Title: To Swim
"Bye, Hon. Try not to scare off all the boys, will you?"
"No promises!"
6:45 in the morning: fifteen minutes before the new school-year begins.
Akihiro barreled out of her house, barely fitting her feet into a pair of brown loafers before grabbing an orange backpack and sprinting past the house gates, slamming it shut with a practiced hip bump. Her house was an old, creaky thing, with mint green paint peeling off in dark crevices and walls dappled where the rain had eroded away the minerals; however her house was also a wonderful, mysterious thing, its floorboards saturated with memories of childhoods long past and windowpanes mirroring the dreams and hopes of those it reflected. The thick vines that seemed to snake up and around every the edges of the house and around the gate also served to give it a more natural beauty. It was, Akihiro believed, the perfect place to return home to.
Unfortunately, at that moment, Akihiro had more pressing matters to worry over than the significance of her worn-down house.
"Ayame's gonna have my hide if I'm late to the orientation!" the girl wailed to herself as she picked up her pace. "I knew I shouldn't have stayed up all night playing video games!"
6:46 in the morning: fourteen minutes until the the start of something new.
"Archery is a traditional Japanese sport which emphasizes calmness of the soul and mind. Here, we will train you to focus and hone your senses, a skill which you may find useful in everyday life as well. Having won the regional award for best archery club, we welcome new members to aid us in our continual effort to polish our conscience and maintain our honorable position as the best high school archery team."
Applause rang throughout the auditorium as club president, Ayame, smirked to herself in satisfaction.
"Of course, what she really means is that we have to continue being the best archery team around, or she'll skin us alive," Akihiro whispered to her friend, Sakura, with a roll of her eyes after slipping on stage. Unfortunately, the loud applause did nothing to distract Ayame from noticing the tardy arrival of a certain girl.
"In fact," Ayame continued as the applause died down, "we will have someone demonstrate the abilities of the archery club."
Akihiro's eyes widened at the sudden turn of events, swallowing her spit in anticipation, 'She wouldn't...'
"Akihiro if you would so kindly come out."
….'She would. That witch!'
Akihiro desperately turned towards Sakura for help, but her friend could only shrug in helplessness. When Akihiro turned around to look for aid from her other teammates, some reacted similarly to Sakura, while others had the audacity to laugh at her misfortune.
'So much for comradeship,' Akihiro thought drily when she was finally accepted that no one would come to her aid and left to walk downstage with a hunched back toward her dreaded duty.
Thwack.
"Wha-!" Akihiro's back straightened up with a snap in response to a sharp smack aimed at her spine.
"Stand up straight," Ayame whispered into the girl's ear as she handed a bow and arrow to her. "We can't have you shaming the archery club now, can we?" The evil glint in the captain's was hard to miss.
Akihiro felt her lips pull into a grimace, 'Well, if that were the case, you shouldn't have called me out to humiliate myself in the first place!'
Glancing out at the audience, Akihiro felt her heartbeat leap out of her chest. The expectant gazes of hundreds of freshmen was taking a large toll on her mentality. The thought of missing the target and the embarrassment that would follow almost caused her to pee in her pants; however she quickly forced those pessimistic thoughts out of her mind.
'If I don't calm down, then I really will fail,' she chastised herself before mentally going over the steps to shooting an arrow.
Taking deep breaths, Akihiro could feel her erratic pulse slow and she gently urged her body to position, propping the longbow to face the stage's right wing where a large target stood. Taking the arrow in one hand, she gently weighed it on her palm before resting the tip of the shaft against a lightly curled finger grasped around the bow's grip. With a straight back and slightly bent elbows and knees, Akihiro checked off the first step to shooting an arrow: getting into the proper stance.
Next was to clear her mind.
'Think of your happy place,' Akihiro reminded herself and the first image that popped up was of her local gym, jam packed with buff, burly men with sweat that seemed to sparkle as it trailed down their toned biceps. 'Wait, not that type of happy!' and the image was quickly replaced with that of the nearby beach. Akihiro allowed the image to consume her mind as she pictured the golden sand shimmering under the warmth of the sun and the blue waves gently crashing on shore before receding back into the sea, leaving a damp imprint.
With a firm grip, Akihiro pulled the bowstring back steadily and focused her vision on the red dot one hundred feet ahead of her.
With a final deep breath...
Akihiro released the arrow.
"So how was the freshman orientation?" Makoto asked Nagisa as they stood on the school roof, reminiscing the past and catching each other up on their recent comings and goings. Haruka, on the other hand, who although stood beside them, was seemingly detached from the conversation, instead opting to stare at the swimming pool on the other side of the school that was enshrouded by the heavy branches of cherry blossoms. "I heard there was an accident?" Makoto's expression turned to one of concern as he did a once-over on the blonde for injuries.
Nagisa laughed, partly in memory of the 'accident' and partly because of Makoto's fussing. "The students weren't injured, but the principal sure had another thing coming for him!"
