Kapitel 113: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 108 [8k Words]
There are a lot of things that we love to see in fiction because we're deprived of them in reality.
That's what some of the most popular genres are predicated upon, after all: fulfilling a wish that is unlikely to ever be reached. Martial arts? Well, wouldn't you love it if effort was guaranteed to pay off and there was no ceiling to human potential that couldn't be shattered with enough persistence? Detective fiction? Please tell me all about how intelligence and wit can triumph over the greatest of evils rather than wither away in an office building. The harem genre? That's entirely…
Uh…
I mean…
Okay, maybe some fantasies can come true after all, but! Those are the glaring exceptions rather than the rule.
And where is that ever clearer than in the pay-off?
You get foreshadowing, often of the ominous variety, a reveal that turns the status quo on its head, and a protagonist scrambling to deal with all the ongoing crises, learning the skills he needs to overcome what's about to happen, gathering his allies, readying for a last stand…
And we know just how that's going to turn out. Despite the inevitable plot twists and attempts at subverting expectations, the hero will face off against the villain. The nervous girl will gather her courage for a last-minute confession. The sports club of high-school-ball will reach the finals.
The sulky malcontent bordering on trench-coat-wearing antihero will emerge from the locked bathroom…
And stupidly stare at a room devoid of confrontational parents.
"What?" he asks, possibly not sounding as dumb as he feels.
"Iroha chased them out," Shizu says from the kitchen counter, nursing what I very much hope is not a glass of whisky.
"She also called your mother 'middle-aged, bordering on old,'" Haruno says, lying against Sofa-chan's farthest corner with the collar of her kimono loosened enough that I bet even Sofa-chan wouldn't terribly mind adding a traditional Japanese pipe to her long list of aggressors.
Also, she's, of course, gloating.
Haruno, that is. Sofa-chan may just be discovering a disturbing affinity for leather corsets paired with ojou-sama laughs.
"Stop reminding me…" Iroha moans, nursing what I very much hope is a glass of orange juice in eerie symmetry to Shizu's pose on the other side of the counter.
"Why would I ever do that?" Haruno says, her grin sharpening. "I've been sadly deprived of a few days of teasing my cute younger girlfriend, and I need to get those out of my system."
"You're doomed," I sympathetically tell Iroha.
"You're a jerk," she immediately shoots back before tilting her head back and taking a long gulp of orange fluid in a way that makes me think that I very much should not let her ever become a bitter, overworked office lady, no matter how enticing the image is.
"We," Shizu says, rolling her glass of what I hope is cool tea across her forehead. "We are doomed."
"I mean, you are my girlfriends," I say. Stupidly confirming her worst fears.
"Yeah. Yeah, we are," Iroha says, her tone lowering as she looks down at the grey counter in front of her.
And that's when I notice the slender arms wrapping around my chest and the woman pressed against my back.
"We are," Haruno whispers before her straightened fingers travel up my chest, my neck, and my jaw, tilting my head to look back over my shoulder so that I can find lavender eyes waiting for me, tender, caring, and mildly afraid.
Then she kisses me.
Not… Not as intense as we usually are. Not a sharing of raw wounds and the passion pushing past them. Just… Just a shallow meeting of softness as her eyes close, and a brief, short gasp announces the shattering distance between us.
Just holding me.
And offering herself.
"Thank you," I say when she pulls back, but not away. When she stays close enough that I feel the air shift between our lips when I speak.
"You, of all people, never need to thank me," she says, the left corner of her lips tugging up.
"I still want to," I say, not quite stubborn, but close enough.
The other corner rises up, and the half-hearted smirk turns into a smile tender enough to make my eyes sting despite all the time I just spent gathering my composure.
That's when I notice a shorter girl wrapped up around my front, her arms reaching past me to include Haruno in her tight hug.
"Ahem," she very clearly enunciates.
I blink in mild confusion at the top of her head and try to ignore the way that Haruno's shoulders and what lies beneath shake when she snorts in undisguised humor.
"She wants you to thank her as well," Shizu says, rolling her eyes about twice as fast as she twirls the glass of amber liquid dangling from the fingertips pressed around its rim.
"It's not the same if you cue him in," Iroha protests.
"Thank you?" I offer, hoping it will be the right thing to say, seeing as at least one-third of my girlfriends seems to think it's a good idea.
"Not like that," that very third says before taking first an exasperated inhalation and then a sip of not-whisky, seeing as I refuse to accept any responsibility for dragging my first girlfriend into early alcoholism.
"You don't even know what you're thanking me for," Iroha says with a sulk that is painstakingly apparent in both her tone and her cutely grasping the front of my shirt with both hands without looking up at me.
