In this lecture series, one of the very few aspects of storytelling that has, so far, been not thoroughly explored to the most exacting and rigorous of academic standards is the original soundtrack.
It is a somewhat forgivable oversight, given that we've covered both light novels and manga, which are forms of narrative that don't supply any music save what the readers themselves may provide, yet is also an unfairness given how pivotal and iconic this aspect of media can be.
Who could forget, after all, the cheerful jingle that you and your chosen companions vigorously shake your fists up and down to after murdering a random creature that is, more often than not, cute enough that realistic violence would engender some very mixed feelings in the player? Who does not smile fondly at the few uplifting notes that accompany the long-eared kleptomaniac triumphantly raising up yet another one of his 'acquired' treasures? Who hasn't hummed under their breaths a completely nonsensical 'Cha-La Head-Cha-La' that is, nonetheless, far more meaningful than about ninety-nine percent of the numbers given in the series?
Who hasn't discovered that Hiroyuki Sawano makes everything epic just with a few bars?
Who hasn't learned that rap is a man's soul after being told to 'Row, Row, Fight tha Powah?'
And, on the more cultured side of the spectrum, who doesn't scratch their head in utter puzzlement at Overdrive's eroges having the kind of soundtrack that makes many anime studios green with both envy and shattered inkwells?
So, yes, music is important. It gives emotional cues that guide us along the scenes, gently and unseen, as it lifts us or drowns us. It nuances what is there, hints at what we don't see, and prepares us for what is to come.
Music is, itself, one of the arts of sequence, of time, appreciated only in its passing, in the feelings that flow through us as it caresses our minds and hearts. Our very souls.
So, after this in-depth analysis of the subject at hand, ready with hard-won knowledge carved into my very soul by hours and hours in front of a merciless machine full of murder simulators, it is with no hyperbole at all that I claim what I'm hearing right now is… Boss Music.
"Well?" Principal Inoue, the literal boss of the school, unless I've been sadly unaware of the Student Council President getting up to shady shenanigans, says.
Shenanigans that don't involve me and a hentai blackmail plot, I mean.
So, yes, here I am, facing what may be the most powerful person capable of making things [uncomfortable] for both Shizu and me.
And I only have my glib tongue, easy charm, and disarming smile to save us.
… We are doomed.
"I'm terribly sorry about my behavior. I was distressed and acted out. I will take any punishment you deem adequate," I say with the quintessential salaryman deference for my superiors that I may, or not, have learned through sheer osmosis and a doormat parent figure.
You know, the one who doesn't look like she used to lead a squad of high school delinquents with long skirts that could have used yoyos as weapons.
…
Let's erase that mental image right now. Ugh. [Gross].
"Distressed, you say," the gray-haired man sitting on a green leather chair behind a dark wooden desk and in front of a window that sadly doesn't show a spiral galaxy while a Gregorian choir chants in the background says.
I nod.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
I don't nod.
He meets my eyes, which I've often been told is not a pleasant experience, and keeps staring at me over the black rim of his thin, square glasses.
I don't know what he sees, but he finally takes them off with a sigh, neatly folds them, and tucks them into his jacket's breast pocket before he leans back to sink into the plush leather.
Disappointingly, throughout the whole process, his glasses don't glint.
Though I can see a few sparkles shining through gray, sparse hair…
"Mister Hikigaya, while I can understand being upset on behalf of… [others], my first and foremost concern will always be toward my students," he says with a leading tone that begs me to fill the silence.
It takes effort not to.
Effort spent, mostly, in not laughing in his face.
I can feel the ugly thing bubbling up. The same laugh I let out after I made Sagami cry her heart out. The same bitter sound that I've mocked so many with.
The laughter a part of me hoped was no longer there.
"I am sure you're doing your best, sir," I finally reply with as flat a tone as I can manage.
He has the gall to cock his eyebrow at me.
"Thank you for your reassurance, Hikigaya. It warms my heart to feel so appreciated by my charges," he says.
Okay, that is… unexpected.
['You're not the only one with a sarcastic sense of humor, you know?']
