Standard disclaimers apply. This is a total rip-off from the narration style of Arrested Development and this is the first time I'm making a RuHana/HanaRu. There are no indications of time and there's too many references here; blink and you'll miss. I still have to think how it'll end though. Reviews/flames welcome, as always.
A certain raven-haired youngster, despite the silence this moment seems to give, is more than thoughtless right now. Earlier that day a rumpus occurred at exactly 5.45 in the morning, by the rented van, just when he was about to continue drooling asleep, that his teammates decided to see the first sunlight with too much excitement. That's aside from the fact that he deems them insignificant. Today he's closed his eyes to resume his deep fascination to sleep, unnoticed by everyone. It wasn't awkward.
"Listen to the waves," he hears.
How can one be asleep and awake at the same time?
"Listen to their soothing sounds, listen to the relentless surge of the waters, to these rhythms. They're as gentle as a caressing breeze but they flow violently against the shore. Listen to the waves that's the Shohoku Basketball Team. Hanamichi..."
There was a frustrated sigh. It wasn't awkward. "I told you to close your eyes,"
"Sensei-ish man, I can't even picture the sands."
"You have to have a powerful body and soul,"
"Obviously," the soon-to-be captain mocks, eyes shut, grinning. This is Riyota Miyagi, jersey seven and point guard for their team. He isn't funny as his joke is. In fact, for the past two years this man is as sentimental as a Sweet Valley High reader. Sweet Valley High was a franchise of books catering to young adults and published 152 titles narrating the adolescence of the Wakefield sisters in a fictional place called Sweet Valley in Californina. An 88-episode TV series of the same title was soon developed. Most writers of the book were ghostwriters. Riyota Miyagi has secretly stashed more than enough volumes that it pokes him under his bed at night. No one has ever seen him reading one.
"Oh shut up dwarf. I bet you're picturing Ayako naked and–"
"Ooh Haruko... aah Haruko, deeper, yeah," replies the point guard, all in feminine force.
The one with a redder face is Hanamichi Sakuragi. Several months earlier his hair is as thick as a mane but as an act of redemption he decided to sport a much shorter hair. A freshman, a sloppy power forward who acts like a genius and thinks with a much reduced sensibility, which is not really awkward for him. Several months ago he fell hard for the team captain's sister Akagi Haruko (who fell hard for the raven-haired freshman) which led him to join the team, and until this seemingly beautiful day he has yet to learn if the girl would give him his 51st rejection. Or 52nd.
"Motherfu–"
"Hanamichi, no swearing. Please guys, this is serious. Take it like a game."
A long fall of silence. Much of them are still grinning, and they kept on grinning despite the silence which grew on them after Miyagi's remark. Except for the team captain and the dozing freshman, they were all smirking with no particular quip to laugh about. It was growing harrowing.
Days earlier, the team has voted (with the exception of a particularly silent teammate) to spend a week off the bays to replenish their supposed morale, or something resembling that. Their coach have suggested it prior to this census but immediately brushed the idea off due to their distressing, stressful, stressful, nerve-racking and disquieting schedule against Aiwa, not to mention that they're losing physical strength. Before that their team won against Sannoh which cost the team some injuries, and before that a particularly lonesome freshman took solace in assisting a particularly stubborn redhead to brush his skin against Hanamichi. Not that it implies something for the redhead.
"Where were we?" asks the scarred man named Mitsui Hisashi, ex-gangster, ex-MVP, ex-embittered, a formerly resilient basketball player who now lost a perfectly glistening set of teeth after his fight with Miyagi and Youhei (Hanamichi's carefree friend). Almost a year earlier he formerly wanted the demise of the team but due to a one-sided Platonic love to coach Anzai he returned to the club and became the shooting guard. There's an emphasis on being Platonic.
The one beside him trying to hide a sneer is Kiminobu Kogure. Vice-captain, and will be graduating in a matter of weeks, along with the team's captain. Although there was really no use accompanying the team to the bays for a vacation, he felt the need of this uselessness as a distraction while he's waiting for the first day at the university he applied for. This is a chance for him to loose a screw (his words), one day of rashness for four years of modesty. The team captain, who is awkward to look at by the way (compared to his sister), is beside the vice-captain and is beginning to loose a screw, too (not his words). Not that it pertained to Kogure's context, but this was supposed to be a day's rest and the rest of the team is making it more distressing, stressful, stressful, nerve-racking and disquieting.
He quivers his lips. The man at the center of all these youngsters twitches an eyebrow. "From the beginning," he says.
It was growing harrowing.
So why is Kaede Rukawa smiling? Because he will doze off brushing his skin against Sakuragi.
'Ole Sweet Player, as Told in Two Chapters and an Epilogue
One day earlier the team has unpacked their bags and started to gather 'round the room to decide which gets more space in the drawers and who goes to the can first. Of course, considering they are high school students, ungenerous provisions were to be expected, but sharing beds were not in the initial plan. But guess who liked that idea.