"I think I'm starting to see the appeal in filming all of you," Haruno whispers in my ear in a way that, if she keeps doing it, is going to give Iroha a very misguided impression of what her acting like a spoiled brat does to my mood.
'… I don't even know where to start.'
Truly, my defenses have become ever more impressive. I no longer offer any openings to even my most insightful foes.
"Thank you for… driving away my parents?" I say, relying on that prodigious insight—ah, no, wait, Brain-chan's supposed to be the insightful foe; I merely am that good at defending against it.
This clear distinction explains the displeased look that Iroha is now shooting at me from between two tiny, cute fists clutching at white fabric.
"I told them to go away so you could relax and think. They'll wait for you until you're ready," she says, apparently feeling the need to explain in detail how and why I should be grateful to her.
It is a pity, then, that my first reaction is to tense between Haruno's languid smile and Iroha's body pressed against me.
"Komachi?" I ask, trying not to bite off the word.
Iroha worries at her lip and looks over my shoulder at Haruno.
A glass clacks when it's set on a grey kitchen counter.
"Komachi left with your parents. She didn't say it, but it's… she wants to mediate, Hachi," Shizu says.
I close my eyes for a moment, just taking in the warmth and tenderness I'm wrapped in, taking in both the scent of Iroha's chamomile shampoo that is supposed to help in making her hair lighter and the mild hint of powdered tea clinging to Haruno.
Then…
"They took a day off," I say, like it's something that matters at all.
"What?" Iroha asks, but likely only to let me explain rather than because she doesn't understand.
"A day off. The entire day. Both of them. And had both Komachi and me excuse ourselves from our classes. I… I don't think they were planning to stay here the whole day, but I don't know what they planned to do after meeting you. Or if they planned anything at all. I don't even know…"
I drift off, knowing all too well precisely just how many things I don't know when it comes to my parents.
"They said where they'd be," Haruno says.
And, when she tells me, I slump back against her.
***
Riding in Shizu's car is as soothing as ever, except for all the times in which I've grabbed the handle over the door in a Shinji-like death grip while trying not to think about Shizu wearing a yellow tank top and cut-off jeans.
So, let's just say that today's specific mood du jour (damn it, Haruno) is a not-quite happy middle between the melancholy relaxation of one of her silent night drives interspersed by insightful conversation and the rush of adrenalin of the race toward Chiba Port after the last duel she held with Haruno that ended up with the two of them still clothed.
"You don't have to do anything," she says, her hand going from the drive stick to my knee in what I think she believes to be more reassuring than it is for me to ponder just how quickly that hand will go back to the steering wheel in case of urgent need.
Also, that I'm still unclear on what, precisely, she was drinking minutes ago.
…
Brain-chan, this would be a perfect time for you to interject with a distressing yet also amusing and distracting aside.
…
Well, fuck you too.
"Hachi?"
"Sorry, I… What was the question again?" I say.
For some reason, she snorts.
"I doubt any of your teachers ever got such a straightforward, honest answer," she says with a wry smile directed past the windshield and with prompt clarification of the reason behind the snort.
And that, after last night and this morning… it makes me smile. Just not past the windshield.
"Stop that," she says, eyes peeking at me through the rearview mirror, her hand leaving the steering wheel once again to tuck a black strand of hair behind her ear as a pink tinge blooms on her cheeks.
"I can't. Not with how much I love you," I say, deciding to stick to being straightforward and honest.
"Stop that," she repeats, the tinge getting darker and making my smile wider.
"Loving you? Now that's definitely something I can't do," I say, my hand going to her knee.
The car slows down, and I refuse to look out of the window to see whether we're stopping at a traffic light or at a convenient spot near my destination, but her turning off the ignition pretty much answers that question despite my attempt at stubborn ignorance.
She takes a moment before turning toward me, and her hands leave the leather steering wheel to cup my cheeks, her steel eyes once more looking into mine in ways that can mean so many things… and have already meant so much more than I ever expected when I impulsively ceded to a childish plea on a deserted faculty office and ended up banging my shin on a traitorous desk, thus making my first kiss about as painfully memorable as I ever expected it to be.
"You don't have to do this," she repeats. "And I can wait here for you, just in case you need to get away early—"
I could stay here and listen to her reassurances for hours. To every little word that I know she will frantically fill the silence of the inside of her car with for as long as she thinks I need her to.
I, instead, kiss her.
Her next line becomes a surprised, muffled string of interrupted syllables, and I shift on the expensively comfortable passenger seat of a car that no teacher should be able to afford without a side gig as a yakuza enforcer, trying to get as near as I can to her as the seatbelt lets me only to end up painfully jabbing the driving stick on the side of my thigh, hopefully not waking up an unwanted part of me with the mix of suffering and pleasure like a certain desk thankfully didn't.
