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

Harem Scarem: 006

At its heart, manga is about wish fulfillment. I mean I guess it's kind of obvious; that's pretty much most popular entertainment. And like a lot of commercialized art forms, a lot of pages are spent rehashing what works (or what the publishers believe will work, and given they have access to the sales data, I suppose they're the most likely to know).

So shoujo slice-of-life romance manga inevitably involves the heroine or love interest falling sick and their prospective partner dropping by to nurse them. Shounen battle manga always have a same sex rival who communicates just how much they actually care about the protagonist with their fists. And seinen rom-coms always involve some amount of lucky lechery.

What constitutes lucky lechery varies a lot across authors, but it usually involves a titillating or risqué situation that occurs thanks to happenstance (because hey, otherwise the main character would be a super creepy pervert, and that stuff is saved for doujinshi—self-published manga that is often too extreme or niche for traditional publishers).

In any case, it's now official that I'm stuck in some sort of seinen romance, because I am a bona fide lucky lecher.

Although she had evidently finished showering, Rachel was not in fact done in the bathroom. However, she hadn't locked the door. When I walked in, she was in the middle of changing into her clothes.

I stopped mid-step, and as embarrassing it is to admit it, I drank the sight in.

Rachel was standing at an angle with her back to the door, bent over with one leg flat footed and the other tiptoe on a little stool that we'd had in the bathroom forever as she pulled her sock on. She wasn't completely naked: she was wearing panties (pink, with a little white lace tastefully arrayed around the waist) and a bra (white, but this time with a little pink lace around the top of the cup). I'll be honest: she had a damn near perfect butt, and the slight glimpse I had of the curve of her breast was equally fascinating.

Now here's the thing: I've seen people bend over like this when stretching for track and field, and it's not sexy at all. Rachel, on the other hand, was gorgeous. It was like she was posing for the perfect shot in a manga. Which I guess she kind of was, not that she knew that.

At the sound of the door she glanced back over her shoulder and our eyes met. One awkward pause as Rachel's face quickly heated later, and I all but jumped back out the door, shutting it behind me. "I'm so sorry!" I called as I did so. "I thought you'd already gone back downstairs! I should have knocked!"

"Wait, Xavier," said Rachel through the door, and then she cracked it and stuck just her head around the side. She was still flushed with embarrassment, and I still thought it was far cuter than her normal implacable attitude. "I'm sorry, I forgot to lock the door. Please don't get all weird with me about this."

That...was a surprisingly mature response for a seinen rom-com love interest. I'd been about the flee down the hall in fear of being sent physically flying (slapstick violence being a classic response to a moment of lucky lechery). Which I guess made sense, given that Rachel was a normal person and not a cartoon character.

Shit, now I was the one whose face was heating up. "No, that was—I'm sorry, I really will be better about knocking. I'm not used to sharing the bathroom with anyone other than Vickie."

"Well, no harm no foul," said Rachel with a playful smile. "At least I'd put my underthings on."

Now that was an image I definitely didn't need. And actually, hold the phone: who puts their socks on immediately after their underwear? Was that normal? I mean she must have had a change of clothes with her; it's not like she was going to go all the way down the hall, down the stairs, and then through a second hall in nothing but her bra, panties, and socks. Also, socks? Indoors? It's not like Rachel wore thigh-high tights (another manga standard that I'd never seen in reality); they were legit, ankle-length socks.