Agrippa
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All right! Fine! I will take you! – Chapter 5
🕑 Added 2021-08-18 06:42:27 +0000 UTCIn a world full of deceit, disappointment, and office jobs, people need an outlet for their purer desires and feelings. They need something that, for a little while, allows them to think “the world is fair and just, and good deeds will eventually be rewarded.” That is, of course, a lie that allows exploiters to keep exploiting those who buy into it, but even if it is a lie, it is a comforting one. It is a lie that allows people to push forward, to believe in the chance of a better world, and to, maybe, if one is optimistic enough, work to make that lie a bit more real.
That lie is the shounen manga genre.
If you had to take a definitory, ultimate element of the shounen genre, it would be the training arc. Yes, manly men being manly and hotblooded protagonists going beyond their limits because yelling a lot apparently breaks the laws of reality (and those of man, from ten p.m. to seven a.m.) are a staple of the genre, but there’s the rare analytical protagonist, or a manga that revolves around things other than fighting, such as cooking battles that for some reason cannot be aired without censor bars (which boosts the sales of the “unadulterated” DVDs). But, even in these cases, the training arc will always be there: at one point, the main character will discover that he’s not strong enough, skilled enough, or that his hair is not gravity-defying enough to overcome his current challenge, and then he will design to undergo hellish trials intended to break lesser men, to utterly shatter his limits and reforge them anew. That is what shounen is.
And that is why I skipped my afternoon classes to go buy a pair of dumbbells.
Some sharp-tongued woman with an overly effusive love for cats may insinuate it is also because my social anxiety has already gone beyond critical levels enough times during the day that I have decided it would be for the best to test the limits of what my new status as a delinquent can offer me. If we take such slander as factual, the disappointing results would have been a couple hours of aimless wandering and very tired arms after getting stupidly enthusiastic in a sports shop.
The things come in a small, plastic suitcase. A suitcase. For dumbbells. I feel like Ryoga Hibiki going to the office.
Dragging the bloody deadweights around (literally dead, I would hope—if I have somehow purchased a pair of tsukumogami dumbbells I will be forced to use the store’s return policy; or an exorcist, if the warranty is voided) has left my arms, shoulders, and back feeling like I should never have embraced the Zaimokuza lifestyle training regimen. Which, looking at the man in question, should have been a foregone conclusion.
All of this, the dumbbells, the truancy, the obvious state of disrepair of my carnal vessel, the increasingly worrying resurgence of my chuuni tendencies… Well, I would like to say the whole thing is part of a masterstroke of genius that will come together from apparently disconnected events in a climax that will be signaled by my cheekily announcing, “Your next line is going to be—”
But that would be lying.
Because the actual truth is that I don’t know what comes next.
I have faced Yuigahama, Yukinoshita, and even Iroha (it still feels weird to call her that in my head, but the deep-voiced bastard that grasped my junior’s chin so domineeringly has left me no recourse—I feel like I should be warier of spiritual possession in the future). I have even taken my first steps towards managing the mess of what was previously considered my love triangle and now is starting to resemble a geometry out of a Junji Ito manga. It could be said I have been proactive, a word I absolutely despise because it suspiciously looks like what a middle corporate manager would use to indicate a particular wage slave should look for more work to do on his own initiative.
To work is to lose. To work extra without anyone telling you to is just masochism.
Which brings me back to Iroha’s red face, wide eyes looking into mine as her breath—
Right. Enough of that. Walking with my hands in my pockets is not an option while carrying these bloody things.
Still, even my capacity for self-delusion is not strong enough (which is why I need a shounen training arc) to allow me to pretend I am not terrified of facing the most important person in this whole mess.
Shizu.
So I swallow all of my doubts, square my shoulders (as much as physically possible, given my luggage) and get in front of the teacher’s room just long enough to make eye contact with an easily flustered Christmas Cake, who looks at me with surprise rapidly turning to shock before I draw a cross in mid-air as if I am about to tell her to rejoice in her wish to become a hero, and then make my way to the nurse’s office, hoping she has caught the meaning of my discreet message that in no way will have the rest of the teachers giving me a wide berth in the near future (which would be an unexpected bonus to the whole mess, now that I am a delinquent in the larval phase).
