My girlfriend is actually myself.

Chapter 5 Sakura Nene's Melancholy

The school that Shiraishi Saku attends is called Morinogaoka Academy High School. The word "high school" doesn't mean "superior" or "above others," but rather "high school."

In contrast, just one street away, is Mori no Oka Academy Junior High School, where the younger sister, Sakura Nene, attends. Junior high school means middle school.

As class was about to start, the entrance hall of the teaching building was deserted. Bai Shishuo walked to his shoe cabinet, quickly changed into his indoor shoes, and strode upstairs.

As the morning bell rang, he entered the classroom.

We arrived safely, albeit with some close calls.

"You timed it perfectly," the homeroom teacher laughed from the podium. "Go to your seats, morning class is about to start."

Morning class, also known as SHR (Surname and Headings Meeting), is, as the name suggests, a meeting held before the first period. The timing of morning class varies from school to school; at Morinogaoka Gakuen, it lasts fifteen minutes.

Any changes to today's lessons, school activities, or events that occur in the class will be explained during the morning class.

This is also the time when subject committee members collect homework.

As a transmigrator from the Celestial Empire, Bai Shishuo's homework was of course flawless, but the two parasites who relied on his homework for survival were arrested by the homeroom teacher.

They were only able to escape when the bell rang for the first class. As they passed Shiraishi Saku's seat, their gazes were filled with resentment.

Ignoring them, Shiraishi Saku took out a mechanical pencil and began writing in simplified Chinese characters that the Japanese couldn't understand on his notebook.

[Some Observations on Twin Phenomena]

Twins—that's the name Shiraishi Saku gave to his ability to have two bodies. Having two bodies meant he had essentially gained a dual life.

I. The Origin of Twins

The first thing to consider is what caused his split?

There's no need to dwell on what's past, but who can be sure whether this division is in the past or ongoing?

Maybe he'll wake up tomorrow and split into two more, then four the next day, eight the day after that, and so on, single-handedly erasing Japan's aging population and making those comics with the theme of "special license for a society with a low birth rate" obsolete.

Thinking about it this way, this question is of great significance.

He twirled his pen, glanced at the teacher's seat, and wrote down his guess.

Hypothesis 1: Due to bodily mutation

Shiraishi Saku doesn't remember being bitten by a spider, and if he were bitten, he should be able to scale walls and exhale as silk instead of splitting apart on the spot.

He was bitten by Sakura Nene the day before yesterday because he stole his sister's pudding and tried to cover it up with tofu. The girl thought she had tasted a wonderful hidden flavor until she discovered that the tofu used to make soup was gone.

If you get bitten by your sister, at most you'll get rabies. If we follow the rule that you become like whatever you get bitten by, you'll only become a cute little girl, not split into two.

If we're talking about animals related to splitting, they should be planarians, sponges, starfish, sea cucumbers, and earthworms. I have no chance of encountering the first four, so the only one that might be is the earthworm, since there are horticulture classes in school, but earthworms don't bite people.

Having abandoned his association with the Spider-Man universe, Shiraishi Saku began considering other universes, such as biochemical viruses, alien experiments, or soaking in hot springs.

These conjectures, based on speculation, are all fantastical and impractical. He has no actual clues; all he can do is propose conjectures, waiting to verify them later when clues emerge, just like those ridiculous scientific conjectures.

The pen tip moved from conjecture 1 to the next line, and Shiraishi Saku continued writing.

[Secret Theory 2: Because of my wish]

Every teenager harbors a childish dream, hoping to trigger a miracle, hoping to unconsciously press the button on a wishing machine, where the three rows of wheels quickly spin across different patterns, finally stopping on a cherry.

The machine went silent, then music burst forth, lights flashed, and chips poured out like a waterfall. Casino patrons and staff applauded wildly, celebrating the boy's emptying of the jackpot.

Shiraishi Saku doesn't remember playing this fateful slot machine. His first wish wasn't to split into a girl's body, but to go to the docks and get some fries—adults' wishes are always so simple and unpretentious.

However, if the cherry blossom on the slot machine represents not his first wish, but a dream that flashed through his mind, then this split might truly be his wish.

After a pause, Shiraishi Saku continued writing down his third conjecture.

[Hypothesis 3: Because of Sakura Nene's wish]

Don't laugh yet, this is the most likely of the three guesses.

The night before Shiraishi Saku split up, this younger sister said the following two sentences.

"Will my brother live with the characters in the computer forever?" "When my brother gets old, he'll only have himself to live with." Putting these two sentences together, isn't it like splitting yourself into a game character?

My foolish little sister, you should have the surname Suzumiya, not Sakuraba!

However, aside from this incident, the girl did not demonstrate any ability to make her words come true. The pudding that Shiraishi Saku stole did not reappear, and the girl could only squat in the corner pretending to be a pufferfish.

None of the girl's three best friends were from the future or were robots.

Although this conjecture has the most clues, it also seems like nonsense.

This is the reason why the girl in the previous body told him not to care: he had no clues at all, let alone the ability to weave clues into a net to capture the truth.

Having concluded his conjecture about the origins of twins, Shiraishi Saku moves on to the next step.

II. The Current Status of Twins

Before the pen tip could finish the last stroke, a familiar name reached my ears.

"Shiraishi, stand up and answer the question!"

This lesson was history, and the history teacher, as old and decrepit as history itself, noticed that Shiraishi Shuo was daydreaming and called on him to get up.

All teachers like to use this tactic: they want to punish students who don't listen, but instead of saying so directly, they throw a question at them and only start punishing them when they get the answer wrong.

They might be trying to cosplay the Sphinx, or they might be trying to elevate the importance of the knowledge they impart, telling you that as long as you learn knowledge, you can avoid punishment. The former is childish, and the latter is also childish; adults are not much different from children.

The history teacher adjusted his thick glasses and asked, "What was the reform aimed at imitating the Tang Dynasty's system?"

Shiraishi Saku paused for a moment before replying, "The Taika Reform."

The history teacher paused, for the sphinx had broken its promise and asked another question.

"To which regime does the system of handing over duties belong?"

Shiraishi Saku paused again for a moment: "The Edo Shogunate."

"You have some ability, now the real problem begins." The history teacher turned around and faced Shiraishi Saku.

This statement is like a child who has lost a lot and suddenly says, "I'm going to show my true strength now." Unlike a child, a history teacher can actually increase the difficulty of the questions.

"Taika Reform, Meiji Restoration, Ōnin War, Jōkyū War—arrange them in chronological order." The history teacher was confident that no one in this class could escape his bombshell!

In history, time is the most difficult thing to remember, and sequencing time is even more difficult.

However, Shiraishi Saku paused for a moment before giving his answer: "Taika Reform, Jōkyū Rebellion, Ōnin Rebellion, Meiji Restoration."

The history teacher swayed. In the legend of the Sphinx, the monster whose riddle was solved jumped off a cliff in shame and anger, and now he understood the Sphinx's feelings.

He quickly asked a few more questions, and no matter how difficult or long they were, Shiraishi Saku could always give the correct answer after a short pause, even if the questions were beyond his comprehension.

What exactly was that mysterious silence, and why was the boy able to find the answer in that short time?

The untrustworthy Sphinx finally accepted reality and sighed, "Sit down."

Shiraishi Saku sat back in his chair and picked up the mechanical pencil again.

Meanwhile, at Shiraishi's home, a twenty-minute walk from the school, Yukimiya Natsune raised her hands from the keyboard.

The search history on the computer screen was densely packed with questions from the history teacher.

No matter how tricky his questions are, can they really stump Google?