Except…
This time, it's different.
It's as different as it can be.
Because when I finally pull away from her lips and rest my forehead on hers, our ragged breaths mixing up as our eyes search one another's…
I know. I just know that…
I will leave. I will leave like I did that evening in the faculty room, what seems like years ago.
I will leave her behind, the door closed after whispered promises of a next meeting and a renewal of our kiss.
Promises of something more left behind by a boy shoving his hands down his pockets, rushing toward the nurse's office, only to wait for a shadowed silhouette on the other side of the glazed window.
I will leave her behind, in her ridiculously expensive car.
But, this time, I won't fear her fleeing from me.
***
We, the proud Japanese people, have a deeply ingrained appreciation for nature. Some may say that appreciation runs deep enough that it is reflected in our work culture and how it faithfully mirrors the law of the jungle, so long as it's a jungle made ever more vicious by the presence of actual lawyers.
That may have something to do with our parks.
They are… nice parks. Expansive. Barely tamed forests bursting with greenery and dancing colors that twirl down from flowering boughs in the springtime.
We are close to springtime.
But it's still winter.
So I walk through a park flush with green grass, past bare cherry trees that will become the object of admiration as soon as they reach a stage that is just shy of their expiration, Christmas Cake date of the season, and I remember… The last few times I've been to this one park.
Chiba park.
Not, thankfully, Chiba Port Park, as it would be somewhat disorienting to reconcile memories of a blue dress and warm panties in my pocket with…
Dad, Mom, Komachi, and I sometimes came here. Maybe a few times a year, back when we siblings were younger and needed closer supervision, before we crossed a certain threshold that seemingly made it okay for us to be alone at home while our parents rushed to yet another late meeting or unexpected office emergency.
The last time I came?
It was me and Dad. Just me and Dad.
So I don't have to guess where in the expansive park they are waiting for me. I just keep walking down a dirt path that takes me along the artificial lake where Dad tried to teach Komachi and me to row without us going around in erratic circles, with Mom laughing and taking pictures of the three of us from the pier where we had to let Dad steer us toward when our time was up and before we managed to capsize the thing where Komachi fancied herself a pirate captainess and I allowed myself to be the sulking Captain Harlock, not quite joining her in spirit, even if I did in vague aesthetics.
Just… with a lot more brooding.
And a ghost wife. Which I'm pretty sure was the pre-Internet equivalent of plenty of things that I thankfully never fell into.
The sun is high, close to noon, and I take off my blue coat and fold it over my arm as I go under branches that are sprouting green leaves, even if seemingly hesitant to do so. It is a soothing walk, and a part of me wishes that this was something intentional. That Mom and Dad had chosen this meeting point to give me a chance to enjoy a walk through tamed nature before my nerves are tested once more.
The truth is that I just don't know. I don't know what they are thinking or planning, or if those plans that I could guess at even exist.
I should have asked Haruno…
But before I can think about reaching for my phone, I'm already at the meeting point: a clearing between trees and grass, an expanse of lightly-colored dirt along a high concrete wall near the kid's playground that has some new equipment neither Komachi nor I ever played with.
Seriously, what is it with modern toboggans? Goshdarn kids, they don't know how good their generation has it. Back in my day—
"Hi," Komachi says, waving at me from where she's walked to meet me on the edge of the grass.
"Hi," I answer with a tired smile, pausing in front of her and only taking a vague look at where Mom and Dad have spread a picnic-like blanket under a tall, black cherry tree.
We stay in uncharacteristic silence for a moment, one that is not as comfortable as shared company in dimly lit bedrooms, and then my little sister, my precious, perfect little sister, steps forward to hug me.
I answer immediately, my coat hopefully enough of a cushion to protect her from strength I don't feel like controlling.
"I talked to them," she says.
"I thought you would," I answer.
She rubs her forehead against my chest, just shy of painful, and I lean down to kiss the crown of messy dark hair.
"I… I think you should talk with Dad," she says.
"Do you?" I ask. Not unnecessarily.
She tilts her head back, looking straight into my eyes.
She isn't crying, overcome with emotion, or any of a thousand things her shoujo manga tells her she should be. She's just… tired.
"Yeah," she says, managing to smile despite it all.
"Okay," I say.
Because in what world would Hachiman Hikigaya deny his precious little sister?
***
"So. You wanted to talk to me?" I tell Dad after joining him under the concrete wall.
