To understand the current wreckage that was my bedroom, you first have to understand the silver-haired hurricane currently trying to claim my soul.
Amilia wasn't just a girl with a tradition; she was the end-product of a family line so steeped in melodrama that their blood was probably sixty percent glitter and forty percent contract law. The Shindou-Ainsworth family didn't live in a house—they lived in a sprawling, traditional estate protected by walls made of ancient cedar and the suppressed sighs of over-worked gardeners.
For eighteen years, Amilia had been the 'Precious Jewel of the Silver Moon.' In her family, being the youngest daughter wasn't a privilege—it was a high-stakes waiting game.
You see, the Shindou-Ainsworth women were cursed—or blessed, depending on how much you liked being tackled—with a tradition known as the 'Rite of the Unforeseen Savior.' It was a simple, yet legally terrifying rule: The first man to save a daughter of the main branch from 'The Jaws of the Abyss' would become her Eternal Consort.
Amilia had watched, with increasing bitterness, as her three older sisters were 'claimed' by the universe's chaotic matchmaking.
The eldest sister, Seraphina, had been saved from a falling grand piano during a gala. The man who pushed her out of the way was a mild-mannered tax accountant named Tanaka. He didn't even want a wife, he just wanted to get to the buffet, but the Compact was absolute. He was now living in the estate, forced to wear a silver collar during formal dinners.
The second sister, Beatrix, had been saved from a runaway beast—which was actually just a particularly aggressive golden retriever on a slippery floor. The savior was a delivery driver who had tripped over his own shoelaces. He was now the head of the family's logistics department, mostly because he was too afraid to leave.
The third sister, Cordelia, had been saved from 'deadly poison.' She had accidentally bitten into a cream puff that was three days past its expiration date, and a passing medical student had performed the Heimlich maneuver. He was now her 'Shield of the Hearth,' which mostly meant he had to taste all her food for the rest of his life.
Amilia was the only one left. And she was desperate.
---
"Why hasn't the Abyss claimed me yet?!" a fourteen-year-old Amilia had screamed at her reflection in a massive, gold-leafed mirror.
It wasn't for lack of trying. The problem was the Shindou-Ainsworth Shadow Guard.
When Amilia entered middle school, her father, a man who viewed parental overprotection as a competitive sport, assigned her a team of four elite bodyguards. They were known as The Exterminators. They dressed in black suits, wore sunglasses at night, and possessed the social awareness of a territorial honey badger.
On her first day of school, a boy named Sato had walked up to Amilia with the innocent intent of asking if she had a spare eraser.
Before the word "erase" could leave his lips, Shadow-1 had materialized from a ceiling tile, pinned Sato to the chalkboard, and performed a tactical interrogation to determine if the "eraser" was a code word for a localized coup d'état.
Shadow-2 had simultaneously cleared the entire classroom with a smoke grenade 'for her safety,' while Shadow-3 and 4 stood over Amilia with bulletproof umbrellas, despite the fact that they were indoors.
By the second week, Amilia's desk was surrounded by a ten-foot "Dead Zone." If a boy accidentally made eye contact with her, the Shadow Guard would follow him home and leave a severed horse-head on his pillow as a gentle warning.
"I just want to be saved!" Amilia would pout, her silver hair shimmering as she sat alone at lunch. "Is a falling chandelier too much to ask for? Does a runaway horse have no sense of timing?!"
Every time a potential 'incident' occurred, the guards were too fast.
A stray baseball flying toward her head? Shadow-1 caught it with his teeth.
A slippery floor? Shadow-2 laid down a Persian rug before her foot could even tilt.
A rogue gust of wind that might have caused a 'dramatic skirt flip'? Shadow-3 and 4 deployed a portable wind-wall.
She was the most protected, most beautiful, and most miserably bored girl in Japan. She spent her teen years pouting so hard that she developed a specialized 'Silver Moon Pout' that could technically be classified as a low-level psychic attack.
---
On her eighteenth birthday, Amilia reached her breaking point.
According to the family scrolls, if a daughter reached eighteen without an 'incident,' she would be sent to the Northern Convent to knit sweaters for the Sacred Goats. And Amilia hated wool. It made her neck itchy, and goats were notoriously judgmental.
"I am going out!" she declared to the Shadow Guard. "And if any of you follow me, I will tell Father that you let me eat a grape without washing it first!"
The guards gasped. That was a firing offense. They retreated into the shadows, weeping silently at their failure.
Amilia stepped out into the world alone for the first time. She walked the streets of the city, clutching her map upside down, praying for a disaster. She walked under unstable construction scaffolding. She stood near open manholes. She even loitered near a group of suspicious-looking pigeons.
