Summary: In which Kirihara and Hiyoshi have a match, Yukimura reads something he shouldn't have, and a large number of people die. Mentions of YukiSana.

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.


Kirihara Akaya, age thirteen, was feeling very depressed. The reason was that he suddenly realized that his hairstyle looked awfully like seaweed.

"Senpai!"

"What?"

"Look at my hair. Do you think it looks like seaweed?"

"Sure does," Marui senpai replied, chewing his pink bubblegum as he spoke.

--

"Senpai! Do you think my hair looks like seaweed?"

"Well, yeah… but don't worry. Look at me, I don't even have hair," the senpai with no hair answered sympathetically.

--

"Senpai! Do you think my hair looks like—"

"Seaweed? The possibility of you saying so is 100 percent."

--

"Senpai-tachi!"

"Yes, Akaya?" Both senpai turned to Kirihara with a questioning look.

"Do you think my hair looks like seaweed?"

"Yes. Very." Both senpai nodded and pushed their glasses up their nose in unison. One of them suddenly looked at the other and muttered, "Niou-kun, stop copying me."

"Aw, but it's such fun copying you," Niou smirked.

However, Kirihara Akaya did not hear his senpai bickering with each other. He had already walked off sulkily, lamenting the fact that he had seaweed hair. Why, oh why does my hair look like seaweed? Why couldn't I have beautiful, smooth ripples of dark blue hair like Yukimura-buchou? Why couldn't I have eye-catching red hair like Marui-senpai? Why couldn't I have cool silver hair like Niou-senpai, or neat purple hair like Yagyuu-senpai? Why couldn't I have hair like Kuwahara-sen… wait, no, never mind.

While Kirihara was sadly thinking this, meandering on the streets with slow, staggering steps and his hands in his pockets, his reverie was broken by a gruff, impatient voice.

"Hey you—yes, I mean you, seaweed-head—get out of the way."

Kirihara was already in a state in which it would not take much to madden him, and therefore flared up instantly at the comment of the speaker, who was a boy with straw-colored hair wearing a Hyoutei uniform.

"Yes, I'm a seaweed-head, so what? You are a mushroom-head!"

Hiyoshi Wakashi, who was in a bit of a hurry to get back to his family's dojo, forgot all about the time and was immediately fuming. "At least being a mushroom-head is better than a seaweed-head!"

"You mushroom-head!"

"You seaweed-head!"

"Mushroom-head!"

"Seaweed-head!"

"Mushroom!"

"Seaweed!"

"Mushroom!"

"Seaweed!"

"Wanna fight? Let's have a tennis match tomorrow afternoon at three! You had better show up or else!"

"Sure, let's have a match!"

"So it's on! If you are too scared of almighty me to appear, I'll—"

"Wait, I have tennis practice tomorrow at three. If I don't show up, Atobe will scold me. How am I supposed to gekokujou successfully after that?"

"Well, it's okay, I can go to your school tennis courts, and we can have a match there. I'm sure Yukimura-buchou will let me skip club practice once if I tell him that this is a match to defend my honor. He's such a wonderful person. Unlike your buchou," Kirihara declared.

"Yeah, unlike my buchou. But won't that be too troublesome for you? Your school is kind of far from mine, after all. It's all right if it's a bit inconvenient."

"It's no problem for me. I'll be there! Wait for me!"

"I will. Bye-bye and see you then!"

The people passing by were too busy with their city lives to notice anything. Therefore, no one heard this conversation, and so no one was there to question why a fight between hotheaded teenagers had somehow turned into something reminiscent of a sweet first-date appointment scene.

--

So it was decided. At five the next afternoon, Hiyoshi stood waiting for Kirihara on his school tennis courts. The other Hyoutei tennis club members had heard about this match, and were interested in the outcome and all came to sit around the tennis courts to watch.

Kirihara, also, did not come to the match alone. When he was telling Yukimura about the match and how he would be missing the day's practice, Niou had heard and was going on and on about how they should go to Hyoutei to cheer "their little Akaya" on and protect "their little Akaya" from weird Hyoutei people. Yukimura agreed to this suggestion, and along with Yanagi who wanted data on Hiyoshi, Yagyuu who was dragged over by Niou and Sanada who was dragged over by Yukimura they made a five-people cheerleading squad for Kirihara.

