All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 50 – Iroha Is a Dutiful Daughter, Really (Patreon)

Night comes early in winter.

…

Aaaaaaaah! No! This is forbidden! I won’t turn simple statements of fact into the jumping point to a prolonged monologue full of sophistry and self-serving reasoning! I refuse to become yet another clone of him!

We already have Hachiman: Original Flavor with Shizu, and Hachiman: Nightmare Difficulty Mode with Haruno; there’s absolutely no need for me to become Hachiman: Cute Apprentice Version!

… Note to self: buy a sailor’s uniform and get them to ‘teach me.’

Gods, that first time was hot.

Anyway, it looks like the crisis has been successfully averted. I can now focus on shoving my gloved hands down my coat’s pockets and my chin and mouth behind my pink scarf as I try to get to my home fast enough that the tips of my ears won’t freeze off—

And now my phone’s vibrating in my pocket.

Damn it!

Oh. It’s Haruno.

… I don’t know whether to curse or cheer.

“Hi there, I trust you’re calling to tell me everything went according to plan until it suddenly didn’t?” I greet her, the cold wind once more hitting my bare mouth as I dodge a middle-aged man who’s too immersed in his own call to show the proper deference to a lady half his size.

Rude.

“Well, I can feel my legs once again, sooo—”

“If you expect me to complain about that being too much detail, you clearly don’t know me yet.”

She… She doesn’t giggle.

No: she laughs.

It has a hint of something masculine, something brash that pushes past the lady-like veneer ingrained in her every gesture. It’s… powerful. Bold.

Thrilling.

And, suddenly, any remaining doubts about how much I actually want to experiment with other girls just because I’ve got a desperate need to look for an emotional bond that won’t betray me instead of me just finding some girls really, really attractive kinda… vanish.

That’s not fair, Haruno. You shouldn’t be able to get into my head and eradicate my questions about my own identity without even voicing a single word regarding them, you know? That’s cheating. That’s completely unfair.

That’s something you’ll have to make up to me.

Hopefully, on your knees.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, the laughter long gone in echoes that are no longer in my reach.

And I sigh.

I wonder how much she can read in that?

“It’s easier with you, you know?” I tell her.

“I think I do. Why do you believe that is?”

Ah.

Therapists.

I hated therapists, once upon a time.

“Because I don’t know you as much. There’s not a Haruno in my mind I’ve got to tear down as I get to know the Haruno I am in a relationship with. I can feel free to fantasize about you, to want to explore and discover. With Shizu… I’m afraid. You know why.”

“I do. But you did well today. I’m proud,” she says, making something in my chest clench before it hammers.

“I… What are you—”

“You didn’t have sex with her. You, instead, had an emotional discussion and managed to grow that much closer, to erase some of the things you had built up inside of you and that you were far too willing to ignore and push past. That takes courage, Iroha. I’m… I haven’t always been able to do what you did today.”

I look around me at the busy sidewalk filled with too many people for me to keep walking while my eyes itch just like they are doing right now, and I duck into a doorway just to the side of a small clothing shop I’ve never entered but often stared at. The gate is made of rough, gray-painted metal flourishes with a pane of glass behind it, and, despite the cold, I lean my left cheek on it to…

To calm down.

Damn it, Haruno. Making our little group lose their mind with some carefully selected words is my thing.

“Better?” she asks.

“What gave all of… that away?” I ask in turn, leaning away from the cold bars and rubbing my almost frozen cheek with the end of my scarf.

I don’t care if the phone’s speaker is now crackling. It’s all her fault, anyway.

“You didn’t send a video,” she says, as if that’s obvious enough.

Which I guess it is.

So I groan in despair.

“It could’ve gone catastrophically. You’re assuming far too much,” I tell her, trying to rub the bridge of my nose before biting the tip of my right glove to pull it off and try again with far greater success.

“Which is why I called,” she says in that way that perfectly conveys she’s now rolling her eyes at me.

“I’d like it if you didn’t talk to me like I’m a detective-like character like you and just explained things rather than imply them, you know?”

“Stop lying. You would hate it if I underestimated your intelligence, and you delight in me pushing you just far enough that you can leap forward. You hate it when people believe your façade.”

I… stall.

Really, I just take a moment to watch the people pass by, all of them huddled in their coats, their shadows quickly changing their angle and being replaced by newer patches of darkness as they go from one lamppost to the next.

“I guess we have that much in common,” I finally tell her, just shy of being hurtful.

Again, she laughs.

