Agrippa
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All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 53
🕑 Added 2022-10-07 00:54:42 +0000 UTCIn this introductory series about manga, anime, games, and other ways for Japan to decrease its birthrate, we’ve already talked about the ball as a scene that is a staple of romance in plenty of settings, many of which shouldn’t even have any kind of ball, seeing as Japanese high schoolers rarely attend high society events and we don’t tend to have that thing Americans do where people are forced to dance with one another as if teenagers both know how to not look like they are having a Pokémon-induced seizure and how to do it while hiding an awkward boner.
…
This is all Iroha’s fault.
I feel that’s no great revelation.
Anyway! It stands to reason that if a ball in a palace, mansion, magic academy, or wherever the rich tsundere dwells is a given, then a banquet should also feature prominently, doesn’t it? One would be forgiven for expecting the light novel with a fantasy-not-Europe du jour to instruct its readers on which cutlery to use while pondering whether or not the wine has cherry and oak accents (Do Westerners eat oaks? They are such weirdoes…). Yet, as a wise man once (and quite often) said:
But that is a lie!
Nowhere in the pages of manga or the fanservice of anime will you find an instructional in the fine arts of dining! No eroge prominently features proper etiquette! No JRPG does anything with food other than treat it like a performance-enhancement drug!
Thus, we are left with a sad realization: as much as otakus would want to believe in the possibility of them ever being gregarious creatures who can mingle with their social betters, those who create the content that we eagerly consume know the dark truth. Every mangaka, animator, and game designer knows in their heart of hearts that none of their followers will ever be invited to eat anything more sophisticated than a bowl of ramen, and, even then, we’ll manage to spill half the broth on our shirts while tearfully trying not to look like uncivilized louts.
(Some among my audience may realize that Ranma had an entire arc about gourmet martial arts that had the titular character challenge a weird French mutant in the consumption of fine dishes and may think they’ve found an exception to the rule. To those sagacious, advanced students of my lectures, I hesitate to bestow this last piece of heartbreaking wisdom: please do remember that Ranma’s ultimate victory consisted of abandoning all etiquette and gorging herself like a pig on all the available food as fast as she could. Thus, the lesson the story sought to transmit is that, should you ever be invited by mistake to an event with expensive food, you should eat as much of it as you can before somebody realizes the violation of the natural order and has you violently expelled.)
“Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to carry the dishes to the table?” Mom asks, rudely interrupting my scholarly pursuits.
“I think I’d rather stand here and wait for an apology,” I reply.
She raises an incredulous eyebrow that all but screams, ‘Apologize for what?’
At which I raise my own eyebrow and tilt my head to my right, over the counter that conveniently separates the kitchen from the living room and toward where Iroha is sitting on our sofa and quietly conspiring with Komachi.
Mom follows my gesture and… deflates.
Which is kind of bizarre to see and far less satisfying than I was expecting.
“Can you blame me?” she asks with a lifeless shrug as she faces me, ladle still in her right hand, though hanging limply from her grasp in front of her apron.
And…
“Honestly? No,” I answer with all the self-awareness—
‘I just told you self-awareness and self-hatred are not the same thing.’
Not now, Brain-chan; I don’t have time for your befuddling riddles.
‘I’m gonna climb out of your ear and throttle you—’
“Look, Hachiman, I… I am sorry I didn’t believe you, but… you barely speak about having any friends, and suddenly you start coming home late, and… I was worried, all right?” she says, a begrudging apology in her tone.
It… I want to accept it. I do.
I also want to throw it in her face.
‘Right. That sounds healthy.’
I’m not the necrophile—
‘He’ll come back! He always does!’
… I’m gonna cut this short before I get engrossed in your side plot.
“I… I have changed. Over the past year,” I finally say, neither accepting nor rejecting.
And Mom looks into my eyes for what feels like too long and… and too late.
She’s…
I look more like her than I do Dad.
He’s a bit stocky. A large chest unbefitting of his place as a corporate cog, as if he never quite stopped going to the soccer club he remembers so fondly from his youth. He has thick, short hair and a face a bit squarer than mine, one that seems designed for broad smiles and boisterous laughs, even if he’s often too tired for those.
Mom… she looks sharp.
Not that she looks smart, even if she does, but that all about her speaks about defined angles and slender shapes. Sometimes, in my more chuuni days, I fancied she looked like a blade without a sheath.
Other times I just thought she looked… drained.
And so, when she puts the ladle back into the pot with the simmering miso she’s reheating before wiping her hands on her off-white apron, when she brushes her shoulder-length black hair back, so similar to mine, and she sighs…
I…
I don’t flinch away.
Because I don’t see a drawn blade. I see a drawn woman.
“You have, haven’t you?” she asks with a pained voice as her fingertips brush across my cheek in what could be affection, or could be regret, or anything in between.
