First and foremost, I don't own or profit from Oregairu nor any other franchise I reference, yada yada you know the franchise is not mine.
Lads, second chapter of this story. Before you read it I would like you to bare with me a little, first I wanted to clarify that even though it started as a oneshot and actually was marked complete when first published I basically though fuck it, I'm making it a series. and addressing that, at first I thought this chapter was great, but after some rereads it seemed a little bit shit and a little bit cringe. So, I would wish you tell me your honest opinion, if you think its shit say so. I enjoy writing as a hobby so please fire away, granted, I will not change my style of writing because well... those are just my thoughts on a document, but if you think the monologues are shitty or tedious or the characters seem OOC do tell that.
Finally, although I did read some stuff on Japanese and Mexican history and culture if I write something incorrect please correct me, I think I'm fairly proficient in english as a second language, you shouldn't have problems understanding my words.
A conformist ballade
Yukinoshita Yukino POV:
Ah wonderful, a little over 10 hours of almost complete stillness with limited freedom of movement is certainly harmful for the well being of anyone's limbs and spine, it is most pleasant to finally be able to stretch my legs.
Not to mention it can't represent any benefit for my physiognomy. The company booked me tickets in the most spacious section of the aeroplane, but you can only concentrate so much on a pressurized metal can at several thousand meters in the air.
I wonder if my eyes look as dead and tired as those of Hachiman…
I unconsciously smirk, deep in the sea of my thoughts when I realize my phone has been going off, apparently my assistant could hear it, but that absurd tendency of monologuing and spacing out I picked up from him hasn't gone away.
*bzzt bzzzt*
"Moshi Moshi"
"Konnichiwa Yukino-chan"
"Nee-san"
"Na, Yukino-chan ¿are you home already? ¿Or are you in the car going home? I was thinking of summoning a meeting two days from now to pick up on your summit with providers in Australia and some data we picked up from operations in Sapporo. ¿Sounds good?"
"Wait, nee-san, please postpone this meeting for at least a day extension, you know I'm not the one to slack off but I need the day of rest after I arrive at Osaka and then head to the office to balance everything."
"Hoh, in other words you're beat"
"That would be the case, yes."
Oh thank the heavens, I can't even imagine how troubling it would be to immediately deal with that board of overpaid salarymen with quite the air of power around them. I can barely withstand nee-san as is.
"Wait wait wait, hang on Yukino-chan. ¿After you arrive in Osaka? ¿Aren't you there right now?"
Unbelievable, I informed her of this with prior anticipation to the purchase of the tickets.
"Nee-san, on several occasions I informed you of this, there were no flights available between Melbourne and Osaka. I'm not in Kansai, I'm currently at Narita…"
….
"¿Yukino-chan?" can be heard from the speaker of my phone
"¿Yukinoshita-san? ¿Is everything ok?" My assistant, the ever observant asks me something
"¿Hik…igaya-kun?"
I can't believe what I'm staring at, at first I come to the conclusion that I'm having some sort of psychedelic trance and picturing a handsome man with an ahoge and stare of the last pick in the supermarket of yesterday's catch in the middle of the airport.
"Yukino"
One word. One word was the requirement for what feels like an uppercut, my heart strings are twisted and I cringe at the fact that my very first instinct was to show distance by calling him by his family name as when we met. Yet after 3 years apart he still calls me by my given name, the name I adored hearing when it came from his vocal cords.
After a little dose of past times in the form of bickering and a deep gaze between us that felt like it only lasted for milliseconds he stopped himself from asking something, as he did specify he was about to depart and left running at full speed towards what I assume was his boarding gate.
"Yu-Yukinoshita-san" I heard a timid voice behind me
"Hmmm? ¿What is it Ikeda-kun?"
"Ermmm…y-your sister texted me to clarify, now that she knows you're in Tokyo she's sending a driver to get us, she says she'll be coming from HQ to receive you"
"I-I see, thanks for letting me know Ikeda-kun" I say a little numbly, who would've thought meeting him again would leave me so knocked out, it doesn't help that I am currently as red tinted as if I was engaging in internal spontaneous combustion, a free treat for this rowdy nouveau. I am in no means getting full of myself, but please, Ikeda-kun has been a nervous stuttering putty ever since we left for Australia, and in the office he's constantly sending me furtive looks. Some would think it's sweet but I'm not particularly amused, before I met Hachiman I had seen dozens like him, and Ikeda-kun doesn't really look like I would have to fear for my chastity, so I don't have to be cruel, but it's best if I don't feed his expectations.
I excuse myself to the bathroom to calm myself and move on, as much as I would like to run after him and just…talk with him, he probably already boarded and he's about to leave eastwards to a faraway foreign land.