Komachi is sitting with Mom on the blanket, though not where Dad was sitting a moment ago. They are talking in what looks like hushed whispers, and I keep catching hints of their faces. Of a conversation that looks both strained and… sincere.
There's not any laughter, though. That's kind of the hint as to how sincere it is.
"I do," Dad finally says when he manages to look away from his daughter and wife and to his errant son.
"Well. I am here," I say, vaguely conscious of how little I'm doing to make this easy on him.
It's kind of frustrating, then, that he answers that line with a gruff smile.
"So am I," he says, maybe aiming for symbolism.
Which, of course, only gets me to roll my eyes.
"Hachiman… Do you remember the last time we were here?" he says, rather than, 'I'm sorry that me saying I'm proud of you was so painfully disorienting that you had to lock yourself inside of a toilet.'
"Yeah," I say rather than, 'I'm not the one nearing the age where senility and memory loss are actual concerns.'
But only because Iroha already pushed that particular button, and I'm nothing if not inventive in my petty insults.
"I kept bragging about my days in the tennis club, didn't I?" he asks, looking at the spot in the wall where he insisted on coaching me, spending an entire morning in unpleasant, sweaty, exhausting physical activity that, compared to my current training regime, had the disadvantage of having no Christmas Cake-related reward attached.
"My mangas assure me that it's perfectly natural for wage slaves to gain mental sustenance from memories of a more pleasant time," I say, maybe a tad more sincere than I usually am with the man I spend so little time with.
It catches me by surprise when he laughs.
"Your mangas lie. That's why they're enjoyable," he finally says, maybe mirroring a few inner rants by a respected researcher in the otaku sciences.
It still manages to irk me. For reasons I would rather not elaborate upon.
"All fiction lies," I say. "It's also how it tells the truth."
His smile turns bitter at that, and he hesitates before resting his hand on my shoulder, doing it slowly enough that I manage to suppress the immediate need to pull away.
He lets me get used to it, the pressure and slight warmth going through my shirt, and then he starts walking toward where he insisted on drilling me on the proper way to serve, making me go through the motions enough times that I still easily find the discolored spot in the wall that he had me aim for until we both were too tired to continue and went on a walk around the lake where Komachi had not managed to drown us both despite her best attempts at boarding nearby boats.
Then we came back.
It's… somewhat ironic. One of the first things that Yukino and I tackled together. The reclamation of the tennis court in Saika's stead.
And I knew how to play. Dad had taught me as well as he could through my last summer break in middle school and then gave me a refresher before my hopeful start of a new high school life that got derailed by the accident that ended up tying me to the two girls that would change my life more than any athletic club would ever have.
But I didn't win because of those lessons. Because of what Dad tried to help me drill.
I won because of who I am.
It was a bitter victory. But a victory still.
'And doesn't that sum up the past two years…'
I smile at the half-hearted attempt at a Brain-chan distraction. Because she's right. Because that's a good summary of who I have been. Who I was. Who, in some ways, I'm likely to ever be.
Just…
"I lied," he says when we're in front of that very spot where he kept making pointless corrections and fussy comments about my form in a sport I never cared that much about.
"What?"
"About my happy memories. I didn't join the tennis club until college."
I blink at him.
"What."
His gruff smile turns sheepish, and he dares rub the back of his head like he does read enough manga to copy that gesture.
"I… I spent most of high school eating my lunch in the school's toilets. Didn't manage to get a social life until college," he says. Shrugging.
"What the fuck."
"It was only… a half lie? Those anecdotes did happen. I just… shifted the dates?"
"I very much hope you never tell your boss about moving the dates in your reports."
"I mean… I'm kind of forced to do so to fudge the overtime—"
"Dad!"
"Okay! That's not… My job's not important right now," he says, taking his hand away from my shoulder to wave it defensively between us.
Which is something I'm very grateful for, as it may have hidden whatever just went through my face after that line.
"So. You lied," I say, focusing on the one thing I can safely channel all my scorn and bitterness on.
"I…" he drops his hands and sighs before shooting a look back at the picnic blanket and the two women talking on it. "I… I am not a good example."
"No shit."
"Language," he says rather than scold me for the actual meaning of the line I have been unable to hold back. "What I mean is… You and I… What I told you earlier?"
His eyes look for mine, and he seems to ask me for permission to continue, afraid that he'll trigger another escape from me just by bringing up the subject of his being proud of me.
I take a deep breath. Remember Haruno and Iroha's embrace. Shizu's silent ride, with her hand going to my leg as often as the laws of traffic and accident statistics allowed for. Komachi's greeting. Then I nod.
He wets his lips nervously, looking yet again at the mark in the wall that signified a day filled with lies.
