All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 52 (Patreon)

A lot has been said regarding the virtues and merits of anime parents—mostly, how their absence facilitates both the plot and the ecchi harem hijinks—but one thing remains unsaid, one key factor that makes the life of every shounen (or particularly kinky seinen—that is, most of them) protagonist far easier than it otherwise would be.

That is, how they don’t invite any girlfriends to have dinner.

“Relax,” Iroha says, her hand pulling on my jacket’s sleeve in that particularly Iroha way she has of being adorably cute without looking like she has devoted a disturbing amount of time to practicing said ways.

I’m onto you, foxy woman.

And ‘into’ her.

Well, not right now…

That could be easily solved…

Aren’t you supposed to get scandalized about me deliberately misinterpreting your innocent statement and turning it into something lewd?

Hi, my name’s Brain-chan. It appears we haven’t met before.

“Senpai…” she now says, shooting me an unfair, pouting look from the side that manages to strike my weak point for massive damage.

Oh, so that’s what the kids are calling it nowadays.

You’re enjoying this far too much.

Someone has to.

Deliberately ignoring the worryingly prone to schadenfreude organ inside my cranium, I sigh before I twist my hand to grab Iroha’s wrist and pull her to my chest so I can hug her, feel her close to me, her soft hair beneath my chin…

She… doesn’t say anything.

Just hugs me back.

Damn it, I love her far too much.

“Better?” she murmurs after what seems both too long and too little, the sidewalk near my home thankfully empty of any bystanders to look at me with reproachful, suspicious gazes.

There’s a difference between self-awareness and self-flagellation.

I find your arguments fascinating yet obviously fallacious.

“Somewhat,” I answer the girl in my arms.

My girlfriend.

My lover.

The girl who loved me after learning how broken, how messed up I am.

At least… in part.

“You usually don’t run into a monologue unless we’re about to do something you are not ready for. You almost never do it during a conversation,” she says, her breath managing to bypass my shirt.

My arms tighten around her.

“I… I love you, you know?” I say.

She rubs her face against my chest, her hands clutching my coat over my back, and I can see the glint of the streetlamps shifting over her light hair even as the sun gets lower and our shadows lengthen.

“Senpai… are you asking me to—”

I grab her chin, lift her face up so that her startled eyes meet my burning ones, and lean down to kiss her.

Without tongue. Without opening our mouths. Just pressing against her, my left arm pulling her closer to me until she gasps as I finally let myself take her lower lip between mine, sucking and licking along it.

Then, slowly, deliberately, forcing myself… I let her go.

“Yes,” I answer her unfinished question with a voice that comes from somewhere below my chest and has to push through my beating heart to reach her.

She’s… Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes brimming with something I dare not name as she stands in front of me, paralyzed, half standing on her toes.

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” she finally whispers, low enough that I almost don’t hear her over the cool breeze of late winter.

“It doesn’t matter. The answer will always be the same,” I answer in kind.

And she leans forward, her forehead on my chest, her arms tightening around me.

“Unfair…” she murmurs.

“I learned from the best,” I tell her, the hand that burned on her chin now caressing her hair, my fingers gliding through short, silky tresses that are distinct from Shizu’s wild locks and Haruno’s meticulous strands.

“Senpai, are you asking me to step up? Telling me that my former efforts are no longer enough as you’ve learned my tricks and grown accustomed to them? Saying I’ll no longer be able to leave you tongue-tied and overcome with lust and passion unless I do my very best to surpass my past self? That I need to think harder about to get to you? I’m sorry, Senpai, but that’s impossible! I can’t decide to do something I’m already doing, after all.”

…

Just hug her, keep breathing, and try not to think about the sudden barrage of images going through your mind unless you want us to walk through the door with an unhideable erection.

As always, your wisdom astounds me, Brain-chan.

Yeah, I know. Now, let out that air you’ve been holding in.

Without further protest, I sigh. Loudly.

