The Onigiri Tastes Best Under the Summer Sun

by thekillerdynamo

A story chronicling Sakuno's misadventures as she works her first summer job and interacts with various schools while trying to retain her precious, precious sanity. The final battle begins! Who will triumph? Will it end with a bang or a whimper? STORY COMPLETE.

7. To Build up Courage to Break Down Hearts

A/N: Almost two whole years without an update! I'm a horrible person. I'm well aware that this chapter is terribly delayed and I am sorry for making those people interested in this story wait for so long. Massive writer's block, switching computers, and a whole lot of real life junk made this chapter as hard as pulling out my own teeth with a pair of pliers. Once again, I apologize. I also want to thank all the readers for their kind reviews, comments, and criticisms. I do read every review and keep your words in mind. I am very grateful!

I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter, but I don't think I can do much to improve it right now, so instead of dragging things out for a perfection that can't be accomplished, I decided just to publish it as is. Since I work alone, I've done my best to edit and proofread it but I'm sure I have missed many little things. I try to revise chapters when I can, so hopefully mistakes will be corrected eventually. I still do have to correct that this is taking place during the Japanese school-year summer vacation, so Sakuno is already in high school, though not for very long.

To make the story work, I also made revisions to Chapter 4. A point brought up in this chapter is that Atobe has yet to formally apologize to Sakuno for helping cause the whole mess she's in. Chapter 4 had dialogue that contradicted this point, so I changed it to keep up with continuity.

This is a long (28 pages, single spaced, in my WP!) but necessary chapter. I hope it is entertaining enough. I do my best to keep people mostly in character, but sometimes I still sacrifice canon points in the name of that dark god COMEDY. Any death threats can be sent to echizen-ryoma at bite-me . net , thank you.

Sakuno Adventure #7: To Build Up Courage to Break Down Hearts

A portrait of sublimest beauty unfurled itself before tantalized eyes. Sakuno traced her bottom lip with a moist tongue, her jaws heavy.

"Oh, my. How exquisite you are, my lovely. Taka-san, if only you could see this right now!"

"I can't believe you got a peek before I did," Taka's voice oozed with invidiousness evident despite the tinny reception of the cell phone. "From the way you talk, I could eat that baby up."

She brought the glossy pages closer to her face to rub her nose against the fragrant inks, giggling in delight at the game. "Hands off, Taka-san! I got the magazine first, I have dibs. Ooooh, I could just drizzle that fine hunk of meat in soy sauce and feast and feast until I could explode!"

"Hum," said a disregarded voice from behind her; she was too preoccupied with kissing the photograph and creating smacking noises while Taka laughed at her greed. A few seconds later Sakuno opened her eyes, about to tear her face from the tent of the magazine, when up close she spied something in the picture that made her squawk.

Upon being asked what the matter was by Taka, she could manage just one word. "Airbrushed!"

"You mean they're fake?"

"Yes, Taka-san! Can you believe it? How cheap."

"Disgusting!"

"Vile." Sakuno shook her head and threw down the magazine on the bench beside her, hardly believing how people could so easily throw away pride and dignity in their work. "I don't believe this-this perversion I see before me!"

"I never thought I'd see the day that 'Sushi Aficionado' would airbrush its feature segments," Taka's voice mourned. "Well I hear Dad coming, so I better let you go. Good luck with today, Sakuno-chan."

Their goodbyes out of the way, Sakuno crumpled up her magazine and tossed it towards the nearest recycle bin, shaking her fist. "Return from whence you came!"

The magazine sailed over its target, so Sakuno stomped over to retrieve it and give it a second toss, which also missed the mark, and so she settled for cramming the disobedient thing into the bin with satisfying violence. Once her indignation had abated, she found Kaidoh-senpai not too far away from her bench, one eye squinting and the other wide with concern.

"Oh, hi!" Sakuno waved at him, arms spread wide to indicate that she was a perfectly sane kohai who intended him no harm so that he wouldn't go running off—she had no chance of catching him with his speed and endurance. Kaidoh-senpai stood his ground at her approach but he seemed to be considering flight as a viable option.

"That was a cooking magazine," were his first words to her. No one had ever started a conversation with her with words like that. It was obvious from his odd preamble that he wasn't quite at ease, so his dutiful kohai instinctively took a cue from the kittens and puppies he loved so well and quirked her head, eyes large, after she had bowed in greeting.

"Of course, Kaidoh-senpai. Taka-san and I always like to discuss the newest issues of our favorite magazines right when they come out. We make a game of who can get the issue first and find out what's featured in the spreads." Genuine curiosity forced her to scratch at a cheek. "What did you think we were talking about?"

Kaidoh hissed to cover up self-chagrin. For some reason unknown to her, he acted like he had been caught at something shameful. "Nothing, Ryuuzaki. Let's just get this started."

Before they had split up the previous afternoon, Sakuno had, though it took all of her skill and the sweetest pouts she could muster, managed to cajole her serpentine senpai into meeting her at an agreed upon place the following morning. Kaidoh-senpai had balked and acted very mulish about the whole proposition until he'd gotten an iron-bound oath from Tezuka that none of the other tennis players would go on any spying expeditions or embarrass them in any way during their mission. Both Momoshiro and Eiji had deflated visibly when Tezuka added that he'd personally break the legs of any snoops and then still force them to run laps, or else that he would sic Taka-san on them. Oishi had continued to fret and none of the other tennis players seemed very pleased about the turn of events with Hyotei except Ryoma, who looked confident and unruffled as ever, and Fuji, whose moods most rational people tried not to anticipate.

"Don't worry, everyone," Sakuno had said for probably the twentieth time over the fretting, "Kaidoh-senpai can help me. I'm sure of it."

"I am sure he will," Tezuka had agreed, but he sent Kaidoh a rather scary glance that promised much pain if Sakuno's plan, whatever it was, should fail. Kaidoh kept his eyes flickering nervously back between his captain and the kohai who had so abruptly conscripted him into her service, but he had neither the heart nor the lack of brains to refuse. Even as he was apprehensive under Tezuka's scrutiny, however, he managed to scowl at the others.

"And if any of you—especially you, Eiji-senpai, and you, fool—try to interfere with us or spy on us somehow, I WILL KILL YOU."

With the assurance the threat provided, Sakuno was able to meet Kaidoh-senpai in secure privacy, and here she found herself walking along next to him. For all his recalcitrance, Kaidoh-senpai had arrived at their rendezvous with some destination in mind; he told her that he had thought about her dilemma and request and made some calls to scope out the best places to practice building up enough self confidence that she could face unpleasant people without hyperventilating, fainting, or being crippled by a migraine. Before they had set out to wherever they were going, Sakuno had given him some cookies wrapped up in a nice green cloth with patterns for his trouble—she told him he could use it as a bandana after he washed it, which seemed to amuse him. He snacked on a cookie as they walked, Sakuno's legs skittering to keep up with him.

"I still don't see why you didn't ask buchou to help you. He's a lot scarier than I am. Better at telling people how to practice on their faults as well," he grunted through a mouthful of cookie. Kaidoh's plunging, perpetually-angry eyebrows managed to quirk in true curiosity.

At his words, Sakuno placed her hand over a telltale quirk in her lips. How to intimate, with all the delicacy that such a revelation required, that it was very difficult for her to consider a young man whom she had used to finagle into a pink apron, answer to the name Mrs. Nesbit, and sit down for a tea party almost the first time he came over to baby-sit actually scary? She had nothing but the highest respect for Tezuka-buchou and she could feel very intimidated by him for certain—yet true fear? Just one thought of him in that red-dyed straw hat decorated with rosettes just killed the terror.

She could also not bring herself to explain that when she and Tezuka had gotten reacquainted after about two years later, after she entered Seigaku Junior High for her first year, he had made her swear to keep mum about the whole babysitting connection.

"You'll tell no one about—those days. I have a reputation to live up to, Ryuuzaki," he had said to her once, after she had dropped off some snacks for the regulars.

"No, Tezuka-buchou," she had answered.

"Not Oishi, definitely not Inui, and above all, definitely, absolutely, certainly not Fuji," he had warned; the glint in his glasses had held an ominous promise, ominous enough to make Sakuno renew her vow just by remembering it.

With hindsight, she really couldn't see what he would have been able to actually do to her back then. Beat her up? Unthinkable. Spread rumors? Also unthinkable, and it wasn't as if he had any dirt on her anyway. Make her run laps? She had been on the girls' team; his powers would have been useless against her! But Sakuno took the promise to heart, if only for sheer decency. At school it was rather more fun to have the secret just between the two of them, even if some of her family knew about the playtime as well, since her grandmother had actually secretly recorded part of the session for home video. Viewing it was always a big hit during the family New Year's party.

No, there was no way she could tell Kaidoh anything about her secret reasons, so she settled for deflecting the subject back onto him. "Because, Kaidoh-senpai, you're definitely the scariest person I know I can trust. Besides, I think most of the other senpai would be too easy on me, or they might take it too far and kill me in the process. If anyone can help me how to stand up to people, it's you!" He blinked at her and she grinned shakily. "A—And Momo-senpai always says that one look from you makes little children cry."

The glower the last remark received only served as further evidence for her claim. To keep herself from wilting under that glare, Sakuno decided to inquire again as to what the exact destination he had in mind was. The response did little to reassure her nerves.

"You'll see," he told her. "I won't say anything now because you might chicken out. Just follow me."

Complements of her rather worse-than-average sense of direction, Sakuno did not recognize the route they took and only began to comprehend their intended destination when the two of them halted right in front of the school's front entrance. The Yamabuki Academy for highschoolers sign stared down at her tauntingly with its name, establishment date, and shiny embossed letters.

"Um, K-Kaidoh-senpai, are you sure this is the right place for us to be? Yamabuki probably isn't the friendliest place for us now."

"Has to be. I know he's here. I checked with Inui-senpai this morning; he's never wrong about these things. Let's go in. The sports area is always open to the public in the summer."

At her reticent foot-shuffling and inaudible murmurs of diffidence, Kaidoh hissed out his annoyance. "You wanna do this or not, Ryuuzaki? Or are you gonna waste more of my time?" His impatience spurred Sakuno on to overcome the rapidly increasing foreboding chilling her bones. The two resumed walking, Sakuno's stride hardly matching Kaidoh's in confidence that she would live to see the end of this day. Queasiness lurched inside her stomach. But no! She had to go on. Only two years ago she would have most likely been throwing up because of nerves now; but this was necessary, and necessity tempered her fortitude.

That was it. One foot after the other. As they approached the tennis courts, Sakuno wondered who on earth this sagely person they sought could be. Another tennis player? At her questioning, Kaidoh replied, "Nah, he doesn't play anymore. But there should be some people here who still keep in touch with him and can tell us where he is."