"I… sometimes, I see myself in you. I was never as smart as you are, but… but I still saw the world just… just slightly different from others. Had to learn how to smile. I actually looked it up. Bought books on body language. Practiced in front of a mirror. Sad, isn't it?" he asks.
I… I remember plenty of Internet searches, hopefully not stored on any server that Haruno can easily get access to, and struggle to keep my face blank.
"And… Okay, you don't have to…" he looks at me as if asking for permission or just acknowledgment, and I end up nodding something meaningless just to get him to keep talking. "So… I saw how badly you were managing middle school, and then you started talking about how you hoped that high school would be better, and I just… I just thought about how I changed myself through college. The things that worked and the ones that didn't. And I tried to get you a bit of extra hope so that you would skip a few years of… Could you stop looking at me like that?"
"This is the dumbest thing you've ever told me; how else am I supposed to look at you?" I say, not quite aware of precisely how I am indeed looking at my father, but having a pretty good guess that it's something that would get me slapped by Miura.
Or stabbed by Sagami.
… Screw that: stabbed by too many people to keep count of.
"I know," he says, running his hand back through hair with more white in it than just a summer ago. "It's… I know how ridiculous it is, but I hoped that if you had a goal in mind… that's how I work, you know? If I set a goal, I can work at it despite all the… I'm making a mess out of this."
I stare at him, very much not saying, 'And how is that novel at all?'
Just… heavily implying it.
Going by his wince, he does get the message.
"I don't even know what—" he starts.
"Komachi," I say.
"What?"
"You talked with Komachi. She does know me well enough to have hopefully pointed you at something other than tennis lessons, lying about your high school, and… Just… What are you trying to say, Dad?"
He bites his lip, still cowed, not looking like he's half a head taller than I am.
"I love you," he says, the words like a gut punch. "I love you, and I'm proud of you, and… what you've done? It's so far beyond my stupid hopes for what you could manage by joining a club and being good at a stupid sport that got me a scholarship—"
"You got a sports scholarship?"
"… Only in my last year of college?"
I look at him.
Try to process the sheer idiocy of the past few minutes.
And throw my hands up.
"That's it! That's just—do you even realize what the actual issue is, Dad? That I barely know you after—I have all those little precious memories of you that just… I… For fuck's sake! You weren't there!"
"Wha—when—"
"Never! Not when I broke down in middle school. Not when I had to explain to Komachi why both of you were too busy working during Christmas. Not when my little sister ran away from home because her brother was stuck in the hospital, and there was no one else there!"
"I was—"
"Working! Working, yes! And making a living, and making sure that we wouldn't grow up poor and trigger all the trauma related to you being an orphan attending a rich kid's school! But did you ever think about what it actually was that makes orphans unhappy? It's that they don't have parents!"
I expect to see rage.
He just looks… lost.
"You… Your mother and I—"
"My mother and you are two incredibly damaged people who should've been going to therapy long before your condom broke and I came along."
"It was actually the pills that failed—"
"Gross."
"I—I mean, you were a blessing, and we both love you very much, and we would never have dreamed about not having you in our lives, and—"
"You can stop lying through your teeth any minute now. Unless you've got any more heartwarming high school anecdotes."
"This is not a lie," he says. Finally angry.
It's just that I don't get why.
I'm not sure he does, either.
But we're both breathing heavily, glaring at one another, and he's far more frustrated than when I kept complaining about unnecessary sports practice under the sun.
He looks…
Like I sometimes do.
"I am your father," he says with that icy tone that means anything but actual calm. "That's… That's who I've been ever since your mother started showing, and I finally realized what that meant. You and Komachi… I have made mistakes. Keep making mistakes. But wishing you were never born? That's the one mistake not even I can make."
"So what?" I say, not even processing the words, just answering his first statement.
That he is my father.
So what?
He looks at me, and I catch him starting to look back at the women behind him, the ones suddenly staring at the two of us without moving from where they sit.
But he, at the last moment, doesn't do it. He manages to keep his eyes on me. To focus on his son.
Good for him, I guess.
"What would it take?" he quietly mutters. "What would it… How can I make it up to you? How can I help you?"
I could answer a lot of things.
'You can't.'
'Too little, too late.'
'Why would I even tell you?'
'When did fixing us become my job?'
I could. I could say all those things and a hundred others. I could throw back at him just a fraction of the things I have thought during long absences or seemingly longer arguments. I could just… just tell him the truth and let him be hurt by it. I could.
Easily.
I don't know why I'm not doing it. Why I haven't done it already. Why I swallowed so much bile through the years when it's so easy to unleash it on others.
'You do know.'
Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do.
I guess I…
"How much did Mom tell you?" I say.
