What do great athletes do when they are not practicing nor doing awesome stuff nor having an exciting lifestyle ?
For the Rikkai tennis team's young athletes, who already made themselves a name by winning the Nationals and attracting pros' attention, they went to school. Obviously.
They went to Rikkai's high school. Rikkai has a middle school, high school, and a college. Mostly known for its college for having elite standards and providing an excellent future to its students, Rikkai's high school and middle school also have to keep up to the name. And the sport department plays a huge part.
The three have a well-known and dominant boys tennis team, but there's also a girls' one, although not as well ranked.
Ishimaru Kumiko was a soon-to-be member of the said club. She always thought the girls' circuit was boring, Shitenhouji was always first, an all-girl school second, and the rest...well, she didn't give a damn.
Her school was well ranked, not weak, but not strong either.
But this year, her second year in high school, she decided she would work on making a great team. She knew what was needed, she knew it was hard, but challenges were her thing.
And that's how the girl with the relaxed posture entered the tennis world. Her life finally going the way she wanted it to.
So she did a party.
As for the eight boys regulars, they were aiming for a third straight win, aiming to be the ultimate Nationals champions again. This time for real.
This year, third for them all minus Kirihara -who was a second year-, shit was about to get real.
"I like unicorns."
"...I know you do. Freak."
"What do you mean ? You ungrateful wretch !"
"Kumi, I won't hit you but I'd like to" A girl with long black hair let out an exasperated sigh. "You've been talking about unicorns and tennis randomly for, like, A MONTH"
"Tennis and tennis players" The other girl, with light brown hair grinned.
"Whatever you say"
Ishimaru Kumiko, sweet sixteen, was seated next to the window. Her light brown hair falling on her eyes, which were closed, when her friend spoke.
" Mind reminding me what we're doing here ? After school of all time ?" Indeed, it was around 6pm, students already left and those who had club activities were nearly done.
The sun was setting, giving the sky an orange-pink teinture. It was beautiful. And the color was mirrored in Kumiko's grey eyes.
"Stay with me won't you" She began, her eye-lids closing again. "It's not like I'm always in this mood, I just don't feel like going home. And this school and classroom are lovely aren't they ?" She asked, with slight sarcasm.
"I can't agree more." She rolled her eyes but a smile crept on her face.
After a few minutes in silence, both girls enjoying the calm, they heard footsteps. Someone was running in the hallway. Kumiko had her hands in her pockets, she lazily got up and opened the door to see. Too late. The person running was already on top of the stairs. She saw wild black hair and recognized it as Rikkai high tennis club's ace : Kirihara Akaya's hair.
"Akira, you're free. I'm going home." The girl with the straight black hair's name is Mazumi Akira, also a 2nd year student and Kumiko's best friend for a really long time.
Akira was a tall and slim young girl. Her hair was jet-black and reached her hips. Despite her feminine looks, she did have the Yamato Nadeshiko's look and elegance. Although she didn't look particularly friendly. A bit hard to approach too.
At break time, Kumiko and Akira's classmate and friend, Nakagawa Ai was in front of Kumiko's desk. With Akira just behind, they were complaining about school work, although school just started a week ago.
Nakagawa Ai was a sweet looking girl, she always styled her uniform with a "cute point". Her short brown hair also had a ruban or was braided. She was the sweet girl always available to make her friends smile.
Being a regular in the tennis team and knowing Kumiko and Akira could easily make it to the regulars and help them, she always tried to invite said girls.
"That's why buchou said we need new miraclous members. Or miracles." Kumiko got what Ai meant, but was seemingly too busy drawing flowers on her history copybook.
"Your buchou seems pretty desperate then" Kumiko wasn't looking at Ai who had her arms on her desk and her eyes clearly sending a message : This year you'll move your butt.
"And frustrated. It's already her last year. She, along with the other third years dreamt of making it to the podium..." But the sad puppy look didn't work. Kumiko did plan on joining the team but she wanted to play around a bit before. Talk about being a sadist. And Akira didn't plan on telling the poor girl either.
Akira wasn't one to talk a lot when she was focused, bored, or reading. Note that she was almost always led her to developing the ability of doing two things at the same time : reading her books while listening to what was said.
