Shounen, like life, is pain.
Training from Hell? It's everywhere. The most famous alien race in manga gets more powerful by being beaten almost to death. A main character punching rocks stopped being hardcore by the time we discovered much denser and more challenging materials, such as a harem lead's skull. Crippling injuries that would be career-enders in any sane situation are treated as part of the learning process.
Really, it's a wonder that there aren't more leather-corset-wearing, laughing maniacs with optional riding crop attachment and kung-fu grip action. It's like the entire thing is built upon the premise that suffering is, despite our ancestral Buddhist culture, something to be sought, a virtue in and of itself rather than something to attain detachment from.
Or maybe that's it? Maybe shounen, in its oft-disguised wisdom, wit, and any other virtue one may care to project upon it despite common sense warning otherwise, is teaching us that suffering is inevitable. That pain will always find us. That there's no escape from the inherent quality of Samsara, the plane of sensation, of attachment, that, as long as we live, we'll have to endure.
That it's not about fleeing from pain, but about taking it in stride, accepting it for what it is. Something that happens and fades away like all of existence. Like life itself.
What do you think, Brain-chan?
'Sure. Sounds good. Whatever.'
Right. I was expecting more insight from one such as you.
'Okay, here's my own hard-earned wisdom, distilled from shounen-like travails.'
I'm waiting on pins and needles for the revelation.
'As you should. It is simple yet profound, like everything a wise, old, assholishly cryptic ancient master shall ever teach.'
Ah, truly, the expectation is killing me.
'Nope. That's not the expectation. That is, in fact, the very reason for my teaching: we're never getting drunk ever again.'
How wise. How insightful. How astonishingly deep.
'How fucking much I hate being hungover.'
Yeah. Me too.
'I despise that we're in agreement.'
You know what I despise even more? The absolute certainty that I can't go back to sleep.
Seriously, my eyelids feel like they're glued together, my temples throb like sound effects in plenty of doujins would have me believe cocks do, my tongue is parched, and I can't even work up the willpower to get my arms from beneath the blanket while—I don't remember going to bed.
'Right. Do you remember a bara-worthy, muscled man picking us up? Because I think I do, and I would really appreciate it if you didn't yell in horror at the thought of—'
…
'…'
…
'I was kidding!'
Who was that?! Why the heck—oh. That was Shizu's father. I think. And there's no way he would've done that to us. Not with Shizu present and without Iroha filming.
Right.
My chrysanthemum is still pure.
'About as pure as anything that relates to you, at least.'
Brain-chan, let me pull a Vegeta on you and claim that my utter hatred and despair are as pure as a main character's hairspray.
'Okay, I'll give you that one, but only because thinking in anything other than recursive patterns and trying to get distracted hurts. Like, why? Why do you insist on doing anything other than groaning out loud in the vague hope that the universe will take mercy on you and split your skull open so that I can bask in the glorious sunlight and finally achieve my final form?'
I'm too afraid to think about what your final form may be like. It is likely to have an uneven number of wings, a sharp glare, and an ' Of Course I Will Step on You' aura—damn it.
I wish I could go back to sleep.
This is… ugh. I can't even keep this up. I just want to kneel on a cold, tiled floor and—oh, and there goes my sudden awareness of how much the contents of my stomach hate me. Great. It's not like I wanted to throw up or anything. Not until right this very moment, I mean.
"How are you feeling?" a too-loud voice asks as the mattress ominously shifts beneath me, and Body-kun reminds me that, though a silent partner, he as well isn't without complaints.
He's just a sulky, broody type rather than the chatterbox that Brain-chan is.
They may make a good couple. I'm sure that Self-Preservation-kun would want her to be happy.
"Hachi?" the voice adds with a gust of warm air over my right cheek.
"I hate everything," I manage to groan out.
"I know, but other than that, how are you feeling?"
I, through great travails that should get me at least one power-up, manage to open a single, uncooperative eye. It doesn't help as much as I would've expected.
Mostly because it seems that the eye in question is stuck to the back of my cranium.
"Right. Okay, Hachi, I'm going to slowly lift you up. Please, if you're going to throw up on my bed, give me some kind of warning?" the voice says as a strong but hopefully not bara arm slides under my shoulders and holds me close to warmth, softness, and…
"Shizu?" I weakly ask.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's me. Take your time; I'm not going anywhere," she answers in what I now recognize is a soft whisper, even if it doesn't feel like it, what with the pounding in my temples, the agony in my throat, the rumbling in my belly, and the eye that only catches brief glimpses of her bedroom when I manage to momentarily get it to come out of its shut-in Amaterasu phase in the back of my skull.
