I am home.
Such a misguiding line, isn't it? A staple of anime in all its forms and incarnations, it can mean a lot of things, often carried only by the nuance of the voice actor or the ensuing imagery.
I am home.
The standard, polite greeting of a character upon crossing the door. It can be the disinterested, routine proclamation of a schoolgirl about to ignore her family on her way to her room or maybe the cheerful proclamation of a younger sister about to disrupt the peaceful, energy-saving ways of her long-suffering brother. It can even be, in the hands of somebody aiming for a masterfully cruel stab, the quiet whisper of somebody locking a door behind her only to step into a darkened room with piled-up trash and no trace of the warmth she should've found waiting for her.
And yeah, I know this isn't canon, but you can't tell me Mami Tomoe never went through something like that.
Or Kyouko. Oh. Yeah. Definitely Kyouko.
But, the weird thing about it? About something so ever-present that it's usually barely background noise until there's a dramatic reason for it to become otherwise?
It's when it's you saying it… and you don't know how to do so.
"I am home," I say with a slightly uncertain tone as I close the door to Shizu's apartment behind me and I stare at the key in my grasp, the one that she gave me so easily, without a second thought.
She doesn't answer.
I clench my jaw and banish all the thoughts that come unbidden at the silence, knowing that it's likely she may be too absorbed with her latest Gunpla, listening to music on her headphones, or even napping.
It's not like she has a schedule to stick to. Not anymore.
So I push away that thought and take off my shoes before going deeper into the apartment, looking for my girlfriend who's, apparently, still shunning Sofa-chan for relationship drama that I would be wise not to get in the middle of, so it's likely that she will be in her bedroom—
I've been plenty of times to Shizu's apartment since… since we started first not-dating, and then basically became engaged with no transitional phase. That doesn't mean I have explored Shizu's apartment. Sure, I'm intimately aware of the intricacies of her bathroom, her bedroom, her kitchen, and her sofa, as those are more or less all the places where we've been intimate so far. I'm peripherally aware of her balcony, but sadly, my relationship gauge with it is at a more casual level.
What I'm not, at all, cognizant of is the room she's currently in.
"Ah," she says when she notices me staring at her from the doorframe.
"Ah?" I answer her with the invaluable help of my adroit eyebrow.
"Surprise?" she offers.
I blink at her. Then I take a moment to take her in.
As in, to try and fail to not discover that, yes, apparently my thing for women who know a thing or two about how to repair a mech and tend to use the sleeves of their jumpsuit as a belt somehow has hijacked my perception filter because there's absolutely no way, no way whatsoever, that Shizu wearing the grey pants of an old tracksuit, her hair in a high ponytail, a black, sleeveless tank top, and smudges of powdered plaster across her forehead and the bridge of her nose could have the same paralyzing effect as Shizu with the blue dress she wore on our first date.
You know, the one that left me utterly speechless. The one that left Haruno speechless. The one that I'll always berate myself for not giving my virginity to—by which I mean, Shizu in that dress, not the dress itself.
Really.
"Soooo… do you like it?" she asks with a nervous grin as she scratches the back of her head with the tip of a screwdriver that I'm rationally jealous of. I mean, it's a phallic object being handled by Shizu in her wrench-wench attire. In fact, I could excuse things if it was an actual wrench, as I could explain that away as being part of the ensemble, but, really, a screwdriver? It has 'screw' in the name! Hurry up and grab a more chaste tool, Shizu!
"Hnrg," I coherently answer after a while of deep thoughts regarding what to tell her regarding a question I've completely forgotten about.
"Hachi? Are you… Are you disappointed?" she says, lowering her head and looking at me with upturned eyes that make it so I'm not being overdramatic when I clutch my chest and grunt. "Hey, if there's something wrong—"
"Cute."
"What? The furniture is not supposed to be cute—"
"What the Hell. Cute. So cute. Mega cute. Shin Dai Mega Cute Shizu-kaiser Jigoku Mode—"
"Shut. Up," a blushing woman forcefully shutting me up says.
