Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ From Beta To Sigma ❯ Endings ( Chapter 6 )

Not having a place to park my motorcycle I continued to take the bus to school until the final day. I’d worked on my valedictorian speech. It’s slightly unfair that someone who doesn’t much care has to give this talk for the simple reason I’d gotten the highest grades by the end of school, but I imagine someone as publically shy and frosty as Yukinoshita wouldn’t enjoy it much either. I could write it out here but I will simply say I reminded them to remember the fundamentals of what makes them who they are, and to focus on that going forward in whatever direction their lives take. Since we weren’t actually graduating from high school but stepping back from most classes and all social activity to cram for entrance exams all year, the whole point is largely lost, as far as I am concerned. Japanese education is broken. Cram for university requires you prove you know most of what they want you to know before you attend the classes at the university where you are supposed to learn it, so its implied time travel or some other bull crap. I’ve read in normal countries that your exams are pretty perfunctory and you learn the skill AT the university, not before you attend it. My people are nuts. Having this confirmed internationally is somewhat humiliating, especially when the great minds of the world all agree on this point.

We said our formal good byes to the teaching staff and I stepped off the podium to rejoin the student body quietly, letting this ceremony wind down. I wonder if I would have more feelings about this high school experience if I’d made actual friends? Yukinoshita has been distant since the camping trip and Yuigahama pensive, which could mean anything. We might see each other around, but now that we’ve graduated we aren’t required to attend the school in person. Most cram students either go to cram schools that specifically prep for the universities they are applying for or otherwise stay home with the needed resources… or quit the education game and get a job. Soubu being a reasonably prestigious academic foundation school, a ladder school if you know the right people, was able to brag about where its students went to university, and what jobs and government positions they gained afterwards.

“Hikki?” asked a gentle Yuigahama pulling at my sleeve. “Are you coming to the celebration party?”

I sighed. Another obligation for my time. I wanted to hop on my motorcycle and ride until I got tired, camp, and ride further, camp again, and make my way to Nagasaki, in the far West of the country. I wanted to see more to inspire myself. I can’t see what I want from life to be something a nice girl like Yui could understand, much less want for herself. She was destined to be a housewife, I think. Better than the alternatives.

“Oh, sure. Where are we meeting?” I asked her. She told me. “Is this formal or can we get into more comfortable clothes?”

“I think we’re supposed to wear our uniforms, one last time,” she said. She barely fit in hers. She’d become very womanly shaped compared to when we first met and she wanted help baking cookies.

The venue was not far, so we walked there. My knee was healed and did not hurt, thankfully. Yuigahama made polite conversation in her cheerful oblivious way. A nice girl. I hope she found someone who liked her properly. I noticed others from our class strolling the same direction, some chattering, some thoughtful and silent like Saki.

“How did your trip go with Yukino?” she finally asked me, looking very nervous. “She won’t say. Did something happen?”

“We had a nice trip. It was very peaceful there. I think she wanted something to happen but I’m not the beast she thought I am, so she’s disappointed,” I answered. I had thought about this a lot in the last few weeks since the trip and used my resources to decode her behavior. She’d gone expecting to lose her virginity, probably as a rebellious act against her controlling mother, but I hadn’t taken the bait and she now feels like less of a woman.

“Oh… that’s…that’s. I don’t know what to say,” Yuigahama answered with more delicacy than I expected. And confusion.

A black limousine passed by on the street, carrying our erstwhile friend and turned into the venue ahead of us. So she’d be there.

“I think we got a glimpse of a fraction of the life Yukino lives, and more from Haruno, and it seems very alien to the daily life ordinary people like us lead. We aren’t here to impress people. She is. I think she wanted to rebel a bit, see what life is like for ordinary people but it might not live up to her expectations. Real life isn’t an exciting adventure romance, you know?” I explained. Yui nodded, thoughtful.

“Did you know that Japan’s birth rate is really low, and many people don’t get married or have kids?” I asked her. She blushed, nodded.

“Did you know why this is?” I asked her. She paused, then shook her head no, wondering where this was going.

