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Collaboration with the talented [@pugbutter]
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Among the bray of the cicadas, and the snorting of the boys in white knee-highs and striped blouse-shirts, bull-like in their stampede, an aluminum whistle loosed a single shrill chirp. The boys took notice, and turned their heads toward their coach, who was wagging his finger toward the dugout.

“Water break!” cried Oguni-sensei. He craned his wrist and leered down into the afternoon glare of his watch. “Fifteen minutes. I want everybody back on the field by 16:40. Got it?”

“Yes, coach!” Despite how they dispersed and drifted in from the third-base line, the cry rang out with an icy clarity. For a moment—only one—it let Oguni believe that this pack of loafers and miscreants harbored inside of them a shred of solidarity; that even if they were mostly slag, each of them had in his heart a nugget of iron which Oguni could smelt together in the foundry of discipline, and quench in sweat, and hammer into a real team. An earnest team.

But as Sunohara, Mutо̄, Takanashi, and the others took their seats in the soothing shade of the dugout, any one of them could have told him the truth. They were all slag. Every milligram. Every atom and iota under their greased, pompadoured heads.

“[i]Fuaaa,[/i]” sighed Yūya with a satisfying slump onto the bench, like he was a big bag of ribeyes tossed onto a butcher’s scale. “I dunno why I keep showing up for this shit.”

“Weren’t you in class, too?” said Sunohara Eiichi.

“Yeah, I saw you in the hall!” Mutо̄ Hiroaki accused, targeting the object of the question instead of its asker. “The fuck’s up with [i]that?[/i]”

So they’d already figured out something was amiss. He had to admit sometimes that they only [i]looked[/i] stupid. Swiping his towel along his nape and his forehead, Yūya went for his oversized jug of Pocari Sweat next, big gulps sending jagged bubbles dancing up to the upturned bottom of the bottle. The lukewarm sweetness loitered on his tongue. He didn’t mind that it had gone warm; the act of drinking it sufficed to let him ponder his answer. What did they not need to know? What would they wring out of him regardless?

“A mission,” he said nebulously. “I had to meet up with my partner-in-crime to talk game-plans. That’s it.”

“That can’t just be ‘it.’”

“Too bad that it is, then.”

“Who’s the partner?” Hiroaki butted in.

“Tamura An—wait. Wait!”

Eiichi’s sudden outburst of laughter affirmed Yūya’s fear in a heartbeat; not two seconds later, Eiichi was reaching, with both hands, into a windbreaker he’d piled onto his slice of the bench. One produced his eyeglass case from a breast pocket. The other—burrowing deep, deep into a Napoleon—produced a memo-book, playing-card-sized and bound in black leather.

“Ta-mu-ra, Ta-mur-a~ …” said Eiichi in a singsong voice, the mischief gleaming in his smile and his reading lenses alike as he opened up the book and carded through its silk-thin pages.

“You put that nasty thing away!” Yūya’s finger slid damningly from Eiichi to Hiroaki. “And [i]you;[/i] you did that on purpose, didn’t you?! You damn accomplice!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hiroaki said.

“Come on, Yūya-kun,” Eiichi cooed, “you don’t want to take a look? Not a single little peeksy?”

“No. You keep away from me with that devil-magic, you hear?”

But already he could feel the pull of The Book, its dark magnetism which sought to devour him like the gravity of a collapsed star. He looked away and stiffened, [i]before[/i] he got any ideas of asking it why Tamura had said such nasty things to him last night on the roof, right after Ishida had dismissed them. What those grossed-out scowls and sneers were all about. Why she was so determined to … no, just what her fucking neurosis was in general! The Book would have the answers; Yūya was sure of it. But once he succumbed to its power … it felt like cheating, somehow. Like if he wanted to know what Tamura’s goddamn deal was then he had to man up, grab her by the throat, and find out the way any other bastard would. As he recoiled, Yūya could feel Eiichi’s eyes behind the glasses, behind the headcap of the book, smiling.

“Fine, fine. Suit yourself,” said the bespectacled boy. “You’ll change your tune soon enough. Just remember: my services ain’t cheap.”

Yūya scoffed. To punctuate his point, he aimed a lump of phlegm at the ruddy clay right at the edge of the dugout. “... A-And what about you? You scare away that chick from 3-A yet? What’s-her-name—Chiaki?”

“Aono Chiaki, yes … 62/58/72. Size 28AA. Petite perfection. Ah!—[abbr=Eiichi is quoting Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.]Chiaki-chan, light of my life, fire of my loins![/abbr]” When Eiichi finally drifted back down from his euphoric daydream, and wiped that wistful, longing look from his face with a rag soaked in smug satisfaction, he then declared, “No, Yūya-kun, this is not your dog-day. For I haven’t even asked Chiaki-chan out yet.”

