Agrippa
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All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 56
🕑 Added 2022-10-28 02:55:13 +0000 UTCIt is said that history repeats itself. If that is the case, then anime is history.
The rival who struggles to catch up to the oblivious shounen protagonist, only to briefly surpass him as a prelude to the latest bullshit power-up? The main girl who’s about to realize her ‘true’ feelings only for the male lead to do something so boneheadedly stupid that the tsundere is reluctantly forced to go back to the harshest possible tsun setting just to preserve the dredges of her remaining dignity? The exasperated barber yet again failing to convince his client to get a regular haircut and stop being a walking eye hazard with all the shounen pointiness? All of those repeat, nay, echothrough the ages, reflecting a rhythm deeper than man’s consciousness, a truth we’re all unaware of knowing.
If history is a circle, anime is a kamehameha.
And don’t even get me started on filler episodes…
“I’m sorely tempted to guess whatever it is that’s going through that intriguing head of yours,” Haruno, sitting on the other side of the round, marble table in this intimately cozy Italian restaurant, says with the kind of smile I’ve learned to both fear and adopt Male Teenager Standard Gait Number Two in front of.
“Mostly, that we seem to have a thing for meeting in cafes where the waitress looks weirdly at us,” I say, not at all staring over Haruno’s shoulder at the woman enthusiastically gossiping to the stoic man behind the counter who Iroha insisted on introducing me to.
Natsumi. Because she’s named cast now, and may God have mercy on her soul.
Tearing my eyes off the poor, unsuspecting woman, I instead focus on those of Haruno in front of me, who sends me a lopsided smirk before slowly raising her cup of cappuccino to plush lips that I learned not that long ago how soft they were and presses the rim on them just enough to make a shadowed, noticeable dent on them that draws my eyes before she takes a slowsip of the foam that only ends when she deigns to lick it off in a way that I’m pretty sure wasn’t optimized for efficacy.
Or, well, not hygienic efficacy.
“Between you and Iroha, I’m pretty sure I’ll never get erectile dysfunction,” I groan.
“Poor Shizu, yet again excluded from—”
“She doesn’t spend a substantial amount of her waking hours trying to come up with new ways to make standing straight painful for me, no.”
“Right. She just does it naturally.”
I… Slowly blink at Haruno.
And nod.
Which, obviously enough, means she ends up chuckling.
“All right, we’ve already established you’re doomed—”
“As if you’d fare much better without me as a meat shield—”
“I don’t know, my dear Hachiman; at least I wouldn’t have to fend with myself.”
Her smug smile is…
OK, fine, two can play at being infuriatingly sexy.
I hope.
‘Why don’t you start drinking seawater already? At least that dehydration will go faster.’
Shut up, Brain-chan. I’m about to do something incredibly clever.
‘… Why do you hate me so much? I’ve been with you since the very beginning!’
Precisely.
‘Right. I just walked into that one.’
“This is when you do something ridiculously over the top, isn’t it?” Haruno asks before deliberately and meticulously licking along the rim of her cup.
Which is when I slide a shoe off and trail my socked toes up the inside of her right leg.
Her eyes fly open, and the cup almost tilts far enough to spill her capriciously expensive, yet not Max, coffee.
Heh. Still got it.
“We are in public,” she hisses.
“And you’re wearing a skirt,” I reasonably counter.
Her eyes narrow.
“Two can play at this game,” she says, the muscles of her inner thigh shifting below my touch.
“Well, yes, but where’s the challenge in that?” I offer with a shrug.
And she… stops.
It takes me a great deal of effort not to show her my inner, gleeful grin.
“The challenge?”
“Yes. The challenge.”
“The one you still haven’t come up with and are desperately stalling in hopes of getting a burst of inspiration for?”
“Haruno, as unbelievably erotic as I find your detective routine, and as much as I want to get you in a deerstalker and nothing else, sometimes you overestimate your abilities.”
“Is this one of those times?”
“Of course not, but I feel you should hear it from someone who cares about you rather than facing the cruel possibility of failure alone.”
