Author's Note

I swear to god, you have no idea how difficult this chapter was to write. It went through so many different iterations before I settled on this outline, and even after that, it still took a good month and a half to power through and write the whole thing.

However, I've already got the next chapter completely outlined, so it shouldn't be that hard to write. Especially because as far as content goes, I'm still basically just introducing the actors. Next chapter will be the debut for two or three more of 'em. Fair warning: I had to screw with a lot of character ages in order to put certain characters in certain settings.

Anyway, that's enough from me. Go ahead and read up.

Like Mother Like Daughter

Chapter One: Even If I Do

"Absolutely not, shit for brains," my adamant words shot at Klein like a frozen knife – cold, hard and very sharp. "She's my kid. I've raised her since she was ten! There's no way I could be in love with someone twelve years younger than me, let alone my own daughter!"

At this point, I had downed an entire bottle of Russian vodka. I was loose enough that I basically said whatever came to mind, no matter what it was, with no alterations to preserve tact or image. Another bottle and I'd probably start stripping. I wasn't normally a mean drunk, but when someone managed to piss me off, I'd lay into them, whether they were friend or foe, or anywhere in between.

This was the main reason I didn't keep alcohol in my house. As soon as I woke up the next morning after drinking, I ended up regretting about half the things I remembered saying the night before, and that's if nobody managed to set me off. The point being that I was afraid I'd end up saying something that hurt or offended Yui. Or even worse, if I made a comment about her appearance… she'd grown into a real beauty these past few years, and though I typically refrained from commenting about it unless it was brought up by her, she was unquestionably more attractive than her real mother by this point—

No. Fuck you, brain. Not now.

Long story short, although I couldn't say that my child was the reason I initially started keeping alcohol out of the house, it went without saying that she was the reason I'd continued to do so for so long.

"I'm just saying, you care about who she loves way too much for it to be just overprotective parenting," Klein responded, tactfully ignoring the insults I'd just hurled at him. "And you're not even an overprotective parent to begin with! You basically just let her do what she wants!"

"I let her make her own choices," I corrected him as soon as he finished speaking. "But I still give her council and guidance at every step. Besides, Yui's smart enough that most decisions she makes are the best one anyway, and when they aren't, she's willing to take my advice before taking action. She's like the perfect kid."

"Which is already weird by itself, don't you think?" the redhead's rejoinder caught me off guard a little. "I mean, yeah, I get that she's smart. But let's be real here. You adopted her when she was ten. Before her real mom died, they were very close."

"Yeah? What of it? Sachi was the doting type, you know." I really didn't get what he was trying to say…

Luckily, Klein wasn't quite done with his new point. "All of a sudden, her mom is dead. And then out of nowhere, a family friend that she'd only ever met a few times just swoops in and starts taking over the role that her real mom had before. Most kids in that position would develop some pretty massive problems with authority, you know? Even if their new 'mom' was about as hands off as you could get without literally cutting off her hands."

I shook my head, holding up my hands in a 'what am I dealing with?' pose. "How does that have anything to do with the point you've been trying to make? That says more about what she thinks of me than what I think of her, numbskull."

After I finished, Andrew walked over to this side of the bar counter, pulled my half empty glass of vodka away from me, and gave me a look that said I wouldn't be getting any more booze until I complied with his demands. I knew the expression very well – with how smashed I generally got myself at his establishment, he'd wielded that metaphorical ban hammer countless times to keep me from doing stupid crap in the past.

"Can I explain for Klein here? Because what he's saying makes sense to me, and I got a feeling I'll be able to make it click for you," he said, his lips curling upwards into what I knew from experience was the smile he gave when issuing a challenge.

Damn, did that make me nervous. He never busted out that smug-ass look unless he knew he was going to win. But I had to at least pretend to have some confidence – this was a very serious matter and these idiots seemed hell-bent on taking it as lightly as possible.

"Please do. If you can get what this guy is saying to make sense to me, I'll pay double for my last glass of vodka," I replied with a nod.