Following a brief scan of the crowd milling about the chain links surrounding the courts, Kaidoh guided her to a bench where some boys in tennis uniforms were resting and he approached one of them, an incredibly skinny youth who had a somewhat familiar hairstyle framing a boyish face. Upon their arrival the boy rose to meet them and all Sakuno's vision could behold was leg, leg stretching towards the heavens. The boy towered over Kaidoh by almost a third of a meter and gave Kabaji a good run for his money; his stork-like legs only served to give him the further illusion of height. This was no tennis player—he had to be on the basketball team.

"Can I help you? You're Kaidoh-san, aren't you?" The voice, not yet grown to match the boy's height, quivered and cracked a little on the last word. Sakuno craned her neck to look more closely at the boy's face while letting Kaidoh answer for them both.

"It's been a long time since I saw you on the courts, Taichi. We just want to know where Akutsu is. Do you know where we can find him?"

So now she realized where the familiar vibes had came from. Sakuno's mouth rounded in her epiphany. If anything, she should have recognized the headband, the raggedly trimmed hair, the sweet face and eager deer eyes. But even she couldn't chastise herself too much. Nobody could have ever suspected that cute little Taichi Dan, once exactly her and Ryoma-kun's height, would grow into a twiggy colossus in so short a time. She swore he hadn't been nearly so tall last year's season.

"Dan-kun? It's good to see you again. You've grown so much!"

Taichi beamed down at her and greeted her warmly, though he quickly became embarrassed and apologetic. Like Sengoku before him, Dan explained to her that it had never been his or the team's intention to add to her troubles with Hyotei, but Sakuno waved them off. It did not feel right to have poor Dan apologize for something that wasn't his fault.

"Well anyway, please follow me. I'll show you where he is," said Dan. His cheerful face went at odds with his skittish legs which were almost tripping over each other and his rapid movements. The two guests fell in step behind him.

Along the way, still preoccupied with meeting Dan-kun, the Seigaku students talked a little with him about tennis. Somehow the conversation turned to a specific player and Dan kept on chattering in an uninterrupted stream: "It's unusual for people from other schools to come out and look for Akutsu-senpai since he stopped playing, and he's maybe not the easiest to get along with because of what he's done in the past, but he's a good guy. Really! I'm sure he'll appreciate the company of people that aren't from the old team. I worry that his people skills are rusting."

He went on, but the significance of the name Kaidoh-senpai had mentioned finally hit Sakuno with the abruptness of a thunderbolt. She froze in place. Her knees wobbled. All the color drained from her face and she stared her senpai with betrayal smarting in her eyes. She never knew that Kaidoh had any dislike for her, but this clearly signaled that he hated her.

"Wait, wait, wait a minute, Kaidoh-senpai! What did you mean, 'Akutsu'? You're not talking about the bully who beat up poor Kachiro-kun and hurt Ryoma-kun in middle school, are you?"

As he nodded to confirm her fears, Kaidoh hissed out a sigh. "That's why I didn't want to tell you until we got here. I knew you'd freak out."

Sakuno felt faint and, heedless in her panic, began to wail. "Of course I'm freaking out, senpai! He's going to get mad at me for bothering him and beat me to a pulp! Grandma will have to identify my body by the clothes!" She began to pace in a tight circle, alternatively wringing her hands and her braids. "If I go to the hospital, who'll pay all my bills? Oh, this is bad. Very bad."

"It's not so bad, Ryuuzaki-san," Dan coaxed; he had his hand poised over her shoulder but apparently did not have the confidence to lay it down anywhere on a female body. "He's not so bad. He hasn't put anyone in the hospital for years now. I promise!"

Well-intentioned words, but hardly comforting for one who had been so grossly betrayed was staring down at imminent death. Sakuno decided that slamming her head against the ground until blissful unconsciousness took her and she awoke in her room, or at the very least a hospital bed, would be a good alternative to this mess. Hardly had the plan formed in her brain, however, before the world went dark without her head receiving one knock. The darkness pressed warmly against her eyelids.

There was a happy chuckle wafting down a little above her ears. "Well now! Was there someone special you were looking for, Sakuno-chan? Lucky me!"

The voice's owner was not particularly unwelcome, yet Sakuno drooped her shoulders underneath the weight of yet another interaction so far from her comfort zone. These Yamabuki students would smother her to death if they weren't going to rip her limb from limb. Light tinted orange-red filtered through her lids into her unopened eyes. Sakuno gave the speaker a bow of her head , eyes still closed to continue savoring the briefest respite of not having to gaze upon the reality of the mad world entrapping her.

"It's good to see you again, Sengoku-san." When she dared look at him, she met with his flashing teeth and his arms held akimbo.

"I knew you would come back to me. It was only a matter of time." The edges of Sengoku's smile crept up so far they squinted his eyes. Sakuno trusted him to keep his hands away well enough but Kaidoh-senpai certainly did not. He swooped next to them and pushed Sengoku firmly back several paces.

"Lay off, Sengoku. She's not here for you, fool. Ryuuzaki is going to speak to Akutsu."

For a brief second Sengoku's smile was a sharp slit that promised some danger; his eyebrows flew upward. "Down, Viper-boy. I'm only teasing. It's what friends do. And I most definitely am Sakuno-chan's friend. Need I remind you that you're not on your home turf? You need to work on your manners."

He gently pulled Sakuno aside and, still smiling but not so shark-like, poked her shoulder in remonstrance. "Well, this is weird. You and Akutsu, Sakuno-chan? I hate to say this about my esteemed schoolmate, but you can do better. Like me!" A wink.

Left to Kaidoh's judgment, the situation might have degenerated into a battle royale of fisticuffs had Sakuno extricated herself as politely as possible from Sengoku's friendly clasp. If it were up to her she would gladly choose the slight discomfort of being teased by Sengoku over having her face bashed in by Akutsu. However, Kaidoh-senpai had brought her to this place for a purpose.

She was more certain it was for the purpose of killing her. Dan continued to lead them to a patch of trees on the school grounds under which the fearsome terror of Yamabuki laid stretched out, elbows cradling the back of his head. Sengoku followed along for the fun and—so he said—to give her moral support and rescue her if things got too hairy. All too soon they were a short distance from Akutsu and Sakuno felt utterly deserted, the two other Yamabuki students told to stay back by her own senpai while he dragged her towards her destruction.

Kaidoh-senpai nudged her towards Akutsu's supine form. Surely he heard them coming; each time her senpai nudged her Sakuno dragged her heels unconsciously into the grass and squeaked, and Dan was shouting out encouragement from twenty meters away. Sengoku's laughter did not make things any quieter.

"Go on," Kaidoh hissed the command in her ear. He stepped back, abandoning her to fate. Clasping her sweating hands in front of her, Sakuno tip-toed to close the remaining short distance. As she thought, Akutsu was wide awake. When her shadow added to that of the tree and fell across him, he cracked open one eye. With a snort, he stubbed out the cigarette he was enjoying on the ground beside him; Dan had told her on the way here that he still hadn't given up that vice.

Jin Akutsu rose to his full height, stretched his arms over his head with a killer's grace, and then settled those eyes that could stare down a Yakuza and make him burst into flames upon her. Sakuno knew her last hour was come. How could she face this beast? He would murder her.

"Whaddya want with me?" His voice boomed down at her.

Sakuno said nothing. Her mouth opened a little bit.

A second later, Jin narrowed his eyes and moved a step closer to her. "Well?"

Kaidoh-senpai was discreetly but desperately poking her in the back as he tried to elicit a reaction, a sneeze, cry, anything from the mute little mannequin that once was his kohai. "Come on, Ryuuzaki, do something," he whispered to her, voice rife with urgency.

"Be nice to her, please, Akutsu-senpai!"

"It's okay if you faint, Sakuno-chan, I know CPR!"

"Go away!" Kaidoh yelled back at them. With him preoccupied, Sakuno had no shred of armor left.

Jin took another step towards her; the beginnings of a growl or snarl rumbled in his throat.

"Please don't kill me," she squeaked.

That stopped the beast right from charging, too stupefied to move further, staring at this long-braided freak with her arms held rigidly at her sides, standing straight at attention in her terror. Sakuno's face was surprisingly slack but her eyes were huge, the eyes of hunted and cornered prey. Once Jin had relished such reactions from his former victims, but now it seemed so pathetic.

"Dammit, you little weirdo, I'm not going to kill you," Jin snapped. "Is this some kind of sick joke? Why the hell are you bothering me? If you don't have anything to say, stop wasting my time. And who," he directed his attention to a less heart-rending sight, "the fuck are you? You seem familiar but I don't remember ya."

"Watch your language in front of the lady," Kaidoh warned. "And my name is Kaidoh Kaoru."

"Oh. Seigaku scum. I don't have any more truck with you people, but if you're looking for a fight I'm game for it."

This called for a desperate distraction. Her senpai was in grave danger if she did not turn the beast's attention back on her.

"Um, um—want to see something neat?" Sakuno reached for her blouse to tug it out from her skirt band and then bunched up the cloth just above her second rib on the right side. Her bellybutton was partially exposed, as was the birthmark, as wide as two of her fingers, on her lower ribcage. Sakuno did not make it a habit to go around showing it to everyone, but she was not as self-conscious about this mark as she could have been. This was mainly because it was rather cute. It consisted of a small circular base and two elongated brownish-pink ovals. Sakuno, her grandmother, and Tomo-chan all agreed that it could only resemble one creature.

Her voice and smile watered. "Ta-da! It's a bunny!"

"What the frig," Jin slowly demanded after a few seconds. Kaidoh scratched his head, unable to do anything else. In the distance, Sengoku hooted and cheered her on. Dan had fainted at the impropriety of it all.

"Um—well, if you look at it and turn it on its side, I guess you could say it looks like a duck, too. If I breathe just right, I can make it look like its bouncing."

"What the frig," he demanded of her again.

"Oh sweet mama," laughed Sengoku. "Jin, move out of the way so I can see better!" Kaidoh yelled back at him to shut up. Jin himself twisted his eyes to add his own glare to forceful desire for privacy.

"Beat it. And take Taichi with you." Sengoku retreated when he Dan up to his feet after a few good shakes, but not after giving a jaunty salute to Akutsu, followed by blowing a kiss towards Sakuno. She did her best to ignore it and focus on resuming the conversation at hand.

"Are you still going to kill me?"

Really too stunned to get murderously angry, the two-toned haired terror of Yamabuki settled for throwing up his hands towards his face. "What the hell are you talking about, twerpette? You think I'm in the business of beating up girls? Where's the fun in that? Besides, you're Taka's little coworker, aren't you, what with the stupid frilly braids and all? He's talked about you. If I did anything to you, he'd never lay off my ass. And just so you know, it looks like a clothespin to me."

Once she had tucked her shirt back in and the bunny/duck/clothespin went out of sight, Kaidoh could finally react to the situation, if only a feeble: "Ryuuzaki—you—"

Not exactly the reactions that she hoped for, but it did not appear that there would be any better time to plunge ahead. The worst was over. The beast was slightly confused, off balance and not so agitated, so she could proceed as she saw fit.

