Mahiru Koizumi is Kazuichi's first encounter.

Before the person watching Kazuichi spoke, the light and sound of a camera going off was what got his attention. When he turned to see who it was, the Ultimate Photographer, Mahiru Koizumi, was storming his way with her hands on her hips. Her red hair and freckles gave her a cute, girl-next-door look that was contrasted with the stern glare in her eyes. That aside, it was clear it wasn’t just her mean face adding to her age: although she was dressed just as she had during the killing game she’d been part of, with an olive green school uniform and long red-and-white plaid tie, he could again tell that she’d gained a couple of years, passing the threshold to become a young adult.

She came to a stop in close proximity to him, then straightened herself up to meet his eyes and point a finger in his face. With her other hand, she pulled the instant-developing photo from the camera around her neck and shifted to waving that in his face, instead. She seemed to be treating it as hard evidence of something, although all it showed was him looking pissed off at a video game console while standing in a corner. “Kazuichi! Do you mind explaining this to me?!”

It wasn’t so much that Kazuichi minded; he had literally no idea what he was being accused of to defend himself. “H-h-hold on, Mahiru!” He waved his hands in front of him, which had the surprisingly successful effect of making his classmate back off to make room for him. “Remind me what I’m explaining?”

“Remind you…?” Mahiru’s face reflected a mixture of concern and disgust at the question. “Kazuichi… The others sent me to check on you, and good thing, too! What is it you think you’re supposed to be doing in here?”

“Uh… Context clues… Working on a motor?”

“Uh-huh. So now that we got that, answer me this: what are you doing standing by yourself in a corner, playing video games and muttering creepy things to yourself?”

“Um… T-taking a break?” Kazuichi tried, grinning sheepishly.

“Is now really the time for that? Look at this, the motor isn’t even half-finished and we’ve been stuck here for days! Aren’t you supposed to be the Ultimate Mechanic? Give me that!” Before the target of her emasculation could protest, she swiped the Usami Tablet from his grasp.

“Hey! Hey hey hey!” Now Kazuichi was really panicking; he didn’t understand what this Tablet or this Therapy Game were yet, but he was going to have a whole new set of difficult questions to answer if she got a look at what he’d just been seeing. “This is… I was just, uh-!”

Mahiru stared at it, raising an eyebrow. “Is it… supposed to look like this? There’s just a bunch of static and gibberish… Oh, shoot, I didn’t break it, did I?” For a moment, her frustration abated and her concern showed.

Kazuichi took it back from her, then took a look at the screen himself. It was exactly the bare-bones menu he’d been looking at before. The words might be “gibberish,” but there was no sign of “static” at all. “No, I think it’s okay…”

“Well, good! I’m glad your precious video game is okay.”

The mechanic was starting to feel a headache coming on. Whatever kind of therapeutic effect this game was supposed to have on him was clearly not working. “Gimme a break, please…! I have no idea what’s goin’ on here either. A-and if it was Chiaki playing a game, I kinda feel like you’d just let her have her fun-“

“Is Chiaki equipped to repair a motor?!” Mahiru gave him a scornful glance, then rolled her eyes. “Kazuichi… Can’t we rely on you just once? Now’s the time for you to man up, if you’re going to call yourself a man!”

A loud beep came from the Usami Tablet, loud enough to nearly make the stressed-out Kazuichi fumble and drop it on the floor. He caught it just in time. He noticed Mahiru hadn’t even paused her speech. “Mahiru, one sec. Do you mind if I-“

“By all means.” She sighed, glancing at his calendar distastefully before scanning the room for anything else she needed to chide him about. “Go ahead and take another day if you need to.”

Kazuichi took a look at the pad with no idea what to expect. It looked like the button for Mahiru had become pink. When he pressed the display, the barebones UI disappeared… It was replaced by a video of the pink rabbit, Usami, who had been their teacher in the previous game. She was sitting in a flower field with relaxing music playing. Over her head, the text he’d read earlier was displayed: “MAHIRU KOIZUMI – When she insults your manhood.” In contrast to the rest of the scene, that writing was in an oppressive dark red.

Usami began to speak, with subtitles appearing in soft, cartoony letters at the bottom. “Kazuichi… Mahiru doesn’t respect you as a man. But isn’t a mechanic like you one of the manliest types of guys there is? I know that if you just show her a manly side of you, she’ll see you differently!”

There were two things Kazuichi noticed.

