A/N: Written in one gulp after I was "encouraged" to update by a friend. :'D A little shorter than last chapter, but I'm still trying to grasp the feel of this story so things might bounce around for a bit. Also, changed "Humor" to "Drama" for genres just because I think it fits better?
Thanks for all the support, lovelies~ 8Db
Disclaimer: All credits go to their respective owners.
o~
Sawaguchi Tesshou was always told to expect the unexpected while teaching middle school. Still, after eight years of teaching at Seigaku, he thought that he had a pretty good sense for students.
Which was the reason why he was currently bewildered at the state of Nakagawa Misono. She was normally a silent but hardworking student, a type that was easy to handle and slipped under the radar more often than not. She was a bit frightening with that intense gaze of hers, but he thought that she was a fine, upstanding young girl.
When she had shown up late that day, panting for breath, he decided that it must have been a fluke. Nakagawa had a perfect attendance record, and he let her off with only a small warning. Then, between first and second period, a monster entered his classroom.
Tesshou had heard rumours about Akutsu Jin, but none of them did justice to the real thing. He was huge, glowering down at all the terrified of the younger classroom's students. Tesshou had expected him to call out Inagaki-kun or Riichiro-kun, one of the troublesome gangsters in the classroom.
But then Akutsu entered the classroom and stood right in front of Nakagawa Misono's, of all people's, desk.
"Next time when you get me a soda, it better be orange flavoured." He had said, and slammed an empty can onto her desk. She flinched, but nodded. He put a slip of paper on her desk, and then left promptly. Everyone stared at Nakagawa, who only took a few seconds to regain her composure.
"Sensei," she said calmly, shocking Tesshou out of his stupor, "Do you know any vending machines around the school that sells orange flavoured soda?"
He shook his head slowly, and the bell rang to commence learning once again. Slightly shaken, Tesshou let himself immerse in geometry and forget about the past accident.
At lunch, Nakagawa left the classroom with her bento, and returned ten minutes before the bell rang with a tube of super glue and shards of some kind of container. She spent the rest of her lunch and the next breaks gluing her bento back together carefully, with an air of total nonchalance.
Her classmates, originally intimidated by her gaze, now fully stared at her in horror.
After class, Tesshou called her to his desk, fully intent to find out what was going on with his student.
"Nothing is wrong, Sawaguchi-sensei." she had replied with a straight face. "It was merely that I bought the wrong soda for Akutsu. I did not know that he disliked the flavour apple."
"Are you getting bullied, Nakagawa?" Tesshou said slowly, trying to make her realize it herself. "Because if you are, you can tell me about it."
She took a moment to think. "In normal circumstances, I think it would certainly be called 'bullying'. But right now I am under special circumstances, and I am only being tested. Please do not worry, I will be sure to buy the right type next time."
"This isn't about the soda!" Tesshou was getting exhausted just talking to her. "Well, actually, it is. If I'm correct, then you were late because you had to buy him soda, and then he smashed the bento that you've been putting back together. There's no kind of circumstance that allows you to be treated like that, Nakagawa."
She pursed her lips. "I will be leaving the classroom now, Sawaguchi-sensei. Now that class is over, I can use my phone and input Akutsu-san's phone number in it. Then, I must go locate an orange flavoured soda vending machine and also buy some jumbo prawns so that he can have it in his nabe tonight with his mother." And with that, she bowed, picked up her bag, and left.
Tesshou leaned back in his seat and massaged his temples.
Ever since he had started teaching her, he never really knew what went on in Nakagawa's head. Now, he wasn't quite sure that he wanted to.
o~
Sengoku caught her trying to fight her way around the old ladies at the fish market.
"Misono-chan!" He grinned, sidling up to her. It was amusing to see someone flinch at their name being used so casually, and Misono certainly rewarded him with that pleasure. "What are you buying?"
"Sengoku-san." She greeted, bowing. "I am buying jumbo prawns for Akutsu's nabe tonight for his mother. What are you doing?"
Sengoku's eyebrows rose all the way to his hairline. "Wait, you're on gofer terms with him already? I only just gave you his address and home number yesterday!"
"I went to his house after that and asked him to train me. Now I am being tested." Misono paused to let a lady wielding a whole salmon slide past her. "Thank you very much for that information."
Shaking his head, Sengoku could only laugh. "When you came to me and asked me how to get in touch with Akutsu, I thought you were out of your mind. But you must be something really special, to get him to agree with something so quickly. What did you do?" And then his eyes widened. "Don't tell me, that black eye-"
"Please do not make assumptions." Misono hurriedly interrupted. She was not supposed to mention that. "When we met, he had no black eye. It must have happened after." Slightly true. "Anyways, I must be getting those jumbo shrimp. I don't think Akutsu-san likes to wait much."
"Yeah, he doesn't." He agreed, still staring at her. She stared back blankly, and he wondered if she was really out of her mind after all. Well, he would give up for today. "Have a good day, Misono-chan!"
"And you as well." She bowed, almost knocking over a frail old fisherman. Sengoku sighed and took his fresh cod and went home. He was going to tease the hell out of Akutsu tomorrow.
But first, there was someone he needed to call.
"Hey, Dan-kun, you'll never guess what just happened..."
o~
"This is disgusting." Akutsu frowned at the prawns, his lip curling. "Why are they gray?"
"I thought you were eating this with your mother." Misono remarked as she plugged the nabe machine into the home economics room. "And it only looks like that because it's raw."
Akutsu clicked his teeth. "She said she was going to be home late, and I thought I would do something for you for the prawns." Actually, it was because only losers ate nabe alone, and Akutsu was no fucking loser.
