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Hachiman stepped off the subway into downtown Chiba with a sense of increase dread with every footfall and change in elevation. He followed the station paths and walked down a flight of stairs into the chilly and amber, end-of-day light. Fall was in the air again, and so was the prospect of many things – times were changing.
Thoughts of college. The end of high school. The final “Final” exams to decide his future fate. His destiny as a salaryman – something, someone shook him from the househusband and part-time, rich-philanthropy, magic-boy lifestyle he was promised in his youth.
Youth. A word he came to detest, and yet so quickly grasp after—after realizing that maybe it was something worth basking in while you still had time. He dreaded when it would come to an end.
Long ago, as in, just a few more than a “few months ago,” Hachiman had nothing to make youth worthwhile. And ever so quickly, it changed. And now he had something to delude himself into. Not that his ‘girlfriend’ and/or friends would appreciate being described as such.
Good thing he was thinking it instead. Bad thing that the center of his anxiety was waiting for him at a bench with a textbook in her lap, a notebook raised with one hand, and refined ballpoint pen hovering in her dainty-gripped hand.
Streaming black hair. Ice-blue and focused eyes. Tiny red ribbons on the underside of her long locks. Yukino, his ‘girlfriend.’
The title still felt alien on his tongue, and in his thoughts. He expressed it, accordingly, emphasizing it and hoping it would become normal. However, the exercise was having an opposite effect as he stifled a shiver threatening down his back.
“Hikigaya-kun.” Yukino’s shout of attention was short and a whisper over the passing crowds of salary workers, shoppers, and young adults headed either which way for work, play, or booze. Her eyes zoned in on her ‘boyfriend,’ and she gestured with her penned hand to approach her way.
He almost tripped on the last stair step but caught himself with only the slightest fumble. He met her eyes and offered a sheepish half-wave in her direction. Nonchalant and covering the internal panic within, the Hachiman way.
Once he was near, Yukino continued with her business-like approach as she packed her things into her opened school bag. “You ready? I already confirmed our spot at the café. It’s just around this corner.”
Hachiman offered her a nod, and for her to lead the way. Yukino did not seem perplexed by her partner’s lack of response. They saw one another mere hours ago at school during Service Club. They broke off to go home, freshen up a little, and get out of their school uniforms.
Now that they were back together, Hachiman couldn’t help himself but let his mind both hyperfocus and drift, keeping close to Yukino but continuing to feel a mix of apprehensive feelings bubbling in his stomach.
He was coming to regret or dread this rendezvous. The distress was killing his appetite despite five hours now without dinner.
Hachiman’s ever-tired-like eyes dragged over to his girlfriend and noted not just her appearance, but the sensations of their proximity. They didn’t hold hands but the space between them was small, a condition of the packed sidewalks but also the uncertainty between them. He could feel the air between their hands blister and twitch in choked attraction. Even in his distracted state, Hachiman didn’t miss Yukino’s less-confident stride tonight. Her steps were inconsistent but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to suddenly spring from Hachiman’s mind to figure out the source – him.
Hachiman slowed his stride even further out of consideration. She made a brief fumble in step but was quick to acquiesce the relaxed change. Yukino gave Hachiman a soft smile and leaned a little closer, touching shoulders but drifting apart once more.
“How’s your sister doing, being the new president of the Service Club?”
Yukino’s small talk question, which wasn’t quite small talk, pulled Hachiman into focusing on her voice and away from his other wandering distractions.
“She’s doing alright. Komachi is Komachi as ever.” Hachiman responded with a very small-talk-answer.
“That’s good to hear,” Yukino accepted with a polite chuckle. “The role is a tough one, I know she can handle it but our work last year really put the club on a new level of attention. I checked the website before we left; there’s even more requests to deal with tomorrow. A lot more than we used to get.”
Hachiman hummed an affirmative, continuing. “She’s quieter to a degree. Goes to bed later and does homework longer but she’s still collecting on Komachi points. You should come visit again. Komachi would appreciate it.”
“I would like that,” Yukino smiled back to the upturn in Hachiman’s cheeks. His careful smile emerged in response.
In their conversation, Hachiman missed the part where they entered the very-clear-cat café and followed a waitress to their booth. His mind and body went on autopilot: holding the door, offering to take Yukino’s coat, taking a menu, and ordering a MAX Coffee.
