Sakuno Ryuzaki woke up one spring morning with a purpose. As she heard her alarm, she readily bounded out of bed, a look of fierce determination on her face. Today was the day. Today was the day she would ask Ryoma Echizen, the prince of her school, to be her date for the spring festival next week.
Her best friend, Tomoka, might have talked her into it. She was going with Horio. When those two started liking each other, Sakuno had no idea. However, they seemed to be joined at the hip now, eating lunch together, walking to and from school together, going on dates on Sundays together.
Sakuno knew her relationship with Ryoma was going nowhere. High school girls' tennis was no joke. She couldn't slip away to watch the boys' practices like in junior high. Then there was the issue of her failing English grade. Between those intense tennis sessions and studying for final exams, Sakuno rarely saw Ryoma outside of class, and he spent most class time sleeping anyway. She had to ask him to the festival if she wanted anything to happen between them.
After morning practice, Sakuno marched into class with new resolve. She would walk up to him and ask him directly. No stuttering or staring at the ground. She had a good ten minutes before class started. She could do this.
She saw him at his desk, surrounded by Momo, Eiji, and the Freshmen Trio. She hadn't anticipated that. She had to get him alone somehow. Why couldn't the upperclassmen hang out in their own classrooms before school? Why couldn't her classmates just sit in their assigned seats?
She continued to walk towards them when she caught a fragment of their conversation.
"Nyah! Kiddo, why won't you come to the festival with us?" Eiji cried.
"Yeah, the whole team is going together - even Tezuka," agreed Momo, nodding his head.
"And Kawamura Sushi has their own booth," Horio half said, half sang off-key.
"Don't want to," Ryoma deadpanned. Sakuno winced. Oh no. Ryoma didn't want to go to the festival. If he'd turned down his best buddies, there was no way he'd go with her. She was no longer listening to their conversation. Why oh why did it have to be like this? She spent the rest of her free time before the bell with her hands covering her head down on her desk, muttering in frustration, paying no heed to the consistent funny looks the boys were giving her as Ryoma explained further.
When lunch came, Tomoka had talked her into trying to ask Ryoma out again before disappearing to God-knows-where with Horio. There was no shame in trying. If he turned her down, she shouldn't take it personally. She was going to do it.
She found him on the roof eating - with another girl. She was a senior and probably one of the prettiest girls Sakuno had ever seen. Not to mention her boobs were enormous. Sakuno glanced down at her own small chest and grimaced.
"Ryoma darling," she cooed, sticking her chest out. "I've been watching you for a while now."
He grunted in response. "And?"
"And I want you to come to the spring festival with me," she said, giving him her sexiest smile. Aw, crap. Sakuno felt her fire quickly being extinguished.
There was no way Sakuno could stand up to that. There was absolutely no freaking way.
"No thanks," he said expressionlessly, grabbing his empty lunchbox and making a motion to stand up. Aw, double crap. He'd probably already been asked by a girl even hotter!
"Ryuzaki, what are you doing here?" he asked, finally noticing her by the door to the stairs, snapping her out of her lament.
"Oh! I-I was j-just, um, w-well, you know..." She looked at her feet. So much for no stuttering.
"Do you want to go to the library with me?"
Why? To mock her? "O-okay!"
Ryoma walked past her to move through the door, and she soon followed after him. The girl who had asked him out was still sitting open-mouthed on roof floor.
They were walking in silence until Ryoma quietly said, "Japanese is one of your best subjects, right?"
"Y-yes," Sakuno hesitantly replied as they kept walking.
"And English is your worst," he continued. It wasn't really a question. Sakuno frowned as they reached their destination. Had he actually asked her to the library to mock her? Before she could say something in retaliation, he had already found a table and chairs, and he was pulling out his Japanese homework.
Sakuno's brows furrowed in confusion. "Get your English homework out," he commanded. She wordlessly complied. He then took her homework, grabbed a nearby pencil, sat down, and began to make corrections. She simply stared at him. She'd forgotten that he was fluent in English. After he finished going over the first page, he looked up at her.
