Rich people’s houses are seriously the best.

Yuuya stretches in the immaculately fluffy bed, and rubs his hands over the fabric of his immaculately plush pajamas. He’s thankful he went to bed too drunk to rationally understand the world around him; even though it made it harder to actually sleep, it at least he didn’t quite pick up on the lack of a warm body next to him.

The place even smells nice. This is wonderful.

Yuuya pulls his bag out from under his bed and pulls on the single outfit in his bag, something he had brought just in case he wrecked his uniform at school. He lays it out on the floor and gives it a critical inspection. The jeans are…questionable. The top is a dark knit cardigan and a low-cut V-neck T-shirt. Almost, but not quite appropriate.

He gets an idea, and takes out his school uniform. He matches the cardigan to the dress shirt, and adds a spare silver necklace he had bought and never got around to taking out of his bag. His jeans work a little better with this set. Like this, he looks at least up to standard of a rich and stylish person…Probably.

Yuuya opens the drawer and fishes out the line of knife clips. It’s troublesome, but learning hand-to-hand combat is even more troublesome, and he doesn’t want to be defenseless, so a bunch of knives in his pants it is. He winds it carefully around his leg and hooks it at the top. To make sure it’s secured, he depends on muscle memory to check if he can grab at the ones clipped at his front, back, and side. They’re all positioned correctly.

Satisfied, Yuuya pulls on his clothes, puts the rest (including pajamas) in his bag, and goes out into the hall.

The hallway is gaudy too, with these wall fixtures, plant vases, and seemingly endless red carpet. Yuuya wonders what the dining hall is like.

With his bag slung over his shoulder, he meanders around, looking as arrogant and rich as he can. He doesn’t…actually know where he is. He just opened doors until he started finding bedrooms, before. And he was too drunk to pay attention to his surroundings. What is he going to do…

This goes on for another painful ten or so minutes, until Yuuya finds himself on some third-floor study, desperate for a staircase in the very least.

There’s limits to house sizes….even hotels aren’t this decadent…

Yuuya glares at the ceiling. Right…so, what should he do from now on? Jump out the window? Is jumping out the window okay? He’s going to do it. It’s a shame he’s missing out on breakfast, but it can’t be helped. Going to breakfast might make him noticeable anyway. So it’s fine if he jumps out the window.

Yuuya marches down the halls until he finds a place with a tree, and unlocks the window. He throws it open to a brilliant sunny day, marked with the white thread being a bit farther to the left. Hm. It hasn’t moved much for the past two weeks. That’s…probably something to worry about.

No…no, it’s something for his family to worry about. Yuuya isn’t involved! Yuuya will remain uninvolved until adulthood!

He fishes an elastic wire from his bag and adds a knife from around his leg to the clip at the end. Satisfied, he starts spinning it. In terms of skill, he’s full marks on grabbing knives, but in terms of doing anything with them, they’re all failing grades. He is probably going to have to do this a few times.

He throws the knife. It hits the canopy of leaves and then flops around uselessly, as expected.

If only the line was long enough to throw it to the ground…Yuuya clicks his tongue and tries again.

This goes on for what must have been a half-hour. Logically, he should give up and try to find the stairs again, but he’s committed himself to the task, and nothing can stop him.

“…What are you doing?”

…Nothing.

“Excuse me?”

Nothing!

“Is that a knife?”

Yuuya bounces the knife back up to his hand and glares at the person talking to him. A girl with raw, untapped beauty, lovely long straight brown hair, and beautiful pink eyes. His eyes flick to above her head. A Love Pink line, and a bad one…It’s not irrevocably awful, but Yuuya still flushes and scrapes his tongue against his tooth.

Of more concern is how shabby she looks. A stained t-shirt and jeans that are falling apart around the seams? Really?

“…Yes.”

“Why…are you throwing a knife out the window…”

“I want to get outside quickly.”

“So you…”

Yuuya chews on his lip until he pulls the skin off. He ends up mumbling his response.

“…I got lost.”

The girl wanders over to the window and peeks outside.

“So you want to get the knife into the tree?”

“Mn…But I can’t throw it hard enough, and my aim is bad to begin with…it’s always slowed down by the canopy.”