“Why not? Heh; not going sissy on us, are you?”

“I’ve been biding, my friend. [i]Biding[/i] … and planning. You see, I only had to [abbr=This time he’s paraphrasing Sun Tzu.]secure my victory [i]before[/i] the battle[/abbr] for her heart could truly begin.”

And there it was again: that pang of envy piercing his heart, like an especially heavy icicle fallen from an especially high eave. Before he knew it, Yūya’s thoughts had wafted away to another girl entirely: one for whose heart the battle had not begun, and most assuredly was not won. “And … how did you do that?” he muttered, laboring, [i]agonizing[/i] to show the water salesman that even without his help, he would survive this march through the desert.

“Mm-hm-hm-hm!” Eiichi only hum-laughed in his usual gloating way. “I bought her a gift. A gift she can’t possibly refuse, Yūya-kun. Of course, it took quite a bit of—[i]research[/i] to find out what the elusive Aono Chiaki-chan likes. But it was worth the patience. Now, by my calculations, the chance of her saying ‘no’ is less than one percent.”

[i]Wa—One percent!!![/i]

“So, are you still pretending you’re not interested?” Now Eiichi was leaning in close, slinging an unctuously chummy arm over Yūya’s shoulders. His breath smelled like Vietnamese fish sauce. “Knowledge comes with a price, Yūya-kun, but it’d really be worth it in your case. The things I’ve seen would turn your unlucky ass around.”

“Now, hold on,” Hiroaki objected. “To his credit, he’s talking to one of those second-years. And this one hasn’t even run away in disgust yet!”

“Yeah? And how [i]long[/i] has he been just [i]talking[/i] to her? Face it, Hii-kun: you and I will both have girlfriends before this loser shapes up.”

“Sheeeeeeeeeyit, Yūya, you should bop him one for that ... Yūya?”

[i]Less than one percent … guaranteed victory … sure to say yes … with Eiichi’s methods she’s sure to say yes?![/i] He had a hand over his mouth and a deathly chill in his eyes, intense with focus and thought.

“Ah, look. You broke him.”

“Did not.”

“... You think I can’t do it, huh?”

“Oh. Welcome back.”

“So, Sunohara, you think I need your goddamn charity to succeed with her; that’s it, right? Is it because I’m a faggot or just a coward; huh?!”

“I … didn’t say anything like that.”

“No,” Yūya admitted, “not in those words ...”

He stood up, knocking aside his empty Pocari Sweat bottle. It rattled a meter down the concrete. “[i]Sensei,[/i]” he cried, “can I go buy something from the vending machine?”

“Hurry up,” Oguni said, his coal-black scrutiny falling upon his watch. “Break’s over in eight minutes.”

“Thanks.”

“Oy-oy-oy-oy-Yūya-kun!”

“What?”

“Whaddaya mean ‘what?’ [i]Where ya goin’?![/i]”

“Check your glasses, four-eyes. I’m goin’ to the gym. I’m asking her out!”

“Right now?!”

He vaguely heard them behind him—“Oy, Yūya, get back! It’s too soon, man!”—“You at least gotta wait until she’s away from her friends!”—but he had to block them out. All their two-seconds-too-late strategism and couch-cushion camaraderie. Before they talked the sense back into him. Before it sunk in how stupid this was, and how right they were.

Hiroaki watched dreadingly between his fingers and the slats of the dugout. “There goes our boy,” he moaned, “all grown up … Hey. If he comes back heartbroken it’s your fault.”

“[i]My[/i] fault?! … A thousand [i]yen[/i] on him chickening out again, anyway.”

Hiroaki didn’t like to admit it, but … “I like my money where it is, thank you very much.”


[hr][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][i]Meanwhile, in the gymnasium ...[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][hr]
“[i]Hai![/i]”

“[i]Hai![/i]”

The third girl standing in as referee savored the moment. “... [i]Hai![/i]” And with the permission of the three, the match began.

The two contestants collided with a loud clap. Akina deftly blocked every hit, dodged every attack that her opponent tried, utterly in vain, to land on her. And when she saw her opportunity, she took it unhesitantly, slipping under a far-clumsier swing and striking at her foe’s ribcage. Three white flags shot upward in acknowledgement of her second point; and, thus, her victory. “I’ll see everyone tomorrow,” cried their teacher as she strode to leave through the gym’s front entrance, looking more than satisfied with the results of the afternoon’s final spar.