"Well, well then," she ventured with the utmost effort to keep her voice and demeanor somewhat calm; "can I ask you something, then? I'm going through a rough time right now, you see, and Kaidoh-senpai agreed to help me out and so he brought me here, even if I didn't expect it, because I'm kind of a weenie and I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own without him to kick me into action; it's kind of like a mama bird shoving out a chick from the nest so that it either gets over being afraid of flying or goes splat on the ground. Not that I'm saying Kaidoh-senpai wants to kill me. . ."

"Spit it out, twerpette."

"When you, you were in the business of…well, beating people up, tormenting them, and I guess you liked to steal their spending money—not that I think you do that anymore, I know you don't!—why did you do it?"

Akutsu bit down on his cigarette so hard that his teeth broke the paper and he flung the useless thing down on the ground. His fingers scrambled for the pack to retrieve a new one, not lighting it.

"You came all this way just to ask me that?"

"Ah—yes. It may seem silly to you, Akutsu-san, but this is a very serious issue for me."

"Heh. Being bullied around, eh? You look like the type."

"I know," she sighed in a miserable way. "But why? Why do people keep on picking on me? I've been bullied before, and I could live it with it then. Now it's affecting my job. I can't enjoy my work anymore. I don't think I'd get fired, but I like running the summer booth and I can't stand the thought of the Kawamuras' business hurting just because these bullies want to get at me."

Akutsu Jin regarded her severely and took a reflexive smokeless puff on his cigarette, then twirled it between his knuckles as he answered. "Depends. There're lots of reasons people make hell for other people. Some do it because their home life sucks and they need to take it out on someone else or they'll go nuts, and it's not like they can fight their folks on equal terms yet. Sometimes it's just that they're jerks. And it can also be a whole bunch of small bits of the other stuff all mixed in together. But if you're asking for my own story, then forget it. I'm not here so you can play psychologist with me, twerpette. You'll get nothing like that from me."

He leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. Akutsu's hard gaze bored right into her, unwavering. Sakuno felt the discomfort of it in the tenseness of her shoulders—he had unyielding eyes that contained no softness. "I'll also tell you this right now: Fretting and thinking so much about their motivations is a damn waste of time. Doesn't matter what the reasons are; they're after your shrimpy little hide. You get them to stop. That's what's important here."

She apparently had a very crestfallen look on her face because Akutsu slapped his hand down his face, which pulled at the skin of his lower eyelids to show the red. He looked more ogreish than ever. Sakuno's knees shook once as he threw the unlit cigarette to the earth and growled, "Damn it. Okay, I'll humor you. You came all this way to bother me, so might as damn well make the most of it. Tell me more about this problem. Make it quick."

Sakuno very quickly told him the history of her troubles, starting with the fateful, wretched day that her bento had been stolen. After recounting the moves Hyotei had made against her booth, she asked him: "Why do they have to torment me like this? Why can't they let it go? Atobe-san was the one who stole my bento anyway, when I specifically told him not to. I couldn't have let him take away something that wasn't meant for him."

Out of force of habit Jin picked up the cigarette from the ground, not caring about any bits of dirt clinging to the filter, blew an invisible breath, and twirled it from finger to finger. "You should have, if you didn't want this mess to happen. What's a bento worth, anyway? To be frank, twerpette, I think you were pretty damn stupid to chase after Atobe like that and confront him right in public. What the Hyotei students saw was you being uppity to their oh-so-beloved Student Prez."

Sakuno rarely got agitated enough to kick something, but a clod of grass and dirt under her foot went flying. She really thought the main issue was being glossed over. "But he stole my grandmother's bento, I'm telling you!"

"And I'm telling you that that little fact means diddly-crap," snapped Jin. "I'm telling you like it is. Atobe didn't think it was wrong; you think his groupies would either? They're not interested in your side of things, and it seems that whenever you try to tell them what happened they don't believe you. And why should they? You're nothing to them. Just some twerp-girl from a rival school who was oh so rude to their top pretty boy. You can't reason with people when they're like that." He sent her a rather dangerous smirk, flicking his finger at her senpai. "You think I cared when I beat up your little school chums back in the day? Hell, if that chump over there did something to really piss me off, I'd pound him into the pavement with no regrets."

Knowing how Kaidoh-senpai didn't mind a good scrap now and then when provoked, Sakuno dreaded that a fight would break out. But Kaidoh stood his ground, grunting with the effort of restraint, and only he scowled, hissed, and spat into the grass at his feet.

"Good boy," Jin laughed.

"J-Jin-san, please don't be mean to him. He's done nothing but help me here."

"I say what I want, you little twerpette. This isn't your territory anyway," Jin grunted, but without malice. "You don't like my answers, then tough. I admit you seem like a good enough kid, pretty much like Taichi. Sweet-natured and stuff. But just because you're nice, because you're polite—that's not going to always save you. People put a lot less stock in those things than they'd have you believe. They don't care for people without qualities that speak to them. And you, twerpette, don't have any qualities they like. Unless you suddenly change your tune and kiss Atobe's perfect ass all the time, they're going to keep hating you. Even if you did play by their rules, they'd know you'd be faking it. They'd still hate you. Take the easy or hard way, it ends up the same. "

The knowledge made Sakuno gingerly and regretfully resign herself to the inevitable. "So they're not going to listen. I'm going to have to go through with this plan."

"That's right. Hate to say it, but Echizen had the right idea. You might lose, but it's still better than rolling over like a dog. You're never going to win them over anyway. I think you should take this chance to have it on some of your own terms, at least."

Sakuno figured she probably had known that Ryoma-kun's idea was the best way for her to tackle things; still, she did not relish what was to come. She could only face her best option with numb determination. Yet there was more she discovered: she had not only managed to have a conversation with a terrifying ex-delinquent, it had been a comfort to talk about things with him. The realization formed little pockets of warmth in the numbness.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Sakuno' notion of graciousness informed her that it was the proper time to go. She bowed and took her leave, speaking for Kaidoh-senpai as well, since he was not the kind to waste politeness on Akutsu.

"Hey," Jin's voice barked after them as they moved away. Sakuno turned around to give her full attention.

"Good luck, twerpette," he called out, raising his fingers; Sakuno returned the half-hearted farewell and left the Yamabuki gates with Kaidoh. Well, she commended herself, that could have gone much worse, and she didn't faint or cry or anything. She was rather proud of herself. It had been quite the feat for her, and perhaps Kaidoh-senpai might be proud of her as well, maybe say something to that effect, like 'good job' or even just a hiss of approval for her decent showing. Her heart was still pounding from the nerve-wracking encounter; a nice word could help slow it down faster.

"Ryuuzaki."

She peered up at her senpai, eyes expectant.

"You handled that pretty well. Not in the way I expected—that birthmark is weird as hell—but you managed, and in front of Akutsu no less." He managed to make his eyebrows not plunge so deeply and he gave a deep nod of his head to her. "Good work. If you can handle Akutsu, you can handle anyone."

Sakuno smiled, her step adding a skip at her senpai's praise. Nevertheless, she did not think that Akutsu Jin was really as bad as everyone said. No one who befriended someone like Taichi Dan and had kept a friendship with her Kawamura-senpai could be a monster, and she said so. Kaidoh only rolled his eyes and hissed that she hadn't seen the worst of what happened when Akutsu had served rocks at Kachiro and Ryoma three years ago. Rather stubbornly, Sakuno answered that if Ryoma-kun and Kawamura could let the past lie, so could she.

As they walked out of the Yamabuki High grounds Kaidoh's phone rang. Sakuno did not catch the number or name, but her senior mouthed the words 'Inui-senpai' and beckoned her over closer so she could listen in to the call.

"So, Kaidoh-kun, how did it go?"

"Fine."

"Ryuuzaki-san did not faint or run away? I must admit, both Tezuka and I had reservations about this little expedition of yours. I calculated many variable outcomes based on my existing data and fainting was at the top of the list."

"She did fine, senpai."

"Good, good. Good data. Also, Kaidoh-kun: did you find out anything interesting? Anything I should add to my notebooks? The best data is relevant and up-to-date. And we must have only the best data."

The muscles in Kaidoh's shoulders tensed and squirmed under his shirt. Sakuno could tell he did not want to disappoint his senpai, the one who had personally trained him, yet she was terrified of what would happen if what had been divulged today reached Inui. He would surely latch on to the mystery of her birthmark and put her through scientific torments, all in the name of obtaining data. She took the edge of Kaidoh's shirt in silent pleading, her gaze filled with the promise of many delectable homemade treats, the finest bandanas money could buy, her eternal gratitude and devotion, anything he could want.

"No, senpai. Nothing new at all."

With that, he closed the phone.

PoT PoT PoT PoT PoT

Kaidoh's plan had become clear. If he was determined to throw her into the fire directly, surviving the Yamabuki trial raised Sakuno's confidence enough that she did not object when her senpai informed her the following day that the next place they would visit was the St. Rudolph Academy along with its high-school dormitories.

"You could talk with Akustu. Surely you can do yourself a huge favor now and at least get the whole Duck-Face issue out of the way," he had told her.

Because St. Rudolph's had an enclosed campus with many areas blocked off by gates that only students and teachers with identification cards could open, before meeting with Kaidoh Sakuno had to ring up Yuuta-kun so she could ask him to escort them around the campus. What made the arrangement more optimal was that he would probably know where to find the certain person she desired to see. Yuuta readily agreed to meet her at the main gate, but he did grouse somewhat at the prospect of letting in another Seishun Gakuen High student onto his turf, especially one who was on the rival tennis team.

"But I need Kaidoh-senpai with me, Yuuta-kun," she'd pressed, "he's working with me on this. I don't want to leave him out of the loop."

A pause and Yuuta grunted. "Fine. But you owe me some pumpkin curry for this. The other guys aren't going to like having one of your senpai around, especially if it's the Viper. They'll give me hell for it later. Kisarazu and Yanagisawa don't like him much."

"All right, Yuuta-kun, I'll make you lots of curry. I don't see why they have to give you so much trouble, though. I mean, they don't mind me coming over, do they?"

"No. But you're a girl. It's different."

"But Kaidoh-senpai hasn't played against you guys in a while and he never bothers you," Sakuno pressed on, truly confused about this whole territorial dispute. Perhaps it was another one of those 'dumb male things' her Grandma always congratulated her on not being exposed to very often.

"You just don't understand guys' tennis, Ryuuzaki-chan."

Sakuno figured as much. Nonetheless, not wanting to make Yuuta's life harder, she promised to make extra snacks for the rest of his team to coax their anger away, if it would work, and Yuuta said it had a pretty good chance. She had further business with that team, after all, and it would pay off to have them kindly disposed towards her visit. She also promised that Kaidoh-senpai would make nice with them while accompanying her—she had promised him a big sack of adzuki buns if he behaved himself.

