All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 85 – Haruno Yukinoshita Spent Too Much Time With Hachiman Hikigaya

The Yukinoshita family has plenty of companies under their umbrella, but only one bears the family name. Its main offices are at the heart of Chiba, a reminder of just whose family helped make the city what it is today.

On those offices, at the top floor, there's a studiously luxurious room with a décor verging just on the right side of ostentatious.

That's where my father works, where he receives his guests, partners, and associates. Where people think the heart of our empire beats.

People who don't know enough to realize just how much of an empty façade the whole place is.

"Please, take a seat," Mother tells me from behind a dark desk with a few neatly placed stacks of paper and a single computer with two screens, her hand vaguely gesturing in front of me as she keeps reading through whatever is on those monitors of hers.

This is her office. One near the master bedroom.

An unassuming place with sober furnishings and almost devoid of any decorations.

How very Japanese of her.

"Are you sure you don't want to offer me a cup of tea? Some snacks?" I say as I set my bag on the wooden floor and take the offered chair in front of her desk, one of three waiting for as many visitors on the rare occurrence that something will come up that she will need to deal with in person rather than through somebody more apt to suffer the waste of time that personal dealings tend to be.

"I would if I thought you wouldn't turn the offer into yet another way to snipe at me. Besides, you've already had enough coffee for today," she says, still not meeting my eyes.

I raise an insolent, almost Hachiman eyebrow and leave it in place, waiting for her to turn fully toward me and notice.

The silence stretches as she occasionally clicks with her mouse, never once looking at her daughter in front of her.

"You're learning patience," she finally comments.

Still looking at the screen.

"I've had a great teacher," I say with just a hint of innuendo.

And the next click on the mouse is forceful. Loud.

Then my mother closes her eyes, sighs, and turns toward me.

The white light of the screens discolors the right side of her face, making her look more like a doll than she already does with her careful updo and rigid kimono, the plum silk with golden brocade as stiff as ever while displaying the restrained elegance of the true Yukinoshita scion.

The beating heart of the power at the center of Chiba.

Then she opens her eyes, finds my insolence still stubbornly on display, and does her best not to roll her eyes.

To be fair, it's an admirable effort.

"So. Straight to the point," she says with full disapproval.

"How Western of me," I say, getting the insult out of the way.

"No. How [you]," she says with a complicated expression that I could read too much into.

"Mother—"

"Allow me to be the direct one this time around: you've come here to fight on behalf of one Shizuka Hiratsuka, a teacher recently fired from Sobu High on the grounds of a scandal waiting to happen."

"How refreshing," I idly comment while trying not to dig my nails into the chair's arms.

"It may be. So, in the spirit of keeping this refreshing change of pace, also allow me to cut to the heart of the matter—" my breath hitches at the wording, and her eyes narrow, dragging out the impromptu pause. "I'm not going to budge on this. Miss Hiratsuka can either leave Chiba or lose her teaching license."

I resist the urge to close my eyes and gather myself. It's… I've had practice with it. With keeping up the mask of the Yukinoshita heir in front of the one who trained me for the role.

But she's still Mother.

And, before Shizuka and Hachiman came along, there already was someone who knew how to shatter all of my masks, even if not in the ways I needed.

"Why? Why are you suddenly so set on—" I start to say.

And Mother, always in control, always perfectly composed, her manners only barely slipping at my most frustrating bouts of rebellious puberty, pushes her chair away from her desk, opens the drawer set in the middle of it, and takes out a sheaf of papers before slamming the drawer shut and picking up one single page from the newest addition to the neat stacks.

"I am Yukino Yukinoshita's friend, one of the three she has. Four, if you count her teacher. You may wonder how someone as gifted as Yukinoshita, so clever, well-educated, and beautiful, has managed not to have more than three friends after two years in high school. This is actually a new development. A few months ago, she had none," she says, reading from a letter that has been unfolded one too many times, the creases no longer rigid as it hangs limply from Mother's always graceful grasp.

