AN: Hello everyone! You may not know who I am, so let me introduce myself briefly: I'm Benzux (or just Ben among friends), and I have been writing fanfiction about my favourite Anime/Manga for well over a year, now. However, this story is my first time writing about such a "well-known" series as Oregairu, with my other stories being about lesser-known titles. If you've already read one of my previous stories, I thank you for your support!

I'd like to think I've read most of the Oregairu fanfictions on , with my favourite ones focusing either on best girl Yukino or not-quite-best-but-still-kind-of-good girl Yumiko, who I began to like after the surprising amount of stories shipping her and Hachiman (Keep them coming!). And for the longest time, I have been planning on joining the various authors in writing fanfiction for this magnificent series, but with my free time being absorbed by my other story projects, and due to not being able to choose whether to write a Yukino fic or a Yumiko fic, I've only now gotten around to it (and what better time, with the 14th Volume of the Novels now out in Japan and the third season of the Anime just around the corner!). But, when given a choice between two things, one always has a third option: choosing both. Me choosing said third option is what lead to the idea for this story. I couldn't choose whether or not to focus on Yukino or Yumiko in my story, so I'll just have to focus on both! And if you are wondering about the "M" rating I've given this story, there's a couple of reasons for it. Firstly, it gives me a lot more freedom with what I write. I don't think there'll be any smut any time soon, but it does allow me to not worry about offending anyone – you know what you're getting into. And secondly, this fic will feature yanderes. That's right, I used the plural. It should become pretty clear who is a yandere and who is not, but you have been warned, if that is not your cup of tea.

Now, this AN is a bit longer than I wanted it to be, but without further ado, let us get Checkmate underway with this first chapter – the Prologue!

Prologue

What. Is. Happening. Right. Now.

"Hachi."

"Hikio!"

My hands are tied, and I'm being pinned down. Two female figures are looming over me, and I recognise both of them too well, even in the dim light of the room we are inside of. Why… why didn't I realize this sooner...

"You must make a decision, Hachi." One of the voices says, and I feel a soft finger caressing my cheek.

"For once I agree with her. You'll choose me, right, Hikio?" The other voice says, while her finger moves in circles on my chest.

"Don't be absurd. He'll obviously choose me. I'm the best choice for him, after all." The finger on my cheek ceases its movements, and its owner turns to face towards the other girl.

"Huh?! And what makes you think that?" The finger on my chest stops, and the girls are now facing each other.

"Umm… G-girls..?" I manage to weakly say, and both of them turn to look at me, their beautiful faces causing a shiver to go down my spine. Their… their eyes… Here I thought I was the one who was said to have dead eyes…

"Could you please be quiet for a moment, Hachi?" A cold voice sends a shiver down my spine.

"Yeah, me and her need to settle this matter first, Hikio." The words come out of her mouth laden with venom, and I find myself swallowing.

"Oh, there's no need to settle anything. Hachi already said he loves me."

"Huh? He told me the same thing, idiot! We were both there!"

"Y-you two…" Both of them place a finger on my mouth to silence me, and shortly afterwards both of their fingers curl inwards, seemingly attempting to find their way inside my mouth.

"Hmmm… I believe that in a situation like this, there's only one compromise we can reach."

"Wait, you're not talking about that, are you?"

"Well, it all depends on Hachi. Can you make a decision between the two of us?" One of the fingers stops its assault of my mouth, and I can see the girl it belongs to gently lick her finger, as if testing the taste of my lips from it.

"Yeah, tell us now!" The second finger leaves, and the girl lifts it up to suck on it like a lollipop.

"I… I can't… really…" I try to avert my gaze from the girls, but something is preventing me from doing so. So even when I'm deathly afraid of them, I still can't look away from their beauty...

"Then there really is only one choice, Hachi." One of the figures leans closer to me.

"It wasn't like, my number one choice, but it's probably the best – and only – one right now, Hikio." The second figure followed suit, the both of them coming so close to me I could feel their hot breaths on my face.

"Neither of us want to give you up for anyone else…"

"...So we'll just have to share you between the two of us!"

As I felt two pairs of lips pressing against my own, I only had one thought in my head.

How the hell did it come to this?!

Love.

