My childhood friend, Mitsuka Souji, is widely acknowledged to be a complete and utter idiot when it comes to twintails.
That why I figured there'd be no one else but me.
I mean... well, he's pretty cool so I can't say no other girl would fall for him, but still. The fact is that I've been asked about it so, so many times. Questions along the lines of, "Are you two dating?" and "Does he have another girl?".
When it comes down to it, it has to be someone who can keep on liking him even after finding out what kind of person he was... I should have been the only one who could do that.
I mean this is a guy who has nothing but twintails on the brain round the clock, 24/7, awake and asleep after all. Even if you find yourself looking aside at him out of the blue and think "Ah. He's pretty good looking...", you can be sure that what he was thinking about at the had to have been twintails. That's just how he is.
Just about everyone thinks that it's just something of a joke at first. It's really just unbelievable for anyone to like twintails as much as he supposedly does.
Unfortunately, supposedly doesn't live up to his reality.
That boy truly is a complete and utter idiot for twintails. He is the face of this world's love for twintails after all.
See? There can't have been anyone else but me. I'm the only woman who'd always be by his side. Always right there by him... always, as the woman who'd be his ideal twintails that is.
It's really tough you know. Taking good care of twintails I mean.
Mentally... and physically.
It's entirely different from going for a short cut for a change of pace.
Taking care of it takes time. It takes careful attention. It takes money. That said, I do trim mine myself so I save money on going to a beautician.
I been cutting out and collecting articles about hair care from the fashion magazines I read. I started when I was a kid and now I think I've got several phone books worth of them put away.
There should be quite a few contradictions between just those scraps alone though. It happens a lot actually. One month they say so and so shampoo's formula is bad for your hair, only to come out saying the opposite months later. The same goes for the pages I bookmark. The beauty programs I record too. They all have to do with hair.
When it comes to hair care, I can take a bit of pride in what I know about it as an amateur.
If this is all it takes physically, then the psychological side is where it really takes its toll.
Sometimes at night, when my eyes are closed and I should be asleep, I worry.
I worry about just for how much longer I'd keep on wearing twintails.
I want to stay with Souji forever.
I want him to keep looking at me, always.
But he'd... When I become an adult and quit wearing twintails, would he really stop looking my way?
Is all he sees of me my twintails?
That's the kind of worrying I do.
Twintails are a childish haircut. I'd often think I'd only wear them till middle school myself.
In those fashion magazines I mentioned, do you think they do special features on twintails? There's just no demand for it.
Growing up, I got used to preparing and maintaining twintails. It's basically like make-up for me. But the more I got used to it and the more routine it became, the more those worries grew with them.
How long am I going to keep doing this... How long do I have to be "Souji's ideal twintails"?
How long will I be "the twintails Souji seeks out"...?
The culmination of those worries hit me this spring. The night before we became official Yougetsu High School students.
I remember not being able to sleep and spending the whole night staring at the brand new uniform hanging on the wall.
My time in middle school was over and so was the limit I set by it. I couldn't make the leap from just being childhood friends.
I couldn't get Souji to look at me as a woman.
I couldn't get him to look at anything but my twintails...
My friends say it'd all work out if I just confess to him. It sounds simple when they say it but do they not get that this isn't your typical boy!?
Just how am I supposed to move forwards with this when I'm the only one that sees the other as a member of the opposite sex...
If only these feelings would just give form to themselves. I wonder just what sort of feelings, what sorts of desires get put into these twintails of mine.
If only I had some way to put them right in front of that blockhead and make him take a good long look at them.
And just like that, I greeted the morning, eyes open and watching a dream... that was the day destiny started to move.
In just one day, the world had been turned upside down. Trends. Theories. History even. They all transformed.
Twintails, the sole merit I had, the childish hairstyle that nobody but him looked at seriously had begun to flood this world.
If this isn't a dream then what is it?
Like an angel, one idiotic woman and her swishy labcoat heralded it and brought nothing but trouble with her.
There's no doubt in my mind that she was the one who change all our lives.
However, as strange as it may sound, I haven't had a sleepless night of worries since...
I'm sure that was my lousy friend Twoearle's doing as well.
"Didn't I tell you to stop barging into my room whenever you felt like iiiiiiiiiiiiittt!!"
