red, yellow, and blue
By: TG
Summary: "Prepare to be completely destroyed, Miyuki Kazuya!" Sawamura says, pointing aggressively at him from down the hallway.
Warnings: none
Notes: written for glory days, a daiya no ace zine.
"Prepare to be completely destroyed, Miyuki Kazuya!" Sawamura says, pointing aggressively at him from down the hallway.
Kazuya throws his head back and laughs, because he can and because he knows it makes Sawamura absolutely crazy. True to form, Sawamura growls at him with his fist up, like he thinks that's going to intimidate Kazuya.
(Kazuya's not bothered; he'd received much worse than a raised fist when he was younger.)
Kuramochi comes at Sawamura from behind and pulls him into a sharp headlock. Over Sawamura's squealing, he says, "the yellow team always loses, idiot. Blue team is going to win!"
"Not this year," Sawamura informs them confidently, choking a little as Kuramochi tightens his grasp. His pretty golden eyes blaze with determination.
"Why, because you're on the yellow team this year? Hyaha! As if that'll help!"
Kazuya rolls his eyes and leaves them to it, sauntering away from the scene they're making in the hallway outside of classroom 2B. He should've known Sawamura would get way too into the spirit of Sports Festival.
It is a bit hilarious that he's on the yellow team, though.
Kuramochi wasn't lying; the yellow team really does always lose.
The weeks leading up to Sports Festival are always a little more stressful than usual. It's one of the biggest events on the school calendar and as such it's always treated very seriously by students and faculty alike. Classes are carefully considered and divided up as evenly as possible to make the three teams — red, blue, and yellow. Once the teams are announced students spend time outside of their school hours and club activities preparing.
Kazuya has never really understood the appeal of Sports Festival, even though he's in a sports club himself. Sure, he gets the drive to compete and win, and he understands that it's a fun day away from class, and he knows that Sports Festival was meant as a kind of showcase for all of the sports clubs to strut their stuff, just like Culture Festival is a time for all of the culture clubs to perform. But, to Kazuya, it's always felt a little bit like a waste of time. Especially since it comes just before the Fall Tournament.
(They need to redeem their failures.)
Kazuya doesn't really care about much beyond his grades, and baseball. He hadn't come to Seidou to make friends and bond with his classmates. Or compete with ridiculous underclassmen at stupid events like tug of war.
If someone wants to join the baseball team, it won't be because of how they paraded around the athletic field during Sports Festival.
Regardless of how Kazuya feels about it, Sports Festival preparations get underway. Each team meets up and votes on their mascot. Kazuya is not surprised that the red team chooses phoenix; they choose phoenix every year, maybe in some misguided attempt at hoping it'll be the year they finally rise up from the ashes of second place. Yellow team chooses demon, which is incredibly hilarious to him because Furuya and Sawamura are both monsters in their own right.
Blue team chooses lion.
(It resonates.
It reminds him a little bit of Yuki-senpai's steadfast, steely gaze, and of Isashiki-senpai's prideful heart. Lions are majestic — lions are kings .
They're not.
But they could be.)
"Why do we have to come to school when we're on break," Kuramochi whines as they march around the athletic field with the rest of the boys on the blue team, in line and in step. On the other side of the field Takako and the girls are working hard on their dance routine, and everyone's sweating and a little miserable underneath the sweltering late-August sun.
Kazuya cuts him a look, but Kuramochi is too busy behaving to notice. "We would have to anyway," he points out. "We have club activities. And besides, we live on campus."
"Oh my god I know , just let me complain."
"Complain to someone who cares," he says loftily back.
Kuramochi has a point though, Kazuya thinks, even if he's coming at it from the wrong angle. Kataoka-kantoku has changed baseball practice times in order to accommodate Sports Festival practices, so they now have baseball club activities in the morning, Sports Festival practice in the afternoon, and more baseball in the evening. It makes for a long day, and an even longer summer break.
The only upside is getting to listen to Kanemaru griping about Sawamura's complete incompetence during the evening practice. And not having to wear his gear during the hottest part of the day.
