Greetings! Welcome back, I hope you've had a nice week~ I'm currently enjoying winter break, so I'm taking this opportunity to make up for the countless hours of lost sleep. Believe me, I've got bags so big, they might as well be suitcases. Anywaysss, without further ado, the next chapter! It's longer than I expected, but I'm sure you guys don't mind. :)

Confusion

Hiyori Pov

I breathed out a sigh of relief as I set a tray of drinks on the wooden surface of my table. I'm okay at balancing stuff, but traveling up the stairs with a tray containing liquids still makes me nervous.

The week had flown by, making today Saturday once more. Chi-chan was downstairs packing another tray with food. The two of us weren't hungry necessarily, but man, those four guys could eat! I heard Chi-chan padding up the stairs as well, followed by the muffled sounds of bags of chips falling and a soft curse. I stuck my head around the corner of my bedroom.

'Need any help with that?'

'No, I can get it myself.' She replied stubbornly, balancing the tray on one hand, while bending down to grab the fallen bags. Miraculously, the salty treats had only managed to fall down a tray or two. You get it? There's trays on stairs and she's holding a tray herself, see it's funny- you know what? Never mind.

I watched Chi-chan grab a bag of chips, bend forward a little too much and drop two more snacks from the tray. This time strawberry Pocky. The cute brunette cursed again.

'Okay, so maybe a little help would be appreciated.' She grumbled.

I snickered and took the tray she was holding, carrying it to the table as well. My friend soon followed and after she also deposited her load, she flopped onto my bed.

'I claim this spot for today.' Chi-chan said with a grin.

'It's all yours.' I replied laughing. Then, I walked over to my laptop. I wanted to get it set up beforehand, for the sake of efficiency.

'How much time before they get here?' I asked, reaching over to the cables as last week.

'Not much, five minutes or so.' She said, 'They texted ten minutes ago, saying they were leaving and it takes fifteen minutes to get to your house from there. So y'know, math.'

I glanced back and saw that she had changed positions on the bed, now lying on her belly and an arm stretched out and reaching towards the boxes of Pocky.

'Yeah, well, obviously I'm not very good at that, given that I've failed just about every pop quiz on the subject.' I countered, sounding salty. I wasn't really, I was doing that on purpose after all.

The brunette ripped open the plastic bag of Pocky and the sweet smell of strawberry wafted over to me.

'Question.' She said.

I turned around fully and leaned against my desk, 'Shoot.'

'Why in the world do you have so many boxes of these things?' She mentioned towards the boxes of sugary sticks, 'I don't remember you ever saying you were such a big fan of these.'

'Oh, they're Oikawa-san's favorite snack.' I replied happily, but then corrected myself, 'Actually, they're his second favorite snack, milk bread taking first place. He said he really liked these too though, so I made sure to get a lot of them. As payback for tutoring me.' I finished with a grin.

'Huh, okay then.'

She was silent after that, looking lost in thought, so I turned back to the laptop and finished plugging in the rest of the necessary cables.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang the second I finished the task.

Oikawa Pov

'Oikawa-kun, good to see you again.' Suzumi-chan's mom said with a warm smile.

'Likewise ma'am, we completely missed each other last week.' I replied, accompanied a smile of my own.

Behind her, I could see Suzumi-chan swiftly making her way down the stairs, closely followed by our manager.

'Ah,' She started, turning to the others who were standing behind me, 'It's nice to finally meet you all in person, my name is Suzumi Keiko. Thank you all for getting along with Hiyori.' She said kindly.

'Hello,' They chorused back, bowing, 'nice to meet you too.'

The older lady laughed lightly, putting her hand before her mouth to partly hide a big smile. 'My, it's almost as if you practiced that.'

'I can assure you that they totally did.'

'Totally did not.' They angrily chorused once more.

'Come on in, it's way too hot to be outside for long.'