Or that she hasn’t understood what I meant, and I will then avoid embarrassment at the mere price of pacing in the room for hours while waiting for her to appear.
It’s a win-win scenario. Sasuga, Hikigaya.
I congratulate myself on correctly foretelling that the nurse will have vacated the premises as soon as the bell rang (because who would ever injure themselves during sports practice when they could do so dramatically in the middle of the match that will decide whether the club advances to the Koshien?), finally free myself of the weight of my expectations—I mean, the dumbbells’ suitcase, which is lying on the ground—and get ready for a long, nervous wait as I stare at the ground glass window in the door.
And I wait.
And, after a few minutes that don’t feel like hours because time has lost all meaning to me at this point, I hear the clacking of hard-soled shoes coming down the corridor, and then a silhouette with long hair is drawn on the window, and my breath catches.
And she opens the door.
My exhalation shudders with my relief, and my shoulders slump. I still, I was… I could cheer, right now.
That isn’t a phrase I ever thought I would think. Which seems redundant, because if I thought I wouldn’t think it, I would have, by definition, thought it. Quick! Don’t think of a polar bear!
Yes, I am bad at dealing with overwhelming emotions. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, coming from the man who used to roll around his bed while screaming ‘I want to die’ into his pillow.
Consistency is one of my chief virtues, after all.
“So…” Shizu begins, not meeting my eyes, her back leaning on the closed door. “Hikigaya, I—”
That won’t do.
As soon as she starts to speak, I get up from the cot and take the three steps that separate us. She raises her gaze, something like panic flashing through them, and then I take her chin, tilt her head down, and kiss her.
“Hachi,” I murmur against her lips, contact not quite broken.
“Ha—you… You can’t just shut me up like that—” she starts to protest. And then I prove her wrong.
The hand that isn’t cradling her face, guiding her movements as I explore her mouth, goes to the back of her head, fingers tangling through long hair and grabbing enough of it that my grip shouldn’t be painful. Only when I have secured her do I stop my tongue from tangling hers and allow her to resume her speech.
It… It takes her a while.
She’s flushed, her breathing short, and her eyes can’t decide whether to settle on my own or on my still wet lips. I can’t help but notice that she must have reapplied her cherry lip gloss since I devoured it this morning, and a flash of warm pride assures me it is all for me, that she has prepared her lips for me to kiss and take.
At some point, I should investigate whether sexual experiences can have some kind of personality modifying effect because I don’t think I have ever felt this ‘warm pride’ before. At most, something similar may have been inspired by Komachi, but I really shouldn’t think about her right now if I don’t want to end up as the kind of creep who goes on and on about the healing virtues of little sisters everywhere.
Which is ridiculous. None of them are Komachi.
Shizu seems to firm her resolve and looks seriously at me.
“Hachi, I—” and then realizes what she just called me, her eyes shoot open in wild panic, and her mouth shuts with an audible ‘click.’
“Yes, Shizu?” I answer nonchalantly, pretending I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the past few seconds in a way that may or not involve my buying a pair of handcuffs in the future.
“I…” She swallows, firming her resolve once again. Maybe I will let her keep it this time. “I can’t have a serious talk while we are… like this,” she finishes, almost pleadingly.
“Yukinoshita’s sister would say you are no fun,” I say, and she looks like she’s gearing up for indignation. “Luckily, I know better.” And just like that, she deflates once again, leaning against the door, her hand resting over her breasts as she takes a deep breath.
… Where was all of this when I was going through social hell in middle school? Is this the foretold awakening of my hidden bloodline due to the stress of puberty? Is it? Is my legendary bloodline just being able to weaken a woman’s knees by saying the kind of things one would read in a yaoi manga with rapey undertones?
I will take it, thank you very much. Choke on it, Sharingan users.
