All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 88 – Iroha Isshiki May Be Tired of This Shit

[Iroha Isshiki]

He's a moron.

"Seriously?" I, most likely futilely, ask.

"Neither Yukino nor I have experience with this, and Haruno isn't going to take care of it. For obvious reasons," he says, just adding the little twist of emotional blackmail because why not.

"You'd better rephrase that in a way that doesn't make me want to get Shizu to punch you, Senpai," I tell him, crossing my arms and staring down at him, taking full advantage of the height disparity granted to me by the stairs going up to the school's rooftop.

The same stairs where I…

Is this deliberate? It [feels] deliberate.

"Ah, physical abuse by proxy. Each day, I discover new drawbacks to our little arrangement."

I glare at him.

He smirks.

And I'm very, [very] tempted to push him down the stairs where I first recorded him having his cock sucked.

"[Senpai]," I say with a tone that I fear I'll have perfected long before we have children.

And the smirk fades away, replaced by the nervous grimace I expected to find underneath it.

"I'm sorry," he immediately says.

Because of course he does.

And I…

I'd say that I can't stay mad at him, but really, I wasn't even mad. Just… Just maybe playing up something that I don't want to let go of because the alternative is looking at the USB drive in his offered hand and…

"I'll find another way, Iroha. If you really—"

"Just… let me think."

He nods.

Then he steps up and gets behind me, wrapping his arms around my belly, pulling me against him, making me feel the hard, unyielding body that I've kissed, hugged, and desired too few times for how well I know it.

He sits down at the top of the stairs, dragging me with him, and now we're both looking in the general direction of where I hid with a trembling phone in my hand and a ball of far too many feelings in my belly until he looked right at me with those eyes I'd never seen, the ones that come out so easily when he has sex and bares a man that too many people overlook.

The eyes that got my breath caught, that tipped something that had been teetering on the very edge since he kept me company as I tried to push past rejection and inadequacy.

I… I told him. That I started loving him back then, on that train at night. When I asked, and he stayed. That I then fell utterly and irrevocably when I saw his tears, when I heard his plea for something genuine.

It's a lie.

Like so many things that he sees through, it's a lie.

Because I think I started falling as soon as I met him, and he looked past my mask.

And now he's asking me to confront the reason why I built that mask in the first place.

"You don't need to do this," he murmurs, his voice warm on the crown of my head before he dips down to kiss my hair.

"No. I don't," I answer.

I can feel the smile on his lips as it slowly comes out.

"But you will," he says.

And I, not as enthusiastically as I should, elbow his ridiculously hard midsection.

That's right, Senpai, brag about the slowly growing muscles that keep surprising me every time I manage to get your shirt off. This is sure to make the emotional trauma you're about to inflict on me pass along unremarked and with no long-lasting consequences for our sex life.

"You're a jerk," I mumble when he doesn't even have the decency to gasp a pained breath and bend forward.

"I thought I was a moron?"

"A moronic jerk."

"[Your] moronic jerk?"

I pause.

Then I grab the hand pushing down on my belly as possessively as I ever grabbed something and turn my head to look up at him and over my shoulder.

"[Always,"] I answer, more a threat than a statement.

And he kisses me.

Of course he does.

And of course I melt into it, my arms going around his neck before I slowly turn over his lap, his arms still wrapped around me, pulling me closer and closer to his body, to his chest, as my mind goes blank and I inhale as deeply as I can, taking in air that smells of him, of his new minty shampoo and the traces of him that always push through after his morning bike ride.

I push away, whining into his lips while bending forward to keep contact until I manage to pass my right leg to his side, and then I dive forward yet again, happily reclaiming my place in the world as I surround him with my thighs.

Gods. I could fuck him here and now. I could ride him until he filled me up in the same place where he first had Shizu swallow his cum. The same place where he looked right into my eyes as another woman showed me what I wanted to do to him.

I could.

And… And one day, when all of this is solved, I will.

