Ch: Eleven
|HIKARA|
And my grey eyes met the blue.
"That's strange…no one from Seigaku has ever come here before," Ann mused. "Why is Fuji here, then?"
To say the truth, I didn't really care why he'd suddenly decided to show up, only that he had. Because while the small huddle of girls around him were tripping over themselves to worship their 'Fuji-kun', to me the appearance of Seigaku's tensai only meant one thing: a chance to obtain news about Yuuta.
"I don't know…" I frowned in his general direction, debating whether to go over that instant, or to wait a while until he'd dealt with his newly established Fan Girl Club of Fudomine.
I was spared the decision, however, because a moment later, Fuji gently extracted himself from his adoring admirers and strode over to where I was standing with Ann, who still looked vaguely puzzled.
"Saa, konnichi'wa, Matsuno," he greeted cheerfully, lifting a hand in welcome.
"Konnichi'wa, Fuji," I replied warily, having just been struck with this wild idea that the tennis prodigy had come all the way to Fudomine—taking a lot of trouble to get there before everyone finished cleaning up and left too, judging by the thin sheen of sweat that covered his pale skin; a sigh of having ran all the way from the nearby bus stop—with the exact intent of talking to me, given his enthusiasm about his brother's affairs.
I mentally rolled my eyes almost at once at this impulsive gut feeling. Hadn't I said it myself? Tennis prodigy, rush all the way from Seigaku to meet me of all people about his younger sibling's social issues? My gut, apparently, was losing its touch.
Stupid idea…thank God I haven't said anything yet…
Stop obsessing over Yuuta…
"Tachibana," Fuji nodded to Ann before turning back to me. "Ne, Matsuno, is practice finished for you yet? Could you spare a few minutes afterwards? I was wondering if I could speak to you about something."
At that point, I was already bordering on incredulity.
He smiled apologetically. "It's about Yuuta."
Then again, there was still something to be said for these gut feelings of mine.
"Sure, I'm not doing anything in particular," I tried to say as nonchalantly as possible, brushing aside the fact that my breath had caught slightly in my chest due to excitement.
I was going to have some idea of what was going on.
Finally.
Promising a slightly disappointed—but much, much more curious—Ann that I'd go with her and the other girls for a snack another day, I hitched my bag onto my shoulder and stepped into pace beside Fuji. There was a lot of staring as we passed the boys' court. On their part, of course. Kamio, a boy I knew from class, was looking strangely relieved for some reason, as he watched me pass by conversing lightly with the smiling brunette at my side. There was this other blue-haired boy, Shinji, I vaguely remembered, who was a friend of Kamio's. I couldn't help worrying about this one.
If he mutters any faster his face muscles are going to have a seizure.
"So, how was practice?" Fuji didn't seem inclined to start getting anywhere on topics concerning Yuuta straight away.
"It was fine. They're trying to step up training now that there's a tournament coming up," I answered with a shrug, noting at the same time that unless he really held a genuine interest in the progress of the girls' tennis team of another school, he was trying to let us both familiarise ourselves with each other before moving on to something more serious. "I'll bet Seigaku is improving loads more…your practices are so much longer…"
He chuckled. "Not so very much longer, since I've been able to make it in time before you left. You overestimate other people too much, Matsuno." He glanced around at our surroundings, answering only distractedly.
It looked as though he wanted to find a place to sit down before we began. Impatient, now that the information was so close at hand, I suggested that we go to a small tennis court nearby, somewhat recalling that there were benches.
"This will do." Sitting himself primly down upon the bench, he waited till I was also seated before getting straight to the point.
"Yuuta sent me, actually. He has been wanting to call you, but doesn't have your number."
I waited expectantly for him to continue for a few seconds, before realising that he already had finished, and was waiting for my reply. "That's all?" I was tempted to ask. If he'd just wanted my phone number, he could've just asked for it at the school. Why take the trouble of coming such a long way?
"…I see. Um, well, I'll write it down…and…you can give it to him," I said, trying not to sound like I'd just been thrown off balance. "Erm, he's not coming home this weekend, so he can't ask me himself?" I ventured.
Fuji smiled. Or rather, the ends of his thin lips gave a slight, almost invisible twitch.
It wasn't like he wasn't smiling already.
He had been, in fact, since he'd arrived at Fudomine. If I hadn't met him before, and found out that this was a kind of peculiar habit of his, I'd have thought that he was trying to relieve tension of an unpleasant discussion beforehand.
"No, he is coming home. Theoretically he could wait till then and ask you of it personally, but I guess he didn't really want to wait."
I let myself smile a bit too, as I turned around to unzip my bag and retrieve a pen and paper. He couldn't wait, Fuji had said… Yuuta couldn't wait to speak to me.
"Here…" Scribbling my home number onto the paper, I handed it to Fuji, who took it with a polite 'thank you' and stowed it in his pocket, and turned back to face me, leaning forwards slightly, setting his hands on his knees, with no apparent intention of getting up.
The gut feeling surged.
There was more.
"Ne, Matsuno, I'd appreciate it if we could keep the following…confidential," he said. "Yuuta doesn't like me sticking my nose in his business."
I thought I saw a spasm of sadness cross his face, but dismissed it immediately; the smile had not changed. "Sure, whatever you say."
"Then I'll be frank with you, Matsuno. Have you had an argument of any sort with Yuuta?"