"No," says Mitsui.
"Yes y'will," the captain insists, making an awkward face. An ex-gangster wouldn't fall for that.
"No," the other emphasizes, making his own face. The captain insists, and hears the other reply, "No," and it was becoming awkward. "Drop dead," he adds.
"Then you sleep there," the captain commands, pointing to a dusty carpeted floor.
"It's your fault we're in this room," Miyagi says. It was true. The ex-gangster was assigned of the simple task to reserve a room capable of comfortably housing tall and almost sculpted high school students, but he decided to reserve this room when he learned that there's a room with 50 discount and that there's a nightclub two blocks away from the motel. No one ever knew of this.
"Miyagi shares with Hanamichi, Rukawa with Kogure–"
"No, sorry," the vice-captain meekly states, and was also expecting Akagi making the same awkward face. "I live nearby," Kogure says. But he doesn't.
"I'd just probably go home after dinner." But he won't, although he'd rather go home than share a bed. Actually he never shared a bed since a child because he had an uninspiring knack for too much motility that he's worried about punching a blue hole on Rukawa's cheek.
"But we're neighbors," Mitsui wonders.
"We moved."
A certain captain was growing impatient, like he always is, and gave up on his teammates, telling them that they choose who they want to sleep with. Not that it meant something else of course, but a particularly lonesome freshman thought the other way around. He more or less liked the idea, but his ways of endearment towards the particularly arrogant freshman are rather discouraging. Tonight, he thought, tonight.
Ten minutes after, the probability that the team would reach an agreement comes into full view. Kogure still insists that he can actually go home after dinner, which would be an incoherent excuse since they supposedly are on some vacation, or camping, and it required not going home. Mitsui is more or less okay sleeping everywhere (because he won't be really sleeping anyway), and Miyagi says he likes to sleep with Ayako. While Rukawa secretly wanted to sleep with the sloppy redhead, the latter opted to sleep with Miyagi. Three seconds after saying that, there was more than enough awkwardness that there was a minute of silence. Sleep has become one of most ambivalent words today, and they laughed (except Rukawa) to nothing in particular.
They went to the sandy bays afterwards.
"If Coach was here y'all be–"
"Only Mitsui I think," cuts the vice-captain. "This's obviously not a good idea," he adds, Akagi seemingly agreeing. While the man who was supposed to teach the team about chakra control and rejuvenation already handed a white flag and finally decided that lunch was a much better choice (there was an alienating sound coming from Sakuragi's stomach while everyone was meditating), Kogure and Akagi watched their almost sculpted teammates, who are in high school by the way, enjoying making sand castles.
"Releasing the inner child."
"Or they were deprived of good childhood mem'ries. I wonder how Rukawa spent his childhood."
Kogure wondered it because he wasn't there enjoying and making sand castles or burying Mitsui and poking his earlobes with a non-toxic plastic spade like what Sakuragi is doing as an act of vengeance (he found out that there was a nightclub two blocks away from where they're staying after stalking Haruko and Ayako but decided against going for some obvious reason). Miyagi held a stick which he grazed against the sand and making particularly awkward shapes of heart, telling Mitsui how he'd give it to Ayako as gift, if only they were not made of sand. The ex-gangster cannot complain; he cannot even twitch a finger.
"Why don't you just tell her man, not that she'll be touched or something but at least you told her."
"Am I not obvious?"
He was. In fact several months ago he finally decided to disclose an undying love to Ayako, the team's manageress, the team's tomboy, Miyagi's object of passion. There were four memorable events during that decision and an infinity of revelations from his teammates. First, he found out that watching Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet in the popular film Titanic made him cry. Second, he found out that Mitsui was watching Miss Match (a 2003 FOX romance-comedy series starring Alicia Silverstone about a marriage attorney and a part-time matchmaker, which only filmed eighteen episodes due to their lack of ratings, some of which were not even aired) when the sophomore asked his advice. Third, he accidentally saw Rukawa lightly kissing one of the basketballs and Miyagi almost fainted at the freshman's literal passion for the game. In reality however, Rukawa did not kiss it, but puffed the ball before wiping it to make sure that the basketballs would glisten as he dunks them the next practice. Of course, considering that the ball is red, it's ambivalent to see why those basketballs had to glisten in the first place. Lastly, he found out that Kogure was dating Ayako. It almost made him lose sanity.
"I would have to admit defeat my friend,"
"Too busy with yer machismo Kogure already beat you. Hey where are you going," Miyagi nods down as he depressingly walks away from the ex-gangster, ruined between the fact that he lost and he didn't even tell her his feelings in the first place. Not that Ayako never knew in the first place. Tonight, he thought, tonight.
"Hanamichi, get me out here,"
"Drop dead," he grins, and stabs the shovel in front of Mitsui.
