UNEDITED
The lunch bell chimes loudly overhead, and the students quickly put away their books to make way for lunch. Some students are already running out of the door in order to be in the front of the lunch line. Chiharu and Nanoka press their desks together to form a table, and Nanoka daintily unwraps her bunny patterned bento box. Chiharu is not so gracious, and throws her heart shaped bento box onto the table precariously.
"What's it like, having your period?" Chiharu asks. Being much more petite than Nanoka, her menstrual cycle most likely will not start until she has gained a few more kilograms. Nanoka flushes at the question and looks around nervously, afraid someone (or worse, a boy!) will overhear.
"Uncomfortable." She grumbles. She opens her bento and sighs happily at the sight of octopus shaped sausages and bonito flake omelettes. Not finished with her interrogation, Chiharu continues.
"Is it true that it's an endless waterfall of blood?" Nanoka grimaces. What a nice imagery. She takes out her bento-matching chopsticks and is about to take a bite. "You're not waiting for Kageyama-kun?" Nanoka's hands freeze for a second before resuming their voyage to her mouth. Mmm, bonito flakes.
"No." Nanoka chews. "And no to that too." Chiharu breaks out into her signature cheshire grin.
"Did you guys fight?" She questions excitedly. Nanoka glares at her.
"You shouldn't be so happy that your best friend fought with her boyfriend." Chiharu ignores her.
"Are you guys breaking up?" Nanoka huffs, angling her body away from her to indicate that this conversation has finished.
"No, Haru, eat your lunch." Haru pouts, but opens her own bento box ("Ew, mom put tomatoes"). Nanoka ignores the third person that arrives at their table, dragging a nearby seat.
"Where's my lunch?" Tobio asks, in his confused-puppy voice. Chiharu singsongs, gleeful at the opportunity to one-up the first year setter.
"You don't get one." Tobio blinks. He turns to Nanoka, who is facing the opposite direction.
"I don't get one?"
"You don't get one." Nanoka parrots. Chiharu's cheeks puff out in an effort to smother down her laughter.
"Is it because I caught you flirting with Oikawa-senpai?" Tobio queries. Chiharu's amusement immediately disappears and she gasps at the scandalous news and Nanoka turns to glare at him. She finds satisfaction in his flinch.
"Don't make me make you eat somewhere else too." She growls, baring her teeth. Tobio nearly falls out of his chair running out of the classroom, racing to the bread shop a floor down. Chiharu jabs her chopsticks at Nanoka, flames in her eyes.
"You flirted with Oikawa-senpai behind my back!" Nanoka's frown deepens.
"You believe him?" Chiharu immediately deflates. Knowing Tobio, he definitely misunderstood a totally innocent situation. Like brushing shoulders, or exchanging hellos.
"No." Nanoka rolls her eyes, continuing her meal.
"Thank you." Not one to stay sullen for long, Chiharu perks back up in a few seconds with an unrelated conversation topic.
"How long are you not going to make him lunch? Two weeks?"
"Until he understands that I never cheated on him." Chiharu gasps.
"You cheated-"
"Haru."
"Just kidding, sorry."
-.-.-
"...why is Tobio glaring at his desk like that? What did that desk do to him?" Kunimi ignores Kindaichi's frantic whispering, quietly putting the books he needs to complete his homework assignments in his messenger bag.
"Don't know, don't care."
"But Kunimi!" Kindaichi whines.
"Nope."
Kindaichi helplessly follows Kunimi out the classroom, easily blending in with the loitering students around him. They pass by equally upset looking Nanoka in the hallway, who nods back at Kunimi and Kindaichi's greeting.
"Do you think they fought?" Kindaichi murmurs. Kumimi shakes off his hand from his shoulder.
"No, Arakita-senpai is going to pick up Kageyama for their walk home. Stop being such a gossip." Kindaichi gasps.
"I'm not being a gossip!" Kunimi ignores him. "I'm not!" Kunimi opens his shoe cabinet, Kindaichi temporarily detaching himself to find his own shoes. Kunimi is surprised that it took this long for Nanoka to finally snap at Tobio. He expected her to find some fault in his immature, borderline sociopathic behavior weeks ago.
Maybe Nanoka is more in love with Tobio than he thought.
-.-.-
Tobio glowers at his desk as students weave around him like a school of sardines. It has grooves from his repetitive pencil scratching and half-erased doodles of volleyball formations on the side. His class president has given up telling him to stop vandalising school property.
