Agrippa
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All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 47
🕑 Added 2022-08-04 00:50:04 +0000 UTCEveryday life.
Everyday life is, by definition, uninteresting. You spend most of it going through a routine developed over the years, either submitting yourself to the whims of the educational system or bowing to your corporate overlords until you can get home and devote what little time remains to inconsequential chores or brain-soothing (in that death is, as far as we know, quite soothing to the one experiencing it) pastimes. Fiction rarely delves into everyday life for a very good reason: it’s either incredibly boring or precisely the one thing the audience is trying to run away from.
There are, of course, two exceptions to that rule: when introducing a character’s background before the plot starts (so that we can gleefully watch their doomed hometown burn to the ground with bright, cheery flames that showcase the Japanese people’s innate love for fireworks), and when the author wants to signal there’s something about to change, a baseline about to be irrevocably altered.
Which is another way of saying ‘burning things to the ground,’ really. Authors tend to be all into that whole symbolism thing, with phoenixes rising from their ashes and everything. That, or really, reallyresentful of their high school years.
…
Not like I blame them. I mean, it’s unlikely they all experienced a whirlwind romance with a hot Christmas Cake teacher, a cosplaying Junior, and a college student-slash-eldritch-being-slash-Moriarty.
Heh.
‘Someday, you’ll say some of this out loud, and you’ll be stoned to death in the middle of Comiket with a pile of NTR doujins.’
That’s a risk I’m willing to take, so long as I inflict more trauma than I end up getting.
‘I know. Gods, do I know…’
So, are you missing Self-Preservation—
‘You don’t want to get your brain into a jealousy-induced rage.’
I mean, it’s not like I don’t have experience with those.
‘True. What you don’t have is experience with some very carefully selected Freudian slips when talking with Yukino.’
… I’ll be good.
‘I doubt it. Now try to pretend you’re paying attention before somebody decides you need to stay after class. I don’t think you would enjoy the results of that.’
This maybe would go a bit more smoothly if you didn’t abhor math.
‘I said pretend to pay attention, not to inflict numbers on me.’
Ah, you’re always so smart, Brain-chan—
‘Eyes on the blackboard, you can praise me more later.’
Damn it.
With an internal grumbling that I very carefully not let become outward, I turn my eyes from the blank notebook on my green desk to the inscrutable chalk diagrams the teacher’s drawing in front of me and pretend that I’ve been isekaied into a fantasy world and I’m just trying to make sense out of the advanced magical seals before my fated duel with the hot noble scion who’s totally not about to become a love interest after her prideful mask shatters, not at all. Totes for sure.
…
Zaimokuza must never know.
Also, Cartesian diagrams. Weren’t you a philosopher, Descartes? Didn’t you refuse to get up before noon until cruelly forced to do so by a capricious princess who must have had blonde ringlets—something that ended up in your death? Weren’t you one of my people?
Then why. Why do you betray me so! Why turn your mastery of the field of letters into a treasonous gateway into numbers! Wrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyy!
‘A collection of historical figures cosplay as popular manga characters, gaining a mix of their powers and a conceptualization of their achievements—”
That sounds like Fate: Pedantic Cosplaying Edition.
‘I know, isn’t that great?’
Yes. Oh, gods, yes—
“Hikigaya, can you solve this quadratic equation?”
Wrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyy!
***
Everyday life also has its good points. For instance, the soothing, oasis-like visage of a good friend for whom I have no complicated feelings for—
“I’m sorry, Hachiman, but I need to speak with Saki,” my Platonic male friend says as he passes by my desk right as I was getting up to maybe have a non-estrogen-dominated conversation.
…
“What?” I gently ask him, not at all startling the gentle, woodland-creature-like Saika.
At which he slowly raises an eyebrow and looks to a corner of the classroom, where Kawasomething is blushing and studiously avoiding my gaze as if, I don’t know, she had caught me right after having sex with Iroha in the school’s toilets or something outrageous like that.
