Aww, I'm sad. I forgot I had a field trip to see a play over Spring Break yesterday, and I missed it. D:
Anyhow, I forgot, 'cuz I was typing this update for you readers... be grateful! I'd choose to update than go to a play about a story I'm not even psyched about. (It was the Wizard of Oz—the original one, not the awesome Wicked one.)
Blah, enough of my self-pity. Here's the story.
Disclaimer: I can't even play tennis. I'm learning how to play this summer, though. Until then, how do you expect me to have created a full-blown tennis manga...?
Atobe Keigo, heir to the world's leading company Teikoku Kigyou, captain of Hyoutei Gakuen's Boys' Tennis Club, and top of the Third Years' class in the High School Division, couldn't believe what he was seeing.
What was this? After three days spent completely avoiding Gin—and the other Regulars, for that matter—to escape humiliation, this appeared on his doorstep? What the hell did it mean? A cake with various hearts and girlishly frilly decorations, as if Cupid vomited on it. Upon closer inspection, Atobe found a pale pink notecard underneath the platter on which the cake lay. Flipping it over to read what it said, he dropped the card partly from shock, but also in disgust. He withdrew indoors and locked the door with unnecessary force.
Why did this pursue to haunt him so? He could have been nicer in the past, but he did nothing whatsoever to be punished this terribly! Hell, he'd even skipped school for three days because his brain and mental stability were in turmoil! That cake—it mocked him! Laughing at his current state, unable to face his friends or that acursed boy!
That acursed boy... Had he been the one to make the cake and leave it on his doorstep? It probably wasn't impossible—the boy also knew how to beat a person he couldn't see bloody and play piano like Beethoven except for the fact that he could hear. Atobe vaguely wondered what kind of cake it was, and if it tasted any goo—
MENTAL SLAP!
Jeebus, even his subconcious thoughts threatened to betray him! Stiffly, he tried to force the ideas out of his mind and trudged away, exhausted for having to deal with this continuously.
If you leave that cake out there, someone's bound to find it and start some worthless rumors.
At least, that's what his (remaining) logic told him. Atobe turned slightly, glancing at the double doors and weighing his options. If he left it out there, some crazed fangirls would find it and either revolt or start a yaoi fanbase revolving entirely around him and that boy. Then the media would get involved and spread those malicious lies even further, announcing worldwide that Atobe Keigo was a gay...
On the other hand, if he took the cake in, Gin would see that it was gone and that perhaps Atobe had accepted his fate. Then he would forever pester Atobe, regardless of what he said or if he even got rid of the cake.
Both outcomes were undesireable, but Atobe would rather sacrifice his pride for his worldly image. Sighing, he reluctantly unlocked the door and snuck the cake inside, careful not to be seen as he tiptoed to the garbage disposal in the kitchen. When the cake was no longer a hindrance, Atobe looked over the notecard before determining what to do with it. Hovering over the fireplace in the living room, he dropped the paper in, the words it contained floating away into the embers. But those words would be forever locked into his memory, no matter how useless he told himself they were.
Go out with me.
~Matsumoto G.
Later that same day, Atobe came to a conclusion. He had to sort things out with that boy if he were ever to untangle the mental stress this idiocy was causing him. He scrolled through the copy of the student files he had on his laptop and searched for Gin's number. Even though this was a Sunday, a day where one was to simply relax in any way they saw fit, he had to come to terms with that boy if was to ever relax again in his lifetime.
He unwillingly dialed the boy's number; sending a text would have been in vain, since that boy couldn't read them anyway. After the dial tone rang a few times, a voice picked up on the other end of the line.
"Matsumoto Gin here. May I please know to whom I am speaking?"
Yeesh, such politeness. It made Atobe's stomach churn uneasily. He had, after all, called the person he'd been avoiding the most.
"Ore-sama requests to have an audience with you, peasant. Kakinozuka Park, two o'clock. It's regarding the 'gift' you left me earlier. My staff tells me it was put here this morning, since the night guard saw nothing suspicious."
"Wait, wha—"
Atobe hit the 'end call' button. He didn't wish to risk his confidence by talking for so long. His resolve had to remain strong.
Atobe sat on a bench near the entrance of Kakinozuka Park. Nervously, he glanced at his watch again. 1:54. He hoped that he could make it through this.
