before sitting down on some couches in his living room. "So who are these girls you've brought home today?" I could hear his mother questioning him. He replied with a irritated, "Don't say it like that," before ignoring his mother completely. He sat down with us and told us about his plans. "The reason I couldn't come later is because I was planning to do some work with Teru and Rin later today, here."

Oh, he was friends with Teru? "What were you guys going to do?" I asked him.

"We were just planning on doing some homework together and hang out, I guess." I see, well now that we were also at his house, I wasn't sure how long I was going to stay there. "When are they coming over?" He thought about it before checking some texts on his phone. Yui was still silently listen to our conversation. "Oh! They're actually coming over in fifteen minutes." Hold on, fifteen minutes? That was sooner than I expected. "Do you want us to go before they come?" I queried. "No, it's fine, you guys can stay, the rain is pretty heavy at the moment anyways so it's best you stayed here for now I think, unless you really want to go." I pondered about the concept and decided to stay after all. "Yeah, I think I'll stay." I wanted to talk to Teru anyways.

It seemed after hearing that we would be staying at Shin's house, Yui's face suddenly became red. She had been fiddling with her thumbs this entire time as well, similar to when I first talked to her at the Japanese restaurant. Shin diverted the attention and started to talk to Yui, "So why did you decide that you wanted to play soccer today?" I didn't expect him to ask such a hard-to-answer question at this time. It seemed to have caught Yui off guard as she frantically thought of a response. She couldn't tell him that she wanted to play just to hang out with him. "U-um... I just thought it would be fun..." Her voice was trailing off at the end. It was a boring answer and it wasn't long before Shin realised just how shy she was.

The three of us sat there silently until he decided to turn of the television. It was just a plain news channel and we just watched as the reporter listed off some pretty standard stuff. All of a sudden the doorbell rang with a musical tone. "That's probably them." Shin got up and walked over to the front door, Yui and I decided to stay on the couch and wait for them.

The three boys walked in and were surprised as they saw us. We all had an awkward meet-and-greet before they also decided to take seats on the couch. They stared at us for a little while noticing our wet hair and still soggy clothes. "So you guys want to watch a movie?" Offered Shin. I guess their plans of doing homework were swiftly cancelled. "Yeah." They all agreed in unison. We were seated on the couch from left to right, in the order of Yui, Me, Shin, Teru and Rin. "Do you have any movie suggestions?" No one gave a response as Shin flicked through some of the movie choices on the television. "Apathy at Gifted Academy looks interesting" I told them.

"Hmm, it looks interesting, what are you thoughts?" No one complained about the choice so unilaterally we decided to watch my suggestion.

Time passed by pretty quickly. The movie was very interesting, it delved deep into psychological concepts and manipulation in a school environment. Everyone was pretty hooked on the movie and when it finally ended, we all looked at each other, satisfied. "Well that was pretty good!" Now that it was over, we had to all decide on something else to do. "How about we play a board game..." It was the first time that Yui had said something in a while so no one disagreed with her thought.

Shin went over to a cupboard and looked through some board games, "you guys want to play Monopoly?" No one was particularly interested in Monopoly so he continued looking through, he checked the number of player on the side of each of the boxes and eventually pulled one out, "well the only other five player board game is Game of Life." Everyone seemed to be pretty familiar with the game, as was I.

It was basically a Monopoly style game where you moved around the board and tried to earn as much money as possible, the only difference was that it had a lot more 'realistic' elements like marriage and school and so on.

We sat around the board in a circle and picked our gold tokens which would represent us on the board. Yui was a book, Rin was a house, Shin was a soccer ball, Teru was a battleship and I was a potato... One of Shin's cats came over and rubbed her face on my leg. Her fur was all nice and fluffy and soft to the touch. That reminded me, I had wanted to get a cat for a while now.

Anyways, the game began and the first few turns went by without much happening. Yui landed on a 'choice square' and chose between hanging out with friends and staying home alone, she chose the hanging out with friends and got the 'extrovert' card. It was quite ironic. A few more turns later, Teru landed on an 'event square' where he saved a child who was drowning in the ocean, he was then rewarded with a 'social hero' card, 'lifesaver' card and $1000. He seemed to be the Main Character no matter what he did...

It was the beginning of the middle of the game and most of us were graduating high school. Rin landed on a 'misfortune square' where he found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him and receiving a 'low self-esteem' card. After being ridiculed by Shin, he also immediately landed on a 'misfortune square' the turn after, being robbed and losing $500. Almost for the entire game up until this point, I had not landed on any square of significance, just slowly meandering through school and life, eventually getting to graduation with no events.

Teru eventually became the owner of a huge conglomerate industry, with a net worth of over ten million dollars. Shin ends up hitting an 'event square' and gets married to Rin, much to Rin's, Yui's and his distain. Yui ends up working at a corporate job and lands on an 'event square' winning the lottery of one million dollars.

The game slowly reached it's conclusion as everyone began making their way closer to the end of the board. Everyone's net worth was counted and the order was;

1. Teru - Net Worth $23,000,000

2. Yui - Net Worth $1,047,000

3. Me - Net Worth $250,000

4. Rin - Net Worth $98,000

5. Shin - Net Worth $60,000

The game was quite disheartening to every single person except Teru. I ended up living my entire life without a single event, bathing in loneliness and watching from the background. Yui was trapped in a corporate job almost her entire life, before hitting the jackpot just months before the end of the game. Shin made nearly no money his entire life and had basically no education. Rin never had a functional relationship and was forced to marry Shin which was not what he wished for.

The mood of the room became depressed. "Hey... you guys have something else you want to do...?" Shin had completely lost his happy-go-lucky demeanour from before. This was honestly just saddening. I decided to use this opportunity to have a chat with Teru.

"Hey Teru, how's your relationship with Ichika?" I asked.

"Ichika?! Um... we're just friends at the moment." Ugh, this was so generic romance protagonist.

"So have you thought about dating her?"

"Dating...? I mean, I haven't really thought about it..." The perfect deflection, an answer which is neither yes nor no. It seemed that all romance protagonist had this hidden power. Although, the answer is basically guaranteed just by his reaction. In that case, I wonder what would happen to the story if I started dating the Male Lead?

I wonder...

Hey author.

I turned to Teru.

"If you're not dating someone at the moment, do you want to go out with me?"