I just hope this little promise to myself will help me push forward.

So I let go of his neck and trace down his shoulders, down his right arm, toward the hand on my back.

"Give me the damn thing, [Hachi,]" I whisper, my fingers reaching for the USB drive trapped between his palm and my back.

Of course, this ends up with me slapping his chest in half-hearted protest when he creatively interprets my demand and unzips his pants.

***

[Kanade Isshiki]

The day at the station was brutal.

But they often are, aren't they? Especially for a divorcee who keeps needing more and more makeup to keep looking about half as attractive as she was in her prime.

For a woman who never prided herself on her looks until they were all that kept her employed as she suddenly found herself being the only one invested in a family with a daughter too young to understand that daddy dearest prioritized getting his dick sucked over his family.

Fuck [you], Kyousuke. Fuck you and that whore leeching money that should be going to my child.

Damn it.

I even had to keep his surname because what kind of moron reporter changes her name for the whole nation to notice that she's a divorced mother? And what kind of stupid woman clings to the name of the man who threw her away?

Damn it.

I… I am late. The meeting ran late, and Tatsuda wanted me to stay afterward so he could 'share his insights,' the sleazeball looking down my cleavage the whole time, making my skin crawl as I kept my warmest, fakest smile on my face through the entire 'private review.'

So I'm late for dinner, and I grabbed takeout on the way to hopefully make up for it, but…

She used to love taiyaki. She never quite enjoyed sushi. Takoyaki was a sometimes food that she enjoyed, but not as much as yakisoba. Yakitori was the one thing she always zeroed in on the festival stalls.

It's been years since I took my little girl to a festival.

And… And I just bought a few yakitori skewers from a place near the station that's always good for a quick bite on the go. Tasty, the juicy chicken always just right, never too dry, with the vegetables giving it enough variety to count as something that I can eat a few days in a row if I need to.

She used to love yakitori.

I grimace as I near my house, thinking about the last time I cooked a balanced meal.

I'm terrible at this.

At balancing everything that needs to be done, all the urgent things that keep slipping away, all the spinning plates always on the verge of crashing down around me.

I filled the rice cooker this morning, so at least there is something to compliment the chicken skewers. And I bought mochi, because what girl her age doesn't have a sweet tooth?

But they were out of taiyaki.

She used to love taiyaki.

She would always eat the tail of the pastry first, the crunchiest part of it, delighting in it all coming apart before she would take her time with the red bean filling, and I would have to wipe her cheeks clean because she used to be such a bundle of energy and mischief that she just wouldn't stay still, and…

And…

The bag with the dinner I bought because I don't have time to cook for my girl dangles from my wrist, and I stand in front of my door.

So I paste my warmest smile on my face before I step inside.

"Hello, honey. I'm sorry I'm late, but I bought your favorite…"

She's sitting down at the living room table, her hands neatly resting on top of one another in front of her.

And she isn't smiling.

I… I stop waving with the hand holding the bag of food and try not to look rattled.

I likely fail.

"Hello, Mom," she says, looking at me as I kick off my shoes and hesitate to step past the entrance.

"Hi. Is… Is everything all right?" I ask, knowing that, no, it isn't and hasn't been for years.

Three therapists.

All of them saying that my little girl was perfectly all right and she just needed time to process things.

Money down the drain.

"No," she says, and something catches in my throat at the outright admission. "Please, take a seat."

So I resist the urge to go back to my warm smile and hold back a nervous chuckle.

'The food's going to get cold; can't this wait?' I almost say out of sheer cowardice.

"You're scaring me, honey," I instead manage to say as I grab the chair to her right, on a shared corner of a table too big for a single mother and her child.

And…

And Iroha looks at me with those startling eyes of hers, the ones that never quite dulled despite everything, always a spark of… not joy.

No, not joy.

But something near enough that I could pretend those therapists were right and my little girl just needed a bit more time.

"Am I?" she finally says, still searching into my eyes.

