Agrippa
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All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 69
🕑 Added 2023-03-05 01:01:43 +0000 UTCWhile hentai is held by most to be just a subgenre of manga that barely introduces any innovation beyond people doing what many stories heavily imply they should already be doing—and even that is a poor distinguishing trait, given the current onslaught of ‘I can’t believe it’s not hentai!’ series—there still are a few things that manage to work in it that are very rarely seen out of genuine, ‘Of course I can believe it is hentai, much to my psychotherapist’s chagrin’ productions.
No, I’m not talking about tentacles. Those made the jump to the mainstream ages ago, you filthy casual.
What I’m talking about, or at least one of the things I’m talking about, is the fixed camera.
Picture this: the couple (or thruple, or whatever it’s called when a single girl and a bunch of overweight middle-aged men love each other very much) have started things. They’ve been going at it for a while, and really are picking up the pace.
How do you show that passion enduring? How do you quickly convey that they aren’t going to stop for quite a while, disclaimers about contacting a doctor if things don’t go down in a few hours notwithstanding?
That’s right: with the fixed camera.
A single angle covers a room that is, ideally, lit through a window that clearly shows how the Sun’s angle varies through the day, and with each subsequent panel, as the light dims and the shadows lengthen, the partners are shown in another part of the room, taking a different stance, that, nonetheless, still manages to be positioned in such a way as to give the viewer plenty of food for thought.
It is really, really hot.
Because the beauty of the fixed camera is not what is shown but what is implied. The ever-growing pile of used, discarded condoms? The girl going from active to passively receiving another’s affections as exhaustion claims her? The intercalation of an oral panel midway to show an attempt at regaining lost strength? All of this creates a story, a narrative, that the readers can’t help but fill in with everything they would want to have happened. Whole sagas can be inserted in the space between panels, material for entire doujins brewing in the imagination with every nuanced, subtle change from the previous one insinuating what may have been with just enough detail to lead an educated audience down the path of a collaborative, creative effort.
It’s, sadly, not what happened today at Shizu’s apartment.
Or… well, not sadly. Sad is definitely the last word I would associate with today, except for the fact that it ended.
Because the first shot was me and Shizu making love as soon as we woke up, yes, but the second was eating breakfast in bed.
The third was us cuddling, brief bouts of conversation peppering the long silences in which we just felt one another, our heat, our touch, as we sometimes fell asleep only to wake up to careful fingers threading through hair or tender lips barely pressing down on foreheads.
The fourth, breaking tradition, was a change of scene, toward her kitchen, where we attacked some of the bouillabaisse’s leftovers yet again, even if Shizu insisted on her cooking two quick bowls of fried rice using some of the fish just to add a bit of variety, and, unstated yet very much implied, to remind me that Komachi gave her full bride points for a reason.
… I am afraid to ponder how Haruno would have handled that particular contest. Or Iroha, for that matter.
Sabotage would certainly have been on the menu. Literally and figuratively.
Still, yet another change of scenery was made, this time toward her sofa, where we napped in one another’s arms, naked despite the copious amounts of tobacco ash I can’t imagine aren’t there.
Then…
Then we watched a movie, because what else are you supposed to do at your girlfriend’s place on a lazy Sunday afternoon?
As it turns out, Oldboy is messed up in plenty of ways. Gee, what is it with Koreans and their fixation with incest? That country makes me sick.
Tee-hee.
Anyway, all of those vignettes culminated in yet another too-long goodbye by her door, with plenty of kisses and promises of plentiful text message exchanges that I may, or not, plan to let go unanswered until she’s forced to add a picture or two.
As usual, though, plans and Shizu don’t quite work together, because I can’t help myself, and I keep checking my phone on the way home, answering anything accumulated, chatting with Iroha and Haruno, discovering that Yukino apparently survived Yui’s assault and is set to recover on time to attend school tomorrow.
She’ll even be able to participate in club activities.
The club activities that will mostly consist of me trying not to stare awkwardly at two girls being saccharinely in love with one another and not, you know, with me.