"Tch. No wonder you don't have any friends."
"Ouch, Youichi-kun. That hurts."
Kuramochi makes a (loud) affronted noise, but before he can respond Yuki-senpai clears his throat from somewhere in the lines of sannensei ahead of them. Kazuya looks away to conceal a grin at being caught out by their team captain.
Maybe it's not so bad.
Okay no, it's still terrible.
It's terrible because Kuramochi is still glaring at him for accidentally tripping him during their marching practice, accidentally.
On accident .
And now he's armed with a can of paint and a wide paint brush and a smirk that spells out the untimely demise of Kazuya's gym clothing. The bristles are old and bent and stiff and pointing every which way, which just means the paint is going to really get everywhere if Kuramochi decides to go through with the plans he so desperately wants to enact. Kazuya can see the bloodlust in his eyes.
Kazuya puts his hands up in a placating manner and backs away slowly. One foot behind the other.
"Now now, Kuramochi, you know how sorry I am —"
"You know, I might believe you if your smile wasn't so damn smug."
"Oh dear. Is it?"
"You do know we'll never win if we don't have enough paint left to finish the banner," Chris says from somewhere to the side; Kazuya doesn't take his eyes off the paint brush. "And as a sannensei , I kind of want to win."
He sounds amused, but Kazuya can sense a nugget of truth there.
Huh.
He hadn't thought that Chris would put any stock into these kinds of things.
Maezono slaps him hard on the back and gives him a grin that's just this side of a leer.
Across the parking lot Kazuya hears Sawamura's raucous laughter and, as one, Yuki, Chris, Takako, Kuramochi, Maezono, Watanabe, and Ono all flinch.
"Poor yellow team," Takako says feelingly.
Sawamura finds him somehow, amidst the throng of students in their gym clothes eating their lunches.
He's surprisingly stealthy considering his usual loud and obnoxious nature; he manages to get to Kazuya before Kazuya notices, and then suddenly Kazuya's lunch is being lifted up by long-fingered hands and held above his head.
Kazuya's lunch has cute little octopus-shaped sausages in it today. He wants his lunch.
"Aww Miyuki-senpai, it's so cute today!"
"If you ever want to stand on the mound again," Kazuya says calmly, "you'll give me back my lunch."
"Harsh," Kuramochi says from Kazuya's left.
"Deserved," Kazuya says back.
"Don't be so mean, Miyuki Kazuya!"
"Eijun-kun, maybe you should give Miyuki-senpai back his lunch." Ah, Kominato — the pink-haired voice of reason.
"Harucchi!?"
"How's the red team doing?" Kuramochi asks, steamrolling over Sawamura's whining like the professional he probably is.
"It's fine. Takashima-sensei is one of our coaches and she's very, um. Thorough."
"Definitely going to beat the yellow team," Furuya says. Even half asleep in the August heat he's still trying to rile Sawamura up.
"Fu-Furuya! Wake up and say that again!"
"Heard Kataoka-kantoku is a coach for the yellow team," Nori says around a mouthful of gyoza. "How's that going for you?"
"Oh lord. Poor Kataoka."
"Having to deal with Sawamura all day, every day? Being assigned to the team that always loses? Hyaha! that sucks , man."
The mixture of anguish and rage on Sawamura's face makes him look constipated. It makes Kazuya laugh, soft and warm.
The rain that pounds the roof above his head is unexpected, but not entirely surprising. It's left over from a long and late rainy season, and it turns the air around them thick and clammy. There's no air conditioning inside the gymnasium, and with all four hundred or so students on the blue team crammed inside at once, it makes for a particularly sweaty afternoon.
Yuki — one of the blue team's leaders — yells commands through his giant blue megaphone, and the rest of the students, sitting on their knees in neat rows, follow his orders. It's familiar enough that Kazuya can do it mindlessly, memorizing and regurgitating the cheers and flipping the pages of the picture book accordingly.
