The Matchmaker
Part Seven
March 11, 2002
The two young men trudged towards the
school gate in silence. Sneaking a peek through the corner of his eyes,
Kogure smiled
when he caught sight of Mitsui, who was looking completely adorable in
full pouting mode. " Why the sulky face, Hisa-kun?"
His lips pulled down even further at
the sound of his voice. Maybe if he pouted enough, Kogure would back down
about the whole
tutoring session thing. " It's not fair. I can't believe I have to waste
such a beautiful afternoon studying. I passed the last Physics quiz, didn't
I?"
" That was Physics, Hisa-kun. You have
a World History quiz tomorrow."
Mitsui raised an eyebrow. This was
news to him. He racked his brain, trying to remember if his history
teacher had made
any announcements about a quiz. " I do?"
The bespectacled boy sighed, wondering
at his boyfriend's lack of concern over his schoolwork. " Yes, Hisa-kun,
you do. Isn't it
lucky that your classmate told me about it? Otherwise, you would have gone
to class unprepared."
" And which classmate gave you this
information, may I ask?"
" No you may not ask. You'd probably
bash him tomorrow for daring to tell me about it…"
Kogure knew him far too well for
comfort sometimes. Sighing, Mitsui finally resigned himself to the fact
that he would have to be stuck indoors the whole afternoon when he had been
planning on taking his Min-kun out to see the latest
action film that he had wanted to
watch. " I hate this…" He muttered under his breath.
Hearing this, his boyfriend turned to
face him, a little smirk on his lips. " We're going to be studying at my
house, Hisa-kun."
He pointed out, as though this was the best news that Mitsui would ever
receive in his lifetime.
" Yeah? And so?"
" Tell me, Hisa-kun…" Kogure slipped a
hand into Mitsui's back pocket, leaning in closer so that he could whisper
into the taller
boy's ear. " Do you remember where my parents are?"
" Oh yeah!" Mitsui was by now, feeling
considerably better about being stuck indoors studying, knowing that it
would only be him
and his beloved Kogure in the house. Maybe if he was extra good, Kogure
would reward him with something nice…He chuckled to himself, eliciting a small
smile from his companion.
" Feeling a whole lot better about our
study session now, Hisa-kun?"
" Studying has never looked better to
me…" Mitsui responded, still grinning from ear to ear.
" Good. And if you do well, then I'll
have to give you some sort of reward, then, wouldn't I?" Kogure remarked,
ruffling Mitsui's
cropped dark hair as though he was a child. " So you have to be good,
okay?"
" Okay, Sensei." Mitsui agreed
amiably. His lack of studying materials struck him then. " Wait! My stuff!
I left my stuff
in my locker!"
Sighing, Kogure stopped in his tracks.
" Hisa-kun…" Must he always be so absentminded? Kogure swore that
Mitsui would
forget where he lived if he wasn't there to take care of him. " Go get it
then. I'll wait for you here." Kogure watched
as his boyfriend jogged back towards
the gym.
~**~
" Another great shot, Hana-kun! I
can't believe how much you've improved since I last saw you
play!"
Hanamichi shrugged, dismissing the
spiky haired boy's praise. He liked hearing compliments, everybody did,
but having his
very own cheering squad in the form of the ace Ryonan player and his
ever-sulky boyfriend was getting on his nerves. Now he knew what Rukawa felt with his
Shinetai around him. Sometimes, it took the redhead's entire
reserved of
self-control to keep from hurling the ball into Sendoh's grinning face
just to stop the constant stream of encouragements from him.
" Aren't you supposed to be in Ryonan
or something, Sendoh?"
" You're pissing him off." Koshino
remarked, jabbing at his boyfriend none too gently in the ribs. "Come to
think of it, you're pissing me off too. Can't you just shut up for once in your
life, Sendoh?"
" I'm just trying to encourage
him!"
Taking pity on the rather henpecked
ace, Hanamichi flashed the two a bright smile. " The Tensai needs
no encouragement.
The Tensai is already perfectly aware of his greatness."