I nod.

And she…

She looks up, toward the ceiling, and takes a breath deep enough that I can hear it.

"That's a relief," she mutters.

And then she takes a laptop from under the table, from the chair opposite mine.

"This…" she hesitates as she opens it. "This is… Mom, I need you to promise me something."

"What?"

"That… That you won't use this. Not without my permission," she says.

"What are you—"

And she turns the laptop toward me.

I just catch the letter header with the logo of the Yukinoshita conglomerate before she turns the computer away from me. Hiding whatever it is that she doesn't want me to use.

And I grab her wrist.

"Iroha," I say, more serious than I've allowed myself to be in years. "This is dangerous. You shouldn't be playing with these people."

She smiles.

Not… Not the polite thing she's so good at inflicting on my professional guests. Not the distant thing I've seen too many times. Not any of the smiles of the good girl she's been since I…

I push back the thought.

Not the time. Not the time to berate myself yet again. Not when my daughter needs me.

"Play? I'm fucking their heir, Mom," she says.

I… blink at her.

"What?" I say, unwillingly thinking about Haruno Yukinoshita, just somebody in the corner of a frame, beside her parents, and—

No. What?

[What?]

"Are you—oh, you—I didn't even know you were gay! How—why—Iroha, sweetie, the age difference alone… Is she abusing you? Do you—we need to file a police report. At least a restraining order. I—fuck, I'm going to [murder] the bitch. I—no, nothing that involves your name; I'll have to dig up something else. A pattern of abuse? Who else has—"

"Mom," she says, eerily calm as I strive not to lose [my fucking mind]. "Haruno has never abused me. And I'm also fucking her girlfriend."

"What?" I say, giving up hope on that whole thing about [not losing my fucking mind].

"And her boyfriend," she says, a bit of a spark in her eyes as her teeth peek through a smile that is the furthest thing from distantly polite.

"You're fucking with me," I can't help but say, my hand on her wrist losing all strength.

"I mean, I don't think incest is my thing, but—"

"Iroha!"

"This year has been a road of self-discovery filled with plenty of unexpected realizations. I'm not discarding anything at the moment."

"You—you [are] fucking with me," I say.

But, just in case, I'm going to have a few [pointed words] with three therapists.

"Look, Mom, I didn't expect to be bi, into older women, or okay with sharing and being shared, much less with a man who doesn't even have enough money for me to retire without having to work a day in my life, but here we are."

"What the—"

"You may be relieved to know that he insists on not getting me pregnant until after college," she says.

And it takes me a moment to realize that I'm halfway to the kitchen and the alluring siren's call of my knife drawer, with Iroha struggling to hold me still with a very ineffective hold around my waist.

"I was joking!"

"Don't joke about getting pregnant!"

"That's what [he] said!"

"Who's he?! Where does he live?! And how does he feel about impromptu vasectomies?!"

My daughter's arms tighten around me, and her face rests on my back.

She's…

She's shaking.

And it takes me a moment to realize that she's on the verge of going from laughter to tears.

So…

So I turn around and return her hold, turning it into an embrace as rage, worry, and disorientation give way to…

My girl.

My little girl.

How long has it been since I held her?

***

"This is absolutely insane," I say, slouching on our sofa and holding a glass of iced water to my forehead.

Alcohol is murder on the skin.

I'm still tempted.

Damn Iroha and my very justified worries about keeping any alcohol in the house.

"You're telling me," she mumbles, staring at a glass of that weird soda with grapes she started buying some time ago.

The glass held in both her hands as she sits on the edge of the armchair and slumps forward in a casual, relaxed posture that…

That makes me feel horribly guilty.

"I… I need to meet them. Just… Just know that—Iroha, I should be [forbidding you] from even thinking about contacting these people," I say, thinking about an upperclassman, a disgraced teacher, and a dangerous scion of the oldest money in the city.

"You could try," she says with a weird glint in her eyes and a soft smile on her lips.