Just a few minutes after I finished all my homework and studying for the night, I heard the front door unlock and open. My eyes widened, and I almost immediately jumped to my feet from the spot on the couch I'd just claimed. I rushed from the front room to the entrance hall, prepared to launch into a full scale interrogation about where the person who'd just arrived had been all night—

Only to find myself face to face with a scene I thought I'd never see again. One that part of me had genuinely missed and part of me definitely didn't. Standing in front of me were two people – one was a good-natured if pretty goofy, redheaded, bearded friend of the woman who'd raised me for the past eight years that I'd been acquainted with for about as long as I'd lived in this house. He was always the one to bring her home when she got too drunk to safely make the trip back herself.

The other was the woman I'd been waiting for all night since I got home. Less because I wanted something from her and more because she owned the house… and I kind of wanted to see her before going to bed. The woman who, after my mother died, took it upon herself to raise me as best she could, even though we'd hardly ever spoken to each other before that.

Her loose long, glossy black hair, matching button up shirt and navy blue, worn down jeans were as disheveled as her face was flushed bright pink. She was leaning on the man next to her for support, eyes closed, completely unaware of her surroundings. All that painted a very clear picture for me of what had happened – after an entire year of not going to the bar, something had made her cave and return to it. She'd gotten totally drunk and ended up stripping, so her faithful friend had been forced to help her put her clothes back on before they left. She normally never allowed her dress to fall into such a state, but when she got drunk, she didn't care about neatness quite so much.

As much as I hated myself for thinking it, I couldn't deny that even in such a sorry state of disrepair, she still looked absolutely stunning to me. I gulped instinctively, both at the beauty of the woman slowly and subtly rocking back and forth in front of me, and from nervousness at the prospect of what I knew was about to come next.

"She just showed up at the bar out of nowhere today with a lot of stuff on her mind that she didn't want to think about with the limitation of a sober head," the man explained, using his free arm to rub the back of his neck. "What goes on in her mind can be hard to keep track of, but she'll come right out and tell you when she's drunk… and sometimes, she's a bit more honest with herself after a few glasses, too."

"I'm right fuckin' here, dickweed. Stop talkin' 'bout me like I left the damn room," came the drunk woman's honest, incisive slur that almost sounded like a Kansai dialect. "Who're ya even talkin' to, anyway?"

The man who had long since been given the title of this woman's knight tactfully ignored the first half of her remark. "Well, we just got to your house. The door I just unlocked was your front door. Who do you think you're gonna find at your house?"

"Uh… Sachi? 'Sides you, she's the only one who has a key." The black-shirted girl's mention of my mother made me question just how much she'd had to drink to start time travelling back that far.

Ryo used his free arm to gently nudge her shoulder, to try to make her stand on her own. He replied to her before I finished formulating the thought I'd had into words. "Close. Fast forward eight years, Kimiko."

His words visually perplexed her. After a few seconds, she seemed to give up on figuring out what he meant, and just opened her eyes. They slowly crept up to my face, and for a few seconds, her stunning violet eyes locked with mine and nearly took the wind from my lungs. I always tried to avoid direct eye contact with her because I could never prepare my mind for it.

I found myself entrapped in her unfocused gaze, rendered completely powerless. I couldn't even look away – it was all I could do to just keep my knees from going weak. As usual, just looking her in the eye stripped me of my ability to function as a human being. And once again, she had no idea the immense influence she had over me.

But for a tiny, chilling moment, I saw her eyes flare in recognition, as if she noticed something significant. I almost broke into a cold sweat at all the terrifying things she could have noticed. But before I could even convince myself my caregiver noticed something bad, I remembered that she was about as drunk as I'd seen her, even more so than she'd ever gotten in the whole time I'd been a teenager up to that point. Which meant she would be oblivious to all the things I was actually worried about.

And then she closed her eyes right after. Just like that, the spell was broken, and I became aware of the world around me once again. I made the immediate connection that I'd just blanked out for a very obvious reason right in front of someone else. Even if I could trust Ryo for the most part, he'd still never seen that before – it had never happened with him around. Which meant that I'd probably have to explain myself…

Wait a minute… is he smirking at me?! What is he thinking about—

"Yui!~" an almost earsplitting energetic shout rang out through the hall, scaring me half to death.