And I have to bite my lip at the image of her face that sends through my mind. The cruel smile that has enough merriment and teasing provocation to make up for it, the eyes that are holding so much back that doesn’t reach her lips…

Damn it. This was a bad day to get clam jammed by my issues.

“We do. I… I like it that we do, even if I’m sorry about it,” she says.

I lick my lips and look up, above the throng of people, at the patch of black sky over the wide street.

The bars of the gate dig through my black coat, pushing against my back in reassuring solidity.

I lean back, more of my weight on them. Because I need it.

“I always thought we wouldn’t open that much to each other until after we had sex,” I tell her.

“Well, I just had sex,” she answers, the teasing lilt making my lips quirk.

“You didn’t record it, did you?”

“Oh, would you believe I forgot?”

“Not at all. What I would believe is that you were afraid of how much you would show him that you wouldn’t want to share with us until it was time.”

“Iroha, stop; I can only get so erect.”

“I’m quite sure you can get as erect as you damn well please. There are toys designed for that.”

“… I suddenly am wary of letting you approach me with a bag in your hands.”

“Would little old me be able to shove an enormous strap-on inside a big bad martial artist like you?”

This time, it’s she that pauses.

Heh.

“Yes. I do believe you would. Which is why our first time will feature handcuffs.”

“Joke’s on you: I’m into tha—”

“I know.”

My cheeks are heated far more than the air around them should allow for, and I keep trying to pull down the grin spreading across my face. The bright storefronts on the other side of the street light everything up like it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m talking with my second girlfriend.

“Haruno?”

“Yeah?”

“I like you. A lot. And I think I could easily love you.”

She pauses again. My smile doesn’t falter.

Because… it’s them, and so I’m not afraid. Not like I used to be.

“Likewise, Fox.”

My eyes are itchy, and I’m glad I wiped my makeup off at Shizu’s apartment before I left.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Anytime,” she says.

And one of us should hang up, because it’s embarrassingly sappy just how long I stand in the recessed doorway, just watching people pass by, seeing their shadows fade away when they go from one light to the next, while a girl I would like to love waits in silence on the other end of the line.

It’s a good thing I like being embarrassed.

***

“Hello, Mom, I’m back—oh, I didn’t know you had a guest over. My apologies for so rudely intruding,” I tell the middle-aged woman with a deferential bow that is just slightly too deep.

“Oh, Iroha! Don’t be silly—she’s just so polite, Ms. Yamada, that I’m sometimes embarrassed by it! My little girl makes me so proud, you know?” My mother says, quickly depositing her cup of coffee on the saucer so she can gesture at me, beaming with pride so warm (and vapid) that it pulls the other woman—Ms. Yamada—in.

“She looks like a marvelously polite young woman,” she says, the approval heavy on her tone as she shows me a terse smile.

I answer with my own deferential smile, my hands clasped in front of my skirt.

Because that’s Ms. Yamada, Head Secretary of… one company or another. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that said company is about to be investigated for some shady dealings that Mom caught a whiff of, and she’s been working on Ms. Yamada for quite a while to get the scoop she wants. This includes playing to Ms. Yamada’s stereotypically conservative values and showing her that, despite being a notorious divorcee, her child is perfectly fine in conforming to the highest Japanese standards of what being polite actually means.

Haruno would make her head spin.

“She certainly is. I was so relieved to know she would be in capable hands when she got into Sobu High.”

Oh, you don’t know the half of it—

“Oh, Sobu High? I am an alumna myself. It’s reassuring to know they are still doing such a great job.”

Yes, yes, and if you believe Mom mentioned that little fact coincidentally, you deserve absolutely everything… Actually, I don’t know what the repercussions of this could be. For all I know, Ms. Yamada could be lauded as a hero for uncovering the scandals her company’s embroiled in.

I doubt it, but I really don’t know.

“They certainly are, though I’m afraid the homework is sometimes a bit hard to deal with while being the President of the Student Council,” I tell her with my best chagrined smile.

Mom’s smile widens a tiny fraction, and she sends me a discreet nod.

I manage not to roll my eyes. Then Ms. Yamada nods in a far more noticeable solemn approval, and my job gets that much harder.

“Oh, of course, sweetie. Please, don’t let me keep you away from your duties. She’s so diligent, you know? She certainly didn’t inherit that from me—”

Mom drones on, gesturing for me to excuse myself, and I…

Do so. While maintaining the mask she wants out of me.

Then I go up the stairs to my room, lock the door, and immediately drop facedown on my bed.

The air tastes weird through the soft duvet, but I’m just too drained to look to the side, so I keep breathing the filtered thing as I try to let the knot between my shoulder blades dissolve through sheer mental power.