With me, it was never saccharine. I added far more nuance to the flavor.
Spite, mostly.
But… Right. That brings my mood back down from ecstatic to merely happy and satisfied with my life as I keep walking instead of taking the train, just enjoying the day turning to night around me, the crowd of fellow Chiba inhabitants thinning slightly as the streets darken and lamps come alive in varied, shifting colors.
The air cools, and I breathe it through my beige scarf, warming it with every exhalation of trapped humidity as I keep barely dodging the other pedestrians with my eyes glued to a screen that keeps sending me messages of…
Well, Haruno’s also in there, so not everything is as straightforwardly wholesome as my current mood and diatribe would lead one to believe, but… She’s Haruno.
I understand her—up to a point.
Which, I think, is something she’s still getting used to.
So I smile something so utterly sappy it’s a good thing the lower part of my face is hidden like I am still going through my dark history phase and thinking about cool mash-ups of half-understood mythologies to self-insert my power fantasy into.
But then I brush the tip of my fingers over the scarf.
It’s… soft. Wool expensive enough to caress rather than itch. The kind of piece of clothing that I’d never think to buy for myself. That could only be a gift.
I can imagine Yui trying and failing at knitting it but keeping at it like she did with her cookies until she got it just right, or, at least, right enough for me to understand what was behind her perseverance.
I can see Yukino going on a shopping trip, hesitating on anything and everything, browsing every single store in her vicinity before settling on it, and then pretending it had been the only choice from the very start.
I can definitely see Iroha in front of me, giving me the lavishly wrapped package hinting at a price tag far greater than what the gift actually merited just to silently pressure me to go the extra mile for her next birthday.
Shizu would just give it to me as an afterthought, maybe even pretending it was hers, and she was just letting me borrow it because the weather had just turned too cold all of a sudden, the remark casual and nonchalant.
Haruno would leave it up in the air whether it was handmade or storebought, teasing me with the mystery, making a game out of the gift and the answer I should give her when my own turn to reciprocate came.
But none of them gave it to me.
No, the one who thought this poor, helpless man needed to have something to shield himself from cold winter winds barely more hospitable than the deepest, darkest pits of his own chuuni heart… was my sister.
Because even before I had the Service Club, before Shizu worked so hard to give me a place to belong, I already had… something genuine.
And I guess I should genuinely do my best to destroy whatever remains of her sanity. It’s the brotherly thing to do, after all.
So, as I finally reach the street taking me home after having called beforehand to tell them not to wait for me to get dinner (because I don’t even know how French people manage to even walk rather than roll down the streets like they all belong to the Akimichi clan of diabetic ninjas), I finally say goodbye to all three of my girlfriends, put my phone in my pocket, realize that my fingers are almost frozen after typing at a cold screen for far too long, and open the door to my home.
Mom and Dad aren’t in the living room, and that could be due to plenty of things, but it will at least help me avoid some uncomfortable questions for a bit.
Well, questions from them.
Because I silently take off my coat and scarf, hang them on the rack by the entrance, remember to get the phone out of the coat’s pocket and into my pants before it’s too late and I become bombarded with Shizu’s pics, berate myself for remembering to do that, and silently creep up the stairs.
And then I take a couple of deep breaths, and—
“If you try to startle me, I’m throwing something at your head as soon as you open that door,” Komachi’s voice says from the other side of a door who has, apparently, betrayed my attempts at non-Akimichi stealth.
Sasuga, Door-sama. Sasuga.
‘I swear, if you start talking to inanimate objects now…”
I mean, I’m talking to you, Brain-chan. Plenty of people claim that you’re an inanimate object.
‘Plenty of people should realize that being stabbed is a painful, miserable way to die.’
… As the days pass, I fear you and I are diverging ever more in character and point of view.
‘The dangers of creating a fork. It’s illegal for a reason, you know?’
I don’t even know what cyberpunk setting you’re referencing right now.
‘You mean you can distinguish them? Huh. Weird.’
I mean, at least Bubblegum Crisis is distinctive enough, what with the magical girl theme.