Akina and her peers removed their birdcage masks and their padded armour and settled into a gasping, sweating respite; on the bleachers, or even the floor. “Sheesh, Acchan!” Haya exclaimed. “What are you trying to do: break my ribs?”

Akina [i]did[/i] take [i]kendō[/i] training a little too seriously, but all she wanted was to be ready for tournaments; and her missions! [color=f49ac2]“Sorry, Haya-chan. You know how I get too focused on these things.”[/color]

“Well, I’m exhausted,” Leiko sighed as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I can’t wait to get home and sit my ass down.”

“I, on the other hand, am going shopping. I’ve got to pick up a few of those new handbag-charms. Everyone’s saying they give you good luck during tests and tournaments! You girls want to come with?”

Even though Leiko did say that she was going home, she accepted Haya's offer with a self-evident nod and a sidling-up to her shopping companion. Akina, on the other hand: [color=f49ac2]“Sorry. I have to go home early to—”[/color]

“Study,” Haya and Leiko cackled in unison, finishing her sentence for her. “Yeah, yeah, we know.”

“I catch a cold just imagining you cooped up in that room all day! Come on, Acchan, have a girls’-night-out with us,” Haya cooed.

[color=f49ac2][i]Maybe I should,[/i][/color] Akina wondered. Sure, she’d end up with yet another set of clothes that looked cute on the rack, but collected dust as she defaulted to her usual idol-esque pinks and ribbons, but at least she’d have fun buying it. Actually, if she found something that would help her fit in better with the Sarayashiki boys … In all their black leathers, recklessly loud [i]kimono[/i]-print shirts, parachute pants and so on, she continued to feel, from time to time, that she didn’t truly belong; that maybe she merely played a part to be accepted up on their stage. At times she even caught herself imagining other lives, the ones which could have played out had she never joined the group. What did she wear in these alternate lives? White cotton, or black lace?

Akina’s thoughts were cut short as she heard her pager buzzing, however. [color=f49ac2][i]Oh, right; the mission![/i] “Sorry, not today but maybe next time. Bye, Haya-chan. Bye, Leiko-chan!”[/color] Akina hurried to leave the gymnasium before they could protest. But while smiling to her friends, she must have misjudged where the door was, and knocked into one of the basketball mats by mistake; as she stepped into something firm and a little warm, and it didn’t budge much while blocking her passage, something shoved into Akina’s stomach and kneaded the air from her lungs. [color=f49ac2]“Oomph!”[/color]

Had she really just walked her clumsy butt into a [i]wall?[/i] Akina looked up to Leiko and Haya again to giggle. [color=f49ac2]“A-ta-ta-ta, that hurts …”[/color] she whispered, then turning to see what she’d walked into.

He had greasy black hair, teased into a style which he may as well have been born with, as Akina had never seen him wearing anything else. She knew only one person with that kind of hair; he was barely recognizable in his team uniform, and behind the rosy flush in his face which must have been sunburn.

[color=f49ac2]“Yūya-ku—”[/color] She realized her mistake at once as Leiko and Haya’s glares burrowed into her back. [color=f49ac2]“T-Takanashi-san, what are you doing here?”[/color]

“A—A-A-Akakak—Akin—Akin—”

Oh dear. This must have been just as mortifying for him as it was for her! He was only calm enough of mind to offer her a hand up—whatever he was trying to say, it only came out in jagged, broken little shards of words.

Akina looked once more to the others. That’s right; in their presence he was “Takanashi-san.” Just like she was Umeko-san.

[color=f49ac2]“Uh, Takanashi-san, [i]d-daijoubu desu k—[/i]”[/color]

“[i]Shitsureishimasu![/i]” Yūya proclaimed suddenly. “Akin—Umeko-san,” he said, suddenly remembering something she’d told him the last time they hung out, “can we talk? I got somethi—I mean, I gotta, uh—”

He looked her up and down, now smudged with the faintest smear of dust from the basketball court’s waxed floor.

“—… apologize?”

“OH, NO YOU DON’T.”

Before Akina could do anything to stop them, Leiko and Haya had both brandished their [i]shinai,[/i] and wedged themselves between her and Yūya. They wore contempt in their eyes, and [i]Hasso no Kamae[/i] rigidity in their limbs.

[color=f49ac2]“Um, guys,”[/color] she tried to say assuringly, [color=f49ac2]“it’s okay … I’m fi—”[/color]

“YOU!” Leiko shouted. “You aren’t even worthy to shine her shoes, you creep! How dare you grab Akina-senpai by the arm?!”