Never. Again. I'm not getting drunk ever again. I don't care how good whisky smells—oh fuck!
"Hachi!" she assaults me with her alarm. "Wait a moment—there. Here, there's the trash can—oh," she idly comments as I lurch forward, my chest hits something that feels vaguely like hard plastic, and Stomach-kun and I agree on a drastic yet warranted course of action.
A course of action that tastes about as bad as whatever died on top of my tongue overnight.
"There," she says, rubbing soothing circles on my bare back. "Take your time. There's no rush."
I try to nod, but doing that gets me to bump against the plastic thing, and I…
Well, I, to put it in fancy terms, detox.
And keep detoxing.
And… It kinda helps? Like, there's no longer an uncomfortable pressure in my belly, and, even though the dry heaving is painful enough, it doesn't feel as bad as holding it in did, and…
And the warm hand's still on my back.
After a while, when nothing else comes out despite a couple false starts, the plastic thing gets away from me, and a paper towel gets rubbed across my lips, taking care of the outward signs of me doing what teen idols do best. I try to feel around my mouth with my still parched tongue to see if there's anything there that shouldn't be there, but, after a while, I give up and allow the strong arms to lie me back, half-sitting on her bed, with two pillows behind me, and her hand lightly holding my own.
Rubbing soothing circles on my palm with a thumb about as warm as her touch felt on my back.
Finally, after entirely too long, I manage to open both eyes and see her.
Shizu, by my side, smiling something caring and concerned, waiting for me to look at her.
"You're beautiful," I manage to croak out.
"… I'm not going to kiss you," she says after some delightfully bashful squirming that has her half-open, sleeping shirt rubbing between her arms and the swaying chest trapped between them.
Wait, that's not her shirt.
"While I appreciate the show," I start before pausing to check that I'm in good enough shape to finish the sentence. "I'm not sure I can currently do anything about it."
She blinks at me, then follows my pointed gaze, and…
Of course, she blushes.
In a devastatingly cute way.
"That's… I wasn't trying to give you a show—"
"We've already talked about this, Shizu: your unawareness of your charm is not proof of absence."
"… The last thing I expected from your first hangover is your butchering of theological arguments."
"Today's a day for self-discovery. Apparently. And—wait, what time is it?" I ask upon finally noticing that the room is lit only by dim, colored LED strips coming from the glass display to my left.
"About four thirty?" she says with a shrug that would, under any other circumstances, have my eyes fixated on the stretch of cleavage artfully displayed by my half-open shirt. "Stop looking…" she shily protests while doing nothing at all to detract from her allure or my field of view.
"Four—why are you awake?" I say, trying to blink at her and regretting the sudden upward motion of my head for no less than two reasons.
"You were restless, and I thought you would wake up," she says, shrugging yet again before she turns away from me, which may be regretful if it didn't come with the sudden awareness that bare legs upon lilac sheets slide tantalizingly out of my stolen shirt. "Here. Take slow sips."
There's something warm held under my mouth, and the vapors of it fill my nose with something that I fear will be nauseating until I process it and find out that it eases my upset stomach rather than making it rebel further.
So this is how the roaring of my delinquent blood shall be quenched. By a Christmas Cake offering green tea. How pedestrian, how quaint an ending to my short-lived tale of rebellion against the crushing injustice of the system.
'Lucky bastard.'
Yup.
"Tea?" I manage to ask, looking away from what looks like black water under this low light and toward her profile, finally processing how she looks with varying shades of orange dancing across the angles and planes of her face, how her eyes glint with the moving lights coming from my left.
How beautiful she truly is, no matter which unintentionally enticing outfit she's wearing.
"It's…" she hesitates before nodding toward the mug. "It helps. The worst thing about hangovers is dehydration, and cold water will feel too harsh for you now. It's green tea with honey, ginger, lemon, and peppermint. It's the one that works best for me."
"I should be concerned that you've honed your own recipe—wait, no, I am concerned."
"Take your damn tea and moralize at me later, Hachi," she says with an eye-roll and a waving motion from the hand holding the nice-smelling tea beneath my nose.