Then her hand trembles and I know she's resisting the urge to ball it up and throw it away.

"That is not a lie—" I try to say.

"Four, if you count her teacher," she repeats. "Her teacher. One Shizuka Hiratsuka. The lover of the letter's author."

Her voice is colder than usual. Forcefully cold.

Furious.

"Mother, that doesn't mean—"

She throws Hachiman's letter on top of her desk, the words that he spent so much time and effort on discarded without a second glance as Mother takes out the next paper from the handful.

One that isn't creased.

It's thicker.

A picture.

A picture of me and Shizu kissing on my campus. Two days ago.

I… I knew it was a possibility. I prepared for this.

Words still fail me.

"[Your] lover," Mother says, her voice full of a kind of poison I know all too well.

My kind of poison.

"Yes. She is," I say, still staring at the picture. At the two of us surrounded by green grass as I clung to the taller woman and tried to reassure her that her world wasn't over, that life would keep turning. That I would be there for her no matter what.

Once again, Haruno Yukinoshita lied without even realizing it.

"An adult teacher having relations with two current students and a former one. A woman who, by your own admission, has had an undue influence on [Yukino]. And I need to explain to you why I want her gone? Why I want her far away from my daughters before she can do—"

"Before she can do [what?] Heal us from the wounds we inherited from you? Let us see a world in which we can be loved and accepted for who we are rather than who we present ourselves as? Before she can help Yukino be herself rather than an imperfect copy of myself? Too late, [Mother;] she already has succeeded at doing all of that."

Her jaw clenches, and her eyes narrow oh so slightly.

But I can't take pride in that slight victory.

"Do you even know what grooming is?" she says.

This time, it's my jaw that clenches.

"I chased her for years before she finally caved in. She rejected me. [Me]. Do you think if she was the kind of predator you think she is, that would have happened? Do you think I can't seduce a lonely woman after her latest breakup while she's drinking herself into a stupor just to lessen the hurt and pain? Do you think so little of your own teachings, Mother?"

"I never taught you to—"

"Oh, you didn't? Interesting. Then I guess all those small lessons on proper posture, on body language, on intonation, on [rhetoric]¸ weren't a way to teach me how to manipulate people for the sake of our company. I guess all that I've learned about how to act in public has no bearing at all in how to manipulate a vulnerable target—"

"Sex was [never] a part of that."

I feel a flash of rage.

And I, for the first time in my life, don't bite my tongue in front of my mother.

"Of course it wasn't," I say, the venom dripping from every syllable, boiling over my tongue, tasting disturbingly sweet. "Sex would have meant physical affection."

She freezes.

Not like Yukino does when one of her wounds is poked. Not like Iroha does when startled. Not like Shizu trying to get a grasp on a rapidly shifting world or Hachiman discovering that people do love him both in spite of and because of his faults.

No, she freezes like I do.

Of course she does.

"Physical affection? The woman's a predator," she says, going back to an earlier point not because she thinks it's relevant but because she's buying herself time to process her unwanted reactions to unexpected feelings.

It's what I would do.

And so, I don't let her.

"Do you even realize just how much effort it has taken Yukino's best friend to get her to [hug back]? Do you understand how afraid that child is to show emotional vulnerability, to show she's [human]? Do you—"

"She's a [child.] And you tricked me into believing that she was safe and healing while all of this was going on. Do you—do [you] even realize what you did to me? How I spent the night waking up and trying not to throw up at the mere thought of what that woman has been doing to my daughters?"

"And, through the whole night, did it not occur to you to [talk to me]?"

My Mother's rage-filled eyes meet mine, and she disdainfully points at the picture of two young women kissing and in love.

"I supposed you would have been too preoccupied."

I grit my teeth, my fingers clenched around the wooden armrest and my nails futilely digging into the lacquer.

"I was. I just spent the night waking up with one burst of anxiety after another, trying to think how to save the woman I have loved for years. The one who helped me [heal]. I have…"

She isn't budging.

