Jock Monarch
Disclaimer: I don't own SD boys, Inoue does. The events that follow are not included in the original plot but enjoy anyway.
Summary: Mitsui tells the story why he's such a jerk to his girlfriend. MitsuiXOC. For Santeira. One shot.
A/N: This is like my first OC fic, ever. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, this is dedicated to Santeira; I really appreciate your review and since I was writing a Mitsui fic (again) I thought I might as well dedicate it to you. I really love writing about him, actually; we all do.
I know ivybluesummers will be so tempted to flame me. Wahahaha!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
'I did not, you pompous chauvinistic pig!' she cried for the whole corridor people to hear. And I was practically covering my jaw with my hand or probably just trying to stop it from saying something horrible. It didn't work, however:
'Take that back!' I shrieked.
'What?!'
'What you just called me, horrific hag!'
'No! Now the whole school's going to know what an irrepressible regal jock you make.' She snapped and turned to her heels to relegate the rest of the shame to me. Did she just say the whole school? Speaking of whom, people all had their eyes on me; someone even dropped the cola can he was clutching, and the rest were just…that, wide-eyed. Somebody really tried to bash Hisashi Mitsui into full gear this time and most certainly succeeded in doing it. And of all fucking people it had to be his girlfriend, my girlfriend.
The next day…
'Hey, CP, what's up with you and your girl this time?' A classmate popped just right behind me.
'Well, man, if you got spat at like that, it just means that things aren't getting along well with you. Common sense.' I said. 'And I presume CP stands for Cuteness Personified, eh?'
'Well actually, Mitsui, it's short for Chauvinistic Pig. That's what your girl called you yesterday, remember?' The boy frowned. I have a lot of pet names actually. Those are the most memorable presents I received from my girlfriend because after she gave me one, it would permanently stick to me like body hair until another new one came in. Take this incident for instance.
'Oh.' I said through gritted teeth. 'And I suppose you're smart enough not to repeat it, cad?' I felt my knuckles clucking by themselves, screaming a ready fight with the bastard in front of me.
'Am I? Because you're gonna do a lot of work in that case; half of the school's forgotten about the Hisashi Mitsui; as it happens, they're more comfortable with CP. Some don't bother with initials, though.' The classmate said.
'Really? So somebody has forgotten his logic from the closet on his way to school this morning, huh? Sit easy because I'm going to get it back for you,' I sneered.
'How?' The boy asked.
'You see this?' I leveled my balled fist with his eye and slowly attempted to shove it to him. 'This is going to help…'
'Mitsui-san, you can't do that; you're not in the streets. The principal's going to have to fix things with you again for fighting…'
'I can't do that? You want me to flip coins right now, dickhead? Maybe not…'
I had my fist on his left eye as fast as I could even recognize what was happening. The boy writhed in his chair and a strangled 'ARGH' flew out of his throat. Other people rushed to his aid while others whispered among themselves. I hated that sight (I mean when people talk among themselves and show no motion of sharing their dumb piece to you but nonetheless make sure that they're talking ABOUT you) but the fear in their eyes was awesome. It gave me a unique kind of satisfaction; exactly like the equivalent of getting good grades which was nearly impossible in my case. Anyhow, a teacher came in as quick as I could remember. Next thin I knew, he was ushering me to the principal's office, my usual chill-out.
'Mr. Mitsui, this is the third time you've been in this office because of the same offense,' The principal was saying. 'If we hear about the fourth time we're gonna have to hold your diploma, which as you've been repeatedly cautioned would render you unqualified in the candidacy for graduation.'
I rolled my eyes as they rested on the familiar furniture inside the room that I was only too used to seeing. I could tell by the principal's stern voice that she was trying to scare me with her bullshit, whatever she could gain by it. Just another failed cruncher to bust me and I didn't care; it was just like saying that I am hot, and I heard that every goddamn minute. I let out a bored sigh and said,
'Uh, what do you want me to do?'
'Reports say that you've been hanging around with-what do they call 'em?-yeah, gang members from around the city. The administration thinks it better for you to, er, just stay away from them awhile so you can concentrate on the school and abide by its policies.' She said.
'I fail to see why my pals are any of your business.'
'Excuse me?' The principal gaped at me.