Iroha is still on the other side of the counter, distracted by whatever verbal sparring she has going with Komachi after she won the first round by default, and so I have this little moment of solitude with my mother.
A mother whose eyes I never found as disturbing as many would claim.
“Yes. Yes, I have,” I finally say, clasping her hand against my cheek as her breath catches and something shifts within eyes that were never like those of a dead fish, but maybe a bit like a dog ready to bite anyone who moved too suddenly.
I think I hate grandpa.
“… Will you tell me? Sometime?” she asks, her voice raw.
And… And I want to say no. I want to say that I shouldn’t have to, that she should’ve been there to see, that it’s not the child’s job to make up for a parent’s failings.
I want to say a lot of things. Hurtful things. Terrible things.
Maybe I would have, in another time, another place, another life.
But…
But I have been looked at by other eyes. By Yui’s unrelenting love that nonetheless backed away, by Yukino’s playful, lying affection that became more even as she was taken by another, by Iroha’s earnest, selfish love that will never let me go, by Haruno’s understanding and reciprocity that is so close to self-hatred that it feels we were born for it, and by Shizu’s…
…
Genuine, huh?
‘What else, in the end?’
So, what is genuine? Is it genuine that I resent her? That I play along for the sake of another? That I—
‘What did you want? All those times that you couldn’t stop reading even as thoughts running through your head made you go back to the start of the page, all those times when you reassured Komachi that she was loved, that you were there for her… What did you want?’
I… I wanted parents who cared. And who showed it.
‘Has she?’
I don’t know. I… I want to think so. I want to think that her pushing me to get into an elite school was for my sake and not just because it was expected. I want to believe that she tries, even if she’s terrible at it. I want to believe she’s my mother.
‘Then… maybe tell her that.’
“Mom… I always wanted you to listen,” I say.
Accepting.
Condemning.
And everything in between.
I can see the moment she almost flinches, but her hand remains on my cheek, my face, without moving away from me.
“I…” her eyes look into mine, dark grey that sometimes looks like blue, and… “I want to tell you that one day you’ll understand, that sometimes it’s an adult’s job to do things they don’t like. That I did everything for you and your sister. And that’s true. But not all of it,” she says, a hesitant smile on her lips.
“You just told me anyway,” I tell her with the kind of cynical smile that I learned from a woman who sometimes had a few entertainingly acrid rants about her bosses after taking a couple of beers, even if she refrained from swearing in front of her children.
She returns it.
And ruffles my hair.
I don’t even pretend to fight her as I catch the frailty behind her gesture.
“You’re a cheeky, mouthy little shit, aren’t you?” she says with the kind of fondness she doesn’t show Komachi. The kind she reserves for the child she thinks is too much like herself.
With Komachi… she’s soft, tender.
With me, she’s… herself.
Good, and bad, and everything in between.
“I’m taller than you,” I tell her, rolling my eyes so that I also don’t show too much.
Her hand goes from my head to my arm, her fingers tightening on a limb that’s noticeably thicker than it was a few weeks ago.
“You’ve been for quite some time,” she mutters.
And she looks at me as if she wants to say something else, something that would be definitive, that would push us past these ambiguities we’re mired in.
Then she turns around and stirs the miso with her discarded ladle.
And I pick up the stack of dishes and walk to the living room.
***
Komachi’s seated in front of me, Iroha to my right, and Mom at the head of the table between Komachi and me.
There’s an empty chair with dishes and a glass in front of it.
And Mom shoots yet another apologetic smile to Iroha that has me clench my teeth.
“I… I’m sure he’s about to arrive, but let me give him a call, just in case,” she says.
“Oh, please, Mrs. Hikigaya, it’s no trouble at all. I understand how demanding work can be,” Iroha replies in that almost, yet not quite, saccharine tone she’s been using since I introduced her to Mom.
A part of me wants to scream at the incongruity, but, really, it’s Iroha.
Being foxy and using the perfect mask for every situation is her thing.
So much so, in fact, that I find it weirdly… sincere. As if Iroha lying to my mother is so naturally a part of our relationship that I should feel more fond familiarity at the performance than indignation that she feels the need to put it on.
And, after all, she’s here to sell a story. The story that she’s my only girlfriend, that she’s a model student, an entirely positive influence, and that Mom shouldn’t be worried at all that we’re spending so much time together.
…
‘If you burst into manic cackling, you may hinder her efforts.’
OK, I know, but on the other hand, if I don’t, I may get an aneurysm.
‘Why don’t you let me worry about those…’
Brain-chan! I’m shocked that you would throw my heartfelt concern for you in my face like that! Shocked!
‘Stop reading Boruto, and I may believe that concern is actually sincere.’
… I’m offended that you would criticize my religious practices like that. How am I supposed to transcend this impure plane of existence without facing head-on the true horrors that lie in it? How do you expect me to truly learn that all attachment is suffering if not by picking at the raw wound in my soul where a once-beloved franchise used to be—
‘Mom’s already gone to call Dad.’