As fast as we were reunited we are now separated again, to put it bluntly
I feel like shit.
Hikigaya Hachiman POV
"¿Where the fuck were you?" asks a somewhat bitter senior now on our seats in the economy zone of the plane currently awaiting a go for takeoff from control tower.
"Hai hai, Yurushite Kudasai" I shrugged off groggily
"Well at least we didn't lose the flight, I doubt the bosses would pay for us another ticket, it's a 13 hour flight you know?"
That's an awful lot of time besides you in these uncomfortable seats
"Not an issue, I can sleep it off" I obviously omitted my 'time unconscious is time well spent-dogma'
"That's seems like a stupid idea Hikigaya-kun, you'll get hit by jet lag like a wrecking ball"
"We're bound to some days of hurt anyways, people in Mexico drive, read and walk on the right side, and of course, finding a Japanese speaker will be like finding a ring at the ocean floor"
After that I tried to deploy one of my set of 126 loner skills, that is passing out as soon as possible, it will probably have some awful cooldown for this trip but I don't think I can bare to engage in small talk with Teshima-senpai for 13 hours and the sound of the pressure is not going to let me read at peace, I guess I can only seek God Morpheus to drown my sorrows in some good sleep.
Hachiman's dream POV
"It ends here Hachiman, just accept it. Sure, we had a grand time, but you'll have to carry me as a souvenir in your memory, not as luggage, or better yet, it will be best if you throw me out, that is what I will do with you for what it's worth."
"Y-Yukino ¿wha-what are you saying?"
"I am saying, Hach-no. Hikigaya-kun, that this…this little experiment we partake in must be deemed a failure, further questioning, research, hypothesis and data analysis are to be suspended immediately"
"¿Like that? ¿You just applied the scientific method on us? Yukino please. ¿What are the bases of this conclusion?"
"The basis for these results, Hikigaya-kun, is that my ambition is genuine, whilst you are not."
When we were just acquaintances I once told her that I could easily drop to my knees and beg, if I recall correctly it had something to do with Saika, in reality my pride is worth a little more, but I have never faced losing something more important in my life, if I have to grovel then so it is.
"Yukinoshita Yukino" I called her while I grab her right wrist and look at her dead in the eyes
"Look at me, please look at me with everything you can back your gaze with and tell me that this is what you want.-"
As I said this to her Yukino's mask broke apart, despite the craftiness of the Yukinoshita lineage at hiding themselves under a realistic persona of something they do not intend, I know the time we spent together meant something, that night on the bridge didn't even come close to what I have felt for her during these years, and I can bet my life that she feels the same for me
"- I…I can't muster up many things, when I say 'everything I hold dear' if I leave you out not much comes to mind, but if I got to know you after all this time, whether it's something childish as pan-san or something as big as your resolve to change this world, please, just please back your desire on them-"
Yukino is now looking at me with a most desperate look. I hate seeing her like this, I always did, even before promising to save her. Just observing Yukino look so desolate and frustrated was painful.
"-so please Yukino, I will not try to guilt trip you or extort you, but if I have to put something on the table or swing another magic ball, then just know, that I love you."
Yukino looks down and I can see tears streaming down her face, after she wipes her eyes with her sleeve in her free arm she returns my gaze.
This is it, I put my chips to the center and went all or nothing. I don't think Yukino will end it here, but I must be ready if she actually drops the guillotine upon me.
…
"Hikigaya-kun, gomenasai, but I must do this.
I insist you should forget about me and the time we had together, someone as marvelous as you doesn't deserve to be toyed with….please Hikigaya-kun, let go of us, we were not genuine and we won't be."
I am completely dumbfounded, in less than 10 minutes I feel like my life ended. All the pain, every rejection, every insult that was thrown at me, it will do the grocery shopping for the pain I will feel when I grasp what the fuck is happening.
Tears start coming from my eyes and I start having a bad rhinorrhea
"¿Wa-was I actually n-not genuine?" *sob*
Yukino opens her mouth but finds herself at a loss for words
*snort* "a-answer me yukino, you o-once told me t-that you never lie" I had come to corroborate that with the passage of time so I was waiting for the killer blow to arrive as soon as possible to end my agony.
Every second that my sobbing was turning into wailing I see Yukino cover her mouth as tears start running down her face again
She just frees her arm from my grip and goes off running, leaving me alone at the street of my apartment.