”How dare you so much as brush your hand against hers, peasant?!” said Haya, a little [i]too[/i] eager to join in.

“You wanna apologize?! Prostrate!”

“Yeah, prostrate!”

[color=f49ac2]“Guys!”[/color] pleaded a weaker voice, sandwiched between Haya’s and Leiko’s.

[i]Two versus one … Haven’t got a weapon on me … Not good odds. Oh, yeah, and beating girls is kinda not cool, I guess ...[/i]

“I, uh, see it’s a bad time …” Yūya murmured.

“For you? It’s [i]always[/i] a bad time, greaseball. Remember that.”

“Yeah, the gym belongs to the [i]kendо̄[/i] team, loser! Mnnnnnn!” Haya pulled down her lower eyelid to bare the pink web of nerves beneath, and stuck out her tongue at him to boot.

Akina knew Yūya well enough to know that his nostrils flaring was a bad sign. He obviously wanted to crack one of them open like a walnut; Akina wondered which one had crawled further under his skin to deserve the honor. But when he thought she wasn’t looking, a nervous glance at his fellow gangmate calmed him down just enough. “Fine; fuck you too, then.” He cocked his knees, shoved his hands in his pockets, and started waddling away in an exaggerated fashion. “Nothin’ here but ugly bitches anyway.”

Only when his stomping had completely died away off in the distance did Leiko and Haya slacken their defensive stances. “You okay, Acchan?” said the latter, shouldering her [i]shinai.[/i]

“Jeez,” Leiko added, watching the door warily as if he may return at any moment, “what makes scum like that even think to walk in here, anyway?”

[i]Great.[/i] This was just what Akina needed: her club peers threatening her gangmate. Could she have just [i]one[/i] day without yelling, without threats, without anyone overprotecting her or overthinking her needs? She took a few deep breaths before turning to her clique, plastered in a plastic smile. [color=f49ac2]“Thanks, girls. I thought that delinquent was going to hurt me for sure.”[/color] She could already feel her heart aching as she said something so insincere, but it was the sacrifice she made. For her public image. For father’s.

“No problem,” Leiko said, the pride evident in her tone. “If he ever bothers you again, just give Haya and me a call, okay? We’ll teach him a thing or two about harassing the [i]kendō[/i] team’s favorite [i]senpai![/i]”

Akina expressed her understanding as a nod while she finally exited the gymnasium. Like a rat-snake shedding an old skin it no longer needed, she finally shed that phony smile. [color=f49ac2]“Morons …”[/color] 

[hr][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][i]A few minutes later, on the baseball field ...[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][hr]
Eiichi tipped his hat to the angle at which its visor most comfortably safeguarded his eyes, both feeble and already exhausted from the after-noontime glare. The fence, the school, everything beyond his little grass-and-dirt, diamond-shaped world trembled in the mirages.

He scanned the distance for something to stare at while waiting for a fly ball to pop all the way to his little slice of the outfield, but saw someone coming instead. He shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted through the glare to see who it was. Mattaku. [i]Cutting it a bit close, don’t you think, bro?[/i] But as Yūya ambled irritably toward the infield, Eiichi could see another figure, too: shorter, thinner, more voluptuous. Clad in pinks and violets with demure white socks. She was beelining right for him, her running-stance rife with urgency.

“Oy, Hii-kun!” Eiichi shouted to shortstop.

“What?!” shortstop shouted back.

“Two o’clock from home plate!”

Hiroaki’s ponytail brushed lengthways across his shoulders just as Eiichi’s coke-bottle-glasses-deprived eyes settled on the Yūya-shaped blur in the distance once more.

And if those two only had ears the size of satellite dishes …

[hr][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][i]Meanwhile ...[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][hr]
When he wasn’t by his motorcycle, and he wasn’t in his usual loitering spot under the shade of the campus’s lone mulberry tree, Akina had to stop herself a moment just to piece it together. He had been wearing the ... more important half, at least, of his baseball uniform, the jacket gripped nonchalantly over his left shoulder; and freshly stained were its muted fabrics with stark, ruddy-orange streaks of clay. The baseball team usually packed up at about eighteen; it was only 16:35. He’d get kicked off the team if the teacher found out he’d skipped early ... so … he had to be heading back to the field! Akina ran as quickly as her shorter legs allowed.

There he was! He’d just started crossing the lawn.

[color=f49ac2]“Yūya-kun; Yūya-kun!”[/color]

When he turned, either truly indifferent or merely trying to appear as such, he had his hands stowed away in pockets, and his back in its usual slouch, his mouth in its usual sneer. But Akina’s [i]lack[/i] of indifference infected him immediately, wrenching his eyes wide. He called her name, and ran out to meet her.

