Agrippa
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All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 70 – Shizuka Hiratsuka Is a Mess, and That’s All Right
🕑 Added 2023-03-12 02:53:27 +0000 UTCDon’t send another message, don’t send another message, don’t send another messa—
Darn it!
Okay, that’s… the third one? Since he last answered? Since he last answered yesterday, right before going to bed?
So, maybe, and this is just a maybe, he isn’t answering not because he’s suddenly fallen out of love with me but because he’s still sleeping.
Something that shouldn’t be hard to convince myself of given that I have to get to school before my students do, what with being a teacher, having lessons to prepare, today being Monday and there being a brief meeting to coordinate the staff before classes, him being a teenager and far more prone to oversleep than I am, and some other reasons that make the scenario plausible.
Like, for example, this being Hachiman Hikigaya, the uncompromising jerk who would rather commit repeated social suicide than go back on his principles and his word. And that such a man has sworn that…
I look at the phone lying atop the otherwise empty pillow to my right, the one where his sleeping face rested yesterday, making my heart melt at him just being here.
With me.
And…
I bite my lip and slowly unbutton my pajama top, my breasts flowing over my arms as the pressure shaping their sides is released, and I pull the covers of my bed down, shifting my body so that the sheets under me wrinkle in a way that draws radial lines converging on my silhouette. Then I tousle my hair, a second blanket of black draped over lilac satin that I guiltily neglected to change after he left because I wanted to sleep surrounded by his scent as if he was still here with me, giving me a warmth I can never get on my own.
Then I carefully arrange the lapels of my pajama so that the light gray flannel covers my nipples, leaving just a hint of undisguised pink, of my fading areolas, to peek out from underneath the fuzzy fabric.
I look down, and, either out of some latent Narcissistic impulse or due to Iroha and Haruno having done their very best to get me to appreciate the female form, I bite my lip at the sight of my spread cleavage, at the pale stretch of appreciable abs beneath it.
And…
And, without disturbing the setup above, I push my hip slightly upward and tug the waistline of my pants down until the sparse black hair slides from under it.
I push my hips higher, angling my body so that my breasts fall toward my face, and then I rearrange the lapels to once more cover everything but the barest traces of pink.
I grab my phone.
And… And I bite the right corner of my lip, my face contorted into what it would be if this was like yesterday morning and he was still here, his first erection of the day available for me to greet him, to please him, to let him know just how much I want him.
Then, once I feel the tingling of my blush creep down from my cheeks, the sides of my neck, and over the top of my breasts, I take a picture.
I look at it. At me being… Needy. Eager. Almost desperate.
I close my thighs together hard enough that the tingling on the inside of them turns into heat and throbbing.
I take another one.
This time, I tilt my head back, my throat standing out for him to kiss and bite like he so often does whenever he has the chance to, and I turn to look to the right, to where he should be sleeping next to me.
I take the next picture.
And… And this one is…
I send it before I’m tempted to continue. To do something else, something I still haven’t sent him a picture of but that I’m sure he would enjoy.
‘There. I hope you have as good a morning as you would have if you were here ;)’
I press the ‘send’ icon and, immediately, my ears and cheeks burn in sheer mortification at such a… such a juvenile thing to send, with a damn emoji and everything, so I don’t even notice when I drop the phone for it to bounce on the mattress by my side so I can bury my face in my hands and muffle out something strangled and unintelligible even to myself.
Aaaaaahhhhhh! I’m not a teenager, damn it! It should be Hachi going through this! Or Iroha! Or even Haruno! Not me! I shouldn’t be the one frantically kicking at her tangled sheets while trying to strangle embarrassing thoughts and urges! They are the ones with less life experience that I should be maturely guiding through this whole… thing.
…
And now I feel guilty.
So I try to take a deep breath before I loosen my hands over my face and try again to a marginally higher degree of success.
Then I grab my phone, look at it, and…
And send the picture to Iroha and Haruno.