“I got it. Hand it over.”

Yuuya blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s fine…because…” She turns to him, looking like she’s about to cry. “Because I’m also lost.”

…Almost painfully predictable. Yuuya is unlikely to ever succeed in getting the knife past the leaves, though, so he passes it over.

Like him, she spins it a bit. After a few seconds, she lets out a slow, careful breath, and releases it. It goes flying, and to Yuuya’s awe, cuts straight through the canopy and lands in the wood with a loud, satisfying THOCK.

“Okay…I won’t be able to reproduce that, so I’ll try it first.”

He gets up on the windowsill, wraps the wire around his arm, winds even more of it around his other hand, and jumps.

Even trying to hold himself up, the whiplash nearly yanks his arms out of their sockets. He screams at the sudden pain, but it’s gone with only a little soreness, and he manages to swing himself until he’s in the tree. It takes a bit of investigating to find where she had embedded it; a large, thick branch. The sudden weight of Yuuya plummeting a floor and a half had dislodged half of it.

This doesn’t seem terribly safe.

He pries the knife out, puts it back in its sheath, and throws it back up to the girl.

The tree is big, but twisty, so Yuuya can descend down half the trunk before he has to jump. The distance still sends shockwaves of pain through his legs when he lands, but they aren’t broken, so he’ll call it a success.

Yuuya leans against the tree and waits for the girl, who doesn’t even bother scaling the tree; she just jumps from where she’s dangling, which looks like it ought to hurt, and leaves his knife stuck in the tree.

“I’m not giving you a boost,” Yuuya complains.

“Don’t worry! I’ll get it!” The girl assures him.

She somehow manages to scale the smooth, straight base of the tree until she gets to the twisty bits, at which point she just runs up, like some kind of tree-climbing ninja. The knife drops down next to Yuuya soon after, fully sheathed again. The girl quickly joins it.

“Thanks for your help! I thought I was gonna go crazy in there. This place really is the difference between the rich and the poor, huh? I don’t know how they stand it.“

“I think most rich people would agree with you.”

“So it really is excessive! I knew it!” She looks heated. The person who brought her here was probably bragging about how only poor people would think this house is stupid and unnecessary.

“It’s used to attract rich people who want to feel importtt…important. I suppose you could call it a bed and breakfast for the affluent. I-I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a home, honestly.”

“Aaaahhh! I got fooled!” She shakes her fists at the sky.

“So what are you doing here? You obv-obviously aren’t someone of status.” Yuuya gives her stained, worn outfit an unimpressed look.

“Ah…that’s…” She crumples, and buries her face in her knees. “…I was invited to come here by Koba- er, I mean, R-R-Ryuunosuke-san…”

Yuuya gives her a blank look. “…Who?”

“Kobayashi Ryuunosuke? He’s the third son of the family who own the house?”

“The asshole, right?”

Her brows furrow. “…Er…That’s not how I would describe him.”

“Right, right…his hair, though, it’s brown, right?”

“Oh…yeah.”

“Right. So it’s the asshole.”

“You…weren’t invited by Ryuunosuke-san?”

“Oh, no. I was just crashing the party. It’s a rare opportunity to be able to sleep in one of this mansion’s beds.”

The girl gasps.. “No way! That’s trespassing!”

“I doubt anyone could stop me. I’m a well-spoken and u-unassuming well-dressed young man, fluent in two languages, and I own a lot of land. It should be f-fine.”

“Eh…that sounds like you’re a really incredible person, though?”

Yuuya flinches. “…I’m going to cry if you say stuff like that, you know…”

“Eh? Oh…Sorry?”

Well, he got the costume by extorting money, he’s fluent in two languages because his dad is Canadian, and he owns a lot of land because his mom still owns the plot they used to live on…and his brother was really mercenary about buying up virtually useless plots of Nashioka land for pennies. They’re definitely upper-middle-class, but not impressive enough to attend parties in places like this.

Yuuya feels he’s got a good grip on her storyline, though; a rich, successful asshole rescues the impoverished girl who treats him like the asshole he is, and through them repairing their relationship and him repairing his personality, they find love. This kind of story got old in the 90s. He could probably recite the next year of her life beat-for-beat.