Makoto's eyebrows rose at the sudden mention of the school's sweaty, nervous headmaster and even Haruka's interest piqued as he looked over in slight curiosity.
Taking their reaction as a sign to elaborate, Nagisa opened his mouth to start his long-winded explanation. "So, during the archery demonstration, this girl came up all cool-looking with this huge bow that was as big as her and a bunch of equipment, like this big target thing and this rack thing that looks like what we put umbrellas in, but they used to put arrows in, was set up on stage and everything. It was kind of weird, 'cause she was just standing there like a statue and not doing anything, but my classmate told me her stance was perfect or something; personally, I think that he just wanted to sound cool- back on topic though, that girl's expression was all serious in the beginning with her eyebrows scrunched up like-." Nagisa proceeded to pinch up the skin between his eyebrows but was quickly interrupted.
"What happened?" Haruka asked apathetically, impatient with the younger boy's beating around the bush.
Nagisa continued speaking without missing a beat as his expression brightened up. "And then she shot the arrow and it somehow swerved right at the principal -it didn't hit him," he said, quickly reassuring the panicking Makoto. "-but it flew at his pants and popped the button right off his waist band so his pants dropped down to reveal his boxers in front of the entire school! And that isn't even the funniest part!" At this point, Nagisa was snorting in his attempt to suppress his laughter. "His boxers had a cartoon of an elephant, on his crotch!'
Makoto's mouth shaped into a surprised "O", while Haruka stared at the blonde in disbelief.
"What-"
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!" A ferocious roar bellowed out of a nearby classroom, shocking all the students near the vicinity.
Akihiro laughed sheepishly. "Well, you told me to demonstrate..."
"I also told you to not shame the club!" Ayame growled as she grabbed Akihiro by her bow tie and proceeded to shake her victim ruthlessly. "So how did that end with you pants-ing the principal during Freshmen Orientation! Were you focused at all? Huh!? Is this all that two years of archery amounts too?"
With her head bobbing so violently to and fro, Akihiro could barely string two words out of her mouth. Luckily, Sakura stepped in to save her friend before her head flew off her neck by soothing Ayame off of the poor girl and so Akihiro managed to sputter out between gasps. "I was concentrating! I even did the whole 'think of your happy place' thing!"
Ayame's eyes narrowed in disbelief. "And?"
"And suddenly the weirdest thing happened!" Akihiro exclaimed desperately. "One second I was imagining this peaceful beach and the next moment this dolphin came flying out of the water followed by this massive killer whale and shark!" She could feel the incredulous gazes of her club members dig into her back but Akihiro continued to insist her point. "Not only that, there was this adorable penguin that just waddled by out of nowhere chasing a butterfly! I'm not kidding!"
An awkward silence followed her declaration-
-before her honest confession was met with a sharp punch to the head and a loud "You just can't be trusted!", followed by Ayame storming out of the club room muttering curses between each stomp. Akihiro collapsed to her knees in defeat.
One archery member laughed at Akihiro's comical teary expression and patted her on the shoulder before following the club captain.
"What were you on?" Another member sniggered before she left as well.
It was only until all the remaining club members had left the room, leaving only Sakura and Akihiro remaining, did the girl finally register the fact that not a single person had believed her.
"You can't blame them," Sakura said with a shrug, practically reading her friend's mind. "Your story is a bit far-fetched."
Akihiro frowned as she stood up and fixed her mussed black hair. "If I can't be trusted, why did she even bother calling me up on stage! I swear, Ayame has a secret agenda against me or something."
Sakura merely shook her head with a faint smile and slid the clubroom door open. "You'd be surprised to learn that Ayame actually holds a lot of confidence in you, which is why she called you up."
"Yeah, right," Akihiro snorted before exiting the room with her lunch in hand, her ego still sore from the verbal beating she was just inflicted. "Gosh, I can't believe that she's our captain again! I can't even catch a break our last year in-"
"That's the girl!"
Akihiro stopped mid-sentence as she instinctively turned toward the loud voice to her left and found herself staring at a cute blonde boy pointing her direction. Turning her head to glance over her surroundings, Akihiro wondered who the boy was sprinting at, before she was mowed over by that very boy. Luckily, Akihiro didn't fall over from the force of his tackle, but that was only because she was stopped by the doorway, her back digging sharply against the side and her head slamming violently against the wood with a loud resounding 'crack'.
For a moment, Akihiro saw stars, or was it handsome men? Whatever the case, the breath was knocked out of her, and her head, which decided it had suffered enough abuse for the day, shut down and the girl blacked out.
Brown eyes fluttered open and Akihiro returned to world of the conscious; however upon realizing that two pair of eyes belonging to two very attractive people were staring down on her, she reconsidered that maybe she was in heaven instead.
"You're awake!" the blonde boy exclaimed happily with his arms raised in the air in celebration.
With a groan, Akihiro shook her head a few times to shake away the sleep in her vision as she tried to prop herself up, 'Where am I?' was her first thought before a rush of memories came crashing down on her.