‘Fine, you’ve found the one exception. Now, as to the battle plan…’
Oh, Brain-chan, you are devious.
‘Praise me more.’
Trying to school my sinister, not-at-all-potato-eating grin into something that lesser minds won’t flee from, I politely knock on Komachi’s door.
“… Come in,” she says with all the wariness of a cute, small animal who isn’t Sable.
So I, like a Castlevania antagonist, enter once invited.
She’s sitting on her bed, back against the wall, wearing her dark blue pajamas and reading my stolen copies of Card Captor Sakura, looking for hitherto untapped sources of yaoi hidden amid the panels. Which is a bit of a futile struggle, because if Clamp is famous for something, that is nothiding the yaoi. May as well look for the secret meanings of a perfectly straightforward show such as Evangelion.
“So. You’re alive,” she says, peeking at me over the pink covers of the tome grasped with both hands resting on her tented knees.
“I have come back from my perilous journey, dear sister, and I bring dire tidings,” I tell her as I slowly and carefully approach before not-ominously closing the door behind me.
Her eyes narrow, not in wariness but in certainty.
“You surviving seems dire enough already.”
“Not at all, for the terrible secret I carry is enough to make grown men shriek,” I continue as I drop to one knee by the side of her bed, Komachi staring warily at me all through the process.
“Surely you jest,” she finally replies in as dry a tone as she can manage, not even moving from where she’s sitting against the wall behind her blue pillow as she throws a deadpan stare down at me.
“Hardly! Voices could be lost, hearts stopped, eyes wide with horror at the discovery,” I continue.
Komachi closes her eyes and seems to count to ten before opening them and fixing me with as unimpressed a glare as the one time I beat her in Smash Bros by disconnecting her controller.
All right, that is a lie: she didn’t waste time glaring and went straight for the bite.
Sasuga, Komachi-sama. Sasuga.
“Fine, I’ll bite,” Hopefully not! “What is it?”
“My Lady Komachi, I’m afraid I must tell you that… Baby, it’s cold outside.”
And, as her eyebrows first scrunch in incomprehension before shooting up in terrible, fearful betrayal, I shove my frozen fingers down her back.
The collar of her navy blue, fuzzy pajamas seems to stretch in slow motion as all color flees from her cheeks, and she opens her mouth to screech her painfully high, wordless retaliation.
She, instead, rethinks her tactics and knees my belly.
…
Sasuga, Komachi-sama. Sasuga.
“Ouch,” I eloquently state my reaction to her unfilial response to my jest.
“Sorry! Komachi didn’t mean to—you know what? Be glad I didn’t scream at the top of my lungs. Have fun explaining to Dad why I would do that while you were in my bed, clutching yourself in pain.”
“Wha—gah! Gross! Hachiman-levels gross!”
“I know.”
Horrified at the Korean implications of my sister’s declarations, I stare up at her from where I am, as she so accurately put it, clutching myself while writhing on her bed.
Then I go over the phrasing of my latest thought and strangle any follow-ups in their crib like a harem manga author going through all the losing ships in the race.
“Did you really have to use those precise words in that very order?” I ask her as I go from a quasi-fetal defensive position to just sitting on the edge of her bed.
“I assume you’re about to inflict tons of mental damage on poor little Komachi, so I thought this would be a good preventive strike.”
“Ah. It seems I’ve taught you well.”
“Horribly. You’ve taught me horribly.”
“Yes. That’s precisely what I meant,” I say.
And then we stare at each other in absolute solemnity before we break down and laugh at one another hard enough that I fear disturbing my parental units.
“Ah, I needed that,” Komachi says, eyes filled with merriment and at least enough amusement to make a pauldron-wearing weirdo smirk.
“Right. I assumed after I saw you re-reading Card Captor Sakura,” I tell her before taking the too-used tome out of her hands.
Komachi bites her lip and looks aside, inexplicably embarrassed by her brother knowing precisely what kind of thing she resorts to when stressed and needing something to escape to.