…Pisses him off.

“So…Let me guess, you’re a normal yet de-destitute girl that got into that rich elite school at the north end of the city on a scholarship, and you railed into Ryuunosuke, the school idol. Ryuu-kun~ was hideously offended, and his thoughts were occupied by you. Because he was sooooo~ unsatisfied with the situation, he ended up seeing you in trouble and rescuing you to ease his mind. Even in rega-regards to the party, he dressed you up and spouted some nonsense about this being the world of the rich. Am I wrong?”

The girl’s eyes are as wide as saucers.

“H-How did you know…”

Honestly.

“I used to go to middle school with that guy. He’s super annoying. I can predict his actions easily.”

“Ah…I see…But I wouldn’t say I’m a normal girl anymore.” She leans back against the tree again. “Actually…I’m totally homeless.”

…Hm?

“Hm?”

“My dad racked up a bunch of debts…we ended up losing the house, and then he disappeared saying something about ‘helixes’…”

HMMMMMM?

That’s…That’s Nashioka Helix, isn’t it? That’s the local fighting tournament, isn’t it? Dearest father, did you sign up to get your ass beat for money? Were you forced to get your ass beat for money? That’s so terrible?!

“I set up a tent by the river, and ended up getting detained by the cops…I don’t know what would have happened, but Ryuunosuke-san rescued me, and told me I could live here in exchange for tutoring and working as a maid…”

“What a shit-eating piece of garbage.”

The girl flinches at his abrupt change in tone. Understandable; he was using full keigo until now. If you hear a guy talking like a prim business partner and referring to himself as ‘watashi’, hearing him suddenly slurring like a delinquent is absurd.

He shakes his head. “…Sorry…Talking polite is a conscious effort.”

“Eh? Really? It sounded natural!!”

“Thank you very much.”

“…Uhm…doesn’t it bother you to talk like that even when you have a stutter, though…?”

“…I don’t use keigo to say ‘sorry’, so it’s fine.”

“That’s a really worrying statement- er…”

He glares at her, picking up on the leading tone of the sentence, but resenting it. He planned on vanishing unseen. Being unseen has been a key motivation since he first started high school, as badly as he’s been failing at it.

“…Reikawa Yuuya.”

Her face lights up like the rising sun, and her eyes glitter with pure joy. It’s gross. “Reikawa-kun! Ah, I’m Itou Sakura!”

“Sakura…that’s a name that’s usually popular with girls with pink hair, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…the fact my eyes ended up being pink was a complete coincidence. Actually, it’d be pretty worrisome if they were pink at birth…”

“…That would mean the blood in the eye is visible, right?”

“Right! It’s so gross just thinking about! A lot of people say to me, ‘oh, because of your eyes’ when they hear my name! I want to tell them how babies actually develop every time! When parents do it, I want to cry! Do you not know the science behind birth after having a kid of your own?!”

“How terrible.”

“It is! It’s so awful!” She dips her head and sighs. “Even Ryuunosuke-kun, he says stuff like how I’m an ugly freak for having irregular colouration…”

“Seriously, you’re in this guy’s debt? The hell is wrong with you?”

“It’s not like I have a choice.”

Yuuya opens his mouth to say something about getting a roommate and a part-time job, since her father is obviously hard at work getting his organs ruptured to pay off his debts, but something occurs to him.

Yamada Tarou, standing on the roof, ready to plummet to his death.

He didn’t particularly enjoy sharing cake with him, but the feeling of seeing the thread disappear…

That was satisfying, wasn’t it.

An eternal spiral, stress piled upon stress, exploding, receding, and exploding again. Stress relief that doesn’t work. A hollow emptiness that stretches out endlessly. Yuuya knows his patience is going to end, things will only get worse, and it’s only going to break him.

But disrupting a story was pretty satisfying, wasn’t it…?

“…I own a lot of land, you know.”

“Eh?”

“It’s privately owned. There’s no way the police could arrest you while you’re on privately owned land, right?”

“…Eh?”