She is staring right through me, only listening to what she wants to hear, interpreting things in the way that fits her already decided course of action.

Like I knew she would.

Like I hoped she wouldn't.

And, suddenly, I'm just so… tired.

"What do you want from me?" I mutter as I let go of the armrests and lean back, slouching against the chair in a way that isn't studiously flaunting Mother's teachings and just…

Just me being drained.

She lets the silence go on, but I don't watch her. I don't take the chance to observe her posture or to analyze just where and for how long she's looking.

I can't.

Both because she's the one who taught me all those things and because…

Because I just can't.

"The same thing I have always wanted," she murmurs.

Murmurs.

The words almost slurred, too faint to carry across the whole room, deprived of crystal-clear enunciation and sharp focus.

So I do look up.

At a woman wearing a tad more makeup than she usually would, her face pale not just because of the screen's blueish light, her lower eyelids maybe somewhat puffy, her chin lowered.

Her shoulders slumped under a rigid kimono.

"And what is that?" I finally answer. "To take over the company—"

Her face rises, and her fury isn't cold.

"I want my daughter to be happy," she spits out. "Is that so hard to understand?"

I look at her.

Then at the picture lying between the two of us over dark wood, flanked by pale papers.

"You have a funny way of going about it," I say.

And she, rather than yell or scream like a regular human, takes a shuddering breath with her eyes closed as she composes herself once again for our next clash.

"I'm protecting you," she says.

"I don't need to be protected; I need to be loved," I answer with a line that feels familiar, that…

That I may have told Shizu, or I may not, but that I should have that night in Chiba Port Park when I understood why she was pushing me away, and I accepted it because I wasn't strong enough to handle the shattering of my image of her. Of Shizuka Hiratsuka lying [to me].

Of her denying her feelings and hiding behind a comfortable, lying mask like everyone else always did.

But I still loved her.

I still longed for what was behind that momentary mask. For the woman who showed me how to be something other than what was expected of me, who taught me how to [live].

And I…

Mother isn't going to budge.

Neither am I.

Because it's lasted for years. Because I've been in hopeless love with that mess of a human being for nearly as long as I've known her, and I won't ever stop loving her and what she's shown me.

Because I, Haruno Yukinoshita, have been transformed in a way that far too many cheap novels have told me can only happen because of love.

True love.

It doesn't happen every day, I've read.

So I…

I smile.

I smile without any masks, without any of Mother's lessons shaping the curve of my lips, the narrowing of my eyes, or the angle of my eyebrows.

I smile like only I can, in the way only they have seen.

"I'll throw it all away. The company. My name. I'll burn everything to the ground if you keep hurting the woman I love," I say in a last, futile attempt that barely holds back my tears with a single glimmer of hope.

"You won't," she says, and I know the words that follow. "You won't because that would hurt Yukino."

I nod my head and let the tears pour out, crystal clear droplets seeming to fall as slowly as snowflakes before shattering on the back of my hands.

"Yeah," I say, more informal than I've ever been with the no longer hieratical woman. "Yeah, I won't harm Yukino."

I let a bit of silence hang between us, a prelude to my next strike and possibly the last one.

"Unlike you," I finally finish.

And Mother gasps.

She's… I take a bit of dark joy in it, even as I hurt myself with the words. With stating outright what has so many times been hinted at.

Because I also hurt my sister through long years of trying to help her and not knowing the shape of that help. Of doing my best so she wouldn't become another me because that was the worst fate I could conceive of for the tiny runt who turned into an elegant, slim beauty that made my heart clench with every little, needless tragedy she went through.

But… But I grew past that. I became another me, one that could better understand my sister's wounds and get closer to her without aggravating them.

Close enough to soothe them.

But Mother…

Mother hasn't.

Mother is still behind her desk, doing her best to present an impeccable façade to the world while breaking down inside. And I don't know how many times she's done precisely that because she hasn't let me.

Because she never let me see behind her masks.

That's unfair, Mother.

That's always been unfair.

"Fine. Then I will leave," I say.