I don’t know why. After all, it was me who taught her how to do precisely that when the world was bleaker, and she had to go back to an empty home without my parents or me.
It’s only natural that an older brother would know this much about the younger sister he once swore to protect and then failed to.
“I just… worry,” she says with a smile that’s not as bright, wide, or easy as the last one.
So I close the book, set it on the desk by the side of her bed, and wrap her up in a hug.
As it turns out, I have as of late come to appreciate physical displays of affection and how straightforward they can be. Truly, words are inadequate.
Komachi… she freezes briefly, and then she returns it, her arms going under mine and clutching at my back as she buries her face on my chest.
Then, without the camera shifting, we stay still and silent.
Until, that is, I pat her short hair.
“It went well,” I whisper.
“I don’t want to know what that means,” she immediately answers without lifting her face from my sweater.
“It means that… It’s not perfect. I still don’t know what each of them feels for one another, but… but there’s enough there that it can work. Shizu and Haruno loved one another for a long time, even if maybe they weren’t in love for all of it. Iroha is learning things about herself at a fast rate, and I now know she isn’t with the other two just because of me. That there’s also something there, even if newer and… different. And they reciprocate. They are willing to show her as much affection as she can take, and she needs all of it, because it’s… I don’t even know, Komachi. I just… I believe this is good for us. For all of us.”
The head below mine slowly moves from side to side, the warmth of her breath seeping through my sweater like my own did through the scarf she gave me when I had no one else to be… what she was for me.
Other than Zaimokuza, I guess, but I prefer inflicting sanity damage over taking it.
I guess I am an S.
“It’s still… what about the future? I know not every relationship has to end up in marriage, but, if you truly love one another as much as you say, how will that work? How will you live together, introduce friends to your group, have kids? How do you… How do you get a harem manga to work?”
And now she’s looking up at me, clutching the chest of my sweater, her gray eyes never straying from mine.
So I guess it’s my turn to worry anxiously at my lip.
“I… I want to say that I don’t know but that things will work out. I really, really want to.”
“But you won’t. Because you’re my dumb brother who can’t leave a thought unthought if your life depends on it.”
“Other than offending an esper, I don’t think that scenario is very likely.”
Her eyes narrow. And she stabs my side with her fingers.
After the inevitable yelp, I rub the injured spot and glare at her with all the big-brotherness I can impart on such a gesture.
“I don’t appreciate your recent violent streak. Is this your rebellious phase? Are you going to dye your hair blonde and start wearing long skirts? While you learn to use a yoyo as a weapon? And if so, can you teach me?
Komachi, for some ineffable reason only known to little sisters of the blood-related variety, pinches the bridge of her nose and slowly massages it.
“I don’t even want to know what dumb manga the yoyo thing came from.”
“That is a lie. Tomorrow I’ll find my bookshelf in very conspicuous disarray after your infructuous search for delinquent girls using children’s toys.”
“Komachi would never do such a thing. Komachi is a healthy young woman disinterested in such ridiculous premises, and Komachi wouldn’t appreciate any hints for an upcoming search at all.”
“I shall, nonetheless, share such a definitely unwanted and unneeded piece of information: the manga you are looking for is—wait. Oh, darn.”
“What is it?” Komachi asks with all the inquisitiveness of someone definitely not planning on raiding my treasure trove—the all-ages one.
I hope.
“I messed up. See, there’s a lot of characters who use yoyos, but the one I was thinking about actually uses a chain, because she’s hardcore like that. It’s a bit of a proto-Ranma series, the romcom mixed with esper powers, and you made me think about that earlier, so I got stuck on it, and now I have broken my up till now perfect record regarding otaku references, and it’s all due to you being your adorable, cute self—”
“Komachi is going to bite you.”
“No! I’ll become a were-Komachi, and that will make me unstoppable in the field of romance! Not even Kawasomething or Totsuka will be able to resist—”
And Komachi bites me.
Really, while I appreciate her strong sense of morals and how driven she is to keeping her word, what I don’t appreciate are the tooth marks.
“You know this means war,” I proclaim to the murderous, rabid girl hanging from my forearm.