Just… not in the way I'd have preferred.
Of course, my brilliant, tactical mind had already devised the perfect counter for such a situation long ago—what the Hell!
"You got precisely what you deserve," a cruel woman who doesn't have the decency to advertise her wickedness to the world with an ojou-sama laugh or good old pauldrons says as I keep trying to wipe powdered plaster off my tongue.
"I disagree. I'm still dressed and your tongue is free to engage in verbal disparagement of my august self, so, clearly, I'm not in the middle of the circumstances that I prefer and thus those that, according to my new positive outlook on life, I deserve."
"How… No. I'm not getting dragged into a ridiculous argument with you and your sophistry—"
"Not with that attitude—"
"I'm trying to ask you if you like your room!"
"My what?" I ask.
She, still slightly pouting, looks to the side, and I… well, I guess I get acquainted with this particular room. Just very much not in the way I would have preferred.
It matches the rest of Shizu's apartment in that it has a wooden floor of a rich, dark color, even if there are some scattered piles of dust that correspond to either a couple of obviously new lamps set on the wall, the whiteboard hanging by the side of an also equally obviously brand-new working desk, or a few shelves running parallel to—
Okay. Okay, no. Think.
There's a window on the wall to the left of where she's set the desk that, going by the pile of folded cardboard and the tools strewn around the floor, she just finished building. There's a battery-powered drill sitting under the shelves, and a crystal display case quite similar in style, if not in magnitude, to those she has in her bedroom that she has set in the corner nearest to the hanging whiteboard. There's also a small wardrobe and a rolled-up futon, a chair with satisfying wheels, and…
Stop. Breathe. Think.
"Shizu… what's all this for?" I quietly ask.
"I… Now that you're here, you need your space, and…"
"Does… Did you just buy an entire room's worth of furniture while I was at school?"
"It was cheap? Not that the furniture's bad! I mean, not that it's expensive either, I just didn't have to buy anything custom, and I built it myself, so it didn't really—why are you looking at me like that?"
"I'm trying to decide whether I'm mad or happy," I say with a tone that leans a bit more toward one than the other.
"Wha… Why would you be mad?" she asks while looking guilty enough to make me feel guilty.
"You… I moved here to help you with your finances, and the first thing you do is spend money on me—"
"What the—you moved here because you needed time away from your parents!" she says, immediately turning around to poke a painfully straight finger at my chest and leaving a trace of white dust behind.
"The parents who had just given me enough money that I can help you pay your utilities, groceries, and—"
"I am not taking your money, Hachiman."
"Oh, you most definitely are. Or I'll get Haruno to buy this apartment so you won't have to pay rent—"
"I own this apartment."
"Then I'll get Haruno to buy it and charge you rent."
"That… makes no sense whatsoever. Both in general and as a threat."
"You really think Haruno owning the place where you live is not a threat?" I say and then pause for dramatic effect.
Or to try not to smirk as I take careful notice of the way Shizu's eyes slowly widen in horrified realization until she turns to me with a pleading, mournful expression that only a dog asking for a treat could top.
"You also live here," she says when I remain (outwardly) unmoved by her display.
"Alas. How will I deal with a stunningly attractive landlady threatening to extract payment from my nubile body. I'm sure the very scenario hasn't been branded into my brain by a thousand doujins already."
"And you wonder why Yukino called you gross…"
"Not really, no," I say with just a hint of pride.
"You—okay, forget about that. This. Your room. Do you like it?"
I hold my smirk in place for a moment as I try to decide how to react to the abrupt change of subject from comfortingly familiar banter around Yukino's misguided appraisal of my character, and take another look at the room.
"What was it before?" I ask after noticing that the paint is not recent, but it's still a pleasant, untarnished shade of pastel green.
"The room? It… nothing important. I never used it," she says, resorting to deflection as easily as… as she usually does when the subject is anything that she isn't prone to boldly tread upon and past.
"Shizu," I say, maybe unfairly lowering seals that should remain untouched when broaching serious arguments.