But the 'Fear Aura' she had developed after years of being guarded by lunatics was too strong. People moved out of her way like she was a walking bomb. Cars slowed down three blocks away just in case she decided to breathe in their direction.
"It's no use," she sighed, standing at that fateful intersection. "The universe has rejected me. I am destined for the goats. I shall become the Queen of Mohair, alone and un-saved."
And then, she saw it.
The Black Beast. The Mechanical Dragon. The Truck.
From her perspective, it wasn't a slow-moving bread van. It was a shimmering harbinger of destiny. She saw the driver (who was currently trying to retrieve a dropped mustard packet) and realized this was it.
Finally! A lethal threat!
She stood perfectly still, closing her eyes and waiting for the sweet, sweet impact of fate. She expected the Abyss to be cold. She expected a heroic choir to sing as she was sent flying into a romantic coma.
Instead, she felt a sudden, clumsy weight slam into her midsection.
It wasn't the firm, muscular embrace of a prince. It was the frantic, bumbling impact of a boy who smelled like sweat, panic, and a very cheap bread.
THUD.
As they tumbled through the air and landed in a puddle that tasted vaguely of oil and regret, Amilia opened her eyes.
She saw a boy. He was panting. His hair was a mess. He looked like the physical embodiment of 'bad luck.' He was scrawny, his uniform was wrinkled, and he had a look of such profound exhaustion in his eyes that she felt an instant, overwhelming connection.
He's perfect, she thought, her heart doing a backflip. He's not a hero. He's a disaster. And he chose to tackle me! He could have just shouted, but he chose the most inefficient, painful, and muddy way to intervene! This is the most romantic thing I have ever seen!
In that moment, Inuzuka Kyotaru didn't just save her life. He became her entire reality. She didn't see a boy who tripped over a paving stone; she saw a 'Savior of the Pitiable Rank,' the rarest and most obsessed-over type of husband in the Shindou-Ainsworth manual.
---
"And that is why," Amilia's voice echoed from inside the folded mattress, snapping back from her internal monologue with the speed of a whipped bungee cord, "I will never, ever let go! You are my bread-van miracle! You are the man who robbed me of my goat-knitting destiny!"
"I don't care about your goats!" Yuko's voice muffled through the layers of cotton and springs. "I've been his miracle for ten years! Who do you think convinced the teacher not to expel him when he accidentally burned down the home-ec room trying to boil water?!"
"I did that for my own good!" I yelled, my face currently pressed against a cold metal spring. "I was trying to make tea! The stove was rigged! The universe wanted that room to burn!"
"See?!" Amilia cheered, her arms tightening around my neck like a silver-haired boa constrictor. "He understands the cruelty of the world! Only I can truly appreciate a man whose existence is a statistical impossibility! Yuko-san, you treat him like a charity case! I treat him like a Sovereign of Sorrow!"
"Sovereign of Sorrow? Is that my new title?!" I groaned. "Can I trade it for 'Guy Who Can Sleep in Peace'?"
"No!" they both shouted.
With a sudden burst of 'Childhood Friend Power,' Yuko managed to kick her way out of the folded mattress. She stood up, her hair standing on end from the static electricity of the blankets, looking like a very angry thundercloud.
"Amilia-san," Yuko said, her voice dangerously calm. "You want a tradition? Fine. Let's talk about the 'Childhood Friend's First Rights.' Since I was here first, I get to decide who enters his life. And my decision is: You. Are. Out."
Amilia crawled out of the wreckage of the bed, her silver hair tangled with a few stray feathers from my pillow. She stood up, mirroring Yuko's stance.
"You have no authority! The Silver Moon Compact overrides your 'Childhood Friend' status! In a court of law—or at least, in the court of my very expensive lawyers—I am practically already his wife!"
"Wife? You haven't even gone on a date!" Yuko stepped forward, her shadow lengthening across the floor. "I've been on a thousand 'dates' with him! Every time we walk to school, it's a date! Every time I help him scrape gum off his shoe, it's a date!"
"That's not a date, Yuko! That's community service!" I shouted from the floor.
"SHUT UP, KYOTARU-KUN! I'M DEFENDING OUR HONOR!"
Amilia reached into the air and, through sheer force of obsession, manifested another traditional staff—this one had a pair of scissors taped to the end. "Then we shall settle this the old way! A duel of hearts! Or a duel of sharp objects! Whichever causes more dramatic tension!"
I stayed on the floor, watching as they began to circle each other around the remains of my bed. I felt my soul beginning to detach from my body. I was 'walking internally'—drifting away into a mental void where there were no silver-haired traditionalists, no saintly childhood friends, and definitely no rocket launchers.
