All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! – Zaimokuza Gaiden – Chapter 18

Often, I’ve wondered about Saika’s gentle demeanor and charm, about how his allure can get Hachiman to so easily lose himself as if confronted by a bashful maiden whose meek protests about being ‘a boy’ are too easily dismissed. About the plentiful adornments of womanhood many of our female classmates fail to grasp with such ease and instinct.

“Tell me everything!”

Apparently, his being a terrible gossip is also part of the package.

‘Dude, no. I mean, yeah, of course, you’re definitely right, but don’t ever let anyone catch on that you think women gossip more than men.’

Isn’t that what all the sayings and stereotypes are predicated upon? Gossiping like fishwives—

‘If you really think a “stereotype” is a good enough justification to say anything, you’re even more out of touch than you think. And I’m saying this as a part of your consciousness.’

That makes absolutely no sense.

‘I know, but you’re still evading the key issue here.’

Which is?

‘Totsuka is asking for something. Give it to him.’

… Your loyalties are as fickle as ever.

‘That is a lie. I’m only fickle when Totsuka isn’t involved.’

“Yoshiteru?”

“Ah… my apologies, Saika, I’m a bit… distracted.”

“Is it butterflies in your stomach? Is it the yearning to be reunited with your one true love? Is it—”

“It is being slightly unsure of how much I can share while still remaining gentlemanly.”

Saika leans back from where his face had almost been shoved against mine—

‘NTR—’

Shut up.

As I was saying: he leans back and reclines on the bench we’re sharing, with our lunchboxes between us making it clear this is, after all, a Platonic meeting (I finally looked that up, as I had ample time to devote to such trifling matters while the Lady—while Minami met with the Lady Saotome, and it turns out the homosexual part is not a requirement).

“So, you went... that far?” he asks, looking at me with his chin tucked in and a maidenly pink dusting on his clearly defined cheeks.

I blink at him in almost shock.

“How—?” I start to ask.

“Yoshiteru, if you’re thinking about not telling me something, that means there’s something to tell,” he waves his hand in almost annoyance.

…

‘You need to reread Detective Conan, dude.’

The only thing I learned from that manga is to stay as far away as humanly possible from any spool of piano wire.

‘You also learned it wasn’t about Conan the Barbarian apprenticing under Sherlock Holmes.’

That would’ve been a much better show…

“Yoshiteru!”

“Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to lose myself in thought…”

“No, I understand. To be separated from your lover after such a fateful event…”

… On the one hand, Saika’s wistful, faraway glance fits my sensibilities in a way that makes me feel like I should be taking notes. On the other, I find it slightly disturbing how engrossed he’s becoming in… this.

‘Take a picture.’

I’m not going to—

‘Take. A fucking. Picture.’

Inner Hachiman, you’re scaring me…

“So, did you give her flowers, chocolates, a poetry recital—”

“I made her confront a childhood friend she betrayed and abandoned.”

Saika’s staring at me. At least he’s no longer looking like Sakura blossoms should cascade around him, carried by a spiraling breeze.

‘Yes. Yes, keep picturing… that.’

Oh, for fuck’s sake—

‘I won’t complain if you picture that either.’

“Yoshiteru, are you insa… I don’t even know how to ask politely,” Saika says in obvious distress.

“I don’t think anybody does. Or, at least, nobody has ever bothered to.”

“You’re going to give me a headache by the time lunch’s over, aren’t you?”

“According to both my sister and Hachiman, that is a very likely outcome.”

Saika glares at me. It’s a… refreshingly new experience.

‘Take a—’

I’m not taking any pictures!

“You’re being deliberately obtuse because you feel sulky about me deducing you had your first time, don’t you?” the ever-gentle Saika asks, with mayhaps a slightly lesser amount of maidenly tenderness than usual.

“It wasn’t much of a deduction…” I answer, not sulking.

A firm palm grasps my shoulder and forces me to look at him rather than at my laced fingers on my lap.

“It wasn’t, because you’re awful at keeping secrets. You’re far too honest for that.”

“… I don’t know whether you’re complimenting me or chastising me.”

He smiles, the soft thing for once becoming a grin.

“Can’t it be both?”

‘Bi. He meant “bi.”’

No, he didn’t!

Also, you’re intruding on a moment of manly bonding and brotherly affection.

‘Let me get the popcorn.’

