My Life is Not a Manga, or maybe...

Harem Scarem: 002

Warmth, sound, and blessed oxygen embraced me, gray uniformity disappearing as if it had never been. Seamus was still laughing, Hayden and Katie still mopping up, and Rachel was out of her chair and had taken a couple steps toward me.

"Are you alright, Xavier?" she asked. "That was a pretty big fall."

No, no I was not alright at all. I grabbed her by the upper arms.

She squeaked, "Eeep!", jerked under my hands, and immediately flushed in a way that was undoubtedly the cutest thing I'd ever seen her do, given that the entirety of our time together she had been demure and the picture of composure. However, I was in no state of mind to appreciate it.

"You're real," I told her fiercely.

"Um, yes? Are you alright? What happened?"

I wanted to know that myself. I let go of Rachel and whirled back around. Nothing looked out of place. I took two steps forward and swiped my arm through the air in front of me, fingers clawed. Nothing. Right, we were definitely in a new panel at this point. The fourth wall could be anywhere.

"Xavier?" queried Rachel, voice wavering.

Oh. Right. I must have looked like I was having some weird psychotic break after hitting my head or something. Wait, what did they even see? I was completely outside of my own reality, so shouldn't I have disappeared?

I whipped back around to face Rachel, who jumped backwards. Whoops, hadn't realized she'd taken a concerned step toward me. That was awkward, though I couldn't help noticing that she smelled really nice.

No, Xavier, focus. "What just happened?" I demanded. "What did you see?"

"You got up to get me something to wipe up with, and then you tripped," she said. Her eyes searched mine. "I didn't see you hit the ground, but the next thing I knew you were grabbing me." She colored slightly again.

Why did I notice that?

Wait. Wait wait wait. I was hyped up on adrenaline, but my mind was finally kicking into gear. Taken at face value, what I had just experienced was evidence that I was literally in a manga. Hell, even the manga's title explicitly told me as much, although it might have been some weird American manga knock-off, since normal Japanese manga don't print the title at the bottom of the page the way American books commonly do.

So. Let's say I was a character in a manga, and suddenly a good-looking girl I've met for the first time that day is randomly getting physically close to me and blushing instead of having a sane reaction to my erratic behavior. Like, I don't know, suggesting I visit a hospital, because clearly I must have suffered a head injury. And meanwhile I'm bemusedly noticing that, which is not like me at all. I mean, how many weeks was Emily trying to get my attention before she just asked me out point blank? I don't know myself, because I'm just not very good at picking up on other people's emotional contexts.

This situation raised all sorts of flags with me, both red and otherwise, because it meant precisely one thing: Rachel was a love interest.

I needed to get out of there, and fast. If I was a fictional character, that meant I had a lot less control over my own life than I thought. And even without knowing what genre I was in, love interests introduced in the first five pages before the protagonist's girlfriend makes a single appearance are never a good thing. I needed to go home, barricade myself in my room, and think long and hard about what I'd just experienced. Also, having a more private place for a complete meltdown and freakout seemed like a good idea.

I don't even remember what excuses I made, but even before the wait staff had fully contained Jesse's water disaster I was out the door and calling my mom. She picked me up six blocks away from the restaurant on the route home and asked no questions when I barely spoke to her all the way home and then immediately shut myself in my room when we got there.