And now he does look back, and I see yet again Mom and Dad's eyes meeting for an enduring pause that conveys an entire conversation that I'm not part of.
"Everything. Everything that she knows and everything that she's afraid of," he says, looking back at me with some of the anger and desperation toned down into tired resignation.
"Hana Yukinoshita. Kanade Isshiki," I say.
He winces.
"Haruno will never forgive her mother," I continue. "She understands her. She knows her better than I think anybody else has ever known that woman. But that's not enough to mend what should've been there and isn't."
He tries to look straight at me, and his eyes dart to the side. To the discolored spot on a concrete wall that I did manage to hit consistently enough that, were it not for a dog and a car, I could've gone into the tennis club.
Maybe been Saika's friend from the start, just… an acquaintance slowly becoming something deeper rather than stumbling into a friendship born out of a dramatic clash that dragged the poor boy into an entanglement with Zaimokuza that can't be healthy for anyone who didn't write their own black-coat-saturated mythos at a younger age.
"Iroha… Iroha is fixing her relationship with her mother. There's hurt and resentment, but… but there's also effort, Dad. There's also a grown woman throwing away everything she's worked for, everything that she's still working for, for the sake of her daughter. They will heal. I'll make sure of it."
A look passes over his face, and it's hard for me to decipher it. Hard enough that I decide not to make the effort.
"But Haruno's father? Iroha's father? What's there to heal?" I say.
His jaw clenches.
He steps forward.
In front of me. Half a head taller than I am. Broader of shoulders, somebody who did his own training arc decades ago.
"I am not like them," he says.
"Aren't you?" I ask, just to let him elaborate.
He… he laughs. Something bitter and ugly that I do recognize as well as plenty of other things I would rather I didn't.
"Not the best defense I could have come up with, is it?" he says, the crooked smile perfectly paired with his tone. "I am not an adulterer. I didn't marry your mother for money. Husband of the year, just because of that."
"There are worse candidates."
"Not father of the year, either."
I don't answer.
There are worse candidates.
As hurt as Yukino and Haruno are by their mother… she was there. She's someone they bother to mention.
As much as Iroha's mother kept neglecting her, forcing her into unwanted roles… She wasn't the one who threw her away.
Dad… Dad has been there. Occasionally. He never…
I can't do this.
"Dad…" I start, just trying to tell him… just…
He hugs me.
I clench my teeth. My eyelids. Just… I just go rigid between arms with more strength than a wage slave should have.
"I…" his voice is as rough as mine would be if I spoke. "Hachiman… Son…"
He trails off, his head pressing against the left side of mine, his chest against my own, against that spot that never feels empty when it's any of them that hugs me or that I drag into a hug. Against what should now be feeling warmth and relief rather than all the unwanted tension that covers up everything else that I could feel at my father hugging me.
He doesn't let go.
"I never meant to hurt you," he says as if that's an achievement. "I just… I am… I want you to be happy. I want you to be whole. I want you to be the man I've never been."
"What—"
He pulls away.
His hands are on my shoulders, his grip trembling despite the lack of strength, and his eyes are looking down at me with erratic intensity. With something that isn't tears but that could very well turn into them with just a few carelessly chosen words.
A few easy words.
"Hachiman," he says, as if clinging to my name just to hold himself steady, "I could… I could say I didn't know better. Maybe I didn't. Or that I… it doesn't matter. Excuses don't matter. Reasons don't matter. They won't change the past, will they?"
I don't nod.
I don't shake my head, either.
He does smile, even if it's something bitter and on the verge of breaking.
"I will…" he starts before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "I will do better. I'll do what you need, not what I think is better for you. I will… I will do what it takes to learn the difference. I will listen. I will… anything. Anything at all so that you can be better than I ever was. So that you can heal and… Anything. Anything, Hachiman. Please."
There's a ball of wet fire in my throat. Something that crushes my breath, that makes talking a struggle. That pulls at words I don't want to say.
"Quit your job," I say, letting the fire win.
He stills.
He just looks at me, trying to understand what it is that I just asked him to do or if I'm at all serious—something that I myself don't know.
"I'll talk with your mother," he says.
"What happened to 'anything?'" I shoot back.
His lips thin into a pale line, and the muscle on the sides of his jaw stands out in pulsing tension, but his fingers on my shoulders are still lax and weak.
"We need to plan for any… changes. If you need… I won't…"
I close my eyes just to flee his and breathe.
What would Haruno do here?
'What do you want to achieve?' she would start with a knowing, barely there, mocking smile.
I don't know.
'Then, what you want is to find out, isn't it?'
I reach up and clasp his left hand on my right, holding him against me before I open my eyes and look back at him in a way that Yukino would deride and Haruno praise.