“You alright? You need a drink? Come to the dugout.”

[color=f49ac2]“Hah … Hah … I’m fine … Hah, I’ll drink when I’m … back inside … Yūya-kun, I’m sorry … for what they said! That was too cruel!“[/color]

“Don’t worry about it,” Yūya replied tersely. “It happens.” Too tersely.

He didn’t object when she took a moment to find her breath again. [color=f49ac2]“I [i]have[/i] to worry about it,”[/color] Akina insisted. [color=f49ac2]“I know I have to pretend to be someone else to those girls, but ... but I don’t have to pretend to you. Your feelings are important, too. And what they did wasn’t right. I know it wasn’t!”
[/color]

This proclamation caused Yūya to scan the environs. He had to appreciate the irony: that when he sought her out, she was holed up in a dim, sweat-stained room like that; but when all he wanted to do was get home, away from Oguni-sensei, and smoke a cigarette without getting booted from the team or chewed out by anyone, here they were, just the two of them, talking about their feelings. Like people. That when he had something important to say he was a stammering mess, but now that the moment had passed, and he’d pissed away all his courage and adrenaline, he could finally talk to her like she was a person. A trickster-god somewhere was cackling.

Yūya gave her a dismissive smile, albeit one wracked with a bashful warmth. “Akina-chan….I think you read too many books ‘cause that was the corniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

[color=f49ac2]“Come on. I’m serious.”[/color] She said it with a huff but a stifled smirk betrayed an oncoming bout of laughter, too, eager and squirming in Akina’s lungs.

“I know. But they’re just lookin’ out for you. They just ... got their own way of doing it.”

[color=f49ac2]“By ‘interesting’ you mean passive-aggressive, rude, and childish? I suppose they do.”[/color]

“There was nothing [i]’passive’[/i] about that aggression!” Yūya blurted amidst his own heave of laughter. “Still, I called ‘em ugly bitches, too. So let’s call it square.”

[color=f49ac2]“Ugly [i]dumbass[/i] bitches. You forgot the ‘dumbass’ part.”[/color]

He let his mischievous smile say it all. Akina could practically see the thought-bubble expanding in his skull, stuffed with Haya’s and Leiko’s “ugly, dumbass faces” wrenching with grief at someone finally saying it, something they’d needed to hear for damn well fourteen years. “Hey, I gotta get back to practice,” he said, turning to walk away all nonchalant and cool. “Don’t wanna keep the [i]kusojijii[/i] waiting.”

Akina had to get back too, but she was forgetting … what was she … oh, no; the mission! Was Minato-kun still assembled with the others? Were they waiting for her?! “Ah!” she cried. [color=f49ac2]“Thanks for reminding me! Yūya-kun, don’t get hurt tonight, okay?”[/color]

“How did you …”

[color=f49ac2]“Just promise me; please?”[/color]

[i]Bathump.[/i] The next heartbeat hit him fast and hard, squeezing in his chest and racing through his arteries. What did it matter, now, how she’d learned where he was going, and what he was going there to do? Or whether she knew, somehow, that Ishida had trusted him with the most dangerous work? How could he have said anything else but what he said next?

“I … I won’t,” he said. “I won’t get hurt.”

[color=f49ac2]“Thank you, Yūya-kun. I’ll see you later!”[/color] Akina turned for the school and took ten steps before she heard his voice again, behind her.

“Akina-chan.”

[color=f49ac2]“Hmm?”[/color]

“... If you hate ‘em too, what’s stopping you from cutting ‘em loose already?“

They hesitated long enough for their eyes to meet. But not long enough for him to get his answer.

[hr][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][i]Doors of The Assembly Room[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][hr]

Akina finally made it in the nick of time to the doors of the assembly room, where she sees her leader and other boy with him, Ten Ton, she thinks that his name. "Lets um...well let's go up there and see if we can sign in?" [color=f49ac2]"Yes, let's"[/color] Akina say with voice full of confidence. 

As Akina and Ten walk towards the two members of the student council, she takes a deep breath and remember what her father say to her before going to a fancy event [color=f7976a]"Stand up straight, look them in the eyes and smile, nobody like ladies that don't smile"[/color] She hates that last advice but Akina has to smile, for the sake of the gang. [color=f49ac2]"Hello, my name is Akina Umeko and this is Ten Ton"[/color] Akina say in a business like tone [color=f49ac2]"Me and my friend here were wondering maybe we can sign up"[/color]