Reluctanly, I let her hair fall through my fingers and take a step back, no longer pressing her against the door. I still feel her heat wafting in waves from her body, her scent still fills my head as it weakens any kind of social restrain I may still have, and I figure my own heat and smell may be doing the same to her. Which makes me smile in a way I am sure would have anyone sharing my train car calling the police. Luckily, there are no witnesses—
That… May have come out wrong.
May.
“Stop smiling like that,” she says, and it makes me panic before I realize there’s no disgust there. No, going by her flush and the way she is tucking her hair behind her ear, there’s no trace of disgust at all. “I… We can’t be doing this kind of thing.”
“Why?” I don’t know what tone I use, but she looks straight at me when she hears it.
“You have been absent from classes all day. I can’t have this affecting your future.”
“It’s just one day. And… I needed a bit of time before…”
“Before facing Yuigahama and Yukinoshita after…” she trails off.
“Yes. Before that. After that.”
“Hachi…” she says, kindness in her tone, but not the kind I want. “That’s even more reason. They… They mean something to you, I can see how—”
“Of course they do. They love me.”
And there’s no arrogance, no pride, not even warmth at that. Just a simple fact. Something for the logic to process.
And Shizu gasps.
“You… That’s what you think?”
“Yes.”
“And don’t you…”
“Love them? Of course.”
And now she looks hurt, pained, but still smiles, still raises a hand to grasp my shoulder, even if it trembles a bit.
“Well, there you have it!’ she says, voice as loud as ever. “They are your age, beautiful, and I am sure you will be happy with whoever you finally choose..” The brash tone dies down, not quite choking, yet she still smiles, and I remember Haruno’s diatribe about Shizu being a Monster of Duty, someone who will sacrifice her happiness at the altar of what is right, and, once again, I am forced to concede defeat to the elder Yukinoshita. So I will follow her advice… up to a point.
“Good. Because I choose you.” And her breath catches before her face settles on something hard, ready to chastise the stubborn child in front of her. “Because I love you.”
And she stops.
“You don’t know what you are saying,” she finally settles on.
“I do. I am not the kind of man who would kiss a woman without meaning it, you know?” She hesitates at that, and I can almost feel the memories those words bring up. The good ones, the recent ones, with me. And the others.
“Some would say you are not a man at all,” she says, hesitantly, and no insult is intended, even if I feel otherwise.
“Some. Not you.” I hope.
“I have seen you grow, Hachi. I have helped you grow.”
“And that’s why I love you.” She shakes her head, eyes closed, unwilling to accept my words. “Because you have seen me at my worst, and didn’t look away, because you have shown me so much, guided me in discovering who I am, and when I have finally done that, when I have found what there is in Hikigaya Hachiman that is him, genuinely him, and no one else…” I… my voice falters, but I push on, because I need her to hear this. To understand this, even if words will never be enough. “I have found someone who deeply cares for Hiratsuka Shizuka, who has seen her at her worst, who has seen her at her most genuine… And who loves her.”
“You… You don’t…” There are tears now, brimming at the corner of her eyes, barely held back.
I take a step closer.
“I do. I have for quite some time. Sorry it took me so long to tell you.” And I kiss her tears away, the salt burning on my tongue.
And she breaks down.
I hold her against my chest as I drag her to the cot, as her crying drenches my shirt, as what she wants and what she thinks she should want tear her apart.
I hold her as she finally accepts I am there, and her hands claw at my jacket, desperate for something to hold onto, something to keep herself steady.
I kiss the top of her head, murmuring meaningless syllables and waiting for her to signal to me what else I can do for her. Because I don’t know. Because the only crying woman I have ever held before this is my little sister, and this is far more serious than any scrapped knee.
But I am here, and I can only hope that is enough.
“You didn’t… I spent all day wondering where you were,” she says, pretending she isn’t hiding her crying face in my chest, that she isn’t still clutching me like a lifeline.
“I wanted to solve things before I saw you.”
“… What?” She pushes back, looking at me.
I know people who cry look disheveled, that their eyes redden and get swollen, that their nose runs. I know the ‘ugly cry’ is a trope for a reason.