"The best of one set match, Kirihara to serve," Gakuto, temporarily acting as judge, announced.

"I won't lose to you," Hiyoshi declared coldly.

"I won't lose to you either," Kirihara remarked, eyes turning a brilliant red color.

"Ah, he will soon be grown up, our Akaya." Yukimura sighed blissfully. Sanada nodded, expressionless.

--

The sun slowly set, but the match between the two sophomores was still going on.

"Yukimura, it's getting dark. Why are you still wearing your sunglasses?" Yagyuu wondered, lifting his own pair of glasses to show his confusion. Indeed, Yukimura had been wearing sunglasses for the whole day and showed no sign of ever wanting to take them off.

Sanada turned to them worriedly. "Seiichi, is there anything wrong with your eyes?"

"No, nothing," Yukimura replied with a smile. Sanada was not satisfied, but could only turn back to watch the match. It was quite an exciting match, which involved a lot of weird poses on both sides.

Niou looked in envy at the sunglasses. "Can I try them on?" He had always been one who liked to try new accessories on himself to see how they suited him, and Yukimura's sunglasses certainly looked pretty cool. You have to admit that Yukimura has extraordinarily good fashion sense.

"I'm afraid not," Yukimura shook his head, still wearing a smile.

"Why not? I'll be super careful. I won't break them, I promise," Niou begged.

Yukimura sighed. "It's not because I'm afraid of you breaking them. Actually, It's because—how do I explain it?" He though about it for a moment and finally lowered his voice, beckoning Niou and Yagyuu to come closer. "Well, have you heard of this story called Fated to Be Cursed?"

"No." Niou and Yagyuu shook their heads together, almost causing them to crash into each other since they were standing fairly close.

"It's a horror story that I read yesterday on a fan fiction site," Yukimura explained. "I though it was a love story at first because there was the word fated in it, but it was nothing of the sort."

"A horror story? Wow. Tell me all about it," Niou exclaimed, being a person who loved horror stories, no matter telling or listening to them.

"Okay. It's like this…"

One day, Bob dug his own eyeballs out. But, to his horror, he could not put them back in again! He went to ask his older sister what to do. His sister said, "That's alright, now we can use them as marbles!" Bob though she was right, so they played a game of marbles with his eyeballs and had a great time. But all in a sudden, Bob's eyeballs rolled under the sofa, and they could not get them out. That very moment, Bob's sister sneezed and screamed "Ahh, Yesss!" and then she died. The End.

After Yukimura finished telling them the story, Niou and Yagyuu exchanged cautious glances, worried that whatever comment they had about this "story" would surely hurt Yukimura's feelings. They came to the mutual conclusion that they should put it as inoffensively as possible.

"Um… this is not a horror story, Yukimura. It is not scary and doesn't sound well written at all. It's more like something the author typed when drunk," Yagyuu pointed out, skillfully choosing words that were less hurtful than "This story sucks. What happened to your sanity?!"

Niou added, "Besides, what does this story have to do with wearing sunglasses?"

"You see, the scary part is not the story itself," Yukimura explained regretfully, "but the author's note after it."

Indeed, after Yukimura read the story, he automatically scrolled down the page to see what the author had to say about it. The author's note went like this:

Congratulations, dear reader! If you had finished this story within five seconds, you have acquired the ability to curse others. Any living thing you set eyes upon directly will die.

Yukimura considered this. He was a fast reader, and when he mulled it over, he realized that he had finished reading the story in five seconds.

"But things like this do not happen. Must be a stupid joke," Yukimura had thought.

At this precise moment, his mother called his name from downstairs. "Seiichi, have you seen your sister's rhinoceros?"

Yukimura felt annoyed because it meant that his sister's troublesome pet had somehow gotten loose again. It was the thirteenth time it had happened this week. He wished that his sister would get a normal pet, like a kitten, maybe, or a hamster. As he turned to check around the place, he saw the heavy rhinoceros trudge past his opened bedroom door, and as soon as Yukimura saw it, the rhino collapsed on the floor and died. Yukimura decided that it was just a coincidence, but as he turned back to his desk, he realized that the plants he had grown for many years had all shriveled and dried up.

"And that's why," Yukimura concluded, "I am wearing sunglasses. It's all for your safety."

"How sad." Yagyuu wiped away tears.

