I Accidentally Built a Harem of Girls Who All Hate Each Other

The world seemed to shrink until it was nothing but the dark, cramped space under the porch and the impossible sight within it. Kittens. A whole litter of tiny, helpless, mewling kittens, curled up against the very stray cat that had single-handedly detonated my peaceful existence.

My brain stalled, crashed, and then rebooted with a single, blaring error message: CRITICAL_FAILURE_0xDEADBEEF.

This wasn't just a complication. This was a narrative singularity, a point of such dense, concentrated irony that it threatened to collapse my entire reality. The source of Reina Kujou's power over me, the living, breathing incarnation of her greatest weakness, had chosen my childhood friend's backyard as its maternity ward.

"What is it?" Yui's voice, sharp with curiosity, cut through my daze. She had moved closer, drawn by my sudden silence. "Kaito, what do you see?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was paralyzed, my mind frantically trying to calculate the potential blast radius of this discovery.

Scenario A: I tell Yui. She, being a fundamentally kind person (when not consumed by righteous jealousy), would want to help them. This would make her an accomplice. Reina finds out. Reina, seeing Yui involved with her deepest secret, escalates the war from a cold one to a thermonuclear one. Result: Mutually assured destruction.

Scenario B: I don't tell Yui. I try to handle this myself. This would involve sneaking into her backyard at all hours to feed a family of cats, an act that would be impossible to hide and would look incredibly suspicious. Yui catches me. She assumes I'm engaged in some bizarre, secret ritual, possibly involving burying evidence of my affair with Reina. Result: Immediate escalation and probably a call to the police.

Scenario C: I do nothing. The cats remain a secret. A secret that could, at any moment, wander out from under the porch and reveal itself. A secret that Reina herself, in her quest for 'surveillance,' might one day discover on her own. Result: A time bomb with an unknown, but probably very short, fuse.

There were no good options. Every path led to ruin.

"Kaito?" Yui's voice was insistent now. She knelt beside me, trying to peer into the darkness. "What is under there? Is it a snake?"

"No!" I yelped, instinctively blocking her view with my body. "No, not a snake. It's... uh... a... a very large, structurally integral support beam! I was just admiring the craftsmanship!"

Yui gave me a look so flat it could have been used as a level. "You were admiring a support beam."

"A foundational pillar of the entire porch structure," I elaborated, digging myself deeper. "Very impressive."

"Alright, that should do it!" my dad's voice boomed from above. He gave the now-solid railing a firm shake. "Solid as a rock. Good work, team." He hopped off the porch, wiping his hands on his pants. "Thanks for the lemonade, Yui-chan. We'll get out of your hair."

Salvation. A temporary, blessed reprieve.

"Y-yeah, we should go," I said, scrambling to my feet and trying to gently herd my dad away from the Porch of Impending Doom.

But Yui wasn't letting it go. Her eyes, sharp and suspicious, were still fixed on the space under the porch. She knew I was lying. My 'support beam' excuse was so flimsy it was transparent.

"What were you really looking at?" she asked, her voice low and demanding as my dad walked ahead of us towards the hedge.

"It was nothing, Yui, I promise," I pleaded in a whisper. "Please, just drop it."

"No," she said, her stubborn streak flaring. "You have been acting weird all day. Weirder than usual. You're hiding something else. Is it from her?"

"Yes! No! It's complicated!" I stammered, my composure fraying.

The mother cat, perhaps disturbed by our whispering, chose that exact moment to let out another soft, plaintive meow.

It was quiet, but in the stillness of the early evening, it was unmistakable.

Yui's eyes widened. The suspicion on her face was instantly replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated delight.

"Oh my god," she whispered, a radiant smile breaking across her face, the first genuine smile I had seen from her in two days. "You found a cat!"

Before I could stop her, she dropped to her knees and peered into the darkness, her previous anger completely forgotten, replaced by an all-consuming love for small, furry creatures.

"Oh, look at them!" she squealed, her voice filled with a joy that was both beautiful and terrifying. "They're so tiny! And the mama... oh, she's so skinny."

I watched, my heart sinking into my shoes. It was too late. The bomb had been discovered. The fuse was lit. All I could do now was watch it burn.

Yui looked up at me, her face glowing with a newfound purpose. The cold war, the jealousy, Reina Kujou—it had all been momentarily forgotten, pushed aside by this new, adorable crisis.

"We have to help them," she declared, her voice filled with a fierce, protective determination. "They need food. Water. A blanket."

"Yui, wait," I said, grabbing her arm. "It's not that simple."

"What's not simple about it?" she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. "They're helpless animals, Kaito. We can't just leave them here."

"I know, but..." How could I explain this? How could I possibly tell her that this specific cat was a walking, purring diplomatic incident?

She looked at me, her eyes narrowing again as she registered the panic on my face. "Why are you so against this? It's just a stray cat and her kittens. What's the big deal?" She paused, a new, horrifying thought dawning on her. Her voice dropped to a suspicious whisper. "Unless... you knew they were here. Is this your secret? Is this the 'special project'?"

My mind reeled. She thought I was running a secret, underground cat shelter with Reina Kujou. The absurdity of it would have been funny if it wasn't so dangerously close to a truth she could never, ever know.

"No! That's not it at all!" I insisted, my voice cracking.

"Then what is it?" she demanded.

I was cornered. Backed into a logical and emotional dead end. My dad's advice came back to me. Tell the truth. It had worked, barely, last time. Could it possibly work again? Could I trust her with a secret this big? A secret that wasn't even mine to share?

I looked at her determined face, at the helpless kittens under her porch, at the whole, impossible mess. Keeping this from her was clearly not an option. She would help these cats with or without my permission. My only chance, my only hope of containing this disaster, was to bring her inside the circle of trust. To make her an ally.

It was the biggest gamble of my life.

"Okay," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I knelt beside her, the scent of damp earth and blooming flowers filling my senses. "Okay, I'll tell you. But you have to promise me—you have to swear to me, Yui—that what I'm about to say does not leave this backyard. Ever."

She looked at me, her expression serious now, sensing the weight of my words. She nodded slowly. "I promise."

I took a deep breath. "This isn't just any cat," I began, the words feeling heavy and dangerous on my tongue. "This cat... is the entire reason Reina Kujou is blackmailing me."

Yui's jaw dropped. She stared at me, then at the purring mother cat, then back at me, her mind visibly struggling to connect two completely incompatible concepts.

"What," she said, her voice a strangled whisper, "are you talking about?"

And so, for the third time in less than twenty-four hours, I found myself explaining the unexplainable, this time in hushed, frantic whispers in my best friend's backyard, just a few feet away from the furry, purring epicenter of my entire catastrophic life.