She stares at me.
Then she throws her head back and barks an inappropriately loud laugh that dies a sudden death when I push past the edge of her seat and my big toe presses against something tender and yielding.
“So, ready for your challenge?” I placidly ask.
‘You’ll die an early death and have the gall to be surprised.’
Well, I hope not. That would mean I would be aware of my own demise, which implies I will have done a poor job of enraging my murderers enough that they don’t even bother with torture if it means keeping me alive for even one more second.
“Let’s hear it,” Haruno says, biting her lip as I start pulsing my pressure on what I’m pretty sure is her clitoris.
“We have a nice chat, you’re as witty and smart as you ever are, and, if you manage not to give any signs that you’re cumming before the end of the date, it’s my loss.”
“Well, aren’t you confident,” she says, laying her hands flat on the table and staring at me while remaining purposefully still.
“I’m pretty sure it’s more brain damage and lack of self-preservation at this point, but I’m also quite certain that it turns you on.”
‘Fuck you.’
“… So that’s what this is?”
I raise an inquiring eyebrow, wondering what she’s talking about.
And then there’s a bare foot between my legs.
“So… you’re surrendering?” I say, not at all sweating as I try to keep my eyes on Haruno while pretending the rest of the restaurant doesn’t exist.
“No, I’m changing the game. Do you wanna hear what’s the new one?” She’s… barely moving her foot, just resting it along the inside of my thigh, on top of the thing that shouldn’t be pushing up the fabric of my long-suffering pants, and with barely any pressure as her eyes hold mine down, as lavender bewitches me like honey and steel do.
I pick up my own cup of coffee. An expresso.
Without milk or industrial amounts of sugar.
I can barely hold back my contempt. Which is as reliable a way to break her spell as I can come up with.
“Sure,” I tell her, slowly rubbing warm panties that haven’t ceased being accessible for a single moment.
“OK, the new game is… We leave this place, and I find one where you won’t dare try to make me cum.”
I blink at her.
“You do realize I’ve been going out with Iroha longer than I have with you?” I ask her.
And then she presses just a tiny bit, agile toes making me go cross-eyed as she bites her lip and lets out the barest hint of a moan that makes me curl my toes.
The ones currently resting against her panties, to be precise.
“Is that you surrendering?” she asks with cheeks a tad flushed.
And I…
‘You’re a moron. You’re a moron who’s about to add more evidence to the theory that stupidity can be a terminal disease.’
“Bring it,” I tell her with a confident grin I don’t feel.
Behind Haruno, a waitress who I’m dearly hoping can’t see what’s going on beneath the table keeps fidgeting as her boss sighs in exasperation.
***
“You’re cheating. This is not me losing; this is you cheating,” I tell a smug Haruno with a glare that’s about as intense as my blood-deprived brain can make it.
‘Don’t you get me involved in this!’
“So quick to accept defeat,” she sighs, resting the back of her hand against her forehead in sheer melodrama.
“I did no such thing. I precisely did the opposite of that.”
“Does that mean you’re going to—”
“Fuck, no,” I immediately answer.
And, with another affected sigh, Haruno unlocks the door to the one place where I’m not confident about my skill to make her become the main heroine in the kind of doujin where witnesses are never a concern.
That is: Yukino’s apartment.
“Cheating,” I grumble one last time as I step inside and—
It’s empty.
Yukino’s apartment is empty, and I’m in here with Haruno, who just locked the door behind her.
… I think I need an adult.
‘Hold me; I’m scared.’
“I want it on record that whatever happens is without my consent, and I can’t be held Yukinoshitally liable for it.”
She turns me around, shoves her tongue inside my mouth, threads her fingers through my hair, and pushes me across the hallway and the living room until we both fall on top of Yukino’s white sofa, Haruno’s soft body on top of mine.
Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m kissing her back, my hands beneath her coat as she struggles to take it off without separating from me, and my left leg is pushing between hers, pressing against that same warmth I rested my toe on moments ago, before a tortuously long walk that was peppered with furtive stops in dark alleys to exchange more brief kisses than I ever thought I would get in a lifetime, but that keep being not enough. Not when it’s Haruno, whom I just recently learned to love and be loved by.
