Sunday, April 27th, 2014.
Er...so Samidare and I got caught. By that, I mean Shigure found out about our little hidden relationship. Damn, Shigure's a sharp one, I thought we were doing a pretty good job hiding the fact that we were going out until now. Houshou couldn't've told Shigure, 'cause she promised us that she wouldn't tell anyone.
Well, specifically, Samidare didn't get caught. What happened was during the morning, just before lunch, Samidare came into my office after teaching Yuudachi some tricks on how to brush her long hair well, and she gave me a morning hug and kiss, which I returned. Shigure had followed Samidare to my office because she was curious as to why Samidare was so happy to leave Yuudachi from their dorms. Shigure explained that she'd never seen Samidare make such a happy expression when she was by herself, heading to my office, and her suspicions were confirmed when she saw Samidare plant a kiss on my cheek, and I didn't look surprised or flustered. And when Samidare left to go to the kitchens to see if Houshou, Mamiya, and Irako needed any help with the food, Shigure came in after her and confronted me about it.
I didn't want to try to hide anything from Shigure. Knowing what she's done to me before (and what she's threatened to do to me, more specifically), I don't want to risk having her go full yandere on me next time. So I didn't try to play off Samidare and my relationship as some kind of joke. That would've just felt like I was doing Samidare dirty, anyway. I calmly told Shigure what we'd been up to until now.
Despite Shigure's Guilt Protocol being weaponized and contained to tolerable levels with her Kai 2, I knew that this instance had the potential to break her in and cause her to go haywire. After her Kai 2, Shigure had always been exceptionally kind to me. No matter what the situation, she's always give me that signature smile of hers. It's not just Shigure, all the girls whom I know have a liking towards me have their own little cute or beautiful smile that I've gotten to associate each of them with. In Samidare's case, she does the left head tilt and the closed eyes smile that exposes her teeth a little bit, and Shigure does the closed-lips, open eyes, and the right head tilt. But she's never tried stepping out of place like Samidare did to go that extra distance to strike up a relationship with me, even though she totally could've.
Luckily for my skin, Shigure didn't take my head out on a nice boat. Instead, she congratulated me on having found a successful relationship with her ship sister and asked me what I thought of Samidare. I explained everything that I wrote in my last two entries here to Shigure, my thoughts on Samidare as a young lady and a potential girlfriend and possibly even wife. I told her about my apprehensions about our relationship; the implications, the potential risks, and the somewhat sad realities that made our relationship, or any relationship I would have with any other ship girl, not just Samidare, really difficult.
But even for someone like me who's never been in a relationship before up until now, it's so easy to tell when a girl who likes you is trying to hide her disappointment from you. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't've been surprised if Shigure turned out to be the type to be able to hide her own true feelings the easiest, but that's not what happened. As she was congratulating me, Shigure had that sad, sad smile on - wistful is the word I'm looking for here. She looked wistful, like she missed out on an opportunity that she could've seized for herself but couldn't bring herself to do so just because of the kind of person she was.
So I asked Shigure what her feelings towards me was, and I asked her to answer me truthfully. Not an order, but just a personal request.
Turns out Shigure is the classic "keep your own feelings to yourself" type of girl, which honestly doesn't surprise me. She revealed that her Kai 2 surgery, when it fixed her Guilt Protocol, also corrected her turbulent emotional state in general. It sorted out all the complicated feelings that she had for me, eliminated all the questionable emotions, and kept all the safe ones, if you could even call it that, so Shigure admitted that she definitely had thought about perhaps growing our relationship. But every time she got a chance, Shigure always dissuaded herself from taking that leap, telling herself that I probably wasn't in any mood to grow any deeper relationships, that our own relationship should be more like that of a father and a daughter rather than boyfriend and girlfriend. But now that Shigure knew that Samidare had already taken me away, so to speak, Shigure insisted that I do everything I could to solidify my own relationship with her. It was more than enough, she said, if one of her own ship sisters could become a loved one of mine, and that she would do everything she could to support us from the background.
Before Shigure could find an excuse to leave, I quickly asked her if that was the best course of action she could think of doing for herself. Was merely "supporting us" something that she could be satisfied with? I told her that I had a feeling that she would be the kind to eventually succumb to the regret that she's feeling about not being able to get into a relationship with me quick enough and let the opportunity slip through her hands. I repeated to her that my relationship with Samidare wasn't necessarily a permanent one, and that both Samidare and I knew it.