Poets would call it the most powerful force in the universe, chocolate companies would call it the driving force behind their increase in sales around February, single women past the age of thirty would call it nothing but a myth, and biologists would call it a chemical reaction in the brains of humans that compels us to ensure the survival of the human race.

Why did I suddenly feel dread at the third depiction? Scary. Single women past their thirties are scary. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes.

Love.

Depending on who you ask, this curious emotion that humans exhibit means different things, just as there are different aspects of love. It is an emotion that ties closely with other emotions, and it is often said that this emotion, love, is what makes us human, what separates us from the rest of the animals living upon our planet. Though just as many people would also say that our intelligence sets us apart from every other living being, we have to remember that there are extremely intelligent animals as well, mostly among our closest relatives, the primates. But, there are others as well, such as dolphins and octopuses, both of which have displayed remarkable intelligence among sea creatures. If only their lifespans weren't so limited, maybe they could do something with that intelligence of theirs. Give it a millennia or two and they'll develop opposable thumbs – that's when we're in trouble. I for one welcome our finned overlords, and I'm sure a certain marine biologist with a fascination for the aquatic mammals would agree with me. Perhaps he'll tell them the secret of his choice of headwear. Where does his hat end, and where does his hair begin? Just another one of the many mysteries of this universe that scientists have yet to answer. But I digress. Back to the topic at hand.

Love.

As I said, when asked, many would tell you that love is the emotion that makes us unique among the millions (Billions? Trillions? I couldn't tell you – I'm not that great at math) of living organisms that inhabit planet Earth. We can love our friends and family, our favourite foods, or our pets, each in different ways. And, of course, we can also love our… well, lovers. The love of the human race takes on many forms, and it can change between all of these, as well as between other emotions. Someone you initially hated may become the object of your affections, or your former crush might simply become your best friend. When we lose someone close to us, we mourn for them, and any time the person is mentioned in the future, all we feel is sadness. Love is truly a fascinating emotion, and calling it unique is definitely the right choice of words.

But, I believe it is incorrect to classify it as the reason we differ from other animals. Do many animals not stay with their mate for life? What reason would there be for this, if the most optimal way to ensure a species' survival is to mate with as many other members of your species as possible? When we shower our pets with affection and love, do they not show affection back to us (except Kamakura, of course. He is far too high and mighty to show affection for puny humans), and display signs of sadness when we are gone? And as evidenced by the largest land mammals, elephants, do animals not also mourn for their dead? They may lack the intelligence or means to hold ceremonies for their fallen brethren as we do, but they clearly show signs of mourning. If other animals were simply emotionless – loveless – what reason would there be for any of these kinds of behaviours? Why would animals display signs of an emotion that we humans associate with our mental superiority? Or, perhaps the better question would be, why do humans display a specific emotion, the signs of which can also be observed in other animals? This would suggest that the biologist's description of the emotion I mentioned previously would be the correct one: that the emotion known as "love" is simply the result of evolution, likely to help with bringing individuals within a species together – as there is strength in numbers – and encourage those individuals to reproduce. This would then obviously mean that there is nothing "special" about love, that it is simply another emotion with a purpose to help a species survive, like anger or fear. Love was, quite ironically, romanticized by humans. Without our convoluted ideas about love, it is simply something which draws individuals together for safety and reproduction – no matter the species.

Now, the dear person reading my mind, you might be wondering why exactly am I, Hikigaya Hachiman – the Monster of Logic and loner extraordinaire – monologuing about love? A subject which I have sworn to abstain from due to more or less traumatic past experiences with said subject, and the belief that the probability for said subject to ever be a part of my life is close to zero? The answer to that question is quite simple. As I'm sure you already know, dear mind reader, I am not the greatest at math, and probability calculation – as the name implies – involves a lot of math.

What I'm trying to say, is that my calculation about the probability of love ever being a part of my life was more than a little incorrect, because I, Hikigaya Hachiman, still the Monster of Logic and loner extraordinaire…

...have fallen in love.

