Title: "Breakfast of Champions" – Chapter 4: Lucky Charms
Author: YumeKoe
Characters: Minami Kentarou & Sengoku Kiyosumi
Disclaimer:
"Prince of Tennis" belongs to Konomi-sensi.
"Lucky Charms" is a brand of breakfast cereal owned by General Mills.
Lucky Charms
He'd discovered the secret! After so long, the hidden weapon that had been cleverly concealed all this time had been revealed! Just yesterday, right before morning tennis practice was supposed to start, Minami Kentarou had walked into the locker room to find his missing teammate, Sengoku Kiyosumi, chowing down on handfuls of some unknown substance.
"Minami! Sorry, man! I totally slept through my alarm clock, but I still made it barely on time. LUCKYYYYY! I almost didn't have time for me Lucky Charms!" So saying, he held up the bag of colorful sugary confections.
"Your what?" Minami asked, confused.
"My Lucky Charms! With pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, green clovers, blue diamonds, and purple horseshoes! And new red balloons!" his friend recited with the child-like glee he usually reserved for the ladies.
"…do they really work?" he asked, skeptically.
Minami, of course, was a practical person and had done his research on all sorts of good luck devices. He bought many good luck charms at multiple temples and shrines, hoping to improve his own luck. He'd even looked outside of Japan; always choosing the number eight, since it was a lucky number according to China, and he carried around a rabbit's foot and fish scale from America and Russia respectively. As of yet, he'd not found an Irish leprechaun or Scandinavian troll, but he was still looking. This was the first time he'd heard of a charm you could ingest as well.
"They're magically delicious!" Sengoku adamantly announced, making Minami's world spin with this new found knowledge. They were magical?! Was this how Sengoku received his seemingly unlimited amount of luck?
He nodded mutely and waited patiently for Sengoku to finish his "Lucky Charms" so he could join them at practice, his brain still turning with the possibilities…
---
Now, Minami was not normally a sneaky person. In fact, there was nothing about him that made him stand out in any way, especially when compared to most of his teammates. Indeed, he was so "normal" that he was usually pushed to the side and overlooked to the point that most people forgot he even existed. Oh, and he was the captain of the Yamabuki tennis team, in case you didn't know.
Peeking around a locker with apprehension, Minami looked with wide eyes in every direction to see if anyone else had arrived yet. Seeing the coast was clear, he warily but purposefully approached Sengoku's locker.
If only the others knew. Oh, he remembered the days when he'd only known Sengoku as his reliable teammate that, although slept through classes and constantly was distracted from practice by girls, brought his happy-go-lucky attitude and charm to the team. How could Sengoku not share his secret with his teammates? This was why he was Buchou (even if no one ever remembered), because he would never leave a teammate behind!
He glanced with trepidation towards the door. It was now only a few minutes before the others would start arriving. With a nervous inhale and large gulp of air, he committed the illegal act of opening his teammate's locker with the intent to steal his Lucky Charms.
Metal scraped loudly against metal as the locker creaked open, much louder than he remembered a locker ever being. Amidst the photos of women, tennis players, and tennis gear, he found the clear bag filled with the questionable contents. He would of course return them after he had thoroughly examined them.
How could a bag of such colorful edible hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, moons, pots of gold, rainbows, and balloons, which looked suspiciously like a breakfast cereal, be good luck? WAIT! How could he be so blind? Those were all good luck symbols! Cleverly hidden by a coating of sugar more intense than a bag of Christmas ginger snaps.
Curiosity and excitement mounted as he opened the bag and reached in to sample a bite of teeth decaying luck, but just when he thought he could finally have his first taste, the doors swung open.
There he was, skipping his way merrily towards him with a large grin on his face. "Wow! I'm one of the first here today! LUCKYYYYY! Hey, Minami, what are you…." Sengoku's happy face froze and turned to that of dread as Minami's own took on the look of a deer caught in headlights.
Before he could blink, the orange-headed boy had grabbed his bag of Lucky Charms from Minami's numb fingers and ran screaming from the room.
"NOOOOO! HE'S AFTER ME LUCKY CHARMS!!!"
---
It wasn't until a few weeks later that Sengoku would even come close to him again, let alone look at him. Of course, by then he had already done his research on the supposed "Lucky Charms," which were in fact nothing more than an American breakfast cereal. At least this explained how Sengoku always managed to sleep through his first classes. The sugar high the cereal put him on was astounding, the resulting sugar crash even more so.
He'd tried to apologize to his overly paranoid teammate, and being the good buchou that he was, attempted to reason with him against such an unhealthy breakfast choice.
"Sengoku… You do realize that Lucky Charms has little to no nutritional value. In fact, it was originally created by a man who got the idea by adding candy to his cereal. It was the first cereal to ever incorporate marshmallows, which of course now is a staple amongst children's cereals, but actually has no nutritional value whatsoever…"
All he would ever get in reply was some mumbling that sounded suspiciously like: "They're always after me Lucky Charms…"
Oh well, back to basics.
General Mill's tag slogans:
"They're Magically Delicious!"
"They're Always After Me Lucky Charms!"
"Pink Hearts, Orange Stars, Yellow Moons, Green Clovers, Blue Diamonds, and Purple Horse Shoes! And now with new Red Balloons."