Fanfic / Beyond Two Fools

Beyond Two Fools is a crossover fanfic between My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! and My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected, written by Haten on FanFiction.Net.

Courtesy of a car hitting him as he foolishly tried to rescue a dog, Hikigaya Hachiman suffers the dreadful fate of being isekai'd in another world, as some rich and entitled kid blessed with tremendous magic power and a wonderful little sister—or, in other words, Nicol Ascart.

Thing is, this means he also has to deal with Katarina Claes.

Contains the following tropes

• Adaptational Personality Change: Because he died in the car crash instead of merely breaking his leg, Hachiman is deeply cynical and bitter regarding people, without any experience soothing his edges. It has the consequence to turn "Nicol Ascart" into a cynical jerk whom everyone finds scary.
• Birds of a Feather: Gerald muses this is the basis for Catarina and Hachiman's friendship, since their mindset and behaviour is so utterly weird for anyone native to Sorcier that they naturally gravitate towards each other.
• Brutal Honesty: Hachiman encourages Mary to bluntly confess her feelings to Catarina, first because the other girl is far too dense to get the memo otherwise, second because dragging the whole mess longer by keeping quiet will only make it painful for Mary.
• Closet Gay: Sorcier isn't the most tolerant society for people breaking the heteronormative mold, so Hachiman concludes Maria and Catarina are carefully avoiding to push the boundaries in spite of being quite shameless in their public demonstrations of affection towards each other.
• Cool Big Bro: No matter the world, Hachiman will dote upon his younger sister — Sophia utterly adores him and staunchly defends him against everyone thinking he's too scary.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Hachiman believes Catarina Claes is a cunning, ruthless witch bent on gaining infamy as an ill-mannered tomboy to escape her royal betrothal because she's gay for Maria.
  • Keith mentally seethes when he gets to see his sister interacting with Hachiman, as he staunchly believes the Ascart heir is playing hard to get in order to seduce Catarina.
• Foil: Hachiman and the monkey girl are reincarnators in Fortune Lover with a very skewed vision of themselves. Where she's cheerful and dense, he's much more cynical and socially perceptive. She was intended to be a villainess only to steal Maria's role as the target of the harem, he was supposed to be a gallant love interest only to turn very unpopular at school. She fully embraced her reborn identity as "Catarina Claes", he still pines after his former life to the point he keeps thinking of himself as "Hikigaya Hachiman" instead of "Nicol Ascart".
• For Want Of A Nail: This limousine killed Hachiman instead of merely breaking his leg, sending him to be reborn in Fortune Lover.
• Freak Out: When Hachiman regained the memories of his previous life, there was a lot of screaming and struggling, then he locked himself in his bedroom for two weeks. It was so intense that Sophia was genuinely traumatized.
• Going Native: Hachiman actively seeks to avoid this, insisting to think of himself as his former identity of a Japanese teen, but he nonetheless admits being raised as "Nicol Ascart" had a noticeable impact upon him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all his complains about Catarina being an ill-mannered dumbass, Hachiman nonetheless fusses over her as much as he does over Sophia and discreetly ships her with Maria in spite of how scandalous it would be for a noble scion to fall in love with a commoner from the same gender.
• Kubrick Stare: Hachiman constantly displays that, to the point that people are unable to notice how beautiful he actually is because they're too busy wondering if he's possessed by some devil.
• Lez Bro: Hachiman comes to the conclusion that Catarina is ruining her royal engagement in order to be with Maria and decides this is the coolest thing ever, trying to let them have a romantic moment at one point by distracting their other friends, fretting about someone lacking good intentions pegging them as a lesbian couple and acting rather smug and proud when Maria finally confesses her love to Catarina.
• Like Brother and Sister: How Catarina sees her relationship with Hachiman, pointing out that he basically treats her the same as Sophia.
• Mistaken for Gay: Hachiman thinks Maria and Catarina are madly in love with each other. Well, he's half right at least...
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, Dan Ascart casting dark magic over his own son is seen as that by Maria, Catarina and Hachiman.
• Morality Pet: The only person Hachiman isn't acerbic towards his Sophia, due in part to the fact that she reminds him of his younger sister from his previous life. He also does become genuine friends with Catarina, though that's in part because she's so cheerfully oblivious that she can bypass his hostile demeanor and uncover his softer side.
• Mutually Fictional: In-Universe. The monkey girl actually had heard of My Teenage Romantic SNAFU through her best friend Atsuko, and couldn't help thinking Hachiman's life was a very sad one.
• Reincarnate in Another World: After Hachiman's death, he was reincarnated into the universe of My Next Life as a Villainess as Nicol.
• Shipper on Deck: Hachiman believes Catarina and Maria are secretly having a passionate love affair and totally supports it.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Under all of Hachiman's bored and spiteful behaviour, he's aware that he died young and will never be reunited with his first family.
• Spotting the Thread: Averted with Catarina who never got to play Nicol's route, meaning she's unfamiliar with how he's supposed to behave and as a consequence doesn't peg his jerkass tendences as a serious Out of Character Alert.
• There Is Another: Both Hachiman and Catarina are stunned to learn the other also is a reincarnator.
• Too Dumb to Live: Hachiman's conclusion regarding Catarina is that she's the most cunning witch of a woman to ever live, or she's just so goddamn dense that she shouldn't be able to breathe and walk at the same time. He eventually comes to realize that she's the latter.
• Unkempt Beauty: Nicol Ascart is canonically so beautiful that it takes your breath away when he genuinely smiles. But this iteration of him happens to be the reincarnation of Hikigaya Hachiman who has a constant Kubrick Stare, doesn't care about combing his hair or properly tying his cravat, and is so hopelessly cynical he reduces people to tears when he opens his mouth.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: When Hachiman gets brainwashed by dark magic, his behaviour gets more "in character" for the canonical genteel Nicol. Everyone else in the student council freaks out.
• What Does She See in Him?: Maria is unable to wrap her head about the endlessly cheerful Catarina being friends with the aloof and spiteful Hachiman.