I do, but I usually tend to associate such a trait with women who may be trying to murder me through sheer dehydration.
['The perfect crime. All the evidence left behind would be too gross for the investigators to consider.']
I know. Haruno's criminal genius is devious, as expected.
"Are you just going to silently stare at me until I get fed up with you?" the principal asks.
"Everything I say can and will be used against me," I automatically answer in what, maybe, doesn't constitute utter, appeasing subservience.
"American dramas aside, you seem to believe that line is more than just a legality."
I cock an eyebrow at him.
I can [feel] Inner Shizu facepalming.
"With all due respect, sir, do you even know me?" I point out.
The man almost but not quite slouching on his armchair rolls his eyes.
"Do you know how many students there are in this school, Hikigaya?" he asks with his eyes closed and continues before I can answer. "Thirty classes. Thirty classes with an average of thirty-five students per class, and that's just because the special J classes drop the average substantially. That's a thousand and fifty students, [Hikigaya]," he says as his eyes open and pierce right through mine. "And out of those literal thousands of students I've been tasked with, not a single one has ever been as disruptive as the one sitting in front of me. [Of course] I know you."
I… blink at him.
"Haruno Yukinoshita—"
"Was far more discreet in her outrageous subverting of this institution. She rarely plotted to have a student publicly break down."
"Ah."
"She also didn't craft a fake student election campaign."
"Really."
"Nor had our sister school call in protest after their representatives were all but traumatized by a poorly aimed Yukinoshita."
"I think it would be rather unfair to pin that one on me—"
"What else? Ah, yes, Haruno Yukinoshita did never appear in pictures such as [these]," he says.
And quickly takes out of the right drawer of his pretentiously mahogany desk a fan of photos that spin over the countertop until they land in front of me.
I was already prepared to see them, as Shizu had decided, for unfair, possibly slanderous reasons, that I should be thoroughly coached so as to avoid me raising Hell when confronted by something unexpected, so I barely devote any mental energy to browsing through the already described pictures that point at something scandalous without any concrete evidence.
None that can't be dispelled with the confident testimony of the parties involved.
Instead, what most of my mental energy is devoted to is [not reacting to Principal Inoue claiming that Haruno is, at all, more discreet than I am in her dealings with Shizu.]
I fear it shall drain too much of my available mental strength.
['Keep insulting me like that. See what happens.']
Brain-chan, at the risk of taunting Murphy himself, I really don't see how you could make this morning [substantially] worse.
['Oh gods. You are a moron.']
"Well? Do I know you, Hikigaya?" Inoue asks.
And I look up from the picture of a cheerful Iroha standing by my side and to a man who's suddenly lost any air of relaxation as he leans forward, over his desk, toward me.
Pale skin, sunken cheeks. He would make a pretty good salaryman.
"Not in the slightest, sir," I answer.
"Really?" he asks with a guileless, almost affable, raised eyebrow.
"Yup. Not at all," I tell him, mirroring his casual non-verbal language and lowering the degree of formality.
And, look, I could easily claim that I do so because it's the smart thing to do. That taking the cues from your conversational adversary and adopting them in a natural, seamless manner engenders feelings of kinship, or, at least, that's what those papers I once read in a desperate bid to understand what was wrong with me and why I never fit in said.
I [could] claim that.
It would be a lie, though.
Because this is all but seamless. This is mocking. Insulting.
And I'm just [royally] pissed off at somebody showing me yet again proof that somebody entertained the idea of Iroha being raped and didn't think to do anything but document the event.
"Maybe I should call your mother and have her—"
"See? That, right there? That's not knowing me. Or knowing me well enough to push all the right buttons to get me so angry that I will say something incriminating that you've been waiting to pounce on since the interrogation started."
"I am not a cop, Hikigaya—"
"Of course you aren't. I never said this was a [legal] interrogation."
He stares at me in silence, waiting for… I don't know. Me to keep talking, to dig my own grave, I guess.
More than I already have, I mean.
"You have been, despite all your idiosyncrasies, quite a good student so far. Your grades are good enough, particularly in Japanese, that I was never that worried about your future prospects, and your somewhat frequent outbursts were, I was told, swiftly dealt with by the teacher who was supposed to be in charge of you," he says.
