"Oi! Fuji, wait up!"
I had to jog to catch up with him. Somehow, during my goodbyes to our teammates, Fuji had managed to progress nearly a block. It was just the two of us now. Kaidou and Oishi had already left our group to head to their respective houses.
As I reached him, I jumped and threw an arm around his shoulder, playful as always. His reaction wasn't the normal amused smile though, so I let my arm drop to my side and cocked my head. He sighed lightly (I knew something was wrong then) and stopped walking.
"Nyaa, Fujiko. What's wrong?" He'd tell me eventually. He always does. It's part of the perks of being best friends. The slight smile he gave me in response just reinforced this knowledge.
"You always notice, hmm, Eiji," he seemed almost proud, despite his obvious discomfort, that I recognized that something was bothering him. "It's nothing really ...at least, not anything that you should be concerned about."
"I'm always concerned when Fuji is unhappy," I told him honestly. It's depressing when your best friend is upset and you don't know how to make them feel better. "Let me guess what could be bothering you, and maybe I can help"
We started walking again, heading towards my house, where we would be having a sleep-over that night. Whenever one of my brothers spent the night at a friend's house, I always asked Fuji to stay the night at mine. He rarely declined.
"Let's see. Fujiko seemed alright during morning practice," Fuji was quiet as I pondered aloud his dilemma. "We played a joke on Arai during lunch, so you were definitely still fine then..."
"Eiji... don't worry about it," I ignored his attempt to drop the issue. It wasn't even a true effort either. He knew as well as I that I was going to figure it out.
"At afternoon practice, we even played a match for warm up, until Tezuka told us to practice doubles and I had to leave you and go play with Oishi. And you were left to play singles against Momo while I played with Oishi against Kaidou and Inui and..." Wait. "Are you upset because we didn't get to finish our match?"
The tension that had been building in his eyes as I spoke went down slightly. So, I wasn't exactly right, but based on his reaction I was close enough.
"Or ...is it because I left our match to play doubles with Oishi?" This time I hit the nail directly. His eyes opened wide as he stopped walking again.
"Eiji... you..." He just stared at me, almost as if in shock that I guessed correctly.
"You shouldn't be so worried about Oishi, Fuji. The Golden Pair is a great doubles team, but Fujiko is my most important person," I grinned as widely as I could and threw my arm around his shoulder again. The tension in his shoulders seemed to release in a huge sigh as he smiled gently at me and I knew he understood.
"Thank you, Eiji. I should know by now not to doubt you," he said as his smile tilted into a slight smirk. Uh oh. I should know him well enough to have been able to anticipate his next action, but the kiss on my cheek was unexpected and so was his laughing form running the rest of the way down the block to my house.
"Fujiko!!!" I grinned again and jumped into action, sprinting after him, and already plotting my revenge.