I’m not familiar with political games.

Most of what I understand about the whole thing? It comes from faculty meetings and talks with yet another befuddlingly miffed principal. I know about alliances and presenting one’s needs as the most pressing concerns to ever be encountered in a learning institution. I know about keeping a poker face while the PE moron demands yet more supplies for what usually amounts to (barely) supervised recess. I know about not pressing Inoue when he looks even more stressed out than usual.

… Which I may have something to do with, as of late.

But, overall? I don’t know about politics. I don’t know about backroom deals, or where the skeletons are buried, or whatever it is that moves the levers of power beyond the obvious, superficial answer of ‘Money.’

I still know what a power move is, though.

“I’ve been waiting for an hour,” I tell the young secretary whose sole job seems to be to stand by my side as I sit on a small, backless, leather bench set against the wall of the hallway presumably leading to Ms. Yukinoshita’s office.

“My apologies, Miss Hiratsuka, but you dropped in unannounced. It will take time for the Mistress to fit you in her schedule,” he says in a way that makes me rethink the title of secretary and go right to ‘butler.’

… And now I’m thinking about a particularly grating young man serving me a bouillabaisse, or however that’s spelled in a sane language.

Damn it, Hachi…

“I understand I may come across as imposing, but this feels like a delaying tactic,” I finally say. Because I don’t know about politics, so I may as well take a page out of the book of somebody who very much refuses to learn about politics and force myself to be as blunt as I can possibly be without boxing gloves.

“I assure you that the Mistress is—”

“Do you have an ashtray?” I ask, already opening my white coat and reaching for the inner pocket on my left lapel.

“Excuse me?”

“An ashtray,” I repeat, taking out a silver cigarette case that Dad gave me two birthdays ago and that I rarely use outside of fancy occasions, such as weddings where I was gifted tickets to an amusement park by a very good, dear friend who never quite caught me dropping the ash on the tail of her wedding dress. “You’re going to need an ashtray.”

“I am going to need an ashtray?” he says, eyebrows rising in asymmetrical confusion.

“Yes,” I say, a metallic sound ringing out when I flick the bottom of the case to align the cigarettes inside it before I open the lid and take out one of the rolled white cylinders. “You’re going to need one because it’s most definitely not my job to keep this very nice and expensive leather bench free of ash stains.”

And then, looking straight into his eyes, I light up my cigarette with a zippo lighter that always feels incredibly satisfying to snap open.

I take a deep breath, filling my mouth with warm smoke that slides over my throat like the caress of a lover, and I take as much relief out of the much-needed hit of nicotine as I take from the panicked young man fleeing in search of anything at all that can serve as an ashtray.

His rushing footsteps fade away before I deign to flick the ashen tip of the cigarette off on the wooden floor by my borrowed slippers, and then I stand up and walk to imposing double doors of reddish oak that are a concession to Western standards I wouldn’t have expected from the Yukinoshita matriarch, no matter how much more private her dealings are behind them than when hiding after paper screens.

“Excuse me,” I say as I open one of the carved panes and walk right in to meet a woman briefly glaring at me from behind a massive desk filled with two computer screens and too many stacks of paper for me to bother counting.

“Please, do come in, Miss Hiratsuka. Make yourself comfortable,” she says with a placid smile and not a hint of the underlying sarcasm, her eyes only briefly twitching to the red, glowing spot dangling from my fingers.

“I think I will, thank you very much,” I say, sitting in front of her in a chair that is studiously worse than the one she uses, even if not bad by any reasonable measure, not with lacquered armrests and leather cushioning.

And then I reach to her side of the desk to grab an empty teacup and shake off some ash into it.

“You certainly took me at my word,” she says, her smile firmly in place and as unnerving as when she came to my school to forbid students from having fun like she was the villain in an eighties youth comedy.

“I tend to do that,” I answer before taking another long drag out of my cigarette, the ember burning that much brighter as I fill my mouth with as much smoke as I can take in, the velvety texture just slightly too hot for my tastes as I keep up my glaring duel.

I slowly let it out. First, two tendrils come from the corners of my mouth, curling up into whirling spirals right in front of my eyes before I open my lips and allow the actual curtain of purple whorls to come up between our stares.

Without looking away.

For a single second.

Neither does she.

“Mistress! I’m so sorry, I—” a panicked voice calls out from behind me.

“Leave us, Shinji.”

“I—”

“Leave us.”

