"Not only have you stolen my earnings, you've also stolen my sole too…"

Yuigahama Yui pressed her palms into her face, cringing in dismay at the line as laughter erupted from her side.

"Oh that was good, write it down, quick!", said Mrs Yuigahama in between fits of laughter.

"No!" Yuigahama exclaimed, mortified at the thought of sending something as horrific as that abomination to anyone, much less him. "That was horrible even IN context!"

"I thought it was pretty nice, the whole idea of soulmates…" said Mrs Yuigahama dreamily, her thoughts wandering to parts unknown.

"OH! You could ask for their shoe size!" said Mrs Yuigahama as a flash of inspiration hit her.

"...Why?" Yuigahama asked, bracing herself for the worst.

"We could be SOLE-mates!"

Yuigahama did not even give her mother the dignity of a response. Instead, she got to her feet and marched to the bathroom.

Pouting, Mrs Yuigahama turned her attention back to the television set. She had hoped to get a laugh out of her daughter for that one.

"That was a pretty good line…" she lamented to nobody in particular as she ejected the DVD - A romantic comedy about a female thief who falls in love with a cobbler after robbing him.

About 3 days ago, her daughter had come home visibly distraught. Mrs Yuigahama had assumed the worst, but was rather surprised and very confused when she was asked to come up with a list of bad pick up lines. It was then the Yuigahamas discovered that they had a mutual fascination with pick up lines. More specifically, bad pick up lines.

As it turns out, Yuigahama was a natural - her lines were extraordinarily bad.

That said, Mrs Yuigahama was no slouch herself. Whether out of pity, love or genuine interest, she embarked on a epic quest with her daughter to seek out bad pick up lines, namely by going to the local rental and getting as many cheap romantic comedies as humanly possible. They had initially went as a pair, but Yuigahama bolted the moment her mother asked for trashy romance flicks by the dozens to the bemused shop assistant.

The end result was that both mother and daughter found themselves watching an endless stream of badly written romantic comedies, self help guides to dating for both sexes, and over the course of particularly memorable movie night, a guide to forming a harem for clueless guys.

"Think we have enough, Yui?" asked Mrs Yuigahama as her daughter returned.

"No…" Yuigahama replied as she collapsed into the sofa. "Ahhhhh - I don't wanna do this anymore…."

"But we're having so much fun!" Said her mother as she cheerfully loaded another DVD into the player. "Maybe we should branch out, watch a foreign film or something. I'll see if we can get any at the store tomorrow."

"Haaa…." Yuigahama replied as the movie started playing. An upbeat soundtrack washed over her as her mind processed the series of events leading to her current situation. One question kept flashing - just who was her mysterious match? She had deliberately went out of her way to be as creepy as possible, even recruiting her own mother to help find bad pick up lines. She was absolutely certain that all her lines were designed to scare the hell out of any potential matches, which was why Yuigahama was completely caught off guard when her match did not immediately block Hachiman, instead countering with a pick up line of her own. And so began the game of cat and mouse between Yuigahama and her match.

At first, Yuigahama had assumed they were both just messing with each other. As the conversation grew weirder with each passing day, she genuinely thought she got matched with a prankster, which is the only logical reason why anyone would act like they did.

Then, her match proposed a meet up. At this point, Yuigahama was absolutely certain her 'match' was definitely just a prankster. There is absolutely no way a normal girl would act the way her match did. In fact, Yuigahama was so certain that she was up against a prankster that she doubled down, counter proposing to meet on Friday instead to call out her bluff. Surely, the prankster will fold, cementing her victory.

But Hachiman's last email planted the seeds of doubts into Yuigahama's mind. He's supposed to be a mere proxy, but his use of all caps gave the impression that he was surprised and more importantly, scared. But of what? What about that match could possibly scare him? Why on earth does he fear such an obvious prankster?

Yuigahama could only speculate as the movie continued to run, leaving her mother to take notes. In the end, she had completely failed to process the movie, with nothing to show for it except for a few out of context pick up lines written by her mother.

Only two days to Friday, Yuigahama thought to herself as she prepared to call it a day. Her mind was still spinning when she finally drifted off to sleep with more questions than answers.