Life after Harem

One day after Valentines.

- Hey Kid, say something...

Akira looked briefly at Sojiro. He was preparing himself for quite some time for this day, but the guilt and fear accompanied by his understandable nervousness made him say the first excuse that came up to his mind in futile attempt to save his skin.

- I was with Sojiro.

He didn't have to look at all of his dates before him, to know they didn't buy it.

- Are you making a fool of me!?

- Enough of this irresponsible behavior...!

- ... You're the scum of the earth!

- I'm disappointed...

- Are you being serious?

- You'll pay for this.

- Stop messing around...!

- Sooo not funny...

- This is absolutely terrible...!

- You're terrible, Senpai...

Sojiro wasn't the one in trouble but even he looked genuinely terrified.

- Uh, oh... I was just about to go shopping... Take your time.

- I'll see you later... If you survive. - Morgana said while slowly walking away.

He could avoid that, and even if not - he survived enough battles and hardships to be able to somehow run away from this situation without sustaining any major damage. But he knew he deserved that, so he tried to not instinctively rise his arms to defend himself. It was hard, but while he was being beaten and slapped from all sides, he thought to himself that all the fear and anxiety that he felt because of this day coming were much worse than physical pain that he felt right now. Weirdly enough it was somehow satisfying, he wondered for a moment if he might be a masochist, but when he was laying on the ground and they all left he came to a conclusion that it was mostly because he deserved that, and after this his worst fear came true and now, that the worst came to be everything after it couldn't possibly be that worse.

But it could. As he slowly tried to stood up and looked at massage from Ryuji asking him if chocolates from his mom count, strength left his body and he collapsed on the floor again. He heard the door bell ringing as Sojiro came back. He couldn't fully focus on the words he said, but from what Akira understood, Sojiro tried to come up with a lot of lies and excuses to try and explain - as much as something like that could be - why Joker did what he did. Joker had no idea how he could possibly defuse the situation with all of the ladies, but he appreciated that he at least tried.

- But make sure your story matches mine, got it?

Akira finally mustered enough strength in his body to slowly stand up. He looked at Sojiro and answered his question.

- I won't do this. I screwed up, I deserved all of this, but now I have to do what's right and explain everything to everyone and ask for their forgiveness, not that I deserve it.

Sojiro's eyebrow rose up almost comically.

- Kid, do you have a death wish? Or perhaps you get a kick from being beaten? 

- No, I just... I know what I should do, and I've been running away from this for long enough, me and the Phantom Thieves hated a lot of adults for avoiding their responsibilities or shifting the blame on others, but if I would just let this end like this I wouldn't be any different.

- Kid, there's fine line between bravery and stupidity, and if you even half-seriously consider doing that you've crossed it long ago and went full stupid.

Akira tried chuckling but the pain that he felt while doing that prevented him from doing that successfully.

- Perhaps, but I will try anyway, I have to make things right. Or as right as they could be.

Especially with her - he added in his head.

____________________

My first try at writing a fanfic, hope you'll enjoy it. English is not my main language, but i know it well enough to watch Anime, cartoons & tv shows or movies with eng subtitles and understand it without problems. At the time when this part is published I've already ended writing the last (9) part, because I didn't want to do what some other fanfic writers do - start something, make genuinely good, or even great first few chapters, and then upload monthly, even less often or never continue. I will drop one part a day (unless I'll forget), so right now I just re-read it, fix grammar/style mistakes that I missed before, and add something that I thought up later, or some trivia's & asterisks aka commentary.