Chapter 11

"Still an hour early..." he mumbled to himself as he slid the phone back into his pocket. The walk-signal flashed and he took a tentative step forward, glancing left and right twice, before making his way across the intersection. After stepping onto the curb and looking up, a familiar figure caught his eye, but before he could reach a hand up to remove the headphones from his ears, her bewildered voice carried through the air.

"Eh? Kashima!"

"Taniyama," he managed to reply evenly, though he was just as much surprised as she was, and proceeded to tug gently on the wires to pop the headphones out of his ears.

He wasn't sure when it began, or even who started it, but somehow they had gone past referring to each other with polite honorifics and had settled into last-name basis only. Not that he was complaining, really; he found it more comfortable that way anyway.

He noticed the quizzical look she was giving him and somehow understood the unvoiced question she was meaning to ask, so he gave her the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod and slowed down his pace.

Glad that her request was accepted, Mai ran up to join him on his walk and fell into the rhythm of his easy, but long strides. "You're an hour early," she said, "We're not supposed to meet until 11."

"I intended to be early. You?"

"Uhm, yes. Because Michiru and Keiko always complain about me being late so now every time we go out I always make sure to arrive a bit early. Though I miscalculated this time. An hour is a bit much," Mai answered sheepishly. "So are you going to tell me why you're early?"

Kei directed her attention to the tennis bag on his shoulder, answering in his usual languid tone, "I wanted to hit against the wall before we all met up."

"Oh, right. Uhm, what do you mean hit against a wall?"

Kashima pointed to the tennis courts they were fast approaching and slipped into his tennis-guru mode he often found himself in whenever he was around the curious brunette. "I figured since it was just across the park from the café, I might as well get some practice done. When we have no one to play with," he explained, referring to tennis players in general, "we often just hit against the wall to practice groundstrokes or head to the courts to practice serves." He cast her a sidelong glance and asked offhandedly, "By the way, have you been able to speak with anyone from the girls' tennis team yet?"

She flushed and answered in the negative.

"Why? I thought you wanted to join the team? Haven't you been coming by to watch them lately? What have you been doing all this time, then?"

"Ah… I've just been… watching them." Sensing Kashima's confused stare, Mai quickly added, "They're really good, you know. I just don't think I can hack it. I don't even know how to play."

"You don't have to know how to play. They'll take their time to teach you all the basics, if needed."

She shook her head indignantly. "No! I should learn how to play a bit on my own first! I can't just show up knowing nothing and expect them to spoon feed me all the information!"

Kashima thought it was a ridiculous notion, but thought against saying something since he understood the feeling of not wanting to look like a complete idiot. A better part of him also felt a sense of admiration for the girl. She definitely had pride, coupled with an endearing trait of never wanting to inconvenience others for her own sake. Instead, he shrugged and muttered, "Suit yourself."

When they arrived at the courts, Kei muttered out a mildly amused, "Huh."

Both the courts were still empty.

"Usually people would be playing already," he said more to himself, then he turned to her and pointed at the three sided wall standing right beside the court. "That's the wall. You just try to hit against it as long as you can, making sure the ball lands above the painted 'net' line. It's a bit harder than it sounds like because you'll need to keep a steady pace and power, otherwise if you hit too hard the ball will bounce back too fast and put you off-balance. It's a good practice, but since the park is pretty empty right now, would you like to go inside the courts and hit against me instead? I have an extra racket with me."

Mai's eyes widened. "Really? Oh, but you know I don't really know how to play…" she tried to reason, but Kashima had already moved toward the courts and stepped inside, holding the gated fence open for her and looking at her expectantly.

Despite her hesitation, Mai found herself stepping into the courts after him. She turned back to him again with a worried expression and was about to say something else, but Kashima simply shut the gate behind him and strode off towards the bench, not bothering to give her a chance to back out.

"It's alright, we won't play a game. We'll just hit the balls so you get a feel for it. We might as well take advantage of the situation—usually the courts would be busy at this time."