"Have you seen Atobe Keigo anywhere nearby?" Gin's voice inquired of a passerby. Resisting the urge to look over his shoulder, Atobe answered for himself.
"Ore-sama is right here."
"Well, how am I supposed to know where 'here' is, you vexatious cookie cutter? I'm freakin' blind, remember? You know what? Never mind. Just keep talking. I'll follow your voice."
"Ore-sama is approximately two meters away on a bench, to your left." Seconds later, a hand uncertainly felt for his face, tracing his features the same way they had three days ago. "What are you doing to Ore-sama's face?"
Both hands withdrew. Atobe looked up to the figure standing in front of him. He'd never noticed how tall Gin was; around 170 centimeters, almost mirroring Atobe's own height. Gin sighed.
"Yeah, no doubt that it's the Cookie King. Me? Since I'm blind, I have to try to remember how people's faces feel rather than how they look. It's how I verify who I'm really talking to. It'd be weird if I started chatting to a random stranger. Which reminds me," Gin said, feeling for the bench so he could sit as well. "What was it that you wanted to talk to me about? You hung up before I could ask."
Atobe's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Why are you polite to Ore-sama all of a sudden?"
Gin shrugged. "I suppose it's the way I try to live my life. It's a quote. 'Life is short: break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, and laugh uncontrollably.' I don't know who it's by, but it's pretty cool. Anyway, what did you want to talk about?"
Forgive quickly? Break the rules? Laugh uncontrollably? It seemed to be a comfortable way to live, for the most part. The other two parts, he wasn't so sure of.
"Ore-sama wished to discuss the gift you left on my doorstep."
"No kidding," Gin huffed. "You said that before you hung up. There's just one thing: I haven't given you anything but backtalk and a bloody nose since I met you. Whatever it was on your doorstep, it wasn't me."
"Really? Then why was there a note saying it was from you?"
Gin suddenly chuckled, snorting at what Atobe just said. "Dude, seriously? That should've been a dead give-away that it wasn't from me; blind kids can't write characters. We write in braille."
"What?" choked Atobe. "But the note—"
"Yes, what did the note say? It must be important if you called me out all the way here."
Atobe's face blanched. "What the contents of the note were do not concern you."
"Another give-away," Gin singsonged. "You told me yourself that someone signed the note as though it were from me. I have a right to know. Maybe I can figure out some suspects."
"...very well then. But there is a reason Ore-sama did not wish to tell you what the note said."
"Whatever. Just tell me."
"Don't say Ore-sama did not warn you. ...the note said, and Ore-sama quotes... 'go out with me.' Words of the note, not of Ore-sama."
Gin nodded understandingly, apparently not caring much for what the message meant. "Hmm, well, if it said that, then it has to have been someone who knows about you thinking I'm a 'frail girl'. I overheard Akuma blabbing to the other Regulars about what happened in the fencing room during lunch. He's pretty loud. Anyway, it's bound to be one of the eight Regulars."
"Make that seven," Atobe ordered. "Kabaji would do no such thing for as long as he lives."
Gin nodded. "True. He lives up to the saying, 'the gentle giant'. So that leaves Shi-chan, Ageha (Choutaro's nickname, since 'chou' means butterfly, and 'ageha' means Swallowtail), Akuma, Shitake Mushroom, Muga (MU-kahi GA-kuto), Ningyo (means mermaid, because Taki means waterfall), and Hiyorin. Ningyo's got a meeting for the Student Council's Treasury business, so he couldn't have pulled the prank."
"Ore-sama knows for a fact that Choutaro is too nice a person to prank someone so ruthlessly. He would also talk Shishido out of it, not wanting his role model to be a delinquent."
"Then that narrows it down to four people. Well, Hiyoshi asked me yesterday about when I could teach him some new manuevers, since he focuses on martial arts from here. He said he had a tournament this morning. So that gives him an alibi."
"Oshitari informed Ore-sama that he was visiting Kenya of Shitenhouji in Osaka this weekend."
"When Akuma was blabbing about the fencing incident to the others, I also overheard that he was going to go and see if he could try to get some kid named Marui to teach him some tennis techniques."
"Gakuto promised Ore-sama that he would work out at the gym today and try to rid himself of his dwindling stamina problem."
"But then that means... No one from Hyoutei is responsible. Huh."