The person who'd called my name so enthusiastically wasted no time closing the remaining distance between us and wrapping me in a fierce hug that seemed well above her muscle mass range in strength. It would have been a pleasant experience… if not for the how it meant she went from figuratively knocking the wind out of me with her eyes to literally knocking it out of me with a hug, and making it harder to breathe in.

"Hey, Kiriko!" my redheaded savior responded immediately, calling her by her old gaming handle and giving her arm a light but firm tug until she instinctively loosened her grip, like she'd trained herself to do. "Geez, not everyone can handle your full strength, remember? Don't literally suffocate her!"

Now that I could actually catch my breath, I began to take notice of the intricacies of the embrace as they began to overwhelm my senses. Her head was buried into my shoulder, and her buxom chest was pushing against my own as her hands grabbed fistfuls of my shirt. It was enough to set my face completely ablaze as my imagination almost began to run wild.

But before it got the chance, I noticed Ryo's smirk again – it was even bigger at this point. I knew I had to dispel any suspicions he had before they had the chance to root themselves into his mind. He was a good guy… but he was just about the last person I wanted to know about this particular problem of mine. I took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled and began to speak.

"Can you stay a little while?" I asked him, voice somewhat firm. "I'll make some tea after I put her to bed."

"You know, this has a real unique flavor," Ryo commented after his first sip of tea as he brought the white ceramic cup down from his lips. "In a really good way. Don't think I've ever had any like this before."

I nodded in thanks, taken off guard a little by the sudden compliment. "It's a custom blend. I actually made it myself."

My guest's eyes widened to an almost comical degree, one of his specialties in my time knowing him. He had some of the most exaggerated facial expressions I'd ever seen on a guy. Not that I'd dealt with males a whole lot in the first place, though – I'd been in all girls' schools since preschool, something which I personally never minded but knew had its own set of drawbacks.

"No kidding? Do you do the cooking, too?" he asked, a reminiscent smile creeping onto his face. "Kimiko's been borderline incapable of that for as long as I can remember. I've gotten food poisoning from her a couple times—"

"Yes, I cook our meals," I cut him off, nodding my head and giving him a look that said to remember whose house this was. "I have been for about three years now. The only reason you don't know is because you never brought Kimiko home from the bar around dinner time."

"The owner of the bar would give me all kinds of crap if I took such a key attraction away that early into his shift," the redhead said with a wistful smile that told me he was remembering a time when that actually happened. "It seems that as always, Kimiko the lady killer has a knack for keeping exceptional housewives around at all times. Although in this case, I guess it's just genetic."

I had so many questions about both of those statements, and I didn't know whether I wanted the answers to all of them. First, he referred to his friend as a bar attraction – what the heck did she even do when she was drunk? She never let me see her in that state even once, so it must have been something spectacular. And if the bar owner would get upset with Ryo for taking her home too early, did that mean that whatever she did while drunk was so popular it actually attracted customers and increased business?

And then he called her a lady killer. Did that mean she was a lesbian, or just that she attracted girls to her? I'd never seen her openly date anyone since I started living here, and that was almost my entire time knowing her. I hadn't a clue about her sexual preferences, and it almost seemed like she went out of her way to hide them from me.

Finally, he said she had a knack for keeping exceptional housewives around all the time. I knew he was, in his own way, giving me a compliment, but I just could not stop thinking about the fact that this meant that there had likely been many others who filled my role in the house before me. Apparently including, as he said himself, my own mother. The fact that he said this in the same sentence as the lady killer comment gave the impression that she had been in a relationship with many of these other exceptional housewives. If that was true, did that include my mom as well?

The thought left a strange, familiar yet unidentifiable feeling in my chest and a bad taste in my mouth. There went my mood, right out the window. Soured like aging grapes. He'd provoked a total of four questions that I couldn't just pretend I didn't wonder about… but at the same time, I didn't really want to know the answer to any of them. Some of the potential answers… they scared me.