Then he looks at the pictures.
And back up at me.
Damn it.
"How many suicide cases have you ever dealt with?" I finally ask.
And he stiffens.
"I won't say a number."
"Ah. That many, huh?"
"Hikigaya, that is not a subject to make light of."
"No. No, it isn't. I should know."
He looks at me.
And then leans away, this time slumping fully on his chair, looking up at the ceiling before sighing and forcing himself to, yet again, meet my eyes.
"If you need help, tell me. If this is a poor attempt at manipulation, back off before I get furious."
And now I lean forward.
Elbows on top of the table, sitting on the edge of the black leather chair, palms spread on the countertop with thumbs and forefinger in a triangle that would make a certain triclops wonder if he should get a new disciple.
Look, at least I can count without needing my fingers, Tien Shin. And I have fewer suicidal urges than the pale creep.
At the moment.
"If I need help? I [needed] help. I needed it for years, but I couldn't even show it, because people needed me to be the strong, reliable one, or the pariah to mock, or quite a few things that were never about me, but about them. I needed help desperately. And I was given it. I was [saved]. Not by you. Not by your school. Not by my [mother]. I was saved by the woman these photos are trying to incriminate. I was drawn out of the downward spiral I'd been in for years and forced to interact with people I never even acknowledged as [human] before this all started. I was allowed to see how my methods, my hatred of society [worked]… and how they didn't. How I fell short. How people had come to care for me and how I hurt them when I hurt myself. And for somebody like me? That's the one thing that could pull me away from idle fantasies about escaping it all. The idea that those left behind would [hurt]. That [I] would be the one hurting them."
This is all exaggerated. A dramatization. Me putting forward the worst-case scenario to paint Shizu in the best light possible.
…
This would be a really good time to throw in a mood-breaking joke, Brain-chan.
"[If] this is true, it won't go away just because you're in a better place. What you're talking about leaves scars, Hikigaya. You need—"
"I need a lot of things. I need my little sister to remain as adorable as she's always been for me to have someone to protect. I need my [mother] to keep clumsily trying to learn how to be a human being. I need my father to sometimes remember that there's a family waiting at home. I need my classmates to remind me that they are people, and not stereotypes for me to casually dismiss. I need Yukinoshita and Yuigahama to be safe. And I need Shizuka Hiratsuka to be recognized as the single greatest teacher that has ever graced this dehumanizing place."
"Really?" he says, straightening up, eyebrow yet again rising.
"Really. Sir."
His elbows also rest on the desktop, fingers massaging closed eyes before he lets out a dragged-out sigh.
"I am not your enemy," he says, like an enemy would, still rubbing shallow circles over closed lids. "I could justifiably do more than I've already done, and the school board would applaud me for swiftly avoiding a scandal before it got out of hand."
He looks at me with solemn seriousness as his fingertips slide down his face until they are joined in front of his lips in something that almost looks like prayer.
I remember [some] things that have happened at this school regarding a certain Christmas Cake, the line 'before it got out of hand' echoing in my head superposed with certain events involving hands and other body parts, and I try to not break out in nervous sweat.
"Why haven't you?" I say instead.
There's yet another silence as he looks at me, [really] looks at me, and he seems to make a decision.
"Honestly? I'm not even sure. If this was a male teacher and Yukino Yukinoshita, I'd likely have already fired him or called the police, so I suppose a measure of double standards is playing a hand in my decision. But this is not a male teacher taking advantage of a lonely girl, is it?"
"Not at all," I immediately reply without even commenting on the likely short lifespan of anyone who tried that on Yukino.
Yui doesn't look like she's into NTR. Or all that merciful.
"But, would Yukinoshita say the same thing, were she in that chair where you're sitting, talking about an adult with undue influence over her? Would I believe her if she did?"
"With all due respect, and I realize just how condescending it is to use that opener twice in the same conversation, it is very unlikely that you wouldn't believe whatever Yukino Yukinoshita wanted you to believe."
Inoue snorts.
It sounds… human.