"But why do you want to come all the way here, Ryuuzaki-chan?" Yuuta had asked before she hung up. "If it's about our guys and making sure they don't bother you, I told you I've got it under control."

"I'll explain when I get there, Yuuta-kun." Any further prying would have no success, so Yuuta caved in and asked no more about it.

And so, armed with the snacks and curry that were her most potent weapons in dealing with the opposite sex, the next morning Sakuno set out to meet Kaidoh at a bus stop, and from there they traveled to St. Rudolph's, where Yuuta punctually met them. Sakuno handed over his box of pumpkin-curry rice with some secrecy, which Yuuta stowed away in his backpack for protection. He was very jealous of his curry, just like a bear coveting his honey-tree.

Only a grunt and a nod passed between her senpai and the younger Fuji, yet they didn't act overtly hostile; it was good a sign as any. But then Yuuta noticed the bandana Kaidoh wore. Silk-screened upon standard green cloth background cavorted several cartoony turtles on surfboards.

"Nice look there, Viper. Or should we call you Turtle from now on?"

Somehow Kaidoh formed a coherent response past the grinding of his teeth. "Don't push it."

"It's so cute," Yuuta laughed. Sakuno nodded.

"It is, isn't it? That's why I bought it for Kaidoh-senpai yesterday and gave it to him this morning with some snacks. He loves cute things. I knew he'd like it. I had him try it on right away when I gave it and he looks so nice in it." True, he had looked rather queasy at the thought of wearing the bandanna in public, but Sakuno was sure the cuteness of the turtles had won him over.

"I like it because of the color. And it's a gift from a kohai. I bet you never received anything from your underclassmen," Kaidoh ground out.

Sakuno only smiled knowingly, saying no more; she doubted her senpai could continue to keep face if she mentioned that just this morning on the way here he had cooed (if the hissing sound he made could be counted as cooing, but his face had been smitten) over a woman's pet parakeet at the bus stop. Let Kaidoh-senpai act as tough as he wanted, she knew the truth. He hated the nickname anyway. It was time for a kinder, gentler image for Kaidoh-senpai!

Yuuta ignored the last remark, distracted by the food. He happily took the curry Sakuno had brought and some of the other snacks, leaving her only needed to hold the sack of Kaidoh's adzuki buns. As he let them onto the main campus, Yuuta asked her the pressing question.

"You said you'd tell me what brought you here," he reminded her. Sakuno already felt a bit wobbly at the very thought of her mission in this place and had to forcibly bear her spirits up. She was with friends, after all. She needed to relax. Nothing would hurt her. She looked at how pretty and well-tended this campus was, the sweet smell of grass and leaves in the heat. . .

"Well, Yuuta-kun, I'm actually curious to know where the rest of your tennis team is. You see, I'd like to talk to—"

A flurry of purple topped with black came flying up the path in front of them. As the flurry came rushing closer, it revealed itself to be a young man with very shiny hair. From the distance his eyes loomed large and dark in his face. Then it turned out that his eyes really weren't that big after all, but that he had humongous bags under his eyes, bags so deep and bruised looking they could have been mistaken for a double set of black eyes received in a brawl.

"Yuuta-kun, where have you been? I've been looking all over for you! Don't you know that your brother, my eternal rival, will surely be—AHA!" He barked, eyes getting a crazed glaze, upon seeing Sakuno in the group. He leveled his finger at her. "I knew it!"

"Mizuki-senpai, I thought Akazawa-buchou told you to take the week off from practice. You need the rest. I'm just showing Ryuuzaki here around the place."

Sakuno hadn't wanted to cower behind anyone, but she did incline her body a bit closer to Kaidoh at this interruption. She eyed Mizuki warily; she didn't know it had gotten this bad with him. Along the hairline of Mizuki's twisty bangs she could make out small hairless patches. His skin didn't have a very healthy sheen to it.

"Ah, Yuuta-kun, you are still so naïve. Surely you haven't forgotten my eternal rival's, your brother's, tricks! This is no doubt what he's been setting me up for! This girl is nothing more than a front to let Seigaku infiltrate our campus and do evil things to me, to all of us. Isn't that right, Kaidoh-kun?" Mizuki shifted his feverish gaze. "What are you here for? Talk! What did Fuji tell you to do? Don't try to deny it! This coincided with my calculations perfectly. You won't get me!"

"Get away from me, you freak," Kaidoh hissed snappishly. He pulled his arm away from grabbing distance, taking Sakuno back with him.

"You can't fool me. You have no power here, Seigaku. Talk!"

"Mizuki-senpai, please, he's not going to do anything to you. I wouldn't let him. Just go to the dorms and sleep." Yuuta's reassurances fell on heedless ears.

"I have better things to do than bother St. Rudolph's," grumbled Kaidoh. "I'm here with Ryuuzaki."

Mizuki's paranoiac brain seized upon that piece of information immediately. He turned on her. "Then it's you after all! I should have known. You're the one Fuji has sent against me. Listen, girl, it was nothing personal, me deciding to help out Hyotei, but if it means getting back at my rival in any way, then I will do anything it takes. The two of you didn't have to take it so hard. But I'm two steps ahead of you. St. Rudolph's will never yield!" His hands started reaching out for her. "I've been waiting, waiting, waiting for my enemy to make a move, spending my nights figuring out how to beat him, and finally he's shown his hand. I'll turn the tables on you all—"

His fingers were getting closer and Sakuno had done her best not to flinch, yet this was now getting too creepy for her.

It really wasn't a hard slap, having no real force behind it, yet it was enough to get that glaze off of Mizuki's eyes. He rubbed his cheek in disbelief. "You slapped me!"

Kaidoh had gawked at first but quickly regained equilibrium. "Of course she did. You were acting like a total head-case, you creep. Fuji-senpai's not planning to do anything to you. Stupid. This is all so stupid."

Sakuno wanted to be happy that she had held her ground, but she was overcome with shame at her reflex. He had alarmed her—but she had never slapped a boy, not counting some cousins, in public before. She could have slapped herself for her lack of self-control. If she couldn't handle a sleep-deprived Mizuki, how could she ever hope to face down HIM?

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Mizuki-san! Here, let's sit you down over here. Yuuta-kun is right, you need to sleep. You look very bad." She mumbled more apologies as she and Yuuta helped him stagger over to a bench to rest. Mizuki waved her efforts away.

"It's all right; I needed something to give me a jolt anyway. I'll forgive you this time, since Yuuta-kun trusts you. But I swear if I catch you spying at least once, I'm throwing the two of you out. We have practice today. Oh, yes! Yuuta-kun, we need you at the court now. The others want to get started."

Once again, Mizuki had made a slight miscalculation on how antsy his teammates were to get the practice in near 40 degree Celsius summer heat over and done with. Voices preceded an approaching group of figures. The tall, dark-skinned one called out first.

"Have you found him yet, Mizuki?"

Then, the accent and way of speaking that thickened Sakuno's blood with cold: "We're going to run out of water and sports drinks at this rate, da ne. We haven't barely started to warm up and it's going away fast, da ne."

The dreams, the flashes of nightmares. Yanagisawa's cheerily goofy face, its charms overshadowed by the unfortunate pooching out of his lips that gave them the appearance of a water bird's beak, flashed before her. Kaidoh-senpai and others said he looked like a duck. Sakuno did not see it. She instead saw the hard, cruelly dull beak of a monster goose and the ribbed teeth within. Every time she saw Yanagisawa open that beak it she was amazed he did not hiss, did not try to poke and bite and lacerate her skin. The goose. Her childhood enemy. The bête noire!

"Yuuta, who's your friend here? Ah, wait, wait, don't tell me! She's the cook, right? Ryuuzaki Sakuno? They said her braids were hard to miss!"

He spun joyfully on his heel to reach her so he could clasp her hands. Sakuno rarely had seen anyone whose face brightened like his. The St. Rudolph's player was swept up as in a dream. His eyes were shiny flat coins of joy.

"It's so great to finally meet you up close, da ne. I think I've seen you at a match or two, maybe, but you always acted so shy."

"Y-Yanagisawa-san. Hello." Sakuno's panic transformed into something less heady, something heavier that settled down in the pit of her stomach and guts like cold glass. His joy was about to smother her. Yet now she was going to have to crush it down into a regret that would turn into a faint painful memory that would be less than nothing.

"Of course, that's understandable, da ne. I am an intimidating specimen. So shy that your friends from Hyotei had to give the message to me; that's so adorable, da ne! And Yuuta likes you. That makes you even better in my book."

"Yanagisawa-san." No—she could not cry like a baby or run away, though the urge was great. Sakuno never in her life would have imagined she would become the teacher of such a hard lesson. But there was nothing for it.

Swept up in his dreams, Yanagisawa kept on plowing ahead. To everyone's dismay he reached into his uniform pocket to withdraw a crumpled piece of paper. "I've been thinking about it a lot, Sakuno-chan. I always wondered how we'd meet some day, da ne. Sometimes I wanted to come over to Seigaku but they said you just needed to gather your confidence. I waited a while; long enough that I've been able to think about lots of things we could do together. I made a list!"

Kaidoh-senpai made a step forward, probably to take away Sakuno's burden and save her the unpleasantness. She shook her head at him. At the least she owed Yanagisawa the dignity of hearing the truth from her own mouth.

"Yanagisawa-san, that all sounds lovely. I hate to say this but, but, but" the ashen words burned and clogged her throat, "I am here to tell you that it's not true. The people from Hyotei spread untrue rumors. I know you're nice. But—I don't know you at all. And-and you scare me!"

Terrible silence rowed by. Many of St. Rudolph's players had their eyes closed, Yuuta looked trapped, and even Kaidoh seemed lost. Yanagisawa's entire stature seemed to have deflated by several centimeters.

"But they told me you liked me, da ne."

"I'm sorry, Yanagisawa-san. The people from Hyotei only told you that."

Yanagisawa turned his head into duckish profile. His one visible eye stared straight ahead and, as if he were wiping away some sweat brought on by the summer heat from his brow, brushed the heel of his hand against the other side of his face. The corner of his mouth stayed obstinately pulled down.

"It's just I thought you really liked me. For the first time, I thought a cute girl thought—oh, screw it."

Yuuta fidgeted with his hand, not hiding his discomfort. "Yanagisawa-senpai, are you crying?"

"Hell no, I'm not. Shut up, da ne," the reply came out on a rising blubber before it steadied itself.

Sakuno had felt deeply ashamed several times in her short life, but right at this moment she thought she was the lowliest piece of scum in the universe. The rational side of her knew that this had not been her doing, yet it was hard to take solace in that when an eighteen-year-old high school senior was on the brink of tears all because of you. Sakuno had never thought a boy could get hurt like she could get hurt sometimes; none of the boys she knew seemed like they would cry over anything, let alone a girl. Especially a girl like her.