"It… I… don't do that."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Hachiman," she says with narrowed eyes and crossed arms that manage to further mar her black tank top, thus also bringing further contrast and definition to the line under her bust and, by extension, the bust itself, which has never needed any kind of help whatsoever in drawing the eye, even if everybody who has played Persona or Chrono Trigger appreciates the heartwarming feeling of thoroughly unneeded, gratuitously devastating teamwork.
Also, what was I talking about?
Ah, now she's snorting and rolling her eyes. Great. There goes whatever shred of a thread my beleaguered brain was still holding onto.
'Speak for yourself. I'm quite adept at keeping the fullness of my focus on the pertinent matters at hand.'
By which you mean Shizu's bust.
'Obviously.'
"Hachiman."
"Look, you can't wear that, cross your arms under your clearly braless chest like that, and expect me to be able to hold a conversation. That's just not how the adolescent brain works. I would say it's not how the male brain works, but I'm certain Iroha would've defaulted to her basic vital functions already, reduced only to breathing, blinking, and filming—"
"I—I am being comfortable! There's nothing erotic about—"
"You, Shizu, dear, love of my life, are an extremely poor judge of how overwhelmingly erotic you are," I say, barely refraining from pointing at my vertical mood indicator.
"Just—I—you. It's you who's just so obsessed with sex that—what are you doing?"
"Hold on a second," I command her with a raised finger as the phone's dial-up noise keeps ringing in my ear.
"Hachiman? Am I supposed to guess the reason behind your call—" Haruno starts with a mind game likely to end up with one of us incredibly sexually frustrated if this morning's precedent is anything to go by.
"Not at all. No guessing involved. I, in fact, my dear Haruno, am about to put you on speaker and ask you a question to which I require an utterly sincere answer."
"… Is this about cohabitation drama? Of course it is about cohabitation drama. This is your second day—"
"It's not quite drama, unless you count those torrid TV shows involving twins, convenient amnesia, and comas that housewives pretend are not all-ages porn. Anyway, now you're on speaker, and I require the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
"You're being ridiculous," Haruno mutters to Shizu's spark of hope.
"Maybe, but I'd like you to reassess that statement after you've been properly armed with the facts of the matter, such as Shizu claiming that there's nothing erotic about her being braless, wearing a black tank top smudged with a line of white, powdered plaster running right beneath her freely swinging breasts, and wearing the old pants of a grey tracksuit that call to mind any and all stereotypes about belligerent wrench-wenches to ever grace the cover of a doujin. Also, she's styled her hair into a high, wild ponytail ideally suited for me to grab with both hands as I pull her toward me and push."
"… I would like to retract my previous statement and have it struck from the court's record," she says with what sounds like a suddenly dry mouth.
"You're all ganging up on me," Shizu says, trying to look like the blush that reaches all the way to the collar of her tank top is one of displeasure.
"Oh, no, not yet. That comes later," I say with a suggestive eyebrow waggle.
"Will you two stop involving me in your sex life when I'm not in a position to do anything about it?" the voice coming from the phone resting on my extended hand complains.
"I mean, if you and Yukino's Sofa don't feel like joining in through phone sex—"
"My what?" a younger yet still Haruno-like voice says from the other end of the line.
"Nothing! Nothing! Hachiman was just bringing up a random example!"
"Certainly! There's nothing that has ever happened involving your sofa, Haruno, Shizu in sportswear, a video call, and—" I start with no mortal terror whatsoever.
"Thank you very much, dear; I think I can take it from here," a suddenly refrostened Haruno says.
And then she hangs up.
Shizu, for some reason, seems torn between a wild fit of giggles and wide-eyed horror.
After a moment of frozen, muscle-seizing panic, I join her.
━❖━
"Okay," I say as I lie on the floor with the folded futon under my back and Shizu draped over my side. "I think I am ready to talk now."
"I don't think you've ever been not ready to talk," she grumbles before rubbing the side of her face on my chest.