"Words are worthless. Meaningless. Words are never enough," I say like I did in a clubroom tinted by an orange sun, struggling and writhing as Shizu told me to, hurting like only something genuine ever will. "They are sounds. Something that the wind carries away," I continue, forcing myself to keep looking up into my father's lost eyes. "Words are nothing. Words only… Words can only point at what is there. Or what isn't."
"I don't understand," he says like a lost, beautiful girl did before fleeing from that clubroom.
But I don't have Yui here to pull me after her.
To explain what can't be explained. To say that not understanding doesn't matter. That what matters is trying.
It's…
It's being there.
"And what will you do about it?" I mutter. Maybe at him, maybe at myself.
His left hand barely moves under mine before his right leaves my shoulder. Before he clutches the back of my head and crushes me against a chest broader than mine.
"I don't know," he mutters.
I wrap my free arm around him and pull tight enough that no tears can escape.
"This… this may be a good start," I end up saying past the wet fire that wants to drown my voice.
And then there's only silence. Just two men hugging in front of a discolored, well-intentioned lie.
Without words.
Just with trembling arms.
It may be a good start.
***
"When did you prepare all this?" I ask, still shaken but doing my best not to show it.
Mom, on the other side of the blanket, between Komachi to my left and Dad to my right, keeps fussing with the bento boxes filled with the kind of food I enjoyed the most as a kid going on a field trip.
Omelet rolls, breaded pork cutlets, small sausages, tuna riceballs… It's all there. The things she cooked for me and then put in a box before dropping me off to wait for a bus that would take me away from everyday school and toward somewhere always more tolerable than my routine.
Yet another thing that she stopped doing when I suddenly became old enough not to need it.
"I… didn't have much sleep tonight," she says with a shy smile that frays at the edges.
"All-nighters aren't healthy," I say, remembering my own adventures in sleep deprivation and how much of an impression I'm likely to have made on my second-most favorite mother-in-law-to-be.
'You haven't met Shizu's parents yet.'
That's why I'm pre-emptively buttering them up. Try to keep up, Brain-chan; this is embarrassing.
"I don't want to hear that from you," she says with an eye-roll that's about three times more sincere than anything she's done since we sat down to get an early lunch.
I shoot her back an insolent smile, and she answers it with what looks like fond exasperation, and… I could fool myself into thinking that everything's all right. That this is our new normal. That my family is fixed.
But this is just a free day that we've all taken due to an unforeseen emergency. This is a vacation away from our routine. This is a field trip.
And tomorrow, we'll be back to where we were.
Mom's smile fades away as she follows my shift in expression, reading into me like… not like I read into Komachi, Iroha, Yui, or any of the people I have come to genuinely know, but like I did into Hayama and his clique. The insight that starts and ends at the surface of thoughts and hidden meanings but never goes any deeper than that.
The insight made up of words.
"Your father and I… we've been saving up," she says, the man by her side once more silent and attentively waiting to follow her lead.
"Oh?" I say, reaching down for a thermos filled with barley tea rather than a yellowcake can of coffee that would convey proper care for my personal preferences rather than my, you know, health.
"We wanted it to be a graduation gift," she continues along a line I wasn't expecting, looking to Dad as if asking for permission and getting a minute nod in answer.
"What are you talking about, Mom?" I say, pretending to be at ease as I pour myself a cup of cold tea.
"Both Komachi and you have accounts to your names. There's enough money in there to pay for college and at least a year of rent."
My hand goes very, very still.
Which isn't a good thing while in the middle of pouring tea.
At least it's cold tea.
"Shit!" I say, immediately taking a big gulp out of the overflowing cup and reaching for a handful of paper napkins while Komachi tries not to giggle into hysterics.
"You knew about this," I tell the little traitor.
"She just told me! But cute little Komachi failed to prepare a properly comedic display of shock when the revelation came. Ah, it's just like my wise brother to anticipate the mood swing of the scene and set up so masterfully a slapstick routine! Komachi still has a lot to learn from her smart and capable brother. Huh. I wonder how many points that got me?" She says, tapping her lower lip with a single finger and idly looking up at un-ninja clouds.
… Cute.
'Don't. That way lies Oreimo.'
You know perfectly well that's impossible. Komachi is, after all, completely asexual and aromantic. A pure existence made to be admired from afar, never to be dirtied by the hands of inferior men.
'That way likes yuri. Possibly with Iroha.'
Brain-chan, it is utterly contemptible of you to suggest that Iroha is rancorous enough to go for a brother-sister sandwich merely as disproportionate retaliation for catching me shirtless with her mother.
