A little Friday the 13th story to make up for me not updating in forever, even though it's a bit late. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Tennis no Ouji-sama
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"Nee, Echizen, are you superstitious?"
The freshman looked blankly at his teammate. "Not especially. Why?"
"Don't you have a calendar, Echizen? It's Friday the Thirteenth," Fuji Syuusuke said with a smile.
Echizen Ryoma just blinked. "I don't believe in that stuff," he said as he finished tying his shoes. He grabbed his bag and stood up, stretching from the early practice.
"That's what I thought," Fuji said, following the freshman as he walked out of the club room. "But it's not up to whether you believe in bad luck or not; it's whether bad luck believes in you."
Again, Fuji received a blank look for his cryptic statement; but the third-year's smile only widened as he walked ahead of Ryoma and directly under a ladder with a paint bucket sitting on top. He then stopped, as if waiting for the younger boy to do the same.
"Echizen, what do you say we make a bet?" Fuji asked, his eyes opening slightly. "If you believe in bad luck by the end of the day, then you have to do whatever I tell you to do."
Ryoma smirked. "And what if I win?"
"Then I'll do whatever you want."
"Sounds interesting," Ryoma said, walking under the ladder. "It's a deal."
Fuji only continued to smile as the paint bucket fell on Ryoma's head.
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"Oi, Echizen! What happened?" Horio Satoshi asked, eyeing his classmate's hair. Specks of white could be seen among the black-green, with large clumps here and there as well.
"Paint," Ryoma answered coldly, refusing to elaborate as he walked past Horio towards his seat. Horio exchanged glances with his friend Katou Kachirou before shrugging and heading towards his own seat.
"Hey, did you know it was Friday the Thirteenth?" Horio asked, attempting to start a conversation with the stoic boy. Ryoma only glared as he sat down, directing his attention to the English book that he didn't need to study.
"I wonder what's up with him," Horio muttered as the teacher came in.
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"Echizen, could you come solve this problem?" the teacher called a little ways into their math lesson. Ryoma looked up at the board for the first time, seeing that it was an easy algebra problem. He stood up with a sigh and trudged towards the board. About halfway down the aisle he felt someone's fallen pencil roll beneath his foot; the next thing he knew he was looking up at the ceiling with half the class laughing at him.
Ryoma could feel how red his face was as he stood up and calmly continued his walk to the board, solved the problem with ease, and then went back to his seat. He didn't say a word the rest of class, and gave anyone who came near him a glare that told everyone, "Talk to me and you die."
How someone could slip on a pencil and fall on their back was beyond him.
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Lunchtime came around without any more incidents. Ryoma gave a small sigh, glad that he had been able to drown out the small bouts of giggles that his fellow classmates were having by falling asleep halfway through the lesson. He reached into his bag to grab his bento…only to find that it wasn't there.
Ryoma scowled as he thought back to that morning, when he had been in a hurry because he had overslept. He had set the lunch box on the counter while he ran upstairs to get something, but didn't remember grabbing it before he left.
Ryoma sighed again as his stomach growled. Horio, noticing that his 'friend' wasn't eating anything, went over to him, half expecting to receive the same death glare he had earlier. When he didn't, Horio felt that it might even be safe to talk to him.
"Echizen, why aren't you eating anything?" Horio asked, hovering a little ways behind Ryoma.
"I left my lunch at home," Ryoma said flatly.
Horio was contemplating giving some of his lunch to Ryoma when Ryuuzaki Sakuno and Osakada Tomoka came running into the classroom. "Ryoma-sama!" Tomoka yelled, setting a large plate of cookies on Ryoma's desk. "I made these last period just for you, Ryoma-sama!"
"Hi, Ryoma-kun," Sakuno said quietly.
Ryoma stared at the cookies. Normally, he would have left them alone, maybe eating one just to make the girls go away; but today, his stomach was telling him to shove them down his throat within the next two seconds whether he wanted to or not.
