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

Harem Scarem: 025

I really wanted to get Dad's input on how he would handle the Samantha situation that I found myself in, but I also felt like that would be a major breach of trust and I was on thin ice with her anyway. In the end, I didn't say much on the way home, and Dad didn't pry.

Back home, I headed straight upstairs and collapsed into my thinking chair. I definitely could have handled that encounter better, but I'd also gotten a lot out of it. She might have been borderline furious when it happened, but Samantha had opened up to me. Not only that, but for a solid chunk of our not-a-date excursion I was interacting with the actual Samantha, instead of her tsundere persona. That was a solid win in my book, not least because I now knew for certain that it was a persona.

Okay, so then what did I need to do to get Samantha out of my harem?

I had no clue. Hell, I'd probably just shoved her further down the rabbit hole. I wasn't sure what possessed me to tell her she was cute, but that was definitely going to come back to bite me somehow.

Alright, so more basic then: what did Samantha want? That was pretty easy, actually. She clearly had some sort of social anxiety or something going on and she wanted to fit in and be able to make friends. If I'd understood her correctly, she wasn't in the harem due to romantic attachment so much as because it provided her with the social interaction she desired.

By that logic, then, if I could improve her social skills, increase her confidence in herself, or just find her a social circle she would presumably not need the harem.

Well, this was great; I wasn't confident that I could accomplish any of those things. How do you make friends for someone else? Maybe if Vickie were a high school student I might be able to finagle something with her help, but she wouldn't join us at Alburn High or another year.

Hmm. I suppose I might be able to increase Samantha's confidence in herself, but I was pretty sure that was going to require more than just talking to her. At minimum, I imagined she'd have to experience for herself that she can navigate social situations without her tsundere persona for anything I said to have any real weight. Which would mean that I somehow had to gain sufficient respect with her that my words have weight, and set up a situation where she could safely practice being sociable safely.

Yeah, that wasn't a high bar at all. Especially considering that the only ways I was likely to improve my relationship with her all involved her falling for me, making getting any closer to her an ever more dangerous balancing act.

I rubbed my eyes. It was so incredibly tempting to just leave Samantha to her own devices for a while and focus on someone else, but that was exactly what the harem genre thrived on. Incremental equal progress, taking one step back for every two steps forward...a harem storyline was a multi-armed seesaw with me at the fulcrum.

No, I definitely needed to stick to the plan, which meant I needed help.

I went to find Vickie.

# # #

I found Vickie sitting at the kitchen table working on homework. I stopped dead in the doorway and pointed dramatically. "Who are you and what have you done with my sister? Vickie would never sit at the table."

"Ha ha ha," said Vickie. "You're a riot. So how was your date with Samantha?"

I slid into a seat at the back of the table so I was facing the room. "It wasn't a date. And it went mostly okay."

"Riiiight."

"Look, have you and Samantha talked much? I know you've only actually met up a couple of times."