A stupid, ridiculous, asinine weakness

“Hey, Yaki. How was school?”

“Uh oh. I get two scenes in two days? This situation must be worse than I thought.”

“I just got in, could you save the pessimism for all of five seconds?”

“You of all people are gonna lecture me on pessimism?”

“...fair point.”

I threw my school bag down haphazardly in the hallway and absent-mindedly fell face-down on the sofa. I hardly had the emotional wherewithal left to stand at that point. It had been a long day.

“So, you wanna tell me what’s wrong, or do you wanna keep wallowing and sulking like a divorcee?”

“Is the second option actually available or was it supposed to be rhetorical?”

“You already know the answer to that. C’mon, deets, lay it on me.” Yaki, who had been on her feet up to this point, sunk into the seat next to me. I took that as my cue to actually sit up and look her in the face, even if I didn’t want to. Eye contact was tiring at the best of times, let alone when I had already had four chapters worth of uncomfortable conversations that day.

“Well, I talked through the whole viral clip issue with Pep and Sai… kinda. We were talking about how best to proceed with everything, but after a certain point Pep started getting weird and sad about it. At some point she just said something cryptic, hopped up from her seat and stepped out the door.”

“Why do I get the feeling Pep would tell that story totally differently?”

“Hey, that’s what happened, what do you want from me? If you asked Sai she’d tell you the same thing.”

“You ever wonder if that’s the problem?”

“What?”

“Hmm… let me take a crack at this…” Yaki looked off into space for a moment, before returning her gaze to me. “I’m guessing it went something like this: Pep probably suggested just throwing in the towel and never streaming again. You and Sai immediately without discussion came to the same conclusion and tried to talk her out of it. Even though you’re both transparently against violating your own privacy, you both felt the need to coddle and protect Pep, and did so in complete sync with one another.”

“Geh- you’re a little too good at this sometimes.”

“It’s part of my charm,” Yaki said, putting her hands on her sides and looking all proud of herself. Though, a moment later, that bluster and bravado deflated into a sad smile, reminiscent of the one Pep herself had worn earlier. “It’s a shame… there really is no blame to assign here, huh?”

“Blame? I told you before I wasn’t gonna blame Pep for all this, right?”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t get it,” she sighed. “You still think the big problem at hand here is to do with streaming, don’t you?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“For someone so smart, you can be really clueless sometimes, bro.” She shook her head in exasperation, though she still had a small smile. “I’ve only ever met Sai that one time, but it was enough for me to probe the sort of person she is pretty easily. Enough to figure out why Pep likes her so much, why she choose you two as the crowd to throw her lot in with, and most importantly, why you and her get along so well.”

“But, at the time you met her we didn’t get along well. We were always at each other’s throats.”

“Really? Can you honestly say your relationship with her was actually negative at the time?”

Instead of rolling my eyes and brushing her off like I momentarily intended, I thought back on that day. In hindsight, I couldn’t say Yaki didn’t have a point. We may have argued and bitched, but maybe there already was some degree of understanding between us. Not to mention what Sai said to me on that day.

“I don’t hate you, Kaburi.”

“Whether you’ve noticed it or not, I think you and Sai have become far closer than either of you ever expected, and quickly too. You said it yourself, right? You two just kind of ‘get’ each other in a way no one else really does.”

“I… guess you’re right about that, but what’s your point? What’s that have to do with Pep?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious? For the longest time, Pep was the only friend you had. And I imagine she was probably the only friend Sai had when she first got there too. Now, all of a sudden the two people she thought were mostly reliant on her are instead relying more and more on each other. Like you’ve suddenly replaced her.”

“What? But that’s ridiculous, I’ve known Pep since before I could speak in sentences and I met Sai all of a couple weeks ago, it’s absurd to think she could just be replaced like that.”

“Of course it’s absurd. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You love looking for logic in the illogical and rationale in the irrational, even when it comes back to kick you in the teeth. You can’t just see human relationships through a lens of what makes sense, Kaburi. That’s now how people’s feelings work.”

“I…”

I couldn’t think of much else to say. She was certainly right about one thing: humans were irrational and illogical. They made no sense. Relying on gut feelings and unreliable emotions even when all reasoning would tell them they’re wrong. It was a stupid, ridiculous, asinine weakness of the human race.

And the worst part was, I could hardly claim to be better.

“I had a feeling something was off when you told me she confessed to both of you at once… should have trusted my gut more then…” Yaki muttered, though loud enough for me to hear.

“Isn’t that just because she… has… feelings… for both of us?” The difficulty I felt saying that made me realise I still had hardly tried to confront those feelings in the past couple days.

“Well sure, that’s part of it, but plenty of people catch feelings for more than one person at once. How many actually confess to both instead of going for one over the other? Hell, how many would confess to both at once? Surely you had to realise there was something more to it than that.”

“I… was a little too blindsided to make much sense of it.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised, I’ll give you that one,” she said, heaving a slight sigh. “I think… Pep probably felt like she had already lost somehow. She wasn’t saying ‘I’m choosing both of you.’ She was saying ‘it’s okay if you choose each other, just please choose me too.’”

“That’s… not something I’d have ever considered.”

Considering I knew Yaki was far better attuned to Pep’s feelings than I was, I knew better than to disregard the idea, but I can hardly say I’d have ever even thought of it. There was three or four layers of feelings and emotions there that I either wasn’t privy to or completely misread.

Fuck’s sake. I really suck at this.

“...what do I need to do?” I asked, completely resigned to the knowledge that I was deep in uncharted waters that I had no clue how to navigate.

“Well figuring out your own feelings is something I can’t do for you. How you feel about Sai and Pep, you’ll have to learn that by yourself,” she said, an almost apologetic tone. “But if your current goal is to fix your mistakes and mend you relationship with Pep, the first thing you gotta do is stop trying to coddle and protect her all the time.”

“Sorry? I don’t follow.”

“Let me put it this way. You and Sai both decided to encourage Pep to keep streaming even though it would negatively affect both of you and go against your own disdain for the culture, right?”

“Well yeah, we didn’t want her to give up something she was so interested in at our behest.”

“But it was you guys whose privacy was violated, right? And despite that, you’re both trying to appease her even when it’s clearly a result you don’t want. Hell, I bet the first thing the two of you did was shift the blame away from her to make her feel better, wasn’t it?”

“...sometimes it scares me how easily you see through me.”

“I’ve known you for 16 years, you should expect it by now.” Yaki shifted in her seat and paused for a second, seemingly thinking through her next words carefully. “Think of this from her perspective. There’s two people that you really love, but you think they’re growing closer to each other and leaving you behind. Then you make a mistake that impacts them, and the first thing they do is rush to make sure you’re not negatively affected. How d’you think you’d feel?”

“...probably like a burden. Like I’m causing problems and they’d be better off without me.”

“Exactly. Knowing Pep, she probably feels like you’re treating her more like a kid or a pet than a friend. Acting all over protective like she’s fragile and delicate. Honestly I’d feel pretty bad too.”

“So, what? Do I tell her I changed my mind and don’t want her to stream now?”

“No, it’s too late to go back on it now, you’d just worsen the damage. Just… stop seeing her like some fragile thing that needs to be protected and coddled. Treat her like an equal, not some untouchable thing on a pedestal. Treat her like you treat Sai. That’s all she wants.”

“...I seriously don’t know where I’d be without you, y’know.”

“Alone, probably.”

“Hey, there’s value in being alone, y’know.”

“Of course there is. Just… don’t forget the value of being together too, okay?”

She shifted closer to me in her seat and wrapped me in a tight hug. I really was lucky to have her.