Tobio doesn't understand why he's being punished when Nanoka was the one who got upset at him for no reason. He simply told her to stop flirting with Oikawa because he's her boyfriend, not Oikawa. BestBoyfriend4Ever (who has four thousand followers on his blog, so what he says must be pretty sound advice) says that it's always best to confront your girlfriend about how you feel about her flirting with other people. Nip bad habits in the bud. But instead of being remorseful, she got mad! Is it because she's older so she thinks that it's okay? Maybe she... wasn't cheating, and it was Oikawa who was flirting? But, she was the one that was touching him like that...all nice and...boyfriendly! Wait, that makes Oikawa the girlfriend, so she touched him girlfriendly? Either way he didn't like it! It made his chest hurt and focus waver when he should have been concentrating on the game, the same way Nanoka should have been concentrating on him. He hated that feeling, he wanted Nanoka to treat him like that too! BestBoyfriend4Ever kissed his girlfriend on their second date! Tobio...Tobio got nothing!
"You better not be thinking about me with that kind of expression."
Tobio swings his head to the side, nearly cracking his neck. Nanoka glumly stares at him from the seat in front of his desk. He hasn't even noticed her sit. Her long black hair is in a messy bun today, exposing the curved slope of her neck. Tobio frowns, looking away.
"...no." He mutters. Nanoka huffs, reaching over to pinch his cheek. Tobio yelps at the painful squeeze.
"You're such a bad liar." His ears burn in embarrassment and Tobio finds it more difficult to meet her eye. Is this why Nanoka doesn't respect him? Because he lets her pick on him? But he...he likes it when she does that. He doesn't have friends who are close enough to feel comfortable teasing him, so it makes him feel special. Every spot she touches is warm and tingly afterwards, and it makes him a little giddy each time. Ignorant to Tobio's inner turmoil, Nanoka lets go of his cheek and rises to her feet. "Let's go Tobio-kun." Go? Go where? Tobio thought they were fighting!
At Tobio's quizzical look, she raises a dark eyebrow. "I'm walking you home? Like always?" When the words sink in, Tobio jumps up, startling her.
"You are?!" Nanoka blinks up at him, bewildered at his behavior.
"Yes. Did you not want me to?" Time finally catches up to Tobio and he notices the empty classroom, his desk still cluttered with school supplies, Nanoka staring at him impatiently. Tobio gulps, his throat suddenly dry.
"O-okay." Nanoka gets up, pats her skirt, and walks out of the classroom without a word. Tobio hastily stuffs his books and pens in his desk and grabs him school and gym bag. Today is a holiday (Tobio forgot which one), so there is no practice. Tobio has planned on advancing their relationship today with the helpful advice by BestBoyfriend4Ever, but he wasn't sure if it will work since they just fought, but Nanoka doesn't seem to be very upset with him. Maybe the plan will still work!
Tobio catches up to Nanoka at the shoe boxes, where she is checking her phone, frowning. Maybe her horoscope isn't good today, he thinks. He throws his worn out sneakers onto the ground and shoves his feet into it. Nanoka snaps her phone shut and stuffs it in her skirt pocket at the sound of him rustling. She waits until he is by her side to start walking.
"Do you have everything you need for your homework?" Nanoka asks out of habitual mothering. Tobio adjusts his messenger bag higher onto his shoulder.
"Yeah."
"Good." The conversation dies there, and Tobio is too socially inept to kickstart it and Nanoka has no desire to converse further. Tobio notices Nanoka's hands swaying with the undulation of her hips as she walks. Nanoka's thighs and forearms have gotten thicker, Tobio notes. Not with firm muscles from hard work like his teammates, but with fat. Perhaps Nanoka has gotten lazy after the disbandment of her club. Should he tell her? What if she continues gaining weight until she's fat? He doesn't want a fat girlfriend!
"Nanoka-"
"What will make you believe that I didn't cheat on you?" Nanoka interrupts. She is facing the road ahead of them, her back facing him. Her arms are taut with tension. Tobio's mind whirs at the abrupt change of topic. He bites his lower lip.
"Don't talk to Oikawa-senpai anymore." Tobio grumbles towards the ground. Unseen by him, Nanoka rolls her eyes. Of course he'd say that. She turns ninety degrees so she is half facing him.
"You know I can't do that Tobio-kun." She tells him in an exasperated voice. Tobio's glare at the ground intensifies. Nanoka has to strain her ears to hear his next demands.
"Don't touch him. Don't let him touch you either." Nanoka looks towards the sky, closes her eyes, and groans into her palms.
"Oh my god, Tobio-kun." Tobio sulks at the rejection of his proposal.
"I don't like it when you're around other guys." He grouses. Nanoka drags her hands down her face and lets them drop to her lap.
"Stop being unreasonable," She tells him. "You can't tell me not to hang out with my friends."