The door closes with a whisper.

I smile.

“I’m glad you could finally manage to take the time to meet with me,” I say.

“You may have cost that man his job. Is this your only reaction to that?” she attacks.

“I’m not responsible for your actions, Mrs. Yukinoshita. Only for mine.”

She stares at me in silence for a moment, sizing me up, and… and it should be unsettling. I should feel intimidated by one of the most powerful people I’ve ever met confronting me like this.

But I’m a boxer.

And it’s easy. No, not easy, but easier than it should be. It’s… looking at someone who only wants to defeat you. To crush you. Somebody whose goal is nothing other than your destruction.

I’m used to it, even if I never went pro. Even if I only had a few amateur matches that, thankfully, never broke my nose nor left any kind of lasting damage. Even if I only do very light sparring nowadays because I don’t fancy talking with a slur when my job is—was to speak.

But I still remember. I still remember being in a ring, and everything but my opponent fading away as if it never existed, the cheers and jeers of the sparse crowd turning into murmurs that I barely noticed under my rushing heartbeat as I stared into the eyes of another woman, one as trained as I was, with a single goal in mind.

‘The shoulders,’ Dad said. ‘Eyes lie, but shoulders cannot. Always keep them in your sight.’

Thank you, Dad. I couldn’t have made it without you.

Because her eyes are more like Yukino’s than Haruno’s. Ice rather than lavender.

But her shoulders have just enough tension that her plum kimono, patterned with the white blossoms of the tree that gives name to the color, rises minutely up. And I don’t know Mrs. Yukinoshita beyond vague first impressions and things that Haruno never talked enough about, but I know that she’s the kind of person to hide obvious tells. To keep an iron grip on her reactions.

I know she’s seething.

And, as one Hachiman Hikigaya would put it: ‘Heh.’

… I’m pretty sure that, at one point in the future, I’ll look back on this very moment and loudly bemoan my choices.

“Are you?” she finally says. “Responsible?”

“Yes,” I immediately answer, my voice roughing up my throat like the tobacco smoke hasn’t in years.

“Then why are you still in Chiba?” she asks, the smile fading away into polite disinterest.

I so want to punch her nose in.

“Because somebody is holding my girlfriend hostage, and I’ve watched too many movies.”

A beat. A moment for her to once again try to stare me down.

The cheers and jeers fade away as my heartbeat drums.

“I’m not in the mood to appreciate your wit, Miss Hiratsuka, no matter how keen it must’ve become after years of entertaining teenagers.”

“Are you ever in the mood to appreciate anything at all?”

“There are pleasures in life that can always improve one’s mood,” she says, her eyes finally narrowing.

Good.

“Oh, I definitely agree,” I say, leaning forward and setting the teacup back on her desk before I drop the half-finished cigarette in, smoke now pouring out of the expensive porcelain.

More silence.

Except for my heartbeat getting that much louder.

“You are to leave my daughters alone. Both of them. That is the only result this little visit of yours will bring about.”

“You are sorely mistaken.”

“Am I?” she says, her finger lightly tapping on top of a stack of papers nearer to her than the others.

Of course.

“Let me guess,” I say, bluffing as hard as I ever did when pretending to go for a heavy hook before throwing a swift double jab, “somewhere in that pile of documents is the deed to my father’s gym, or an article about Iroha’s mother’s divorce, or maybe even a letter petitioning Sobu High to expel one Hachiman Hikigaya due to his idiosyncratic approach to scholarly pursuits.”

Her eyebrow rises, so I take the exchange as a victory, however Pyrrhic that may be.

“You’re refreshingly blasé about the destruction of everyone you hold dear,” she comments as if she does this often enough that it is refreshing.

For all I know, maybe she does.

“What do you expect from me? Crying? Bargaining? Immediate capitulation?”

“Those are expected reactions, yes.”

I nod, acknowledging how utterly absurd it is for me to do none of that. To still be… me.

A me that met him.

So I stand up.

And, without looking away from eyes or shoulders, I walk around her desk until I stand in front of her.

“You just threatened me and the people I care about. You just crossed a line again. You’ve hurt Haruno and made everyone who loves her lose their goddamn minds for days as we struggled to first understand what was wrong and then learn how to solve it.”

“You are what’s wrong,” she says, turning her chair around to face me directly but not standing up, the power play obvious enough.

And then I punch her stomach.