"Then, who could've done it? Ore-sama will not—cannot—rest until—"
"Well, well, well. See which you has there," a gruff voice interrupted. Atobe glanced over at Gin and saw him flinch. Which meant Gin recognized the voice, and knew the owner of it.
"Hmph. It's 'look what we have here'. Your Japanese sucks, Volkov, just like your sparring skills."
"Молчи женщина. У меня улучшилось после нашей последнее встречи. Я сломаю шею на этот раз." The speaker appeared in front of Atobe and Gin, smirking and cracking his knuckles. He sneered down at Gin, in a way that was clearly malevolent. Atobe couldn't understand what he was saying, but he knew it was Russian, and he could tell from the way it was said that it didn't mean anything good.
"Кто этот мальчик? Ваш друг? Или, возможно, он ваш человек." The guy was now laughing in a mocking way. Gin's face flushed a bit, but his expression visibly darkened in anger.
"Тихо. Этот человек для меня ничего. Как ты меня нашел?" Gin retorted. Atobe made a mental note: fencing, piano, and foreign language.
"Во время нашего последнего боя. Я разрезал руку. Или ты не замечаешь микрочип?" Deep chuckles resonated from the man as Gin grimaced and gripped his arm. Atobe wished he knew what was being said.
"Вы... являются мертвеца." After he spat this out at the Russian man, Gin launched himself off the bench and attempted to slash the Russian with a switchblade he pulled out of his coat pocket.
The Russian was not fazed by this and sidestepped to dodge. He then pulled out a blade of his own, stabbing the weapon various times in Gin's direction. Without trouble, Gin circled around the man's back, avoiding the knife. Frustrated, the Russian reached around to grab Gin, who evaded him all the while throwing in punches and kicks. How he fought evenly without sight, Atobe did not know. He found himself too amazed to do anything but watch; it was the first time anyone else's prowess awed him. Gin seemed to suddenly remember him, because he turned to Atobe as he struggled to wrestle the man's knife out of his grasp.
"Atobe!" Gin shouted, voice highstrung and shrill from the battle. "Get out of here! I can't hold him off foreve—" His sentence was cut short as his grip on the man's arm slipped.
"Ваши навыки ржавый. До свидания, женщина." Smiling with bloodlust, Volkov took the opening and dug his blade into Gin's side. He slashed it forward, drawing a ragged cut below the side of Gin's ribcage. Atobe didn't know how, but he had Gin's switchblade clamped in his own fist, crouching between Gin's collapsed bleeding form and the Russian. Genuinely surprised, Volkov paused for a moment and contemplated his next moves. That moment was all Atobe needed as he drove the blade into the man's arm. Volkov yelped, then howled in pain, dropping his knife and clutching his injured arm.
Making Volkov's distraction as useful as possible, Atobe picked up Gin's nearly unconcious body and carried it in the bridal position, since a piggyback or the fireman's carry would cause the wound to rip open more. Running to gain as much distance as he could from Volkov, Atobe started the fifteen-block sprint to the hospital.
(I would have ended it there, but I feel generous. Read on.)
The doors to the Emergency Care Unit were violently shoved open, revealing a bloodstained Atobe Keigo carrying a person in even worse condition.
Minutes flew past. No one questioned the urgency of this patient, no matter who it was that brought him in. Gin's now seemingly fragile frame was laid down on a gurney being pushed frantically down to the ER. Atobe strided to keep up, wanting to know if Gin would be alright. Though his conciousness was slipping, Gin managed to squeak out a few words. His voice was hoarse and quickly fading.
"Told you... having KGB parents... gets you... in a crap-ton... of trouble..."
Atobe stood in a paralyzed state of mind as the gurney made it way inside the ER. He barely registered his own movements, but he was aware that he was trembling. Never in his life had he seen so much blood. He held out his hands and stared at them, basked in deep vermillion.
Atobe Keigo, heir to the world's leading company Teikoku Kigyou, captain of Hyoutei Gakuen's Boys' Tennis Club, and top of the Third Years' class in the High School Division, couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Well, that's it for now. I've gotta go to sleep. But I hope you enjoyed.
I apologize for the gore, though I tried to be as inexplicit about it as I could without taking away from the story.
Will Gin make the emergency surgery? Will Atobe recover from shock and figure out how he feels about Gin? Will they learn who put that cake on the doorstep? Will the girl Atobe's supposed to end up with ever show up? Drama (and more hilarity) ensues in the final chapter of Sensibilities.