'…'
… Fuck.
'I mean, I'm pretty sure that Shizu would try to stop her.'
I can't help but notice you didn't mention Haruno.
'No. No, I didn't.'
"None," I say, my tone cutting, definitive, and hopefully not as filled with turmoil as the Iroha-shaped suspicion in my heart is now making me. "No points at all whatsoever. You're forbidden from ever gaining any more points. You're already too dangerous of an existence without accruing more proof of your outstanding, undisputable superiority."
"… I really should've hired a babysitter," Mom says for no reason that I can easily discern.
"That would've cut into your savings account," I flippantly answer.
And she throws a balled napkin at my head.
… Fair.
"What I'm trying to tell you, you impossible child, is that the money is yours to do with as you will," she says, her tone going back to something more familiar.
Something that makes it kind of hard for me to flee from the situation and right into another endearing skit with my little sister.
"Why?" I say, setting down the cup of barley tea on the wet spot of the blanket.
She, yet again, looks at Dad.
This time, it's him that answers.
***
One of the things I've grown somewhat used to doing since this whole mess started is.. standing outside my little sister's door, gathering my courage before knocking on it so that I can properly traumatize her.
It was, in retrospect, a good habit to get into.
I've always been terrible at keeping up good habits.
"Come in," she says after a while of me not knocking on white, painted wood.
I clench my teeth and open the door, stepping in to find her sitting by her desk rather than on her bed. It's still early, between afternoon and evening, and her room is lit by something not as dimly orange as my club was the first time that I let myself cry in front of Yui and Yukino.
I'll take it as a good sign.
"Are you… are you sure about this?" I ask her, pausing a couple of steps away from her, looking down at the tiny girl in her loungewear.
Her hands barely peek out from the long sleeves of her green jersey, her legs are bare past her shorts, crossed over the seat of her spinning chair that's slowly coming to a stop to face me properly, and her face is set into a grimace that tries to be a smile.
"You need a change. We need a change," she says.
I stare at her for a moment, and… and it takes me some courage to sit on her bed and pat the spot by my side.
It doesn't seem to take her any to leap straight at me and barrel me flat on her still softer than mine mattress.
"Ouch," I tell her past the stupid grin I can't suppress as I hug my tiny little sister with all my training-arc-given strength.
"You'll always be my stupid brother, okay?" she says.
"Always," I unnecessarily tell her.
"And… And I don't need you. I can let you live your life and… I can. But I will still need you. Always," she says, burrowing her face against my shirt.
"I'll always need you, Komachi," I say. "Who else would I ever burden with terrible knowledge?"
"Haruno."
"See? The thing is, it kind of stops being a proper 'sharing of things man was not meant to know' when the reaction you get is sadistic laughter."
"Fine. You can still make your cute little sister suffer through your long, nonsensical ramblings about that Lovecraftian thing you call a dating life."
"Lovecraftian?" I ask with both an arched eyebrow and the suspicion that somebody may have taken a look at my computer and found traces of Demonbane on it.
"I am dumb, not illiterate," she says, furtively looking away from me, her face lying in a flat profile against my chest.
"It's a very specific word," I say, not buying it for a single second.
"… You kept browsing the Monster Girl Encyclopedia. Komachi's eyes were pure and innocent before. Take responsibility, you unparalleled grossther."
I try to look at her with burning indignation.
I end up snorting before the laughter takes fully over.
She joins me, and… as corny as it is? Me and Komachi, hugging, laughing together? That's just enough to make me feel that everything will be all right.
***
Everything's not all right.
"Stop laughing," I say to Haruno.
She, bent over at the waist, raises a single finger, asking for the quarter she shall never give me.
"Seriously. This is nerve-wracking enough," I insist.
Futilely.
Or, well, even worse than futilely, seeing how the laughter just got louder.
"I just want you to know that you're acting precisely like Komachi and I thought you would act. This is uncharacteristically predictable of you, Haruno," I tell her with as much spite as I can gather.
Then, ignoring the noises that she tries to communicate past the hysterical laughter, I finally gather my courage to do the thing I've been trying very hard not to do since the elevator doors opened:
I ring Shizu's doorbell.
It doesn't take long for the door to swing open and reveal a frazzled woman who smells like her sofa needs to be vacuumed.
She looks at me.
Past me, at Haruno still bent over in incapacitating laughter.
Then down at my suitcases.
"I was kind of hoping I had dreamed our last conversation," she mutters.
"Is that any way to greet your new roommate?" I dignifiedly ask her.
And Haruno laughs harder.
… I guess I'll be visiting Komachi earlier than I expected.
===================
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): Adad64, aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
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Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein