Komachi

Not that long ago, my brother went, at length, on one of his rants regarding something incredibly pointless and farfetched that he treats like the most important thing in the world.

The subject in question?

Anime parents.

Like, how they are often absent so that the main character can be gross with girls lured into an empty house—I mean, enable a harem plot. Or how they can be absent so the protagonist doesn’t resort to adults to handle issues that should never be placed in the hands of a minor—I mean, enable a shounen plot. Or how they will hopefully be absent if the work is not meant for younger audi—gross, gross, gross!

Okay. Fine. You get the idea.

Anime parents.

The implication being that we are, of course, anime siblings born of anime parents, but he, for some reason that is definitely much grosser than any yaoi ever written by Clamp, blanched at the idea of us being anime siblings.

Which is somewhat strange, given how hard I’m wishing at this very moment that he was an anime brother.

…

By which I mean an absent one. Just to make things extra clear.

…

Gross.

“Komachi, go back to bed,” Mom says from where she’s standing with her arms crossed in front of the TV like she does when telling me to get to my homework.

“Mom, I really think I should be here—”

“I appreciate the support, brat, but I can fight my own battles—”

“You sure can. That doesn’t mean you should,” I tell the infuriating moron pretending to sit placidly on the sofa—

“This is not a battle. Your brother and I are just having a calm conversation about a very regular and not at all alarming topic.”

“Grossther’s harem situation is nothing if not alarming.”

“You knew about this?” Mom immediately asks with a wild-eyed yet sharp look that tells me the sheer outburst of rage has evaporated all traces of alcohol.

“Welcome to my life,” I weakly mutter.

“Bet you it’s quieter than mine,” the moron quips.

Seriously, he’s even doing that little smirk of his, the one he does when choosing Kirby on Smash Bros. The one that tells me he just shuffled his entire manga bookshelf so I’ll have to go through at least three new series before getting to my—his Card Captor Sakura volumes. The one that—

Uh.

It… seems kinda brittle?

… Damn you, Grossther. Damn you and you trying to look like you don’t desperately need your cute little sister to rescue you.

“Mom—” I start.

“You knew,” she cuts me off.

I look at her in a very unimpressed way and then take my time walking around the couch and to my brother’s right side before plopping down on a cushion that, come to think of it, feels warm enough to tell me they were sitting side by side just a moment ago.

Sooo… He felt close and vulnerable and spilled. Because of course he did.

“He needed someone to talk to,” I explain while sounding about as accusatory as I feel at this very moment.

“He needed—he can—he…” Mom trails off.

And… and looks like…

Oh.

I take a look to my left and bother’s smirk is gone, but it’s… The usual blank face he puts on when being scolded isn’t there either, and he’s looking at Mom in a way that… I don’t know.

I’m the dumb one in this family. I’m not qualified to understand what it is that Mom’s hurt and guilty look is trying to say, nor what his answering stare is other than…

Other than it’s not angry.

“Mom,” he starts. “I’m talking. Now. And I need it.”

His voice is rough despite the calm he tries to force into it, and before I even realize it, I’m holding his hand as I keep staring at him, waiting for him to turn toward me and shoot me an infuriating something, anything at all. To grin, or raise a mocking eyebrow, or…

Or anything at all that my brother does to tell me that things are not that serious. That at least he is finding the funny side of things, and I should make an effort to do the same, even if he’s bedridden in a hospital after nearly dying in a car crash, and… and…

And he’s not doing any of those things.

“How much do you know?” Mom asks me with a quiet tone.

“Too much,” I can’t help but mutter with a hint of exasperation that I have the time to regret before I squeeze his hand in what I hope is something reassuring.

“That’s not an answer, Komachi—”

“Everything. I know every dumb thing about his messed up dating life, and I’ve been worried sick for days because the mother of one of his girlfriends just moved Heaven and Earth to tear them apart.”

“What—how do you—no. One thing at a time. Is this the fight you had today?” she asks, but not to me.