‘Good morning. I hope this doesn’t cross a line, and pleasetell me if it does, and I won’t do it again,’ I say to my youngest girlfriend.
‘If this is ever made public, I’ll find you and endyou,’ I say to my most devious lover.
Then I feel something boil over inside my head, and I once again drop it on my pillow as the phone bounces on my bed a few times.
This is gonna be one of those days, isn’t it?
***
By the time I’m done with my shower, they have woken up.
‘Do you want me to be late for school? Is that it, woman? Are you trying to sabotage my academic prospects so that I’ll be a poor househusband wholly depending on your salary and unable to ever look for my own financial independence? Because that sounds like a magnificent plan, and I’m fully on board with it.
‘Also, good morning.
‘And I love you.’
… I look at the Shizuka in the mirror, the one wrapped in a white, fluffy towel, with her long black hair wetly draped over it, and how the color of her cheeks manages to stand out despite the condensation covering the reflective surface.
Then I grab the hand towel and wipe the mirror to see the wide, painful grin stretching between the red spots on my blushing cheeks.
Only Hachiman Hikigaya can make being insufferable into such an art form that I appreciate it all by itself.
‘Of course it crosses a line: it isn’t a video.
‘More seriously… Thank you. I know you took this for him and his weird rule of three thing, and… And I’m glad that you still thought to share it with me. I can’t—I don’t want to tell you what this means to me, or how my day is better just because you thought of me this morning, that you would give me this one moment before we even meet. I just… I don’t want to say everything I’m feeling through a text, because it feels too cheap, even if I like the idea of it being written down so that I can find it years from now and remember this moment like so many others you have already given me.
‘Thank you, Shizu, for… For everything
‘I love you.
‘But, seriously, I want a video.’
By the end of it, I’m almost crying, and then she makes me laugh.
This… This isn’t unusual. This is what being with them is. This constant upswing of powerful emotions that leave me raw, that make things I thought long buried come up to the surface. That have me spend a whole night remembering how it all became tangled and twisted and how I grew to accept it before…
‘Take me!’ I begged him. Jokingly.
And he did. Deadly serious.
And since that very moment, everything that came before started to crash down around me until I was once again a younger Shizuka, one that was braver, that was willing to risk making mistakes rather than making mistakes with no risk.
I look once again at my bathroom mirror, thick droplets of condensation running down the glass, distorting the reflected marble tiles behind me and framing a face that… that is smiling something sappy, naïve, and just the slightest bit cynical.
I am not who you think I am, Hikigaya. I am not so pure and idealistic. I… I lost. I broke down. I gave up.
Not on you. Not on Haruno. Not on any single one of my most frustrating students. For you, for all of you, I fought and will keep on fighting.
But I gave up on me.
‘Good luck, I am behind seven proxies,’ she says.
I don’t know whether to snort or roll my eyes, but then I notice the—
Haruno, smiling shyly into the mirror, an ivory silk robe falling open from her slender shoulders, by the sides of her full breasts, her right hand posing into a sideways victory sign that manages to cover both her nipples and sex with her fingers as she winks at the camera.
‘And, just in case you were actually worried… here’s some mutually assured destruction just for you.
‘I mean that, by the way. Iroha and Hachiman are not getting this good morning from me.
‘Not… Not because they don’t deserve it. Or because I don’t want to give it to them, but because…
‘Do you remember how you used to grade my essays and compositions? How you praised my clear prose, my succinct summary of the subjects when I was not feeling like playing around? All this goes out the window when it comes to you. All of my much-vaunted genius, and then I get a single picture from my first love, and I may as well be babbling into a text-to-speech. I am blushing, and stammering, and still giddy from Saturday despite having my whole Sunday to cool down while teasing Yukino.
‘I am a mess, Shizuka. I am a girl in love who does not know how to be so happy, that she could be this happy. And you know how I am, and how I am coming up with all the ways this can go wrong, convincing myself that it will, that nothing I want to hold onto ever lasts.
