Chapter LII- "I Do Like the Idea of Not Doing Work."
"So, to answer your question, Tezuka, I was thirty-one when I finally came to terms with my identity as a woman," said Ryuuzaki.
"What?" said Tezuka since he didn't remember asking any questions, especially not ones that involved Ryuuzaki or her identity as a woman.
"Oh, we're back!" exclaimed Hyoshi because he's the go to guy when choosing someone random to say something since no one likes him and, at the same time, no one has any problem with him so when they see his name, they just glaze over it and continue reading.
"HURRAY!" cheered everyone.
"We happened to notice you misspelled 'Heal' and wrote 'Hell' in the previous chapter," Oshitari observed.
"We approve of this change!" announced Marui.
"You will NOT be having swears in your team name!" said Ojii as he waggled his finger at the geniuses.
"Cause we're middle school students?" inquired Sengoku.
"Exactly!" Ojii said.
"Fine…" grumbled the geniuses.
"So let's get right into it," said Sakaki, sounding rather excited.
Inui and Kaidou were up first for the Hard Working Team, aka Entrepreneur, which has turned out to be a really annoying team name to write so many times because it's difficult to spell. Anyway, Inui had of course been taking copious data from the first match the Geniuses played so he was ready to undertake Fuji and Oshitari's foolish competition against one another instead of against the other team.
"WORST MATCH EVER!" Momo shouted in response to Kaidou's similar earlier remark in Chapter 48.
"Shut up!" Kaidou yelled uncreatively, which isn't a word, but it should be.
"Kaidou, try to focus on the match," said Inui as he tossed his databook aside in a needlessly dramatic way. "Though our opponents are not working in cahoots with each other, they are still formidable."
Kaidou was too busy being thrown off by Inui's use of the word "cahoots" to really pay attention to anything else he had said.
Fuji and Oshitari, meanwhile, were developing a strategy on their own.
"So we should work together for this match just to throw them off," Fuji said, smiling pleasantly at Oshitari.
"Fair enough," said Oshitari.
Renji happened to be standing pretty close by for some unexplained reason (he was probably stalking them and doing his regular creepy stuff) and he also happened to overhear what was being discussed between the two geniuses and wanted to convey this information to his best friend and possibly secret lover, Inui. He also wanted to tell Kaidou since any friend/secret lover of Inui's is a friend/secret lover of Renji's. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to simply shout this information to the other team because then the geniuses may have just switched up their technique, so he instead decided to convey his knowledge telepathically to Inui, since these two have obviously evolved beyond the realms of normal human abilities and developed techniques such as telepathy. But not really. He only WISHED he had magical powers. Instead, he used another ability which he and Inui had developed which was more realistic, though completely outrageous, which involved arching his eyebrows in different manners, with each angle of the brow symbolizing a word or phrase, which Inui was able to interpret and learn the secret that Renji was attempting to send him.
Pointless, yes, but useful.
"Kaidou, we have to be on guard even more so than before," Inui reported. "Fuji and Oshitari are planning something devious."
"Duh," said Kaidou. (Which brings his syllable count to three so far.)
"Begin the match already!" said Sakaki impatiently.
Fuji and Oshitari had decided to start the match of fake tennis in the long interlude that had taken place while Renji was wiggling his eyebrows at Inui and pretending to have telepathic powers. Even though Fuji would have obviously easily won the round for them by taking the serve, he graciously offered it to Oshitari. And, since they were now best friends, Oshitari gladly took it and gave it a serve.
Kaidou returned it, and the ball went back and forth for a bit in flawless perfection, which makes sense because it doesn't seem like perfection would involve any flaws. Fuji and Oshitari's natural grace mixed with Inui and Kaidou's clumsy stamina proved to be a very compatible match. All four of them played just like a gym class in which everyone got a turn and nothing especially magical happened, which is pretty surprising considering the quartet.
Finally, the first point was scored by Oshitari and Fuji.
"I'm bored," Fuji said to Oshitari.
"So am I," Oshitari agreed as he caught the ball to do the next serve.
"Now we have two options," Fuji said. "We can either just throw the game so we can be done with it without having to do any work, or we can get serious and crush the dreams of our opposing team."
"Well, I do like the idea of not doing work," Oshitari.
"As much as I like not doing work, I like crushing the dreams of the innocent even more," Fuji remarked.
"You are so evil," Oshitari said, but it sounded endearing.
"I know," said Fuji. "Isn't it lovely?"
"Bordering on scary," Oshitari admitted.
