All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 87 – Repost (Patreon)

Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in the dungeon?

This, at first blush, seems not only to be a nonsensical question but one we’ve already answered with a resounding, ‘No, it isn’t, and do you even realize what kind of game you’re playing?’ in our ongoing lecture series.

Yet things aren’t that simple.

You see, the existence of dungeons themselves is somewhat suspect. They are, after all, more of an artifact of gameplay than story, and the way they’ve become an ever-present trope in the fantasy genre often clashes with plot elements and sensible worldbuilding. The dungeon can’t help but bring to mind the games from where it came, casting a shadow of suspicion over the whole tale it’s enmeshed in.

Unless we’re talking about LitRPGs, I assume most of my cultured disciples have better literary taste than Zaimokuza.

Still, that’s the main issue. There are ways for a skilled, hard-working author to exert some effort and explain how and why a dungeon has come to be, but most of the people eager to unironically throw around game terminology in their novels are also the kind of people to faint at the mere idea of work, hard or otherwise. Which is very laudable of them, and I do indeed sympathize with my kinsmen doing their best to embody the noble ideals of the househusband, but the results still speak for themselves.

But, even if you went ahead with it and developed a convoluted set of circumstances as to why the monster youth center full of traps and with no less than four self-excluding biomes is a viable approach in the current housing market? What there are very few ways for is to justify not bombarding the damn place.

Seriously, a hole in the ground full of monsters? A murderhole in the ground purposefully built to annihilate heroes? Why would you enter when you can stay outside, at a safe distance, as the token loli of the group satisfies her pyromaniac fetish? Why wouldn’t you flood it with poison clouds, barrels of acid, or whatever it is that remains of a spellcaster’s arsenal after the latest nerf when the author realized some troublesome implications for the ‘I win’ button?

Indeed, there are very few reasons for a sane, rational hero to enter a dungeon.

Unless they want something guarded inside of it.

“I am sorry, Hachiman, but your princess is in another castle,” a dungeon guard standing with her arms crossed and barring my entrance to the place I need something from says.

“What?” I, understandably confused despite my superlative intelligence, ask.

“Was the reference too unclear? And here I was, lowering myself to communicate with you on your own terms,” the infuriating woman who made the top of two of my lists says.

Yes, one of those lists is the ‘people to kill’ notebook that I should burn before any inevitable police investigation is triggered by my current circumstances. No, I won’t elaborate on what the other list was. Suffice it to say that the rankings have recently changed in that one, with a more or less three-way tie at the top that has, at last once, ended up in a four-way.

‘At least? Are you seriously trying to pretend you don’t remember how many times you’ve fucked your three girlfriends at once?’

I’m a modest and humble person, Brain-chan; you can’t expect me to keep a detailed account of my many staggering accomplishments.

‘… This is because you don’t know whether the breakfast in bed with naked aprons counts, isn’t it?’

I mean… does it?

“Do I actually need an interpreter?” Yukino, still barring entrance to her apartment and rudely interrupting a fascinating conversation on what level of interaction is required for something to count as a foursome, asks.

“Are you that eager to get Yui as backup? Can’t you stomach being alone with me without your girlfriend—ah. Crap.”

I realize the mistake I just made in my banter barely in time to both stop myself from finishing the line and to raise my hands in vehemently kinetic apology.

It… It does little to placate Yukino’s reaction.

Which, in this particular instance, is a brief struggle to keep up her stone-faced look of faint disdain as an increasingly virulent blush creeps up the side of her neck until she gives up and lets out a low eep while looking straight at her feet—a task in which she excels in a way that Yui never will—that only gets interrupted by her hands slamming over her mouth.

…

Cute.

‘What the Hell has Yui done to this woman?!’

I don’t know, Brain-chan, and I don’t think we can adequately explore the answer to your question in the wholesome, all-ages, fun-for-the-whole-family show that is my life.

‘If by ‘whole family’ you mean Komachi—’

She’s been a particularly loyal viewer through the years, but I’m going to stop that train of thought right away.

Also, I’ve got a melting Yukinoshita to take care of, and I know firsthand just how dangerous those can be.

“Hey,” I say, softly and as composed as my brief pause has let me become, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… Look, I just want to talk. Would it help if we went somewhere else? A park? A cat café—”

“Don’t you even dare suggest taking me out on a date. Just how many people do you need in your harem, you lustful beast?”

“I mean, it’s not so much about needing—”

“I already slapped you once, Hikigaya, and it was a memorable enough experience that I wouldn’t mind repeating it.”

‘Oh, kinky,’ I very carefully don’t say.

