All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! – Zaimokuza Gaiden – Chapter 12 (Patreon)

All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! – Zaimokuza Gaiden – Chapter 12

When it comes to heroes and their weaknesses, there are two schools of thought. The first one is the one so lauded by pretentiously literate people everywhere who won’t shut up about flaws making the hero more relatable or that having him struggle adds meaningful layers to his journey.

The other is the light novel-slash-isekai school of thought, who apparently didn’t go to writing class when they discussed the concept and thinks that maybe an adequate weakness for the hero would be not to know a multiple body technique that would allow him to properly and realistically manage a harem that usually doesn’t even mingle among themselves.

Both schools have their own merits, certainly. Nothing ruins a good power fantasy like character development and realistic struggles, after all. Still, if I had to lean on one side of the argument, I think…

I think I would lean toward the one that doesn’t have my sister be as brutally effective against me as a Charizard against a freshly hatched Bulbasaur…

“So…” the dread… something says. Probably multiple dread things at once.

It’s unlikely that ‘pirate’ would be among the list, as her only documented weakness so far includes a propensity for getting seasick, but I would not put it past her to have faked that just to have an excuse to throw up on me.

The boat railing was right there!

“Are you listening, Yoshi?” she asks.

The question, of course, only admits one answer, which means it utterly fails at the usual raison d’etre of a question—that is, gathering new information.

‘Do I really have to tell you—’

No. No, I don’t think you do.

“Of course, dear sister. How could I ever not hang on every word you deign direct at my unworthy self?”

She raises an eyebrow and stops stirring her tea with her spoon, the silence at the sudden absence of the irritating clacking of metal against porcelain heightening the tension already drifting across my living room like a mist summoned by a shirtless ninja.

I am not sweating.

‘Cold sweat also counts—’

Inner Hachiman, I would appreciate you not testing my patience under the current circumstances.

“I don’t know, Yoshi, would you ever be so cheeky as to completely ignore what I’m telling you and then spout that utter load of bull?”

Oh, that’s why they call it a poker face. Because it feels like someone is about to stab you with a fire poker.

“Would I?” I answer, with a not trembling voice.

“Of course you would! Well, you would now, after your balls have finally dropped. Seriously, I can’t thank that girl enough for giving you a much-needed burst of testosterone.”

“You are utterly mortifying. And she’s called Minami.”

Now that the air of menace has somewhat abated, I deign it safe to take a sip of my tea to steady my nerves and hide any nervous twitching of my lips that is definitely not currently happening—

“I’ll call her cumdumpster, and she’ll be happy about it.”

By some miracle, I manage not to spit my tea all over my sister and thus lower my life-expectancy to a point where she would have been forced to travel back in time to murder me and thus cause a paradox where I’d be killed before committing the act that would merit such a death. Not that she would care too much about that.

On the other hand, I care quite a lot about currently choking. And coughing. And desperately hoping for both sweet, life-giving air and the perchance sweeter release of death.

“Such a drama queen,” she mumbles.

“What! The! Fuck!” I inquire of her.

“Oh, swearing. That’s a new one. She must be a great cocksucker.”

My vision dims, and red starts—

“I mean, how else would a formerly popular girl fall so hard for the local doujin protagonist if not by being ahegaoed so hard she became addicted to—”

“Sister! Enough!”

And she chuckles.

…

That’s it, I’m giving her number to Shigeru. They deserve each other.

“So, the girl really has helped you grow a pair, uh?”

“I won’t stand here and allow you to besmirch her name—”

“Yeah. Mostly because you’re sitting.”

“I despise you.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“So, true love, huh? It doesn’t happen every day.”

Is that…

“If you tell me you’re the Dread Pirate Roberts, I’m going to have questions about a certain seasickness incident a few years ago,” I finally tell her.

And she smiles placidly as she takes a sip of her tea—chance!

‘No! Don’t—’

“Also, I have no doubts about the Lady Minami’s prowess in the bedroom—”

My sister satisfactorily spits her tea in shock.

Not so satisfactorily, she does it all over me.

“... I should have seen that coming,” I tell her uncharacteristically contrite face.

“You really, reallyshould have.”

***

For just a brief moment, I enjoy the peace and quiet of the bathroom as I go there to divest myself of my stained shirt and wash my face. No, I’m not trying to flee the demon woman; that’s just happy serendipity.

Happy, sweet, short serendipity.

“So, you really, really love her,” she says, leaning on the doorframe, her arms crossed with not even a hint of the Lady Minami’s grace and mastery of the classic poses, an eyebrow insolently raised over the frame of her glasses.

“I…” I take advantage of splashing my face with cold water to avoid answering for just a moment, but when I raise my head, I still see her looking at me through the mirror, waiting for me to speak. “I… think I do. But mayhap not properly.”