In this mental void, I was on a beach. The sun was warm. There were no birds to crap on me. No trucks. No traditions. Just the peaceful sound of the waves.
Wait, I thought in my void-space. Is that a shark?
Even in my own imagination, a shark was currently beaching itself just to try and bite my toe.
"Yep," I whispered to my internal self. "There is no escape. This is my life now. A Sovereign of Sorrow in a house full of beautiful idiots."
Outside the void, the sound of my wardrobe being smashed echoed through the room.
"GET AWAY FROM HIS UNDERWEAR DRAWER!" Yuko screamed.
"I AM JUST CONDUCTING AN INVENTORY OF MY HUSBAND'S ASSETS!" Amilia countered.
I closed my eyes and prayed for a very small, very localized meteor to hit me. Just hard enough to knock me into another world.
If you saw a guy dragging his feet across the school gate with dark circles under his eyes and a piece of duct tape holding his blazer together, that was me. Inuzuka Kyotaru: The man who survived a bedroom collapse and lived to regret it.
The 'House Situation' was no longer a threat; it was a settled, depressing reality. My home had been annexed. Amilia hadn't moved in—she had established a sovereign state in our guest room. A fleet of black SUVs had arrived shortly after the 'Mattress Incident,' unloading trunks filled with silver-threaded linens, a miniature shrine, and—for some reason—a golden bust of her own head.
My mother, a woman whose moral compass was apparently calibrated to "Whoever Does the Dishes," had already started calling Amilia "Amy-chan."
"She's so diligent, Kyotaru!" my mother had chirped while I was trying to find a pair of socks that hadn't been "traditionally scented" with jasmine. "And she says her family will pay for the roof repair! Maybe you should tackle more rich girls in front of slow vehicles. It's the most productive thing you've done all year."
I wanted to cry. I wanted to move to a cave. But the cave would probably have a 'Tradition' where the resident bat claimed me as its spouse.
I slumped into my seat in Class 2-B. The air in the room felt heavy. I rested my head on the cold wood of the desk, hoping that if I stayed still enough, the universe would forget I existed.
"Kyotaru-kun~!"
The voice was like a chime made of pure sugar and hidden needles. I didn't even have to look up to know that the "Saint of the Neighborhood" had arrived.
Yuko Yoshino didn't walk to my desk—she glided. She looked pristine. Her hair was a black silk curtain, her skin was glowing, and she was carrying a bento box wrapped in a cloth printed with tiny, adorable skulls. Wait, skulls?
"Good morning, my precious, unlucky best friend!" she said, leaning over my desk so far that I could smell the 'I-stayed-up-all-night-planning-your-restructuring' scent on her.
"Morning, Yuko," I groaned into the wood. "Why are you vibrating? You're vibrating at a frequency that's making my teeth ache."
"Vibrating? Me? I'm just full of the joy of friendship!" She suddenly sat on the edge of my desk—an act of extreme boldness for her usual 'Saintly' persona—and began to stroke my hair. Her touch was soft, but her eyes were darting around the room like a hawk looking for a field mouse to eviscerate.
"You look so tired, Kyotaru-kun," she cooed, her fingers digging slightly into my scalp. "Is it because of that... roommate? Is she being noisy? Does she talk in her sleep about goat-knitting? Don't worry. I've already contacted a local priest about an exorcism. He said 'Tradition-based Obsession' is a tricky demon to banish, but he's willing to try for a discount."
"Yuko, you're being... clingy," I muttered, trying to sit up.
She didn't let me. She pressed her hand against my chest, pinning me to the back of my chair with a strength that defied her slender frame. "Clingy? No, no. I'm being affectionate. Since certain 'silver-haired intruders' think they can just claim people based on physics-defying accidents, I've decided to upgrade our friendship to Version 2.0."
"Version 2.0?"
"Yes! The version where I never leave your side, I pre-taste all your food for 'poison' (or silver hair), and I sleep in a sleeping bag right outside your bedroom door!" She leaned in closer, her smile widening until it became a bit too wide. "Because that's what best friends do, right? We protect each other from the 'Abyss' of crazy rich girls!"
The guys in the back of the class were whispering.
"Is that Inuzuka? The trash-luck guy?"
"Why is the Saint of Hanagawa basically sitting in his lap?"
"Did he save the world in a past life or something?"
No, I thought, staring into Yuko's swirling, possessive eyes. I didn't save the world. I just accidentally invited a war into my living room, and now the defender of the peace has turned into a territorial warlord.
"Yuko, the teacher is coming," I hissed.
"Let him come," she whispered, her fingers now playing with my earlobe. "Let the whole world see how much I treasure our platonic, absolutely-not-jealous bond."