"That may be. Gods know how her sister has instructed her." Don't say anything, don't say [anything at all, Hikigaya, you moron—] "Still… that's only part of it. I know Hiratsuka as an individual. It is very hard for me to believe that she would ever do something truly… hurtful."
"She has a mean right cross," I reflexively say. Like a moron.
Which causes yet another graying eyebrow to rise.
"While that's not what I was alluding to, I'll make a note not to challenge her to a boxing match."
"That would be wise. Particularly given that she's now cross-training in Muay Thai. "
"… Of all the things I expected to learn during this conversation, Hiratsuka's martial style was not chief among them."
"Know yourself, know your enemy, and you shall be undefeated in a hundred battles," I wisely tell him with the acknowledging nod reserved for pupils who are finally taking a step toward enlightenment.
For some reason I surely can't understand, Inoue snorts.
"More than a thousand students, Hikigaya. I can't know them all," he says with a bitter tone that…
That finally makes things click.
"You can't. You had to take a step back and prioritize. To trust others, the teachers who are closer to them, to do that job for you while you cared for the school as a whole."
"That is an administrator's job, yes."
"Obvious enough, isn't it? Except you never wanted this. You wanted to [care]. Not for numbers. Not for whatever it is that the board or the parents demand of you. Not for the prestige of Sobu High. You wanted to care for individuals."
"I am not here to be analyzed by [you]."
"No. No, you are here because my earlier outburst gave you an excuse to really learn whether or not you could [help]. Because that's what you want to do despite having your hands tied. Despite knowing how horribly this could all backfire."
"And what is [this], Hikigaya?"
I open my mouth.
And close it.
['Miracles do happen.']
Shut up, Brain-chan. You weren't there when I truly needed you.
['That line has sooo many layers…']
"This…" I start to say, frantically scrambling for the safest way to continue, "this is a teacher behaving inappropriately with a student by taking an active role in his life and interacting outside the mandated social structure so as to make sure said student doesn't become the Japanese Unabomber."
Inoue, once again, snorts.
"I read that bear essay," he says.
"That is going to haunt me all of my life, isn't it?"
"Let's just say that, if you ever go into politics, I've got leverage."
I look at him. At the balding man with gray hair and sunken cheeks wearing a gray suit.
And nod.
"I can live with that," I tell him.
He looks down at the pictures lying on dark wood between us before meeting my eyes yet again.
And nods.
"I hope so. I truly hope so," he says.
***
So.
The lunch period.
The lunch period in which I manage to somewhat dodge Yui, Sagami, and, for some reason I'd rather not think about, [Hayama].
A period of solitude and reflection, one that, according to any stories about high school outcasts I could care to mention, I should be spending in the cool, soothing, secluded recesses of the school toilets, pathetically sitting on the cover while hunched over my lunchbox.
I am, instead, sitting in another secluded spot. One near the tennis courts, one that I learned the wind patterns of long ago.
One that very few people come to. A perfectly isolated place that most of the social students in Sobu High would avoid because why would they choose not to spend their free time with their friends and youthful rivals rather than alone in monk-like silence?
In reflection, this all makes this a spot seemingly designed for a crime scene to occur.
"Why did nobody [tell me?"] Iroha cutely growls, staring straight at me, pulling me down by a tie that is quickly reminding me of precisely how much it resembles a noose in both form and function, and forcing me to her eye level.
I sweat nervously. Panic. Try to come up with an excuse.
And then I kiss her.
I surround her waist with my arms, pulling her close to me as she muffles out a wordless protest, and I raise her up, her body flush to mine, her lips opening to accept my tongue as I start with something rushed and end up just languidly taking from her all the reassurance I can find.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, my eyes closed, my forehead against hers.
"You will be," she promises, her fingers threading through my hair.
And then she kisses me, and, for a few moments, I can forget everything in the world that doesn't have to do with my foxiest junior, her lips, her sighs, and the way that her touches are sometimes tender enough that I could just sob in relief.
==================
This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/all-right-fine-ill-take-you-oregairu.15676/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 96 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).
Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Brain-chan's intrusions into Hachiman's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance
Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and 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 https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!