The One Phrase

Another day, another aimless goal, I sighed once more. It was over at least. That turned out to be about the only positive thing. I started to gain some appreciation for those that complained about such jobs. It really didn’t matter what I did. I could do great one day and it’d be the same as if I completely screwed everything up.

The boss probably didn’t even notice what I was doing. He just sat back in his office pushing around papers. If anything, his job was probably even more unenviable, but who’s to say. Unless I completely did something stupid, no one even notices.

The thought of quitting still swam around in my head, but I held back from it. The unknown of how the world would react still bothered me. If I could, I would really like to survive a world, even if it is just out of spite rather than work.

Still after all the time in Aya’s world, I found that a lot of my anger had disappeared. Part of that I believe was thanks to Aya, which is ironic, since she always was the same one that pissed me off about as much as Yuki did. There came days that I didn’t know which one bothered me more.

Though I think if I had to pick, Aya did more often than him. Facing her in Yumi’s body with her arrogance as she just talked down to me the whole time acting like she knew everything. Which mirrored how she turned out in the world as well. It made her easy to spot after a little bit of time. Beating her just once or failing that, giving her a challenge turned into my only desire. Just something to balance the scales.

But nothing still and now stuck in one last world.

Chapter 572 - The One Phrase

Forgot how many days it had been, everything just blurred together. One random day when I couldn’t say no to the urge, I walked into Saki’s restaurant again. Like the previous time, I didn’t find her immediately around the dining area.

Resorting to the usual, I sat at the bar again and ordered what I did last time. “Oh and I’d like some tempura, whatever you recommend.”

“Yes, sir.” The bartender went back to retrieve a glass and motioned over to pass on my food order. The previous times I hadn’t gotten anything to eat and I did quite like the food when I came for lunch. Though I didn’t really know if I wanted to go for dinner quite so much. There remained no clue how long I’d stay.

Whether Saki showed up played a factor in that for sure. Part also rested on me and how long I lasted. Coming here on a whim didn’t really provide a strong motivation, but I kept returning. A puzzling circumstance to be sure. While I delivered supplies around my mind poked at it hoping to find a reason.

So far none came to me.

My beer already in hand, I waited for my appetizer to appear. It came about ten minutes later, though with one surprise. Saki delivered it to me for some reason. I raised my eyebrow a little to see that she had surfaced. Obviously she had no fear of me, but given the last time I thought she might have just planned to ignore me until I never returned. “Hand delivered?”

“It would seem that you don’t get a clue.”

“All I promised you was not to get in the way.”

She slid the food over to me. “I guess you did.” With no more words to spare for me, she turned around. The message was clear. Anyone could read it. I could. But it didn’t matter in that moment. Some impulse came over me.

“Can you stay?”

Saki looked back at me paused with the expression of confusion rather than the one she normally seemed to reserve for me, something between punching into oblivion and stoic indifference. I won’t lie that it’s a complicated thing. And I still didn’t know why I said it. “What?”

“Stick around, sit, talk, listen, punch me. Whatever you’re willing to tolerate.” There was obvious doubt in her eyes about it. But what more could I do? I barely understood it myself.

“What are you wanting?”

“Someone that isn’t a stranger?”

“We’re barely more than that.”

There was little that I could disagree with that statement. “Someone dealing with the same situation then? I’ve literally had no one else to discuss this whole thing.”

She looked around at the counter and the dining area. “This is hardly the place to have that sort of conversation.”

“Got a better place?”

There was a long pause after that. She clearly weighed the options. Probably tried to figure out if it was worth kicking me out. And how much she wanted to waste her evening listening to me.

Damn it, I miss how things used to be.

“There’s an isolated booth we can use.” She actually agreed and didn’t just pass me off. Maybe it was just wearing her down. Whatever the case, I accepted the small win it provided.

“Lead the way.”

Saki snapped her fingers, summoning one of the workers over and whispered to them. A half minute later, they finished their chat and Saki brushed past me with only so much as the fact that she was ahead of me as the sign that I should follow.

The warm and rustic feeling of the interior continued around the corner we took and got a little more dense with wood trim and treatment. When she said private, I had expected maybe a closed off room or a door to slide. Something that would create a clear sense of privacy. But it was merely the corner most table in the place.

A few house plants lined the divide between the booth giving a different feeling from the rest. At a glance, it was indeed more isolated looking, but sound no doubt could carry through a few plants. But if this was where she wanted to do it, I wasn’t going to argue. While we’ve been careful in the past, I’d never run into a problem and the odds were we’d eventually screw up. I felt it treated us just like a game, we understood those perimeters, but if we did anything that broke with the immersion, it would just be ignored as if we never said anything. Not that I really wanted to test that idea.