Her eyes narrow in silent declaration.
And I tickle her.
“Ah! Stop! Komachi yields! Komachi yields!” the red-faced, breathless girl writhing on her bed below me gasps, defeated by the mere touch of my hands.
…
‘I am not going near that thought. In fact, I’m doing my very best to outright erase it from your memory.’
Thank you, Brain-chan. I knew I could count on you.
‘You take that back!’
“I hope you have learned your lesson,” I mutter to the panting, blood-related little sister below me.
“Komachi has! Komachi now knows she can’t defy her big, strong, older brother, or he will do his best to defeat Komachi until she can’t even speak, completely at his mercy, clothes disheveled—”
“Stop that.”
“Tee-hee!”
I narrow my eyes.
Komachi smirks.
And I tickle her.
After about five minutes of wordless pleading and quite a bit of kicking, both of us are exhausted enough to drop bonelessly on her bed, staring up at a, for once, familiar ceiling.
“I don’t know,” I finally say after a while.
“What?” she barely manages to reply.
So I close my eyes and… Well, I guess I just let the words pour out.
Mostly, because she asked for it, so I’m not at all responsible for what’s about to happen.
“I don’t know how I’ll handle it. I guess… I guess we could try to be discreet. An official couple and two friends living together to share costs isn’t that far-fetched, not with how expensive it is to rent an apartment nowadays, but one of those friends being Haruno, who I’m pretty sure is, or will definitely be, a millionaire, already stretches that. And then there’s the family thing. I don’t know if they all want children—and I’m not trusting Iroha to understand what happens after her pregnancy fetish is finally fulfilled until we are done with college at least—but even if only one of them wants it, that would be… how does a child grow up in such an environment? What happens when they go to school and are the weird one out? What happens if—”
A small hand grasps my lifeless one on top of messy cerulean sheets, and I turn my head to my right to see Komachi looking at me with a soft, caring smile.
“They would be loved. Even if everything else doesn’t work out, they would have the greatest father in the world watching over every step, helping them, lending incredibly inappropriate mangas to the young, impressionable minds. They would be loved, and treasured, and that would be more than enough,” she says with absolute certainty that makes me…
Want to cry, actually. Even if I don’t understand why.
“Komachi, I—” I try to answer despite my rough throat.
“I know. Komachi knows. You’ve already done it before, after all,” she says as her fingers squeeze mine.
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, and then… then more words pour out.
“I love you, sis. I have loved you since I first saw you, since I first heard you cry in that annoyingly high-pitched voice of yours. And I… I am so grateful that you are a part of my life that sometimes it’s hard to believe. And even if I have found more people to love, I just… I don’t ever want to let go of you. I want those hypothetical, little, infuriating Irohas, scheming Harunoes, and solemnly silly Shizus to have the greatest aunt in the world. So, no matter what, promise me that—”
“I’ll be there. I was always going to be there.”
I smile at her, the stupid tears brimming in the corner of my eyes, and my little sister wraps an arm around my chest as we lay in silence, just…
Just holding one of the most important persons in the whole world.
Then, because I am me and I won’t ever stop being what I am, I add:
“Of course, you shouldn’t take this as an invitation to live rent-free with me—”
“Believe it or not, brother dearest, Komachi plans to have a life of her own without you constantly hovering over her at some point,” she says, utterly dismissive.
I hug her closer to me.
And, after a while, I whisper:
“That honestly terrifies me.”
She nuzzles against the side of her chest.
And, after a while, mutters:
“Me too.”
So, once again in agreement, saddled with too much trauma, self-inflicted or otherwise, the Hikigaya siblings take refuge from the world for a brief, precious, irreplaceable time.
And, just for that, for how precious she’s been, how much she’s always meant to me, I won’t even hide the Kimagure Orange Road tomes.
They already are behind the Love Hina and Mahou Sensei Negima ones, after all. It should take her a while to dig through that.
Comments
Agrippa
I'm far too fond of their little scenes.
Edison Castelan
Best siblings the Hikigaya's