“It’s because nobody can buy a house with the pay being offered by the jobs in Japan today. Without a house, raising a child in an apartment and the noise complaints make that very difficult. A crying baby is a fast way to get evicted. The reason there aren’t more people living in the countryside and villages is farming jobs pay almost nothing, even though people need food to eat. Low price for rice is due to imported rice being cheaper than we can grow it. There are no subsidies, so the farmers are barely surviving. With no money, they can’t branch out into related disciplines or education that leads to local jobs, so all the jobs have centralized into places like Tokyo, where rents are the highest and there are no homes to buy. Our nation has perfected and refined unaffordable housing and made marriage impossible. Someday you’ll get married, get pregnant, have a child you want to raise and protect and nurture. This is obvious to me. You’ll be a good mother. But Japan will make things very hard for you and your husband, having to choose life far from work, and a long expensive commute that makes you poorer, or a job that pays nothing but you can be a family together. That’s a terrible choice, and one the few families that are still trying for normal life have to make. Until our nation decentralizes its industries and changes its land laws so you buy the land under the home, not just the house and lease from a mean old grandma who will jack up the rate once you get settled, until then, nice girls like you are going to suffer,” I explained.

“I can see why you didn’t give that speech as your valedictorian address. It would have upset a lot of officials. Particularly since Yukino’s family was in the audience,” answered Yuigahama, reminding me she wasn’t actually dumb. She played dumb, because that helped her get along socially, but she passed the tests and her grades were in the middle for our year.

“I hope you are wrong about that,” said Saki, now close behind us.

“I wish. I’ve gotten good at researching statistics. Our siblings are going to have it rough if they marry each other.”

“Eh?” complained Yuigahama in surprise. “Marry?”

“My sister is dating her brother for the last few years,” I explained. Yui flushed again.

“Unless they outlaw marriage,” delivered Saki, smoking a cigarette before entering the venue.

“If they do we’ll be outlaw inlaws,” I finished the line. Saki grinned. So did I. I’d gotten used to her, and her little sister. Yui knew enough English to get the joke.

“That’s a pun!” she complained, outraged by the terrible joke. Saki finished her cigarette and stubbed it out.

“Let’s attend this party and finish our obligations. I want to see my family,” Saki said, gesturing. I held the door for the two women and then followed them in. The formal party had lots of camera flashes. Lots of parents posing with their graduated children, now mostly adults, though not officially until they were 20. They could legally marry, I supposed, but most would not. The statistics for Japan were more brutal than I’d told Yui. Our nation is past the peak of its sustainable reproduction. It would die back over the next few decades to a very small population. Perhaps when enough grandmas were dead the property laws could be changed into something a Western nation would consider acceptable and maybe Japan’s very close minded ideas on foreigners would relax. It needed fresh blood and new ideas rather than the usual corruption and inbreeding and concentration of power to people who consistently got things wrong. People like Yukinoshita’s parents.

Yui and I waited as the various newspapers with their press passes showing and a couple bodyguards obstrusively stood like samurai with bulges under their suits, protecting Diet upper house member Yukinoshita and his deadly wife, Yukino’s mother. Haruno was wearing formal kimono and looking exactly like what she wasn’t: pure, mysterious, and delicious. A lot of adjectives a man’s mind could take him if he wasn’t careful. I quickly ran through my Stoic exercises bringing my libido under control. In coming years Yukino may blossom out like that. Or she may continue as an icy princess, undernourished and cold. I do not know. I probably won’t ever know, now.

Yui and I waited, Saki lingering nearby. I could smell the smoke wafting off her uniform. She wasn’t joking about wanting to get back to her family. She lived for her siblings care, despite looking like a yankee. If I weren’t aware of the madness which afflicts men, I would probably have dated her. Yui gripped my sleeve nervously. When the cameras finished and statements were taken Yui darted forward and hugged Yukino fiercely. I stood back watching the friends exchange emotional greetings.

I am cold in my way, too. I have to be, or I’ll get stabbed by the fishhook every woman conceals, of marriage and child support and mortgage payments and the job which sucks the very life from you. My parents had taught me by their absence. The corporate salaryman suffers and gains little for it. And the companies they work for, fail. You can’t work for your family if you rarely see them. It is so obvious.

“Hachiman,” greeted Yukino politely. “Your speech was rather generic.”