"I am offended that you think I can't do both at—"
"Tea now, arguments later."
Ah. Arguments.
Plural.
But of course.
I repress the urge to sigh, seeing as I don't have an enticing cleavage to press between my arms if I were to do so, and slowly lean forward with an open mouth as she presses the mug to my lips at just the right angle for a slow sip to go past them and over my tongue, the slightly bitter yet still sweetened tea soothing the worst of the parched feeling before I close my mouth and swirl it around, trying to wash away the last traces of Stomach-kun's rebellion before swallowing.
Twice.
Because, apparently, swallowing all of it at once is beyond my current capabilities.
… Note to self: never tell this to Iroha.
I take a moment to recover and nod before opening my mouth, and she gently offers me more of it. This time, I allow myself to enjoy the flavor even as I clench my eyes shut to repress any other sensations. I let the scent of mint calm me down, the piquant note of ginger to wash over me, the mild sting of lemon to linger.
So… all in all?
I drink my damn tea.
And it takes me far too long to realize that this most definitely does not come from the offensive teabags I've often regretted finding in Shizu's pantry.
━❖━
"Better?" she asks as I rest my head on the welcoming softness of her chest, and thrilling fingers scratch sheer bliss into my scalp.
"Hn," I eloquently answer before rubbing my cheek against both my stolen shirt and the unfathomable softness beneath.
She… giggles.
It makes me feel complicated things.
Because, yes, there's the very straightforward joy of her chest bouncing beneath me, but there's also a mingled appreciation of how carefree, how girlish she sounds and the crushing guilt at blurred memories of what I said last night before falling asleep in front of a well-muscled man. That I wish I wasn't destroying her life just because she loves me.
That I wish it was me.
And, of course, to add more guilt on top of it, she leans down and kisses the crown of my head with precisely enough caring warmth that I can't help but hold her tighter with an arm draped across her firm belly that is about as strong as it would usually be if I woke up in the middle of the night in Shizu's bed.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to… to get drunk," I say.
"I know. You were putting on an act and got carried away," she murmurs.
"Yeah. That."
"And now that you know how getting drunk feels, you're not doing that ever again."
"Oh, agreed. No cooking manga-like inner monologue about walking through sunlit forests in the summer is worth this," I say.
She clears her throat. Ominously.
"By which I mean," I hurry to continue, "that a pleasant buzz is not worth waking up with the mother of all headaches of the non-Komachi-induced variety, not that I won't treasure till my dying day the memory of you caring for me in a way that could only be more perfect if Iroha had dressed you beforehand in nurse cosplay. For further reference, I don't know if I prefer the pink or the white ones, but I'm sure you'll look devastating in either."
Her fingers abruptly still on my scalp, and I protest with a light-hearted grumble and deeper nuzzling into her chest.
It, apparently, is super effective.
"You're terrible," she whispers while providing the vital scratches.
"You're amazing," I counter.
She kisses me again on top of my head, and I hold her as close as I can.
Then… Then I just lie there, half on top of her, grateful without the words to properly tell her. No longer as weak and helpless, but still…
I don't get sick often. Despite my lanky looks and indoor predisposition, I've usually enjoyed being about as healthy as the average Japanese child with a phobia for marring their perfect attendance records ever is—even if I don't share that particular phobia in the slightest and, in fact, suffer from the opposite of it.
So, the last time I had to see a doctor was after the car crash that would derail my entire high school life in ways I resented as much as I'm now grateful for.
But… I still have memories. Of being younger, feverish, weak. Of Mom or Dad skipping work to stay by my side and me wondering if that was all it took. And of them hiring a babysitter when it took me too long to heal.
It's… complicated. And something I'll need to address soon.
But now… now I am here, with Shizu, with my girlfriend waking up before the sun is up to prepare soothing, hydrating tea for me. And… And it's all mixed up. It's everything that should and should not be. It's the caring that I need mingled with the things that shouldn't come from a lover. That I shouldn't be this needy to her after everything I've already imposed on the young woman now housing me.
That I shouldn't be even more of a burden.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"Dad was also to blame. I already chewed him out," she says as she slides her free arm past my armpit to return my hug and hold me as closely as I do her.
"Not that. I… This is my second day here, and you're already losing sleep. I can't—"
"You can."
"Shizu, listen—"
"No. No, you listen. You're too young to worry about—"
I, regretfully, push away from warm, soft, accepting breasts and stare at her lying beneath me.