I looked into his face, surprised that—despite the ever present cheerful, carefree smile—he sounded so solemn. "An argument?" I would have passed it off as a joke, if it hadn't been for the seriousness in his voice. "No, not that I know of. Why do you ask?"
"Saa…" Fuji rocked back and forth on the bench. "I wonder about that too, actually. I had no concrete proof…just my intuition…"
"Intuition," I told him, from—very recent—self experience, "can tell you a lot."
"Well, this time it told me all the wrong things, it seems." He chuckled lightly. "Yuuta is beyond intuition, then…it wouldn't be the first time…" His voice faded; his eyes started to glaze over.
I, of course, hadn't the foggiest idea what he was going on about, but felt that if it involved Yuuta, I would be better off being in the know.
Yes, it was a gut feeling.
Or as Fuji put it, intuition. Which I by now trusted a lot more than before.
Though he'd just said that in Yuuta's case, it didn't really work.
But I went on anyway.
"Is something the matter with Yuuta, Fuji?"
The rocking stopped, and he looked thoughtful. "No," he finally decided.
Which totally justified his theory of me being in a fight with Yuuta.
"No," he said. "I thought there was something wrong with the two of you."
"Well…" Now that I really thought about it, there was nothing really wrong between Yuuta and me. True, I mightn't have been completely pleased with him the last time we'd met, but nothing had really happened. Maybe he'd sensed that something had been different about me, when I'd made up that excuse about having an appointment with someone to avoid hanging out any more with him and Sakai, but we hadn't opened any hostilities or anything. "…nothing happened, really…"
"But," Fuji leaned in just a fraction of an inch. "Yuuta called me, and really, he doesn't do that much if he can help it, and he explicitly asked me to come and get your number for him. When it came to reasons he got all snappish."
Now, I decided, Fuji was inclining towards making a mountain out of a molehill. "Maybe he just doesn't like answering so many questions. Some people simply don't."
Especially the questions of his brother, I added silently. Not that I had anything against Fuji personally, but having his unsatisfied younger brother around tended to influence me. Yuuta and I now had our 'goals' in the open. For me, it was Hyotei, and for him, it was his aniki. Practically, these were just things we used to provoke or encourage each other on the courts during practice, but since it's technically a lot harder to be motivated to surpass something or somebody that you quite like in the first place, we'd come to think of these 'goals' as sort of 'enemies' that we had to beat. And since Yuuta and I were supposed to be on the same side…
It was hard to shake the habit of being just a bit guarded against Fuji.
"On the day you last saw him, were you really busy after practice, or were you just looking to escape his company for a while?"
And he in turn, it seemed, was guarded towards me.
Well, two could play this game. "That's kind of random. What brought it up?"
"Nothing, nothing," he chuckled, waving his hand.
"Er…" I wondered what was going on inside his head, but decided that if he didn't want to give an answer, I wouldn't be able to force one out of him anyway, and let it drop. "Um, well, if you really think something's wrong concerning Yuuta…I suggest you just go ask him about it." Though I knew, perfectly well, that Yuuta probably would never tell his older brother a thing.
"I know, but…" The gentle rocking began again, back and forth, back and forth. "I guess Yuuta will have told you all about his…viewpoint…of me."
I momentarily couldn't decide what to say. It had just seemed so unlikely that Fuji already knew how Yuuta felt about him, and still make the mistakes he did.
"Well…Yuuta likes his privacy," I said slowly, trying to decide how much to say. "He doesn't really dislike you, he just…he just likes his privacy sometimes…isn't the most open of people."
"But he is with you," Fuji said, in a tone so soft, yet so melancholy.
I looked up just in time to receive the shock of my life as his eyes slowly opened to reveal very blue eyes. I stared at them; I'd seen plenty of blue eyes before, but so very intense…and for the first time…he'd always had his eyes closed… I kind of understood why. His gaze made me a little uncomfortable.
"Not—not really, not as much as you think…" I said, desperate to take that almost sorrowful note out of his voice, while the back of my mind mulled over this sudden outburst. I really had a knack of giving people emotional upheavals.
"I've seen you two practice together," Fuji said lightly, all smiles again. The eyes were hidden once more. The tensai was in control. "He trusts you, really. He let you help him with his special moves…Super Rising…"
"That's because…he helped me with my moves…so I helped him back…" I explained, thoroughly unnerved by sudden and very drastic change in atmosphere.
"Oh, yes, he loves to help, Yuuta," Fuji agreed fervently, with a strong—and did I mention sudden?—sense of pride.
"…right…"
"But he doesn't really like to be helped a lot." Fuji bowed his head. "Only his team-mates, I think…and now you…"
Deciding against causing more emotional fluctuation for him, I didn't say anything, but stared at his profile with question mixed with perhaps a little pity. The rocking had ceased once more, and Fuji was sitting completely still, hands still pushing against his knees, neck and head hanging low. My line of sight travelled along the arc of his shoulders to his locked elbows to the hair that hung loosely, unattended to, around his face, and had to admit that this hardly looked anything like the brother Yuuta had described so frequently which he obviously resented but at the same time highly respected.
It was a little ridiculous, that I should see him like this, while Yuuta himself…
Of all the things Yuuta had mentioned about his aniki, Seigaku's renown tennis prodigy with his never-lost-a-match record and sparkling social reputation, he had never really seemed to be aware that the boy in question was actually halfway broken.