And brother looks away from me and up at the woman still standing with her arms crossed, even as he doesn’t let go of my hand.

“No. The fight I had today was… wasn’t a fight. I’m just hurt that the woman I love threw away her career to protect another woman I love, and I can’t even argue for them to act sane and properly selfish.”

Mom looks like she’s going to argue out of sheer force of habit before she stops herself, just looking at Brother sitting down in front of her with none of the insolently defiant attitude or blank expressions he would usually use for a scene like this.

Then she looks at me, and I don’t know what she sees because I’m too busy trying not to fret over the dumb boy by my side to do anything other than shoot her a worried glance before going back to my brother being quietly hurt rather than sarcastic, or exasperating, or flippant, or…

Or himself.

“What happened?” I quietly ask, rubbing my thumb over the back of his hand in slow circles.

He looks at Mom without saying anything, and she doesn’t answer.

Except…

Except she doesn’t say anything.

Doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t yell. Doesn’t demand him to explain himself.

Just… Just stares as her own face falls from what should be there when Brother’s getting scolded and turns into something frail as her crossed arms shift and I realize for the first time that she’s hugging herself.

I don’t know what goes on between the two of them as they look at one another, but he finally turns toward me and starts telling me about his day while Mom…

While Mom quietly goes to the fridge, the cool light pouring from it clashing with the warm floor lamp to my right, the metallic sounds of her rummaging around not quite distracting me from Brother starting off with something outrageous regarding Iroha’s Mom this morning that almost gets me to roll my eyes and poke him under his ribs, and…

And then Mom is in front of us, setting a chair down to face the sofa, a can of beer on the carpet, and both her hands extended toward us.

There’s an apple juicebox for me and a can of coffee for Brother.

I do my best, and I smile encouragingly at her when I get the juicebox.

Brother takes the can with a single nod and keeps talking.

And Mom takes a long time before she reaches down to get the can of beer, cracks it open, and sips as Brother finally says what he should’ve said from the very start.

“The worst part is that I was almost certain she would do something like this.”

***

“I want to be absolutely clear about this,” Mom says. “You initiated the relationship. You pursued her when she tried to reject you. You were the one who pushed for the couple to become… an arrangement. Is that the actual truth?” Mom asks.

“The truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God,” he says, finally being infuriatingly sarcastic.

Mom looks at me, presumably asking for corroboration in case Brother has been lying straight to her face through the past couple of hours.

… I’ll assume she’s just that sleep-deprived.

“I can’t do this on an empty stomach,” I say as I stand up and walk to the kitchen.

“You had dinner—” Mom starts.

“You really don’t know about her night-raiding?” Brother tells her with what could be just a tiny smidge of reproach.

“I—she’s a growing girl,” Mom’s voice answers from behind my back as I open the fridge.

Cowed.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like it any more than when it’s Brother the one who’s cowed. I don’t like that she’s this raw and open and… and hurt.

So I grab a tomato, some lettuce, the mayo dispenser, and a can of olives, and turn away from the fridge before grabbing a can of tuna from the cupboard over the sink. Then I get the sliced bread from the cupboard beside the sink, a plate, a knife, and…

And start making myself a sandwich.

“Are any of you hungry?” I ask as I slice the tomato and carelessly get the speckled counter full of reddish juices.

“No, thank you,” Mom replies.

“Do you know how many calories a can of Max Coffee has?” Brother asks.

“Yes,” I hiss back. “I know in excruciating detail all the trivia there is to know about your canned diabetes. Now, do you want to eat something solid and healthy?”

“Nothing can be healthy when drowned with that much mayo,” he answers. “I don’t care what isekai protagonists may think otherwise.”

“There’s nothing wrong with adding a bit of extra mayo. The tuna gets dry otherwise. Nobody likes dry tuna,” I say while slathering two slices of bread with a perfectly adequate amount of mayo.

It’s an amount that’s been honed through long practice not to crack the bread open, but only barely. Thus, it’s clearly the perfect amount of mayo, and anybody who disagrees doesn’t count because just drinking that much of that canned coffee immediately disqualifies you from participating in any cooking manga, even as a nameless extra.

