All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! – Zaimokuza Gaiden – Chapter 13 – An Anxious Girl

School rushes by.

Except it doesn’t, because I am in the center of the rumor mill, and it’s obvious I’m not getting out of there any time soon after very publicly kissing the chuuni, about as publicly getting into a fight, and then yet again kissing the frustrating, warm, tall, strong—

I mean, uh…

Yeah. School kinda drags.

I could be thinking about how to maneuver so I utterly destroy Haruka and Yukko, but it seems the both of them are giving me a wide berth for reasons entirely beyond my understanding. I mean, boys punch each other out all the time and still remain friends, right? That’s a thing they do? Affirm their friendship through their fists?

…

Yeah, I also don’t think high school martial arts is a good genre to learn about male friendship dynamics…

An excellent source of yaoi pairings, though!

Damn it, Ebina…

Anyway, I certainly didn’t mean to affirm my bonds of eternal rivalry with the bitches two, and I’m kinda glad that bridge is as thoroughly burned as it seems because there’s absolutely no way I was going back to quietly accepting their low-key torture until I hit an arbitrary level of redemption, but…

It still leaves me a bit… lonely?

I guess I could join Miura’s clique. That thing about it being better to reign in Hell than in Heaven? Yeah, I don’t think the writer had ever been to Hell—at least not a version without suspiciously revealing robes and black-feathered wings artfully hiding strategic parts of slender, male bodies that—damn it, Ebina!

Yeah, that’s kind of an argument not to join Miura’s group…

Wonder if she ever thought about Hikigaya and Yoshi—ugh. That’s definitely not my fetish.

Besides, it would be a mess to clean up all those rose petals afterward… It’s a very unpractical genre.

Anyway, about the only solace I get during the day is ambushing—seeking out the guy who’s not quite my boyfriend, because he still hasn’t asked, because he wants to do it ‘seriously,’ and I don’t know what he means by that, but I keep feeling this heat inside my chest whenever I think about his face when he said it, when he stared straight at and through me while I sat on top of him and…

Don’t. Bury. Your face. In your hands.

That way lies even more comments about mastering the art of anime posing.

… And hot make-outs, apparently.

All right, fine, just a bit of burying, but only because it feels like my cheeks are about to burst into flames, and the last thing I need is to start hyperventilating right in the middle of the classroom while Hiratsuka is teaching, and oh gods, now I am thinking about that speech she gave me, and—

… Deep breath.

Right. Warm sunlight streams down from the crown of my head, depositing itself on the tips of my fingers and toes, accumulating and growing steadily, pulsing with the sensation of open space and a face warm after a nap beneath a tree in the middle of summer…

In.

And out.

Right. It works. It still works.

Even if Yoshiteru didn’t feel it, even if nobody else I talk to knows, even if…

Even if it’s just me. Even if I am alone.

It works.

… Is this how he feels? Just doing his own thing regardless of how little others may care or tolerate it? Just wearing that overly dramatic trench coat like he cares more about his cosplaying fantasies than about any mocking gazes?

And is this how I want to feel?

***

I don’t see him at lunch for more than a moment because he has something to do that he adamantly refuses to tell me about.

Which means he doesn’t get to make out with me on the rooftop. Serves him right.

… I definitely need to understand what is going on with my libido, because this is definitely not normal.

Anyway, moving on, and whatever other means to express a segue I currently cannot come up with, that just means I eat by myself. Which isn’t precisely a new experience, but…

Well, the alternative is eating with Shigeru, and I could easily do that… But I refuse!

Heh. Best character in Diamond Is Unbreakable.

Anyway, the thing is that eating lunch by my lonesome is, while not a pleasant experience, at least… peaceful. There are no hidden barbs, no political maneuvering, no… friends. Friends who aren’t.

I could almost trick myself into thinking I like it.

I can see how somebody could do it, trick themselves—If they had no better alternative.

But… But I wear a silver cross with a heart of garnet. And it beats when I think about it, and, as much as I like it, as much as it means to me—no. Precisely because how much it means to me, I despise the idea of tricking myself. Of letting myself fit something I’m not.

I already did that. And… it ended with me crying on the shoulder of the school pariah.

Which has been working fine, marvelously, except it really hasn’t, because he has yet to ask me to be his girlfriend as he looks for whatever way he thinks will show that he’s being serious, which means I’ve had my first shared orgasm with a boy who refuses to go out with me, and that sounds awful when put in these terms, and—

Gentle sunlight streaming—fuck that!