We all stepped trough the front door, took off our shoes and stepped into the slippers that were already set up in a neat line. No doubt by Suzumi-chan, I could tell she liked making things neat and organized.

Making a short detour to the kitchen, I said hello to Suzumi-chan's dad and the other guys once more did their introductions. The fierce blonde must have already had a talk with her parents, because this time there were no signs of the overenthusiasm I encountered the first time I entered the house. Aside from the obvious proud smiles and the sneaky thumbs up her mom gave her daughter of course.

Before I knew it, we were all making our way up to the hostess's room. I followed the two girls in front of me and walked over to the desk to set my bag in the same spot as last week.

'You weren't kidding when you guys said you had a big tv Suzu-chan!' Matssun said incredulously, looking at the screen.

Suzu-chan. The nickname annoyed me. It somehow made Matssun more special than me, which was unacceptable.

'Of course not, we're no liars.' I said, throwing my arm around the shoulders of my female friend.

The other opened his mouth to reply, but Iwa-chan cut us off.

'Stop bickering you two, Oikawa, give Suzumi-chan the CD with the practice match.'

I complied, removing my arm and bending down to reach into my bag. I pulled out the disk and handed it to her. She said a quick thanks and placed it into her laptop.

'What's the seating arrangement?' Makki asked.

'Go for any place that catches your eye.' The blonde replied.

'Then I call dips on the bed!' He exclaimed, quickly striding over to it and sitting down on the side closest to the door.

'Hey! I already claimed that spot, move it!'

'You're scaring me Miyagi-chan.' The wing spiker said, crawling away from her, 'Matsukawa, save me!'

'Don't worry darling,' Mattsun said dramatically, sitting down in between the two, 'I'll protect you.'

This left the bed with one more open spot, between Chi-chan and the raven haired middle blocker.

I was about to find a good excuse to make Iwa-chan take that spot when Suzumi-chan tugged on the hem of my shirt. I peered at her from the corner of my eye and saw her intently staring at something. I followed her gaze and saw the outline of our deathnote staring back at me. Oh crap.

'I'm sitting on the floor the floor!' I exclaimed.

The room fell silent and they all turned to look at me weirdly. I guess it would be pretty strange of me to say that. I racked my brain to find a smart way to explain my desire to sit on the ground, rather than a comfy bed.

'Um, well, you know, I've already been on the bed.' I lied. Oof, that came out wrong.

'Oh?' Makki said with a Cheshire grin, 'How come?'

'Yes Oikawa, explain.' Iwa-chan said with a suspicious look in his eyes.

'Um, you see…' My mind drew a blank. Why couldn't I just think before I said something.

'Oikawa-san always lazes around on my bed while I make math problems about the stuff he explained.' Suzumi-chan explained, sounding way more convincing than me.

'Really?' Makki questioned, grin still firmly in place.

'Really.' She replied, clearly determined to steer away from this subject as fast as possible. I couldn't agree more.

'Yes, it's only fair I let you guys enjoy some of the comfort I bask in every Saturday.' I added, making sure to sound nice and annoying.

My best friend didn't seem fully convinced, as I expected from the guy I grew up with. Though I didn't expect the intense stare he was throwing my way, almost as if he was trying to look into my soul. Then after a moment, he shrugged.

'Well, whatever,' He sighed, seemingly accepting our explanation, 'Suzumi-chan, you wanna sit on the bed? So you can sit beside your friend.' Iwa-chan said, looking at the blonde and then over at Chi-chan. I could see the tiniest hint of redness creep up his cheeks. So cute, if I could tease him about it without getting absolutely murdered, I would.

'Absolutely not.' She voice firm, 'I'm not letting my guest sit on the ground.'

Iwa-chan sighed again, though this time I'm sure he was just trying to calm his nerves. His blush deepened in color as nestled himself in between Mattsun and his crush, who was shielding her own red face with a curtain of brown locks.

Let's hope that this would help them get a bit more comfortable around each other. The shrill sound of a whistle drew our attention to the game and after Suzumi-chan sat down next to me, we all quieted down.

