Chapter 37: Yumiko Miura: Incident IV

Yumiko Miura felt really annoyed. Hikio had come up with the bright idea the she was going through a difficult phase – thank you for noticing – and he had further stated that she needed to calm down, relax and enjoy her down time now that she was finally single.

"I don't enjoy being single."

"Well, you should get used to it Miura." Hikio had said. "We are born into this world alone and we die out of this world, all alone. It's the way things are."

Miura couldn't help it. "What about twins? Or God forbid quintuplets."

Hikio had winced at the idea. "Don't remind me. I had some experience with the latter."

Yumiko Miura wondered what kind of life Hikio was leading nowadays. Back in their first year she hadn't paid much attention to him. He was a loner, a guy who kept to himself and had the looks and feels of an emo edge lord or a creepy otaku who collected anime girl figurines.

But now suddenly he knew a bunch of quintuplets and from the tone of his voice, they were talking about the same people. After all there was only one set of quintuplets on this campus.

"Who did you meet?" Miura asked. Then she made a rough estimation of his type. "Was it Miku?"

"I wish." He scoffed. "It was Nino."

"Oh."

Nino Nakano was a friend of hers. They shared common interests like having a taste for popular fashion, taking care of her nails and liking handsome, blonde boys. However, Miura felt confident that Nino would be the last person to be on friendly terms with Hikio. He was just the kind of person that would have pissed her off. And unlike her, Nino had a, shall we say, strong personality.

Hikio and Nino together, she thought and shook the image out of her head.

"Just how many women do you know, Hikio?"

He didn't answer. It was a legitimate question. There was Yui and her club mates, all of them women. Then there was Ai. He probably knew some more, but exactly how many, now that was another important question. But she was certain he wouldn't give her a real answer. Not unless she pushed real hard. However this was something she didn't really want to know.

He could have his women. He could have an entire harem for all she cares, she thought with a huff.

"We are here." He said

"Finally."

Yumiko Miura looked at the nearby surrounding. The two of them were at the lake. It was a popular hangout spot on campus. She had come here sometimes with her friends, having a little picnic. Yui and her would be chatting about one thing or another. Hina would pop open a book, but would drop in to their conversation from time to time. The boys would make some sort of silly bet about who can run the fastest lap around the lake. Hayato would win most of times.

Miura let out a sigh. Those were simpler times.

"We used to come here often back in our first year." Miura said.

Hikio looked at her with an interesting expression. It was like he was caught somewhere in between wanting to know more and wanting not to ask what could be deemed as a personal question by his standards. She wanted to chuckle at how little he knew about making small talk.

"You can ask, Hikio."

"Why did you guys stop hanging out?"

Yumiko Miura knew why. But she didn't want to put it into words and say them out loud. It felt like saying them would make it real. "Because we got busy with our own lives and stopped making time for each other." She explained. "Yui started the Service Club. Hina became the manager for the Host Club. Tobe hangs around with the Dollars. And Hayato-"

"Yes?"

Yumiko Miura took responsibility.

"We two ignored our friends just because we started dating each other."

Hikio was quiet for a while. Yumiko didn't have the courage to face him. Her olive green eyes were focused on the ground. A cool breeze blew, disturbing the clouds, letting the sun shine down. It was peaceful, it was tranquil. It was perfect.

But she wasn't any of those things.

"Why did you bring me here, Hikio?"

He looked at her with no judgment. She had told him how she had messed up, how she hadn't stopped her friends from leaving her because she had stopped paying attention to their needs, because she had thought they would always be there for her, because she thought they needed her and not the other way around. And now, she was proved how wrong she had been.

What was even worse, she tried to destroy another friendship. This time it had been Ai Hayasaka, her roommate.

But Hikio had stopped her. She didn't understand what he did. He definitely lied, played some mind tricks and did some mental manipulations, all the stuff Hayato warned her about, but this time around she reaped the benefits.

