COURTSHIP
A Motor City Baby Fanfic
by Peregrine Vision

Note: the "My Home Papa" idea isn't mine. Got it from the Yuu Yuu Hakusho Doujinshi in English site on aestheticism.com.

3 - In Which Information Is Exchanged Between Friends

"....and my father had the most...the most self-satisfied look on his face, and I was thisclose from wiping it off his face with my knuckles, or maybe throwing up, so I had to get out of there and blow off some steam."

Mitsui threw himself backward onto the grass, just like he'd done the day before. It was funny, but telling people what bothered him...didn't make it go away, but somehow made it bother him a very little bit less.

Ayako handed him a cold bottle of mineral water.

"Thanks."

"Hou..." Stunned, Kogure flopped onto the grass on the other side of him. "So, what are you going to do?"

"Do? What the hell do you think I can do? I'm not about to marry her, that's for sure!"

"Poor girl..." murmured Ayako.

Miyagi was laughing. Mitsui threw the now-empty water bottle at him. "What's so funny, you little twit!"

The short guardman was laughing so hard he didn't even bother to take offense. "You..." he gasped. "You just...didn't strike me as...a My Home Papa...!"

"A...My Home Papa...?" repeated Mitsui, blankly.

Ayako started to giggle, and Kogure to chuckle, and then Akagi began to roar and everyone was rolling on the ground laughing at poor Mitsui, who was now quite red in the face.

"This is serious!" he yelled. "Will you guys quit laughing! I don't want to be a My Home Papa! I'm not going to be a My Home Papa! I absolutely refuse to be a My Home Papa!" Every time he said "My Home Papa" everyone else fairly screamed with laughter.

Finally Ayako, gasping, said, "It's not that bad, Mitsui-senpai. These things happen in Japan all the time. It's not like the bad old days where the kids have no say. These days it's the practice to just go out dating a few times, then decide if you want to get married or not."

"Yeah, they can't force you," Miyagi joined in. "You don't even live with them anymore."

"What's the girl like?" said Kogure.

"Eh? Oh...small. A little smaller than Haruko, for instance," he nodded at Akagi, "but with a frail kind of build. And very pretty, with long hair. Like those scroll paintings you see on the walls in restaurants. You know, the ones with geisha and things?"

He realized everyone was looking strangely at him. "What?"

"So...what's...the...problem...then...?" asked Miyagi very slowly, the way one would speak to a rather dim child.

"Are you even listening to me? I'm not just going to date her. They want me to marry her. She hardly talks, except to say things like 'I hope you will be pleased' and 'Would more tea be desired?' and I can hardly see her face for bowing, and I don't even know how she can walk without bumping into things, she's always looking at the floor. How am I supposed to live with someone like that?"

"Even so--" Kogure was beginning.

"I know many Japanese boys who--" said Ayako at the same time.

"And they don't like basketball."

"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh," everyone said, understanding suddenly.

"But..." Kogure looked confused. "What's wrong with basketball?"

"The hell I know," muttered Mitsui. "They don't think it makes a reliable career, I guess."

"I don't suppose they've ever seen you shoot, then," Ayako teased him. Mitsui smiled at her, then made a face at Miyagi, who was giving him a jealous look.

"And if they don't like basketball, you can imagine what they think of my bike."

"It's a really cool bike," sighed Miyagi, changing gears abruptly. Mitsui looked at him in surprise, but he was staring over the fence at the Kawasaki, twinkling in the street lights. "I only have a scooter. Where'd you get it?"

Mitsui grinned. "Tetsuo gave it to me."

Kogure sat up. "Tetsuo? That...that yakuza-san?"

"He's not yakuza!" said Mitsui indignantly. "He just belongs to a gang."

"Not much better, idiot." Akagi was glaring at him. Everybody else was too, even Kogure.

"Hey, he didn't steal it, okay?" insisted Mitsui, holding up his hands. "I swear. It's clean. Licensed and everything."

"How did he get it?" asked Ayako suspiciously.

"It's FINE," Mitsui grated out. "Tetsuo's okay, too. Ask Sakuragi and his troop. He's a decent enough guy in his way. And he's my friend."

He tore up a piece of turf and tossed it toward them. "Honestly, you guys aren't helping. You sound just like that old woman. Ask me questions when I'm not so tired and pissed off."

Ayako gave him a sympathetic smile. "All right, then, senpai. Why don't we tell you what we've been up to."

At that Miyagi began to swell up proudly, like a gamecock ruffling its plumage. Mitsui blinked at him. "What's with you?"

Kogure chuckled, while Akagi grunted a bit and lay back in the grass. "Miyagi's the new Shohoku captain," said the glasses-man. "Akagi bestowed the honor this morning."

Akagi grunted, but looked pleased.

"What?" If they'd expected this news to cheer him up, they were going to be disappointed. "Hey! I thought I was the ace! After you were captain, Akagi, you expect the other teams to take us seriously with this little twerp in the lead?"

Miyagi leapt over Ayako to land on Mitsui's chest, driving the breath out of him. "Take that back!" They began to scuffle like angry cats.

WHACK! WHACK! went Ayako's ever-ready paper fan. The two rolled away from each other, clutching their heads. The graduates sweatdropped.

"Quit it!" she snapped.

"But, Aya-chan..." whimpered Miyagi, but she waved her fan threateningly and he shut his mouth with an audible snap.

"Don't be such a baby, Ryota. And Mitsui, if you had any brains left in that worn-out head after today it would occur to you that, obviously, the school board would never allow anyone left behind a year to qualify as captain...no matter how qualified he was otherwise," she added quickly. Mitsui, who had bristled at the mention of his inadequacy, subsided a bit.

"Besides," she noted, "Ryota's done well for himself this past season. He's fast, and he's good, and he can think for the team as well as himself. He'll do fine."

Everyone blinked at this unexpected praise. Miyagi turned red, and his eyes went starry. Mitsui watched with something approaching horror as the most ridiculous expression of mindless joy spread across the guardsman's face.

"Aya-chan...." Miyagi sighed, in his usual wobbly Voice of Absolute Bliss In The Presence Of His Goddess. Mitsui wondered what would happen if one day Ayako actually kissed him.

He'd go comatose, probably, he thought with amusement, and in that case I could try being the team captain.

"And what about that problem?" muttered Akagi, jerking a large thumb at the blissed-out Ryota.

Ayako rolled her eyes. "I'm working on it."

"Are you still going to barge into our locker room every time you have a juicy piece of news?" Mitsui demanded. "The freshmen will get a nasty shock and never come back."

"Are you kidding? It totally makes my day, seeing your faces. One day I might even catch you guys in the showers."

At that EVERYONE went red. "God forbid," muttered Mitsui.

"If I bring a camera, I could make thousands of yen just for pictures of Rukawa."

Akagi looked ill.

"Well, we're counting on you to carry on," said Kogure cheerily, clapping Mitsui on the shoulder with all-too-obvious relief.

"Deserter," muttered Mitsui.

They laughed, and talked, and then they all went to have a cheap dinner at a nearby ramen stand in the park. Mitsui couldn't remember ever being this close to his teammates. It was really as though...as though they were all friends. And then he realized that they were all friends, and had been for a while. It was only Miyagi and the older two who'd been mature enough to admit it.

It felt good to talk to them about something besides basketball. Mitsui hadn't thought there would be any difference, but there was somehow.

And he liked the change.

-end 3-