'How come we're on snack duty?' I whined.

'Because Chi-chan, that traitor, argued that we were closest to the door.' Suzumi-chan said, looking just as peeved.

We had run out of snacks. Naturally we were voted to go get more downstairs. We didn't really have much of a say, it was four against two, long live democracy. All we could do was hope that no one would look underneath the bed. As we busied ourselves amongst the cabinets, I thought back to my earlier annoyance.

'Say,' I started, glancing at the girl next to me.

'Hm?' She hummed in response and reached up towards a cabinet, pulling two family sized packs of Oreos out of it.

'How come Mattsun gets to call you Suzu-chan?'

'Oh, he just misspelled my name when putting it into his contacts, so we both just went with it.'

'So, you'd be cool with it if I gave you a nickname too?'

She now fully turned to look at me, her head cocked to the side.

'Uh, sure, go for it.'

I thought about it for a second, I wanted to call her something the others didn't. Suzu-chan and Hiyo-chan were therefore not an option.

'I get to be that special huh?'

'Did I say that out loud?' I asked.

'You sure did.' She replied, snickering.

I groaned while her snickering turned into a delighted laugh.

'Well?' She inquired with a grin, 'What's it gonna be?'

I paused, 'What about Hi-chan?'

'What?' She said, looking offended, 'You're just going to remove ninety percent of my beautiful name?'

'Mattsun and Chi-chan to that too!'

'Well then the name is not that special, like you wanted.' She replied teasingly.

'Then, just Suzumi.' I grumbled, done with the teasing, I picked up the tray and made my way out of the kitchen.

'Sure!' Came the chipper reply from behind, 'No one calls me that!'

That made me feel a little better.

Iwaizumi Pov

It was a little past twelve, time for us to leave. We had all put on our shoes again and were making our way out of the house again and into the summer heat. I briefly wondered how long it would be before the sunny weather would be replaced with rain. At least now it was hot with nice weather, soon it would be hot with bad weather.

'Thanks for coming guys, I had a lot of fun!' The blonde said happily, snapping me out of my musings.

'Thanks for having us!' Miyagi-chan replied equally happy, giving her friend a hug. I felt jealous, would she hug me too if I invited her over? Probably not I thought, feeling a little down.

'Yeah, thanks.' Matsukawa said with his signature mischievous smile. It was like he was always up to something.

'Be sure to invite us again.' Hanamaki added, giving his new friend a high five, 'I don't think I can ever go back now that I've had a taste of this luxury.'

She laughed and promised to do just that.

'See you at school.' I said, giving a wave, which she returned, 'If crappykawa gives you a hard time, just text me and I'll come beat him up for you.'

'You won't!' My childhood friend, who was standing a little bit behind our hostess, exclaimed, 'I know you would never actually hurt me!'

I wouldn't, but he didn't need to know that. It would boost his ego more than I could handle.

'Just don't give me a reason to and we're all good.'

'Of course, unlike someone here I'm a true gentleman.' He countered, sticking out his tongue.

I just rolled my eyes and walked off, the rest following behind.

'Well guys, this is where we split up' Miyagi-chan said, fortunately looking a bit sad at that fact.

'Actually, I've got something to ask you.' I said, 'Mind if I walk you home?'

'Oh, um, yeah.' She replied, but then looked a bit panicked, 'I mean no! Wait no, yes!' She took a deep breath, 'Sorry, um, no, I don't mind walking home with you. I kinda want to discuss something with you too.'

'Come on man,' Hanamaki taunted, 'phrase your sentences better.'

'Yeah, that was confusing, even for me.' Matsukawa added.

'Shut up,' I said heatedly, my cheeks flushing slightly, 'you guys live in a constant state of confusion.'

I grabbed the brunette's wrist and started walking off with her.

Behind me I could hear Matsukawa talk to Hanamaki, 'Well, I mean, he's not wrong.'