Or stood there, petrified, as she heard Iroha’s moans on the other side of the stall’s door.
…
‘Yeah, I’ve got nothing.’
I’m starting to wonder why I pay you.
‘You don’t. You torture me by reading trash isekai harem manga, which is the epitome of a pleonasm.’
Oh, right. Tee-hee.
‘I’m already working on that list of Freudian slips, just so you know.’
“So… do you mind if I go talk to Saki and maybe… smooth things over?” Saika asks me, yet again proving that male solidarity is a force the world is not ready to contend with. Mostly, because of how preciously rare it is and how few opportunities there have been to develop proper countermeasures.
Hayato’s clique comes to mind.
“Sure. I mean… Ah… What exactly do you plan on telling her about… you know?” I confide in Saika, showcasing my utter confidence in his ability to handle the situation without any undue worry on my part.
He rolls his eyes in a very un-Saika way and claps my shoulder with enough strength to remind me that yes, he is an athlete, despite looking less muscled than most tomboy characters. Then he shoots a reassuring, warm smile at me, and I fear Iroha’s going to show up with a camera.
Which is a perfectly valid and sane concern. When it involves Iroha.
Even if, knowing her, she’s already taking notes on the lighting of Shizu’s apartment.
…
No, I’m not looking forward to watching that. Really. Mostly because I don’t want to think too much about it and end up adopting Standard Adolescent Male Gait Number Two in front of Saika.
“Hachiman… Do you trust me?” he asks.
For a moment, I have to blink at the question.
And then I grin.
“We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month, and in the same year…” I start.
“We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month, and in the same year,” he finishes, returning my grin.
And then, without another word, goes to Kawasomething’s desk and says something I don’t care to hear, as my sworn brother is already handling it.
Also, Yui, stop staring at us like that. It’s rude.
***
Yukino, unlike Yui, isn’t rude.
I mean, assassins are the aristocrats of crime. They’ve been romanticized in every form of media available, and sometimes they even get cute, wholesome shenanigans with spies and adoptive psychic daughters. It would be the height of impropriety to deem an assassin as ‘rude,’ much as it would be the height of charity to deem a harem author as ‘fit for polite society.’
Sorry, Zaimokuza: I’m not that charitable.
“Stop running away into—”
“Your dumb monologue. Yes, yes, I already know that line; now, would you be so kind as to stop holding me up by my lapels? People may misinterpret things, and after this morning—”
Before I can even finish the sentence, Yukino is three steps in front of me, her hands brushing her skirt as if wiping them off any impurities (ouch), studiously avoiding my eyes, and blushing in a way that makes me very glad this particular stair’s landing is currently deserted, because the last thing I want is to have rumors flying around about me cheating on Iroha.
I mean, Yui looks cute and cuddly, but she also looks like she bites.
… Not like that.
‘You could ask Yukino and make sure, but I’m pretty certain that also like that.’
You aren’t helping.
‘Freudian sliiiiiips—’
You’re the most helpful voice I’ve ever gotten stuck in my head, and any praise I direct your way is woefully inadequate.
‘You do realize I know that can be taken as an insult.’
As expected of my Brain-chan, truly—
“Hachiman, I’m certain whatever is going on inside that twisted mind of yours must seem terribly entertaining, but I should remind you how little I care for your personal amusement.”
“That is a lie. Talking with you always was some of the most entertaining time I ever spent in my life—damnit, I’ve just been sabotaged.”
‘I warned you. Heh.’
Right, and now Yukino is looking at me wide-eyed and blushing in that perfectly gorgeous way of hers. You know, the one that looks like the red sun rising behind a snowy peak that—
‘Yeah, I know. We both know. I’m pretty sure that Yui, her girlfriend, knows.’
Then why do you test me so—!
‘Genuine, motherfucker.’
… That is the worst use of that meme I’ve ever thought.
‘Yup. Now pat the Yukinoshita.’
Damn it.
“Yukino, I…”
“How dare you…” she says, lacking all the heat she should have when saying that.