"But I really haven't held a racket before at all, you know," Mai said dubiously. "I imagine it won't be very fun for you and I wouldn't want to impose on your practice time."

Kashima sighed in mild annoyance and plopped his tennis bag down. He opened the zipper and took out an already opened can of tennis balls and deposited the contents into his pockets, then grabbed both his rackets and handed one of them to his reluctant companion. "I already said it's alright. You actually really want to hit, right? Just make sure to not drop my racket or scratch it."

Having nothing to say against his correct assumption, Mai tentatively reached for the racket and held it in her hand, noticing how the handle was beveled in an octagonal shape. She hadn't expected that. She also noticed it was exactly the same racket he was currently holding and figured it must be his back-up spare in case the strings snapped (she wondered if that happened often) or if it broke somehow.

She gripped it tight and swung her arms around, trying to get a feel for its weight and thought about how it wasn't as heavy as she thought it would be, though she was sure holding on to it for a long time and swinging it around would eventually fatigue her.

She looked up at him. "Am I holding it right?"

Kashima waved dismissively and jogged over to one side of the net, motioning for her to situate herself on the opposite side.

As soon as she did so, he responded, "Don't worry about any of the technicalities for now. Just hold it how you want to hold it and try to return the balls to me. We're just going to see how well your coordination is." He pulled out a ball and looked at her. "You ready?"

Grasping the racket tighter, she nodded.

The ball flew over the net in a slow arc. Mai kept her eyes trained on the ball but eventually let her gaze pry away and fall into the direction where she wanted to aim at in the last minute, so she ended up swinging blindly. She completely missed and froze as the ball continued on its unhindered trajectory and rolled away behind her.

"Ah crap!" she cried out in embarrassment.

"It's alright, just keep your eyes on the ball at all times even as you hit it with your racket. Let's try again." He took a second ball out of his pockets and fed her another shot.

This time, Mai's field of view narrowed and all that existed was the ball. She followed its movement as it made a slow arc over the net, hit the floor, and bounced back up at her. She swung her arms but unlike before, kept her eyes locked on the ball even as it made contact with the face of the racket, exactly as she was instructed.

Instead of it going straight toward the other side of the court, however, it shot high up in the air, before landing on the other side of the court close to the net. Kashima was immediately there but instead of hitting the ball, he simply grabbed it with his hands.

"Good."

Mai pouted. "But it didn't even go where I wanted it to. It went up."

"You managed to get it over, that was better than missing. Try again and this time try turning the racket face slanted a bit more downward so you're not scooping the ball up when you hit it."

She sighed but refocused her mind. This time, again by following Kashima's advice precisely, Mai was at least able to direct it forward across the net, though her aim could still definitely use some work. She - and uncharacteristically, even he - broke into a grin.

"I always figured you were a quick learner," he said with a genuine look of satisfaction. "Let's try again, then later we can move back to the baseline and rally for a bit."

They passed forty-five minutes in this manner, with Mai demonstrating marked improvement from when she began, though she was still having a lot of difficulties once they moved away from the net and started rallying from the baseline. She was also already feeling fatigued and winded from the small exercise, and was struggling out of breath when she handed the racket back to the blonde after finishing their impromptu training.

"Tired already?" Kei asked in mild amusement.

"Yes... As you can tell, I don't work out a lot."

"Hm. Well surprisingly you have good form, I suppose that's due to you watching everyone so closely all this time, so once you go over techniques I don't think you'll have much trouble. Your stamina is terrible, though. I didn't even make you run around that much, did I?"

Mai groaned. "Yeah, be quiet. There's no way I can join the girls' team like this; it's embarrassing. Look at you though, you haven't even broken a sweat!"

"Running is part of my routine so this is nothing. If you're serious about playing, you should start your endurance training."

Kei stuffed the rackets and the balls back into his bag and zipped it up. He hefted it up on his shoulder and nudged his head toward the cafe. Mai obediently followed suit right after him, though she was still furiously fanning herself in an effort to cool down.

"Would you like to play again later today?"