Oh, thank Heavens, I could not have kept that up for much longer.
“Again, Senpai?” Iroha grumbles, her hand resting on my thigh with a gentleness that belies her tone.
“He tends to run into his monologues when he’s stressed—” Komachi begins to say with a hint of smug before she’s interrupted by Iroha’s incredibly eloquent ‘You don’t say?’ look.
… Ouch.
“OK, fair, you know at least that much…” my little sister mutters with the kind of displeasure one usually reserves for restaurants that give you an unexpected extra dose of protein with your meal, so long as you’re quick enough to catch it before it runs away.
“This isn’t a competition,” I try to reasonably interject.
And they both look at me like Mom dropped me on my head as a baby.
Which… I mean, I’ve often heard I was a very peaceful baby, and brain trauma could have explained that.
“Senpai, of course it isn’t. I’ve already won,” Iroha says right before Komachi kicks her shin.
…
‘Don’t look at me. I’m not equipped for this situation.’
“You little savage!” Iroha almost yells before shooting a quick glance at the door to the hallway Mom has disappeared to.
“Oh? You don’t have something clever to say? Some kind of quip? How unfoxlike of you, dear sister-in-law,” Komachi says with the kind of pleasure that can only be found in…
Oh.
She’s going to say, ‘How amusing,’ isn’t she?
‘I swear, if this dinner ends up with her reincarnating as an otome villainess…’
“Is that how you wanna play it?” Iroha asks with eyes narrowing dangerously.
“Is that a challenge? How amusing.” I knew it! I fucking knew it!
“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself,” Iroha says.
Then she grins dangerously…
And bends down face-first into my crotch.
“What the Hell are you doing?!” Komachi screeches at a volume that Mom may or not hear, depending on how engrossing Dad’s groveling is at this point.
“Winning,” Iroha smugly mutters, her voice muffled as her lips rest against my zipper and—
And I pull her up by the back of her shirt’s collar.
She seems momentarily sheepish, but then she looks down to see my rapidly tenting pants and shoots me the kind of grin that makes me want to pull her over my lap and—
… Mental note: reread Nana to Kaoru. I need more ammunition.
Also, Komachi, stop pointing at me like that. Your poor, innocent brother has nothing at all to do with the amount of mental trauma you insist on accumulating. It’s not my fault that you keep picking the more sanity-damaging options in the dialog tree.
“You—you—” she says, finger trembling as she points at my foxy junior, whose only reply is to lick her lips and wink at her in a way that makes Komachi’s face suddenly a tad greener than it already was.
“I don’t even know if you want to murder one another or if you’re actually getting along…” I finally say as I let Iroha sit back down on her chair and rub my somewhat strained shoulder.
“Oh? Senpai, are you asking me if I will make an effort to befriend your little sister, your closest relative, so that our future family will be as hospitable as possible for you? Are you asking me if she will be welcomed in our home so that our plentiful children will be able to enjoy their aunt’s visits? I’m sorry, Senpai, but that’s impossible! After all, why would I need to make any kind of effort when I don’t even need to pretend?”
I blink at her.
Stupidly.
And Komachi dope slaps me.
“You’re so used to seeing the real her you don’t even notice when she does it with others, are you?” my sister says, rolling her eyes as I rub the back of my head.
…
“I’m feeling kinda dumb, now that you mention it,” I say as Iroha’s hand returns to my thigh, but thankfully below the tent she just caused.
“You’re lucky you’re hot,” she immediately shoots back.
“Ugh. Gross. So gross,” Komachi mutters.
“Look, brocon, let’s make a deal: you don’t call him that when I’m around, and I don’t find out just how many pictures of him you have in your phone.”
Komachi… freezes.
Then she looks at me and clearly enunciates a few silent words.
‘She’s the devil.’
I look to my right, at the beatific smile of my second girlfriend, and shake my head before answering:
‘A kunoichi kitsune, actually.’
Komachi blinks at me, either stunned at my insight, not properly parsing the implications of my revelation as to her future (lack of) privacy, or just not being able to read my lips as fluently as her little sister character class should allow her to.
Ah, I guess she just lost a lot of points…
‘You haven’t deducted a single point in your life, and you aren’t gonna start now.’
Well, no, but there’s no need for you to ruin my bluff like that, Brain-chan.
‘For the last time: she can’t read your mind.’
If you’d let me buy that pack of Zenner cards we would have solved this question ages ago—
“We should get dinner started,” Mom says as she opens the door to the dining room.
I stiffen, Komachi’s lips thin, and Iroha’s hand tightens reassuringly on my thigh.
There’s just one thing in the sequence that’s new, one thing that hasn’t happened a hundred times before after Mom came from the hallway to make such an announcement.
A single thing.
A warm hand, touching me.
Such a small, simple thing.
Yet it makes all the difference.