“Would you have told them the truth?” I asked her. “Doom and gloom with cameras recording the event, and your father watching? I have more sense than that. People want generic and forgettable nonsense which soothes their sense of self-worth, validates their insipid beliefs. They are fake, as we know. All our service club activities proved that.”

“What a marvelously poisonous thing to say,” said a venomous female voice. Her mother loomed out of the shadows, hearing sharp. “Yukino, who is this young man?” she asked our friend.

“Hikigaya Hachiman, our male club mate,” she introduced. “This is my mother, Narusei-san.” I bowed respectfully and she bowed less, because of status differences.

“So, this is the boy who dared to carry my precious daughter into the wilderness?” she accused.

“A little ride in the country,” I confirmed.

“I suppose I should be grateful you did not despoil her and she’s gotten it out of her system now,” Narusei commented, piercing gaze accusing, seeking weakness. I stared back.

“Did Yukino mention I’ve been working as a librarian for the last year, so I could pay for my motorcycle?” I asked her.

“No,” she answered.

“I loan a lot of romance novels out to middle aged women. They’re the most popular thing we have. All the way back to illustrated versions of the Tale of Genji. Women like romance, seeking a passionate experience with the Bad Boy archetype, but they settle down with the Nice Guy afterwards. If there is ever a genetic survey of the entire population, I wonder how many fathers will be shocked to learn their first born is some other man’s child?” My eyes flipped briefly to Haruno, chatting with her father. Narusei’s eyes narrowed, very briefly at the insinuation.

“It is a good thing that Medical privacy laws forbid such intrusions,” she eventually answered. “Unpleasant discoveries would be very disruptive.” She floated away, taking her husband’s arm and gestured for Yukino to mingle. The power couple found a table, with good lighting and greeted various parents and school board members and even Sensei turned up in an evening gown. She was trying too hard, as usual.

“That was very rude, Hachiman, but I suppose you just can’t help yourself. She was goading you,” she insisted.

“Do you want your riding suit and camping gear back? You might find a guy you like going with more than me,” I asked her, changing the subject.

“Keep them. Maybe some girl will want to travel with you in the future,” she said, ignoring the cost of the things. I sighed, thanked her just the same despite the casual insult I’d grown to expect since our very first meeting, and mingled.

All these people I barely knew. Many I’d helped against all reason. The school trip last year had been a disaster for the club, attempting to interfere in a complicated unwanted love confession from a guy I disliked, Yukino despised, and the girl in question pre-rejecting and asking for help to turn him down without destroying their group. We’d turned down the request entirely, and the rejection had apparently gone poorly, causing Ebina Hina to withdraw from her close association and the usual riajuu looming over her had to change their positions. She’d gone from the protagonist chair to one of the middle seats, between the Girlish Boy and Saki. She kept her nosebleeds to herself, for once, and was much subdued. I felt it was an improvement, and a year later at our graduation party, seeing her standing in the shadows looking sad as their social group said their goodbyes and lied about keeping in touch forever, I could see another cat lady in the making. I don’t know what she’ll do with her life, as even Drills had failed to turn Smiley into a steady boyfriend or husband. He would abandon her, and his dumb jock friends, and find another productive group to smile for, to use for his goals, to blend in.

Music started up and some couples danced together, maybe for the last time. Other classes might get some marriages out of their school romances, but most would be over in a mere two years. I guess that’s all there is. Years together every day and we still separate like it was nothing much. My readings on women were again confirmed by actual experience. I danced with Yui at her insistence, and Yukino did so out of obligation, then we parted and that was it.

I made my excuses as early as I could and escorted Saki to her home in the evening. It was chilly and there was plenty of traffic moving. Saki smoked and we didn’t have much to say. My sister was at the Kawasaki home. I said my hellos to the family, including Taishi and little Saika, who hugged my waist as usual. She’s a cute little girl, as they are, and her family and Saki doted on her. She reminded me of Komachi when she was little, back when I realized I’d need to care for her because Mom and Dad weren’t going to be home in time to cook dinner or put us to bed. Because that’s what the marriage trap did. Was Komachi going to be a happy wife with happy children or would the long hours ruin their marriage and leave her a bitter divorced single mom?

I didn’t know, and there’s little I can do about it. This is her choice, and she was old enough to be making it.