She cocks her head to the side in birdlike curiosity, and I’m suddenly reminded that birds are the closest thing we have to dinosaurs.

… Maybe they could be ancestral deities for an underground cult in that bird-people setting?

‘Focus. Also, that’s awesome,’

It is!

“What do you mean, ‘properly?’” she asks after my silence stretches too long for her liking.

I grab a towel and dry my face, gathering my thoughts for just a moment longer before I finally turn to face her.

Then I gather my resolve.

And keep gathering it.

It is a laborious, delicate task; I wouldn’t want to rush it.

‘For fuck’s sake…”

“Yoshi, you neverhesitate to tell me your latest dumb idea. While I do appreciate variety, I would rather it didn’t happen when I’m actually invested.” She taps her right pointer and middle fingers against her elbow in a rather transparent show of impatience.

I sigh.

“I… I may have come to the conclusion that there’s no need to show one’s worthy of being loved. Yet I find that conclusion unsatisfactory.”

And now both her eyebrows shoot up.

“This oughta be good.”

No. It really doesn’t look like it ough to.

I lean on the washbasin behind me.

And then try to tell her my actual concern.

“A part of me… A part of me is still thinking about this like a story. Like something where the main character does something unexpected, a heartfelt kindness, or a heroic showing that makes the girl fall for him. Yet I know I haven’t done any such thing, and the Lady Minami still lavishes her affection on me. And that is good. Wonderful. But I can’t help but feel it’s not earned. And I know love is not something to be earned, not when it basically amounts to two people—”

“Harems—”

“To usually two people connecting. But… But I don’t feel at ease just sitting back and letting it happen. Letting all this good fortune just rain down on me. I feel I should… I don’t know.”

My sister sighs, her arms uncrossing before she aggressively combs her hair back, the gesture pulling a few strands of silver hair loose from her own ponytail.

“Yoshi… I’m not having this conversation with you half-naked in the bathroom.”

I look down.

I’m still wearing my undershirt! This isn’t half-naked by any stretch of the imagination!

I raise my eyes to once again meet the merry, insolent gaze of the spawn of the stars masquerading as a human being for reasons beyond my understanding.

Then she turns around and walks to the living room, obviously expecting me to follow.

Which I do.

Because, apparently, I’ve spent so long with Hachiman even his survival instincts have rubbed off on me.

‘Dude, no. Not at all. You are not courting a Yukinoshita; this doesn’t even rate.’

I find your optimism adorable, Inner Hachiman.

My sister has taken a seat on the cream-colored sofa and is insistently patting the cushion at her side.

With a resigned sigh, I sink into it.

And then she twists, leans back on the armrest, and deposits her feet on my lap.

…

I look at her with all the indignation I can muster.

“I’m not giving you advice for free. Either get working, or you’ll owe me a favor,” she says, not a hint of levity in her tone.

Damn it.

With a resigned sigh, I pick up her right foot and start carefully kneading it.

She grunts in approval before she examines me.

And then she finally speaks about the matter that currently weighs on my mind.

“Look, you’re right: love doesn’t work like that. It’s not about grand romantic gestures, about rescuing her from a villain or whatever half-cooked fantasy’s currently festering on that thing you call an imagination, and I call a gateway into God’s discarded plans for alternative models of Hell,” she starts.

… A story about hired divine contractors, each one trying to show their proposal for Hell is superior to the others. The concept could either be comedy or horror—horror comedy? Like a twist on Junji Ito’s body horror that—

“Stop that. Stop what you’re doing. I know that face.”

Right. She’s giving me advice, and I should listen.

Working to repress a full-body shudder at the notion, I give her my full attention.

“And don’t stop the massage.”

Fine. About eighty percent of my attention.

“Oh, she’s going to appreciate this a lot. Now, where were we… Right. Most people will tell you that the only thing that you need for a relationship to work is to be yourself. As far as I can tell, that’s a stupid load of crap, because relationships can be a ton of work, or so the boys chasing me tell me. But let’s assume there’s a bit of truth to the idea. To the notion that you and your Lady Minami are just compatible and that the only thing you need for this burst of hormones to turn into something more stable is to show her your true self. How would she know?”

I frown at her question, not quite understanding—

“Yoshi, I’m serious. How does she know you are this guy who, while not perfect, may be perfect for her? How does she learn to like you, warts and all?”

I ponder the question. And change the foot I’m massaging when she kicks my thigh.

So. Exasperating.

“By getting to know each other? There… there don’t seem to be any shortcuts,” I finally tell her.

And she grins.

Which worries me. A lot.

“Precisely. And I can’t tell you how glad I am that you didn’t just start shouting about ‘true love revealing itself with just a glance that conveys the deepest secrets of the heart’ or some other moronic—”

Oh. I couldhave said that.