And, before she can ask what that means, I reach into my bag and take out my thin, almost weightless laptop, opening it to display the last plan I came up with.

The only one I thought had a chance of working.

"The Sorbonne?" she says, staring at the top of the screen and pretending the last exchange hasn't happened.

"They offer legal studies through an associated Parisienne university. I can get an international law degree in there and come back to head the exports division while adding some cosmopolitan credentials to my public profile," I say, also pretending that my throat isn't rough, that my cheeks aren't wet, that I don't have to forcefully close my eyes to futilely try to stop the tears.

Mother looks at my laptop. For longer than it takes her to read the displayed page.

"And in return?" she asks, carefully keeping the line short enough that her tone can come off as steady.

"And in return, you will back away, call Principal Inoue, and tell him that he's to claim Shizu's firing was an administrative mistake."

"I won't let that woman keep working under the same roof as Yukino—"

"[Then] you will tell him to go ahead with his first offer and rush a quiet transfer to another school."

She meets my eyes.

Over a dark, sober desk with neat stacks of paper and a single messy one, over the picture of me being happy with the one woman who taught me how to be, my mother looks into my eyes.

"This isn't a temporary reprieve. If I accept this, you are to cut all contact with her. I won't accept you meeting her behind my back," she says.

"I can't do it too abruptly. I'll need a few days to pretend this is just a regular transfer—"

"You won't meet her, Haruno. And I'll know if you do."

I look at the picture.

At the picture taken by one of the private detectives that I tried to hire to investigate Shizu's neighbors.

One who very discreetly pointed out that they couldn't work on the case due to a conflicting contract.

One who warned me as best as he could without breaking his own contract.

A man that I now both hate and respect.

"You would, wouldn't you?" I say.

She, again, closes her eyes.

"I never set a detective on you. But I will keep an eye on that woman," she says.

"If you… If you hurt her? Despite all this? If I leave her behind and then find out something, [anything], happened to her? I [will] burn everything to ashes, Mother. And I'll convince Yukino to help."

When she opens her eyes, I'm ready to meet them.

And she, for just a moment, flinches away.

But there's no reply. No rejoinder. This is a deal, the conditions have been laid out and accepted, and there's nothing more to say between mother and daughter.

So I take back my laptop and, in a pique of sentimentality that I will regret in the months to come, also grab the picture and Hachiman's letter to Yukino, treasuring the bonds to the lovers I'm about to leave behind.

Iroha…

I'll just have to make do with her videos, won't I?

I barely notice the bitter, small, hopeless smile that it brings me, the thought that I finally understand—[understand], not know—the reason behind her need to keep so many little mementos of each and every single one of us. Of our transient moments, both the ones that shook up everything and redefined who we were and would be for one another, and the small ones that went by unnoticed until they suddenly meant everything.

I barely notice it, but I do.

It, of course, makes the held-back tears fall once more.

But I just close my bag and sling it over my shoulder as I turn my back on the silent woman behind her desk and her masks, and—

"Haruno," she says, stopping me despite myself. "I… Everything I have done is because of you. For you. Every single thing."

I close my eyes, pushing the warm, stinging moisture out of them.

I could pick at the words. At the choice. At the ambiguous 'you' that could or not include Yukino, at the sweeping statement that just adds this latest horror to all the years that came before.

I could pick at the tone and enunciation. At my mother being once again overwhelmed by something strong enough to crack her perfect façade.

I don't.

I, instead, let the world come back in, displacing all the things I had placed between it and me over the past weeks that have felt more real than the decade that came before.

I let that color drain, the vivid memories take a step back.

And I dispassionately whisper:

"I know, Mother. And that just makes it so much worse."

Then I step out of her office. Out of the beating heart of the power at the center of Chiba.

Out of the place where we've always worn some kind of mask.

And, with a fragile smile, with a purposeful bitterness, I say the last thing that I feel needs to be said to close this part of my life:

"How dull."

But, yet again, I don't believe it.

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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 99 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!