However she had to ask, was what he did, acceptable. Wouldn't it have been better if Ai Hayasaka told the truth and placed the blame on the guilty party, the one who had asked her to follow her stupid commands in the first place. Kaguya Shinomiya should have paid dearly for what she did. Miyuki Shirogane should have seen the truth for what it was.

But neither of those things happened.

"I am worried about you, Miura." Hikio said.

"I'm touched." She said sarcastically.

He decided to ignore it. "What happened in the associate student body today, it was really…something." He floundered for the right words. "I mean you punched the president, Miura! No one in their right mind does that."

Miura crossed her arms and pouted. "He's a man. He can take it."

Hikio ignored her again and continued. "Miura I think you are projecting your insecurities on to others." Hikio said. Then he tried to save his own ass. "Like Hayasaka said, you are looking to save other women who don't need saving. Just because you miscalculated and were wrong, doesn't mean everyone is wrong. Not every guy is Hayama. And not every woman is Miura."

Miura wouldn't let him have this victory. "You lied about Ai, Hikio." She said. "She doesn't love the president. It was a lie you told to work your magic and shift the focus back to Shirogane. But what you did, it achieved nothing. In the future, if Kaguya Shinomiya orders Ai to try to seduce the president again, she will do it. She will do it without a second thought about her own self." Yumiko didn't realize she was shouting. "Today, I wanted her to come clean, quit her job with that ice bitch and start fresh."

"What if she doesn't want to start fresh?" Hikio asked. "Sure it sounds nice, having a fresh start at life. But the sad thing about it is that there is no fresh start. The past never leaves your shadow. You are stuck with it."

Yumiko Miura glared at him. "So what you are saying is nothing will change."

Hikio looked like he was having trouble making up his mind. It looked like a part of him wanted to agree with the pessimist that was him while the other part, the one which knew Hayasaka, the one who helped her out of a spot of bother, it wanted to protest, disagree, form its own opinion.

"The status quo has to be maintained." Hikio mumbled more to himself. Then he looked at her eyes and there was something which flashed across his gaze. He at once looked a new man while also being his old self, the two coming together in harmony. "But when ready, people can change for themselves. We can't force it, we can't make them change for the sake of others. It won't be genuine."

Genuine, Miura rolled the word around in her head. What is genuine, she liked to ask, but something told her it was not the right time. No matter, she could wait and it was not like he was going anywhere. But she could see others showing up, uninvited, interfering, being bothersome.

It got on her nerve.

"Miura, this is Shouko Nishimiya."

Shouko Nishimiya was a beautiful woman. Petite build, having chest-length, dusty pinkish brown hair which fell down in waves, the bangs reaching the bridge of her nose and she had the loveliest brown eyes Miura had ever seen. There was something innocent about her, fragile yet strong. She was a living contradiction, a type of woman she had never seen, nor interacted with, nor known to exist in this campus. She looked like she belonged elsewhere, somewhere safe, somewhere away where she couldn't be hurt.

At the same time, Miura felt jealous. No, not because she seemed to know Hikio in her own way. It wasn't something so petty. But it was the naivety she exhumed, which reminded her of Yui, only it was far more pure, if that was even humanly possible.

No it wasn't. But here she was. A human being, a woman, and someone Hikio knew as well.

"Nice to meet you." Miura said with a wave.

Shouko Nishimiya smiled. The she turned to Hikio and started making these vague gestures with her hands. Only they were not vague as it appeared to her at a first glance. There was definitely more to it and it came to her a second later.

Sign language.

She was using sign language.

Which meant –

"You are deaf!"

Miura gasped and covered her mouth with both her hands. Shouko Nishimiya didn't look at her, but she noticed Hikio give her a withering look. Yumiko never felt more embarrassed.

"Sorry." She whispered.

"What are you whispering for?" Hikio asked. "She's deaf like you said."