"Oh, Yanagisawa-san, I'm really, really sorry," she began. Yanagisawa had already turned and was walking at a rapid pace down the walkway. "Leave me alone, da ne. Go away," he called back, not turning his head or hiding the break in his voice. Sakuno, her face prickling hot now, almost felt like crying herself.

Akazawa had turned his frown's full displeasure on her, his arms folded tight. "So what, did you come here to make my team member feel like crap?"

"So that was the plan all along. Even I've never made Yanagisawa cry," muttered Mizuki to himself. No one took any mind of him as Yuuta tried to intercede before things got too ugly and Sakuno and Kaidoh found themselves forcibly ejected from the premises.

"Buchou, she honestly didn't mean any harm. And it's not her fault. She didn't do anything. I feel really bad for Yanagisawa-senpai, but it was the Hyotei folks who lied."

Though she appreciated the support from Yuuta-kun, it did little to assuage Sakuno's misery. What was all of this for, she wondered; surely it was not to leave things in a shambles, a worse state than when all of this began. Something had to be done.

"Where are you going?" Kaidoh-senpai called after her, about to jog as she walked briskly down the path following Yanagisawa's trajectory.

"I need to talk to him, Kaidoh-senpai."

Akazawa gestured in a different angle than the one in which she was headed. "Well, you're going the wrong way. He headed towards the cafeteria. Yuuta, go with her and make sure she doesn't get lost."

Sakuno was too overwrought to try to forge her own path across the campus, so she accepted Yuuta's assistance. Neither spoke during the walk. It did not take them long to find the runaway. At her whispered request, Yuuta held back as Sakuno approached.

Yanagisawa, sitting in the middle of a path by a campus fountain, was plucking pebbles from the ground to cast them at other pebbles near his feet in some morose distraction. He flitted up his gaze at her arrival but did not hold eye contact. When Sakuno stood right beside him his posture hunched and he made no move towards acknowledging her.

It was strange how a simple difference in height, in position, could alter one person's perception of another. Being so petite and shy in her manner, Sakuno did not really know what it was to be able to literally look down upon someone, most especially an older boy. How could she maintain her visions of the boisterous goose-fiend Yanagisawa when he sat crouched on her feet in misery? The realization struck her so hard that Sakuno was unaware that he finally had lifted his head at her presence. His odd lips were pursed tightly.

"What do you want," he demanded.

Off-guard, she sputtered and stammered for a moment until a coherent sentence came out. "What are you doing on the ground, Yanagisawa-san?"

"Wasn't looking where I was going. Tripped and fell on my ass."

She thought that Yanagisawa would be more hostile, but his voice and face were flat. His eyes were a little red around the rims.

"Ah—here!" Unable to think of anything else to do, Sakuno and held out the sack, stiff-armed, to him. "They're adzuki." She prayed that Kaidoh-kun would forgive her and give her another day to make a new batch.

"I don't need you to feel sorry for me. I don't want 'em."

"Please accept them, Yanagisawa-san, even if you won't eat them. I don't have anything else to apologize with, and I—I can't bear to leave things like this."

A sardonic quirk lifted his lips. "How about going on a date with me, da ne?" At her helpless, suffering glance he snorted and yanked the bag from her hand. "Fine. Gimme." Half a whole bun was promptly stuffed into the right side of his mouth and that cheek began to bulge out like a balloon as he gnawed at the snack with a will.

"Y'know, I appreciate the thought, but I'd rather you not play like you were a bodhisattva or some angel of mercy with me. Shoo. Get back to your snakey friend."

"Will you be all right?"

"Yeah. Don't worry about it."

"I hope that we can be friends someday." Embarrassment decided to make her end the matter at that—all Yanagisawa was doing was stare at her with a blank face. She bowed her farewell to him and, after she rejoined Kaidoh-senpai, did the same for the rest of the St. Rudolph team. Yuuta escorted them out, repeatedly assuring her that Yanagisawa's ego was resilient, that it would bounce back in no time.

She truly wanted to believe him. "I really hope that will be the case, Yuuta-kun. I gave Yanagisawa-san some food; that usually makes things a little easier. It's better than being let off with nothing. Oh," she flushed at the realization. "I'm sorry, Kaidoh-senpai. I gave him the adzuki buns I made for you today. Come to the restaurant today or tomorrow and I'll give you some more."

Kaidoh's face grew even sourer, yet he did not voice his displeasure. "That's fine. Don't think Duck-face will appreciate them very much, though."

It only made her feel worse.

Since he too had a training session that day, Kaidoh-senpai followed her to a nearby bus-stop. He asked her no less than three times whether or not she was positive that this was the right place and that she could swear on her grandmother's soul that she knew the right bus number to take her home. When she had finally convinced him, her senpai shuffled his legs for a moment, then reached out his head to give her three rapid pats.

"Ryuuzaki—once again, you did all right today. You've made lots of progress. Tezuka-buchou will be glad to hear it. I think you'll be okay, and—fssh? Why are you laughing?"

He eyed her, almost nervous, as Sakuno's shoulders trembled under the force of her giggles. She could not stop herself. "You, you're pretty bad at this," she gasped, squinting up at him. "You don't know how to comfort girls very well, do you, senpai?"

It was not that she blamed him; she figured that the only things Kaidoh-senpai had ever petted and tried to reassure were stray kitties and puppies. She figured that for him, dealing with her was like asking a flautist to play the trombone: way out of his comfort zone.

"I'll be fine," she informed him once the giggles had flown away. "Thank you, Kaidoh-senpai, for your help. I'm much less nervous about what's going to happen now."

He nodded as he walked away slowly. Still looking back at her. "It was nothing. And Ryuuzaki, don't worry about Yanagisawa. He'll get over it. You gave him my snacks, after all."

Be that as it may, she thought when he finally left her by herself, her eyes following the flow of street traffic idly; there were some things that not even food could make right.

PoT PoT PoT PoT PoT

A plan. A course of action. Some sort of emergency evacuation procedure. A smoke grenade and a helicopter. She could have used any one of these right now, sitting under the sun as her braids baked and her heart wanted to tumble down out of her ribcage from its own weight. Sakuno knew full well that it was a sad fact that she could not think on her feet very well. It was one of her dearest wishes that she could be as clever and resourceful and witty as her friends, but on the few occasions she did try to think of some scheme, it landed her in trouble or in the school counselor's office.

What to do? What was the next step?

Perhaps it would be best and easiest to wait, to see what Ryoma-kun and her senpai would do. It had been Ryoma-kun's bright idea to bring everything to a direct challenge, she thought petulantly. He had dug her deeper into this mess. Let him figure a way for her to go about it, then, if he was so smart! She was going about it pretty badly on her own.

Tempting as that sounded, Sakuno nixed her own suggestion. No one would want her to sit by doing nothing. Not her Grandma, not Tezuka-buchou, and especially not Ryoma-kun. She had to keep trying.

During her wait for the bus Sakuno's cell phone sounded its tinny beeps—her Grandma thought putting down money on a ring-tone was a most abject waste—and she sighed out an answer to Ann-chan's greeting. This automatically aroused suspicion.

"What's wrong, Sakuno-chan? And don't you dare hold out on me. If anyone from any school, those Hyotei brats or even your precious senpai, have been giving you a hard time-if they've got an ass, I'll kick it!" Ann was not one for beating around the bush.

"Not much, Ann-chan. I just spent my day crushing all the hopes and dreams in my wake is all."

Ann's soprano-pitched exclamation prompted Sakuno to explain the day's events, the surprise changing into ruddy indignation after all was revealed.

"Why those louse-ridden prissy twerps!" Ann's angry hissing gave Kaidoh's a run for the money. "Making you clean up their damage. I'm no fan of Yanagisawa, but what a ratty thing of them to do to him!"

"I know. That's why, Ann-chan, I..." A revelation! "I'm going to call Atobe today and arrange things as soon as possible. I can't keep on doing things like this. And Yanagisawa-san—he was crying. I can't stand it."

A fierce determination evident despite the slight scratchiness of the reception burned in Ann's voice. "That's the best thing to do, Sa-chan. I'm going with you. I've been pissed at Atobe ever since the jerk stole your grandma's food. If he isn't fair to you, someone needs to kick him in the balls. And I'm just the type of classy lady to do it."

PoT PoT PoT PoT PoT

In spite of her insistence that Ann-chan did not have to go to such trouble, the two young ladies sat nestled on the steps of a library near Sakuno's apartment complex, waiting for Atobe's grand appearance. As this was a business affair, Sakuno had decided to dress up for the occasion; she wore one of her nicer floral-print dresses and, at Ann's suggestion, had her braids pinned up instead of hanging down. Ann kept on fussing over and adjusting both Sakuno's hair and clothes during the wait.

Now, it was good to have a friend for moral support but Sakuno had her reservations. There was little love lost between An-chan and Atobe. Three years had passed but Ann hadn't forgotten about the incident when she had nearly been forced on a date with him. Sakuno wondered if a desire for revenge hadn't played a part in Ann's decision to lend her moral support.

"Like I'd ever go out with that puffed-up peacock," Ann-chan muttered. Sakuno, having heard this rant several times before, tuned in with only half a patient ear. "I'd rather date that humongous brown cabana boy of his. At least Kabaji doesn't yap on all the time. I tell you, Sa-chan, you've got to watch out for that Atobe. He's from a big slimy business family; those people have tongues as nasty-slick as oil. Don't let him trick you into any sort of disadvantage!"

"I know, Ann-chan."

"I think this new business style is a perfect compromise for you. You get to keep the braids but you look so much more sophisticated. You look like Princess Leia! I still think you should cosplay as her one of these days."

These and other such admonishments Sakuno had also heard many times during their wait, so they had lost some of their force. Nonetheless, Sakuno primed herself to keep on her guard, to keep her inherent nervousness at bay as much as possible. She'd been through much worse than this, she kept reminding herself, and she could deal with Atobe in some fashion. Yet it was impossible to fully relax. Sakuno envied her tennis friends' ability to act so nonchalant under pressure, turn it to their advantage. Perhaps she was cursed with a freakish adrenaline that did the opposite of what it was supposed to, making her thoughts and deeds more sluggish and scattered. . .

A gleaming luxury sedan, its passenger windows tinted so dark that no one could see inside, took a sharp curve around the street corner. It halted before the steps and the girls arose as the Monkey King himself glided out, glancing at his watch.

"Ore-sama apologizes for the delay and now for the rush, but please accompany right away Ore-sama, Ryuuzaki-chan, so we can—" He finally spied An-chan. "Oh, hell no. What sin could Ore-sama have committed in a single lifetime to deserve this?"

"Good day to you too, Atobe." Ann's tongue dripped sugary sarcasm. Atobe gave Sakuno a displeased look and she shrugged in apology.