"You're taking a long time to get started," he said, and she looked at his homework laying untouched across from her on the table. "At this rate, neither of us will get good grades on final exams."
"Sorry!" She clumsily grabbed the papers and a pencil from her bag and began to correct. So he wanted to study together. Sakuno's cheeks turned slightly rosy. She still had a chance. She would ask him as soon as she finished correcting his homework.
Ryoma had always seemed so smart to her. Actually, he seemed perfect at everything. However, she had just found his Achilles' heel. She almost missed it because he had no problems speaking Japanese, but being raised in the States had clearly taken its toll. Ryoma Echizen's writing sucked. Big time. The kanji was all wrong. Sakuno wondered how he had even passed his high school entrance exams with grammar this atrocious. Her left eye twitched in frustration. She would never finish correcting this.
"You've still got a long ways to go," she heard him say under his breath while shaking his head at her homework. Oh hell no. He still had a long ways to go.
Suddenly, he paused and put his pencil down. Corrections were far from being finished. "Ryuzaki," Ryoma said, "will you c-"
"Echizen!" He was cut off as Inui sauntered over towards them, carrying a purple sludgy-looking liquid that smelled like a combination of rotten eggs and vomit. "I just finished making my new and improved Inui J-"
"No," Ryoma said quickly, covering his nose.
That was when the librarian decided to make an appearance. "This is a library, not a stink bomb factory," the woman cried, fanning the bad air away from herself. While Inui tried to convince the older woman to try some of his newest concoction, Sakuno felt something grasp her wrist and tug her out of the vicinity. Ryoma had seized her hand and their study materials in their attempt to flee the scene. As soon as they were out of the area, the bell rang for classes to resume, and Ryoma promptly dropped her hand. Her chance was ruined again.
Afterschool, Sakuno had tennis practice. So did Ryoma. She figured she could catch him before he went home. That was until practice went on twenty minutes longer than usual for the girls. Sakuno sluggishly wiped off her sweat and changed back into her school uniform. Ryoma was most definitely long gone by now. She moped out of the girls' locker room and sighed dejectedly.
"What's the sigh for?" a mocking voice said behind her.
Sakuno turned to see golden brown eyes and the trademark Echizen smirk next to the locker room door. Ryoma was standing there in all his princely glory.
"You took a long time changing," he said. He'd waited. It wasn't over for her yet. Sakuno felt the fire within her slowly being rekindled. "You need to finish correcting my homework. The teachers here just give me a grade. They don't give me any feedback." Her fire was quickly re-extinguished. So that was why he had waited.
They ended up sitting down at some cheap burger joint near the school. They had split the costs on a large tub of chicken nuggets. Ryoma ate most of it while skimming Sakuno's work for any errors he may have missed. Sakuno tentatively sipped a Ponta while finishing up her review. Finally, they handed each other back their papers.
"Thank you," Sakuno said. Ryoma nodded.
"Thanks," he said tonelessly. The booth they were sitting in was really uncomfortable, and it grew less inviting every moment. The red plastic of the seat stuck to the bare backs of her legs. Sakuno worried at the awkward sounds it would make if she were to move. They had finished what they came for. Or at least Ryoma had, she thought. Without their schoolwork to occupy them, what would they say now?
Then, the tensed part inside of Sakuno begged to be relieved of its discomfort. Now was finally her chance. There was nothing to get in the way now. She took a deep breath and began to speak quietly.
"Ryoma, will you-"
"Come with me to the spring festival," he said suddenly. His face was turned down towards the chicken nuggets, and his dark bangs shielded his eyes from view. Sakuno's jaw dropped.
No mother-freaking way. He was asking her out. They sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity.
Then, the words sunk in, and Sakuno released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Okay," she said at last, then broke into a full-out smile. The weight lifted off her chest. He looked up then smiled sincerely with her.