Some people have done the math. That a boxer’s cross carries that much more energy than a handgun bullet. That we learn how to pour in everything we can, every ounce of our weight, every fiber of our muscles. That we push with legs and hips, twisting our entire bodies into a single, unified purpose when concentrating all of that power into a single blow.

Mrs. Yukinoshita’s eyes fly wide open, and her breath comes out in an explosive gasp right after my knuckles dig into the stiff fabric of a multi-layered kimono and just before her chair rolls back, bleeding off some of the pain I wanted to pour into her.

The chair slows down before reaching the wall, but I don’t let up. I chase her with a single leap and place my right foot right on the edge of her seat, by the side of her thigh, and shove her that much farther, the rolling not even slowing down before she collides beside a cabinet with glass doors that barely rattles when I kick the wall by the side of her head before leaning forward and down.

Right in front of her shocked face.

Because I don’t know politics, but I know damn well what a power play is.

“You just told me how far you’re willing to go. That rules and laws don’t matter to you. Well, here’s when I tell you that they also don’t matter to me. At all. That what I care for are fairness and justice, and I care more than anyone should after growing out of their chuuni phase,” I say, my voice as low as it can be, taking full advantage of years of smoking to drop into a growling register that has as much intensity as his but none of the dark warmth.

“You—” she starts to say.

And I slap her.

“But I care for my justice, not for what you can manage with bribery, blackmail, and rigged laws. And if you hurt them? If you hurt anyone at all but me? I will destroy you. I will do anything in my power to end you. And I can’t do backroom deals, but I can punch.”

“You think I can’t deal with a thug?” she says, her face twisting into a hateful grimace, a disdainful sneer.

“No. I think you can’t deal with me, much less us,” I say.

And then I take a folded paper out of my coat’s inner pocket.

“What—”

“Read it,” I say, throwing it on her lap.

She does.

And she pales.

Under the elaborate makeup, under what I realize are disguised eyebags, under the rehearsed pretense of a woman always immaculately in control, the Yukinoshita matriarch pales because of Hachiman’s scheme in a way she hadn’t while I just threatened to bash her face in.

I’m not surprised. At all. I know who the most dangerous of us has always been.

“What do you want?” she finally says.

I glare at her.

With all the spite and hatred that I can manage on Haruno’s behalf. With all the disgust this woman instills in me. With all my need to hurt her.

“To talk,” I say.

And so I lean back and take my foot away from the now scuffed wall before I walk back to my lacquered chair and sit in front of her desk.

“No blackmail. No threats. You don’t use this,” I say, pointing at the stack of papers, “and I won’t use that,” I finish, waving at the article in her hands.

She takes a moment to stand up, and I can see the inner struggle on what option would be more undignified before she grabs the backrest of her chair and drags it back in front of me.

When she sits, her eyes are neither placid nor polite.

At all.

“You expect me to believe you would give up… this?” she says, the paper rustling when she waves it.

“No. I won’t. I will keep a copy of that safe and secure for the rest of my life, and everybody I trust will know what to do if I disappear. I will keep that sword pointed straight at your heart until the day you die, you vicious harpy.”

“If you think that threats and violence will stop me from protecting my daughters—”

“Stop that before I finally give in and break your jaw.”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

“Oh, I did. I heard the main reason for Haruno and Yukino to be traumatized and barely able to understand that anybody could love them telling me that she’s protecting them. I heard a woman who treats her daughters as possessions, as pieces on a board, tell me that the years I devoted to helping them heal are the actual threat to their wellbeing. I just heard a broken doll try to act as if she cares at all for the two daughters she’s all but strangled, turning them into little bonsais, plucking away at their branches whenever they grew in a way she didn’t care for—”

I catch the computer monitor with both hands, the cable jerking after the violent throw, and I quickly lower it so that it won’t blind me to a follow-up attack.

I shouldn’t have bothered.

She’s heaving, her arms still extended after launching the clumsy attack at me, and furious tears are running down her face, smudging that masterfully applied makeup of hers, revealing the darkened skin under her eyes.

“You seduced my daughter. You took advantage of… of… She was vulnerable. Young. She… My Haruno—”

“My Haruno,” I say.

And, as she glares at me with as much hatred as I’ve ever seen on anybody’s face, as her shoulders shudder a single time under the stiff kimono, I set the monitor back on her desk.

Just… a tad nearer to me.