Rifling a hand over the back of his neck one time, Atobe, straightening his back, proclaimed: "Well, your attempt to stun and entrap Ore-sama in your devious web with this unpleasant surprise will not faze me. Ore-sama has come upon a sudden conflict of time schedules, so if you ladies would please come with Ore-sama to his summer home to discuss this pressing matter at our leisure—"

Sakuno regarded the lovely car with some alarm; she thought she could see other people in there, barest blobs of dark pitch against the window tint. Were they the other Hyotei team members? A kamikaze squad from his fan club? Tattooed bruisers from the Yakuza break her kneecaps? There was also the most pressing matter of all. "Atobe-san, I thought we agreed to meet in neutral territory. And it would be rude for us to impose on your hospitality like this. There is no need."

His normally unflappable eyes darted to check his watch again. "Yes, yes, Ore-sama apologizes, but like Ore-sama said, there has been a schedule conflict. This is the only viable option."

A familiar voice, Shishido's, came from the car. "Dammit Atobe, it's just a soap opera! It won't kill you to miss one episode! Just drop us off at the tennis courts so you two can talk over tea and crumpets or something."

Half of Atobe's face rose into a snarl that was very unbecoming indeed as he whipped around to poke his head through the passenger door. Sakuno didn't doubt that that an unspeakably evil glare was staring Shishido-san right in his face and she was thankful she did not have to witness it.

"It is not just a soap-opera, you philistine. It is a fine, engaging televised serial, Ore-sama's favorite of all time, and Ore-sama has been waiting an entire month, avoiding all news and gossip, for this season finale! And Ore-sama will not miss it, not even if a nuclear holocaust exploded all over Japan right this second! Any more complaints or insults of that fine drama from you, Shishido, and Ore-sama shall summon all the powers of tennis darkness, and you're off the regular team, soaking in your own shame—again! And that also goes for the rest of you. Do you all understand me?"

The sufficiently meek peeps in reply appeased him, and Atobe faced the young women again, his visage composed once more. "Ore-sama will ask only one more time, ladies. Please accompany us. Or else you will be left here, this Ore-sama promises."

Faced with such an ultimatum and terrifyingly fierce devotion to a daytime soap, Sakuno felt the best thing to do was accept the offer. Hardly the best circumstances for a conference, but Atobe looked very likely to make good on his threat. It would be unacceptable for her if she passed up this opportunity and no other chances at negotiating a solution on any of her terms came later. Resigned, Sakuno nodded and gestured for An-chan to follow, which she did, albeit sulkily. At least Atobe bowed for them and let them go first, something that Sakuno appreciated until she remembered she was no shorts underneath her skirt. Thank heavens Hyotei had more gentlemen than Yamabuki.

As the three tried to enter the car, Sakuno gaped at the realization that the other Hyotei members had completely occupied the passenger seats, custom made so that the two rows faced each other. It was crammed full as it was.

"Now what?" Gakuto demanded, hardly more pleased than Shishido at their playing second fiddle to a TV show. "There's no room for them, and you'll still miss the first minute of your little soap."

"Ore-sama's mighty brains have already designed a solution," Atobe replied with stiff dignity. "The girls will have to sit on someone's lap."

Sakuno groaned, face tingling. Ann-chan began to shriek in outrage but with a good push Atobe got her halfway inside, sending her sprawling over several boys' knees. With much wrangling they managed to seat her with Kabaji. Sakuno got in much more obediently and so was spared such treatment. To reward her (so Atobe said) she got to be seated on Atobe's lap during the journey.

Sitting across from her, Oshitari wiped his glasses. The action jostled everyone on his side. "I told you we should have taken the limo."

"Too conspicuous," Atobe proclaimed. Gakuto started to complain again about the cramped spaces and stupid TV soaps, Ann added to it, and soon everyone was arguing, trying to make peace (Choutarou), or sleeping (Jirou). Uncomfortable beyond belief, sitting on the very boniest edges of Atobe's knees while her own bumped against Hiyoshi's and Oshitari's, it became harder for Sakuno to breathe. On instinct, she reached for her cell phone to tap out a message for either her grandmother or Tezuka: BEING TAKEN BY HYOTEI TO WATCH SOAPS. SEND HELP.

The phone was snatched from her hand. "Nice try."

Atobe clicked it shut and stuffed it in her book bag. There was nothing to do but endure the sardine can of a ride and then an hour's worth of watching a show she had never seen starring characters she knew nothing about do things and concoct schemes that made no sense to her.

Soon enough they were all seated in one of the numerous sitting rooms in one of Atobe's many houses. From what Sakuno knew this suburban chateau hardly approached the splendor of the main mansion owned by the Atobe family, far outside the cramped Tokyo limits, but the house was still more spacious and opulent than she had ever experienced. It had taken them a whole two minutes two reach this room from the main hallway, following halls decorated with fine art and plush carpet. One wall in this room was dominated by a massive high-definition television with complete stereo-surround sound entertainment system and several game consoles. In the back, next to a small drink bar with refrigerator was a mahogany table used for informal conferences. In front of the television were a couch, posh leather recliners, and several leather beanbag chairs.

The girls and Jirou, because he was deemed the least threatening, took the sofa for themselves while Atobe pulled up the largest, most elegant recliner next to it. The show began and, just as she feared, Sakuno had no clue about what was going on; unlike her, however, Ann did not suffer in silence.

"This is stupid," she moaned. "My brother watched sentai shows better than this when he was a third year in elementary school."

Gakuto sprang to agree, slouching in his beanbag chair with his mouth skewed into an irritated line by the way his hand cupped around his chin to prop his head up. "Yeah. If anything, instead of this crap we could be watching a cool show like 'Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit'."

"That show sucks," snapped Shishido, already in full peevishness.

"Yeah," said Hiyoshi. "Oh look, Angel Summoner summons a horde of angels and saves the day again. I was totally not expecting that."

Ootori and Kabaji had been ordered by Atobe to act as the welcoming service for the girls and they were hovering around offering various treats from the large refreshment bar in the back of the rec room. Choutarou moved in an uncharacteristically frantic way and kept on trying to make peace between the two factions. "Come on, senpai-tachi; please don't start while we've got company here. We're not even watching that show."

Jirou blearily squinted at the proceedings. "At least it—and this show of Atobe's—are better than one of those Audrey Hepburn movie marathons." Oshitari's glasses gleamed in some wickedly sardonic way but Jirou only yawned. Well, Sakuno thought, when on foreign territory, perhaps it would be best to try and join in.

"I like Audrey Hepburn movies," she put forth. At first she thought no one had heard but Oshitari threw her a look that approved of her tastes. Jirou blinked at her, considering, and gave up any further contention.

"At least they're more entertaining than this. I don't see how buchou can watch it and do anything else besides sleep."

"Ore-sama's stupendous powers that your miniscule mental faculties cannot begin to comprehend are capable of many astounding feats. Ore-sama can easily negotiate and entertain himself at the same time! Now, let us get down to our business, Ryuuzaki-chan, while the commercials are on."

With An-chan giving her a brilliant, urging smile and a clasp on her knee, Sakuno forced her thoughts into a slow, deliberative pace. She had rehearsed her ideas with her some of her senpai, Ann, Tomoka, and even Ryoma the evening prior (thank goodness Eiji-senpai was a blabbermouth and had given her Ryoma-kun's new cell number! She had even been so focused on this meeting that she had hardly any qualms about calling Ryoma at all until it had been too late, and still she had stuttered only a little). They had given her suggestions and advice to further shape the plan into something presentable. Now was the time to lay it out.

In the beginning, she was still quite nervous and her fingers trembled along with her stuttering tongue. Despite his eccentricities, Sakuno knew from her sources that Atobe was a first-rate negotiator and judge of workable ideas; she had to be very clear and firm, yet ready to compromise on a few points. Her nervousness made her slip out a cheat-sheet of paper with the outline of her plans so she could keep her train of thought. So important were the notes that she had not even dared to stick them in her handbag—which could be misplaced—but she actually had stuffed the paper into one of the folds of her braids atop her head. Atobe and the other Hyotei team members smiled at that, but she thought it made good sense. She had yet to lose her braids, after all.

Then, in the middle of her piece, something fluffy and light-colored flopped right across Sakuno's lap. The end of her sentence trailed off into a squeak. Jirou had lost the battle with his borderline narcolepsy once more and had crashed-landed into a nap.

"Jirou-senpai, please stop that, you're making us look like jerks," Choutarou pleaded. He clutched the tray of snacks as a lifeline and kept on hesitating between going towards the girls' (plus Jirou) couch and his doubles partner. "Shishido-senpai, do something!"

"Yeah, he's a real perverted menace, all right." Shishido jerked his thumb at the cherubic face pillowed on Sakuno's lap. Jirou had curled his legs across Ann's knees. The girls shared a glance and, with an unspoken agreement, gave the dead weight a firm shove. Jirou hit the floor with a mighty WHUMP but he didn't break his sleeping rhythm at all; he just snored once more loudly than usual and then turned onto his belly. It was such a feat as Sakuno had never seen before.

"I hope he doesn't have some kind of brain problem," she whispered to Ann-chan, who only snorted and prodded at him with her foot.

"I think the whole darn school is a freak show, what with all the narcolepsy and the delusions of grandeur and the 'ossu' sycophancy and—" she waved her fingers at the general direction of the others, "whatever other deeply hidden psychoses these guys no doubt possess." Hiyoshi, Shishido, and Oshitari regarded her with apathy; Choutarou looked stricken to near-tears. Sakuno was about to praise the snacks he had brought as a means of comfort when Atobe crashed his fist down on his chair-side table. His face and eyes were set in grim displeasure.

"Tachibana, if you insist on insulting Ore-sama's team, interrupting his business, and drowning out the dialog of his favorite drama with your infernal screeching, Ore-sama shall have Kabaji fetch the unvanquishable duct-tape and shut your trap for you."

When Ann-chan called the bluff and said he wouldn't dare, Atobe gave one snap of his fingers to get Kabaji to stand and rifle around through a supply cabinet. Ann glared but said no more.

"N-now, as you know, Atobe-san, a few days ago my friend Ryoma-kun, my senpai and some of your schoolmates came upon a way to resolve this uncomfortable stalemate between our schools—"

"Echizen? Your friend?" barked out Gakuto, his grin crooked. "I heard you used to be over the moon for him."

Having heard all of this before, she had formulated a response that would hopefully cover up the deep embarrassment she continued to feel whenever this subject was brought up. Had she really been so soppy with her crush that everyone in the eastern prefectures knew about it? It would not surprise her if even major tennis schools in the west heard rumors (thanks to Kintarou-kun, though she hoped that his normal denseness meant that nobody took whatever gossip he spread seriously). Her back arched in a bracing position, fingers interlocked between her knees to keep from pushing the pointer fingers together or unconsciously teasing at her hair, she forced her eyes to give Gakuto an oblique glance.

"That was in middle school, but I like to think we are still good friends. Still, that's neither here nor there, Gakuto-san."

