Petal 5: Teammates Obviously Care

"Ohayou minna," Rose said bored as she walked onto the tennis courts.

"Ohayou Rose-chan," the regulars replied.

"Neh Rose-chan?" Marui asked.

"Nani?" she replied.

"Have you heard about a girl named 'Everlasting Flower'?" Niou asked.

"I've heard of her. She was on the news yesterday wasn't she? She sent another criminal to jail," Rose replied.

"Wait another?" Kirihara remarked.

"I did my research on the little police officer. Seems that she catches at least five criminals per month. Her biggest record was when she caught over 100 criminals in one year. That beats all of the police officers records when they can only arrest 100 criminals in five years or more," Rose replied. She was thinking, 'I guess my record does surpass everyone else, but I hate bragging. I should stop talking about myself or they are going to ask more questions.' "Why did you ask whether I have heard of her?"

"Why?" Kirihara started, "because she is cool! Did you see the way she fights? Her moves are so graceful, and she looks like she's dancing while fighting. She can even fight with two swords in a cheongsam. A cheongsam! There is no way a normal person could fight in one of those like that!"

"Who said she was normal Akaya?" Yukimura said surprising the hell out of everyone.

"Ah! Don't scare us like that Yukimura-buchou," Marui said while sighing.

Rose's face was as bored as ever.

Yukimura was disappointed and the other regulars knew it. They all knew that the only reason Yukimura tried to scare them was because he wanted to get some emotion out of Rose other than boredom. They have already seen her cocky attitude when she faced Akaya and her arrogant attitude when they took her shopping one time. They were glad that she wasn't like any of those girls that would spend all of your money in one trip. All she bought was grip tape for her racket as well as some tennis ball stickers so that she could differentiate her personal ones from the clubs'. For some reason she would always bring her own personal tennis balls to use instead of using the clubs.

Marui glomped Rose and said, "Come on, weren't you scared when buchou did that?"

"Not really," Rose said while trying to get Marui off her. He just had to glomp her on the shoulder where the gun injury was. It was hurting like hell, but she had learned a long time ago how to control her emotions not to show during anything which would probably explain her bored expression all the time.

When Marui didn't let go, Niou joined in on the glomp-fest and glomped her other shoulder causing the weight on her shoulders to be even greater.

Rose was starting to feel even more pain and wanted the two off her as soon as possible. She finally had enough and yelled, "Get off of me!" while practically shoving the two off her and running to the clubroom.

Niou and Marui were certainly surprised along with the other regulars. Rose had never yelled at her before, and they were surprised that she had just yelled at them right now.

"Akaya, can you go check up on her? We want to know what's wrong and since you are the closest to her, we thought maybe it would be better if you checked on her," Yukimura said.

Kirihara nodded before rushing off towards the clubroom. It was true that Kirihara and Rose were closer than the other regulars were to her. Ever since that first match between the two where Kirihara nearly ruined Rose's legs, they had been working and training together trying to seal his 'devil' side. They had a lot of progress throughout the week they had trained, and he didn't even go into 'devil mode' even if he hit the ground. Yukimura was certainly pleased and had the two constantly train together. Out of all the relationships, his and Rose were the closest between her and the other regulars.

He got to the clubroom and slowly opened the door. As soon as he saw Rose he screamed.

The other regulars heard Kirihara scream and immediately ran over to the clubroom and heard Kirihara scream, "Rose! What happened to your shoulder?"

The regulars immediately pushed the door open more to see what Kirihara was talking about and froze at the sight.

Apparently when Rose ran into the clubroom, the gun wound was starting to bleed again, so she took off the bandages to replace them when Kirihara walked in on her changing the bandages with her shirt tilted over to reveal the shoulder.

"What…what happened Rose?" Kirihara asked.

"Nothing happened. Nothing that you should know about anyway," Rose answered trying to rewrap her bandages around her shoulder. She was stopped by Sanada who grabbed the bandages and helped her rewrap them around her shoulder.

"What do you mean 'nothing that we should know about' Rose? We are your teammates and should know what happened," Yukimura said trying to reason with Rose.

"Fine," Rose started, "you know that event about 'Everlasting Flower' yesterday?"

The regulars nodded about it and waited for her to continue.

"I was running around training when I suddenly heard gunshots. I went over to the bank to see 'Everlasting Flower.' I kept hidden to keep out of the way, but it didn't help much when 'Everlasting Flower' accidently deflected a bullet into my shoulder. I ran out of there as quickly as I could to get the bullet out at home. Luckily my mom is good with medical types of things," Rose finished with a bored look on her face once again.

"Souka…you should be less careless next time. What were you thinking going to a place where you could hear gunshots anyway?" Yanagi asked.

"I was just curious I guess," Rose answered and nodding to Sanada as thanks for rewrapping her wound.

"Just be careful next time alright. We don't need any more injuries before out match next week. When do you think that shoulder will heal?" Sanada asked.

"About three days. The bullet didn't go in as deep as I thought it would so it should only take a few days," Rose said standing up and walking out of the clubroom with her racket in her hands, two tennis balls in her pockets, and the regulars following her out.

"Can't wait for the world to know about our female player," Marui said popping his gum.