Mai's eyes lit up, but she quickly dampened her enthusiasm. "It was really fun, but I feel like I was making you chase the ball around too much because I couldn't control where I want it to go," she mumbled. "Maybe not yet. Maybe I'll practice hitting against the wall first so I can be consistent. Of course I'll have to set aside some savings to buy myself a racket and some balls first, though..."

Kei opened his mouth to assure her he didn't mind, but one look at her determined features made him hold back. If she wanted to try and pursue her goal on her own first, he would respect it.

"If you say so," was all he managed to say.

They exited through the gated fence, but before they could walk away completely, Mai suddenly tugged at Kashima's shirt from behind and asked shyly, "Wait, Kashima. Could you show me how you would practice against the wall first?"

The corner of Kashima's lips upturned. "Sure."

-000-

Not too long afterward, Keiko and Michiru arrived to meet them at the cafe. They ordered their lunch and as soon as they were sated, delved right into their task. They worked diligently for two whole hours, but eventually group felt they had to relocate somewhere else to avoid being detrimental to the cafe's business, so Michiru had suggested they stay at her house. Once there, the quartet again wasted no time in getting back down to business.

Their study session went longer than expected, particularly because both Michiru and Mai proved to be slow at grasping the mathematical concepts and needed to be babied through a lot of the practice problems before they finally got the hang of it. Thankfully, Keiko was a great help at communicating with the other two girls and could water down Kashima's detailed explanations to words they could better understand.

After their fifth hour of studying, both Michiru and Mai were showing signs of fatigue, so Keiko suggested for them to take a short snack break. At this, Michiru all too eagerly jumped up from her seat and ran into the kitchen, with the rest of them following suit, and began rummaging through her cabinets and fridge before suddenly exclaiming, "Ah! Mom said she was going to go shopping later today! I don't have any snacks here..."

Mai sighed and plopped down on the dining table. "Man, we were already out earlier! We could have stopped by the store on the way here!"

"My bad. I forgot I'm out of food, k? Unless you want eggs? I have a lot of those."

"That's not a good snack!"

Keiko, ever the voice of reason, interjected, "I can go out and buy some snacks for us. The store isn't that far. How about you guys continue reviewing until I get back?"

"What? No, that's too much of a hassle for you, Keiko. I should be the one to go buy it..."

"It's okay, Michiru, I don't mind at all. I already finished my work so you and Mai should continue studying. You still have a lot of work to do."

Both Michiru and Mai looked unconvinced and voiced out their concern against having their friend go unaccompanied, so to ease their apprehension Kashima blurted out, "I'll go with Amane-san."

The two girls looked at each other before nodding in understanding, then Michiru ran off somewhere and came back holding her wallet. She handed Keiko some cash and told her to get whatever she wanted.

"Don't worry about the change. Use it all. Mai and I will make sure to get through a lot of the problem set! Thanks for doing this, Keiko, Kashima-kun. Sorry to make you do this."

Keiko shook her head and smiled. "No worries. We'll be back soon. Don't slack off, you two!"

Kashima simply made a short wave of his hand before following Keiko out the door.

Once she was sure they were gone, Michiru suddenly giggled and the two began their slow walk upstairs back to her room.

Mai looked at her friend in mild alarm and asked slowly, "Are... you okay?"

Michiru's eyes gleamed as she answered, "I think Keiko secretly likes Kashima-kun. This is great for her!"

"What! She does? She never told me!"

"No, she didn't tell me either, but it's one of those things you just feel, you know? Let's bug her about it later. You guys are leaving me behind. She's got Kashima-kun to walk around with her, and you've got your Naru hanging out with you."

They entered the room and sat back down on their respective spots around the study table. Mai crinkled her nose and spat out, "What's Naru got to do with it? And don't say 'your Naru'. There's nothing between us, Michiru! Geez."

"Sure," the girl sarcastically drawled, but before Mai could retort, she already buried her face back into her book and got to work. Mai wasn't sure if that was her friend's genuine attempt at studying, or merely a ruse to prevent her from arguing back. Either way, Mai sighed and decided to also get back to studying.