Hachiman returned from another existential plane and the concept of a chair under his butt suddenly seemed fascinating as if the first time. Bad sign, bad sign indeed.
A ball of pure fluff offered a stealthy, sudden shiver against Hachiman’s leg almost startling him into a fright but the surprise vanished as quickly as it came. He knew where he was. A glance in Yukino’s direction and she seem to already forgotten his existence, or where they were.
She was in heaven.
A gray kitty furball rested in her arms, cradled like a newborn. A tabby found its way into her skirted lap. There were mews coming out from beneath the table, more than Hachiman would like to count. Yukino’s eyes had a mix of a glazed-over look and a shining of excitement, as if caught between two separate fantasies.
No matter where she went, Yukino was a goddess of felines. It seem every cat was a friend of hers, exemplified as she mewed along with them in harmony. Hachiman wondered, if left without interruption or worries of life, would she become one with the cats? Go to one of those cat islands? Create her own cat tribe?
Dragged along to Chiba’s cat cafes implied a future of visiting Tokyo’s cat cafes, and eventually all of Japan’s cat venues and tourist cat islands. History was a lesson in possibility and inevitability, of which Yukino was a creature of both. On that note, Hachiman could not help but offer a toothy grin and internal laughter. He brought up his phone and muttered to himself, “Cute,” snapping a photo of his girlfriend half-buried in cats.
“Disgusting,” Yukino grumbled back but with none of the barbs or venom of someone disgusted. A glance at her face revealed a stifled smile, struggling and failing to prevent an outburst of laughter. She managed to hold it for three seconds and then exploded into a Yukino-laugh, quiet and yet uncontrolled and animated. Her shoulders chortled wildly with her voice in a manner too unpredictable for her feline friends who scattered in several directions.
“That look is disgusting, Hachiman,” Yukino continued to giggle with one covering hand over her lips and another pulling her own phone out to snap a picture of her boyfriend. “But cute too. Can-can you send me that photo?”
Hachiman opened his LINE app and transferred the image of the young cat lady, receiving in return the picture of an awkwardly smiling punk caught halfway between crossing his arms and not knowing with his smartphone-holding hand wresting atop their table.
“Thank you Yukinoshita,” Hachiman confirmed in appreciation as he zoomed in on his own picture and tried to take in his own details. He was quite happy about his own looks but the dead-fish-eyes reputation still seem to follow him around.
Yukino offered him a “Thanks Hikigaya-kun,” in return as well, her eyes bouncing from her phone screen and the boy sitting across from her.
As quickly as the introduction and fun began, so did the reason for their arrival to the themed establishment. The waitress came back to them with a platter of holiday breaded snacks, variety cat treats, and their drinks – Hachiman’s signature coffee and Yukino’s flavored tea with a little extra sugar than her normal beverage. School bags zipped open and books were brought out, containing notes and sheets of assignments in leadup to their final exams. Topics in English, mathematics, Japanese, sciences, and social studies. Some other assignments for elective classes.
The study date began, with several clicks and silence.
Other booths in the café offered a quiet background of business between a distant kitchen, waiters coming and going, and other customers enjoying time with the exciting animals calling the eatery home. The cats came and went around Hachiman and Yukino as the scribbling of strange humans on strange pieces of very thin, wood-like material fascinated them. However, concentrated swooshes of hands told off the cats – “keep away, stay near but not close.”
Yukino offered a liberal number of treatments in turn to her feline minders, appreciating them as a multiplying force of constant comfort.
Hachiman deployed one of his old 108 Skills: the Stealth Hikigaya, subtly bringing his phone camera back up over the rim of the table from his pants pocket and snapping photo after photo of his very cute girlfriend in her most natural element, between work and play. This seemed a rare time to as he discovered a seeming limit to her capacity to multitask – she could only offer so much between her homework, the cute cats, and her cute boyfriend as well. If she did notice the phone, she didn’t say anything. It mattered little either way, she would ask for Hachiman’s pictures of her and the cats later anyway.
And yet, there was another dilemma. The old dragon rearing its ugly head from within Hachiman’s discomforts. Yukino’s finished assignment stack was climbing. Not quickly, but one, two, and three. She was working through the homework and class readings in a diligent manner as she always did – a consummate studier.