“I really want to talk to you. About Haruno,” I do say, once again waving my hands in front me though maybe in a way less suggestive of frantic apology and more of an ‘I have read enough martial arts mangas to know what a defensive stance looks like from the outside, but maybe not from the inside.’

Yukinoshita, in answer, glares at me in a way that perfectly states, ‘While I haven’t watched any martial arts animes, I am about to give any author who cares to take notes a masterclass on displaying proper killing intent.’

“About Haruno,” she says, her tone as icy as it ever was. “My sister.”

“Well, yes, though I’m pretty certain that genetics are merely a suggestion to her—”

“The sister whose wellbeing I entrusted to you,” she remarks, the blush no longer apparent on her neck.

“I’m trying—”

“The sister who has left this apartment with no explanation whatsoever,” she continues.

“If you just let me explain—”

She grabs my tie and pulls.

I stagger forward a single step, and then, bowed forward just a tiny bit, just enough to make up for the difference in height with the slender, tall woman, I meet ice-blue eyes that, for once, feel like burning blue flames.

“I know you hurt her. I know that, after everything, after every damn thing you’ve put me through, after everything Yui and I have had to overcome with your lingering ghost hanging over us, you’ve gone and hurt the sister I gave you to,” she says.

And I…

I hug her.

My left arm goes around her waist, pulling her to me with as much strength as I’ve gained since Shizu decided to show me how to train to one day hold her body above mine, and my arm snakes around until I grasp the back of her head to pull her against my chest while I stand as tall and strong as I don’t feel.

She doesn’t move.

Not until her hands rise to clutch the lapels of my jacket, and she buries her face deeper against me.

Not until we have this… this moment that should never be.

Because it isn’t.

Because I’m not yet again confessing to one of the two what I actually felt for them, what I still feel even if in thankfully different ways.

Because I’m just…

“I’m going to get her back,” I say, murmuring the words into black hair that once fascinated me when it drifted behind her, hanging along a breeze that seemed custom-made to highlight her beauty.

“Your promises mean nothing,” she says, turning her head to rest her ear over my heart.

“I… I promised Haruno. That if you cried, there would be someone to take care of you,” I tell her. Defending myself, or… or doing something else.

Something stupid and likely unneeded.

“I know…” she whispers, the hand in front of her eyes opening to lie flat against my chest, her warmth reaching me despite all the ice puns that I ever made.

And I…

“I promise you. I promise I’ll get her back. I’ll help her heal. I’ll get her to smile without bitterness, resentment, or malice. I’ll make both of you happy,” I say.

Stupidly.

Rashly.

And meaning every single word.

Even if words are never enough.

She stands close to me for another thousand years, for another eternity of a faint scent that I never caught as close as I do now, for a too brief moment of the first woman I loved being in my arms.

And then she pushes me away, and all the strength I’ve gained fades away to let her.

“Come in,” she says.

And, without looking back, knowing I will follow, Yukino Yukinoshita regally turns around, her black hair a cape of woven shadow flaring around her as she steps into her apartment.

***

“You aren’t drinking your tea,” she says.

“I’m sure it’s delicious and not poisoned at all,” I answer with a deferential nod and a hopefully successful attempt at not showing her precisely what it is about the current situation that is making me sweat cold rivulets of terror down my back.

Going by her Yukinoshita eyebrow arching in supercilious contempt, I may have succeeded.

Because if she knew that my current state of abject horror is due to the very vivid memories of Haruno and I very nearly fucking like rabbits on the sofa Yukino and I are currently sitting on, I’m pretty sure an arched eyebrow would be the last of my worries.

Damn it, Haruno…

“If I planned on ending your offensive existence, Hikigaya, be assured that I wouldn’t deprive myself of the pleasure of doing so with my own two hands,” she says before taking an elegant, short sip of her cup of green tea adorned with a thin slice of very British lemon.

“Are you sure? Because there are plenty of agonizing poisons that would prolong my excruciating demise for hours, maybe days on end. Yes, you lose that artisanal touch that a good strangling gives you, but the plus side is that you’re not so involved in the scene as to miss the valuable, nuanced memories that passively observing can offer you.”

There’s a very authoritative click of porcelain against porcelain before she slowly sets her tea on the coffee table in front of us.

Then she slowly turns toward me, the eyebrow making a comeback now that it’s returned from its training arc of a bare few minutes, which, according to shounen rules, means at least a one-point-five increase in its power level.

Ugh. Math. Must it hound me even in shounen?

“You said you wanted to talk, not spew random diatribes that are just a breath away from collapsing under your usual self-serving logic,” she calmly states.