"I'm your [mother]," I say, pulling that card and immediately regretting it.

"Yes. You are. And [he] convinced me to consider asking you for help."

I look at her.

I try not to… not to gasp, or gape, or be overly dramatic about it. About the sharp stab through my chest.

"What do you mean?" I say with no inflection whatsoever.

She meets my eyes and just…

Stares.

"I hated you. You and Dad. And I felt right about hating Dad, but… guilty about hating you. Because you… you [hurt me], Mom. You just… You just made me smile and pretend to be all right, pretend to everyone around me that little Iroha would be all right as long as she could stay with Mommy dearest. And I resented you for that—[resent you] for that. But… I also felt guilty about it. Because you cared. You stayed. It wasn't you that tore my life apart, that turned me into the bullied child of a cheater. And I… I hated you. Hated you and hated feeling guilty about hating you."

I don't say anything.

I… I can't even smile. Not the fake, warm things I wear most of the time. Not the professional and distant ones for more appropriate settings.

I just…

I…

For the first time in years, I don't even know what face I'm making.

And then Iroha sets the condensation-laden glass of soda on our coffee desk, not bothering with a coaster, and she…

She turns to face me, her eyes glimmering with their own share of wetness about to spill over.

"I hated you. I hated you, Mom. And I hated myself. And Dad. And my former friends. And my teachers. And the therapists. And… I hated so many people. So many until I could just move on to a new place, hoping that things would be different, only for the bullying to start again for entirely different, petty reasons, and that…"

She drifts off.

I…

I still don't know what to say. I barely even process that she's still being bullied after I spent so much of our money getting her into the most prestigious school I could find, thinking that none of her former classmates would follow her there, that she would be [safe—]

"In a way? That… That was a good thing. Because I only met him when he helped me deal with the bullying, turning a cruel prank into me becoming the president of the student council because he's twisted like that. So… So that… That ended up with me meeting people that I didn't hate. That I could love without… Mom…"

Her eyes meet mine.

And I manage not to look away.

"I hated you," she says, the words only audible because I'm not breathing.

"But never half as much as I loved you," she finishes.

And I…

I'm kneeling on the carpet, my arms around the daughter who hates me, and I'm crying, and she's crying, and I don't want to ever let her go even as I feel like throwing up because she's [right], and I also hate myself, but I don't love myself, not with how much I've messed things up, with how much I've hurt my little girl.

My little girl.

She used to love taiyaki.

Now, apparently, she loves a boy and two women.

***

I'm cried out.

Exhausted.

And… And so was Iroha, none of us managing to even try to eat after our talk, so I…

I took her to her bedroom and tucked her in, staring into her room from the half-closed door, only the light from the corridor letting me catch the hue of her bright hair as she finally fell asleep on her side.

Facing me.

I…

I don't have that luxury.

So, yes, I'm lying in my bed, but I'm not planning on sleeping.

Not with the open laptop resting on my bent thighs, the harsh glare of the screen doing its best to keep me both awake and uncomfortable.

My posture may be contributing to that as well. I may be too old to have my head bent forward, resting on the wall behind me.

… I need to buy a better pillow. I keep putting it off.

But this…

I can't put this off.

Because my daughter's friend is the younger child of the Yukinoshitas, and I doubt very much that she's a world-renowned hacker. She must have just used her parents' computer and copied everything eye-catching on this pen drive.

With very little eye for selection and relevancy.

I sigh at yet another email hinting at backroom deals. This one has the mayor's secretary sending a polite thank you note for their endorsement in their last campaign.

An endorsement that a few other documents hint at having been far more involved than the one speech they gave in his favor. There are gifts just on the verge of legal bribery, a few meetings with other businessmen, and…

And nothing usable.

It's dirty. But it's also perfectly normal.

Expected.

I would have better luck writing a human interest story about a local poetry contest than getting this on the air.