Iroha giggles and rubs her face on my chest.

And I, looking down at the bundle of future heart attacks in my arms, smile.

***

“Welcome, brother’s girlfriend,” Komachi greets us with a stiff smile.

…

I’m not gonna touch that one.

Your sagacity is illuminating as ever, Brain-chan.

“… I have a name, you know?” Iroha says.

“Can I guess? Is it Home Wrecker?” Komachi replies with a slightly more sincere smile.

“Oi!” I say, with all authority vested in me as an older brother.

“Ah, sorry, brother, you’re right: she’s Voyeur-chan!”

There’s a sudden silence slithering across the entrance hall of my home, and I feel the dreaded, legendary, killing intent wafting off from somewhere to my left.

I guess Shizu has taught her more than I thought.

I’m pretty sure you were there during their last lesson together.

Not the time!

“Senpai? Care to elaborate why your little sister would call me that?”

“Because she’s traumatized by the terrible knowledge I’ve inflicted upon her, and she’s been bidding her time, waiting for a chance at revenge,” I immediately answer with absolute certainty and no hesitation.

“Ah! How much my brother knows me! Truly, the bond between siblings can never be underestimated—I wonder how many Komachi Points that—”

“None. Absolutely none. Cero, Nada, and any other Spanish word Bleach may have used.”

“I don’t know if Nada was a thing, brother.”

“I don’t even care anymore; the language thing was both chuuni and obnoxious.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Komachi, you’re about to make your brother both sad and mad.”

“Tee-hee.”

“… Oh gods, there’s two of him,” Iroha mutters under her breath for bizarre reasons only known to her.

Komachi, also for causes unexplainable to the science of mankind, is now preening.

“I’m sorry, Voyeur-chan, but I don’t swing that way. If you were hoping for a three—”

“Komachi, if you finish that sentence, I’m pretty sure you’ll be far more traumatized than I will be.”

“Grossther! Are you saying you won’t be disturbed by thoughts of your rapacious girlfriend pushing me down and—”

“And if you finish this sentence, I’ll be forced to lock away anything with even a remote hint at homosexual romance, starting with Clamp—”

“No! You can’t take my Clamp away! Komachi will die! I will seriously die!”

I cross my arms and smirk the superior smile of the victorious sibling. Iroha, contrary to what one would expect from a supportive girlfriend, is burying her face in her palms and muttering something completely unintelligible, likely in awe of my strategical thinking on the level of potato chip-eaters.

“This is my life,” she mutters. “This is what Christmas will look like. This is what New Year’s Eve will look like. This is what my wedding will look like!”

OK, slight correction: that last part isn’t muttered.

“Getting a bit ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Komachi asks with an arched eyebrow and the kind of look that assures me that my own Self-Preservation-kun is in good company in the afterlife.

“You don’t know your brother half as well as you think you do…” Iroha… despairs.

And Komachi crosses her own arms in a mirror of my own idle character pose that shows, once again, how lazy developers are even when they come up with something vaguely more elaborate than a palette swap.

“Is that a challenge?” my little sister says, with a tone that clearly implies the omitted ‘punk.’

Iroha looks at me askance before shaking her head.

“We’re actually already married,” she states with a perfectly level, calm voice.

Which, funnily enough, doesn’t stop me from choking on my spit.

“Brother?!” Komachi says, mercifully reaching toward me to slap my back and help me—ah. No, my bad.

She’s strangling me.

I shake my hands between our faces trying to deny—

“Go ahead. Tell her we aren’t, Senpai,” Iroha says.

I frantically shake my hands between our faces, trying to convey to Komaki that my marital status is a transcendental state of being that has little to do with the laws of man, and so she shouldn’t concern herself with it before getting a theology degree in a place where nuns don’t wear mini-skirts and priests aren’t too fat.

“You said Miss Hiratsuka was your priority! I barely tolerated you going after Haruno! And now you’re married?!” Komachi, apparently not appreciating my pantomimed metaphysical dissertations, exclaims.

