Kapitel 110: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 105 [3.6k Words]
Shizuka Hiratsuka Tries Not to Panic
"You were supposed to take care of him when I—you were supposed to take care of him," Yumiko Hikigaya states after my latest jab.
'A bit late for that, isn't it?' I just told her when she said she didn't want her child to be hurt.
"Oh, I can guarantee she has done that," Haruno says with a polite smile that maybe could fool somebody going through a brain aneurysm.
"Haruno," I hiss in the verbal equivalent of an elbow to her ribs, very much tempted into going for the non-verbal application.
"What? I was just talking about your excellent qualifications as a teacher. You know, that career you just sacrificed for the sake of the kid you have been taking care of."
"I gave that up for you."
"Right. And what did I just say?" she answers with another smile. One that wouldn't fool anyone with even a hint of a working survival instinct.
… So, maybe Hachiman.
"Right. You're now unemployed. Such a wonderful prospect for my son's girlfriend—"
"You don't care about that, and pretending that you do just to snipe at me will only make this uglier than it already is."
"And how would you know I don't care about your financial prospects? Hachiman, after all, often claims to want to be a stay-at-home-husband," she says before masking the lower half of her face with her own coffee mug like an asshole ninja teacher.
"Because you don't want him to be a househusband. You want him to be perfectly self-sufficient and to not depend on anybody else," I say, gauging the reapplied façade, trying to see where the cracks are, to know if I should push as hard as I'm about to… "Not even on you."
Her jaw clenches, and the fury returns to her husband's eyes.
"You seem to assume a lot about my family, Miss Hiratsuka," he says, finally intervening without his wife prompting him to.
"I wouldn't have to assume so much if you just talked to your son."
"I am not the one taking advantage of—"
"Oh, dear, I wonder what that is? It sounds like somebody struggling to deflect years of neglectful parenting and latching onto the first excuse they can think of to change the subject," Haruno pleasantly comments before taking a small sip of her coffee and then lifting her eyes and blinking innocently at the three of us. "What?" she asks with… with what Hachiman would no doubt call 'utter Harunoness.'
The kimono and updo aren't helping.
At all.
Note to self: stop reading kemonomimi stories when I have to regularly deal with the likes of Haruno and Iroha. Also, never buy a kiseru pipe for Haruno.
No matter how tempting.
"Come with me," I say, standing up and looking at a single person out of the ones who could've interpreted my words as an invitation.
"Always," Haruno says.
"Not you," I have to clarify while also ignoring the innuendo that, hopefully, just flew over Hachiman's parents' heads.
"Why?" his mother asks.
I close my eyes, hold back the sigh I very much want to let out, and gently place the coffee mug with Dad's gym logo back on my counter, my hand moving slowly enough that the impact on the grey countertop is soft rather than as loud as my heartbeat currently is.
Then I open my eyes and look at a woman who keeps wavering between unflinching confrontation and fearful disorientation.
"Because you wanted to talk to the one who got your son into this whole mess, not to engage in a four-way verbal brawl," I say.
And then I walk out from my open kitchen and toward my balcony, missing the reassuring clack of hard-soled shoes on the floor as my steps turn into that overly masculine thing some of my exes have often criticized.
'You can be so unladylike.'
'I don't know why I bother—you're clearly a dyke.'
'I'm just saying… sometimes I feel like you're trying to be the man in this relationship.'
Yeah. Some of them.
Others just thought it.
And… And it's taken too long for me to find someone who doesn't flinch away from the woman I refused to stop being even as I grew more and more desperate. Someone who will joke with and at me, but never…
Never resent who I am.
I planned to let go. I really did.
But even Haruno has learned that one does not make plans around Hachiman Hikigaya.
The metal handle of the door to my balcony feels cooler than it should be with spring so near, and the button is stuck as it often is until the weather grows warmer, forcing me to apply more strength than I should until it unlatches and I can slide the glass pane open.
It's a luxury, having a balcony, one that I looked for when I got my own apartment but that I now find myself rarely indulging in, often staying on my sofa rather than on a chair with an open book like I envisioned when I first went through the door and fell in love with what would be my place for the years to come.
An apartment for a single woman with just enough room that she could pretend it was meant for a couple.
