Let One's Heart Decide
Disclaimer: Slam Dunk is © Inoue Takehiko and all its other companies. This fanfiction is © Hitora. It is not allowed to be put up on any other site without permission. Other characters in this fiction belongs to Hitora.
Chapter 5: Beginning of Change
"Onii-san, why were you home so late last night?" Kazuo asked his brother sleepily when he entered the kitchen, scratching his head and causing his already tousled shaggy raven black hair to become messier.
Rukawa merely shrugged as he spooned the last of his cereal into his mouth and got up to leave for school.
"Okaa-san, I'm leaving," he told his mother in a monotonous voice. Turning to Kazuo, he raised his eyebrows in question.
"Huh?"
"School. You coming?"
Kazuo's sleepy eyes widened.
"It's Monday?! Aah! I'm going to be late!" Kazuo yelled, rushing back to his room.
"D'aho," Rukawa muttered, rolling his eyes.
In his room, Kazuo struggled to change into his uniform. His eye caught the scrunchie he picked up yesterday. Thinking about it, he grinned and blushed a little.
"Kazuo, Kaede has already left! You might want to hurry," his mother shouted from the kitchen.
"Hai, hai!" he shouted, hopping on one foot as he tried to pull on his sock. "Onii-san is so impatient," Kazuo grumbled under his breath.
~*~*~*~*~
"Kuso, where's my scrunchie?" Hatsuko muttered while looking around her room.
With ten minutes left before school started, Hatsuko rushed to her brother's room.
"Nii-chan! You don't want to be late again, do you?" Hatsuko yelled, banging on Sakuragi's bedroom door repetitively until her hand hurt. "Nii-chan!! Nine minutes!"
Sakuragi opened the door with a frown. He was already wide awake and fully dressed.
"Why make such a racket in the morning?"
"Er… cos I thought you were still asleep?"
"Tsk tsk tsk," Sakuragi smiled, shaking his index finger at his little sister. "Do no underestimate the punctuality of a tensai."
"What does punctuality have to do with being a tensai?" Hatsuko asked, a bemused expression on her face.
"Nothing! Just wanted to remind you that your Nii-chan is a tensai and that we're going to be late," Sakuragi answered, laughing and running out of the house.
"NII-CHAN!"
When Hatsuko raced out of the house, Sakuragi had already cycled a good distance away. Pouting, she pulled on her rollerblades, piled her hair on her head and put on a baseball cap so that it will not interfere with her as she race to catch up with her brother.
Sakuragi turned to look as a girl in a Shohoku uniform and a red baseball cap in a pair of rollerblades racing and struggling to catch up with him.
'Hatsuko?' he thought, grinning.
He turned a corner and almost collided with a speeding… bike?!
"Rukawa!!" he shouted, as he swerved his bicycle and tried to maintain his balance. 'Unusual of Rukawa to be wide-awake and cycling like any normal human being,' Sakuragi thought as they cycled abreast.
To Rukawa, he said, "Rukawa! You almost made Tensai injured! How dare you!"
Rukawa gave him a sidelong glance but otherwise, ignored him.
"You dare ignore Tensai?"
Hatsuko finally caught up to her brother and her eyes smiled with pleasure when she saw Rukawa with her brother. She liked he argued with her brother and made him irritated. It was really amusing to watch, though mean.
"Ohayou, Rukawa-san!" she greeted him cheerfully and she bladed in between the two.
Rukawa turned to look at Hatsuko and his eyes widened in shock. She looked almost like a female version of Sakuragi, with the red baseball cap on, but also not. He quickly nodded his greeting.
"Eh, Rukawa-san? Daijoubu ka?" Hatsuko asked, frowning a little as Rukawa took quite awhile to acknowledge her greeting.
"Ah. Daijoubu," he muttered.
Sakuragi frowned.
"I shall not grace that kitsune with my Tensai presence. Hatsuko, if you don't want your not-so-great-as-mine tensai skills to disappear, you might want to stay away from him. He's affecting my basketball skills," Sakuragi informed his sister, cycling ahead of them.
"D'aho. You need more practice," Rukawa said but Sakuragi was laughing too loudly to hear him.
"Nii-chan!" Hatsuko yelled at her brother, embarrassed. "Gomen ne, Rukawa-san. He's always like that," she apologized, turning to Rukawa.
"Iie. Not your fault. Actually, I'm quite used to his insults," Rukawa said.
Rukawa looked at the shocked look on the girl's face.
"Nani?"
"People told me that you were a man of few words except when you're arguing with Ni-chan and I believed them, until now," Hatsuko said.
