A Day in the Life of Akutagawa Jirou
by omi
Akutagawa Jirou sleeps. His baby soft blonde curls fall gently around his face, along his rosy cheeks, tickling his nose, and he looks just like a cherub from a Raphaelite painting. The girls in his class giggle softly, and one particularly daring girl takes off her blue hairclip and pins his fringe up with it and there is a brief flurry of activity as everyone rummage for their camera phone to take his photograph.
He shifts a little restlessly at the commotion, his mouth working a little in complaint, and everyone holds their breath until he sinks back into a deep slumber.
Their first teacher for the day -- the strict Kawahara sensei for Mathematics -- wakes him up with a sense of resignation, and does not mention the fact that he has a very pretty blue hairclip in his hair. He would really rather not know. Instead, the teacher spends the rest of the class going through sine, cosine, tangent; opposites and adjacents sides; angles and distances.
He calls on Jirou every eight minutes, as part of his daily effort to make sure the boy does not drift back to sleep in his class, and represses a growing sense of guilt as Jirou wibbles at him in innocent dismay at each question.
He has a reputation to uphold after all.
But the boy is really too cute for his own good. The teacher escapes from the class, with something like relief, and notes in passing, as he closes the door, that Jirou was already back at his desk, head on his arms, fast asleep.
The class president shakes Jirou awake for the fifth time that day. But this time is easier. It is lunch time, and Jirou is already half-awake from hunger anyway. He sleepwalks his way to the school's dining room, to where the tables reserved for the tennis club, and only blinks a little when Atobe plucks a blue hairclip from his head and puts it in his pocket.
He spoons Boeuf Stroganoff and perfect blinis into his mouth, listening as around him, Oshitari and Atobe are debating the finer points of Russian poets and their Germanic cousins, Gakuto is bickering with Hiyoshi, Shishido and Ohtori are discussing their plans after practice and the ebb and rise of their voices are sufficient to lull Jirou back to a gentle sonorous slumber.
Atobe stops mid-argument, snaps his fingers and gestures imperiously at the sleeping boy, and Kabaji pushes his plate away, gets up, picks his senpai up and begin his daily after-lunch trek to deposit Jirou back safe and sound to his class.
The rest of the day's classes trickle by in dribs and draps. A line of poetry, the day a battle was won, the slightly acrid smell of chemicals, the slow drone of a teacher's voice.
Jirou listens with his eyes closed, in between sleep and waking, conscious and not.
He is conserving his energy for more important things. Like tennis.
Atobe refuses to play with him, and Jirou is stuck practicing with Oshitari.
It isn't that Oshitari is not a good player -- you cannot be bad and be on the team -- but Oshitari... is not Atobe, or Marui, or Fuji.
Oshitari's game is a calculative one, all subtle traps set and waiting for the unwary player. There is no inspiration. No brightness or verve. Only those calm steady eyes behind the glasses, and a lobby like clockwork. Jirou begins to droop, his shots slowing down, lessening in power, and Oshitari sneaks a drop shot by him while he was still at the baseline.
Jirou stares at the little green ball lying innocently on his side of the net, his lower lip trembling just a little, and his sense of competition is spurred and he begins to play with increased focus.
Jirou wins the next three sets, but loses the match.
School is over. Practise is over. And the team members are slowly moving away in small groups and ones and twos, back home, back to tutors and family.
Jirou stays back, even after the last member vanishes with a slight wave, leaving Jirou alone in the court.
The sky is now completely dark, and insects flirt back and forth with the court spotlights, insect wings buzzing softly.
Jirou pants, his hair dark with perspiration, as he swings almost randomly at the ball. The ball clears the net with just a centimeter to spare, and bounces off at an impossible angle.
He already has a new stunner of bruise starting on his shin, the third one this week. His mother is going to go ballistic again if she sees it.
It is now a quarter to midnight, the witching hour for the tennis cinderella, six hours since practice ended. Jirou stretches, and lobs the last ball into the basket, and heads for the school gates, when a car has been waiting silently.
Home, shower, homework, bed, and in another six hours, Jirou will get up again, wonder a little about a girl's blue hairclip in his pocket, and sleepwalk his way through school.