Ryoma Echizen woke up on the morning of his final exam ready to fight. That Japanese test was going down. He had tortured himself everyday at lunch in the library with Sakuno instead of taking his daily nap to prepare for this day, and it would not be for naught.
Of course, it wasn't really torture.
He recalled the way Sakuno twisted one of her cinnamon braids around her dainty index finger as she scrunched her thin brows together and bit her lower lip while she examined his essays. It was an interesting change hearing criticism from her even though he gave it right back to her for her English.
But still. He had to pass this test. His English and science grades were no longer enough to get him by. All that sleeping in class added up.
Ryoma was ready. Morning and afternoon practice was cancelled for finals, so he had time to eat a full Japanese breakfast. He showed up to class ten minutes early with two number two pencils. Sakuno was already there, nervously sitting at her desk. The Japanese history section was first, then Japanese language, then science, math, art, and finally English. The test would last the whole day with a brief lunch break in the middle.
He walked up to her and placed a hand on her head to get her attention. "Are you ready?" he asked.
She looked startled and tiny as she looked up at him standing next to her desk. "Y-yeah!"
"Good," he said then looked away, "do your best."
"Good luck, Ryoma, fight" she said, beaming as if suddenly empowered. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at her wide smile. He hoped nobody could detect the faint pink tinge running across his cheeks.
The test passed by in a sort of blur. Ryoma just bubbled in one answer after another, no longer enthusiastic. When it was over, he couldn't remember any of his responses to the questions. He did remember that Satoshi Horio and Tomoka Osakada were really annoying though. They kept pestering him for which answers he put. Didn't they know how to shut up?
"Hey Echizen, did you put D for sixty-two in the history section?" What was the history section even about?
"What? I put A! How about thirty-seven in the math section? I got pi!" What did pi even stand for?
"I don't know," he replied, hoping his tone implied "leave me alone." Sakuno seemed to understand that he didn't want to talk about it, and she suggested they all go for ice cream to celebrate being done with testing. Ryoma was glad when the loud-mouthed pair politely declined, saying they had to babysit their brothers, or go to a piano lesson, or clean their mothers' handbags, or something. He didn't have the patience to deal with them right now.
Ryoma's brain was exhausted. Seriously, the concentration needed for his tennis match with Yukimura, the Child of God, had nothing on finals. He couldn't seem to focus for more than a minute at a time. He placed an arm around Sakuno's shoulders and allowed her to guide him to her favorite ice cream shop. She felt unusually warm under the weight of his arm, he noted. She didn't talk too much on the walk, but when she did, her words didn't really register, so he just grunted in response.
He perked up after a few bites of green tea ice cream.
"I said, 'Are you okay,' Ryoma," he heard Sakuno say. He was sitting in a chair in the ice cream shop with her sitting across from them. She looked pretty pink in the face.
"Sorry, I spaced out after the test." Then, Sakuno's face contorted strangely, and she covered her mouth. She let out a few strange sounds, and her eyes lit up. Was she giggling?
"What's so funny?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. She held up another hand to hide her face as the offending noises became a little louder.
"You," she replied. "It's so funny to watch you when you're tired."
"Well, I'm not tired anymore," he said. He shoveled some more ice cream into his mouth.
"I noticed," she said as she took a bite of some pink ice cream. Probably strawberry. Ryoma started to take off his school jacket when he noticed his wallet in his pocket. He hadn't touched it all day.
"Ryuzaki, did you pay for me?" How embarrassing. While he was busy spazzing out, she had forked out the cash.
"Oh no, don't worry about it," she said quickly. "I actually have a friend who works here."
"Oh."
"Not that I wouldn't have paid for you," she said defensively. They were silent for a moment.
"I'm really looking forward to school being out," she told him. They only had two days left of school. She looked down. "And the spring festival," she added so softly he barely heard it. The festival was the day after school ended.