“Komachi, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about how much mayo you—” Mom starts.

“Can’t we get back to Brother’s impending life crisis? Because, in case you haven’t been paying attention, this is the guy who can and will commit actual crimes to defend his girlfriends,” I say without turning around, carefully arranging the olives in two domino-like fives on each slice.

“That’s… Right. You do realize you could go to jail, don’t you?” Mom asks in a tired tone that shouldn’t be used to say that line.

“Ah, but that’s the beauty of my plan: if Hana Yukinoshita wants to get me in jail for blackmailing her, she’ll have to first reveal how I got my hands on that information, which means getting her younger daughter in jail. I’m perfectly assured that it’s slightly unlikely this would happen.”

I pause in the middle of washing the lettuce and shut off the water before I slowly turn to look at him over my shoulder.

“Are you seriously saying you could get Yukino in jail?” I ask with no particular tone at all, and thus it’s quite rude that he looks at me with a paling face and poorly disguised fear.

“I am joking! Releasing the tension after a long talk that has me on the verge of shaking with sheer nerves! I never planned for Yukino and Yui to end up in gay jail!”

“You what—”

“Kids. Settle down,” a tired woman says, prompting me to go back to putting the finishing touches on a sandwich free from the horrors of dry tuna.

… It’s too thick.

It always is too thick to comfortably grab without anything spilling out, but I can’t quite get the trick on how to get everything I want in there without getting plenty of it out of there before I’m done eating. Maybe I should buy wraps? Wraps don’t spill, do they?

Or maybe I could use a third slice like they do in some family restaurants with those stacked sandwiches that need a toothpick to not fall apart, and that does sound delicious, seeing as a third slice would mean two surfaces to add mayo to—

“Shall we get back to my impending crisis, or can I go to bed? Because sleep deprivation is a thing I’d rather avoid perpetuating if at all possible,” the reason for me craving comfort food says.

… Darn it.

So I sigh and grab a few paper napkins that I resign myself to needing to use long before my sandwich is fully consumed.

Then I walk around the kitchen’s open counter and toward the sofa where two people are waiting for me, and a third should already be in if Dad wasn’t that stupid about overtime, or getting drinks with his boss, or whatever it is that has him spend the weekends in a half-conscious daze.

I look at them before sitting down, Brother holding my juicebox to me when I do, and I nod in gratitude before taking it and settling it on the paper napkins, resting against the backrest.

Then I start eating while I wait for the two of them to say something that will make me intervene and likely drop half the contents of my sandwich on the dish resting on my thighs.

“This is too much, Hachiman,” Mom says.

And I can’t even disagree even as I feel him tensing up.

***

My sandwich is gone, and my napkins have been turned into soggy balls of paper, barely more consistent than the sliced bread was when the mayo and tomato juices soaked into it.

“I am happy,” he says. “Happier than I’ve ever been.”

‘You should be happy for me,’ he doesn’t say, even if we both hear it.

“You… You’re skipping school, getting in danger of expulsion, violating the law. My job is to be sure that you’re safe.”

‘Happiness is secondary to that,’ she strives not to say with anything other than a worried, anxious tone that clashes with the severe set of her shoulders.

“Mom… I almost got killed saving a dog. Do you really think you can keep me safe?”

She doesn’t say anything.

I almost slap him.

“Don’t joke about that,” I whisper.

‘About you dying. About how scared I was. About all those days when I was worried sick in this empty home without you,’ I don’t need to add.

Not with the way he looks at me and immediately grabs my hand with both of his to apologize without words, his eyes doing more than any line could ever do to tell me how badly he regrets…

Not risking his life. Not for a dog.

But hurting me.

I should slap him.

“Sable is very cute,” I end up saying. “Can’t blame you.”

“Sable is an utter terror, and someday, he will make a dog breeder very wealthy.”

“Gross,” I say, lightly slapping the back of his head.