"You've put me in plenty of situations that say otherwise."
"Name one."
"Blue dress."
"… That doesn't count," she says with what I'm pretty sure from her tone and squirming is a burgeoning blush. "That was… Iroha. Iroha and her make-up skills."
"Really."
"I…"
"Shizu, if Iroha's make-up skills were solely responsible for what I felt when I first saw you wearing that, cinema studios would murder to hire her."
"That seems to align with her career path," she mumbles.
"Don't let her hear you say this. She's pretty set on what her near future should look like," I say with a reassuring (to me) shoulder squeeze.
"… I am going to have to give her another talk, aren't I?"
"If our first talk here is anything to go by, please, by all means."
"Pervert."
"Says the woman with the diagrams."
"Informative diagrams."
I chance a look over her ponytail at the whiteboard now hanging from the wall of this room that is allegedly mine, and remember the extensive use of multicolored markers that made me wither inside when I was subjected to a long, long lecture that, while admittedly informative, was far from what I had envisioned when I talked Shizu into teaching Iroha about sex.
Then I get poked in my stomach.
"Stop being rude inside your head," she says, nuzzling the top of her head against my chin.
"Stop pretending to be Haruno."
"It's not that hard to guess what goes through your head."
"I mean, obviously. It's usually some variation of 'I can't believe how lucky I am and how much I love this cluelessly adorable woman.'"
She stills for a moment, her soft breathing noticeable through my uniform's shirt, and then she shifts until she's above me, her hands on my chest, her eyes looking down at me, her ponytail falling by the side of her right shoulder.
"I want this to last," she says.
"It will," I promise her, but she's already shaking her head before I answer.
"No, I… I know how I am. I don't want… I need you to tell me when I smother you. When you feel like I'm being too much, or I…"
"Is this what the room's about?"
"I… Yes. It used to be my office, but… I wasn't lying. I really haven't used it in forever. I'm always in my living room, the kitchen, or my bedroom, so… so you can have it. You must have it. You need a proper space to study, without distractions or… or…"
"Or you," I say.
She, slowly and sadly, nods.
It is a struggle not to roll my eyes.
"Shizu… do you remember what was one of the first things that happened when we started going out?"
"That is a long list," she says, to which I, shockingly, don't have an appropriate quip, so I instead clear my throat and try not to look away from steel eyes that are too vulnerable for the scoff she's just let out.
"Right. So… the thing about the messages? And the pictures?" I clarify.
"Ah."
"Yes. Ah," I say.
She wets her lips, and I try not to stare at the pale, pink flesh, and—screw it.
I grab her ponytail and enact my previous Haruno-influenced plans to pull a surprised Christmas Cake down on top of me, her braless chest pressing down on mine, her mouth open in slight shock, allowing me to dive right into a passionate kiss that gets only rougher as her hands go from my chest to my face, and my own hand slides into her pants to grope her always welcoming, malleable ass, pulling her toward me, forcing her to tilt her pelvis down and forward so I can press myself up against her.
So she can feel precisely what she does to me merely by existing. By being herself. By letting me be in love with her.
She writhes atop me, and I turn us around, her legs opening and wrapping around me, squeezing me and pulling me down, her hip slowly swinging back and forth, rubbing along my length until I maneuver so that my tip presses straight against her opening despite the unwanted cloth between us.
She throws her head back, hissing, sinking into the folded futon that holds my arm prisoner between it and her body.
I go down to her neck and suck.
"Ha—Hachi!"
"You're mine," I growl. "I want you mine. I want you by my side. I want you with me."
"I—I'll mess it up—"
"I'll tell you," I say as I slide her pants down and unzip my own, my cock poking past the opening in my boxers to press against the wet front of her panties and make her hiss again. "And then I'll tell you your new rule to follow."
"My—what are you even—"
"One picture for every three unanswered messages? That's just the start, Shizu. How about one kiss for every time you keep ranting without me answering? Maybe I'll make you cum with my hands every time you interrupt a phone call? Or how about I get you naked and on my lap every time you forget to ask me about the new furniture?"