With my tempura and beer, I sat down and Saki took the opposite side, fixing me with a stoic glare. It wasn’t until I saw Saki in this world that I realized there was such a thing as a stoic glare. I thought you needed to have some sort of emotion to glare, but she pulled it off without any. It was impressive, if not also really creepy.

Just as I was about to open my mouth she raised her hand to stop me. I gave her a confused look, which only increased with no response from her. Any attempt to start something came to a halt. This went on for about five minutes until a waiter came by and put down two plates of food in front of us.

I looked over at him and then back at her, who already started pulling it in close to her. “I don’t have the stomach to do this without eating.”

“Good grief, am I that much of a problem to talk to?”

“Do you have all night to go into it?”

I leaned back in the booth and grabbed the dinner given to me. “Fine, I get it. You’re not happy with me.”

“No, I don’t think you do get it. And that’s the problem we have with you.”

A sigh escaped my lips as this wasn’t the sort of conversation I wanted to have, but I guess this is where it was going to go. I took one of my tempura vegetables and ate it, strapping in. Once I swallowed, I looked back at Saki. “Fine, let's do this. Clearing the air is probably healthy.”

“You don’t get to act like you’re not the cause of this.”

“I’ve had a decade or so to think on things in the last world. I’m not claiming I don’t have a part in this.”

“A part? You’re literally the sole reason. If you haven’t figured that out, you’re more of a child than when you actually were one.”

All of the old memories of these thoughts and arguments flooded back to me. Everything that I thought had cooled over so many years just re-ignited almost immediately. It got my heart pumping and my hands shaking. “Yumi is my family, not yours. She’s disagreed with me in the past, but we worked through it. I know what’s right for her.”

“No, you don’t. She’s her own person, you don’t get to make all the choices for her.”

“It’s up to me as the eldest to guide and protect her.”

“There’s a difference between guiding and controlling.” Saki ate some of her food pausing for a moment in our heated debate. The stoic wall had started to crumble before me. It relieved me to know that she could get emotional. “I can’t believe I have to have this conversation with someone that’s supposed to be an adult. It’s like you never grew up.”

“Between dying repeatedly and almost never seeing Yumi, I haven’t been able to talk to her. You try to resolve things when the other party isn’t there!”

“Last I heard, she tried to talk to you, but you refused.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Because it was in one of the time loops.”

“How does that count then? I can’t remember it!” Honestly, if you’re going to use evidence at least make it something that actually happened.

“Damn it. Why the hell did you talk me into this…”

“You started this one. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Because you’re running away from your problems. The only way anything is going to be improved between the two of you or the rest of us is if you actually admit your failings and actually correct them. Otherwise nothing is going to change.”

I didn’t feel like eating at the moment and leaned on my arm. These were really unsettling feelings that she brought out of me. I didn’t want all this anger or rage stewing in me. If only they understood. “If you were the eldest you’d understand the responsibility.”

“I am and I do. You however have twisted and corrupted it. You’re so fixated on trying to hold on to what you had as children that you can’t see Yumi’s grown up and doesn’t need your protection anymore. You’re stuck in the past.”

“I’m not...Yumi is my little sister… I’m supposed to be there for her…” My hands dug into my forehead and pushed against my hair struggling with words. I tried to shake my head. She was wrong, completely wrong.

“You have the right idea, but the wrong comprehension.”

I glared up at Saki as my words continued to fail me. It seemed that her breaking emotions disappeared and the stoic wall returned. As if she got what she wanted out of me and no longer needed it. What was I doing here? Did I just come for a verbal beating? Why am I doing this?

She ate some more seeing that she had managed to silence me for a bit. It was hard to tell if there was pride in her eyes or not for that. It seemed like a petty victory, if she found joy from that. But it didn’t feel like I was going to be able to get her to see things the way I do. We were at an impasse.

Silence filled the table as we just looked at each other. There didn’t even seem to be any sort of planning or building of a rebuting. Just a simple dead space left empty and waiting. But what could be said. Saki had extreme opinions about me and convincing her otherwise would be impossible. ‘Is this what they all thought? Why is this happening to me?’

Surprisingly and then troubling, Saki broke our silence. “I just realized...you’re basically your dad.”

Her statement hit me harder than a punch could from her. I fell back in my seat completely paralyzed as her words washed over me again and again. My heart sped up, nearly ready to burst. I thought I was going to faint.