I know, it sounds completely unbelievable. Anyone who really knows me – so not a lot of people, as not that many know me in the first place – would simply laugh if I said this to them, which is also the reason why I am monologuing about it all by myself instead of telling anyone. When the riajuus laugh about me behind my back, I couldn't give a damn, but if it's those few people relatively close to me? That hurts. Anyway, even I am having a hard time believing it, but the conclusion I have come to after pondering about the matter for an extended period of time is clear. There is simply no other explanation for the curious phenomena I have experienced in the past couple of weeks, though whether or not my feelings have existed for longer than that? I couldn't say.

Ah, love. Curse you, Gods of Romantic Comedies, for inflicting this plight upon me.

But, no matter how much I curse and agonize over the matter, it won't change a thing – it won't change my feelings. It won't change the fact that I find my breath getting stuck in my throat every time I see her sitting at her usual spot, or how simply hearing her voice causes my heartbeat to increase exponentially, or how I catch myself involuntarily staring at her whenever she does that thing with a stray strand of her hair and her index finder when she's thinking or reading, or how my eyes always find their way gazing down at her lips, and how I wonder how they would taste, or how it would feel to stroke her beautiful, glistening hair, or-

Wait, stop.

…

Maybe I've been observing her a little too much. Bad brain! You're not allowed to get sidetracked like that during my inner monologues, we've been over this. No more sugary sweets for you! Actually, scratch that. My heart couldn't live without MAX.

Back to the point: my feelings.

I can't get rid of them, not any more. Usually problems are best dealt with by cutting it out by the roots, but I fear these roots have ingrained themselves too deep into me – too deep into my walled-off heart – that attempting to cut them now would probably do more harm than good. And here I thought Ingrain was supposed to restore HP every round, not drain it. Heh. Anyway, I'm too far into the deep end now, as evidenced by my monologues – the only times I can be alone with my thoughts, truly safe and disconnected from the cruel world – already being infested with her presence, her face, her rare smile, her voice-

I'm doing it again.

Who knew love could have such power? Truly scary. If some scientist figures out how to transform love into a weapon of mass destruction, we would all be doomed.

So, if I can't get rid of the problem any longer, what should I do? Confessing my feelings -whether to the cause of those feelings, or someone else – is out of the question. I am the only one who knows about this, and I intend to keep it that way. Not even Komachi is allowed to know. Komachi especially is not allowed to know. With confessing not being an option, what am I left with? I could always keep these feelings entirely to myself, bottled up deep within the nigh-impenetrable fortress that is my heart (only nigh-impenetrable now, as she obviously managed to penetrate those defences) and just watch the days pass and see her slipping away from me, ultimately leaving me sad and alone. Okay yeah maybe not, that's just making me depressed, and I never want to experience that again. So, what does that leave me with? Well, dear mind reader, the answer is simple. I must do what I do best.

Observe.

Now, given that even right now I am struggling to keep my thoughts straight and preventing them from being invaded by her yet again, a part of me is saying that I have already done a little too much observing, like I previously noted. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is currently the best course of action I could take. If I take the time to carefully observe her- er... the current situation, I mean, I should be able to find and/or determine the next thing I should do. If I take a little bit of time to observe and analyse everything at close, it's only a matter of time before I can reach a sound conclusion to my conundrum. Totally does not have anything to do with the fact that I am completely hopeless as to what to do in this situation and simply want to have an excuse to spend more time looking at the person I am immensely attracted to.

No, that would be ludicrous. Hah! The mere thought is making me laugh.

Sigh.

Curse you, Gods of Romantic Comedies!

Well, one more time cursing them won't do anything bad, right? It's not like they could make the situation any worse, like suddenly making me fall in love with a second girl. Yeah, right like that would happen. Or even worse, make a girl fall in love with me. Hah! Now that's comedy, simply hilarious.

Oh, but you might be wondering, dear mind reader, who could this unlucky girl who I have fallen for actually be? Well, given that reading the minds of others only happens in Science Fiction or Fantasy, you do not exist, dear mind reader. Thus, all of my monologuing has been kept safe and private, only in the knowledge of yours truly, just as it should be. Because of this, there is no risk in me revealing who this girl is, as I am not really "revealing" it to anyone but myself. So, to answer the question from my non-existent mind reader, the beautiful, amazing, perfect girl who I, Hikigaya Hachiman, have fallen in love with, is none other than one of the two queens of Soubu High…

...Yukinoshita Yukino.