"Thank you very much." Misono bowed, biting her tongue. She had also been eventually sent to buy cabbage, mushrooms (only the enoki kind), soba noodles, beef slices, oolong tea, and radishes. She also was the one to go to his house and bring over the nabe machine, as well as find a way into the school.
Looking around again, she hoped the janitors had already left. Did the third year always just use the school however he liked?
"Put more radishes in." Akutsu said, leaning against the wall to fan himself with an instruction manual on how to bake cupcakes.
"You like radishes?" Misono asked as she navigated her chopsticks around the broth. (She had also brought plates and cutlery from the Akutsu house; a separate trip than the one to bring the nabe machine.)
Akutsu glared. "I hate them."
"Then..." Her chopsticks hovered over the machine, weary to put more vegetables in. "Why?"
"They make the broth taste better. Don't you know fucking anything?" He rolled his eyes, scratching his stomach. "This is taking forever."
Misono tried not to flinch. "It is cooking. Unless you like raw meat."
Akutsu threw, not so lightly, the manual at her head, finding a tiny bit of satisfaction at the shocked expression she wore when it hit. "Don't be an idiot and add more fucking radishes."
Misono did not want to be here. Her head hurt. There were a million things she would rather do, but she clenched her jaw and stirred the broth. She thought about all the things she could say, like what about the money for the various foods she had bought, or the simple question of why she was even eating nabe with Akutsu-san.
Tonight, Misono's family was having croquettes. It was Misono's favourite.
She hated jumbo prawns.
There were a million things she could say. But instead she looked up and said, "The beef is ready."
"You better finish all the radishes." Was all he replied before scooping up the meat from the machine.
Ah, so that was why he wanted to eat with her. Picking out a few, Misono told herself that this was all for her goal. "Of course."
o~
"What do you want?"
Misono stopped pouring him orange soda to look up. It was ten at night and the food was all eaten. She wanted to go home. "Nothing."
"No, not that." Akutsu raised an eyebrow to signal for her to keep pouring. "What do you want me to train you for? If it was just talent, then Sengoku could do. Fuck, even that Jimmies captain could help more than I could."
Misono stayed silent until she handed over his drink, and she stared at the broth still settling in the nabe machine. "Because you are the only one's style that I want to use."
Akutsu motioned for her to go on, clearly unimpressed with her kind-of flattery.
She kept her gaze down. "When I first saw you playing a few months ago, it was scary. Terrifying, even. You had so much force in your shots, and you aimed to hurt. You completely destroyed your opponent, and you scared the entire team out of their wits. Being a rookie tennis player myself, I hated it because it defied all the sportsmanship ideals that all rookies carry."
"Then why are you letting me screwing you over?" Akutsu asked, annoyed. If she was just going to insult his playing style, then why should he even bother training her? "I lost badly, you know. It's not the best tennis style."
"I don't care about winning or losing." Misono looked up so sharply that it made Akutsu slightly uncomfortable. Then she bowed. "I'm sorry for snapping, Akutsu-san. I'll explain. There is a tennis tournament in three weeks, just for rookies. It's not official, but there's an older girl there that's pretty good. She..." Misono stopped, and Akutsu did a double take.
She was angry. It was the first time her entire face expressed it, instead of just her dark brown eyes. "She spread rumours because she didn't like my older sister. Rumours that I can't repeat because they're horrible. Eventually, my sister had to move schools and now she still gets harassed by her old classmates." Her fists clenched even tighter.
"She ruined my sister's freshman high school year. I want to crush her. I don't care about winning, but... I want to cause her pain. I don't know what this feeling is. It's so dark and anguishing, and I haven't ever felt it before, but you must know what it is. You seem like the type to be familiar with this type of feeling." Misono looked up for a second, eyes almost pleading. "I just... when I go to bed at night, I see her face and I just want to punch it. I don't care what you make me do Akutsu-san, but please let me crush her with your tennis." Misono looked him straight in the eyes, her face a mixture of anger and tired hope. He eventually broke their gaze by staring at the ceiling.
When he looked back, she was back to normal, staring at the floor.
There was something seriously wrong with her. To hate someone with that much passion was too strange for a good girl like her. It was much too like him.
With the feelings of right now and the punch from yesterday, Akutsu was experiencing a new feeling as well. He was getting worried that this girl was like him, and was getting only more and more dangerous to deal with.
He told himself to cut it off. To quit and be done with the mad chick.
But he wanted to see it. He wanted to see his playing style from an outside perspective, to see it being played by a girl who wasn't violent at all.
Akutsu had the slightest feeling in his stomach that maybe, she would be even more ferocious than he was.
His style was that of a villain's, but... for once, it would be nice to see the villain win.
He sighed. "You're a crazy bitch. You know that, right?" Misono didn't deny it. "If you start learning that style, you'll have to restart everything you've worked hard to build. That good student act can go to hell. There's no way that you'll be able to play tennis again without hurting someone every fucking match. Everything will change, and you'll have to be okay with it. I want some kind of commitment acknowledgement, or I'm not doing a single thing."
Akutsu stood up, slamming the lid on the nabe machine and taking it under his arm. "Anyways, enough with this crap talk about feelings. I'm going home now. Tomorrow, I want to see something fucking awesome. And it better not be some crap like dying your hair or something, your face looks scary enough as it is." He smirked. "Can't wait to see this bitch you're angry at, by the way. She sounds like a ball."
As he left, he heard a strong voice call out, "Akutsu-san, I will not disappoint you! Good night."
Walking back to his house, he wondered what kind of crazy shit she would think of.
Well, I'm beyond being surprised by her, he rolled his eyes.
The next day, she came to school on a motorcycle.