You’re awful.

“Hey, Yoshiteru—”

“You’re a great friend, Saika.”

He stares at my eyes before, once again, his soft smile surfaces.

“Thank you. That means a lot, coming from you. Now… are you going to tell me what actually happened, or…?”

Looking at his earnestly curious gaze, there’s little I can do to resist the request, so I—

‘At last!’

Shut up.

***

Going over the most superficial, decent, and not at all mortifying details of what happened yesterday with Saika turns out to be an exercise in subterfuge harder than I expected it to be, but, by the end of it, I do believe I’ve managed to regale my friend with a tale that, while truthful, won’t betray the Lady—Minami’s right to privacy.

“She made you kneel?!”

“I do believe it was mere fancy taking her…”

“And you proposed?!”

“I… I thought it was expected of me…”

“And then she asked you to—”

“Enough! Enough, my lips are sealed on what went on after the Lady Minami and I reached a place of privacy and—”

Saika’s staring at me with wider eyes than I imagine he would have if Hachiman finally let his bestial urges run rampant and pushed him down.

… Damn it.

“A love hotel?” he asks in an almost whisper.

“This administration can neither confirm nor deny—”

And he laughs.

It’s full-bodied, raucous, and, I do believe, far from feminine.

Hachiman would still love it.

“I can’t believe you—and she—oh dear, this is—”

Something. Apparently.

“I... I’m still fearful I may have shown her too much of my… most unappealing side…” I say, interrupting his barrage.

“What do you mean?” he asks, cocking his head to the side and immediately forgetting his scandalized delight.

“I am… I am not like… other people.”

Rather than answer, Saika rolls his eyes. Which, I guess, is answer enough, so I decide to continue.

“I’ve never been, but I… I made peace with it, or I thought I had, but being so close to her, so… open… it made me want to keep her there, by my side. To have her be… somebody who would never leave.”

The warm hand returns to my shoulder, and, once again, I look straight into Saika’s piercing, surprisingly deep, lapis lazuli eyes.

“I won’t ever leave, Yoshiteru,” he tells me.

And I choke up.

He obviously understands, because he keeps holding both my shoulder and my eyes.

“I… I know how it can hurt. To be abandoned. Left behind. How it feels when others realize you’re not what they expected you to be, but… But that’s not a bad thing. It just means you’re available to meet others who will value the real you, not the mask, and… And she does, doesn’t she? She knows who you are, Yoshiteru, and that’s who she loves.”

And his words are soothing. Reassuring, precisely because I recognize a familiar pain in them, and so I know they aren’t mere platitudes. But…

But who I am, really?

***

“I’ll meet you at your home,” Minami’s text message tells me, urging me to leave her behind in not as many words.

It… may be for the best. Because my head’s been a whirlwind since my talk with Saika, and I keep wondering who it is that I am, or, at least, what part of me have I shown the Lady Minami that wouldn’t make her disappointed after learning about the rest.

Am I the creepy otaku, far too taken with his obsessions?

There’s a case to be made for that. I certainly devote far more energy to my hobbies than others do, and I understand not all of them are palatable to a regular public. It’s a subculture with its own language, rules, and aesthetics, and those not versed in them may easily be turned around at the first glimpse of something they weren’t ready to grasp.

Or, in other words: not everybody likes the same things I do, and most people would find at least some parts of it cringy and distasteful.

And that’s all right.

I don’t like many of the things they do. I have never liked any sports other than martial arts, and those I enjoy more in the abstract than the concrete. I have always disliked status games and all the vicious backstabbing they incite. And I have always despised… Just fitting in. Jut the need to fit in or be cast aside.

I… I’ve already thought long and hard about this. It’s not even that important, and the Lady Minami certainly knows about this part of me. She… by all accounts, she finds it appealing, a contrast to the ordeals she underwent while disguising her true self. She may chastise me for my excessive effusiveness, but she’ll never decry my penchant for being… genuine.

No, this isn’t the problem, even if, at times, it may be a problem.

So… am I the caring boyfriend who’ll devote himself to her happiness and wellbeing even when he fears he may be despised for it?

…

I fear any answer other than ‘yes’ would invalidate my earlier point about being genuine.

So… taking yesterday into account, and how nerve-wracking it was to contact the Lady Saotome and convince her to attend the meeting… Yes. I’ll go with a tentative yes.