Which was useful because Kumiko couldn't stand being ignored. While she and Ai did all the talking, Akira listened and smiled from time to time -a really small smile though-.
Akira looked behind her. It was a friendly boy's seat, Takami Ryou was it ? She already sent daggers at the said boy for moving too much when he chatted with Kirihara who was seated behind him. And now she felt a bit sorry for the boy. He was a good boy and it was Kirihara's fault after all.
She considered both apologizing and sending annoyed glares to the true culprit. But ended up forgetting about both and resumed her book.
Yagyuu Hiroshi was unlucky enough to have the trickster -or ex-trickster- on his back because of multiple reasons, but on top of that, he ended up in his AND Marui's class. Just guess how tiring it could be.
The two boys, a.k.a Marui Bunta and Niou Masaharu, a.k.a bubblegum and the dangerous dude, a.k.a the douche combo, were called the Demon Twins. Although they were far from brothers. Except they both had ridiculous non-human hair color.
The gentleman was also unlucky to be seated behind "the dangerous dude", but on reflexion, he was lucky not to be in front of him. It would have been hell. Next to Niou was Marui.
" Dammit Niou, you never do your work and I end up not doing it either" Said Marui when their teacher went to print some notes. He turned his body to face Niou who was shamelessly sleeping, his head on his arms. Marui swinged his legs and thought about taking a gum, but figuring the teacher could come back anytime he decided to direct his attention to Niou again.
"Man, if only Jackal was here, he would have helped us-or no, he would have helped me, since you don't need help" grimaced Marui. His other best friend, Jackal wasn't in their class. The "big three", Yukimura, Sanada and Yanagi were in the same class : 3-A, The gentleman +2 : 3-B while Jackal : 3-C. Was he alone ? Meh.
"He's with his girlfriend, which is way better than with you." Was Niou's -who still didn't look up- brief answer.
Marui threw something at his sleeping head, unable to retort anything because their teacher finally came. Yagyuu smiled, amused, but pushed his glasses up -that were perfectly fine the way they were- to hide the smile.
Gentleman one day, gentleman all days.
When back home, Akira threw her school bah on her bed and sighed. Looking at her face on the mirror she realized how tired she looked. I look as blank as Kumiko's math homework page.
A few things went on her head, the fact that she should get her shit together and the fact that her english teacher asked Kumiko and her to help Kirihara Akaya with his grades in english.
Her grey eyed friend told her it was a great opportunity to get in touch with tennis again. But no way she was going to listen to her about the topic that is trying tennis again. She decided to forget about tennis. And about people. Yeah, people were being bratty lately.
The next day, Kumiko, Akira and Kirihara were in the school library for the first "save-Akaya-mission". As expected, the boy was litteraly dragging his feets to the unknown place called school library.
Small talk aside, the two girls soon realized the green-eyed teen really sucked in hated the subject with all his being. And he had no intention of befriending the language either.
So Kumiko thought the only way was to threaten him with tennis. "Kirihara," screw honorifics. She was getting irritated by the boy's smug and not-concerned behavior. "if you don't bring your grades up they'll kick you out of the tennis team, you know how Rikkai works."
"I have average marks in every other subject. Especially math." Was his evasive answer. He wasn't taking the bait. She wished he would have gotten angry, but the boy grew up and learned to control himself. Actually, when he wasn't playing tennis he was more cool-headed than hot-headed.
"But your english grades are catastrophic" He didn't answer. Which motivated the black-haired girl, she asked Kumiko to give her her fake glasses.
Having anticipated her friend's request, she handed them to her in no time with a proud look.
"What the hell are you doing with fake glasses ?" Kirihara made a face. At least that woke him up.
" 'never know when you need them, you always need glasses, a wig, chalk, and a doll. And a black hole if possible. A black hole would be nice and fits perfectly in one's bag you know. It's only available on mondays though."
She reminded him of people he was close with, so he smiled.
And there it begun. They stayed until the librarian had to kick them out. Kirihara probably learnt more in one day than in his whole life, Akira was SO not letting him off the hook. He was tired in the end but grateful.
Akira being the spartan teacher and Kumiko smoothing the work, they worked efficiently and somehow succeded in making a peace treaty. For the moment.
They covered the basics...the "apple, do you want an apple ?" stuff he should have learnt a long time ago.