“Don’t be silly; he can’t marry Haruno. That would be incest,” Iroha calmly states.

My eyes widen as I try to look at her while Komachi keeps doing her best to throttle me.

“What? You can’t tell me you aren’t related in someway,” Iroha shrugs innocently.

Iroha. Innocently.

OK, that’s the last straw.

As calmly as I can manage, I grab Komachi’s waist and lift her entirely, her hands falling limp as she stares at my straining shirt sleeves in sheer shock…

And Iroha bursts out laughing.

“Oh… Oh, I wish I had filmed this,” she says, wiping a tear off her eye with a bent pointer finger.

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” I grumble.

“Oh? Senpai, are you asking me to record each and every second of our lives together? To make sure not a single moment gets forgotten, lost to the ravages of time? I’m sorry, Senpai, but that’s impossible! After all, how could I ever forget anything related to you?” she says, her tone unfairly cute, vulnerable, and coquettish.

Komachi, unprepared for the barrage, even if it’s lacking some of Iroha’s most… poignant themes, looks from her to me and back again.

“How… How do you withstand that?” she finally asks me, still hanging limply from my hands like a kitten.

Which is weird, because I always thought she would make a better dog girl. I’m sorry, Yuigahama, but it looks like you just lost a prospective member of your ancestral tribe.

“He doesn’t. Thus, our marriage,” Iroha calmly states.

Well, except for the blush steadily climbing down her neck, the silly grin, and her mouth twitching every time she tries to look serious.

Komachi glares at her. Then at me. Then tries to eradicate the space between us with her own, still unnamed, stand so she can glare at both of us at the same time.

I… sigh.

“Komachi… I’m obviously not legally married.”

“I want proof! And why do you have to clarify ‘legally?’”

I look aside to Iroha, whose dopey grin tries its very best to elicit one of my own.

This is when you say, ‘Tries and fails.’ Except we both know how this goes.

Look, I’m young, inexperienced, in love, and hormonal. It’s a wonder I don’t have this sappy grin plastered on my face just through the realization that even one of them reciprocates a tiny bit of what I feel for them.

“OK, the joke’s gone on for too long. It’s just… what your brother and I have, it feels… It feels like it has to endure. And I… I know it’s silly. I know we’re going too fast, that we should… that maybe we should be more careful before sharing so much, so quickly, but… But I love him. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone, romantically or not, and I can’t conceive of a world where I don’t, and so I… I want this. I want this now, and I want it… Forever.”

Komachi looks at Iroha.

I… don’t.

Because it feels indecent. It feels like too much, like seeing her naked before she gave me permission to. It feels like, once I look at her, at the luminous, honey eyes and how they gaze at me after saying all this…

Do it.

I take a deep breath.

And look to my left.

I don’t realize when I let go of Komachi, when my arms stop straining with her light weight.

I do realize when I hug Iroha, when my lips go to hers, her hands tangling in my hair, mine on her back and nape.

And then I lean back and see luminous eyes searching through mine with a wide, quivering smile shooting through my heart below them.

“Forever,” she says. Softly, like she once did.

“Forever,” I repeat, like I did back then, yet understanding far more than I did.

Yesterday, I told Haruno that ‘never’ lasts far longer than ‘forever.’

Because we’re both cynics, disillusioned with a world that promised more than it gave. Because we can both derive a knowing pleasure from such a line, a shared vulnerability, a showing of wounds that draws us closer and closer as we see in the other what we often deny in the mirror. As we can look with compassion at our faults when reflected in someone we care about.

To Haruno and I, ‘never’ will always be romantic enough. A pledge that could see us together to the grave and beyond.

But when I look at Iroha…

With her, it’s forever.

And not even Komachi quietly sneaking away can make me look away from honey, luminous eyes that look at me with a wonder I never thought I would deserve.