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

Harem Scarem: 021

I woke the next morning feeling physically awful, but the best I'd been emotionally in a long while. I still wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get myself out of this situation, but just having someone know about it who was solidly on my side was incredibly liberating.

As an additional benefit, I guess my harem realized how ridiculous they'd been all visiting me at once, because despite another day at home recuperating I received not a single caller. By Saturday, I was starting to feel halfway human again, and after enjoying a surprisingly edible egg dish for breakfast—Dad seemed to have finally gotten a handle on the basics—I retreated upstairs to combine a strategy session with avoiding Rachel, because I had a really bad feeling that I was due for some sort of manga-related run-in with her. I wasn't convinced my little partial nudity a couple days ago was anything more than a warm-up; I'd had run-ins of one sort or another with every other harem member recently, and it felt like Rachel was due.

I'd just settled down into my thinking chair when someone knocked at the door. Before I could say anything, my dad just barged right in. Gee, thanks for respecting my privacy, Dad.

"Hey, kid. Your mother tells me that you've got a bit of a girl problem." He shut the door, pulled out the folding chair that I keep tucked under my desk, sat down, and cleared a spot for the notebook and pen he was carrying by simply shoving stuff into a pile out of the way. This is why I don't usually want my parents in my room. Dad's great, but he's got no appreciation for a properly organized utter mess.

"You could say that."

Dad sighed theatrically. "Well, son, when a man loves a woman very much—"

"What? No, that's not—"

Dad laughed and waved me back down. "I know, I know, kid. You're stuck in a harem, and your mom wants me to help you brainstorm a way out. We are going to have a sex talk right now, though."

"What the—no way, why?!" I'm not a religious person, but I was seriously tempted to take up prayer right then in there on the off chance that a divine miracle could prevent a repeat of the fiasco of my thirteenth birthday.

"Simple!" said Dad with a huge grin as he folded back the cover of his notebook and uncapped his pen. "Manga don't include sex talks."

# # #

Ten minutes later, I had a renewed and comprehensive appreciation for the ins and outs of heterosexual intercourse—pun very much intended, thanks so much for that one, Dad—and Dad was happily tearing up a piece of paper into infinitesimal flakes.

I could see why Mom looped him in so fast. He was really good at this.

"So, on to the topic at hand," said Dad as he carefully deposited his paper scraps in the dusty waste basket under my desk. "I don't have any direct personal experience with harems outside of the Lab and my admittedly febrile imagination—"

I groaned. Really, Dad? Right after the sex talk repeat?

"—but there's one question you have to ask yourself regardless of genre: when the manga ends, what do you want to have accomplished? No, don't answer right away! This is important. See, your mother said you were pretty worked up about being trapped in a manga, and I can understand that. Having control of your life suddenly wrenched away is horrible. But here's the thing: you never had control of your life in the first place. You just didn't have some ineffable force screwing around with you. If you keep that expression on your face, it's going to stick like that, young man. Think about this. You have a broad grounding in manga, and judging from what your mother said you identified your genre incredibly quickly. That means that you are uniquely suited to take advantage of your situation. Now, I'm guessing Emily was a casualty of your genre and you're probably still salty about that, but I'm telling you this in all seriousness, Xavier—" Dad leaned over and stared at me hard. "—You will never have a harem of beautiful women fawning over you again, because that's not how reality works. So, I'll ask you again: what do you want to accomplish?"