“I wouldn’t say arguing for my painful, prolonged demise is self-serving—”

“Hachiman, talk to me.”

And…

And she’s Yukino.

So I slump forward, my elbows resting on my thighs yet again in the defeated slouch I’ve adopted one too many times since Principal Inoue got an envelope full of pictures, and I tangle my hands in my hair.

“I need you to give me everything you can get on your mother. Every skeleton and where they are buried. Any weakness you can think of that I wouldn’t be able to ask for. I need you to be for me as dirty and underhanded as you ever thought I was,” I say, cowardly looking away from the woman I once decided never to shy away from.

There’s… a silence, yes.

I think it only endures because she wasn’t holding anything that she could dramatically drop.

“What?” she finally asks, her voice thin and weak like it’s been… Like it was when Yui set her terms to solve our issues after a single date, the only one that the three of us will ever have shared.

The one time Yui Yuigahama tried to be like Hachiman Hikigaya, and it, predictably, drove Yukino to tears.

“Your… Your mother got a hold of some pictures that reveal that Haruno, Shizuka, Iroha, and I are in a relationship. She’s pressured Principal Inoue to fire Shizu and blacklist her from ever teaching again. And now Haruno is sacrificing herself so your mother will back off.”

Another beat of silence.

But this one stretches.

And so, despite my cowardice, I look up from between my feet and…

She’s… Pale. The first thing I notice is how pale she looks.

Then I see her lips thinned into an angry line as her eyes burn.

“My sister—what do you mean by sacrificing herself?”

I don’t lick my dry lips or look away.

No, I…

I take her in.

Yukino, filled with enough rage that it overflows. That it makes her feel so much more real than the faint, ethereal vision she often was.

“She’s going to transfer to France. She hasn’t explained why because she doesn’t want me to meddle, but it’s clear that the pact is that she’ll stay there for long enough as to wreck any of her romantic entanglements, however long that takes. And then she’ll have to be the company heir she never wanted to be.”

I don’t shy away from telling her. I don’t even bother to soften the blow.

Because this Yukino is… fascinating.

Her right hand is a clenched fist, her knuckles whitening with every word until her whole arm trembles as she remains still.

Her jaw is tightly clenched, the muscles standing out, sharp and well-defined.

And her eyes blaze.

It’s a very good thing that we’re both taken.

“That moron,” she hisses.

This time, it’s me that raises an inquiring, often insolent, eyebrow.

She takes it as an invitation.

Which it is.

“She… We were finally—she’s throwing it all away! Where’s her much-vaunted genius? Where’s the spite and disdain for anything that so much as reminds her of rules and common sense? Where’s my sister?!”she says, her tone steadily rising until she’s on her feet, sweeping a sharp, blade-like arm in dismissal and refusal.

In contempt.

“Hurting,” I say. “Your sister is hurting.”

A part of me is… messed-up. Despicable. Just… Just curious to see if she’ll deflate, if she’ll once again show me the frail Yukino who hid behind her façade and the wall of incomprehension she had built between herself and regular people. Those who should have been her peers in a kinder world.

That part is disappointed.

I am not.

I… I am proud, exultant, when I see that my words just made the flames of her temper flare higher.

I owe Yui so, so much.

“You will solve this,” she says, daring me to disagree.

I nod, my smile coming off without meaning to.

That smile.

The one I should never show in public.

“Good. Because this is your fault. You chased her, Hachiman, promising her she could have what she had wanted, needed, for years, and now you have two promises to fulfill.”

She steps toward me, and I stand up to meet her head-on.

Her eyes are once more on mine.

“When have I ever disappointed you?” I say.

Stupidly.

Cruelly.

Sincerely.

Something flashes behind her eyes, something nearer to the surface than it would be if she were calm and composed, or at least pretending to be.

It doesn’t fade away as we shake hands, and her lips twist into a smile that doesn’t quite mirror my own.

“Never. You’ve never disappointed me. Not even when you hurt me.”

I hold her eyes, her hand, as her words wound me and soothe me at once.

Our smiles soften.

And we, once again, hug.

“You are despicable,” she says, her words not muffled as she just rests against me rather than cling with all our combined strength.

“I know. I think it’s one of the things that caught Haruno’s eye,” I answer, not breathing in her scent or wondering about a world in which this hug would’ve been for entirely different reasons.

“No,” she says after a single breath. “It wasn’t that.”

Her hand briefly rests over my heart.

And then she pushes me away, her smile further softening into something I’ll never forget as mine just grows bitter.