"Why did I invite you in, again?" I asked with a firm voice, trying to mask the insecurity I suddenly felt inside.

He shrugged his shoulders and gave me a curious look. He clearly didn't get what my words were implying, or he was just ignoring it. "I dunno, why did you? You haven't gotten to that part yet. I've been wondering about it a little myself."

I couldn't tell whether he was being coy on purpose as a means of striking back against my short temper or whether he was speaking genuinely. Ryo had a funny habit of saying things which would either make him sound really smart or really dumb, depending on the intent behind them, which he always did a superb job of masking. Although I noticed that most times, when he did that in front of Kimiko, she didn't notice and assumed he was being his normal self.

"You were giving me some really unsettling looks earlier," I told him, my voice and face equally deadpan as I pointed to him with the hand not holding my teacup. "I wanted to take care of whatever weird things you were imagining so that no rumors got started based on minimal evidence."

"Ah, that. I wouldn't worry about that if I were you," he told me, giving me a thumbs up and a goofy smile. "You just reminded me about one of the things Kimiko was talking to us about at the bar. Turns out, she's worried for no reason. I just realized that back there. I don't plan on telling anyone, though. Not even her. Because if I'm right, she'll figure it out soon enough."

I sighed, realizing very quickly that whatever he was really thinking of, he wasn't inclined to tell me. He'd just masterfully crafted a response that managed to broaden the scope of my suspicions – I couldn't even be sure that he realized what he was seeing back there anymore, and meanwhile, he'd managed to give me an answer that told me precisely nothing in more words than it took me to indirectly ask him about it.

"Well, I have somewhere to be tomorrow morning, so I can't stay too late," he said, standing up and turning to leave the room. "Thanks for the tea. Any more and I'd keep myself up too late, so I'm gonna go pour it out. As long as the location of the sink hasn't changed in the past year, I think I should be fine without an escort."

He gave me a blasé wave before walking out of the room and turning for the kitchen. Once again, I found myself completely outmaneuvered by someone whose standard part he played was the fool. Even now that I was almost an adult, he was still running up the score at every encounter we had. Ryo… he was one terrifyingly adept individual, no matter how dumb he pretended to be to get by.

I heard the sound of him pouring the glass of tea out into the sink, then setting the cup down in it. After that, I heard his footsteps draw closer again and eventually saw him walk through the foyer until he was standing at the front door. He turned back to look at me, giving me a laid back smile.

"You can lock up after I leave, right?" he asked before unlocking the door again and opening it. "Oh, and before I go, just one more thing…"

I nodded, and suddenly felt a subtle unease. "What is it?"

He opened the screen door and took one step outside before giving me one of the most smug looks I'd ever seen on him, very much counting the ones he was giving me when he got here. I gulped my rising nerves down, with very little success, as he finally began to speak.

"I know googly eyes when I see 'em." His words cut through my composure like a razor sharp katana, and my face immediately paled. He knew. "Don't worry, though. Secret's safe with me. Good night, Yui!"

Before I had the chance to issue a single refute, he pulled the front door shut behind him, cutting me off, and I could hear him laughing his ass off into the night.

Good night, my foot. How am I supposed to sleep after this? Damn it, Ryo…!

Author's Note

So, the actors currently on the stage are Kiriko, Klein, Agil and Yui. Who do you think I'll be adding next?

Anyway, it looks like this story isn't dead. Imagine that. Even if I kind of hate myself for making a story with this ship, I managed to justify it in the fine print. That is, the context behind the characters. Still doesn't exactly change the fact that I'm basically writing pseudo incest. But I'm pretty sure the allure of the forbidden is precisely what's kept this on my radar long after a story with a normal ship would have just died. That's what got me into yuri in the first place, after all (I was raised by a very conservative Christian family, which is why I perceived it to be forbidden initially. Consequently, I started liking it, because I'm drawn to literally anything forbidden).

Anyway, next up on the writing list is probably either my real Aincrad AU fic, or GGO SW. Depends on what I feel like when I next decide to write. Who knows?

Anyway, see you next time!