"What's this?" Atsuya asked, eyeing the white drawstring bag in front of him.
It came from Nae, which meant he probably didn't want to know, but the words slipped out before he had a chance to stop them. The bag was only about the size of his hand, and was obviously homemade judging by the long, uneven stitches. Snowflake charms decorated the drawstrings, which were barely tied shut from whatever Nae had crammed inside.
Suddenly, Atsuya was very aware that the entire clubroom had gone silent.
"You know what day it is," Shirou asked, creeping up on his younger brother like a wolf. (Not cool, bro!) "Don't you, Atsuya?"
"Uh..."
Atsuya looked back and forth, from Nae's puffy cheeked determination to Shirou's dry smirk to the rest of the club's expectent gazes, a few times.
"Is it Thursday?" he asked finally.
Somehow, Atsuya managed to disappoint every person in the clubroom with only three words.
"It's White Day!" Nae cried out finally.
"How was I supposed to know that? Shirou is the one who takes care of all the – Wait, why are you the one giving me a gift in the first place?! Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"
"But you gave me a gift first!"
"I did not!"
"Yes, you did! On Valentine's Day!"
"I did not!"
"Do you remember the pink hanky?!"
Atsuya paused. He did remember the pink hanky… Nae had been recovering from a minor cold or something, and listening to her sniffling all of the time had gotten really annoying. So he'd handed her the hanky his mom had laid out with his uniform to blow her nose with, then told her to keep it, because no way had he wanted to carry around a handkerchief full of Nae boogers for the rest of the day.
"That didn't mean anything!" Atsuya protested.
"Then why was it pink, huh? Valentine's colors?"
"The same reason all of Shirou's things are blue! Our mom thinks it's fun to color coordinate our socks and underwear to – "
Atsuya cut himself off, but not quickly enough. Oh no, he did not just admit to having pink underwear in front of the entire soccer club.
"It's true," Shirou piped up, as if this were some kind of sitcom and not another tragic instance of his younger brother embarrassing himself. "She tries to match our hair colors, but the closest she can ever get to Atsuya's is pink…"
"P-plus, there was that time my red socks got mixed with the wash…" Atsuya grumbled, now that his face was almost a matching shade of pink.
"Nobody believes that, little brother."
A couple of people laughed, trying to be discreet so Atsuya wouldn't yell at them next. Underneath their giggles, one of his teammates whispered, "Where did Juka go? Did she leave because this is too embarrassing to watch?"
"No, she said she needed popcorn…"
"She must have gotten it for White Day."
Before Atsuya could get mad, Nae – who had a special talent for distracting him – added, "Then what about the chocolates?"
"Huh?"
This time, Atsuya knew exactly what she was talking about. But he hadn't thought anything of it a the time!
"You were complaining that you didn't have any chocolates, so I gave you some of mine!"
"But… but chocolates on Valentine's Day are supposed to be special!"
Finally, Shirou stepped directly between them. "As fun as this has been," he declared, looking back and forth between the two in a way that could've meant either amusement or their impending demise, "we have practice we should be getting to."
"Perfect!" Atsuya agreed. "Just tell Nae's she's crazy, and – "
When he went to stand up, Shirou lightly pushed him back into the bench he'd been seated on. At the same time, Nae yelled, "I am not crazy!"
"'We'," Shirou corrected. "Not 'you'…" he added, pointing at Atsuya and Nae. "Or you."
The girl fell unusually silent when she heard her name. Atsuya's impression of her, from the moment she'd joined their football club, was that Nae wasn't used to being told what to do. Or not do, in this case.
Shirou ignored both of their protests as he continued, "Soccer practice is for the non-disruptive members of the club only. You guys can practice with the rest of the team as soon as you stop arguing. Until then, you two are only distracting everyone."
"Sh-Shirou!"
"How come you're never on my side anymore, bro?!"
Instead of answering, Shirou simply glanced over his shoulder and asked them to tell Juka to change into her uniform and head outside as soon as she returned.