I let out a bitter smile at the familiar thought, one that sometimes assaulted me when I came in after a night out drinking with Haruno, complaining about my latest ex in ways that she found more hilarious than I thought my words merited, and…
And I take a deep breath of city air cleansed by the park under my building before I reach the railing and lean over it, both forearms resting on cool, dewed wood that makes the sleeves of my white shirt wet.
Then, the door slides closed behind me.
"I love him," I say before she can derail this with another meaningless insult. "I love him, and, if I thought it was for the best, I would've broken up with him already."
She doesn't answer.
Her eyes are on my back, and I can feel the growing pressure. The tension of… maybe hostility.
I don't know.
It's not like I ever learned about killing intent. That kind of thing should be up Haruno's alley, even if she often scoffs when I mention the supposedly esoteric aspects of her chosen art.
'I don't need any ancient teachings to know when I'm pissing people off, Shizuka; it's when I open my mouth—sometimes, it's when I don't.'
Damn it.
I shouldn't be grinning right now.
"He says he loves you," she finally answers, still from behind me.
"But he's young. He's young, and this is his first relationship, so how can you trust him to be right and not just infatuated? How can you trust your son to be making the right choice rather than letting hormones choose for him?"
Another pause.
There's a mild breeze. Enough for the trees in the park to show it, the branches swaying and the first green leaves glittering in the still low sun.
The air smells crisp. I often imagined waking up by filling my lungs with it as a mug of tea warmed my hands, and I looked over my city, letting its sounds greet the day for me.
I, instead, ended up waking up at the very last moment, instant coffee burning down my throat and toast with whatever I could throw on top of it making me feel like I should run down the street yelling about being late until I clashed into a tall and broody man.
… He's still growing. He will soon enough be taller than I am.
"He's… three girls," she says with a pained voice. "Three girls, when he didn't even have any friends a few months ago. How… If you… You could destroy him. Just the wrong word or gesture, and he… how could he recover…"
I turn around, my lower back now against the railing, the light of the grey-blue sky framing me from behind as I face Yumiko Hikigaya and my dark reflection on the now opaque glass door.
"It takes a lot of wrong words and gestures for someone to reach the point where a single one can destroy them," I say.
Her lost eyes sharpen.
"What do you want from me? To tell you that I screwed up? That I wounded him more than I realized? That my own child doesn't trust me? That he fears being truthful with me enough that he came up with the brilliant idea of using Iroha as a cover for… for your quartet?"
"Maybe. Have you told him?"
"What?"
"That you're sorry."
Her jaw clenches.
It's a good defensive reflex. Otherwise, a punch to the chin can get your jaw dislocated. Briefly cut off the blood flow to the brain, as well as rattling it inside your skull until you fall unconscious and drop to the mat.
I don't think she's ever practiced boxing, though. Her knuckles are too thin.
"That would be self-serving," she says.
And I could slap her.
For too many reasons.
"So… That's where he gets it from," I say, falling to temptation and pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Where he gets what?"
"Unflinching, uncompromising, self-destructive stubbornness. What else?"
This time, it's her that closes her eyes.
"I did apologize," she says when she opens them.
"Oh?"
"Yesterday. I… I told him that I was sorry I had passed my rage on to him. And he then felt… guilty, I guess. He felt forced to tell me… about this."
"Ah."
"I'm not proud of how I reacted," she says, looking away and down into the brick red tiles of my balcony's floor.
"Love can make you stupid," I say, experience making the reply all but the airy platitude it should be.
She turns back to look through her reflection at something I can't see from this angle, and her face softens for the first time since she rang my doorbell, turning into something other than anger or pained anguish.
"Yes. Yes, it can," she says.
And then she walks to my right and turns around, leaning back on the railing, her weight shifting the wood behind me as she bends her head back as far as it can go so that Yumiko Hikigaya is staring up at the sky rather than at me, her husband, or her son and daughter.
"I'm afraid," she says, completely unnecessarily. "I'm terrified that he will… That you will hurt him. That Haruno will twist him further. That Iroha can lie to him as easily as she did to me. That Hana Yukinoshita will go after my children. I'm afraid of so many things that can go wrong and end up with my kid… He was healing. I could see him… growing. More confident, more him without all the parts I never wanted him to inherit. My son was about to become…"
She drifts off, unable to find the words.