"Well, I don't see him or any other Seigaku people here. Where are they? You'd think the least they could do is be here for you. You could have done better than bringing along that Fudomine loser Tachibana's little sister." Shishido finished a swig of his soda with a grunt, its dismissiveness the event horizon that caused Ann's patience to snap. Her fingers clawed at the velvet upholstery the couch.

"Kippei's toenail clippings are worth ten of you," she snapped. Sakuno reached out to mollify Ann-chan but the damage was done. Ann plucked out a glistening ice-cube from the glass of juice Ootori had provided as a refreshment and launched it at Shishido's head. Shishido twisted his torso to dodge and Hiyoshi took the hit; he looked fit to spring out the chair into a full karate stance.

"Geez! That hurt. Atobe, tell me why you wanted to go on a date with this girl again? She'd kill you with a misaimed volley if the two of you ever played tennis together, her aim's so bad."

"Do you want me to get up in your business, 'Shroom-boy?" Ann demanded, waggling her fingers in a gesture for him to bring on whatever he had.

"You won't get up in my business, I'll get up in your business if I have to, Tachibana. And possibly your grill!"

"Ore-sama demands that you all be quiet. Can't you dunces see that Tsukiyomi is going to eat the poisoned fish meant for Iyoko? You're ruining the drama."

Though almost everyone had their nostrils flared with the lingering scent of heightened emotions, the hostility began to drop from its near critical-mass state. Sakuno still wanted to get in one last word in favor of Ann-chan, however, before Atobe managed to re-disengage himself from his TV drama to continue forming a strategy with her. Ann was doing her such a favor to come into territory such as this, where they both ran the risk of receiving insults, and Ann-chan had the disadvantage of not having Ryuuzaki Sumire as a family member. Despite their baiting Hytoei may have held respect for Tachibana Kippei, but for her grandmother they held something more powerful: pants-wetting fear.

"I am very glad that Ann-chan is with me. She's as good a friend to me as anyone else, including my senpai."

"Still don't see why some of them, at least Tezuka, didn't come."

"If I had asked, I'm sure he and some other would have, Shishido-san. But this is mainly my problem, so I wanted to settle it in my own way. It's the principle of the thing, you know." She was astounded by the unwavering lack of stutter in her words, a strange sense of calm at the improving mood making comfortable enough to tease them a little. "Perhaps I should have brought someone else, though. Maybe I should call up Grandma, see if she can come over."

"Not necessary, Ryuuzaki-chan," stammered Ootori. "I, for myself and on behalf of the entire team, beg pardon for any teasing that may have gone too far. You know how rival sports teams can be...we didn't mean anything by it...isn't that right, senpai?" He stood behind Shishido to gently nudge the back of his doubles partner's neck so that he started to bend down in something akin to a supplication pose. Whether Shishido was actually going to cave and speak an apology would remain forever a mystery as Ann, in triumphant glee, answered for him.

"That's right! So you can just sit and spin, you sour-pussed baldy."

Ann might as well have lit a firecracker under half of the Hyotei team's pants as Shishido, Gakuto, and Hiyoshi shouted in protest. Choutarou was gripping at his hair, overwhelmed, Oshitari wryly amused, and Jirou still asleep. Once again pushed to drastic measures, Sakuno cast all pretense of businesslike serenity away, leaning over to grasp the arm of Atobe's chair with wild desperation.

"Atobe-san, I cannot talk with you under these conditions! This is why I didn't want to meet in your own house. It's unacceptable!"

He gave her a curt nod. There was a snapping of fingers and a twitch of the head toward the hot-heads' direction, when in a sudden swoop Kabaji appeared behind them before they rushed the couch. Heads collided together like coconuts as Kabaji lightly—for him—knocked them one against the other. Much to everyone's dismay, Kabaji looked even grimmer than usual, and for once in a blue moon he uttered a full sentence.

"Atobe-sama told you all to be quiet. You are being very rude. He is very displeased."

"That's right, Kabaji. This circus has gone on long enough. Everyone except Ryuuzaki-chanan, out. All of you."

It was then that Sakuno realized why and how Atobe could lead his freak show of a team. The sudden change in his bearing, the sheer authority in his voice could not be denied, and the other players recognized it in an instant, though not without somee residual grumbles. Sakuno did not want Ann-chan to leave her alone with the megalomaniac, but her friend was being whisked away by the exodus. Gakuto prodded her along with pokes on her back, which earned him a sharp slap on his hand. The two began arguing heatedly at the door and Sakuno was afraid that the next time she saw one of them, they'd be sporting bruises. Shishido dragged Jirou out by the leg. Jirou

Oshitari halted at the door, his glasses winking in the light at her. "Don't worry about your friend. We'll make sure she doesn't injure Gakuto or Shishido too badly. And, Ryuuzaki-chan, I'm have no worries for you either. Our buchou is a fair man in business dealings, even if, as the French say, il pète plus haut que son cul."

Sakuno only knew some cooking terms in French so she could not join in on the joke, but Atobe turned down his nose in offense. "Go away, Oshitari. Ore-sama would have you know that he never engages in such crass functions, and even if he did, it would be, as everything Ores-ama does is, a glorious thing."

"You keep telling yourself that, buchou." He closed the door, leaving a moment of blissful silence and calm. Sakuno could have wept with relief.

The following negotiations were not nearly as dreadful as Sakuno had anticipated. She had prepared to steel her guts and keep her tongue squeezed up against the roof of her mouth to deal with the byzantine machinations of Atobe's ego, but he proved straightforward in his clarity. She laid down the gist of her plans, concocted with suggestions from her other friends; he responded in kind with his own terms and ideas. Best of all (to her) she didn't have to resort to bartering with food. She did not want to cook anything for him after what he did—it was only right to deny him.

Though they both were distracted by the goings-on of the television drama and the most productive moments were during the commercial breaks, they reached an agreement before the ending credits.

"Is that it for now, Atobe-san? Wow, I couldn't believe that Iyoko would sabotage Michiru's mecha-armor like that. Now Michiru won't be able to fight crime!"

"Yes. Let Ore-sama deal with the arrangements. You should only focus on preparing and providing for your supplies. Everything will be as neutral as Ore-sama can make them, but do not expect that Ore-sama can go out of the way to make things easier for you. And Ore-sama easily saw the wisdom of that move. It was for Michiru's own good since the armor was possessed by Wilford's restless spirit. Ore-sama does hope they bring back the crime-fighting sub-plots, though. They made the drama as cutting-edge as it is."

Sakuno had long given up on pointing out that everything that had happened resulted from his filching of her food; the cause had become quite moot. It still quite irked her, however. He shouldn't act imperiously if he could not dare to make outright amends and call the whole ridiculous one-sided feud off.

"Ah ah, don't pout now, Ryuuzaki-san. Such a sour look does not become you. Here, have some more refreshments."

He offered her a tray decked with delicate crème-filled pastries fashioned into the shapes of various animals. Sakuno took one that looked like a bear and, with a delicate bite, chomped off its head. It made her feel a little better.

"This reminds Ore-sama—Ore-sama never has gotten to sample your cooking. Tezuka speaks well of it and Ore-sama even has heard the brat say it's quite good."

"Ryoma-kun likes my food?" Sakuno leaned forward for confirmation. She had not seen him for a few days; he had probably dropped by when she had been off her shift.

"It appears so. Ore-sama chanced across the impetuous whelp a few days ago on a take-out run from Kawamura Sushi. He also said that Ore-sama would not appreciate it, as monkeys only enjoy bananas. Damn brat. Nevertheless, as Ore-sama was saying, since he did not have the opportunity to partake of the bento he purchased—"

'Stole and wasn't for you,' Sakuno corrected in her mind, but she did not dare say it aloud, although she wished that she could tell him what she thought just like Ann-chan or Tomo-chan could so easily. Most people only saw her overriding nervousness, not suspecting that she felt frustration and irritation just as keenly as anyone else, but she had always been taught to act by the expected rules of politeness.

What Sakuno could not stand, however, was her host's own lack of propriety. She had never really expected for him to make a public apology in front of his own teammates, let alone pay a visit to her humble house with his parents in tow to make amends, but the original wrong had been his own. Atobe had only to bow his head and admit his fault directly to her, express his regret; but he would never do that. That much was clear to her. Atobe reminded Sakuno somewhat of Ryoma-kun, and that distressed her. It had been difficult enough to deal with Ryoma's own brand of brusqueness. If only there were more gentlemen of propriety like Sanada—now that was a person, Sakuno was sure, who knew how to make proper Japanese apologies.

Atobe was staring at her, lost in her musings. Sakuno blushed deeply and murmured, "I'm sorry, Atobe-san. However, I did try to tell you that the food was for my grandmother."

"An infinitesimally rare mistaken assumption on Ore-sama's part, yes. However, Ore-sama does not apologize for assumptions. He can apologize on behalf of his...overzealous admirers, if you like."

How could it be that one person could be easy to get along with when discussing plans and then become so exasperating that she wanted to burst out into tears while strangling him with her own braids? Sakuno settled on closing her eyes, putting her little shy smile on her face, and count from five backwards. Lovely images of her Tezuka-buchou soundly thrashing Atobe in a tennis match while Ryoma-kun lobbed tennis volleys at that oh-so-perfect head and her grandmother and Fuji-senpai gave him the mother of all wedgies soothed her nerves.

"I see, Atobe-san." That was all she needed to say to convey her dissatisfaction. Noticing this, the conversation turned back to bargaining. He gave her a winning, gleaming smile.

"But just so you know, Ore-sama's offer of a date filled with nigh-perpetual indulgence still stands. Ore-sama never did receive a reply from you. Ore-sama's schedule is booked for a while, but once things do blow over, Ore-sama would like to try to do something to make up your trouble for you, Ryuuzaki-chan. And Ore-sama promises, once you have accompanied him on a date, all of this difficulty will seem worth the effort."

"I'm very sorry, Atobe-san, but I can't date until I'm sixteen."

"Ore-sama's patience is unmatched."

"My grandmother would insist on accompanying us at all times."

Atobe's impeccable groomed eyebrow twitched. "A problem—but Ore-sama could endure."

"I have no really expensive clothes and Ryoma-kun says my hair is ridiculous. I'm not nearly fashionable enough for you."

He leaned forward across the table to squint at her as if she were some kind of exotic bug that defied classification. "It sounds, Ryuuzaki-chan, like you are trying to dodge out of the issue. Refusing a date with Ore-sama, the dream and highest aspiration for any girl (or boy) at Hyotei High—no, the world? Ore-sama is simply baffled by this."

Since Atobe was in the habit of bestowing 'gift-dates' on any female who caught his attention (he felt it was his charitable obligation to that half of society), Sakuno had received warning about needing to deal with it from her Tezuka-buchou. She had formulated a suitable response. She lowered her eyes demurely and blushed in self-deprecation.

"Well, Atobe-san, you must realize that people who haven't gone to the Hyotei schools can't fully appreciate your looks and style. Your handsomeness, money, tastes—they're too dazzling for me! It's too rich for my blood. No, I'll have to settle for second-rate boys if I ever date."