Shizu is… Shizu. Tender, mature, childish. A contradictory charm. A straightforward enigma. Someone who I am connected to in ways that feel almost sacred. Someone who helped me become who I am.
Iroha is… It’s impossible not to love her. Not to give back everything she so willingly presents to me. Every kindness and tenderness, every disguised, veiled, or overt declaration. She’s… She’s Iroha. My Iroha.
Yet Haruno…
She has something of Yukino in her, much as she’s loath to admit it, and Yukino was my first love for a reason. Yet… That’s not it. That’s a part of it, but one small enough that I can avoid hating myself over it. Because Haruno is… Haruno is, first and foremost, herself. Defiantly so.
In that way, we also fit.
So, when she leans back, when she sits down on top of me, throwing her head back to make her hair flare around her, grinding her hips atop of me as she grabs my hands, lacing her fingers between mine and pulling them up…
“I love you,” I say.
And Haruno, eyes still wild, coat undone and hanging off her shoulders, green sweater raising and falling with breasts beautiful enough I could stop myself from kissing them if it meant admiring them just one more second… Pauses.
“I love you,” I say. “And I love that cruel part of you as well. Because I know where it comes from. I understand what it is. I… I share it. And you know that as well, but there’s a difference between knowing and hearing.”
Her eyes are on mine, lavender searching for something that she’s rarely found.
Until, finally, she comes back down, soft breasts resting against my chest, her cheek on mine, and the warm air of her breath making me shudder worse than any winter wind.
“I love you,” she repeats.
I keep holding her right hand, but I let go of the left one so I can hug her. So I can wrap an arm around her waist and press her harder against me.
And I stare at Yukino’s ceiling, holding Yukino’s sister, and knowing perfectly well Yukino herself is being ravished by Yui at this very moment.
I still know crossing this line would hurt her.
As does Haruno.
But I think she knew perfectly well how this would turn out before we arrived. She knew that I wouldn’t go through with it. That I wouldn’t do this secretly cruel thing, no matter how tempting the woman in my arms or how remote the possibility of anyone ever finding out.
She knew. But there’s a difference between knowing and hearing.
As there was a difference between joking with me about entering a love hotel before her date with Shizu… and seeing me panic and refuse. Because the kind of knowledge Haruno has is one that’s always filled with self-doubt and recrimination. It’s the knowledge of someone who knows there’s something wrong with them, that their certainty may not find the right world to be fulfilled in.
It’s knowledge that needs… Trust but verify, some say, not knowing how much harder it is when you can’t even trust yourself.
So I caress her hair, marveling once more at how soft it is, at how my hand glides over it, how I can’t find a single tangle in the short locks.
And she turns to kiss my cheek with more shyness than when she gave herself to me.
“OK. You wanted to have a serious talk,” she says, pretending to grumble even as a small shiver goes through her and over me. “Let’s hear what’s your latest plan.”
I pull her a bit tighter, just… just feeling her body filling that aching void I sometimes find in front of my chest, that thing I never knew could be mended by another person, much less three of them, and kiss the top of her head.
She giggles.
And I smile.
“Well, I was thinking that… Iroha and Shizu didn’t send us a video the other day, and I understand their issues, but… maybe we could prepare something special for them? This weekend?”
Haruno shifts on top of me until her palms are on my chest and her chin on the back of her fingers.
She’s… staring at me.
“You must be the only man alive for whom planning an orgy is not only a heartfelt gesture of love and devotion but an anxiety-inducing ordeal,” she finally says, the eye-rolling implicit in her tone.
“And that’s why you love me?” I ask her with an uncertain smile. Knowing, yet wanting to hear.
She stares at me.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s part of it.”
Then she turns her head to rest her face on my chest, her hands now on my back, and refuses to do anything but nuzzle me for almost twenty minutes.
I pretend to complain.
She pretends to aggravate me.
And I fall just a bit more in love with her.