So I bend my head back and look at the same sky she sees.
There are some sparse, wandering clouds, the kind that look like flour over a kitchen's counter, their edges fading away in puffs of ever thinner white until they become the sky around them.
I briefly wonder what a lazy ninja would see in them, and whether Haruno would've been a better Nara than an Uchiha before my smile grows bitter at the reminder that now, more than ever, she would make for a fantastic Itachi.
"You are wrong," I say to the mother of my lover. "As much as he's grown and learned… what made him who he is was always there, waiting to bloom. His intelligence, his bravery, his compassion… those he didn't learn over the past year," I say.
'He didn't learn them from me,' I don't add.
There's another silence as we keep staring up at a sky too gray for the late winter. Too dim.
Too dull, Haruno would say.
"So. You love him," she says.
"Wha—" I try not to blurt out as I frantically blink and have to grab the railing with both hands when I turn toward her too quickly.
There's a mocking smile waiting for me on her face.
"It's easy to say things. It's not so easy to fake spontaneous emotion," she tells me with an infuriating grin that I know too well.
"You—I—what—"
"At least the kids will be tall."
"Wha—I'm not ready! Iroha's not ready!"
"Iroha what?"
"Uh… nothing. She's… just too young to be in a relationship that involves raising kids. Yes. That's it. That's everything that I meant."
"… At least I know for a fact that one of you is a poor liar."
I let out a perfectly dignified, not at all flustered whine and lean forward to hide my burning face between two blissfully cool and slightly wet hands.
"Iroha has… issues. Abandonment issues. She often talks about getting Hachiman to… you know," I say without looking away from my barely spread fingers.
"… I'm getting him a vasectomy."
"Wha—no! I—I mean, I'm pretty sure a parent can't take that decision—"
"They are perfectly safe and reversible. His father got one after Komachi made the need for it clear. It doesn't affect anything," she says with a pointed eyebrow that my fingers don't shield me from.
"You still can't make that decision for him."
"I'll pay. Whatever it costs."
"Iroha won't get pregnant until after college. She promised," I say, sliding right into the pleading phase of grief.
"Oh, a promise. I'm sure those are as effective as an IUD—"
"There's nothing wrong with an IUD. They're statistically safer than condoms and reduce the risk of user error—"
"I'm learning more about my son's sex life than I ever dreaded to learn. Please, stop."
"You brought up kids!"
"I was teasing you! I didn't expect to become a grandmother while one of my kids is still in high school!"
"Well, then you better make sure that Komachi doesn't repeat any grades—"
"I can't believe I ever suspected you of being a masterful manipulator…"
"Oh, no, that's Haruno. Maybe Iroha, in one of the days when she doesn't get caught by her own schemes. Hachiman, if we account for social suicide… Oh gods, I am so screwed…"
"Don't expect me to console you."
"Thank you for the offer, but I've got a pair of perfectly functional parents of my own."
"And look how you turned out…"
"Excuse me?!"
I meet my boyfriend's mother flat stare from slightly too close and realize that I may have slightly overreacted to the past exchange, seeing as I am… too close.
And that my cheeks are heated up, my heart's racing, and I'm riding an adrenaline high the likes of which I would expect in the middle of a heated spar.
That thing I never did that often because of health concerns.
… This is all Iroha's fault.
I nervously take a step back and reach for the pack of cigarettes in my pants' pocket—
And she takes it away.
"Wha—" I ask with blinking confusion.
"I saw that sofa," she answers.
I blink. Again.
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with my sofa—"
"I can't speak for Haruno, but if you're going to be around those two? You'd better get a grip on your habit. Particularly if that girl's going to keep talking about babies."
I try to glare in reproach rather than in absolute and utter mortification.
Given the enduring flat stare, I suspect that I fail.
"Can you give those back? Please? You don't want me enduring the rest of the conversation in the middle of nicotine withdrawal," I say with the most reasonable tone I can manage.
She looks at the pack in her hand and then at the park below, pondering something that would likely make me punch her out of sheer reflex if she did it, only to end up rolling her eyes and handing me back the slightly crumpled package.
"Thank you," I say without an actual reason to.