He stopped to consider this. "Yes, Ore-sama can understand your sentiments. He is a most intimidating specimen." He quirked an eyebrow. "However, that sounded like a scripted response to Ore-sama. You're hiding something."

Ah, despite his occasional delusions of grandeur, he was quite perceptive. Blushing even more deeply, Sakuno simply wanted to find a good conversation-stopped so that she and Ann could go on home. It was too strange talking with Atobe about her own personal life. Stammering again, she tried to come up with a suitable response and blurted out the most embarrassing thing.

"I'm sorry, Atobe-san, it's just th-that: I like someone else. I didn't want to say it to you, b-but..."

"Ha! Ore-sama does not miss these things." He leaned in like a cat for the kill, an odd smirk on his lips. "Who is it? Surely he is inferior to Ore-sama, but no matter." His nostrils pinched. "Don't tell me it's still that Echizen brat. You could do so much better."

She couldn't stand that smug look of triumph on his face and she wanted to throw him a curve ball. Her dignity was at stake here. Her grandmother always said she needed to stop being such a pushover, to retain her poise so she wouldn't be bullied as much...she wanted to put him off-guard for once. She did her best to put a placid look of longing on her face.

"Well, Yukimura-san from Rikkai does have the better hair, I admit. I love how silky and shiny it is in the pictures. Ryoma-kun doesn't pay nearly so much attention to his own hair as he should."

"Are you telling Ore-sama that the main point you judge males by is their hair? Then you should have always been drooling over Ore-sama! His hygiene is unmatched! His hair is far superior to Yukimura's!"

Sakuno returned his indignation with a helpless shrug and a confused pout. His frown turned to smile indulgently at her while he reached across the table, patting her head. His eyes held something like pity in them, like she had gone insane. "Ore-sama cannot account for taste, poor Sakuno-chan. He only hopes this delusion will pass. And one day, Ore-sama swears, he will taste your cooking. You cannot stop Ore-sama. Ore-sama will even hire you to be his personal chef for a day if he has to. If the food is not as good as others have described, you will be fired so fast your braids will whip about your head like little helicopter blades and you become airborne!"

If he were more familiar to her, Sakuno would have blown him a nice raspberry to scorn his threat. Decorum and politeness won out once more, however, and she only giggled again. He then invited her to stay a bit longer and sample more of the luxuries of the town house—even generously allowing her to 'keep that harpy-mouthed friend of yours around too'—but she declined. With plans out on the table and about to go underway Sakuno suddenly felt drained. She was not up to the task of braving the rocky diplomatic waters of keeping Ann polite while making sure Choutarou didn't have a nervous breakdown and making sure that Jirou did not crash into her or Ann's boobs during one of his fits.

"Perhaps someday Atobe-san, when this is all blown over," she said. He did not press the issue further.

It did not take long to find Ann and the other Hyotei regulars in another nearby recreation room, this one furnished with a ping-pong table. An was currently volleying balls at Shishido's head while everyone else except Jirou (asleep) and Choutarou (wringing his hands) egged her on in their own way. Goodbyes were exchanged and Choutarou escorted them through the winding halls to the car that would take the girls home. Ann-chan expressed joy at the news that a resolution had been reached, clasping an arm around Sakuno's shoulders to squeeze her.

"I knew you could do it, Sakuno-chan. See? All your hard work is paying off."

"I hope so, Ann-chan. To tell the truth, it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Atobe-san can be pretty reasonable." She puffed out her cheeks. "Still, dealing with him can be—er, draining."

"Tell me about it," said Choutarou. "But I'm glad that things are working out, Ryuuzaki-san. You're holding up well." He opened the car door for them and the girls began to clamber in. He gave Sakuno something of an odd look as she passed by him, as if wanting to say something but afraid to give it voice. She peered up at him with an uncertain smile.

"Is there anything wrong, Ootori-san?"

He fidgeted. "It's silly."

"You can tell me anything, Ootori-san."

His glance bounced from her face to his feet. "Well—it's just that, Ryuuzaki-san, when this is all over and you have time to think about other things and can process everything—"

"Yes?"

"Please don't sue."

PoT PoT PoT PoT PoT

After supper that evening, sprawled out on the sofa, Sakuno found herself vacillating between moments that brought rushes relief and then absolute panic. She could now see the end of her current troubles, just as a marathon runner could finally see the finish line of the race far-off though it was; still, the very prospect of failure nearly crippled her poor nerves. To work so hard, to jump through such hoops and only lose to her tormentors gnawed through her. Not only that, but dealing with Atobe was truly exhausting. So many details and worries tilted her mind on its axis and she just wanted to sleep right there so they would disappear for a few hours. But the very spinning in her head allowed her no rest.

Her phone chimed nearby, the sofa's armrest reverberating with its hum. With some foreboding, Sakuno opened up the pink butterfly-stamped cover to receive a message that, even from the first words, could only have been from Eiji-senpai.

Saku-chan!

We all loved Kaidoh-kun's bandana he wore yesterday! So cute! :3 :3

Get me one too? Please?

Momo-kun really thought it was nice too. It made him so happy he kept on talking to Kaidoh-kun about it all through practice!

Goodnight and hugs from your most favorite Eiji-senpai!

Taking in the message, Sakuno closed her phone, feeling wearier than ever; it was as if receiving such energetic missives from Eiji-senpai made her crash from an electronic sugar high. In addition to being stuffed into a luxury sedan and riding on Atobe, having Jirou-san crash-land into her lap, breaking a boy's heart and confronting a chain-smoking ex-delinquent the day before, she had now effectively destroyed Kaidoh-senpai's reputation. Time to ring up Guinness, this had to be a new record for her.

Really, she sighed heavily as she put her head under a pillow, there were only so many times a person could ask 'Why me?' in a lifetime; she figured she had hit her quota by now.

She also figured she must have been Stalin or Genghis Khan in a previous life to be dealing with these things.

"Sa-chan, you seem out of sorts. Is everything all right? You acted so cheerful during supper," her grandmother asked from afar. Sakuno groaned into the pillow. Supper. Food. Cooking. Her arrangement with Hyotei. It never ended!

All the praise she had ever received for her cooking flew out of mind and sight. She knew she had talent, yet her relative lack of experience under pressure troubled her greatly. Her lack of regional diversity didn't comfort her either; she knew only the barest thing about French or Italian or German dishes and nothing about cuisine from Spanish-speaking countries. Her experience was more traditional, and she hadn't acquired the skills yet to do truly gourmet Japanese dishes.

What to do? What could she do?

Then, in a revelation from the heavens, she figured out what she could do.

Her grandma was ensconced in the corner recliner, her unsuspecting face having been focused on a book's pages until a few seconds prior. Silently, not making a peep in her movements, Sakuno scooted along the floor as she flopped ungracefully off the sofa, right knee and elbow tentatively following the left over the rough carpeting. She peered up.

Sakuno flung her arms around those warm knees of those venerable legs in their venerable slacks and socks with the kitties embroidered on them, nearly making her grandmother rocket out of the chair. Fumbling with the book, the redoubtable old dame stared down in affectionate exasperation at the creature hugging her legs and staring up with great dewy eyes.

"Grandma, great one, my most favorite relative, most beautiful old lady and best and wisest coach of all time," Sakuno began, but her litany was broken when her grandmother brought the book lightly crashing down on top of her head.

"That's enough of that, Sa-chan. Now, what do you want?"

"I just wanted to ask: can we go visit Aunt Natsuko sometime soon? I mean, soon soon?"

"And why," her grandmother asked with the most piercing glare as she leaned over, arms resting on her knees, "do you want to see your Aunt Natsuko? You never were so keen to do it before-you're up to something. I read you like the newspaper, darling."

"Grandma, I need to know how to cook."

The book came down on the crown of her head with a gentle thump. "Sa-chan, you've said some silly nonsense before in your life, but this is the topper. What on earth makes you, a virtual apprentice to a gourmet sushi restaurant, the girl who has baked every week for the Seigaku regulars and never brought home leftovers, think that you can't cook? Honestly!"

At length Sakuno explained that she enjoyed her time with the Kawamuras and was learning much, that her skills were greatly improving, but that she wanted to expand her range. "I love cooking Japanese food and pastries, Grandma, but I want to do more. But I don't know anyone who knows foreign food well enough who can really teach me." Her face with its cat-grin gave her attempt at slyness away. "Well, there's one person I know."

Her grandmother's face faulted a bit in surprise. "If you're suggesting what I think you are, Sa-chan—"

"You got it, Grandma! I'd love to go see Auntie Natsuko. She's the best chef in the family. I could learn a lot from her."

"I always thought you were a bit scared of her. Not that I totally blame you for that, but still!"

"How could I be, Grandma? She's kind of like you!" Sakuno nuzzled her face against her grandmother's legs as she earned herself another gentle blow on the head with the book. "Ow. You can't keep me from telling the truth, Grandma. I shall not be chained! Besides, it would be nice to get out of Tokyo and go somewhere else for a little vacation. I have Tanabata week off, you know. And the doctors say it's good for you to do some light traveling."

Sumire paused in contemplation, helping to scoop up her granddaughter from off the floor into her wide lap. Sakuno laid her head on her grandmother's shoulder. It may not have been a good sign for the development of her teenage independence, but she felt that she would never become tired of her grandmother's warmth or the scent of jasmine perfume wafting from her bosom. There was nothing but softness and warmth.

"I suppose we can do that. Your aunt could use the help to prepare for the Tanabata festival anyways, and she'd enjoy the company. She tends to get too stressed when there's a big event that she has to cater coming up. And Kanagawa's festival is famous for its authenticity. She's such a perfectionist about it—"

"So can we go then, Grandma, please? Before the big Tanabata rush? I'll do my absolute best to help Aunt Natsuko out. It'll be such good practice, too!"

There was a long pause. Their eyes met and Sakuno tried to make her face as round and shiny as possible—it was the quickest way to melt her grandmother's heart. Sumire blinked down at her, swallowed, and finally spoke.

"Fine, fine. I'll call Natsuko before I go to bed. If she says yes, we'll start to pack tomorrow, go to the bus station, get tickets, and pay your auntie a holiday visit. Heaven knows she could use the decent human company for once."

COMING UP NEXT: An adventure in Kanagawa! Sakuno receives instructions from a woman who would make Iron Chef Morimoto cry like a little girl. A wicked trick! Can Sakuno survive an outing with some familiar faces? Will the Ichinen Trio be able to take a picture of Sakuno with her hair down? Will they get beaten up by Kirihara? Can Sakuno leave town without getting engaged to Marui Bunta?Will the author stop asking these pointless questions?

Tune in next time!

PS: 'Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit' comes from a very funny skit on a BBC show called "That Mitchell and Webb Look." I think it would feel right at home in Japan. See some clips here: .com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA