Kyouma was the captain of the tennis team, the ace that was nearly unbeatable. And he looked fabulous doing it, too. As flocks of lady fans gathered around to see his performance, they swooned as the sweat glistened upon his brow from exertion.
The crowd cheered as he crushed another one of his rivals. At this rate, he would be taking nationals by storm later that year.
As he exited the courts, a ball fell from his bag. He chased after it and scooped it up with his racket.
Suddenly, a truck turned the corner sharply and ended up right before him.
With hardly time to hold his racket up in reflex, the truck crashed into him, sending him into darkness.
Tsubasa was a cute, petite boy. His parents loved to dress him up in girly clothing. As a result, he had attracted a lot of unwanted attention from adoring fans, many of them guys.
Of course, he felt rather insecure about his feminine looks, but at the same time, his body type had been perfect to become the next best fashion model for a line of androgynous clothing. Pretty soon, both girls and boys around the country would be tickled by his charming looks and innocent personality.
That was, if he hadn't clumsily tripped from a gust of wind into the direct path of a speeding truck.
Usami was a possessive man. The girlfriend of his didn't seem to appreciate all that he did for her. After all, they were crazy in love. So, of course, he would keep tabs on her contacts. Of course, he would go around intimidating the guys that came to her with his 'large hands'. He wasn't being a creep. He was just protecting what was his.
All the more surprised he was when she suddenly pushed him away. Not expecting it, he stumbled back a few steps, right into the path of a speeding truck.
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"Vera…Don't you think we've gathered enough guys for the request?" Diesel questioned his currently assigned partner this time.
"Well, the requester did ask for a good assortment of viable candidates this time. An assortment of different tastes, that is. That was the last one," Vera confirmed as they headed back to the Divine Realm.
Diesel looked confusedly at the list of 'serviced' people. They had all been fairly attractive young guys with interesting quirks. It was certainly a strange request.
"Why do they need so many anyways? Are they in need of THAT many heroes?" At this rate, Diesel thought that an entire hero squad could be formed. Just how dangerous was the evil there for so many heroes to be sent?
Vera stopped and turned towards Diesel. "It's not that the world is in dire perils…They had just offered a ridiculous amount of karma to satisfy the unique traditions of that world."
"That being?"
"A female summoner who requests for the aid of a group of chosen ones. As part of the summoning, she typically ends up bonding with one of them to vanquish the demon lord. However, it's hard to say what type of guy she prefers, so they had made the request to gather a variety of different stereotypes."
That took a moment to register what the situation had seemed like. "Gwah! An otome game?!"
Vera laughed at Diesel's response and nodded, pretty much confirming his suspicions. Diesel sighed that he had been roped into an otherworld scheme for setting up a dating sim. What happened to preserving the balance between worlds?!
"But this is still considered balancing, you know. That world is actually in need of several heroes to turn the tide, and this world seemed to have too many guys with overwhelming advantages compared to the norm."
However, Diesel wasn't quite convinced. For some reason, Vera seemed awfully keen on selecting certain guys for the task. She had been oddly picky between some choices when Diesel couldn't tell the difference between them.
Moreover, he felt a bit sorry for the guys that didn't get the girl. After all, she would only end up with one of them, would she not? It seemed like the remaining ones would get the shaft for their help saving the world. Oh, the dreary life of a tossed-aside side character. How dreadful.
"Things will work out between them. I made sure of it." Vera puffed some air like she normally did. Diesel had gotten used to the floating tie that was a clear indicator of when her emotions got strong. However, why was she so confident in this case?
"Wait…it couldn't be? Is that girl summoner going for the harem route?!" Diesel sputtered, thinking that this was the typical way to please the entire spectrum in a dating sim, granted those of an R18 nature.
Vera had a good laugh at that. After her giggles calmed down, it seemed like she was ready to confess.
"No, that's not it. That's not the kind of society that is. Even if she is the esteemed hero of that world, returning the affections of 9 guys at the same time would be a little much, don't you think?"
"Well…yeah. Certainly. But then…?"
Vera's windshield suddenly got kind of foggy and her words started to ramble.
"It seemed like Usami would be a good 'Seme'! And that Tsubasa, he would look perfect on the bottom! And Kyouma, he's an all-rounder! He could get along with any one of them! They just need to end up as heated rivals guarding each other's asses…"
It took a few moments for Diesel to understand what Vera had meant by all of that, but when he did, he slowly backed up from her.
All this time, she had been looking for BL pairs to ship!
'So, that was the reason she painstakingly scrutinized each one of the candidates. She was looking for ones that triggered her Yaoi senses!'
Diesel had the incredible urge to bang against something. To think that her backup plan had been to pair up each of the unchosen guys as the solution.
'Madam Sorceress and her BL Squad, I dub thee!' Diesel imagined a strange title, mentally wrapping a bow around the request and calling it done.
The truck stop was now in their sights. Time for a quick refresher. When they arrived, they were greeted by the sight of only Mama Shanty.
"Back from a job? That certainly took a while."
"Well…Vera was very keen on selecting the right candidates to ship." Diesel sighed as Vera's headlights looked somewhat starry-eyed from the result.
"At least, you guys have a request to take care of. I'm here, waiting for the dream guy to truck."
Mama Shanty didn't really do requests unless she felt like it. It seemed like she was the pickiest out of all of them.
"If only there was a nice world that requested a suave, cool-headed detective. The glint of his badge gracing his form and the determined, righteous look on his face as he points his gun at you – now, that is worth running into!"
Diesel didn't quite understand the appeal that she had for those in uniform. However, he couldn't deny that some people had them. His sister in the previous world he came from had a calendar of sexy firefighters hanging in her room, so he just passed it off as a strange quirk.
"Didn't you say you liked requests that looked for intellectual people that could defeat evils with their brains? It doesn't have to be a guy in uniform, right?"
Mama Shanty sniffled, which was a bit odd because trucks didn't have noses.
"I tried one not long ago, but for some reason, they didn't want the mature, classy guy that had many talents. Instead, they asked for a pair of shut-in siblings who did nothing but play games all day!"
Diesel couldn't say anything about that. It seemed like isekai-related requests all checked off the box asking for certain factors in their summoned heroes. The image of an action hero in a crime drama just didn't fit the bill. Rather, an image of the requesters cheering from their sofa, as a cute young boy or girl appeared, floated in Diesel's mind.
Although, what did he know? Diesel tended to watch problem solving through silly martial arts and fighting people with everyday objects instead. To him, a good fight scene just wasn't complete unless the villains were beaten up with things like ladders, bicycles, or umbrellas. It just wasn't as satisfying to merely see a villain taken away by the police after a 'the culprit is YOU!' moment.
"Cheer up, Mama Shanty. You'll find the request just for you someday. And it will be all yours. I'm sure Kami-sama will save it just for you."
"If a goose doesn't beat me to it first."
"They haven't been so active lately, so you're probably safe."
In truth, Moon Goddess Yue didn't seem like she wanted to compete with Kami-sama directly, but rather, she wanted to catch his attention. After all, she had readily agreed to sending her geese out to help when he asked.
In fact, they were probably busy in the online world messing with people's gaming sessions and desktops. Most of them liked to play non-lethal pranks to begin with.
Diesel sighed as he thought that there could have been worse things that he could find himself doing.
It was just another day in the daily life of a Truck-kun.