'I don't let anyone tell me what to do and I'm not going to start to.'
'Well, sir, I guess there's a start for everything.' She whisked on a fake smile.
'How about "no"?'
'Then maybe I shall sit here until you incurred your fourth, Mitsui.' She sighed a tired sigh and fingered her spectacles. 'Please don't tell me next time that I haven't given you an ultimatum; this is enough warning for you to be able to gauge your situation. We are only concerned about your studies and your life; for this reason, we have to go through all these means, but it seems like…'
She rambled on and I don't remember listening to her or holding any interest in what she was going to say. I could come up with something as mean as 'Right, right; you're the boss but I'm the God so stay out of my life' but I wasn't in the mood for wasting spit. Actually, I never was; I hated talking about my life, really, and I was only too distressed that I had to talk about it then when I felt so shitty. And afterward I would have to think about it too; but dang it, didn't I just hate thinking? Back then my favorite hobby was actually NOT thinking. I left the principal's office after muttering a meaningless 'thank you' and with a sentence of another two-day suspension. Damn, I loved my life.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
'Where have you been?' My girlfriend appeared out of nowhere as I scrambled my way to my first class.
'Honestly, woman, you have an ambulance's sense of timing. Can't you see I'm running late?'
'Yeah I can see that but you haven't answered my question.' She snapped.
'I was at my grandma's.'
'At your grandma's? For…let's see…two days? Pardon me but I can't buy that.' She said.
'Yes you can; all you have to do is say "yes, Sashi, I believe you".' I faced her and twisted an irritated eyebrow at her. 'Why do you ever ask me anything when you never believe me?'
'And why can't you ever learn that it's only easy to bluff at someone who doesn't know you? I know you're expert at it but it's me you're horsing around with here.' She said in a tone that pleaded for mercy or a sensible answer. She didn't know I couldn't horse around with the principal either.
'Alright, I was suspended. Now I don't reckon the how and the why of the story interest you because I doubt if you haven't scooped up what happened. There.'
'I heard of it.' She said. 'But where were you the whole time? I was trying to get through your line for four hours yesterday and they said you weren't home.'
'Is that concern that I'm hearing in your voice?'
'40 percent, and 60 percent anger. Now where were you?' She insisted.
'Just home; I was grounded too. Anyway, I didn't want to talk to you, you know; phone calls aren't exactly what I want to do besides boredom.'
'Wow. That's the nicest thing I've heard since you called me a horrific hag.' She said, bitterly indulging in her sarcasm.
'Hold it, girl; I'm not exactly over the fact that you called me a chauvinistic pig and the whole world repeating it to me.'
'That's what you are.' She glared at me and suddenly shifted her gaze to her watch. 'Listen, we're both late for the next class. Call me later if you get home, alright?'
I nodded after her with a look that promised nothing.
I didn't call her that night. I didn't want to and even if I did, I couldn't because I had totally forgotten her number. One of my honest mistakes. I wasn't the one who always phoned her; it was more like the other way around, so there was no way I could help it. Not of course if I had her phone number listed somewhere on the empty pages of my notebooks, but I don't remember jotting anything down. And this physical weakness was another factor. My knee was throbbing again; the physician had said the pain might come back once in a blue moon. I was quite surprised it came back with tremendous pain. Talk about rare times hitting hard.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
'You didn't call.' She said coldly the moment I set a sole on Shohoku grounds. It appeared that she was waiting for me; lucky there weren't a lot of people around to witness the impending drama.
Wasn't this just that old style I-hate-you-and-you-hate-me-for-not-calling dead encounter? It was, but in the movies things like that go temporarily while this one seemed not; it could actually go on forever without anyone wanting to conclude it. All because of a missed or refused phone call. What the hell was happening to us?
'I was tired and I wasn't feeling well and my body was weak and my knee hurt like fuck and…whatever.' I said and continued sauntering to the entrance door. She trailed a step behind.
'You could've at least remembered you have a mobile phone and that my cell number's stored there and you could've at least sent me an SMS saying you couldn't make a call.' She said.
'Oh great. Now it's my entire fault.' I said with an air of someone who wants his jaw broken on the curb better than to go twice over this rotten argument.
She said nothing; a little further I ceased to hear any pursuit of her footsteps. I turned around and found her rooted in a standstill with her head down and her hair partly covering her must've been really depressed face.