" That much is already pretty
obvious…" Koshino muttered under his breath, watching as Hanamichi made
his way to join them at their seat by the sideline of the court. He hadn't wanted
to come to Shohoku with Sendoh, he could think of a
whole lot of things that he would
have preferred to do to tricking some poor, gullible freshman into
thinking that someone was dying, but the spiky haired boy had threatened him, saying
that he would carry him all the way to Shohoku if he
had to and
Koshino, knowing that the guy would have no qualms about doing such a
thing, had just relented.
" So, why are you and pouty here at
Shohoku again? I notice that the two of you have been coming over here a
lot lately… Are
you guys trying to find a couple that you could have a partner swaps with?
I think Mitsui and Kogure might go for that…I mean, Megane-kun seems sort of
dorky at first but he's pretty adventurous. Besides, Micchy can
pretty much talk
him into doing anything…"
" A partner swaps?" Sendoh's blue eyes
sparkled. He was obviously interested and besides, he had had his eye on
the sweet, brown
haired Shohoku vice-captain for the longest time, not that he would admit
that to Koshino any time soon. No. He valued his life more than that, thank
you very much. "That's a great idea! Tell you what, Koshino. Let's do
that and I'll
take Kogure-kun. You can have Mitsui-kun."
" Oh, so you want to exchange me for
that Kogure now, do you?"
Sendoh fidgeted nervously under his
boyfriend's piercing glare. " No Hiro-love… it's nothing like that. I was
just thinking that it would sort of be interesting if we were to do that but we
don't have to, if you don't want to…"
" Damn right we don't have to."
Koshino snapped.
Hanamichi smiled apologetically at the
tall, Ryonan player. He should never have brought that topic up in the
first place. Poor
Sendoh. Did Koshino always treat him like this? Then again, he was sure
that Sendoh, with his ever roving eyes and wandering hands, needed someone that
could control him. Someone precisely like the dark haired
boy scowling up
at him. " So…what are you guys doing here again?" He asked, hoping to get
them back on safer ground.
" We had some extra time after our own
practice and thought we'd come to see how Rukawa-kun was. But then,
I realized that
I'd forgotten that he told me he wouldn't be at practice today. By then,
it was too late though. Hiro-kun and I were already here so we thought that we might
as well stay here and watch you guys practicing. And then you
decided to stay
behind for some extra practice so we decided to stay here and keep you
company and that's why were here right now…" Sendoh was slightly breathless by the
time he finished his narrative of how he and his boyfriend came to be
where they
were.
" Oh." Hanamichi paused, taking a
while to absorb all of this. " Why didn't Rukawa come to practice then?
He's never missed
one before and I was sort of worried when Gori told us that he wouldn't be
coming…what's the matter with him? Gori said that it was some sort of family thing
but I don't believe that. I knew right away that it must have
had something to
do with his sickness. So, there's nothing wrong with him, is
there?"
Sendoh was gratified by the obvious
look of concern on the redhead's face. Everything was working out so
nicely! Koshino
was less than pleased though. He wanted to punch Hanamichi in the face for
being so damn gullible and falling right into Sendoh's trap. " As a matter of
fact, Hana-kun, you're right. It wasn't some family thing that made him
miss practice. It
was a doctors appointment." The spiky haired Ryonan player kept a somber
look on his face, hard as it was for him.
" Nothing serious, was
it?" Sendoh took his
time answering, pretending to be in very deep thought. He let out a heavy
sigh. "He's getting worse, Hana-kun…"
" He…He is?"
" Yes, Hana-kun. He is. Didn't you see
the way he was at that game Shohoku played last Saturday? How easily he
got tired and how
he wasn't playing like he usually does? All of this is beginning to get
him down…" Koshino had to hand it to his boyfriend; he would make one damn fine
actor.
" Well…isn't there…isn't there some
way that the doctors can help him or something?" Hanamichi ran his hand
through his fiery
red hair, his lips pulled down into a troubled frown. The Kitsune… Now
that Sendoh mentioned it, Hanamichi realized that the guy's playing at Shohoku's
last game hadn't really been up to par. He thought it was because
of Rukawa's heart
condition, the one that Sendoh had told him about, when in truth, Rukawa
had been in his distracted state because he couldn't keep himself from
thinking about Hanamichi and his sudden change of attitude.
" There's nothing more that they can
do. They can only try to make him comfortable while he waits for the
inevitable…"
" That's it…" Hanamichi's voice was
full of resolve, his hands clenched into fists by his side. " I'm going to
go and talk to the Kitsune. I'm going to tell him that he can't go on straining
himself like this. That he has to quit basketball."