As I see Shizu’s face streaked by glistening trails of light, her cheeks still red with emotion, her lips parted while she catches her breath… I do not decide I don’t care. No.
I decide I care. A lot. That I want to see every face this beautiful woman is able to make and commit it to memory, hoarding them like the treasure they are. I want to see her radiant with joy, frustrated after a bad day, satisfied after a good meal, drowsy after a late night marking tests… I want it all, and I want it for me.
I guess, after all, Hikigaya Hachiman can be greedy.
“I asked you a question… Hachi.” And that pause before she decides to use my name? That, I will also treasure.
“I am sorry, what did you say?” It seems being confronted with an oblivious man that just doesn’t listen lets her get back on solid ground, because her expression firms and her grasp on me slackens.
“What do you mean by ‘solving things’?” she asks, before she takes a tissue out of her pocket and starts cleaning up her face.
“I went to have lunch at the club room, where I met Yuigahama, Yukinoshita and Iroha.” She looks up at that, still wiping under her nose, surprised and a bit nervous. “We talked about the prom, which is now a challenge to settle things with Yukinoshita once and for all,” she interrupts with a snort of amusement, which I let pass magnanimously, “and then I had a meeting with Iroha on the roof and she swore no to do anything with the pictures she took this morning.” Well, that is a lie: she didn’t swear not to do some things.
I mean, I kind of implied I gave her permission to. And isn’t that a lovely mental image…
“She what?!”
“She swore—”
“She took pictures?!”
“Well, I mean… wouldn’t you have?”
Shizu looks at me as if I have gone insane. Which, apparently, doesn’t look much different from how a girl looks when I mistakenly answer a greeting meant for another person.
“Wouldn’t I have taken pictures of you with a woman doing… that? Of course not!”
“Oh. I guess that’s normal if you don’t have Iroha’s voyeuristic fetish.”
“… Her what?”
“I seem to be explaining a lot of things during this conversation, are you sure you should be the one doing the teaching?”
“Don’t test me, brat.”
“I wouldn’t, too much work. I mean, unless it was an oral exam.” She looks up into my grinning face and sputters something that definitely doesn’t have to do with wanting to improve her grades. Which is a pity, because I could be accommodating.
“I—I shouldn’t have done that…”
“What? ‘Returning the favor?’ Or giving the Student Council President the chance to indulge in her voyeur—”
“Why do you keep saying she has a fetish about… that?”
“It… may have something to do with when she asked me to let her watch us together.”
“What.”
“I didn’t agree.”
“Of course you didn’t—”
“I told her I would speak with you and not to do it without permission.”
I seem to have overcharged Shizu’s brain because she just shuts up and flops back into the cot.
She’s also groaning. It’s a long groan. It displays great lung capacity.
Not that I didn’t know that already. Tee-hee.
“Why are you even asking me about it?” she mutters, her arm covering her eyes as if refusing to acknowledge such an absurd world exists and denying the sensory evidence regarding the contrary.
“She did say she was starting to get curious about these kinds of things and wanted to learn from people who made her feel safe…” I take a deep breath and brace myself. “And I also got a bit turned on, when I saw her getting excited while you twirled your tongue around—”
Shizu, very slowly, removes her arm from her face. And looks at me, her eyes as blank as a yandere who is talking about anything other than the subject of her obsession.
I… may need an adult.
“I don’t even know how to answer that,” she says, as if her flat tone and dead gaze aren’t answer enough.
“It looks like I shouldn’t test you before you have had a chance to review. You are such a slacker.” If I am interpreting things correctly, she is trying to stab me with her eyes. Let’s hope it’s not part of a legendary bloodline activated due to the stress of meeting a frustratingly dense harem protagonist.
“Just to be clear… You are not asking your teacher to participate in a threesome with two underage students, are you, Hikigaya?” Her tone is as sweet as Yuigahama asking me to try her cookies, and likely at least half as dangerous. I think, just this once, I will let the ‘Hikigaya’ slide.
It seems even the deep-voiced bastard has some survival instincts.