Which means I am the caring boyfriend, the obstinate outsider, the happy-go-lucky otaku…

But… what else?

A part of me yearns to proclaim ‘writer.’ For that to be my defining trait, the core, not a careless addition easily discarded.

But I…

The last thing I truly wrote, the thing that, as the Lady Minami would put it, is mine, was that short tale, that fanciful thing I’ve been too cowardly to share with anyone other than her. And what is a writer who’s not read, if not a pretentious dreamer?

And that’s what I fear. Because if I claim I am a writer, that’s just the start of the answer. Because writing shows, reveals, and what can I offer the world other than being a devoted boyfriend and equally devoted otaku? What is there at the core of Yoshiteru Zaimokuza that would make it worth it for him to write?

Who am I?

I sigh almost forlornly as I take my keys out of my trench coat’s pocket and open my door. The house is empty, as I had anticipated, with sister still in her demonology classes or whatever it is she uses to mask her actual nature while researching an all too vulnerable world, and so…

I drop on the couch, the very same place where I can say this… thing with the Lady Minami truly started. Because I think I intrigued her during our first date, but it wasn’t until she came here and we had that second talk that my thick head managed to understand she was an actual, real person and not a fantasy clad in far too attractive, out of reach, flesh.

It was that day, here, when her mask slipped, that I saw her for who she truly was. And that was when it all started for me.

Because I would’ve been elated to go out with the stacked, short yet lithe redhead who turns quite a few heads even when walking among the likes of Hachiman’s battle harem.

But… I wouldn’t have feared losing her. Not like this. Not because I don’t know who I am and what I can offer her.

Not because I… May not be who she thinks I am.

‘What of us? What do I say? Are we both from a different wooorld—’

What the Hell—

‘Thanatos – If I Can’t Be Yours, a song from The End of Evangelion—’

I know what the song is—

‘Then you should understand how appropriate it is—‘’

It was masturbatory navel-gazing! It completely destroyed the themes and characters! About the only one who wasn’t ruined by that wretched film was Misato, and that was because she died before they could inflict on her the hellish, nightmarish treatment they inflicted on any other named character—

‘And that’s precisely what you’re doing.’

Self-contemplation is not always masturbatory! It’s sometimes needed for personal growth.

‘And is that what you’re doing, or are you just afraid that Minami will toss you aside as soon as she realizes she’s infatuated with a fat, chuuni, pretentious, aspiring writer with no actual ambition beyond vague dreams of being published?’

… Inner Hachiman, you forget yourself.

‘No. No, this is precisely what you made me for. Not to keep you company, not to have a friend who could never leave you, but to hear the words you know Hachiman would tell you. I am the part of you that you need to be filtered and confrontational, because if this was just your own voice, you’d sink into that depression you’ve barely held at bay for years—’

I know that! Don’t you think I know it’s always lurking there? That I cannot feel it clutching at me whenever I force myself to push past it? That I can’t feel the way it’s always waiting for me to slip—

‘Then don’t! Don’t sink into this… this angsty thing. You just lost your virginity! You have a beautiful, loving girlfriend! You have good friends! What else do you need, Zaimokuza?’

I… I don’t know.

‘… Yeah. We’ve never known, have we, buddy?’

I take a deep breath, Inner Hachiman’s diatribe still ringing inside my skull, and I decide to stand up and brew some tea, to lose myself in the small ritual. The rituals that I like because they bring order, and meaning, and structure, and—

And the doorbell rings.

I hurry to open the door, all the while donning the mask that should cover the struggle and—

The Lady Minami beams at me, holding a page to my face as soon as I open the door.

“You’re going to win this,” she says by way of a greeting.

I blink in confusion before I read the printed paper.

It’s… a competition for new writers. For a short novel.

The winner and second place will be published.

I stare at it in disbelief, and then finally manage to tear my eyes away and meet those of the Lady Minami.

Tarnished silver smiles at me with joy and utter confidence.

And I…

I don’t…

‘You will.’

I hold back the tears and force a smile on my face as I embrace the small girl, lifting her body up into a searing kiss that shows all my enthusiasm and happiness at having her believe in me so utterly and completely. At her faith in… in the devoted boyfriend and equally devoted otaku. At her faith in the writer she’s seen a single work of.

I show her all of that, kissing her at my home’s threshold.

And I hide all the rest of it.