Koshino raised an eyebrow at this.
What an interesting turn of events! He couldn't wait to see how Sendoh
would get himself
out of this one! He could just about picture the reaction of the dark
haired Shohoku super rookie when Hanamichi turned up at his doorstep, begging
him to give up basketball for the sake of his life. Things would not be
too pretty for
Sendoh then, would they?
" No! Hanamichi!" The younger boy was
slightly shocked by the adamant reaction from the Ryonan ace player.
" You…you can't
do that to him!"
" Why not? It's for his own
good…"
" Basketball is his life, Hanamichi.
His life. It's what keeps him going. You can't take that away from him.
You just can't."
Nice save…Koshino thought to himself,
a wry smile on his face as he watched Sendoh and the
redhead.
" I guess that you're right about
that, Sendoh…But…I just can't stand the thought of the Kitsune suffering
like that…"
" I thought you hated him." Koshino
couldn't resist putting in. He himself was rather amazed by the sudden
change in Hanamichi's attitude towards the person that he had considered to
be his worst enemy.
" I did…"
" Did? So what happened to change your
views of him?"
" Well…When I found out the truth
about him, how he was dying and all that, it made me feel sorry for him,
so I started acting nicer to him and everything and when I did that, the
weirdest thing happened…" Hanamichi murmured
thoughtfully, his
voice so low that his two companions had to lean in towards him to hear
him talking, " He started to act nicer towards me too and I guess I sort of realized
that he wasn't so bad after all, after he started to get all decent
and everything…"
" Your whole attitude changed towards
him because you found out that he was dying?"
" Yeah. That's pretty much
it."
" And if, let's say, you found out
that Rukawa wasn't going to die anytime soon after all…" Koshino ignored
the look of alarm
that Sendoh sent his way, " What would your reaction be?"
Hanamichi shrugged. " If that were the
case, then I would be really happy for him."
" You would still be friends with
him?"
" Well, yeah. Why wouldn't I be? I
mean, I've found out such a lot of things about the Kitsune that
completely changed my views about him…"
" All because of you hearing about how
sick he is…"
" That's pretty much it. I really
regret the fact that I only just now found out that the Kitsune is really
pretty decent…"
Sendoh flashed Koshino a smug smile. "
See. What did I tell you, Hiro-kun?" The shorter boy, never liking being
told that he was
wrong about anything, wiped the irritating smile off the face of the
Ryonan ace by stomping down onto his foot.
Hanamichi rolled his eyes at this,
realizing by now that physical violence was a normal part of the
Sendoh-Koshino love-hate relationship. " For a guy supposedly in love with Spiky,
you sure hit him an awful lot, Sulky…"
" He deserves it. For messing into
people's lives…"
The redhead raised an eyebrow at this.
" Messing into people's lives? How exactly is he doing that? If you mean
that he shouldn't
have told me about Rukawa and the fact that he was sick, then you're
wrong. He wasn't messing into people's lives by doing that. He just did the
right thing. God knows that I would have felt like a bastard if Rukawa
had suddenly died
with me treating him the way that I had been."
" Believe me, Hanamichi-kun, you'll
find out about everything soon enough. Just you wait."
" What the hell is he talking about,
Sendoh?" The redhead demanded, puzzled by Koshino's grim warning. The guy
wasn't exactly
the model of sweetness and light at the best of times, but it wasn't like
Sendoh's boyfriend to just be spouting morbid crap like that without some reasoning
behind it.
Sendoh had to think fast. It seemed as
though Koshino was determined to ruin everything for some reason. He
hadn't been
planning on going along with this stage of the plan so early on but it
seemed as though it was necessary for him to do so if he didn't want everything that he had
been working on for the past few weeks to be put to waste.
" Hanamichi-kun,
you've really made these last few weeks easier on Rukawa. He told me so
himself. He couldn't stop going on and on about how great you were being to him, how much
you've been helping him with your new attitude. It
just brought him to life
again…"
" The Kitsune…He…Said that?" The
redhead's tone of voice was gruff and yet the spiky haired boy could see
that he had been
quite pleasantly surprised by what he had just told him.