First, he was already cursing Usami for giving him a speech that would be humiliating to explain to Mahiru. However, she was still idly scanning the room. He began to realize that her perception of this Tablet was somehow messed up.

Second, a part of the last sentence Usami spoke was highlighted in pink. Maybe that was related to the game?

That was all well and good, but Kazuichi still had no idea how this game was supposed to work, and as therapy went, it was just testing his patience. “Okay, so that’s the deal. It’s just like one of those pick-me-up things. Like, ‘yeah, you’d just sit here and take this in real life, but since you’re in a video game, what have you got to lose? Try actin’ the right way, be the person you wanna be, whatever. Gah… What does Mahiru even think a man is? Usami makes this sound so easy…”

The video was over, and the screen was back. Usami was gone, but Mahiru’s text was still pink, and all of what she’d said was written there to replace what had been under Mahiru’s tab before. “All right, all right… I’ll play along,” Kazuichi muttered under his breath. “I don’t get what’s wrong with me that a lesson in responsibility is gonna fix, but whatever.” Clearing his throat, Kazuichi looked Mahiru in the eyes. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m gonna put this thing down, pick up a wrench, and get this motor runnin'. No problem for a guy like me.”

Mahiru’s olive-colored eyes widened, and she clasped her hands together. The strange, startled gesture wasn’t subtle, but it also didn’t last but a second: instantly, she’d replaced her hands on her hips. “You’d better, all right? Remember, this is for everyone’s good.”

“You don’t need to remind me! I can do it if I put my mind to it. Stay here and watch if you want, I’ll get this thing movin’ in thirty minutes.” Enjoying putting on a show of bravado in a place where he knew he couldn’t permanently embarrass himself, the young man grinned as he headed to the bench to survey what tools the simulation had for him.

“… I can watch?” Mahiru asked, too softly for him to hear. Suddenly flushed, she shook her head. “I mean, okay, yeah! If I don’t watch you, who knows when you’ll get moving. Hmph...”

Ignoring her, Kazuichi grabbed the tool for the job, telling himself this is what he should have done from the start. Working on a machine was so nice: he’d already figured out the state the motor was in just by looking at it, and he already had a plan of attack. He had spent so much time working on computers and programming lately, he hadn’t felt the confortable feel of a wrench turning in at least a month. He flourished it in his hand, enjoying the weight of it. Finally, he turned for the motor-

When he turned around, he caught Mahiru surprised. She had a strange, feverish look to her, and when his eyes met with hers, she jumped. “Oh geez,” she muttered quietly under her breath, squirming in the corner they’d both been standing in before.

“… What?” Kazuichi already had the wrench in place on the nut he wanted to undo, but he gave Mahiru a moment of his attention.

She paused, looking unsure of what to say. Finally, she laughed nervously, then spoke. “I was just thinking, if I squint hard looking at you like this, you kiiinda look like a real man! Almost!” She gave him a nice cheesy grin to indicate this was a friendly joke.

“Really?!” That turned out to be an effective motivator for Kazuichi, whose mood was easily influenced. “Hehe, just you wait till I get serious!”

Mahiru nodded enthusiastically, then continued to watch his back with rapt attention while he began disassembling the motor. Just five minutes ago, Mahiru would have probably had some remark for how the engine now looked even farther from complete than when she walked in. Now, she was silent, save for the breathing she seemed to be putting in effort to control.

Kazuichi had only been working ten minutes now, but he was making it count. True to his word, it really did seem he was making great progress.

Meanwhile, Mahiru was failing to keep her jaw shut as she observed him, now leaning against the wall and trying her hardest to make that gesture look casual and not like the support for her weak legs it actually was. When she tried to make conversation again, her throat seemed dry. “Uh… gee, Kazuichi! Since you haven’t been working on anything else, I guess you had plenty of time to…” She had to stop to gulp, then continued with an awkward smile. “Work out? Have you been putting in some time with Nekomaru?”

Kazuichi was totally lost in the zone now. He was working on the engine from below, and didn’t seem to have heard her.

“I-I said, you’re looking pretty hot, Kazuichi!” Mahiru tried, now shouting.

“What?” That did get his attention, and he peeked out in surprise.

“I said y-y-you’re looking hot! You need to, um, towel off all that sweat!” Mahiru stuttered, looking around frantically. Her eyes lit up when she found an unused hand towel. She picked it up and brought it to Kazuichi, who was climbing out from under the engine. “You know, I can’t stand here and be useless. If you wanted me to… I could…” She’d been speaking quickly, but immediately pumped the brakes, staring at the towel in her hands with a red face.

