Sekaiichi Romantica VS. The Real World

Part 8: The Case Of Junjou Mistake

Chapter 17: Something I care about...

*Narrated In Asher Palaan's POV*

The white light, the white bright light of the morning, which was so destructive after a hangover from last night. I fluttered my eyes open only to notice that I was in an enclosed space. Metal and silver everywhere. My vision was hazy and I had no idea where I was. As soon as my vision became somewhat clear, I could see five bars in front of me! No! No! No! No! No! No No No No! No No No! Please No! There's no way in hell that this would happen to me! There's no way that the sun rises from the west instead of the east! And there is no way, that I AM IN JAIL! ME! ASHER PALAAN! A teacher in CGHS for 10 years now! I mean, I always follow the law!

"There has to be a mistake!" I shouted at the top of my voice. I ran towards the bars to ask someone to let me the hell outta here! But I couldn't! I was handcuffed to the radiator next to me! And that radiator was firmly fixated on the ground so there goes my shot of ever making out of here alive. I don't even remember anything. And my head is spinning around, my stomach hurts, and my head is aching. There was a mirror in there, so when I slowly walked towards it as I found my legs wobbling and my feet as numb as it used to be in Toronto on a cold icy day. I was shocked to see the man that the mirror reflected. I didn't know this man. His face looked terrible. Scars are spread across his face. One eye turned black. The other one was flashing as red as a traffic signal. His hair was messed up and was standing straight like a bad hair day that he never had in his life before. I was horrified to discover that this man was me. The complete opposite of who I am; or who I believed I was.

The police officer came towards the silver bars I was clutching onto and told me that someone bailed me out. As I changed out of my prison uniform and came outside that terrifying box of shame, I saw Isaka, Asahina, and Dave standing at the entrance of the establishment.

"Asher! Are you okay, buddy?" Dave came running, slammed his hands on my shoulder and anxiously questioned me.
"W-who I-is this?" I curiously asked Dave as I pointed at myself while posing the question.
"That's you!" Asahina said in an unusually loud voice. "That's the real you, Palaan! The human you!"
"Huh?" That was all that could come out of my mouth at the time because I was perplexed and having a hangover at the same time so incomplete sentences are not gonna work on me.
"This is the Asher who understands why Asahina and I haven't been able to give up on each other. Love. Palaan, last night, you realized that you found someone who you deeply care about. More than your wife who left you for ANOTHER MAN! And took your kids away from you. But you didn't care about your own because you were never around for them. You love your CGHS kids more than your own."
Dave added, "Yeah dude we kinda noticed that, but you care about one of them more than the others."
Asahina started explaining, "Try to recollect what happened last night. We were at the bar......"

*FLASHBACK*
*ASAHINA'S POV*

Asher knocked down a couple of shots and started telling us the story of why he brought ten kids to the anime world instead of his wife and kids. Being a teacher at CGHS, and writing a novel at the same time can be pretty time-consuming. And because of that, he began to shut out his wife and his kids and was mentally frustrated to juggle work and Nobel all at once. On top of that, came the family problems. Since the mother and father were our working all the time, they couldn't afford to take care of their kids who were failing at school. He and his wife used to fight about their children all the time. Finally, Asher won the literature award for his novel but his wife wasn't there for the ceremony. He thought of going to his wife and apologizing to her about his behavior for the past few years but could actually justify it because, in the end, his hard work did pay off. When he drove home to find a white Corolla on the driveway and walked in on his wife having relations with another man... Asher lost his mind and immediately filed for a divorce. Before he caught his wife, he had talked to Andrew about the simulator and told him that he was bringing his family along with him. But the wife won the custody of the kids because Asher never even fought for them.... which is actually quite unusual for a father... and based on his facial features, I speculated that he would be an extremely doting one. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe this fine man in front of me is a robot who doesn't have a heart.