The book is heavy, nailed to a stick that sits squeezed between his thighs for stability, and full of laminated colored pages. If everyone flips the correct pages when they're supposed to during the cheering, it should create giant images visible to the other teams and the audience that comes to watch Sports Festival every year. Some of the images are from popular culture, such as Studio Ghibli characters or famous mascots like Kumamon, and some of them depict other things like the date of Sports Festival and kana in support of their team.
Even Kazuya can admit it's kind of neat when it all goes right, even though it's really tedious to practice.
One of the other student leaders yells a command, and their voices rise as one as they shout their cheer, drowning out the sound of sharply-flipping pages. The kana for strength. Another command, another cheer, another kana: win.
Kazuya shouts too, voice mingling with his teammates.
Rain pours down from the sky in thick sheets, and the wind beats against the walls of the indoor practice area. The noise is deafening. It's a typhoon, weak but still energized enough to hug the Pacific Coast all the way up and cause a nuisance.
It postpones Sports Festival, but not baseball practice.
Kazuya taps his mitt with his fist, grinning as Sawamura's eyes zero in on the sweet spot. Kazuya grins, feels it turn feral behind his mask.
He makes the sign, asking for Sawamura's signature pitch, and loses his breath as it hits exactly where it's supposed to.
One more month until Fall Tournament. One more month until redemption.
Kazuya looks around at his teammates, watches them throw and bat and run and sweat and work .
This team is strong. This team is ready.
This is their time.
The day of Sports Festival is beautiful — sunny, warm but not hot, blue skies from one edge of the horizon to the other. It's a perfect day, and Kazuya finds that time is flying swiftly by.
The athletic field had been set up the day before by the sports clubs — an entire afternoon spent setting up tents, pounding stakes into the ground, carrying equipment, testing the sound. Today the field is full of faculty, parents, and students in their gym clothes.
The dust flies up around the perimeter as the steeple chase relay gets underway. Kazuya watches from the blue team stands, listening to his teammates yell out encouragements to the runners. He adds his voice to the cacophony, screaming luck at Kuramochi as he speeds by and vaults effortlessly over an obstacle.
(Kazuya cries with laughter when Sawamura doesn't quite make it over the vault and instead faceplants into the dirt on the other side of it.)
The little Kominato ends up snagging the win for the red team as the anchor, crossing the finish line with a winded laugh while the red team screams. The scoreboard records fifty points to red; it's 350 to blue, 200 to red, and 100 to yellow. The boys holding up the score on the roof of the school dance and scream as they flip the numbers to 250.
Kazuya is next up for the tug of war, so he climbs down the stands to join the others on the field. The first opponent is the yellow team, and Kazuya grins when he catches sight of Sawamura's fiery golden eyes across the dividing line.
He wraps the rope up in his fists and plants his feet, a long line of teammates at his back.
This is going to be fun .
The whistle blows.
Blue team wins.
(Yellow team loses.)
Kazuya looks around the athletic field where the students are gathered, standing in neat rows behind their student team leaders. Blue team celebrates loudly, laughing and hugging each other, genuinely happy. Kazuya feels pride — the same pride he feels when Sawamura pitches just right, the same pride he feels when he watches Kuramochi steal a base. He's proud of his team, proud of the effort he'd put into their win.
The blue team is standing in rows between a sea of red and yellow, and as Kazuya looks around at the other teams he sees sannensei crying, sees shattered expressions and exhaustion and disappointment. He sees all of the work they'd put into this silly little festival — all of the hours spent painting and practicing and having fun and working.
(Sees, again, in his mind, Yuki crying on the bus just one month earlier.)
Sees them smiling and laughing despite it, and something inside whispers, ahh.
Someone claps him on the back, hard enough to sting. It's Sawamura, his eyes red-rimmed and his grin wide.
"Good job, Miyuki Kazuya," he says with that steadfast gaze of his. "Maybe next year you'll be a leader, too." Sawamura's grin turns mischievous. "Maybe for the yellow team, hahaha!"
Kazuya grins and flicks at the bill of Sawamura's cap, knocking it askew and making him scowl. "Oh? Sounds like fun."
And it does.
Notes: Sannensei means third year.