Ryoma looked down as well. He didn't have his cap to pull down over his face, so looking down was the best he could do to prevent her from seeing his face. "Yeah, me too," he said.
"W-why did you ask me to go with you?"
Ryoma didn't know what to say. Because they were family friends, and it made sense? Because she was cute, and his mother wanted grandchildren one day? The real reason he'd asked her was the same reason he wanted to study with her instead of asking one of his upperclassmen for tutoring - simply because he'd wanted to. Wasn't it obvious? Did he really have to say it out loud?
"Because you're not that annoying for a girl," he said. She was always around. In junior high, she was always standing outside the green fence of the boys' tennis courts while he practiced. She still showed up to his matches to cheer. If he had found her constant presence bothersome, he would have dealt with it long ago. It was practically a confession of his undying love, but Sakuno looked disappointed. Clearly, he did have to say it aloud in standard language. "And because I like you."
She turned pink from the neckline of her uniform all the way up to her hairline. Her russet eyes were the size of saucers. Was she really that surprised? He never let her see him blush, and he didn't stutter. But he thought he had made it painfully apparent that he preferred her to other girls and that other boys should stay away.
"I-I like you too," she choked out. Ryoma had an inkling she did, but it still felt good to hear her say it. They swiftly finished their ice cream in silence.
Ryoma stood up from the booth first. Sakuno followed and waved goodbye to her friend behind the counter. "Bye An," she sang to Kippei Tachibana's younger sister. He then tugged on her hand to leave. When they left the shop and started heading home, Ryoma decided that he didn't feel like letting go of her hand wrapped up in his. She didn't seem to mind. So that was how he ended up walking her home holding her hand.
Takeshi Momoshiro and Eiji Kikumaru considered themselves to be the sons of the gods of dating, acting as their prophets. Being the charitable demigods that they were, they so generously offered their services to their high school's first-year class gratis. They knew they had done well in their counseling when little Kachiro got a girlfriend. They knew they had done really well when they spotted loud-mouthed Horio making out with that equally loud-mouthed friend of little Sakuno's behind the tennis equipment shed during lunch one day. However, their favorite little project, the forever alone prince, always stubbornly refused their advice.
After middle school, the two had given up on trying to get Ryoma into dating. He just never seemed all that into girls. He had shown slight preferential treatment towards the old coach's granddaughter, but they had always assumed it was because she was the coach's granddaughter.
That was until they invited him to the spring festival. They had fully expected him to be free. Ryoma was popular, but he was no social butterfly. When he said no, they assumed he was lazy and just needed the proper convincing to go. Then, he explained, "I'm asking Ryuzaki to be my date."
They knew the girl would say yes, so in honor of their newest disciple finally seeing the light, Momo and Eiji took it upon themselves to make sure their kiddo's date went well. They could catch up with the rest of the team later.
The Freshmen Trio, save for Horio had decided to participate as well. They would act as lookouts. Momo gave them each a walkie talkie he and Eiji had pooled their money together to buy off the internet to use as they followed the couple.
"Come in Special Agent K Number One; come in Special Agent K Number Two; Roger," Momo said into his walkie talkie from his position a block away from the Ryuzaki household. It was early in the afternoon. He was sitting on his braked bike, ready to move at a moment's notice. Kikumaru was standing on the back of his bike listening in on the conversation.
"Momo, you gave us such lame codenames," whined Kachiro from the bushes outside Sakuno's house.
"And, um, why couldn't we just use our cell phones?" Katsuo asked.
Eiji and Momo looked at each other. Neither of them had thought of just using their cell phones. That probably would have been easier on their wallets.
"Yeah," Kachiro agreed, "these walkie talkies make it seem less like we're making sure Ryoma and Sakuno's date goes well, and more like we're spying."
Eiji's mouth fell open in horror at the implication.
"And even if we were just lowly spies," Katsuo continued, "these things just make us more conspicuous, don't they?"
Momo face faulted.