When she told me some nights before that she was going to Osaka permanently I was skeptical of a change of airs, but I was working as an independent writer, I could follow her to the ends of the earth if need be, but no early warning system or anti air defense could keep me safe from this bomb. It wasn't like this was out of the blue, she did look troubled for some time, and she only came clean with her intentions of leaving me recently, when I pressured to tell me what was wrong, when I tried to be genuine. And my mind was racing like Tsunoda Yuki, I was not angry, but desperate to understand the reasoning behind this. ¿Could her family be after us again? ¿Could she be cheating on me? ¿Did she actually stop loving me? ¿Was my life and everything that came with it not enough? I immediately thought of Haruno, Hayama or her mother. But I quickly put those dangerous and poisonous thoughts down. Yukino wouldn't betray me that hard.
But the questions still stood
¿What could it be? If it wasn't me
¿Who could've shown her more genuine love? If it wasn't me
¿Who erased me from her heart?
Hikigaya Hachiman POV (awake)
*diiiiiiing*
*gasp*
"Ah Hikigaya-kun, you're finally awake, the catering service started"
I turned my head around somewhat eagerly, as if to confirm I wasn't in that dark street both of my mind and the street in which that happened, of course I was in the plane bound to Mexico. I relaxed when I spotted the female All Nippon Airways staff giving out snacks.
"Tell me Hikigaya-kun, were you having a nightmare just now?"
A question like one my mom would ask me made me raise my eyebrow like that meme in which a bald american actor looks at you suspiciously Komachi sent me some time ago.
"I-I mean, not to intrude or treat you like a child, but honestly Hikigaya-kun, I saw your face like an hour ago and I could swear you looked as if you were being tortured."
Torture, nightmare. That they are, very lucid nightmares should I say
If they were lucid, why didn't I stop Yukino from leaving me or something like that is not a mystery. Every time I had this dream I always asked and said very similar things, because I can only fidget mentally with the problem. I try to find an explanation to all of this, think of it as that scene in interstellar when the astronaut desperately screams at his past self to not leave his daughter, it is the same thing at the end of the dream I repeated the same process expecting a different result, expecting answers, I expected her. Einstein would deem me as a madman, but I can only conform.
"I don't remember what I was dreaming about, probably something to do with tomatoes, I fucking hate them" I evade the truth
"Sumimasen ¿would you two care for some snacks before the actual meal is served? They are of course, free of charge" the ANA woman asks us
"Eh sure" my senior says to which I nod as a back up to his positive.
We are immediately presented with some weird bags of what I assume are chips, but I have never seen them, and they have foreign letters written on them.
"¿W-what the hell are these?" My senior asks
"¿Ta-kis? Chu-rru-ma-iz, ok trying to read that almost gave me a stroke, but it can't hurt to try them. Worst case scenario they taste like tomatoes, and this ones definitely taste like lemon, look. A lemon guy in the wrapper"
"Hold it Hikigaya-kun, that lemon guy has his tongue on fire and he's sweating, your wrapper is red unlike the pink one most passengers have with the same lemon guy, and look. It says something below what you read, fu…furamas?"
"It's pronounced flamas I assume, foreigners don't pronounce the ls as rs. Besides, don't be a pussy Teshima-senpai these are some cheap snack to munch, they're not gonna go full habanero on us"
12 minutes of actual masochist torture, 3 free water cups and one overpriced Calpis bottle later:
Holy shit, I forgot people in countries like India, China and of course Mexico train themselves to eat spicy stuff for hundreds of years, now that is a divergence not convenient for the japanese palate.
Yukinoshita Yukino POV
We were greeted by the chauffeur my sister sent for us. The rendezvous point for meeting with my sister was one of the properties she acquired in Tokio after we dropped Ikeda kun at the shinkansen station.
"¡Matane Yukinoshita-san!" ikeda-kun says while getting out of the car and I wave him goodbye
*sigh*
Ikeda-kun is not a lout, but I can't permit myself to break down in front of a younger coworker that stares at me with the eyes of a hormonal pubescent boy.
Hikigaya-kun…Hachiman… Ha…chi
And so like that I engaged in a debate with myself, with my very being, my two sides stating the facts and the carnal opinions.
And the facts are that my career in Osaka was not a mistake, but a bigger and more bloated fact is that leaving Hachi behind is the worst regret I have had in my entire life.
I will have to conform myself with what I said, and too, I will imagine that none of it was genuine, none of it was true.
¿What!? ¡No! Hachiman meant freedom, ¡Hachiman saved me and I saved him! We were a bond like no other. We just both tried to give, not take anything, in the end we both lost and destroyed our own free wills.
Don't ask more, I don't want to answer, I don't ask for anything else. If he's happy right now that's joyful. We can begin to perceive reality as how it is.
I can't accept that, I can't distort my life any longer if it's not by his side.
