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

Harem Scarem: 005

According to my mom, things shook down like this: thanks to his job, Rachel's father has to relocate regularly. This summer he was going to be out of the country entirely with several moves during the interim, so the Doyles—Seamus' family—volunteered to host Rachel for a few weeks.

Having Rachel as a house guest was a last-minute development, however, and the Doyles had already booked an extended two-week vacation on a cruise ship for their whole family. The cruise company had originally said there was room for Rachel as a late addition, but at the last minute reneged, leaving the Doyles with the quandary of what to do with their unexpected guest. Seamus' mom and my mom are close friends, so when Mom heard about the problem, she immediately suggested that Rachel stay with us instead. After all, we had an extra bed now that Sasha was out of the house, and that way Rachel wouldn't be stuck alone in a relative's house in a strange city for two weeks.

So in the span of a few hours, while I was out destroying my faith in movie previews and then subsequently chewing the fat with Hayden, Rachel became a house guest.

I was honestly not sure how to process this development, since it didn't fit into any of my expectations for how manga should work. Cohabitation with a love interest? Sure, that's a standby (usually for shoujo relationship dramas), but 100% of the time it involves two people who live away from their families. Having a love interest move into the family home, with the family still in residence? I'd never seen that particular plot twist, because how can you have heart-pounding scenarios crop up when your parents and sibling are constantly hanging around? I mean, if my parents were divorced and Rachel's dad married my mom, it would be one thing. Falling in love with a step-sibling is a tried and true manga trope (and thank goodness that wasn't the case here, because the whole "sibling as a romantic partner" thing—even if it isn't siblings related by blood—creeps me the heck out).

In any case, my exhaustive research of the last few weeks was proving useless, because without an established cliché to work with I wasn't quite sure how best to thwart the plot.

# # #

While Mom had described why Rachel was staying with us when I asked her, I didn't actually see Rachel herself much until the next morning when she joined us for breakfast. She spent the entirety of the evening moving her stuff into Sasha's room and getting situated by my parents.

The next morning being a Saturday, though, we all ended up at the breakfast table together for our weekly Dad-sperience.

Since he works at an office a decent commute away, Dad doesn't cook much during the week. Instead he always makes a big fancy breakfast on Saturday mornings that we're all expected to eat together (barring other commitments; there were a memorable couple of years when Sasha was doing early morning swim practice six days a week, and boy was Dad grumpy every weekend for a while). Unfortunately, while he loves breakfast, he also tends to experiment without bothering to think ahead or consult—well, anything at all, really. No recipes, online videos, or cooking classes for him, thank you very much. We've all pretty much given up on suggesting he look to outside sources at this point; it always just results in half an hour of grumbling about what it means to be an engineer. Never mind the fact that he hasn't written a line of actual code in years.

So it was with minor trepidation not only over seeing Rachel but also over discovering whatever Dad might have cooked up for our unexpected guest that I trooped downstairs the next morning.

Fortunately, it smelled like pancakes, which—barring his stint a couple years back when he tried every strange grain he could get his hands on—usually turn out delicious.

I was one of the last to get to the kitchen table thanks to taking the time to shower and get dressed, so by the time I arrived everyone was already seated: Mom, Rachel, and my younger sister Vickie back near the windows, and two spots open for Dad and me closer to the kitchen.