“Haruno seduced me. I did everything I could to resist her, to keep her as a friend. And that was only because I was sure I was her only real friend and couldn’t push her further away than that. It took her years and waiting for the right opening to finally force me to accept her feelings, and… and I regret not doing that sooner. Because I love her. Because, in one way or another, I have since long ago.”

“Her. And two others,” she says, venom dripping from her tone.

“… Ask her to explain. And listen,” I say, deciding that’s not one argument I’m willing to entertain with the woman glaring at me.

“To explain how a teacher ends up with a former student and two current ones? With chil—”

“Yes! To explain that! To explain why she ended up with us. To explain how hard she fought to be a part of this whole fucking mess. To tell you what it is that she sees in Iroha, the one girl other than her sister who may have finally understood why Haruno clings so tightly to people who accept her; what she sees in Hachiman, the man who forced her to find something to love inside herself, and to explain to you why the Hell she’s so set on me because I couldn’t tell you to save my life.”

“Because you found her at her lowest and showed her something that she could believe was a ray of hope—”

“And why was she at her lowest, Hana?” I say, finally forgoing her title.

She stops.

“You don’t have the right to interrogate me,” she says.

“You just threatened to destroy the lives of everyone near to me. You already did your best to wreck your daughter’s peace after she’d finally reached it. I have every right. The only rights that matter.”

“Do you really think you can fool me just with your—”

“The only person I ever fooled was myself. Everyone else knew how things stood right from the start,” I say, remembering a phone call after Haruno had Hachiman eat me out for her voyeuristic pleasure.

… Which is not the best thing to remember at this very moment.

“No. You don’t get to claim this. You are the adult. You have all the power in that little arrangement of yours—”

I laugh.

I… I really can’t do anything other than that. Just… just laugh at the absurdity of me having any kind of power over precisely that very trio. The voyeuristic exhibitionist who delights in making all of us lose our minds, the malcontent human wrecking ball who never stopped even when I begged him not to tear down my walls, and the woman who…

Haruno.

My Haruno.

And so, my laughter ends.

I stare back into eyes that do look like Yukino’s. That are ice full of cracks.

Except Yui has allowed us to see what lies behind Yukino’s ice. What was hidden so poorly in there. The warmth that was just afraid to reach out and be snuffed.

That’s… not what I see behind Hana’s ice.

“You really don’t know any better, do you?” I finally ask.

“I know enough about emotional manipulation and grooming to—”

“No. No, you really don’t. This… This is what Haruno had to deal with. You set on a rational argument to mask your actual reasoning. You present… what you think is acceptable for the world to see and keep hiding your true self. Because that’s how you survived. That’s how you managed to stop being hurt.”

“You don’t know anything—”

“That’s how you stopped feeling.”

And she clenches her jaw.

I… I can see it. How another Haruno, another Yukino, would’ve ended up like this. Extraordinary, yet surrounded by things that only accept a fraction of that. That never allowed them to show themselves fully.

Flowers in a greenhouse. And the world was outside.

So I take my cigarette case yet again out of my pocket, the glint of silver as nostalgic as ever, even if I’ve only had it for two years.

But it’s a reminder of Dad. Of a gift that he gave me in spite of himself after all the times he told me to quit smoking.

That’s what’s engraved inside of the lid: ‘Please, for my peace of mind, quit it.’

A line that is applicable to so many things…

But, at this moment, I yet again acknowledge it and proceed to ignore it, like most daughters do with wise advice from doting parents, and take out another rolled white tube, the zippo flicking open with long practice, the flame wavering before I drag it in with a long inhale that has the tip of the cigarette turn into a red ember.

There’s no smoke coming out of the teacup on my side of the desk.

I lean back, my head hanging over the backrest of this heavy chair, and let a clumsy ring of smoke out to fly up to the ceiling above, wondering if this would be the right time to remark how unfamiliar it is as my tired mind tries to hold on to any of the strong emotions I keep feeling just by being in this room, with this woman in front of me.

“I feel, Miss Hiratsuka. Right now, I feel hatred,” she says, her voice finally as calm as it was at the start of this whole mess.

“That makes two of us, Hana,” I say. “I just wish that pity wasn’t spoiling the mood.”

I look back at her, straight into icy eyes.

And I flick the ash of my cigarette on her immaculate, wooden floor.

 

 

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This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on QQ, where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 104 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Also, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, 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 Amazon. Thank you for reading!