'What's wrong?' I asked in an honestly anxious tone, and a little startled she didn't force on her verbal attack. I can't say I didn't know the answer. I did. And it was all because I was acting like a complete asshole. Well, that's me being normal.
'...' She gave me that silence, the kind that I know every corner of. What's wrong? Did I really ask her that? What a fucking typical phrase that would kill us both. Maybe I would freak out if I was the one being asked like that.
'Well, I suppose you don't get nothing for an answer if things are okay, neh? Well, miss, my knee DID hurt last night but…er, the other truth is, I don't have your number and I don't remember it. There. Just stop looking skagged; we're running late so let's hurry.' I said rather calmly. I didn't want to sound too concerned and it was only too true that that stuff was really beginning to get old, i.e., pretending to worry sick over things that I couldn't care less, much as I hate to admit though.
'What a jackass.' She mumbled.
'Sorry I was born one.' I exhaled without conviction. Who in his right mind and with an awful sense of pride would admit that he's a jackass?
'Look, we're not getting anywhere if you've noticed. So if you have time to think about it maybe you could work things out like…'
'Uh, I'm not sure if I'm following you; would you mind speaking in a language common to both of us?' I said. Truly, I don't want anyone speaking in riddles; as I've said before I really hate going over the difficulty of delicate thinking. She rolled her eyes,
'Maybe the time's coming when…-'
RING…RING…RING
Thank fuck the bell rang. And mind me, we ended up not concluding anything, as predicted.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
'Hey Norio, What does it mean when your girl tells you you're not getting anywhere?' I asked a friend later on. We were in the school yard.
'It's over because you've been a prick to her.'
'No, seriously?' I said.
'It comes down to the basics of clichés; you're not meant for each other.'
'Oh yeah?' I asked, a little disbelieving.
'Mitsui, do you ever feel very, very happy when you two are together?'
'Since when have I felt very, very happy, dumby?' I replied irritably.
'That's what I'm talking about.'
'So, it's over then?' I asked.
'Not technically; someone has to go up to someone to say it's over.'
'I should do that?' I said, not wanting to hear any answer.
'If you don't want to be the one who gets dumped.'
'Hot damn, of course not. Hey Norio, you think I screwed up?' I said.
'What do you make of yourself then?'
'A jerk, but she's being a bitch too; calling me all sorts of names that she picks up everywhere like disease. I don't know,' I scowled, knowing very well that she got those smutty malicious words from me. 'It's probably what she lacks but then it's probably my high stakes too. What shall I do?' Yes, I really said that when I just did a good job telling the most powerful person in the campus that she wasn't to tell me what to do. The irony made me want to laugh my eyes out, but this was just too serious to begin with.
'Mitsui, I'm not going to tell you what to do.' Norio said flatly.
'What else should I fucking well do, huh?' I almost blared. I was too confused at this crisis, if that's even the right term. Maybe it wasn't much to whine over, maybe I was just bored to fuck with that kind of relationship. Maybe I was really a jackass.
'Just do what's right, boss.' I heard Norio say. It sounded as if he was uttering from a script written two hundred years ago, that do-the-right-thing crap we hear in every flick in an average once per minute. But it sounded right, so right because I was so wrong. Fucking wrong.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
There are some urges we ignore, those that do not have significant consequences; but there are some that we just have to succumb into. Like breaking ties, breaking connections, breaking up a relationship that has been fading away for a long, long time; it's just that both were either too intimidated to admit it or just too indifferent to put any heart to it that neither was ready to proceed. But that was it; she saw the real me and was probably seeing it for a long while now. I didn't think she liked it, no.
I'm not really the kind of jerk who would break up with his girl of two years in a parking lot, much less carry it through a phone. A phone, for crying out loud. Just think; two years of for-better-or-worse relationship (NOT fling) ending in a single phone call with minimal exchange. I used to think lowlife chickens are the only ones capable of that but there you go; I did. And yes, I did; she said 'fine', I said 'fine' and we both said 'let's call it quits' and then click. We were over within a few minutes in the worst imaginable case of impersonal settlement; through a phone and in the parking lot, you gotta be kidding me! And then the skies suddenly looked dim and my surrounding gloomy and my eyes watery…Nah! That was the movies. This was for real. And it was absolutely robbed of the spontaneity of a real life drama, and it just felt awfully junky like what you feel whenever you want to get serious and then some apeshit insane bat like Sakuragi just popped out nowhere and cracked corny jokes. Yeah, just like that. So call me a jerk who's also a full time lowlife chicken shit, and I assure you you'd be very welcome to do it.