"Where're ye going?"
The redhead picks up a flower nearby and placed it on Mitsui's ear. "You're the most beautiful girl in the world, if only you had make-up on,"
"Get the (censored) out here then,"
"Queer."
Hanamichi suspected it for some obvious reason.
"Who's (censored)-ing queer?"
"I'll be back."
At the other end, Rukawa heard the word queer, who by the way was asleep and awake at the same time, and thought that Hanamichi referred to him and that he disliked this certain kind of sexuality. Although the fox was more or less inclined to words like open-minded or curious or tripper, he didn't really mind because everything meant one and the same thing and it was pretentious. The ashamed succumbs to being hypocritical. So after several minutes, the redhead was applying foundation to Mitsui's face, which he acquired from Ayako. Haruko and the manageress was there to witness the makings of the most beautiful girl in the world (Sakuragi's words) and Rukawa yet again thought that the former was referring to him.
"I'm going to kill you,"
"You can't even twitch a finger."
"Idiot." Hanamichi recoils, and his head turns in slow motion so that his view is parallel to Rukawa's. The word, however, meant something else than a much reduced sensibility.
"(censored) close-minded idiot." Not that the redhead heard it anyway. He's too much of a genius to hear it.
"Why're y'here foxy?"
There was no reply. Tonight, he thought, tonight.
"Akagi! Kogure! Hey Haruko, you're even here? Go get (censored)-ing Akagi here!"
This is Haruko Akagi, sister of the team's captain, Hanamichi's supposed crush, naïve but only plays innocent, freshman and is more than selfish to stay and watch Mitsui become the most beautiful girl at her right eye and watch Rukawa doze off at the corner of her left eye. Months earlier she tried to show her feelings towards the open-minded Rukawa by giving him lunch packed so perfectly in checkered cloth and while Rukawa is not really fond of these ways of endearment, he nonetheless took it to save money.
"Did you like the lunch I gave you Rukawa-kun?"
"Yes. Thank you."
Ask him such questions, and he'll only tell you lies.
"My brother's on the store by the entrance," she replies softly. But he isn't. There's no entrance in the first place. In fact Akagi is on the room with Kogure preparing for dinner.
"Yes, I... I think, yeah, he was buying groceries for dinner later."
"Lighten up Mitsui, this only happens once in a lifetime," says Ayako, readying the lipstick. "You really look like a geisha,"
Mitsui cannot complain; he cannot even twitch a finger. What he can do, however, is to think ways by which he can have acts of vengeance towards Hanamichi and Ayako and Haruko. And even Rukawa, whose apathy was annoying him to no end. Tonight, he thought, tonight.
Earlier that moment, Akagi was making barbeque marinade and Kogure was readying the bonfire by collecting enough wood he gathered near the bays, wet, and so he had to ensure that they will burn by wetting them with gasoline. Although it crossed his mind that the food would probably taste like kerosene, Akagi is a very good cook that it his teammates will mistake the taste for the marinade.
"We've spent too much on food,"
"Which is okay y'know, than spend it in the nightclub."
"You're going?"
"I dunno," Kogure says. "Mitsui likes to. Ayako told me it was a very peculiar nightclub. Queen Mary's."
"Yeah," the other says, wiping his hand with his apron.
"And what d'ya intend to do after dinner? Will a retreat-like program manage to rejuvenate them?"
There was a growing silence, and both of them thought really hard. The first retreat they had, the one before their mock game against Ryonan, had Yasuda clenching his fist when Hanamichi told him that he's not as good as he is showing in the practice. Rukawa twitched an eyebrow, which was a miracle at that time. The second retreat had Miyagi and Mitsui hitting the air than themselves (their fists were not as accurate as Tyler Durden's) when the latter complained about the ex-gangster's lack of stamina (and whispering a complete set of teeth) and Haruko almost fainted when she found a condom by the bed she shared with Ayako. There was no third retreat-like ambience at their third camping because everyone learned their lesson.
"What secrets lie hidden amongst those naughty faces they have eh?" Kogure muses, "but they'd probably just take their guts out after that,"
"We'll set new rules then,"
"But didn't we do that before?"
"This time it's true. Whoever tries showing the slightest manifestation of violence will be stoned to death."
Kogure felt awkward. "Maybe something else, ne? Although no more of that brutal honesty crap, it really is brutal."
"Let's hope for that," says the other. This conversation was heard by Rukawa when he was about to go inside because Mitsui's stares are growing harrowing, and realized how much he's sold his body out for all of Haruko to savor, and decided to just anticipate tonight by the bed. He enters, playing innocent, asleep and awake at the same time, and the seniors have to wonder for themselves why this certain lonesome freshman had a very deep fascination to sleep. In reality however, he detests sleep, for some obvious reason. So why is Kaede Rukawa smiling? Because he will doze off brushing his skin against Sakuragi.
tbc.