‘Just put on a bright smile, OK, Iroha? For mommy?’

‘But I—”

‘Iroha… it’s important. The judge needs to know that you’re happy with me. You wouldn’t want them to take you away, would you?’

And no, I wouldn’t.

At all.

Because that would mean living with Dad.

‘What happened between your mother and I has nothing to do with you, Iroha. Daddy loves you just as much as ever.’

‘But… But you’re leaving…’

‘I… Sometimes, things between grown-ups don’t work out. It’s nobody’s fault. It doesn’t mean anything other than that we will see each other a bit less.’

That, and that he could fuck his secretary a lot more often.

Nothing to do with me. Leaving our family, betraying my mother, had nothing to do with me.

Nothing at all, right, Dad? Other than you not being able to keep it in your pants long enough that your daughter wouldn’t get caught in the middle of a messy divorce that I had to smile all the way through because gods forbid I was at all upset that my whole life was being torn apart, and you not even noticing when my grades started dropping and I—

‘No wonder your father left you.’

‘Sayuri! Look, she’s crying! That’s hilarious!’

‘All right, girls, move along. Iroha, come with me. You’re going to the school’s counselor whether you want it or not.’

Yeah. That.

I manage to push myself into turning around, my back sinking into the warm groove I already left on the duvet, and I stare up into my cream-colored ceiling.

At least Dad’s money’s still here.

I… I sometimes wish it wasn’t. That Mom and I were poor, that she had another kind of job, one that didn’t revolve around looking good for the camera and tricking people into telling her things they shouldn’t.

I envy Yui, really.

How sad is that?

…

I take a shuddering breath and pick up my phone, going through the pictures of the only time I hung at her place, with her talking my ear off about Yukino, and Hachi, and all the things about the two of them that drove her insane.

Her dog was adorable.

And… And then her mother arrived, and she just…

I’m not Haruno.

I… I am smart, but not a genius. Not by any stretch.

But I was raised by an investigative reporter, and I’m very good at picking up on clues. At reading others. At… understanding things.

People.

And intuitive empathic type, the therapist said.

I’m really not.

So I… It just took one look at their faces, the way they looked at each other when Yui’s mother stepped in and deftly caught the furry missile jumping toward her stomach to understand that the small apartment with old furniture and not a single thing with a named brand was a place far more hospitable than my two-story home filled with the expensive things my mother and father strove to surround me with.

It’s another thing Hachi and I have in common. One that Haruno understands while Shizu doesn’t.

Gods, we’re all so messed up…

And me? I think I’m the worst of them all.

It… It just took a single glimpse at him. An overheard proclamation, as he tearfully declared what he truly wanted, that genuine thing he was looking for and that he wanted to attain with the girls sitting in front of him.

Yukino… I don’t think she ever understood what he was saying.

Yui did. And resented him for it.

And I… I just listened on the other side of the door, trying not to cry like he was, trying not to crumble as someone finally pointed me toward that thing I had missed for years, that thing I had learned to ignore through fake smiles and reassurances.

I… I had already half fallen for him, after far too many small kindnesses, after he stayed with me that night my heart was broken.

And it just took me seeing his own shattered heart to finally take that last step forward. To fall.

Gods, I love him so damn much.

And…

I‘m far too used to lying down like this, to think about past grudges that I want to pretend don’t exist even as I dwell on them, to craft the perfect Iroha to mask all those little secrets with.

What I’m not used to…

Is thinking about a single, insufferable, exasperating manand feel my heart rush, my breath quicken, my lips tug into a silly smile, my—

The phone’s ringing between my hands.

“Senpai? Were you thinking about me after leaving behind an exhausted college girl who could not manage to withstand your wild lusts? Are you so unsatisfied that you want to take me, to grab my hips and spin me around before bending me over as you spread my legs so you can penetrate me, thrust your hard, rigid cock inside of me, and make me scream your name until I can’t even articulate that much and I just keep breathing and moaning as you empty yourself inside of me? I am sorry, Senpai, but that’s impossible! I would keep screaming your name regardless of how far my mind was gone, after all.”

There’s a silence on the other end of the line as my cheeks burn and my heart beats hard enough that I feel about to faint.

“You know, I wanted to ask you how things went with Shizu and make sure you were OK, but I’m suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, finding it somehow hard to think straight. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!”he says, his voice slipping from his usual, bored tone to the kind of panic I love seeing in his eyes when I know I’m the cause of it.

I giggle, the way neither Shizu nor Haruno are able to, and try to pretend I’m not about to faint out of love and embarrassment.

I like being embarrassed, after all.