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

Harem Scarem: 009

It's mainly a shoujo thing, but there's an incredibly common trope in manga in which two or more delinquents surround a lone woman and try to pressure her into accompanying them...somewhere. I've never been clear what the end goal is: do delinquents in Japan try to pressure random women into sex? It's a little weird. Additionally, there's a high probability that if some random guy walks up and says, "Hey, this is my girlfriend"—true or not—the delinquents will back off. Because someone who is trying to isolate a woman in order to extort sex from her is going to care if she has a boyfriend? It makes literally no sense to me, and I'm honestly curious if this sort of behavior is actually common in Japan, or if it's just one of those things that happens in manga.

In any case, while I'm sure there are all sorts of scuzzy people on this side of the water, too, I've never seen someone in real life trying to bully a woman in that way.

Until now.

There were three of them, all of whom looked to be older than me by a few years, and they were clustered around a woman who was sitting at one of the tables arranged down the middle of the concourse in this particular part of the mall. I couldn't see her very well, thanks to Hooligans One, Two, and Three.

"Hey, babe, how about you come with us? We promise you'll have a good time," said Stooge #1.

Ugh, seriously, this was straight out of a manga in all the worst ways.

"No, thank you," said the woman. "I'm waiting for someone."

"Aw, you can ditch him," wheedled Stooge #2. "You'll have a way better afternoon with us."

The woman was silent. Maybe she was opting for staring at them in hopes they realized they were hassling her in the middle of a busy mall and came to their senses. It didn't work.

Meanwhile, I was agonizing. This was clearly a manga event and given that I was the only manga protagonist around—at least so far as I was aware—that meant it was aimed at me. In the normal order of things, I would have walked straight past these three without pausing. Their posture and clothing practically oozed belligerence, and I'm not a confrontational sort. Plus, it frankly wasn't my problem, and if the woman refused to accede to their demands it was unlikely anything would happen given the public setting.

However, the fact that it was a manga event meant that if I interfered I had a very good idea of how things would play out: I'd be the hero, the woman would be grateful, and—wait just a second. I knew from her voice that this woman wasn't Rachel (also I'd seen Rachel walking the other direction, so unless she could teleport that was obviously impossible), but Rachel was my love interest. Why was I running across this scenario for some stranger? And—the hoodlums shifted enough that I caught a glimpse of her face—a woman who was obviously older than me, at that?

I was getting very uneasy about this, but as I stood there dithering the three men were getting more aggressive. Stooge #1 reached forward and grabbed the woman's arm.

Alright, fine. I'd play this out, if only because I hated seeing someone targeted for nothing more than plotline purposes and I wanted to know if the sneaking suspicion I'd just had was correct. The only question was how to approach—pretending to be her boyfriend was classic, but I just couldn't believe that would put anyone as stupid as these three obviously were off. There was no way I could physically intimidate them, even if they didn't have numbers on their side; I couldn't see any mall security nearby; and—hmm, actually, maybe I could bluff them into backing off. Now that I thought about it, I did know the right way to deal with a situation like this.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. Operation White Knight was a go, nervousness be damned.

I stopped just out of reach of Stooge #1. "Hey," I said, a little louder than I thought was necessary. "She said she wasn't interested."