Hikio better watch him mouth. If he thought she wouldn't punch him in the gut just because he happened to be in the presence of a deaf woman, then he had another thing coming. Of course he was no idiot and realized more than was needed to be said from one of her patented python stare.

He gulped audibly. But Shouko Nishimiya couldn't hear it. However, she turned around and came face to face with Miura…and her glare. However unlike Hikio she didn't look remotely frightened. She didn't even blink. Turning her head to the side and signing slowly with her fingers, she seemed to ask Hikio a question.

Hikio hiccupped, then coughed. If he was trying not to make it look like he wasn't laughing, he failed miserably. Miura felt her anger rise back to the surface. Did the deaf woman make fun of her, she couldn't let that slide, could she, Miura thought.

"What did she say?"

Hikio didn't stutter. "She asked whether your eyesight was weak."

Miura didn't get it. "Huh?"

Hikio chuckled and explained further. "You know, because you were narrowing your eyes and frowning like you had trouble reading something." Then to her shock, he joked. "You know she doesn't come with subtitles, right?"

"Hikio!"

"What? It's fine." Hikio said, smoothly. "I had this joke approved by her. She even laughed the first time I said it."

"She heard you say something?" Well maybe, she wasn't clinically deaf. Miura did notice she wore a hearing aid in one ear. But there wasn't one in the other. Strange, she thought.

"Nah, I sent her a text."

That would explain it – Wait.

"You two text each other?"

Shouko Nishimiya looked at her. Oh god, did her voice reach such a high pitch that even the deaf could hear her for a moment, Miura hoped not, because that would be extremely embarrassing. But no, it looks like she was guessing, sometimes turning to her and sometimes turning to him. From the looks of it, Shouko Nishimiya could also read lips. It helped that it was an especially bright and sunny day. This time, she was looking at Hikio.

"Well, how else would we communicate?" Hikio said. "I don't speak sign language."

Miura didn't believe him. She had good reason not to. "I just saw you use sign language, just now."

"Oh that's just the basics. She has been teaching me for a month now, since the start of the new semester. I'm a fast learner she says. And I have good instincts, and I made some educated guess." Hikio prattled on. "And I may or may not have been paraphrasing a little bit."

Again Miura didn't believe him. "What she said was pretty random. She asked if I had poor eyesight. That doesn't come up in day to day conversation, Hikio."

"Actually, it was one of the first things she said to me." Hikio said.

"I don't believe you." Miura said. "You were glaring at her!"

"No, no." He protested. "I was glaring at the bird who flew off with my piece of bread. I didn't have any left to feed the fish." He looked at Shouko Nishimiya. "Of course she didn't mind."

Yumiko Miura didn't know what to do. Hikio was acting weird. He was looking at the other woman like, like, he actually cared for her. And they have been talking with each other since the start of the semester. She was even teaching him sign language. And they had been texting each other.

And now Yumiko Miura was here with the two of them, feeling out of place, like a third wheel, like she was interrupting their date, which involved feeding the fishes and making this cute little eyes at each other. She had never seen Hikio this happy.

He was actually smiling.

He looked at peace.

"Nishimiya-san!"

But it seems like peace was too much to ask for today. The three of them would soon learn that Shouya Ishida had something to say to Shouko Nishimiya and he wouldn't be leaving today without saying his piece. Hachiman Hikigaya was wary. Yumiko Miura was confused. Shouko Nishimiya was frightened. And Shouya Ishida, he.. .he, needed closure.

A/N: Now the start of The Silent Voice Arc. Here are the options:

Option 1: Miura x Hachiman x Shouko Nishimiya. (Continue)

Option 2: Miura x Hachiman x Yuigahama.

Option 3: Miura x Hachiman x Rio Futaba.

Option 4: Miura x Hachiman x Eru Chitanda.

Option 5: Miura x Hachiman x Kurumu Kurono.

Please pick any of the above or suggest a character in the review.

Hope everyone enjoyed reading this chapter.

Leave lots and lots of reviews, follow and fave.

Won't betray your dreams.