“The place we used to live is a-a cafe now, and most of the bits of land we own is crap, since he bought a bunch of gar-garbage for cheap; the terrain is too rough to build on, or it’s sitting between bits of land that already have buildings planned…stuff like that. My brother got some of them for as low as 20,000 yen. I think he was ho-hoarding them?”

Yuuya opens his phone and opens the MyHouseLine app. He selects the blueprint of the city, and the map spreads over the screen, lit up with countless markers and small chunks of area lit up with red, designating which bits of land his brother bought up.

“Altogether, it’s about 19,000 metres square of worthless l-land. Most of them were actually ba-bought for camping. The only useful bit is…”

He zooms in on an area near the south bend of the river, and taps the photo icon that’s popping out of the red chunk. A photograph of a cabin pops up.

“…This one. It’s one-room, and we use it to store seasonal equipment. We don’t have much; if you just stacked it all, it should be a fine enough living space.”

Itou stares at his phone with wide, disbelieving eyes. Yuuya shifts uncomfortably and scrapes his tongue against his tooth. He doesn’t like revealing weird bits about himself, even though most of them are just the really absurd things his brother got up to in high school.

“You’d…let me stay there…?”’

“You want to hang out as Ryuunosuke’s personal maid?”

She wavers, looks away guiltily, and mumbles “no”.

“Then.”

“…Reikawa-kun…you…” Her voice wobbles, and even though the curtain of her hair dips down to hide her face, he can tell she’s about to get weepy about this.

“Well, I’ll e-expect you to maintain the land around it, so I wouldn’t call it a gift, but—”

He’s cut off by Itou springing up and throwing her arms around his neck. He screams. Just a little bit.

“You really are a good person, Reikawa-kun! Thank you so much! I’ll pay you back! I promise!”

What’s with her? It’s not like Yuuya gave her a room in his house, or something.

He grimaces and pats her woodenly on the back. With his bare eyes, he can see the pink thread deteriorating as if submerged in acid, the bulk of it burning away and staining until the green underneath blooms out. A warm, pleasant sensation curls inside Yuuya at the sight of the happily waving Daily Green, much thinner than the Love Pink had been.

It’s satisfying to destroy plots.

It’s satisfying to impede guys like Ryuunosuke.

It’s not much, but…

It’s satisfying to be an antagonist.

“So…non-perishable food, a water jug, a can opener, some dishes, and a hot plate. Don’t get water from the river. You will get sick and die.”

“Got it!”

Yuuya places the bags by the door, observing the room. Most of the equipment had been piled away, though she’s using the old sleeping bags piled on top of each other as a futon. The tobaggon has been converted into a table, with her homework piled on top. This is beyond living in poverty…it’s really more of a survivalist setup.

“You can use the rods if you want, but you have to fish at the lake. And hurry up and get a part-time job. Even if bathing in the lake is fine, it’s not re-realistic in the long-term.”

“I got it!”

…She looks too damn happy.

Yuuya runs his tongue over his tooth. It’s not bad, having his antagonism rewarded with this level of gratitude. He was only trying to break the main couple up.

“…This is my contact information. Since you don’t have anyone to turn to, right now, you can list me as an em-e-e-em-emergency contact.” He passes her a card.

“I got it! Thank you very much!” She bows at a 90 degree angle.

“…Don’t act so grateful. It’s embarrassing.”

“Oh! Sorry! Reikawa-san!”

“I’ll bring more food at the end of the month. If you run out too quickly, I’ll grab some stuff from the store. You have a phone?”

“Yeah! …But I couldn’t pay the bill, so I can only use wifi…”

“Use it to look up survival techniques. If you end up shrivelled up even though you have shelter, I’ll seriously kill you.”

“I understand!” She bows again.

Yuuya looks up at the sky. The White Thread is still there.

He doesn’t feel too terrible, though.

“…Well. I’ll be going now. Enjoy the rest of your life.”

“Got it!”

How far is he willing to go to get rid of this stress?

It’s bothered him for so long. He’s already ruined himself trying to cope, and he has yet to recover from it. Sometimes he sees parts of himself, broken beyond recognition, and the self-loathing makes it too hard to even bother putting them back together, even if he wanted to.

But it’s fine, now.

Yuuya likes it.

Being a ‘villain character’ seems like a fine place to start his decay.