"Stop chatting and get back to the game!" commanded the coaches.
Oshitari and Fuji then spun around and pointed at Kaidou and Inui with their rackets in the most dramatic way possible with their cold stares which caused a gust of wind that was so powerful that Inui and Kaidou were knocked off their feet.
"What an aura!" Kaidou exclaimed as he got up.
Inui was unable to speak because he was frozen in fear as he adjusted his glasses.
"Let's start," said Oshitari as he threw the ball up into the air and served it with such intensity that the coaches decided right then and there that the match was over.
"Winners, Team Genius!" announced Ojii. No one really argued or complained because they were all petrified by Oshitari and Fuji's collective iciness.
"Who even let them be on the same team?" Eiji whispered to Oishi since they were standing next to each other for no reason other than they're best friends.
Inui and Kaidou returned to their team's bench and proceeded to hack up blood for a half an hour since all of their organs were crushed by the Geniuses. But don't worry, they were fine.
"You guys are slightly hardcore," Kirihara commented when his teammates had come to the bench after their victory.
"Maybe someday you can aspire to be that great," Fuji said.
"So now we'll move onto the second doubles game," said Ryuuzaki a little nervously. "Kirihara and Marui from Achilles' Heel versus Shishido and Niou from Entrepreneur!"
"You can do it!" Yuuta said. "Just win like you won last time and we're off to the finals!"
"We won last time because half of the other team had to be taken to the hospital," said Shishido, annoyed.
"I'm just being supportive," said Yuuta, looking hurt.
"Well stop it," said Shishido. "It's annoying."
Yuuta went off to a corner to cry as the four people took the court. Fuji happened to notice what had transpired between Yuuta and Shishido and was none too pleased about the treatment his precious little brother had received, so he decided he would take matters into his own hands to make sure Shishido's dreams (and organs) were crushed EXTRA hard.
Because Fuji is so subtle and creepy, he opted to take drastic measures right off the bat to injure Shishido's innocent loved ones in order to cut him down extra hard, which would definitely involve his BFF Choutarou. Since Fuji is so creepy, however, his revenge would not involve instant gratification because creepiness is all in the execution, but boy would Choutarou be surprised when he returned home only to find the head of a horse in his bed!
Anyway, that's a sad and unrelated story, so moving on. While we were on that little tangent, I'll have you know lots of intense things happened and, for the sake of story, we're going to say Kirihara and Marui won. This was kind of good for Entrepreneur because of Yuuta's recent turn to the Emo Side so he probably wouldn't have played too well against Sengoku, but of course it was actually really bad for them because that meant they were out of the tournament.
"All of our hard work…" Niou said, clenching his fist dramatically. Then he looked around to see his teammates were legitimately lamenting their loss and suddenly realized he didn't care as much as them. And what's worse, his BFF Yagyuu had left a while ago! The only reason he had continued to hang around was because he had the opportunity to play more tennis and he would never pass up on that, but now that he had no more chance to play tennis, he realized he didn't need to be there anymore, especially since Yagyuu wasn't there either! What an unnecessary and circular sentence! Oh well!
So anyway, in case you couldn't come to your own conclusion, Niou left. This would have disqualified Entrepreneur anyway, but it didn't matter since there was no way they were going to win in the first place since they had such bad attitudes in the previous competitions. The remaining people on the Hard Working Team threw temper tantrums and almost ran home crying, but then they decided to stay because they had reasons to watch the following rounds. Specifically, Shishido wanted to see Choutarou play tennis, Yuuta wanted to watch his brother and foam jealously, Kaidou just enjoyed anything which involved tennis and Inui would never pass on an opportunity to gain more data on people.
"Well, so yeah," said Sakaki. "Achilles' Heel will be playing in the finals against a team which has yet to be determined!"
"Of course, it's between Respect Your Elders and Switch Trick Play," Banji said, thoughtfully stroking his chin which may or may not have a beard on it. At this point, I don't remember what he looks like anyway.
"Should we start taking bets?" Hiyoshi pondered. Yes, this is Hiyoshi's second line in a section which he should be completely silent like the rest of the tennis players. But he's getting special treatment.
Though, everyone ignored him so it's not like it mattered anyway.
"But remember," Ryuuzaki said. "Just because a certain team wins this tournament does not mean they will go to the tennis camp."
"It helps though," Ojii added.
"First up for the next match," Sakaki started, checking the lineup on his clipboard. "Atsushi and Eiji from Switch Trick Play against Saeki and Ryou from Respect Your Elders! Please take to the courts!"