Making sure to keep his cool composure, he reached out and grabbed a cookie, wondering why they were panda shaped, and popped it into his mouth.
He instantly wished he hadn't.
Normally, Tomoka's cookies were very good, though Ryoma wouldn't admit it out loud. Today, they tasted like they were made out of cement. His disgust must have shown on his face, for a moment later a glass of water was being offered to him. He gratefully took it and gulped it down, half-listening to Tomoka as she wondered why her cookies tasted so bad this time.
"I thought that adding a whole bunch of sugar would make them taste better, but maybe five cups was a bit much…"
A few minutes later, the bell rang, drowning out the sound of Ryoma's stomach.
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Ryoma played with a spot of the paint in his hair while his teacher went on about the different spellings of words in English. After living in America, he really didn't care about the various ways of using 'their, they're and there'. Not that he would have cared anyway, but it gave him an excuse to not pay attention.
Which he really should have doing with the kind of day he was having. But Ryoma was stubborn, and refused to believe in bad luck no matter how bad a day he was having. It's all just a coincidence, he told himself. The voice in his head telling him this was so loud that his teacher had to call on him three times before he actually heard him.
"Echizen, now that you've joined us, please translate the sentence on page four fifty-two."
Ryoma looked down at the textbook. There wasn't even any use of any of the forms of 'there' in the sentence. "My carp in inadequate," he said without thinking after reading, 'Mou koi ga todokanai'. Instantly, the class burst into laughter.
"I suppose it could be translated that way, but what I was looking for was, 'My love can't reach them'," the teacher said, clearly trying to keep from laughing himself. Ryoma sat down, his face bright red.
He officially hated the English language.
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Ryoma was glad when school was over so he could go to tennis practice and take out his frustrations on the ball. He was not having bad luck, though. A large number of bad things had coincidentally happened to him on the same day, but it was not because of bad luck.
And it was a coincidence that on the same day he got hit on the head with Momoshiro's Dunk Smash when he wasn't paying attention.
It was his own fault, really. He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and, remembering the time when Karupin had followed him to school, had looked for just a second to see what it was. Momoshiro just happened to use his Dunk Smash at that moment, and it had just happened to hit Ryoma on the head.
It was all a coincidence.
Ryoma sat on a bench, holding a pack of ice to his head. He brushed off his teammates' concerned looks and dodged their questions, silently counting the minutes until he could go home. He held on to the faint hope that maybe Fuji had forgotten about the bet they made earlier, and he could just leave without any other incident.
But, as he would soon find out, Fuji didn't forget about his promises.
The brown-haired boy was waiting for Ryoma outside the club room after practice. "So, Echizen, do you remember our little bet?" he asked after everyone else had left. Ryoma sighed. He remembered it, all right.
"I have to admit, a lot of…weird things happened today," Ryoma said after a moment. "And yes, they were bad; however, the fact that they all occurred on the same day is just a coincidence." Fuji's smiled dropped a bit as Ryoma continued. "But…I suppose that it was bad luck that they all happened on Friday the Thirteenth." The last part was muttered, as if he was hoping his senpai wouldn't hear it.
He did.
"So that means I win the bet," Fuji said, ignoring Ryoma's futile protests. "That means that you have to do whatever I want. Now, what should I have you do…?"
As if you haven't already thought about it, Ryoma thought.
"Ah, I've got an idea," Fuji said, sounding almost like he had just thought of something. He leaned down and whispered, "You have to carry my stuff home for me, and suffer through dinner with me, since no one else is going to be home tonight," just before placing a small kiss on the freshman's forehead as he stood back up.
Ryoma grumbled a bit as he picked up Fuji's tennis racquet, but figured there were definitely worse things that Fuji could have picked as punishments.
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Author's Notes:
Did you know that 'koi' can mean both carp and love? This is why Ryoma translated it the way he did.
I really did want to get this up when it was still Friday, but instead it's technically one o'clock in the morning on Sunday, so I guess me and deadlines don't get along. Reviews are most loved and get cookies in return.