If he doesn’t ask me by next Sunday, I’m dragging a confession out of him.

I have my ways.

***

I may not have to resort to my ways.

Because, as soon as the bell signals the end of my classes, Yoshiteru shows up to ask me out.

Well, not to ask me out. He doesn’t say as many words—by which I mean, as few words.

No, he asks if I ‘would allow him the immense, incommensurable honor of escorting me to a destination he has in mind to mayhaps something or other that he must have prepared beforehand with his wreck of a thesaurus.’

… I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s code for ‘let’s go on a date,’ but I don’t want to assume. Mostly because the last time I assumed anything he just told me I wasn’t his girlfriend. Straight to my face. While I was sitting on his lap and feeling his—his thing poking up my butt.

What is it with him and my butt? I mean, I always catch him peeking at my breasts, so why is it that he ends up grabbing me with his huge hands and squeezing—moving on!

The thing is, we are currently walking down the street, holding hands, and—wait, what?

I look to my left. Yep, that’s a gloved (half-gloved?) hand curled around mine.

…

Not. Blushing.

“My Lady Minami?” he asks, breaking a silence I desperately needed to continue for at least a little while.

“Hmmm?” I answer, still trying to get my capillaries to behave.

“I feel like I must apologize,” he continues, apparently deliberately trying to get me off-balance.

Jerk.

“About?” Is this the right answer? It sounds far too much like one of those tips about keeping boys on their toes by making things vague and letting them imagine the worst-case scenario.

Not to self: burn my old magazines. They are useless.

“About this,” he says right as we turn a corner and step into a small park.

The kind that’s basically a square surrounded by trees acting as a wall, the ground made of bare dirt, and benches along three sides. There’s a small concrete fountain that provides a backdrop of soothing, falling water.

And a girl I don’t recognize sitting on a green, curved, wooden bench.

She’s… Taller than me. Her hair is short and messy, her legs toned, and she has a Band-Aid over her left knee.

Because she always was athletic. What else could the daughter of a martial artist be?

She’s staring at me, not making any moves, not waving her hand in greeting. Nothing.

Just like I am.

And then Yoshiteru squeezes my hand.

“I apologize for this, my Lady Minami. I truly couldn’t conceive of a better way to do it,” he almost whispers.

And he lets go of my hand, pushes me forward, and I stumble into the park.

“I’ll be waiting for as long as you need me to,” he says. And walks out of sight.

Leaving me alone.

With Mika.

My best friend.

The one I betrayed, left behind.

… I’m going to murderhim.

***

I’ve finally managed to sit down next to her, on the same bench that feels rough through my skirt, though with a healthy distance between us, and only the sound of water falling fills the awkward silence to end all awkward silences.

She’s clutching the hem of her skirt, her knuckles white.

And I guess I picked that up from her, because so am I.

“I have no excuse,” I finally say.

She doesn’t look at me, still staring at her hands.

“I… I didn’t know what I was doing, I was stupid, foolish, and I… I still am, because it shouldn’t have been Yoshiteru that called you. It should’ve been me, begging on my knees to…

“No.

“No, I won’t beg for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.”

I take a deep breath, my belly filling with a warmth that should be steady and is anything but.

And I take off my cross.

“I… I felt too ashamed to wear it until a few days ago,” I say, looking at the… the companion I hold in my hands. “I never stopped to think about what I did to you, what it meant for me. What you meant for me.

“You opened my world, Mika. You gave me so much… And I betrayed you, and…”

Another breath. I clench my eyes shut at the same time as my left hand, feeling the edges of my earring press into my palm.

Then I force it to unclench, the throbbing lines of warm pain reminding me of the tingling I sometimes feel when wearing it.

“I… If you want—”

One strong, firm hand that belongs to the heir of an aikido dojo grabs my wrist, which is a sentence that never bodes well.

The other gently closes my fingers around warm silver.

“It’s yours,” she whispers. “And it could never be another’s.”

Something warm and wet pools behind my closed eyelids.

“I wondered why, you know? When you stopped talking to me. When Sayuri said those horrible, awful things and you just kept silent. When you stopped coming by, or answered my messages with just one word. I just kept wondering why.

“Then I wondered what had I done wrong.