‘But…
‘But you’re here. You’re finally here.
‘And, this time, I’m not letting go.
‘Because I love you.
‘Even though you are never again going to beat me in a fair match. Ending me won’t be that easy, boxer girl.’
This time, I do cry.
And I smile all the way.
***
Juggling three texting conversations while getting a breakfast with enough protein to actually qualify as a proper meal has me leave my apartment in a rush not to be late despite my early morning.
This would be a magnificent time to do my best Misato Katsuragi impression.
… Hachi must never know.
With a sigh, I put on the safety belt and drive at a legalspeed toward my place of employment, trying not to look at my phone whenever it dings teasingly with another message I would dearly love to answer, but I have already gotten enough fines at red traffic lights for doing precisely this, even if not quite this, because this time around there’s people answering on the other side of the phone, and it’s not just me anxiously sending out messages in a bottle.
So, I manage to wait till I get to a parking spot near enough to Sobu High that getting there will be a nice walk rather than an expedition.
And…
There are more messages than I thought there would be, but all of them tell me not to waste time answering and to get to work, that the year is almost over, and I don’t need to jeopardize things by abruptly changing my routine.
It reeks of Haruno’s meddling.
As in, I could see Hachi coming up with something like this because the two of them are similar enough that I may need therapy before the month is over—that, or forcing them into therapy—but Iroha? As scheming as the amorous koala can be, her foresight is… lacking.
And that’s me being generous.
…
If I hear just a single word implying a desire for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy yet again, I am going to give her a talk.
…
Knowing her, she will enjoy it.
Knowing me, I should gather all my memories of reading Nana to Kaoru, lock them in a mental crate, and bury them deep inside my psyche before I get the urge to contextualize why Iroha would greatly enjoy having an older woman disciplining her.
Wisdom can be a burden.
As is being the only sane legal adult in a group of four people romantically involved with each other.
I… At the very thought, I take a deep breath and lean my head forward until I rest my forehead against the leather steering wheel I’m now grabbing with both hands.
I’ve got a couple minutes before I have to get out and walk toward my place of employment, where two of my lovers and students attend and a third one used to attend.
I am now convinced that this is good. That this is genuine. That this is the best for all of us, myself included.
I now understand that it’s all right to be a bit selfish, or, at least, selfish enough that the people who love you won’t worry about you.
But… It will still be hard.
I look at the phone resting on the brown copilot’s seat.
And I guess I can squeeze a few extra minutes if I walk fast enough.
So…
“Shizu?” the rough voice asks as soon as he picks up. “Hey! Good morning! How is my baby girl doing?”
“Dad… baby girl? Really?”
“It’s the privilege of a parent to keep embarrassing their kids with infantilizing terms of endearment until way past the age of retirement.”
“… And now I don’t even know if you’re calling me old.”
“It’s the privilege of a parent to tease their children about the wonders of waking up with back pain!”
“Oh gods, I think I know where I got it. I think I know where I got this stupid weakness, and I don’t like it.”
“Weakness?”
“There’s this boy—”
“I’ll murder him. Just preemptively. Tell me his address, and he won’t bother you again.”
I take my phone away from my ear as Dad keeps saying stupid, sarcastic, infuriating things, and I massage the bridge of my nose.
“Right, as I was saying—”
“You just took the phone away to ignore me, didn’t you?”
“You know me so well. It’s almost as if you raised me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say this with your mother around, but it certainly wasn’t her who taught you how to punch a motherfu—”
“I spent a night at a police station!”
“I know. I have never been so proud of you, and that’s a high bar to clear.”
I close my eyes and pull the lever that makes the seat of my car recline until I’m almost horizontal.
I can’t deal with this, and I haven’t even said what I wanted to say yet.
… Wait. That could work.
“So, who’s this boy I have to introduce to the grim reaper—”
“Dad, do you remember me telling you about Haruno?”
There’s a brief pause at the abrupt change of topic.