So it was over and I didn't feel what the textbook asked me to feel. It was not even half as painful as telling yourself that your personal frustrations are caused by you alone. Singlehandedly screwing things up that way. In other words, being single again wasn't better or worse than when I was in my worst days with her; it was just not at all different, emotionally speaking. I doubt if it mattered much to her too; she was always giving me that sick-of-each-other look whenever we were together and we had lots of fight that can no longer be ignored or kept track of. Both dangerous and petty ones, but mostly just the kind that two people who can't stand not hating each other have. What the hell. However, I wouldn't call the relationship bad or a failure. It was rather something akin to a process. A process that missed a lot of steps as we gravitated toward the break-up point; it wasn't a failure because we made it to the last stage, but it was roughly a pass. I was never really happy.
The only thing that made me very, very happy was that.
Basketball. I needed to go back to get out of this stagnation, which I did a few weeks later.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
'Hey, Hisashi.' I spun around to face my ex-girlfriend. She was smiling. 'You did great against Shoyo! My God, I was shouting to the whole stadium saying 'that's my ex, Hisashi Mitsui! Hahaha!'
'Really?'
'Yes! I'm so proud of you.' She grinned.
'Thanks. Hey, how do you like the hair?' I asked.
'Much better.' She stroked her hands on my now short hair. 'Wow, you finally took my advice to cut it clean, Hisashi. I thought I wouldn't live through the day when you will finally listen to me.'
'I wasn't that bad.' I smiled.
'No, you're not; you're great.'
'Ha! That's me.'
'Yeah, so do you believe me now?' She said, descending her note in to the low.
'What do you mean?'
'What I told you that day.' She frowned.
'When?'
She paused with a reluctant gaze then, 'When I called you a chauvinistic pig. I said it wasn't I who told your mom that you were in that gang brawl and you didn't believe me so you called me a horrific hag.' She finished nervously.
'Oh, that.' I took a breath. 'It was my stupid squeaky brother, alright. I'm really sorry.'
'Wow, you are apologizing? Where's the masculine pride of Hisashi Mitsui now?' She laughed.
'I don't need that anymore.' I said as the bell rang again; it rang for the two of us or so I felt, just like when it rang when I was fed up talking to her. 'Hey, I'll see ya around.'
'Okay.' She said and moved toward me to give me a friendly peck on the cheek. I used to think that kissing after a reconciliation is for gullible, ignorant rationalists only; and I'm a radical. And that seems a stupid fucking concept to me now; because right then and there it felt alright and necessary to brush away the ugly episodes behind us. She wasn't so bad after all.
'Look! Mitchy is kissy-kissing a girl in the corridor!'
It was Sakuragi's gang, noticeably wearing maniacal grins.
'Hey, Mitchy, who's the chick?!' They ran to us, four of them, with a look of childish excitement in their eyes. What they wouldn't do for gossip materials, these boys.
'Well, boys, this is…'
'Jun.' She reached out her hand to shake it with the freshmen. 'I'm Hisashi's friend. How do you do?'
She wasn't really so bad after all. Well, she was probably even great too. Like me. It made me feel nice again, and not just feel nice without being nice; but nice and great and comfortable and… free without feeling such and such.
I left her to make friends with the boys; I figured I wasn't stupid enough to be late in my classes again. Tenth tardiness equals another violation; I knew that and knew very well that it was going to be my fourth just as the principal warned me. Speaking of whom, I was actually doing what she told me. Funny eh? But rules are rules; I didn't need to disobey them just to say I could do a lot of things others could not. I mean, I see no point in being the jock monarch that I was when I could just be a great athlete, and a good team mate, or even a nice ex-boyfriend. Which are all a small price to pay, come to think of it.
END
A/N: Well, as you can see, the story still revolves around Mitsui and not about the girl. I just think it's better to end them as friends rather than to 'start all over again' which is a stupid cliché.
