It's a Hentai Life

There are a scarce few moments in history. Moments where a man may bear witness to the world one day. Then on the next declare with clarity of mind and surety of meaning: The world has changed.

Moments like these are often accompanied by fire and blood. By the outcry of masses at the sudden revelation that the world’s course was changed by war. Or else it is a change brought upon the world with wonder. When those people of the earth look up to the stars and know with the new day that they are no longer beyond reach.

Seldom few times have been like that of this morning. As a young man sits alone, looking out into the city around him, he knows: The world has changed. It was not a change born of fire, nor one of wonder. It was a change that came in the night, as though a King among Kings of Thieves stole the whole world with nary a whisper.

From his place sitting on a lonely park bench, the young man turned his gaze to the ID card in his hands. Daichi Jones was the name it gave him. Yet he knew that hadn’t been true the day before. No matter how he wracked his mind, he could remember no more than that it wasn’t the name he had. His original name eluded him, as it had the entire day thus far. Daichi’s gaze returned to the city and it’s people. All of it and them changed yet no one the wiser. No one except for Daichi.

“What the actual fuck.” A quiet cry, all the more plaintive for it despite the harsh words. His morning already spent in panic and denial, he could no longer muster the energy for those emotions.

New Tokyo City, a sprawling mega-metropolis with a population of nearly thirty million. A city whose appearance, culture, and even population seemed to be jaggedly combined from two notable cities of the old world. The city that Daichi awoke in, but one that he knew didn’t exist when he had lain to sleep the night before. Yet to his utter dismay, not a single soul aside from himself seemed able to realize that things were not as before.

Daichi had tried of course. Upon waking in an apartment similar though decidedly different he had rushed out. Seeing the new world around him he fervently asked those within reach what had happened. The only responses confusion and polite attempts to explain that he must not be in his right mind. After several repeats of this, he stopped asking. It was all too clear that he was the only person within his purview who understood anything had happened.

This being true, how then could he know that the issue didn’t exist within himself? The thought that he was mad came quickly, but was just as quickly dispelled. Gazing out upon the city and it’s people without the sheen of panic he noticed the Errors. In places, objects, and people could be occasionally seen issues Daichi attributed to whatever altered his world. The combination of American and Japanese was not nearly so seamless as his addled mind at first thought.

Signs were the most obvious of the Errors. Everywhere he looked Daichi saw signage that mistakenly combined English and Japanese writing. In some cases so egregiously that words had letters and characters replace each other part way through. By no means was it universal, but it was a mistake far too common to be natural. Indeed even as he observed from his park bench Daichi saw signs getting replaced with more natural versions by those people confused at how such a mistake came to be.

An Error of buildings is what had initially restored the young man’s faith in his sanity though. The street he now looked down was full to bursting with shops and businesses of all kinds. Grocery, barber, bank, books, games. The store fronts simply went on, save for one lone intruder. A small quiet house stood amidst it’s humble garden so jarringly that one would almost have thought it a wound on the storefront itself. The Japanese styled little house was clearly old, yet treated with care. It’s garden well maintained by the ancient couple whose small forms could still be seen enjoying the breeze from their modest porch.

It had been mere chance that Daichi heard the argument between the old couple and the businessman. A middle-aged man had loudly insisted the existence of a new shop at the very spot he stood. The elderly couple only able to reply that they had lived at that very spot for the last 70 years. Despite the conflicting claims both produced evidence about the location. Such a blatant discrepancy had let Daichi feel reassured that his sanity hadn’t simply fled him in the night. The world had changed, and he was now sure of it.

More than the world had changed however. Daichi held his hand out in front of him, a look of appraisal upon his face. Muscles, unfamiliar in their strength, tightened as the hand clenched into a fist. He released the tension in his hand, and repeated the process a few times more. The action was not unfamiliar to him, but the limb that did it was.

Daichi in his panicked haste upon awakening had taken time to realize this now obvious fact. A glance at his reflection in a window had driven it home for him though. What he saw was a tall muscular young man with spiky red hair and a sharply handsome face. His own reflection, yet one he had not the slightest recollection of.

“Dammit. Now that I’m thinking about it I can’t stop noticing how weird it feels. Like… like wearing clothes that are too tight. Grrr, it’s driving me crazy!” A sudden flurry of movement accompanied the cry as Daichi roughly ran his hands through his hair. A cursory look at the store in front was enough for him to confirm. The reflection staring back with thinly veiled frustration had hair in exactly the same unrealistically spiked style as before. His efforts to dislodge the unnaturally stationary hair amounted to nothing.

Turning his attention to those around him he addressed the third Error. The people. A multitude of people were traveling the streets around his park, and Daichi looked over them all with his new sense of confusion still going strong. A small portion of those people did not belong. They walked and talked, in all the relevant ways still people like the rest. Yet still it was all too obvious to Daichi that they were Errors. These stand outs did not look like how real people are- or were supposed to look.

In some cases they are mundane enough that it could be explained. A woman walks across Daichi’s line of sight who has bright pink hair. He could have convinced himself that her hair was dyed and that there was no greater issue at work. Others made such denial more difficult to bear. A tall young man walked down the street, regal of posture and bearing. His hair tall and wildly spiked in a blue color, one lone tuft of it hanging low across his forehead. Yet his hair moved in the wind with such a gentle softness that Daichi could not bring himself to think the man was using some type of product. In the face of conventional reasoning, the regal man’s hair simply stood up all on it’s own. A figure that struck a chord in Daichi he recognized, as the man looked all too much like a Shounen hero.

Daichi’s own hair had displayed similar resiliency to being changed from it’s spiky style. Again in spite of feeling soft and free of anything to hold it in place. Uniquely bizarre hair was a frequent trait among these exceptional people, but by no means the only oddity. Among the endless stream of strangers the street provided were an unusually high number of women who possessed impressively large breasts. Breasts that despite their size seemed able to completely defy gravity such was the extent of their perky roundness. Yet despite such perk the slightest provocation sent them jiggling and bouncing in a way that many a man clearly appreciated.

The more that Daichi looked the more details jumped out at him as bizarre and unusual. Things he could only rightly explain away were this world a work of familiar fiction. His thoughts had been swayed at first by his impression of the heroic looking man. However he increasingly became sure in his conviction. Though perhaps only in the way that any lost man desperately grasps at direction.

“The world is an anime. Why? Why is the world an anime?!” As though the weight of so many thoughts was finally too much Daichi’s head dropped into his hands.

‘None of this makes sense. Why am I the only one who realizes? Have things changed that I can’t notice either? Does this happen all the time? Is it gonna happen again and that time I won’t notice?’ The rampant confusion and frustration built up inside of Daichi until he suddenly stood up from the bench like a cork popping out of a container with too much pressure.

“AAAAAAH! I DON’T KNOOOOOW!” The young man cried out to the heavens his indignation towards the cruel hand of fate. Or rather, that was his impression of his action. Those people around him who bore witness to this strange young man shouting in the park had no such grand thoughts. As people began to stare, point, and laugh the full understanding of his actions impacted Daichi. A sudden heat rushed to his face at the overwhelming embarrassment he felt while stalking off. Shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, looking to all the world the image of a man desperately wishing the earth would suddenly swallow him whole.

“Dammit… what the hell do I do now?” Daichi sighed once more before lifting his head to gaze at the sky. Unsurprisingly, no grand answer was written in the clouds to guide him. It was to him to decide what to do with this new world he found himself in.