“Student of yours? You were worried about her home life and ended up being friends? Drinking buddies?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. What, is something the matter with her? Maybe another boy I can turn into a human jigsaw—”
“I am dating her.”
There’s another pause.
And I’m anxious about what it could mean. About what face my father is making on the other end of the line while taking a break at the gym just to dote on his maladjusted daughter.
“Are you happy?” he finally answers.
And I could, for the second time in the day, cry while smiling.
“Yes,” I answer him, my voice slightly rougher than I want it to be.
“Good. Bring her around, and I’ll give her the shovel talk.”
“Daaaad—”
“I am a firm believer in gender equality. Everybody gets the shovel talk. You could start dating Hatsune Miku like I always thought you would end up doing, and she would get the shovel talk.”
“I am offended on so many levels it’s hard to keep count of.”
“And that’s why they have you teach Japanese rather than anything even remotely related to that lab coat you insist on wearing, you cosplaying weirdo.”
I clench my teeth and try not to answer that it’s not methe one who’s into cosplay.
But, well…
“I’m also dating Iroha.”
I could swear I hear the clanging noise of a workout bench being inadvertently kicked and some muffled cursing.
Or, at least, I would like to think I do.
“Iroha is another student—”
“Student. Not former student,” he cuts me off.
“Yes.”
“And how did that happen?”
“Well, the boy who got Haruno and me together was more or less a package deal.”
“What.”
“Well, he’s another student of mine, and he had three girls after him—Iroha was the latest one—so, when he cornered me and—”
“Cornered you?!”
“At the stairs of the school. He’s another student.”
“What the Hell kind of classes do you teach?!”
I briefly remember a whiteboard with various diagrams and elaborated explanations on consent and non-penetrative sex.
My cheeks are burning.
They also hurt with my smile.
“Very thorough ones,” I purr out.
“Gah! No! My precious baby girl took after her mother after all!”
“I’m snitching on Mom just for this,” I tell him, my tone as flat as I can manage while restraining my laughter.
“Please, don’t. She’s still holding telling you about Mike over my head.”
“Hell hath no fury—”
“Like your mother. At least for a few decades, when she gets tired of the mortal realm and decides to conquer new horizons.”
“… Dad, do you know what the word ‘chuuni’ means?”
“Something likely filthy and related to you dating at least three students?”
I…
I am still smiling, but it’s softer. And it only endures because I know the answer to my next question.
“Dad, do you trust me?”
“Of course,” he answers without a pause.
And my smile remains.
“Then… I hesitated. I fought back. I pushed them away. But they still took hold of me. Still fought for me even after I’d given up. They… I think… I think I am good for them. And they for me. For each other. But I’m still scared, Dad, because I haven’t been this happy in years, not since I first messed up and things went downhill. Not since Miki and I…”
My voice drifts off, turning into something barely audible.
And then, when he answers, his voice is no longer half-panicked and half-incredulous, but steady and strong. The voice my father used when I needed him to be anything other than a loveable goof.
When I needed him.
“I want to meet them. I want to see who these three people are who deserve my daughter.”
My smile comes back, broadening.
“That’s not gonna happen,” I tell him with a teasing lilt.
He grumbles, I joke back, and so does he.
And, just like that, the weight of a secret lifts off from my chest.
***
By the time I reach the school gates, I’m sweating slightly. The weather has warmed up, and I should have switched coats before I left home this morning, and the quick rush from my parking spot has made me uncomfortably aware of that fact.
Still, I am almost late, so I race up the stairs faster than I did when Hachi was chasing me and reach the door to the staff room—
“Ms. Hiratsuka, the principal would like to have a word,” the PE teacher standing outside the room says.
And my world crumbles.
Comments
Agrippa
And so am I! (But really, I apologize: it was the best point to end the chapter and set up the next one. It was this or having this one be a 10k monstrosity, most likely.)
Samuel Williams
Cliffhangers are evil!