'That blondie over there was the one who rammed me right into the doorway, wasn't he?' She grimaced wryly.
"Are you okay?" the other boy, one with olive hair, asked as he leaned in to gauge her condition. "I'm sorry for what happened. Nagisa just got a little excited." The blonde boy temporarily ceased in his cheering, perking up at the mention of his name.
"Come on, go apologize to her now!" the olive-haired boy chastised.
"I'm sorry!"
The puppy-dog face the boy had put on was just so adorable that Akihiro found herself forgiving him even before he uttered the first syllable to his apology.
"It's fine," she reassured him as she started rotating her arms through the air furiously as if to demonstrate that she still had bodily control over her movements; however her erratic actions only ended with her gutting someone behind her, hard. "Wha-?"
"Haru-chan!" the two boys cried in shock as they leapt towards the prone figure which had bent over onto Akihiro's bed in pain.
Akihiro's eyes widened at the sight of a mob of black hair resting next to her blanketed thighs. "Holy cow! Are you alright? I didn't even- never mind that, can you breathe?"
Blue eyes raised up from the depths of the blankets to glare at her dully.
'Another pretty boy?' Akihiro blinked before realizing that she had more pressing issues to tend to than getting mesmerized by pretty boys and leaped out of her bed, "Here! You should probably lay down. I really am so sorry for that! I had no clue you were standing there!"
Before the black-haired boy could protest, she deftly shoved the boy onto the bed and tightly cocooned him within the swath of blanket.
The bubbly blonde, or Nagisa, as Akihiro recalled the olive-haired boy call him turned towards her in mirth. "As expected of the girl who pulled the pants on the principal! You handled this situation spectacularly!"
Akihiro's eyes widened as she registered what he just said, 'Pulled the pants...', before face-palming. Now that she took a closer look, Nagisa was wearing a red tie, symbolizing his freshman title. No doubt he was there at the orientation to witness her embarrassing display of archery. 'Judging from their green ties, the other two boys must be sophomores.' Suddenly, Akihiro felt like such a cougar as she recalled the blue bow tie hanging around her neck.
"Did you really-?" the olive-haired boy asked, still unwilling to believe his ears.
Akihiro felt red dusting her cheeks as she sharply raised her face from her palm, "I can assure you, it was far from intentional!" Then as if salvaging some hope from her desperate situation, "At least we now know he's maintaining a healthy private life judging from the direction that elephant's trunk was pointing!" ...Or maybe not.
If only she could hide herself in a hole forever...
Luckily, the boy took pity on her and changed the topic.
"My name is Makoto Tachibana." He chuckled bashfully. "I just realized we haven't introduced ourselves yet."
"I'm Nagisa Hazuki! Nice to meet 'cha!" the blonde chirped brightly. "And that's Haru-chan!" His finger pointed at the aloof black-haired boy who just managed to untangle himself from the suffocating blankets.
"It's Haruka," he corrected. "Haruka Nanase."
The idiosyncratic relationship between the three inherently different boys was something so endearing, Akihiro couldn't help but crack a smile. "My name's Akihiro Suzuki."
"Akihiro?" Makoto mused questioningly, tilting his head.
Nagisa's eyes seemed to sparkle at that point. "So you're-"
"A girl with a boy's name." Haruka finished monotonously.
Honestly, Akihiro wasn't surprised by their observation, having gone through the same scenario throughout her life, and shrugged as she ran a hand through her curls. "My parents are super traditional, so they refused to undergo ultrasound when they had me and instead predicted my gender through this sketchy fortune teller that lived in my old neighborhood. But once they found out I was a girl, they were too lazy to change my name." She rolled her eyes, "Big and bright, is what my name means, so they justified it by saying they hoped I'd become a a cheerful girl with certain big endowments." Akihiro gestured towards her chest.
Three pair of eyes flew towards her relatively flat chest and Akihiro suddenly felt awkward, especially when her eyes happened to meet Makoto's and he turned away blushing.
'Maybe I shouldn't' have mentioned the second part,' she thought.
"I guess only the 'cheerful' part held true," Nagisa said solemnly.
Akihiro's eye twitched. 'I definitely shouldn't have mentioned the second part.'
"You're the same as us, then," Makoto hurriedly piped in when he noticed the brooding look that started to take over Akihiro's face. "We're all boys with girly names."
Akihiro blinked as she allowed his words to sink in.
"You're right!" A quirky smile tugged at her lips. "Wow, what a coincidence!"
That was how the four of them bonded over the rest of the lunch break before the bell rang for classes to commence once again.
A/N: Thanks for reading thus far! I know many people are reluctant to read fanfiction containing OC's for fear of Mary Sues; however I assure you that is not my intention. If Akihiro ever comes off as a Mary-Sue please message me! This chapter was more of an introductory chapter, so hopefully things will start heating up next chapter. ;)