No matter, I can say what I want and there's no other way to make me understand, but whatever I was before, I'm not like that anymore. However it was before, I was not the first, I'm not going back.
I feel the desire to talk to him again, it's hard but it is the truth nonetheless.
Don't ask more, I don't want to answer, I don't ask for anything else…
This line of thought is obsolete, our time is uncertain and it has become our desert. I tried to hide my darkest thoughts from myself, I thought myself omnipotent and played mind games with no player competing against me.
I lost him forever ¿How does it feel? To pretend and not yield
"Errr… Yukinoshita-ojou-san" the chauffeur calls to me a little confused, looks like I was spacing out again.
"¿Ah? Yes I am sorry, what is it?
"We have arrived at our destination, mistress Yukinoshita Haruno will arrive shortly."
"Very well, thank you for the drive."
As I push the digital card nee-san provided me with in order to enter the condominium I start thinking again. Mexico…¿why on earth is Hachiman going to Mexico? I feel childish for immediately calling him a pervert upon meeting him again, but one part was true, I never thought he would leave Chiba with how much he loves it, and yet now he's bound to arrive in Mexico in a few hours ¿what could be the reason for this?When we parted ways I believe he was practicing freelance writing and publishing…Mexico has a record breaking problem of murdered journalist… Oh dear Gods no, my heart dropped at imagining something like that.
Then again ¿why would he leave Japan? He was dressed in business attire, a leisure trip seems out of the equation. To overcome his skepticism for extra work and getting him out of Chiba it must be something big.
Think Yukino, think… Mexico is one of our most important trade partners in the Americas, a lot of Japanese automotive corporations established themselves in Mexican soil…but that doesn't involve Hachi's line of work. Hmmmm I don't know much about other countries politics, but data I've read because of my father in the diet…their president seems stupidly incompetent, if I recall correctly they recently withdrew their office of commerce and trade affairs from Japan.
I am at a loss, I see no explanation as why would someone that makes a living off the ink of his soul would flee to…¡To observe! Hachiman worked at publishing, it's not far fetched if he's now working with a studio of animation or production of some sorts, he once told me something about human talkative communication using only about 60% of the actual communication that takes place with mannerisms, body language and all sorts of signals. I figure the same applies to cultures and peoples, if he was commissioned for a project involving Mexico, some books and web research might not cut it. It is not unheard of from film producers and writers to visit a country or province to get inspired or to portray a more accurate depiction of the land and my hypothesis turns out to be correct, that means he will most likely return to Japan eventually. I want to see him again…at least one more time. Of course I can always wait for him to go back to Chiba, I often visit my hometown, and of course I could ask Komachi-san. I haven't engaged in conversation with her in a long time, but maybe she will…No.
It wouldn't come as surprising if Komachi-san started to resent me after I cut my relationship with her brother short,and I would be depending on someone else to fight my battles, it seems like I never learn, I can never grow. Hachiman organized a bloody prom by himself in order to not lose me and I threw all his efforts away. I can't afford to come back to him in the same sorry state he found me in when I was about to break down. I need to find him, I have no idea how I will manage to find a man in a country with a population as big as Japan's an ocean away, but I have to find him.
Trying to put this on fate and luck is rather childish, but we are talking about the man that once took one of the ribbons I used back in preparatory school and tied it to his finger calling it a 'red string of fate'. We are talking about the man that I should have never let go of. We are talking about Hikigaya Hachiman, the man I love to this day.
*click*
"¡Heya Yukino-chan!" my sister finally arrives at her own place.
"Nee-san, you're here."
"Of course I am here silly, these days the times we can sit down and chat about something other than business are rare, so don't you mind if I do hehe"
I bring my hand to my chest
"Nee-san, I have requested more than once that you refrain from acting like that, I think we can agree it brings bad memories to the both of us."
"Hai, Hai sorry for being an asshole back in the day, I apologize for the umpteenth time" she halfheartedly bows and I shrug it off.
"So, ¿Whatchu wanna do Yukino-chan? ¿Care to play some music with me? Or would you prefer to watch a movie or something, let's try to relax a little bit before we have to deal with the asshats of the board."
"That would be most lovely" I need to say it, I need to do this.
"Actually nee-san"
"Hmm?"
"Before we can spend some good time I actually did want to talk about something company related first." I can't conform to how I left things anymore.
" ¿Really? Well be quick please , I was starting to get in a good mood."
"Yes, I promise it will be brief" I assure her
"Fire away then."
"I… I was thinking that… I was thinking that I want to experiment on a venture in Mexico."
Next Chapter: In Mexico or Tokyo or washing your feet in the Baltic Sea