"But I still want to try your sunglasses anyway. They look so cool," Niou admitted and resumed his shameless begging.

"Niou-kun, that is too dangerous," Yagyuu reprimanded.

"Aw, just for a few seconds, please? You can close your eyes and turn around, so you won't see anyone," Niou suggested to Yukimura.

"Makes sense." Yukimura considered it and decided that Niou was right, so he took off his sunglasses and handed them to Niou.

"Look, I'm Neo from The Matrix. Our names are so alike," Niou quickly put the sunglasses on and showed them to Yagyuu, who still found this action dangerous.

"Niou-kun, you should return them to Yukimura now. This is not safe, you know," Yagyuu murmured, looking concernedly at the back of their captain.

"It's just for a few seconds! See? I make such a handsome Neo. I'll play Neo, and you'll play Smith."

"I don't want to. Smith has such a high forehead. I'll play Neo, while you play Smith," Yagyuu said decidedly.

"Okay, you try," Niou shrugged and handed the sunglasses to Yagyuu. As his doubles partner, Niou knew very well that, deep inside, Yagyuu liked trying out accessories just as much as himself.

"How do I look?"

"You look wonderful."

"Do I? Thank you, Niou-kun."

As the two were having a happy conversation, the match was reaching its peak of excitement. Kirihara scored. Then Hiyoshi scored. Then Kirihara scored again. And then—

"Look out, Sanada-fukubuchou!" Kirihara yelled about an out-of-control ball that was zooming straight towards Sanada's nose. Sanada, who was standing near the courts watching the game intensely, easily ducked and avoided the tennis ball. At the same time, unfortunately, hearing that Sanada was in danger, Yukimura instinctively turned and opened his eyes to see what was happening to Sanada.

Niou, as soon as hearing Kirihara scream, realized that he was standing right in front of Yukimura and that put him in a dangerous position. He quickly shouted "DOWN!" and threw himself to the floor, pulling Yagyuu, who was still happily trying out the sunglasses, down with him

"Thank you, Niou-kun, for saving my life."

"Meh, no problem. After all, I'm you, and you're me."

These two avoided disaster successfully, having known about Yukimura's condition in the first place. The others were not so lucky.

Yukimura's eyes, on their way to finding Sanada, swept past a whole bunch of Hyoutei people. One by one, starting with Atobe who was sitting on the ground at one far side and ending with Oshitari who was standing on the other far side, the Hyoutei regulars collapsed on the ground and would never wake up anymore.

"It's my eyes!" Yukimura cried, but it was too late. He had already set his eyes on Sanada. Sanada, struggling to say something, locked eyes with Yukimura and crashed down onto the bodies of the dead Hyoutei members.

"Genichiro!" Yukimura exclaimed, and was about to run over when Niou passed him his sunglasses from the back. He thankfully accepted, put them on and then darted to the side of dying Sanada.

"Seiichi, I'm… I'm sorry…" Sanada gasped, using his last bit of strength.

"No, no, I'm the one that should say sorry," Yukimura wept.

"Seiichi, your eyes… are like the stars in the skies. Let me see… your beautiful eyes… once more before I die…" Sanada whispered.

"Okay," Yukimura said and agreeably took down his sunglasses.

"Ahhh!" Seeing Yukimura's cursed eyes once again, Sanada cried out, coughed up blood and died in the arms of his beloved Yukimura.

The beautiful love story of the two was widely spread around the campus by Niou, who loved gossiping, and Yagyuu, who loved gossiping as well though he pretended that he didn't. All who heard the tale were extremely touched. When interviewed about this incident, fifteen-year-old tennis club members Marui and Kuwahara both stated, "Luckily we didn't go."

So the story ends. But remember, dear reader, if you had finished this story within five minutes, you have acquired the ability to curse others. Any living thing you set eyes upon directly will die. You can choose whether to believe this or not, but all I can say is that it will be better to put on your sunglasses before saying good-night to your parents or chatting with your roommates. Good luck with your new cursing skill!

The End.


Not to be continued. This is the first piece I've ever written about Rikkaidai, and I sincerely hope it didn't suck too much. The original Chinese version was a challenge fic, so the plot was... kind of weird xD

Anyway, of course this curse isn't real. If it were, wouldn't the people around me all be dead by now? Or, of course, it could be the fact that I wear glasses that kept them all alive. Who knows?