"Ah… I…"
"You. Wonderful you. Beautiful you. Carelessly erotic you," I say.
And I slide her panties aside.
Her eyes fly open, and her lips part as I move against her, against her tilted, offered pelvis. Against the surprised woman who isn't moving away, who's just breathing faster and harder, warm air washing over my wet lips as steel turns to silver in her eyes and my tip meets wet heat that—
The doorbell rings.
We look at each other, and I suspect that her expression of panicked frustration is quite near to my own.
"They… They must be door-to-door salesmen," she says.
I nod and push a bit harder against her, her toned thighs squeezing on my sides, the elastic waistband of her pants rubbing under my cock—
Another ring.
"Persistent salesmen," she all but begs.
I dive down and kiss her, pulling on her ponytail to have her head tilt up, her mouth opening wider as she lets out a hungry moan that washes over my tongue—
The doorbell plays a goddamn jingle. An actual jingle. As in, one I've heard before on a TV commercial—
Shizu pushes me away.
I try not to look hurt at it, but, really, as I flop down on the futon, I'm suddenly treated to a half-naked Shizu frantically jumping up, a sight that is both energetic and bouncy enough that any feeling of mournful loss is temporarily pushed aside so that I can enjoy the view—
"Get dressed!" she yells at me with worrying urgency.
"Wha—"
"Get dressed! Now!" she says, her panties quickly shifted into place, followed by her pants, and then by a sprint out of the room.
I blink at the vacated door and start following her commands out of the sincere belief that being contrarian only works if you occasionally give people reason to believe you will act in accordance with expectations and common sense, though I do allow myself the leeway to curse as I struggle to shift my still erect cock into a semblance of clothed propriety without the zipper doing something painful and regrettable to my vertical mood indicator.
"H—hi Dad! What a nice surprise!" Shizu yells from her door.
I stop cursing.
I, instead, devote any and all available mental and physical resources to quickly putting my pants in as chaste a disposition as they've ever been in, then I repress the urge to curse anew when I notice that Shizu had unbuttoned a great deal of my shirt without me noticing, so I race to solve that particular issue and to smooth out the fabric of the white shirt before I have to start brushing off the powdered plaster that Shizu's black top has generously bestowed on me and that may come across as slightly incriminating to anyone with a third of a Haruno's detective tendencies—
"Hello!" an incredibly fake jovial voice says as a broad hand slams down on my shoulder. "We haven't been introduced yet; you must be the reason my daughter's currently unemployed!"
I look up and up at the tight, green shirt doing a poor job of disguising a wall of muscle that, now that I think about it, I do recognize from a gym commercial with a jingle that I've been recently exposed to.
Then I open my mouth and do what comes naturally:
"And you must be the reason Shizu's so tall. Which I'm grateful for, don't misunderstand, but it makes it slightly harder to lift her up and carry her around."
For some reason, Shizu, standing behind her father in the doorway, slaps her hand on her forehead.
Heh.
━❖━⧫━❖━
And… we're back.
Finally.
Once again, sorry about the unannounced hiatus, dereliction of duty, and… well, everything else that's been going on over the past year or so. I'm working to get back to a predictable schedule, and this story is, as it's always been, a priority.
But the actual priority is… well, sticking the landing.
Don't hesitate to criticize me, remind me what the story is and should be about, and all the little things that we stumbled on after Hachiman decided to take a bite of his favorite Christmas Cake. It's been a years-long journey, and…
It sounds like a cliché.
It really does.
But it's a journey that has allowed me to meet a lot of wonderful, insightful, witty, supportive people who have stuck by my side even when I stumbled. It's a journey I couldn't begin to contemplate finishing without you.
And I hope I can make it a journey worth your time. Worth every single minute that you have spent reading about teenage malcontents, disjointed monologues, and both familial and familiar trauma.
Thank you, guys. See you next week.
That's a promise.
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, Crimson Grave, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!