And then Mom’s standing in front of us, not saying anything, her lips turned into a pale line, her eyes…

I don’t know what I see in her eyes.

“That is just another reason for me to keep you safe,” she says in something that should have been a whisper if it wasn’t so strained.

“Safe from what, Mom? From living?” he asks.

She drops to her knees and surrounds us with her arms.

“Yes. Yes, please, from everything,” she mumbles.

It… It takes me a moment to return the hug, to fight past the surprise of Mom just… just breaking down in a way I’ve never seen before.

But Brother is also hugging her back. Hugging both of us.

He’s strong, now. Stronger than he’s ever been, and his arm feels solid around my back and under Mom’s thinner one as he pulls us together.

As he pulls us together like I always hoped he one day would.

***

Yumiko Hikigaya Is… More Normal Than She Thought

They are both in bed, and I had to resist the urge to tuck them in like they were infants. To make sure they didn’t…

Komachi.

He told Komachi before he…

No. That’s not fair. I understand. Those two trust each other even more than regular siblings. I can’t fault them for keeping one another’s secrets.

Even if those secrets involve my son fighting against one of the most terrifying women I’ve ever met.

Hana Yukinoshita.

My blood froze when he told me so carelessly about what he pulled today. About going up against that woman and hoping to win without suffering for it.

I still don’t quite believe it, but if he’s really dating her daughter, and if he’s best friends with the other one, then, maybe…

I shake my head and immediately regret it, the beers catching up to me and making the living room sway with a slight delay from my movements.

I should go to bed.

I should go to bed like my two children and get some sleep so that I can go to work tomorrow and pretend to be present while my mind runs a mile a minute and I come up with every single possible plan I can to protect my children from the woman who now sees my family as an enemy.

So I can go to work and not think about the teacher getting in bed with three students that I’m told is… important.

To my son.

I almost want to throw up.

But he’s him.

And… And Hachiman is many things. Deceitful, when he cares to be, yes, but never about things like this. Never about emotions or values. He will lie straight through his teeth about having done his homework or about how the latest show he’s forbidding his sister from watching is not thinly-veiled porn, but he will never say something nice about someone he despises.

He’s too much like me.

In all the worst ways.

As if there were good ones…

Damn it. I really drank too much, didn’t I? I didn’t plan to, but I got caught up in the moment, and I needed to do something with my hands, so holding a can may as well have been it.

At least I didn’t get drunk in front of them. The last thing they need is more reasons not to trust me.

Us.

Trust us.

I close my eyes for a moment, the floor lamp too dim to bother me through my eyelids, and I can still feel the room swaying around me as I hold still and breathe deeply while splayed on this sofa that’s witnessed too much family drama for a lifetime, never mind a single night.

Then I force my eyes open and stand up.

I’m barefoot, and the floor is cold, so that helps me center myself as I walk to the counter of the kitchen, the open one separating it from the living room.

Where my phone is.

I unplug it from the charger and look at it, at a screen with no missed calls or messages waiting for me, and I push away how that always makes me feel before I unlock it and go to my contacts.

To call the most frequently called number I have in there.

“Yumi?” he says after the first call went to voice mail and I had to redial. “Is everything all right?”

“Where are you?” I ask.

“At the usual hotel near the station. I told you today would run late,” he says with a drowsy tone that he struggles not to turn complaining.

I’ve never suspected him of cheating. It’s stupid of me, I know. A married man spending so many nights away from home. Away from a harsh wife who doesn’t know how to show him how much she desperately loves him.

I never have suspected him.

I don’t think I ever will.

“I need you,” I whisper, my voice rawer than I thought it would be.

There’s a beat. A moment where I can see his back straightening and his eyes sharpening like they did that first time he caught me talking on the phone and trying not to fall apart.

“I’ll be there right away,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

“No. Thank you. For needing me,” he says.

And, when he hangs up, I smile and cry at the same time.

Like I did the first time he said those words to me.

 

 

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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 110 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!