"Hiiiiiiiiiiii! I'm quuuaaaaaaaaakiiiiiiinnnng!!"
I shake Twoearle who snuck into my room at some point by her head with the palm of my hand. As I do, I also see her boobs shake along with her. They're pissing me off...!!
I met her in the spring and now the season has turned to fall.
I haven't been losing sleep from worrying but now I get deprived of sleep in a different way.
"That's your own fault!! You were so engrossed in your solo play that you failed to use your wild animal-like senses to pick up my presence like you always do!!"
Normal people would have blacked out from all the damage by now but Twoearle recovers quickly. She doesn't even gets discouraged by it and makes fun of me saying that I was having lewd thoughts about Souji.
If I had to be honest, her energy and positivity are formiddable enough to be worthy of respect.
"I told you to knock on the door! No, before that call on the interphone by the entrance! Also, I said I don't do that sort of thing!!"
I use up too much energy in retorting back at her with all those points.
"Eeeh? There you go again~ I definitely saw you getting moist again today in the hallways when Souji-sama praised your twintails!"
"Wha...!!"
"You said something like 'Why don't you think about anything but that pervy stuff' to me but I know that you get turned on by Souji-sama the whole year round! Whoops!"
She dodges my second palm strike.
Darned Twoearle. She's been getting really good at dealing with martial arts lately... I have to up my game too or else.
...when I think about how I'm using these fighting skills of mine honed from years of practice to send retorts her way, I can't help but feel down about it.
I had grandpa train me so I could use them to protect Souji.
Just how many times has that all too trusting and people-loving idiot gotten tricked when I wasn't there with him?
I find Twoearle in front of me, staring back at me, grinning.
She's pretty to the point of being enviable, has a great sense of style... and a good head on top of that!? She's also a scientist... it's like she's got no weak spots to her! Or she would if she weren't such a slut!
Well, that pervy side of hers would count as a plus if it were a normal boy...
If she had twintails too... If that happened she just might have snatched Souji up in one fell swoop.
Furthermore, since she was the one to give Souji his twintails, Twoearle just might be the closest person to bound to his heart....
It seems she's misunderstood something from the way I was looking at her. She was hiding a smile behind one of her labcoat's sleeves.
"What's this? You're not coming at me with another attack.... Don't tell me that you were at that good a spot when I interrupted? You were doing an especially good job of mimicking Souji-sama during solo-play today..."
"I told you I wasn't doing that kind of thing!!"
Twoearle reaches into her labcoat pocket and pulls out a cage with a stout green parrot inside of it.
"Then as an apology for ruining your fun, I shall give Souji-sama this parrot who has memorized gasping noises and tell him 'I brought this from Aika-san's room.'"
The parrot was letting out small squeals in a shrill voice. It might need a little filtering but it's not hard to hear them as gasps... Still though.
"And I would hazard that Souji-sama will say 'I see. So Aika makes these sort of gasping sounds in her room then'. Well... Knowing him he'd probably only pay it any attention for about three seconds."
"If you thought that it'd only last for so long then don't put the little guy through so much trouble in the first place!!"
As if something like this would work on a boy who doesn't seem to have even a single porn mag in his possession.
...not that I know from going through his room to look for them or anything.
Twoearle continues on with riling me up.
"Why is it that childhood friend-type characters spend all those years with those defenseless gentlemen right in front them only to brazenly let them go to waste... Of course, I'm not talking about you Aika-san. I'm just speaking about the matter in general."
"That's what I want to know!! Tell me how to get past thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
"Oh? I'm feeling a new sensation at getting a retort beaten into me but there's also a part of me that's happy about this!?"
She's completely right. It's a huge pain to be the one thinking so idly.
Forget childhood friends, I need to hurry up and graduate from that relationship!
I thought I was the only one who could love Souji for real but... in just the past few months, the number of girls who fit that bill rose up enough to give me headaches.
This intruder herself is serious too, enough to do everything she can to support him when things get tough... she really is.
"Wooooooooddddaaaaaaa my boooooooooooones! Twoearle-chan's bones are reaching ball joint levels of free motioooooooooooooooon!!"
Honestly...
It feels like I'm gonna be stuck together with this idiot from another world for just as long as I will with Souji...