Making a quick recovery, Momo quickly shouted into the communication device, "Hey, respect your elders, freshmen! We know what we're doing"
"Yeah, never mind that," Eiji reassured them. He then covered the mouthpiece. "Why didn't we just use our cell phones?" he whispered urgently to Momo.
"I don't know," Momo forcedly whispered. They were interrupted in their miniature crisis when they heard voices coming from the controversial gadget.
"Hey, I see Ryoma!"
"Oi! What's he doing?" Eiji asked, grabbing the piece of equipment out of Momo's hand.
"He's ringing the doorbell," said Kachiro.
"Aw, Sakuno looks so cute in a kimono!"
"Aw, I want to see," Eiji cried.
"Whoa, are they holding hands?"
"Hey, they're heading towards you guys," said Katsuo.
Ryoma and Sakuno were indeed holding hands, Momo and Eiji both noted from their perch in the nearest tree. Momo's bike had been abandoned at the tree's base. "You know, we wouldn't have to go through this if you had a car," Momo said.
"Hey, Oishi usually drives me around," Eiji replied defensively. They were too preoccupied with their discomfort to hear the quiet conversation below.
"Hey, Sakuno, did you hear something?"
"Yeah, it sounded like branches cracking," she replied. Momo and Eiji fell out of their oh-so-comfy tree just as their favorite freshmen couple turned the corner.
Once at the festival, Eiji positioned himself sitting on the ground behind the snack booth Ryoma and Sakuno were currently visiting. The festival was an agglomeration of colorful booths lined up along a concrete path and bounce houses and people and other kiddy rides. At the end of the path, there was a large Ferris wheel. Behind the booths, several trees surrounded the festival. He did his best to listen in on the conversation while the Freshmen Duo relayed the visuals from the Ferris wheel with binoculars.
"So you really don't like hot dogs," he heard Sakuno say.
"I like Japanese food better," Ryoma said bluntly.
"G-grandma's not home, but I-I can cook for you later." Score for the kiddo. He turned to whisper to Momo, but he instead found a middle-aged man in monk robes crouched between them.
"So the boy is doing well," the monk said cunningly. He smirked in a familiar way.
"Hey, you're that perverted monk," Momo nearly exclaimed, pointing at the man. "Aren't you Echizen's father?"
Nanjiro Echizen grunted. Sure, the boy was getting somewhere, but no son of his would take this long to get busy on a date.
"Maybe," said Samurai Senior tauntingly.
"Hey, he's taking her away from the crowd," Katsuo's static-veiled voice broke out from the walkie talkie.
"They're going off the path and into the trees," said Kachiro.
Eiji, Momo, and Ryoma's father hastily followed the pair as inconspicuously as possible. Maybe Ryoma was his son after all, Nanjiro reflected. They all ducked for the bushes when they found their little prince and his princess in the middle of a clearing, invisible from the lights and chatter of the festival . Peeking through the leaves, they saw Ryoma holding one of Sakuno's hands again, the other hand in his pocket.
"R-Ryoma?"
"Just trust me," they heard him say. Suddenly, the upperclassmen felt as if they were intruding on something extremely personal. Ryoma leaned closer to her face. Momo and Eiji both felt the blood rushing to their cheeks and ears. Ryoma closed his eyes. Oh god, he was going to do it. Momo frantically tried to look away, but he found his eyes were glued to the scene. Ryoma leaned even closer towards Sakuno's lips and -
His golden brown eyes flashed open ablaze. and he looked their way. He removed his hand from his pocket holding a tennis ball and threw a fastball at the bushes they crouched behind.
"Ouch! Nyah, that hurt!" Momo was about to scold Eiji for blowing their cover, but he was stopped silent by the deadly look on Ryoma's face.
"Run." And that was all it took. Nanjiro was already long gone. Eiji and Momo did not look back as they fled, so they didn't see Ryoma re-pocket his tennis ball, laugh, and walk over to give Sakuno a quick kiss on the lips, making them both quite pink in the face.