“No! No, I am—I don’t even know, all right? I just… promised her I would speak with you about it.”
“And now you have,” she states tonelessly.
“I am a reliable man, you know?” I lie through my teeth.
She sighs, staring at the ceiling with a complicated expression before raising up to a normal sitting position that promptly devolves into her leaning her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. Because maintaining proper position is too much of a bother. I think I get some of what Haruno likes about Shizu.
“Yeah, I guess you are…”
“Oi, at least you could pretend you are not surprised about it.”
She snorts as her only answer, and we just sit there, side by side.
Which is kind of nerve-wracking.
I mean, this is the point in the story where the suave protagonist says something that not only manages to soothe the ruffled feathers of his love interest, but also shows her he had been in the right all along and she should just reward his steadfast, unwavering heart with a three—
No. That is another genre. One that involves a carefully curated selection of savegames and a flowchart. Right now we are more in the josei forbidden romance, which means she shouldn’t get mad at me for being a bit of a horny bastard, given it’s already a small miracle I am not an actual psychopath.
Seriously, women like some bizarre things in their romantic fantasies. Not like men, who will always be satisfied with the wholesome, pure love between a young man and his childhood friend who is secretly a yandere serial killer.
I am still debating whether hugging her shoulders is likely to get my liver elbowed when Shizu twitches (and I don’t let out a small yelp and drop my hand in response).
“What is that?”
“Uh? Oh, those are the dumbbells I bought.”
And now she looks at me as if I have just said the weirdest thing she ever expected me to say. A position that should have stiff competition, given the Iroha situation.
“You… Why?”
And nowI am blushing and fidgeting with my index fingers. How the tables have turned.
“I kinda… Wanted to get stronger?”
“Right, but why?”
My hand meets my face, and I mutter between my fingers.
“What did you just say?”
I separate my hand enough for it not to muffle everything, but not enough I can see her face. For reasons that will quickly become apparent.
“I wanted to be able to handle you.”
And now there’s silence. Blissful silence. A silence complete enough I can imagine I am blushing like an Iroha without anybody else to witness my eternal shame.
Actually, I don’t think she’s breathing.
I cautiously lower my hands enough to peek, and I see Shizu, red as a German plugsuit, biting her lip and evading my eyes as if she was a female classmate.
She is starting to emit a kind of low whistle. Maybe it’s a warning mechanism in case of overheating?
“It… It won’t work.”
“Excuse me?”
“The dumbbells. It won’t work. Those are mostly for biceps and forearms. Triceps and shoulders, if you do the right exercises, but guys always focus on biceps.” Her gaze is darting all over the room. She still refuses to look at me.
“I… I think good biceps are kind of a prerequisite if I want to… lift a woman—you.” Why am I even saying this? Couldn’t I just say I wanted to get in shape like a normal human being?
“Yes. Yes, you need strong arms…” she trails off, and then swallows. Which reminds me of this morning, and now my face is red for two reasons. “But you also need a strong back and core, or you could injure yourself. You will need a full-body regime, maybe introducing isometrics…”
“I don’t even know what some of those words mean.”
“I could… teach you.”
And now I look at her, and she makes the titanic effort to raise her head and look at me. I think, somehow, blushes are not only contagious, but able to exacerbate one another. The mysteries of the human body.
“You… could?”
“I have a small home gym.”
“You do?”
“I could… show you?”
I picture Shizu in workout clothes, in the kind of sports bra that pushes her breasts together, the kind of elastic shorts that hide absolutely nothing, and I imagine—
I hunch over, hands in my pockets. You know why.
“Yes,” I say, voice as hoarse as if I had just run a marathon instead of being about to prepare for it.
“Yes?”
“Yes, let’s go. Right now.”
And she lets out a soft whimper as I stand up, grab her suddenly sweaty hand, and she allows me to pull her up from the cot.
We are standing face to face, flushed, embarrassed, (hopefully?) excited, when I realize I just invited myself to my secret lover’s house under the very thin pretense of exercising, and she has silently consented.
Truly, my illicit romance seems to be looking up. How unexpected.