"Please, for my peace of mind, quit it," she mumbles.
And I almost drop the cigarettes at that line coming out of this woman.
***
Haruno's Girlfriend Didn't Think Things Through
"Do you want to guess what they are talking about?" I say after staring in silence for too long at Shizu's instant coffee cooling in front of me.
I may have a spoiled palate, but this… this makes me more sympathetic to Iroha's urges to colonize her fridge with more appealing options.
I may even try one of Hachiman's canned abominations at this rate.
"No," the purposefully dull man in front of me answers before taking a sip that suggests long experience with even worse brews.
Which, on an unrelated note, may help me understand Hachiman's horror at the mere idea of ever becoming a salaryman.
"Really? Is that because you think you know your wife well enough that you don't need my insight? No? Maybe because you're still convinced that I have, somehow, turned your child against the both of you and am purposefully hostile? Hmmm, that hits closer, doesn't it? No, wait, I think I have it: it's because you're completely adrift, unable to reconcile the years you've spent sacrificing every waking moment for your family with the scornful disregard your children don't even direct your way when there's a serious subject to discuss—"
A palm slams down on Shizu's grey countertop.
Not for the first time, given her past history with men with poor emotional regulation.
"You don't know what you're talking about—" he starts, the hiss gaining in volume with every syllable.
I smile.
"I don't? Really? About a parent devoted to their job because that's the only way they can conceive of supporting their family? Interesting. What else don't I know about? About kids growing more and more distant with every year that goes by without you in their lives? About poor attempts to reconnect during always too short holidays? About being too tired on the weekends to hold an actual conversation? Maybe about that little bit of resentment that keeps growing and heating up, telling you that it's all their fault, that if only they would make an effort to understand—"
"What are you trying to achieve?" he asks, rather than hit me.
Or, well, attempting to. He doesn't look like he has the time for a hobby, much less proper training.
"Didn't you listen to your son? Must be force of habit, at this point—"
"What do you want—"
"To poke and prod. To get you out of balance and see what you reveal. To get under your skin so you can't ignore me like you do everything but your self-imposed mission. To get to know you, my dearest, honored Father."
There's venom in his eyes, almost matching that in my tone.
Good.
"If you're trying to convince me that this relationship is a good idea, you're doing a poor job of it," he says, holding back what he actually wants to say.
Out of sheer habit, I would guess.
I smile at him in that way that was once so easy—or that I was used to pretending was easy—and stand up, moving as demurely at the tight kimono forces me to as I turn in small steps toward the cooking counter.
"What are you doing now?" he asks rather than go back to his self-enforced silence.
My smile… shifts. Just a tiny bit. Just minutely enough that I'm sure only a few people in my life would understand the change and its meaning.
"Preparing some proper tea," I say before I open a cupboard and take away the golden can of Earl Gray that I all but forced Shizu to keep after the last time I was subjected to her awful red tea bags.
Then it's just a matter of rinsing the teapot I pretended I had to use for my impromptu tea ceremony and putting it on the gas stove, the hissing of the flame licking over wet metal quickly turning into background noise as I measure the proper amount of dry, fragrant leaves for the teapot's capacity.
Two entirely different ways of making tea, and two entirely different results.
I like mine with a dash of honey, after all.
***
Hachiman Hikigaya Wants to Monologue
After too many trials and tribulations, after tests of patience and endurance harsher than man was meant to withstand…
Sofa-chan's cushion is ready.
Or, well, as ready as it can be.
"So. No more excuses?" Komachi asks as I brush my hand over the warm fabric with no lingering moisture.
"My dearest, cutest, most treasured little sister, you have forgotten my teachings," I say, ignoring Iroha's rude and misplaced snort.
"There are always more excuses," Komachi says, not with the reverent tone one should adopt when reciting hard-fought wisdom, but with what may, to the uneducated, sound like frustrated exasperation.
I sagely nod, stand up, place the hair dryer on the cabinet it should be stored in, and…
And deflate.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"No. You don't have to. You never have to," she says, hugging me from the side and tightening her arms hard enough to almost hurt.
"I beg to differ," Iroha mumbles when she offers her own hug.
I look down at the two of them. At the short, black hair, and the light one.
And I take as much strength from their presence as I think I'll ever need.
===================
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