"You met them through me." Tobio grumbles pathetically, as if his reasoning made complete sense to him and Nanoka is the one acting like an insolent child. Nanoka hisses, finally facing him completely.
"Excuse me?!" Nanoka is about to say more, but makes a growling noise with her lips sealed tight. Nanoka, stop it. You're just making it worse.
Nanoka knows. Nanoka knows that Tobio is just as insecure about this as she is, possibly more. He's always says things without thinking it through, so she should be more patient with him when he blurts something stupid. His social etiquette is also level negative zero... look at the way he asked her out! Tobio is also acting clingy because he doesn't have any friends, at least none that Nanoka know of, other than his two freshmen teammates, Kindaichi and Kunimi. More Kindaichi than Kunimi though, for the latter doesn't really seem to care for Tobio other than as an obligation.
"You're right. I met them through you." Nanoka starts, wringing her hands. She's trying to regurgitate the thoughts that have been swimming in her thoughts into proper, non-threatening sentences that Tobio won't react negatively to. She practiced this in the mirror a thousand times, she can do it. "But without me, you wouldn't be playing volleyball with your team." Before Tobio can argue with her, Nanoka quickly shoves at his chest, knocking him into the cement wall that surrounded a home. Tobio immediately forgets what he is about to say as he cradles the back of his head, definitely not letting out a high pitched whine. Nanoka swallows her apology, her mind telling her that her arguement willimmediately be nullified if she shows any weakness. Drip even a teaspoon of blood and the shark will descend upon her.
"If...If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have passed your last two exams. You know what that means?" Nanoka closes in on him and pokes at his chest. It is Tobio's first time seeing her face so close and he doesn't understand why, but his heart rate starts to increase. "You would have been kicked off your team." He can feel her breath on his neck, for Nanoka's mouth barely reaches his collar bone. He still remembers when he and Nanoka were at the same height. He now towers over her by more than 8cm. Her breath smelled faintly like those cheap mint gums that you can buy at a convenience store.
"I...what?" Tobio responds intelligently.
"If you want me to stop talking to Oikawa-senpai or any of your teammates, I'm going to stop tutoring you." The second year stabs him in the chest with her index finger one last time before retreating, letting Tobio breath normally for the first time in the last two minutes. He splutters, loosening the collar of his gakuran and trying to inconspicuously lower the temperature of his face. Nanoka crosses her arms and widens her stance into a power pose that she learned while watching a show on how to boost self confidence. She thinks that this conversation has gone very well. "Well? Do you still want me to not talk to Oikawa-senpai?" Tobio scrunches his face into an ugly grimace that Chiharu would have been proud of ("like mother hen and chick"). Tobio purses his lips, accentuating his sharp cupid's bow and furrows his narrow eyebrows into a pout that didn't quite fit his face.
"...no." Relief floods her and Nanoka lets out the breath she was unconsciously holding.
"Thank you."
Nanoka watches Tobio silently doing a temper tantrum in his head and suddenly realizes how awkward it is to try to recover from a resolved argument. Are they supposed to not acknowledge it until the next fight? Or do they have to bring it up every once in awhile to prevent the same conflict from happening again? Tobio is still stewing in his thoughts, and Nanoka starts to doubt herself. Was she too harsh? Did she say too much? Did she hurt his feelings? What if this becomes the last straw and they end up breaking up? Nanoka doesn't want to break up-they just started dating, and there's still so much to learn. Aren't fights supposed to make their relationship stronger because they're overcoming differences? Nanoka starts to wring her hands again-a nervous habit she seemed to have picked up from Yasui. She tries to not accidentally crack her knuckles, for her mother told her that cracking them will make them knobby and hideous, but there is something about the sound of gases between the joints escaping that sooths the fourteen year old.
Nanoka is jolted out of her thoughts when long fingers encompass her small, sweaty one. Her eyes follow the hand to the wrist to the elbow to the shoulder and to one Kageyama Tobio's blushing face. He refuses to make eye contact, a common theme when Tobio is embarrassed.
"Let's go home." He whispers. Tobio's quiet words seem to bring closure to the girl's spiraling negativity and Nanoka smiles back fondly. The black haired boy has a tendency to drive her crazy, but he is also the sturdy rock in the storm that she is drowning in. Tobio seems to have to most simple solutions to problems she moans over for days and is a constant presence that is easily traced when needed for his schedule is like clockwork. Nanoka is enveloped by warmth for the boy before her. She can tell he is nervous about this too, because his hands are getting sweatier by the second. She gives his hand a squeeze. She takes the first steps towards the train station, pulling Tobio off the cement wall and lightly dusting his bangs for residue.