But Hachiman’s stack? Zero.
Thirty minutes in and this state of affairs continued on. Hachiman’s dead fisheyes might be conspiring against his brain in collaboration with his writing hand. His eyes drifted everywhere and nowhere, all places but the sheet of math homework with second-degree quadratic equations refused to write, solve, and finish itself. It stared back without eyes, but ever daring its owner to try and succeed. ‘Futility,’ it seemed to say to him.
Hachiman suppressed a groan, looking up to Yukino and staring on at how her head bobbed between her history textbook and her short answer response assignment regarding something about Southwest Asian trade routes in the thirteenth century. Or at least that’s what it looked like, Hachiman’s native Japanese was almost unrivaled at Sobu, well except by Yukino, but reading upside down and at a slant was still a challenge even for a proud connoisseur of literature like himself.
He didn’t say anything, continuing the dance of avoidance. He fiddled with his phone resting on his lap. He watched Yukino and her cats even as she side-glanced back at him now and again. Hachiman took indulging sips from his coffee. He drew a funny stick-figure shinobi with a ninja star in the corner of his homework to appear busy, erasing it subtly as if correcting a mistake in a math problem.
Asking for help was never Hachiman’s strong suite, but stating it was repeating his obvious character flaw. It was a personality quirk that almost ruined his friendship with Yukino, almost ruined their chance of their budding romance. It put him in the firing line at his own expense, hurting his friends as much as himself along the way. It was something he reminded himself almost every morning upon wake up to improve on.
But no one woke up one day and found their problems gone. Surprises were welcome, but even wrapping up a sudden near-resolution still required some effort and input, hence the notion of a ‘near-resolution.’
Hikigaya Hachiman was procrastinating. He knew it. He told it to himself in his head. Declared it silently with conviction. Like a persistent spell of hiccups, the work block wasn’t going anywhere. And his struggle with asking for help only exasperated his debacle.
Hachiman flipped his phone open for the eighth time and checked the clock. They were here for 73 minutes. He still didn’t finish his math homework. Yukino was on her third assignment.
Out the distant window behind Yukino, Hachiman could tell the sun was really beginning to set, turning the sky from a shade of orange amber to a dark pink. Soon it would be dark, indigo, and night. And the day would be over. It would be time to walk Yukino home and return home himself.
But if he didn’t make some serious effort soon, today would go to waste and he would be even busier in the days to follow. He could feel the beginning of perspiration to prickle at his skin in awkward distress.
“You’re still on your math homework, aren’t you?” Yukino asked from across the table, but she didn’t enunciate the question like a question. More like a rhetorical declaration of fact. And she was right again. Darn the brilliant woman he already offered his love to; she always managed to see through him – if not immediately, eventually and at the critical moments to save him from fiascos of his own making.
Hachiman didn’t bother with hiding or shirking from the truth. He sighed out his response. “Yeah…”
Yukino set her unused pencil down on her side of the table and gently pushed a cat off her lap. The fluffball vacated quickly as the girl’s movements became sudden and deliberate. She dusted down her skirt with her hands and stood up, wandered around the booth, and slid into Hachiman as he was too busy observing her and too slow to compensate as she got very close.
“Let me have a look at it,” Yukino said and pulled Hachiman’s math homework from his half-hearted hands against the table. “Eight questions done. Another six to go. You’re not doing too badly but you do seem very distracted.”
Hachiman sighed. “I guess, yeah. I don’t know if it’s the venue, tiredness, or I’m just not as in-control today.”
“Are you sure it isn’t the cats? Or me maybe?” Yukino asked, not even a hint of offensive in her honest concern.
“It could be… But I don’t think so. We’ve studied before together. At my house. And in the clubroom. Kamakura has never bothered me that much either.”
Yukino offered a weak smile in acknowledgement even if they both knew whatever it was might as well be excuses. Whether in Hachiman’s control or not, it was still him at the end of the day. It would be on him to finish his work and no one else: distracted, stuck, or not at all. Yukino wasn’t going to magically fix his problem for him. And as she hinted, she could very well be the source of his procrastination too.