So I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and step toward her.
Three steps. Three steps and I’m right in front of her, the two of us blocking the stairs, the right side of her face lit by the red sun of the late winter’s hour, her blue eyes looking straight into mine. Still fragile, still wavering.
Just like I imagine mine are.
And then I…
Pat the Yukinoshita.
“What are you doing?!” she yells, batting my hand away and looking anywhere but directly at my warming eyes.
“Showing an appropriate level of physical affection to my Platonic friend who’s one of the very few people I’ve ever truly loved,” I tell her before I hug her.
Her thin, elegant body freezes against mine, her arms falling straight by her sides and between my own.
And then she leans against me, her hands on my chest, and I resist the urge to kiss her hair. Because that would still be Platonic, still excusable, but far too close to something that wouldn’t be.
“I was going to give you the shovel talk,” she murmurs, her breath soaking into my shirt.
“I know.”
“It would have left you shivering, terrified of ever doing anything to harm my sister. Even in self-defense.”
“I know.”
“And you would have answered with something scandalously inappropriate and sarcastic, and I would’ve pretended not to laugh.”
“I always loved the way you pretended not to laugh.”
She remains silent for a moment, just… resting.
I tighten my arms around her. Around this woman I loved and let go of.
I don’t lie to myself. I don’t say this is the last time, because I hope we’ll be friends long enough for this to be natural, to be something we can do whenever we feel like it.
But it’s, maybe… the last time. In a sense.
And the first.
“Why…” she mutters. And I can guess the words that would follow. Why Shizu. Why Iroha. Why Haruno.
Why not Yukino.
And I…
‘Do it.’
… I’m afraid.
‘Of course you are. So is she. That’s why you have to do it.’
And, sadly, yet again, Brain-chan is right.
So I take another deep breath, one that smells not like whatever it is they use to clean the school’s always immaculate floors, but… of her. Of the crisp air of a clear winter’s morning, even if only in my mind.
“I… I wanted to, you know? That day, when I told you to kiss Yui… It took everything not to join you two. But I was already with Shizu, and I can’t leave her, Yukino; I can’t ever hurt her. And I can’t hurt you. I know you could’ve accepted it, but you would’ve always felt like you were there just… just as an addition to the group. And that’s not true, that could never be true, but it would still hurt you to think it. So I… I asked the one person I knew would teach you that you are worthy of that love, that you will always deserve every smile, every kiss, every caress… and… And I watched my two first loves leave me behind.”
Her open hands close into fists clutching my lapels yet again.
Her face still lies against my chest.
“You presume too much,” she mutters, pretending at anger.
“Men are disgusting creatures who thrive on fantasy rather than reality,” I answer, pretending to joke.
And she then pretends not to laugh, and it’s, maybe, even better than the last time she did.
***
I am facing a red brick wall.
One may infer this is somewhat representative of my mental state, of my incapacity to see any way past my current difficulties and dilemmas. That the red bricks are symbolic of the myriad problems that have been laid up one by one in my way.
One would be terribly pretentious and misguided, because I’m facing the damn bricks just so I don’t have to look at the love hotel right behind me!
“Guess who!” a cheerful voice says in my ear as two fuzzy gloves delicately cover my eyes and two soft things press against my back.
Yet again, I take a deep breath.
“Haruno, your sister just tried to give me a shovel talk that ended up in what amounts to a futile, heartbroken, mutual love confession.”
“… You know, I’m pretty sure that’s the most entertaining answer anyone has ever gotten after asking that question.”
I can’t help it:
I laugh.
And Haruno, my third girlfriend, the fifth woman I’ve loved, and likely the most troublesome (sorry, Iroha—and please don’t take it as a challenge), spins me around before devouring my laugh with a hungry, scandalously inappropriate, and maybe even sarcastic kiss.
Comments
Agrippa
Sorry about the delay, I ended up getting food poisoning, and, well... This took far too long. Hopefully I'll manage to finish the Batman chapter tomorrow and not wreck the whole week completely.