So I sigh and discard yet another of the numerous depressing leads I've been handed. All of them paint a quite unsavory picture, but… I [could] turn this into a book, and it would sell relatively well.

But it's not the smoking gun I've been searching for.

The one thing my little girl wants me to find.

So I do my very best to ignore the LED display of my alarm clock glaring at me from my bedside table and I curse under my breath when, despite my best attempts, I catch a glimpse of the laptop telling me that it's past three a.m. and that lack of sleep is much worse for the skin than any amount of alcohol I could conceivably imbibe to get past this horrible day.

This horrible, hopeful day.

And I…

I sit up, my back on the wall as I slump forward, pinching the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes while suppressing a yawn and resisting the urge to rub my itchy eyes, knowing just how much worse it will make things if I fail to—

Darn it.

Now, my eyelids are rubbed raw. Fantastic.

The uncomfortable warmth of the computer on my thighs tells me that the pause has been going for long enough, and I open the next document.

Nothing. This one is just a list of guests to a private Christmas event that, if I squint hard enough (which I currently am), may imply that the Minister of Finance has a mistress.

Joy. Such shocking news. Truly, a treasure trove of—

Wait.

That's…

I curse the slowness of the touchpad as I find a subfolder with a name that—

A letter of apology.

From [former] Minister of Finance, Kaya Watanabe.

The one who resigned.

The one who was [forced] to resign.

And… Yes. This is a smoking gun. This is a [solid] lead. This is something that got buried at the time after nobody managed to figure out what the Hell happened.

This is something that I can use.

And…

This is something that I [can use].

This is news. Big news. Because that scandal touched beyond Chiba's sphere of influence. It would make the national headlines [easy], and it would drag down the names of both of Watanabe's successors, the Prime Minister at the time, and…

This is big.

This is a level of meddling in national affairs that goes beyond petty bribery and the expected amounts of corruption. This would make all the little things I've had to discard into the perfect corollary to display the Yukinoshitas' web of influence. This could get several [convictions].

As long as there's more than just this letter.

So I hunch over the computer and browse through the entirety of the subfolder's contents, growing impatient at opaque reports and joyful at the little nuggets that solidify the picture I had in mind after reading the letter. The amount of outright blackmail that the Yukinoshitas used to force Watanabe's resignation and just how legally dubious it is for them to have such blackmail in the first place.

[I can use this].

The… the exhaustion and drowsiness fade away as I let old urges surface. As I'm once again discovering things meant to be hidden from my eyes. As I'm an actual reporter.

As I'm not a faded beauty, a middle-aged woman thrown away by her husband, struggling to keep herself employed, tolerating borderline sexual harassment from her boss because being eye candy for the greasy fuck is the only thing that keeps her employed after having been irrelevant for too long.

As I'm… Kanade.

Not Kanade Isshiki.

Kanade Arakawa.

And…

Kanade Arakawa, who dreamed of a big scoop. Of helping turn this nation into something better, something that would not need to shy away from the truth.

Kanade Arakawa.

Who has a big scoop.

I'm writing the first paragraph before I even realize it, the staccato rhythm of a keyboard under my fingers as reassuring as it ever was, words flowing from a part of my brain that is as tired as the rest of it but that has been conditioned to keep working no matter what, to be able to produce concise, unambiguous lines under any circumstances.

It's not award-winning.

But, after a third revision, it will be.

Enough to secure my career. To get lecherous gazes turned into respectful, professional distance. To have me home at the hour I'm supposed to get here, able to cook dinner for my little girl—

My little girl.

My little girl who's a young woman in love.

I look at the screen. At the white glare of the still mostly blank page keeping me awake and uncomfortable.

And I slowly close the lid of the laptop.

Then, in darkness, I allow myself a moment to mourn and bury Kanade Arakawa.

==================

This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/all-right-fine-ill-take-you-oregairu.15676/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 103 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Brain-chan's intrusions into Hachiman's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and help me keep writing snarky, maladjusted teenagers and their cake buffets, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!