I know that this sounds extremely harem eroge-esque, but I'm willing to shove all the standard conventions of relationship rights and wrongs to make sure that Shigure doesn't have another incident again. I said that if she was willing, Shigure, too, could have the same kind of relationship with me as I did with Samidare.
"This isn't some kind of eroge, Admiral," Shigure informed me. I told her that I was fully aware, thank you very much.
So Shigure asked me why I would try to go out of my way to try to make her happy too. After all, she'd nearly killed me before. She was afraid that if we were to get into a relationship of our own, she might allow herself to become too attached to me and eventually refuse to accept anyone else to get as close to me as she was. Shigure didn't want to go back to being her old self, so it would be better for everyone else involved if I just kept her out of this. Besides, I'd just gotten into my relationship with Samidare, I couldn't just go off and be unfaithful to her already, could I?
See, this's the part that I find really difficult to explain, and I didn't know how to word it to Shigure. Basically, it's that even though I do really enjoy Samidare's company and being, well, her boyfriend (let's not beat around the bush here), I don't want the thing I've got going on with her to come at the expense of someone else's, like Shigure's. I don't feel comfortable knowing that Shigure isn't able to develop her own relationship with me because it's already been taken by Samidare, especially now after I realize by looking at Shigure's reaction just how devastated she must feel. Maybe she's telling the truth about herself, that she can handle it. But personally, I don't think she can. I want to play it safe and make her happy too, before she blows up again later on down the road. I tried to explain this the best I could to Shigure, and I told her that I would talk with Samidare tonight about this situation, and then the two of them could discuss it as well. And now that I was going to get involved with Shigure too, I warned her that other ship girls might see what's going on, like Ooyodo, and want to get in on it too, so we'd all better be prepared in case this starts spiraling out of control.
The bottom line is, I just want my girls to be happy. And if maintaining several relationships at once is mandatory to ensure the well-being of my fleet, then I suppose I don't have any other choice. It's not like I'm exactly comfortable with polygamy or having multiple girlfriends in the first place, either. If I had a choice, I would just stick with one girl and see where I could go from there. But if I know another girl like Shigure might cry herself to sleep every night while Samidare's sleeping with me, I think I can sacrifice my own freedom of choice to make sure that Shigure doesn't have to go through that, or any other ship girl, for that matter.
Shigure gave me a hug. She said that if I felt like this was just simply too much work on my part, she wouldn't mind if I just stopped trying to do all of this. She claimed that Samidare was a much better girl to fall in love with, and that trying to make someone like herself happy would probably end in tragedy. I told her I'd risk it, because I felt Shigure was too sweet of a girl to simply ignore, and I'd feel terrible if she ever suffered because of my own conscious decision to go into a relationship with her own ship sister.
By the way, new drinking game, take a shot every time you read the word "relationship". Please don't die of alcohol poisoning.
With this being said, later on in the evening, I asked Samidare during dinner to come talk to me in my office after dinner was over, and we talked about Shigure. I explained everything to her about what we'd talked about after she'd left before lunch, and I asked her if she had any problems with me taking care of Shigure alongside her, and much to my surprise, Samidare asked me why I felt the need to ask for her permission to take care of her own ship sister. That stumped me hard. Well, isn't it 'cause normally, if you have a girlfriend, she'd be pissed off if you told her that you'd be getting another girlfriend? That normally sounds like you're dumping your current girlfriend to most girls, right? Apparently not to Samidare. Her logic was that she loved me enough to the point where I could make Shigure another one of my girlfriends and she wouldn't mind at all. The fact that Shigure was also her ship sister, though, she admitted, eased the process. Samidare also said that she knew I wasn't the kind of person to outright abandon her for another girl, that I was too earnest of a person to pull something that douchey on her. I don't know when Samidare became the world's greatest angel, but in any case, Samidare said that she would talk to Shigure and convince her that it was alright for her to grow her own relationship with me and not have to worry about it interfering with her own relationship with me.
Samidare said that she would bring Shigure to my room early tomorrow morning so that we could hear Shigure's official decision before we head off to Emerald Beach tomorrow. As much as I do want to make these girls happy, I really hope I can keep this under control. I wouldn't be surprised if this triggers some sort of mass chain reaction, and suddenly I find myself drowning in a sea of ship girls. I also really hope that Suzuya doesn't get a hold of this, otherwise it's going to be nonstop night battles for me until I leave.