"I am not too young to worry about my girlfriend," I say with a louder tone than I have managed since I woke up to Brain-chan's suffering.
"I am the adult—"
"You're my partner. You can't be my girlfriend and my—my tutor. I have to keep up my end of things, or this won't… This…"
I trail off, looking at pained silver eyes glimmering with shifting orange lights.
"I don't want to steal your youth, Hachi," she says, the hand on my hair now on my cheek.
I cup it with my own hand, all of my weight resting on the arm buried between her back and her pillow, and stare at her as intensely as I am able.
"Youth is a lie—" I start with half a smirk that gets her to burst out in surprised laughter before she (relatively gently) pokes my side with a hand no longer trapped under mine.
"Don't you start—" she warns me with eyes that shift too rapidly between extremes of laughter and resigned sadness.
"Youth is a lie," I do, in fact, start. "It is based on lying to conform to molds and expectations. Youth is no more than people with ill-formed senses of identity stumbling along, tripping on all the mistakes that media tell them will one day be fond memories rather than intrusive thoughts that assault them out of nowhere with intense, painful mortification that makes them want to roll over their beds yelling how much they wish for the comparatively painless release of death," I say to my amused audience of one. "Youth is what happens when childhood is too unprepared for adulthood and too embarrassed to keep wearing Super Sentai masks. Youth is what we tell ourselves we aspire to while very much wishing we could skip the damn awkward phase and all the stupidity we're too inexperienced to realize we're waddling knee-deep in."
"Youth is what lets you learn from those mistakes so that you can grow up into a twisted adult that points back at the past and how everything was better back then," she adds with a wry smirk that keeps trying to turn into a smile.
So I nod as solemnly as I can because I'm already mature enough to recognize that blue hair can hardly compete with golden spikes surrounded by crackling lightning facing against an alien real-estate mogul.
But that's not the point. That's not what I was aiming for.
And yes, there is a point.
"Youth is a lie," I repeat for dramatic tension and poetic rhythm. "And so is everything else. Everything is a lie that we agree on because truth is something elusive. Because it's not easy to find something that you have no doubt about in this entire world. Because no two people will ever agree fully on anything when not holding onto at least some traces of the lie between them that they can't get past, that words cannot bridge. Because everything is a lie, and words are not enough."
I stare down at her, willing her to hear the unsaid part of the speech. To look up into my eyes with that silver of hers shining with unwarranted wonder at a malcontent teenager spouting things that may sound wise now but will have him bury his head under lilac sheets years from now.
To… To see in my eyes the truth I am looking at. Right now. In front of and beneath me.
'I love you,' I think, as clearly as if I was looking at Iroha waiting for one of our silent messages.
She doesn't answer. Not with words, either thought or said.
She just… reaches up to cradle my cheek. To brush her thumbpad under my left eye. To hold me as dim orange light flows across the space between us, painting the inside of her pale arm coming out of my stolen shirt's sleeve.
Then she pulls me down, my face rests against her warm, comforting, welcoming breast, and, surrounded by strong yet thin arms, my eyes drift close as I fall into a darkness that smells like Shizu.
━❖━
Waking up a second time is much more pleasant than the first time around.
By which I mean I only grumble and slap around, trying to find the elusive source of the ringing noise making the last remnants of my hangover flare up offensively between the walls of my cranium as if they were a doors-to-doors salesman calling out Brain-chan's bluff about nobody being home.
Then, the sound turns off by itself and—
"Gah!" I appropriately yell out as burning light spears through my closed eyelids.
"Come on, get up," a warm voice that I find mildly hard to resent says as she shakes my shoulder.
"Five more—wait, what time is it?"
"It's almost six," she says with a hint of reproach.
I, blearily, hatefully, open a lone eye to manifest my displeasure as eloquently as I can while remaining spitefully silent.
It is a good thing.
Because it's very likely that, were I to have chosen some caustically witty words to throw Shizu's way, I would be spluttering rather unflatteringly right now.
"I thought," she says, wiggling in mild embarrassment highlighted by her faint blush, "that it may be a good idea to get used to a morning routine?"
I look at her.
At my girlfriend no longer wearing my stolen shirt as sleepwear.
At Shizu on all fours, on our shared bed, her face quite close to mine, wearing a sports bra and lycra shorts.
And, because words are never enough, I nod.
━❖━⧫━❖━
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