“You what?” Kazuichi still had no idea what was going on, and he reached for the towel before she could say anything else. Snatching it, he began patting away the beads of sweat that had started forming on his forehead.

“Ah! I was… Sheesh! Why are men like this…?” Mahiru grumbled, wringing her hands together. “I was saying it smells over here! Your workshop is more like a sweatshop. And I was wondering why, uh, men always have to smell so… strongly… like you do.” Her complaint turned awkward, and she seemed to realize it, clenching her teeth in an embarrassed grimace.

“Smell? I can’t do much about that.” The mechanic shrugged, turning back to the motor. “Well, I guess I could wash my jumpsuit more often, but nothing I can do about it right now, I mean. Kehehe!”

“You could work without the jumpsuit,” Mahiru gasped, then clasped her hands over her mouth as soon as the words had left her lips. When Kazuichi whirled around with a confused look, she shouted immediately in her defense. “I mean, we’re adults here! You can unzip and bare your chest or whatever, if the jumpsuit’s hot for you.”

By this point, a less dense guy than Kazuichi might have taken a hint that something strange was happening. The young man, however, was that dense, and he just laughed in response. “Mechanics wear this stuff for a reason, y’know? It keeps the oil off of us, protects our skin, all that… Besides, I’d smell just as bad with it off, trust me.”

Mahiru didn’t respond, letting him keep working, but now she was biting her finger, seeming to struggle with a mental image as her legs rubbed together. “What am I doing… What am I thinking? Since when do I…?” The young woman whispered the question to herself as she watched Kazuichi’s back. The hand that wasn’t in her mouth traveled down her tie, sliding as if trying and failing to catch something to stop itself… It slid further down… She began to fumble with what she had been reaching for.

It was, of course… her camera, still on its strap around her. She took a shot of Kazuichi from behind, then a series of additional shots as he turned to face her. “I’m gonna go!" she squeaked, before correcting her pitch. "Go show the others these photos, I mean. That’ll prove you were actually working hard and get them off your back.”

“Thanks-“ Kazuichi began, dumbfounded.

“Don’t mention it! I’m just gonna go do that and think about some things in my room!” She was already one foot out the door before she’d finished declaring her intention. “See you later Kazuichi, good luck! B-but don’t work too hard. I’ll definitely come back and see how you’re looking later. How it’s looking, I mean!”

The mechanic blinked at the now-empty doorway as he heard Mahiru's footsteps rush off. He felt like he hadn’t even been working thirty minutes, but he’d already made great progress on the motor. “Guess I’ll take a break… I probably need to find some water around here if I’m gonna be working like this, anyway.”

He almost left the room just like that, before noticing the Usami Tablet on the table where he’d left it before, a blinking pink light struggling to get his attention. When he faced the screen now, the text that had been there before had been replaced again. There was no new video, but the new bubbly Usami text read:

“Whenever you show Mahiru your manly side, she seems pretty interested. Now’s the time for you to take an interest in her hobbies! I bet if you could get someone to take a photo of you two, it’d be an interesting one!”

The young man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So… Wait… This Therapy Game, is it…? Oh! Ooooh! I finally get it!” Kazuichi slammed his fist on the work table next to him in excitement as he came to what he thought was an explanation. “It’s like a Dating Simulator?! Or, wait, no, there were guys listed there, too… I guess it’s just like, uh… good choices, good life. It’s like a world where my good karma will be rewarded! Like, it’s supposed to show me that if I act like a man and show a little responsibility, Mahiru will be friendlier to me, huh? Or with any of ‘em, I guess I’m supposed to face up to what their problem is with me to become better friends with them. And I guess things naturally progress from there, and then… Holy crap! Is this what that AI was hinting at earlier with that horny stuff? Could I actually hook up with someone in this simulation?!”

Still not fully getting it, Kazuichi Soda nonetheless decided he needed to start scouting out the ship. One of three things ought to happen: He’d bump into someone else and get to try out more of this game; He’d find a place to pour himself some water, which would let him get back to work on that motor, a task he found himself enjoying even if the motor only existed in this simulated world; or, he’d find himself pulled out of this simulation and back with Hiyoko in the real world, with an interesting story to tell her.

There was a lot more about this world he probably ought to learn, but that seemed to be a distant fourth priority for him.