It was and wasn’t rocket science, even more like a matter of faith – one’s own feelings. No matter how in touch or self-aware of their own feelings or internal logic, Hachiman knew he would never have a perfect understanding of himself even if he did a great job of pretending, and even more wishing he did.
“The difference now is we’re dating, Hikigaya.”
“I know…”
“We can leave earlier if you think you’ll do better at home.”
Hachiman met Yukino’s ice-colored eyes and quickly saw the acceptance there. She cared for him; he knew that. His girlfriend was ready to set aside her own fun for the day even after two weeks of planning this get-together to make sure his grades were okay, and that she removed the obstacles in his way. Even if it included her.
“No, no.” Hachiman decided and repeated firmly. “We spent a lot of time finding a good day to do this. I don’t want to waste it.”
“But if you don’t get your homework done, you’ll have to do catch up. Are any of these assignments due to tomorrow?”
Hachiman thought on the question and shook his head.
“I came prepared for that at least. I have a couple days but they’re kind of big assignments. I’ll still need some time to finish the others after this math homework.”
“Is the math your easy one?” Yukino asked.
“Yeah.”
Yukino sighed, her face scrunching into a light frown as she weighed the situation. Hachiman waited patiently, his eyes focusing in and out of her eye contact and onto her cute button-like nose. Finally, she made her decision, raising an arm slowly and around Hachiman’s shoulders.
“Come here.”
Yukino drew Hachiman’s head to her thin shoulder. She whispered, “Lean on me. Take a break, it’s good to sometimes to step away from something if you can’t find the energy to focus through it. If there’s a chance, I am the cause for your distraction, let me be the solution too.”
The request felt oddly familiar. Heartfelt and very awkward that Hachiman couldn’t help but chuckle lightly in its corniness. Because Yukino reminded him of himself. He briefly returned to a season ago, the pedestrian bridge and the investment scam talk he tried to use to ask Yukino to be his girlfriend.
Yukino told him yes then. And here they were. Hachiman couldn’t look up at his girlfriend from the crook of her neck, but he felt the tickle of her long hair strands against his own untamed hair nest.
In his right ear, he could hear the faint thumping of Yukino’s heart and felt the rocking of her shoulders as she breathed in a rhythmic, lulling pattern. It didn’t take Hachiman more than a few seconds to make himself at home, nestling a little more comfortably by nudging his chin a little bit so she felt like more like the side of an armchair.
He felt her shift against his head, adjusting herself so she was comfortable. A mass of stranded blackness coming to lay over Hachiman’s head didn’t even surprise him anymore as she settled in against him.
“Just for a few minutes,” Hachiman whispered back, trying to keep some semblance of control and chivalry in their half-embrace. At the very least, he didn’t want to feel guilty in using his girlfriend so readily as a shoulder pillow.
“Just a few minutes.” Yukino confirmed. She lifted her head slightly, adjusting her arm still so it rested beneath Hachiman’s neck while still affording some flexibility of movement. She brought it back around to rest atop the other side of his head. She ran her fingers across his scalp, back and forth, not unlike how she pet cats at any given opportunity. She added, “You have Kamakura’s smell.”
Hachiman mumbled back, forced to relax under the attention of her long fingers. “You mean Kamakura has my smell.”
Yukino sniffled at him in good humor, “Whatever the origin of your smell, I’m sure it’s one reason I like you both.”
Hachiman hummed in affirmation to his girlfriend as they continued in their embrace. It became very easy to ignore the noise of the other populated booths nearby, or the clicking of shoes as waiters passed by to attend patrons. Hachiman didn’t mind the inquisitive eyes and audience of the nearby cats so much as he let his eyes fold closed, even if briefly.
“Thank you,” he whispered to Yukino once more.
“And thank you,” Yukino responded back softly. “For coming with me here. I’ll be here as long as you need me to. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
Hachiman nodded and raised his chin once more to place a beginnings of a kiss on her neck. Yukino leaned down once more and placed a similar gesture on his forehead. They stayed like that for a while.
Hachiman remembered the day a week later, crystalizing the proximity, feelings, and senses of his girlfriend’s embrace. He couldn’t remember what he did after but he knew he turned in his math homework. Whatever spell Yukino cast that evening did the trick. Even if she wasn’t magic, she was easily the closest thing to it.