She kicks me once again. Now with her freshly massaged foot.

“Hey!”

“No. Bad Yoshi. No backsliding, not when you’re on the right track. And get back to rubbing.”

With a grumble, I do so, and if I maybe put a bit too much pressure on the spot beneath her big toe—

Yeah. That just gets me another kick. Of course it does.

“Do the job properly, or you will owe me that favor.”

“Fine! Fine, though I should state that a conversation between regular siblings shouldn’t be this mercenary—”

“And since when are you regular at all?”

I beam at her—

“Not what I meant. And stop looking at me like that; you’re making me feel like I’m bullying a dumb puppy rather than a dumb little brother.”

I glare at her—

“Yes. Much better. Now, where we were before you decided to pretend you just lost a few more brain cells, was on the verge of the grand revelation that for you to feel like you’ve somehow earned her love, you need ‘the Lady Minami’ to understand you. To know you—the real you. Tell me, brother who knows love isn’t actually earned, but rather found and nourished… is the real you someone who will sit back and enjoy what life has thrown his way?”

I look at her, and, at her insistent gaze, think.

Think at how much easier things would’ve been if I just went along with the flow. About all those times when I refused to not be myself. All those times where I decided to wear a spiky ponytail, a tan trench coat, and fingerless gloves.

All those times where I…

Didn’t sit back.

It wasn’t courage. Not really.

But… but it was something I chose. Something I did.

Something that didn’t just happen.

I give my sister’s foot one last squeeze.

“I need to go,” I tell her, getting her feet off my lap before I stand up.

And she smiles at me, for once not quite mocking, nor acerbic, nor exasperated.

“Yes. I think you do.”

***

I am in a street near a small cinema that sometimes projects old films.

I am near where Minami and I started our first date.

Where Hachiman’s sage advice started a chain of events that he himself still is only vaguely aware of.

And, with a grateful smile, I set out to look for a specific thing we saw on our date.

By luck, happenstance, or fate, I find it.

It’s a small silver bracelet artfully decorated with a few garnets, sitting on a white mantel at a street stall too near to an awful hag of a fortune-teller for my peace of mind.

The price is displayed, and I remember wondering how many novels, mangas, or games I could buy with the sum after pondering an impulsive romantic gesture that, at that point in time, wouldn’t have been more than what Hachiman so aptly calls simping—something he thoroughly instructed me not to do.

Now… I can see the pieces of the story fitting. The callback to the start of everything that would go down, the genuine surprise in her face, the way the garnets would compliment both her eyes and the earring studs—

And the story crashes all around me.

Because they are no longer her studs.

No. It’s a stud and a cross.

And I remember her warm hands lightly holding mine as she tried to instruct me on feeling my energy. As she guided me through an exercise I tried years ago, but that never worked beyond something that could only be called self-delusion.

I remember her sadness when I didn’t feel what she wanted me to feel.

Her earring. An elaborate cross. Something that would horribly clash with the understated elegance of the thin band of silver I’m looking at.

I close my eyes for a single moment as I ponder it all.

Then turn my back on the jewel and go back.

“What? You aren’t going to criticize my merchandise today?” the old la—woman at the fortune-telling stall says as I pass by.

“Are you at least telling a story that’s tangentially related to what you’re selling?”

She glares at me, and this would be the moment she gave me some unintended sage advice.

If this was a game.

Which it isn’t.

And so I walk away from a bitter old swindler as I try to think.

‘Good luck with that.’

Thanks. I’ll need it.

***

I’m sitting on a park bench, the light of the sun having long turned to crimson sunset.

The rustling of the evergreen leaves above me is far more soothing than the noise of the children playing on the sandpit I’d been enduring for the past while, but it looks like the coming of the night, as early as it is on this winter’s eve, still acts as a signal for parents to bring their spawn home.

So I find myself alone in here, my trench coat an adequate shield against the steadily growing chill even as I stuff my hands down my pockets when my gloves prove to be anything but.

And I think.

I think about a fiery, enthusiastic girl who’s spent too long pretending to be meek.

I think on the loneliness I saw in her eyes as she sat on my lap, the words to some guided meditation cribbed off the same pages I used to frequent still hanging between us.

I think about her new earring that actually looks worn down with time. Something from her past that she’s allowing herself to display once again.

I think.

About love, and showing your true self.

And what I would like the true self of Yoshiteru Zaimokuza to be.

And, finally, I take out my phone and select one of the very few contacts on the list.

“Shigeru, I need you to tell me about a friend of your sister,” I say as soon as he picks up.

“Wha—”

“I’ll give you my sister’s number.”

He squeals enthusiastically, and I grin in retribution.