---
The door to the classroom slid open with a sharp clack.
Our homeroom teacher, Mr. Sato—a man who looked like he hadn't slept since the late nineties and whose only joy in life was watching his retirement fund grow by three yen a month—trudged to the podium. He dropped a stack of papers and sighed a sigh so deep it rattled the windows.
"Alright, settle down, you bunch of hormonal disasters," Sato-sensei droned. "I have an announcement. Apparently, our school's budget was just quadrupled by a 'private donor' who wishes to remain anonymous, provided we accept a new transfer student mid-semester."
The class erupted.
"A transfer student?!"
"Is it a girl?!"
"Is she rich?!"
I felt a cold shiver crawl up my spine. My 'Bad Luck Sense' began to tingle. It was the same feeling I got right before a pigeon targeted me or a vending machine ate my last coin.
"Come in," Sato-sensei signaled to the door. "Try not to break anything. The floors were waxed yesterday."
The door didn't slide open this time. It flew back on its tracks with a violent BANG.
Standing in the doorway, framed by a literal halo of sunlight that seemed to follow her specifically, was the Silver Disaster herself. Amilia.
She wasn't wearing her traditional dress anymore. She was wearing our school uniform, but somehow she had modified it. The skirt was shorter, the socks were higher, and she was wearing a silver-threaded cape over her blazer that was definitely not in the handbook.
She stepped into the room, her silver hair flowing behind her like a liquid moon. She held a hand to her chest, her violet eyes scanning the room with a look of intense, dramatic purpose.
"Greetings, citizens of this educational facility!" she announced, her voice booming with the confidence of a girl who owned at least three rocket launchers. "I am Amilia of the Shindou-Ainsworth! I have traveled from the sanctuary of the Silver Moon to be here! My purpose is singular! My resolve is absolute!"
The class was silent. Half the boys were drooling. The other half were trying to figure out if the cape was a new fashion trend.
Amilia's eyes locked onto mine. A smile of pure, unadulterated obsession broke across her face.
"KYOTARU-SAMA!"
She didn't walk to the front of the room. She sprinted. She dodged three desks, vaulted over a stray backpack, and skidded to a halt right in front of me, ignoring the fact that Yuko was currently still draped over my shoulder like a possessive scarf.
"I have arrived!" Amilia declared, throwing her arms wide. "According to the Tradition of the 'Scholastic Shadow,' the Savior and the Saved must never be parted by the bells of learning! I have purchased the seat behind you, the seat next to you, and—just to be safe—I have purchased the cafeteria's entire supply of yakisoba bread for the next month!"
"You did what?!" I shrieked. "That's the only thing I can afford to eat!"
"Now you shall eat only what I provide!" Amilia beamed, reaching into her cape and pulling out a silver-foiled bento box. "Traditional Silver Moon Sandwiches! They are crustless, just like your future!"
Yuko stood up, her aura finally exploding into a visible, dark mist. She was shorter than Amilia, but at this moment, she looked like a titan.
"Amilia-san," Yuko said, her voice a low, terrifying hum. "This is a place of learning. Not a place for 'Traditional Sandwiches' and capes. Why are you here?"
"I am here for my husband!" Amilia pointed a finger at Yuko's nose. "He is my Savior! He is my Destiny! And according to the school records, you are listed as his 'Childhood Friend,' which is a title usually reserved for characters who lose in the twelfth episode! I am the Main Heroine! I have the silver hair and the tragic backstory!"
"I'll show you a tragic backstory!" Yuko growled, her hand slowly moving toward her grocery bag—which she had somehow brought into the classroom.
"Ladies! Ladies!" Sato-sensei yelled, banging his head against the chalkboard. "I don't care about destiny! I don't care about capes! Amilia, sit down! Yuko, get off Inuzuka's desk! Inuzuka... I don't know what you did, but please, for the love of my retirement, don't let them explode the school."
I sat there, buried between a black-haired Saint who wanted to 'reformat' my life and a silver-haired fanatic who wanted to 'traditionally' consume it.
I looked at the chalkboard. 'Lesson 1: Quadratic Equations.'
"I'd rather do math," I whispered, a single tear rolling down my cheek. "I'd rather do math for a thousand years than spend another minute in this rom-com."
Amilia leaned over and whispered into my ear, "I have the answers to the test, Kyotaru-sama. My family bought the textbook company."
"And I have the eraser!" Yuko hissed from the other side. "I'll erase anything she writes! I'll erase her very existence!"
I closed my eyes. The universe laughed. It was a loud, boisterous laugh that sounded suspiciously like a truck horn.