" Yep. He said that. Isn't that right,
Hiro-kun?"
" Whatever you say, Akira…" By now,
Koshino had decided that he might as well go along with things, because as
much as he may
wish this not be the case, he was already hopelessly embroiled in the
whole situation. He was already going to die anyways when Hanamichi found out about
everything, what was the harm in going along with his doomed
boyfriend then?
" You've grown to mean a lot to him…"
Sendoh paused dramatically, taking in a deep breath, as though bracing
himself before
revealing some sort of mind blowing secret. " And he likes
you."
" Well…I like the Kitsune too. He's my
friend."
Sendoh blinked, wondering if he hadn't
been clear enough. " He likes you."
" You already told me that, and I
already told you that I like him too. He's my friend and-"
The spiky haired Ryonan player held a
hand up to stop him from going on with his sentence. " Look, I don't think
we're understanding each other here…"
" God, Sendoh. What the hell is there
that's so hard to understand? You just told me that the Kitsune liked me
and I just told
you that I like him too. All right? Do you get it now? We're friends now
so you don't have to worry about me not getting along with him
anymore."
" Look Hanamichi. I see that I have to
be very clear here…" Sendoh rubbed one aching temple gingerly. He poked
his finger to his
chest and then at Hanamichi's. " Hanamichi likes Sendoh. Sendoh likes
Hanamichi. Hanamichi and Sendo; friends."
The redhead nodded in understanding,
watching his companion in rapt attention. He still didn't know what the
guy was getting
at but it wasn't everyday that he got to see the star player of Ryonan
acting like such a loon. If Sendoh didn't look so damn serious, he would have been
laughing his head off by then.
Next, Sendoh draped an arm around
Koshino's shoulder and pressed a soft kiss against the smaller boy's
cheek. " Koshino
likes Sendoh. Sendoh likes Koshino. Koshino and Sendoh; more than
friends."
" All right. And so?"
" And so…can you guess which sort of
'like' Rukawa has on you?"
" Can you try to be more clear instead
of acting like such a spastic idiot?"
" Dammit, Hanamichi. Rukawa is in love
with you, all right? Is that clear enough? Is it, Hanamichi?" Koshino
finally blew up,
irritated by the fact that it seemed as though he was surrounded by a
bunch of dimwitted morons who had to have everything spelled out for them. The two
boys with him just gaped at him.
" What the hell are you talking
about?" Hanamichi reeled back in alarm.
" Hana-kun, Rukawa has always liked
you. It's only now, when it seems as though he might actually have a
chance with you,
that he confessed this to me though. He likes you. Rukawa is in love with
you."
" But-"
" You like him too, don't you,
Hanamichi?" Koshino put in softly, his warm brown eyes sympathetic. "These
last few weeks,
you've seen a side of Rukawa that you never knew about, and now that you
have, you've fallen for him." God. For the sake of the two younger boys, Koshino hoped
that Sendoh's love prevailing over all the lies theory to be
true.
" I don't know…"
" Hana-kun. You have to give this a
try…"
" I can't…" Hanamichi whispered his
brown eyes trained on the gym floor. " I just can't. I won't be able to
stand the thought
of loving him and losing him, just like I know I will. He's going to die,
and I don't want to be that attached to him. I don't think I can stand losing someone
that I loved like that…"
Dammit. Sendoh couldn't exactly just
up and tell him right then and there that all that Rukawa dying stuff had
been a load of
crap, so he came up with another convincing argument for Hanamichi to go
for it. It was really lucky that he had been blessed with a particularly quick mind. "
Hanamichi, he loves you, and you love him. Isn't it better to have
true love, even
for a short while, than to pass it up, just because you're afraid of
getting hurt? It will make him so happy to know that you feel the same way about him too,
Hanamichi. It will make things easier for him. Having you will just
make things
better. Rukawa is dying. And he needs you…"
~**~
Mitsui stood breathlessly by the
doorway to the gym, his History book and binder lying forgotten on the
ground beside him. God. There was too much going on in there for it all to
register. First finding out that Rukawa was a terminally
ill person, then
hearing Hanamichi's confession of love for the person that he had
considered his worst enemy…
He couldn't handle all of this
information on his own, so he did what he usually did when confused; he
went to look for his Min-kun so that the two of them could talk.
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