Issei was freaking out.
He, one of Kuoh Academy's infamous Perverted Trio, was about to go on a date.
A date.
With a really cute girl, with really nice boobs, just like what he's dreamed of!
Issei is oblivious at times, and a fool who keeps trying to peep in on the Kendo club despite the fact that they are the most likely club to kick his ass afterward, and doesn't have the best grades, either. But he isn't an idiot. He knows how unlikely it is that someone like him could get a date, especially with his reputation at Kuoh Academy, and despite his fantasy of having a harem, he knows (and his parents especially know) that this is his biggest chance of having a girlfriend he might ever get in a very long time, loath as he was to admit it. He needed this to go well.
Which is why he was currently freaking out, desperately researching how to have a good date on his computer. All the tabs and windows he previously had devoted to games and hentai were minimized and closed out, to minimize all distractions. He even threw blankets and towels over his shelves of manga and figurines to help him focus. He had a stack of notebooks on his desk, a mechanical pencil, and about 3 separate containers of extra pencil lead alongside it for note-taking.
With all his focus devoted to learning how to be the best boyfriend possible (he wasn't actually Yuuma-chan's boyfriend yet, but it expanded his options if he pretended that he was), he was sure to become a master of dating knowledge by the end of the day!
He could do this!
——————————
He could not do this.
He let out a groan, letting his head hit his desk and cradling it in his arms.
He had spent hours studying endlessly, writing down nearly everything he could that might possibly help him out. Two notebooks, completely filled out, were tossed onto his bed. Broken pencil lead and eraser shavings littered his desk and the floor around him, his butt and back were sore, and his eyes and head were hurting.
And it feels like he's barely learned anything!
Like, okay, some pieces of advice were just incredibly obvious, like "Don't stare at other girls while on your date." No, really? Even he knows that's an incredibly rude thing to do. That's like, basic knowledge. Not helpful.
There were a few things that were legitimately good pieces of advice, like "Keep things casual and don't rush into physical intimacy" or "You're both going to screw up from nerves on the first date. Humor those things and don't let them control your experience."
There were also really bad pieces of advice that he took as indications of how NOT to treat the date. Anything that unironically said "Alpha Male", for example. Almost universally, they gave terrible advice, like "steal a kiss from them right when you meet up to mark them as yours", which sounded creepy, and "don't let them run," which sounded like something a serial killer would say.
The most infuriating, though, to him, was all the contradictory statements he saw.
"Girls like confidence, not assholes. Being an asshole is just a symptom of excessive confidence." Cool! That's helpful.
"Girls think nervous boys are cute. It lets them take the leading role in deciding what to do, and makes them feel more in control of the relationship, which is safer for them." What the hell, that's the exact opposite of the other one! And that also sounds helpful!
So were "Be upfront and show romantic interest sooner rather than later" and "Make friends with people first, nobody wants to date strangers"—directly contradicting each other!
And also, some pieces of advice needed some deeper analysis as to what they actually meant. Like, "'The One' is a myth." Okay, his first thought was The Matrix, but he's pretty sure that's not what that was talking about. Also, he had no idea what that meant. A couple of separate searches later, and he found that "The One" is some kind of idea of someone's perfect match, like some kind of fairy tale. Okay, so "'The One' is a myth" probably means that you shouldn't expect things to go 100% well all the time, and that there's no such thing as a perfect relationship without any flaws or conflicts. That makes sense, and sounds helpful enough, but he had to go through so many more steps to find out what it meant.
All of these complications, combined with the fact that his only break was pretty early on in his studying session, when he was called down for dinner, and he was feeling like his brain was completely fried.
He needed to rest, or take a nap, or something. Thank God it was a weekend tomorrow, and that he didn't have any homework.
His bed was also looking really comfortable right now...
Alright.
He stood up, stretched, and set his alarm for an hour, moving the notebooks on his bed back to the desk, before climbing in. He blacked out as soon as his head hit the pillow.
—————
When he woke up, it was already dark out, and his alarm clock read midnight. But, his headache still remained.
He groaned and slid out of bed, willing himself back to his desk to continue researching—or at least, to start reviewing the notes he had taken.
However, when he sat down, he noted that, centered perfectly on his desk, there was another notebook he's pretty sure he doesn't own. Probably because it had a title on the front: "The Book of Reality." In English.
Immediately, he was a little bit wary, because his mind immediately went to Death Note, but he was also too tired to worry too strongly about that right now. If it turned out to be some kind of mass murder-enabling thing, he was going to lock it in a drawer and completely forget about it, then go back to sleep.
With slight trepidation, he opened the book, and...
Nothing.
The pages were blank.
Only slightly disappointed by this, he continued flipping through the pages...and flipping...and flipping...
It didn't end.
"What the hell?" He muttered, before having a bright idea.
He closed the book, then turned it over, and opened it on that side, so as to get to the end. There, he found actual words!
Issei Hyoudou, you are now the owner of The Book of Reality. Congratulations. You can now alter the fabric of existence with the words you write. However, there are some rules to keep into account:
1: No one can see what you write unless you specifically allow them to.
2: No one else can use the book unless you specifically allow them to.
3: The book is indestructible. Please do not try to destroy it, it gets very annoying.
Have fun, and try not to destroy the world immediately.
Issei stared. And stared some more. And then some more.
Then his head throbbed from the headache, and that broke him out of his stupor.
"What the hell..." he said, closing the book. "Is this some kind of prank by Matsuda and Motohama?"
He thought about it, but...
"No, they wouldn't leave the pages blank if they gave me a book—they'd probably fill it with nudes at the very least." If he had done something like bolting on them during one of their peeping sessions, they'd fill it with their own nudes, but that's about it.
That's kind of how they worked, really. If one of them pisses the others off, the other two would get back at him in some other way. Then they'd laugh it off and go back to normal. And Issei hadn't really done anything to piss them off...
What? Getting asked out by a cute girl?
Nah, that wouldn't do it. Oh sure, they'll cry and call him a traitor, but he knows happy tears when he sees them. In their own weird way, they were both proud and relieved that Issei managed to get a date with a girl—that meant that there's hope for all three of them one day.
Anyway.
It couldn't have been Matsuda and Motohama. So maybe it was real? Seems odd, but...
His head throbbed, and his eyebrow twitched in frustration.
Alright, might as well test it out.
He turned the book back to the front, and opened it to the first page. Grabbing his pencil, he wrote down, My headache is gone.
And then it was.
He stilled. His head felt clear, and his concentration returned to normal. The throbbing stopped, and even the dull ache in the background had disappeared entirely.
He shook his head really hard, and still, he felt no pain. The book was real.
"No way..." he breathed out. And then he realized.
This was exactly what he needed!
He didn't need to spend countless hours pouring over articles and top 10 lists that constantly contradicted each other! He could get all the information he needed to make the date go well right now! Or wait—he could even make sure the date went well!
That's when he stopped.
Is that what he really wanted?
If used the book to force the date into going well, wouldn't that be...cheating?
Like some kind of shitty ikemen who coasts by on his good looks to get the girls?
Maybe he should dial it back a bit.
But, what should he do, then?
He contemplated this for quite a while, but eventually, he put his pencil to paper, and decided...
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