Chapter 1744 - 242 - Shredica and Leon (3)

I was lying on my bed at the moment, trying to relax after what had already been a fairly exhausting day, while Akane was sitting nearby and watching a movie as though she had completely forgotten that she was technically a guest in my apartment.

She did that quite often whenever she came over, so I had eventually stopped questioning it and simply let her watch whatever she wanted. At this point, having her quietly occupying one corner of my apartment had become strangely normal, even though the circumstances that had brought her here were anything but normal.

From what I had heard, Akane couldn't really relax much in her own apartment because of her father, who was constantly drinking and had a habit of taking out his anger on her whenever he had too much alcohol.

Calling it outright abuse probably wasn't completely accurate, at least not in the usual sense of the word, because he wasn't constantly hurting her physically or doing something that would immediately make someone think of the worst possible situation.

The bigger problem was what happened whenever he became drunk.

Her father blamed Akane for her mother's death because her mother had died while giving birth to her, and whenever the alcohol took over, all the resentment he normally kept buried would apparently come rushing back out.

He would scream at Akane, blame her for things she couldn't possibly have controlled, and sometimes even say things that were cruel enough to make me wonder how he could possibly remember them without feeling ashamed afterward.

Once he became sober again, however, he would apologize for what he had said and done, and he would go back to acting like a normal father who genuinely cared about his daughter.

He still did things for Akane, after all, and from what she had told me, it wasn't as though he had stopped caring about her completely.

Unfortunately, the apologies never seemed to break the cycle.

He would go to work, come home, drink again, lose control of himself, and eventually repeat the same behavior that he had promised himself he wouldn't repeat.

That was why Akane was staying at my apartment for the time being.

"My father is drinking right now, so..." she had said earlier.

She didn't even need to finish the sentence before I understood what she meant.

I couldn't exactly tell her to go home after hearing that, especially when I knew there was a possibility that she could end up dealing with another drunken argument. I had to wonder why was he drinking this early in the morning.

I didn't believe her father would actually do something that would seriously hurt or kill her, but that didn't mean I was comfortable with leaving her there while he was drunk and unpredictable.

For the time being, staying here seemed like the safer option.

Besides, by the time she eventually returned home, her father would probably be too drunk to do much of anything anyway, so keeping her here until things calmed down seemed reasonable enough.

Right now, though, I was simply lying on my bed and enjoying the quiet.

I had been staring at the ceiling for a while, letting my thoughts wander wherever they wanted, when Akane suddenly entered my room without saying anything and walked straight toward my bed.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she climbed onto the mattress and lay down beside me as though she had every right to claim half of it.

"What are you doing?" I asked while turning my head toward her.

"I'm just lying down here, so is that really a problem?" she replied while looking at me with an innocent expression.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," I said while staring at her. "I'm asking why you suddenly decided to come over to my bed and lie down beside me."

"Can't I?" she asked while raising an eyebrow.

"It's not that you can't, but you're making this unnecessarily strange," I replied.

Akane had been slowly heading down a rather destructive path, and from what I could tell, I was probably one of the only people she currently felt she could cling to when everything else around her became unbearable.

I honestly couldn't remember exactly when the two of us had become this close.

She was a beautiful woman, and she had always carried herself with a strange combination of confidence and vulnerability that made her difficult to understand.

Somehow, despite all of that, I had become someone she trusted enough to come to whenever things became too difficult at home.

"If you don't get off, I might assault you, you know?" I told her, mostly because I wanted her to understand that she was crossing a line.

I wasn't serious about it.

The words were simply a clumsy attempt to tell her that she needed to think more carefully about what she was doing instead of acting on whatever emotion happened to be controlling her at that moment.

Instead of taking the hint, however, Akane suddenly reached over and grabbed me in the crotch.

"W-Wha?" I stammered while staring at her in disbelief.

"I don't mind," she said calmly.

"H-Huh?" I asked again because apparently my vocabulary had abandoned me at the worst possible moment.

"I said I don't mind," she repeated, still maintaining that strangely emotionless expression.

I hadn't expected her to respond like that at all.

Then again, people who were already slipping into self-destructive behavior sometimes made decisions that went far beyond what they actually wanted, especially when they were desperate enough to use someone else as an escape from their problems.

That was precisely what worried me about Akane.

I didn't want to become another reason for her to hurt herself emotionally.

"What are you doing, going along with something like that?" I asked while carefully moving her hand away from my crotch. "You should be more careful about what you do, because you might regret it later when you're thinking clearly again."

"Well, I just think that if someone were going to do something like that, I'd rather it be you," she said while looking away for a moment.

She began removing some of her clothes, apparently trying to make it clear that she wasn't joking about what she was suggesting.

"I've basically given you the green light, haven't I?" she continued. "So aren't you going to take the bait even after I've made it this obvious?"

I stared at her for several seconds.

Honestly, I felt like I had accidentally stepped into a trap that I had personally built.

I probably shouldn't have said what I said earlier.

All I had done was give her another reason to push the situation further.

"I won't," I finally said.

She looked at me quietly.

"It's not like you."

"I see..." she replied after a short pause.

Akane turned around and began putting her clothes back on, moving much more quietly than before.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

The room became awkwardly silent, and I suddenly became very interested in staring at the ceiling again.

"Forget what just happened," she said while fixing her clothes.

Before I could respond, she reached over and lightly snapped her fingers against my forehead.

I immediately rubbed the spot while staring at her.

"Hey, what was that for?" I asked, genuinely confused by the sudden attack.

She looked away with a faintly embarrassed expression.

"Consider it punishment for making things awkward," she said, although judging from her face, she was probably just embarrassed about the whole situation herself.