"Let's go home." She agrees.
For the first time, Nanoka and Tobio keep their hands linked for the half kilometer walk to the train station that takes a starry eyed Tobio two stations past his stop.
-.-.-
A/N:
This chapter was helpful to write because it helped me figure out where these children are in their thoughts. Tobio is still in a dark slightly, but I'll work on that in the next chapter.
An anon review I got fro chapter nine had this at the end:
*About the kareben, I can't help but feel it's kind of sexist. I mean, these girls wake up early and work hard to make them for their boyfriends. Do they get anything in return- as in a "girlfriend lunch"?
Very very true! While Japan is advanced with wonderful technologies and food, they are still pretty backwards when it comes to gender equality (don't even get me started on gay and trans rights). In 2012, the gender wage gap was 21%, and it is even steeper for Japanese women with children because there is a stigma against them (should be at home taking care of their children instead of working, but it's a double edged sword because if they aren't working, how can they afford to take care of their children?). Japanese media still objectify women like there's no tomorrow, and anime takes that to a whole new level. Even Haikyuu! Isn't spared when it comes to being sexist. I forgot who it was and which chapter, but Kiyoko is harassed by a team during a tournament, and Hinata comes to 'save' her. The boys only give up when their manager shows up to herd them away. For some reason, she is the one apologizing for the boy's sexual harassment to Kiyoko and Hinata, instead of the boys? That baffled me so much and made me slightly upset at Furudate for encouraging this weird 'boys will be boys' mentality, but I digress. (I also stopped reading Yowamushi pedal for a similar but worse situation. The UNDERAGE manager is visibly fondled by an opposing team member and instead of this boy getting kicked off the tournament, no one acknowledges it except the manager's team, where it only fuels them to defeat the opposite team? Where is logic?) Ahhhh I'm getting off track, but I can go on forever when it comes to sexism in Japan. AKB48. Maid cafes. Prostitution. Censorship. If you want a discussion, feel free to PM me because I'm all ears.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is, yeah, Japan is sexist, therefore my story is going to incorporate that. Animes and mangas sometimes portray this magical world where everyone is okay with everything, and sure, maybe the new millennials might have that mentality, but a good portion of Japan's populations are older people with older beliefs. These 60+ people who take up 33% of Japan's population are also the ones in power in the government, so you get the idea.
Also boys making girlfriend bentos? Pffft, please. Boys? Cooking? For girls? Haah, maybe it'll be the norm in a decade or so, but not yet, anon. Not yet.
Chapter Analysis:
A reviewer before mentioned that Nanoka has softened a lot after dating Tobio. She used to be pretty snippy with him, and now she's all gooey and lets him walk all over her. My reasoning for this is that Nanoka has never dated before, and therefore does not know what to do with this new status despite the same players. Before Tobio and Nanoka were Kouhai-senpai, a familiar setting that Nanoka knows the rules to. Boyfriend-girlfriend however, is totally foreign. Nanoka turns to internet forums and relationship columns in her girl magazines and they all give conflicting advice, further confusing the already insecure girl. She unconsciously kowtows to Tobio because she wants someone else to be the leader in their relationship. Obviously, this ended pretty badly since Tobio's ease with Nanoka was growing at this time, and therefore his increasing possessiveness and selfishness was left unchecked to fester until Nanoka finally had her breaking point.
For me, Tobio is the type of character who doesn't know how to climb out of holes he accidentally digs himself into. This is obvious from how he was ostracized from his teammates in his third year of middle school, but he never tried to resolve this discrepancy between him and the rest of the team by talking it out. He kind of just… wallowed in self pity. It was also how he got himself into the situation by disregarding his teammates abilities and feelings. Instead of trying to figure out why he and the wing spikers were out of sync, he simply blamed them for not being good enough, and not realizing that the problem is in himself. I wanted to show in this chapter that Tobio has trouble seeing himself as the perpetrator in any situation. He often sees himself as the victim, and Nanoka struggles to get him to understand that the fight they had had an underlying cause in both of them and not just her.
After their fight, Nanoka finally regains her footing. She realizes that boyfriend-Tobio is still the same as kouhai-Tobio, annoying, adorable, and disgustingly high-maintenance, and now she is back to her Chapter 1-2 self, snarky, grimacy, and annoyed at default.
Sorry for those who were expecting some screen time for Oikawa and Iwaizumi. I'll try to squeeze them into the next chapter.
Poll Update:
53% Iwaizumi Hajime
30% Oikawa Tooru
7% Kageyama Tobio
7% Kichijou Chiharu
Thank you for reading!
donut