“Had I offended you? Crossed a line? Had I shared too much, pushed my beliefs on you to the point you felt the need to flee?”

There’s a hand around my wrist, tightly clasped, and one around my fingers, holding them gently. And Mika’s voice wavers between the two of them.

“Time passed, and I decided that no, that I hadn’t done anything to deserve that. That I was blameless, just unlucky that… that my best friend had turned out to be a traitorous jerk. And I was out of that hellhole Sayuri turned middle school into, was free to make new friends, to be more cautious about how I went about it.”

I desperately try to hold back my tears. Because I don’t deserve them. Because it would be indecent to have this self-pitying display in front of the girl I hurt.

Because I already cried my fair share yesterday, in front of Ms. Hiratsuka as she consoled me for basically having been an awful person to the one girl who had never done anything to deserve it.

Then I feel…

I open my eyes, and look straight at where warm, gentle fingers curl around mine.

With a steady, pulsing warmth that fights against the cold surrounding us.

“Are you…” I can’t stop myself from asking, as I turn around to finally look her in the eye.

The wide, wet eyes, the mouth trying to smile, the shy nod.

The girl using her ki to feel mine, as we did so many times before, sharing a secret just for the two of us.

I hug her, and we cry into each other shoulders.

And I imagine warm light flowing from the middle of my chest, down my arm, pooling around a cross I first blessed in front of my best friend, and meeting the pulsing touch of the girl I betrayed.

And I imagine the two lights brushing, gently shining against each other, warmth being shared and reinforcing each other with every beat of something that is not quite a heart.

Just as I know Mika is picturing in her mind.

***

We just sit there, for a long while, not daring to move from the embrace, to say any more words that would break the moment.

“I don’t forgive you,” she finally says, her mouth close to my ear, her arm around my shoulders, her hand around my fingers.

I nod, not trusting my voice, my chin digging into where her shoulder meets her neck.

“Not yet. Not so easily,” she continues, and I feel a couple more tears escape, though they are warmer and not bitter at all.

“So… if you want me to forgive you…” She draws back, the arm around me loosening until her face is in front of me, her eyes still hurt, looking straight at me. “You’ll have to work at it. You won’t just get away with having your boyfriend—”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I interrupt her right before I can catch up with my mouth and strangle it.

“Really?” Mika says, eyebrow arched in a way I desperately missed. Because she was not only strong, and smart, and creative, but had this dry, sardonic sense of humor that always was a delight, and—

Right. Not my boyfriend.

… At least I didn’t add a ‘baka’ in there.

“I… He said he wouldn’t ask me until he could do it properly…” And now my eyes are puffy, my nose runny, and my cheeks burning. Great. I can’t think of a better way to scorn Sayuri and her teachings.

Screw the rules.

… I’m going to need a few tissues, my make-up mirror, probably to redo my eyelashes and do a few retouches with my eye pencil—at least I wasn’t wearing eyeshadow. Wait, isn’t that erotic? There are far too many images of girls with runny make-up after getting roughly—focus.

“But… You came in here holding hands…?”

“Oh, if that was the only thing we held…”

“Minami!”

“What?! He’s just—he just makes me so mad that I have to get my hands on him, and by the time I do that, my hands get ideas, so I—stop laughing, it isn’t funny!”

“Oh, I disagree! That’s so utterly you! Courtship through tsundere aggression.”

“Not. A. Tsundere.”

“Keep telling yourself that. I still remember the way you threw that poor kid around in the dojo…”

“That was the whole point of the exercise! It’s not like I slammed him against the mat because I liked him—oh, you bitch.”

“Can’t believe you still fall for that one—seriously, Minami, you’re going to make me cry again.”

“The only reason I’m not choking you right now is that you will do that weird thing with my forearms…”

“As if. Unlike a certain someone, I never stopped training. Plenty of new ways to play at ‘stop hitting yourself.’”

I look at her, at the brash, tomboyish smile, the eyes still as puffy as my own over lips showing gleaming teeth.

And I hug her as tightly as I can.

“I missed you so much.”

“… You could’ve called yourself, you stupid, dumb girl.”

She lets go of my hand, the energy between us stretching before snapping right back to me, and she holds my back, rubbing twin soothing circles on it that carry the same warmth.

“So… are you making him get on his knees when he finally ‘properly’ confesses?”

“And kiss my shoes, if he delays too much.”

She giggles.

So do I.

Even though I’m totally serious.