"I talk when I want to or need to. No big deal," Rukawa replied.
"So… now, is your talking a want or need?" Hatsuko asked curiously, her brown eyes sparkling.
"Want, I guess. I don't need to speak to you," Rukawa said.
"I know but why want?"
As Rukawa stared at the road ahead, he knew that he was at wits end. Unlike her simple-minded brother, Hatsuko was witty and very hard to satisfy.
"I wanted to ask you about this," he quickly said, tapping her cap.
"Ah. I lost my one and only scrunchie and in order to catch up with Nii-chan, and without getting my hair in a mess or letting it get in my way, I put it on this morning," Hatsuko explained.
Rukawa sighed inwardly with relief. Thank goodness she didn't ask him more about his loquaciousness.
"Oh no! We're late," Hatsuko wailed as they came to the school gate.
Sakuragi was the only one there and he was waiting for them. He looked at them but shifted his gave to someone behind him. Kazuo was but a few feet away and he was glaring at him. Rukawa returned the glare and cycled into the school compound.
"Rukawa-kun?" Hatsuko turned and bladed backwards so that she was facing Kazuo. "Late too?"
"Uh-huh. I thought today was a Sunday," he said sheepishly.
Hatsuko giggled.
"Rukawa-kun no baka," she teased. "Hayaku. We're going to be really late."
"Hai, Hatsuko-san," Kazuo said as he parked his bike.
He glared at the retreating back of his brother as he entered the school building with the laughing Sakuragi. He clenched the scrunchie which he held in his right fist and the thought of his brother being chatty in the presence of Hatsuko made him envious.
"Rukawa-kun?" Hatsuko called to him, jolting him out of his thoughts.
Hatsuko pulled the cap off her head and her raven black hair cascaded pass her shoulders. Kazuo was awestruck by her beauty and could only stare with a slacked jaw.
"Rukawa-kun, ikuzo," she said, pulling his hand and leading him into the school building.
At her touch, Kazuo's heart fluttered. Realizing that he was still holding her scrunchie in his hand, he quickly stuffed it into his pocket and allowed her to pull him to their classroom.
~*~*~*~*~
Hatsuko was walking towards her classroom after their lunch break when she heard the dribbling of a basketball from the indoor entrance of the gym.
'Eh, who can that be?' she thought, curiously wondering who the person who was training so hard was.
She slowly walked to the gym door and peeked through a small opening. Her eyes scanned the area but she could not find anyone there.
"I thought I heard dribbling…" she muttered, still scanning the area from the opening.
Unsatisfied, she slid the door open.
"What are you doing?"
Hatsuko yelped and fell backwards. Right in front of her was her brother, crouching with a suspicious look on his face. His expression then turned to amusement and he laughed heartily.
"You should've seen the look on your face, Hatsuko," he said between laughs.
"Nii-chan!!"
Haruko walked out from behind the door, holding a basketball.
"Mou Sakuragi-kun. You're very mean. Even Onii-chan doesn't scare me like that," she said, referring to Akagi Takenori, the previous year's basketball captain.
"Haruko-san! We always play around like this. Isn't that right, Hatsuko?" Sakuragi replied urgently, his eyes begging her to agree.
"Um… that's right, Haruko-san. It's just a little game we play. Don't worry, I'll get Nii-chan good next time," Hatsuko said, stretching her hand out so that Sakuragi would pull her up.
"It's still mean though," Haruko insisted, as Sakuragi got up and pulled his sister up.
Sakuragi looked heartbroken.
"But it was a little funny," Haruko added, smiling.
"Haruko-san!" Sakuragi said gratefully, a large smile on his face.
"Nee, Haruko-san. How about helping me plan scare Nii-chan?" Hatsuko asked. "After all, I don't want to lose the game," she added, giving her brother a mischievous look.
"Okay! We girls can't lose to guys like him, ne?" Haruko agreed, grinning.
"Haruko-san!" Sakuragi exclaimed, his eyes tearing.
The girls began to laugh at the look on Sakuragi's face.
"Nee, what were you two doing in the gym? Playing basketball?" Hatsuko asked Haruko as the upset, super-deformed Sakuragi continued to cry.
"Iie, I was training Sakuragi-kun. We always train during our breaks, ne, Sakuragi-kun?" Haruko asked Sakuragi, who immediately perked up.
"Hai. Tensai actually doesn't need training but if Haruko-san insists, Tensai will do as she says," Sakuragi replied, punching a fist into the air.
Haruko giggled whereas Hatsuko shook her head. It was so obvious that her brother was in head-over-heels over Haruko and as Hatsuko looked at her, she wondered if she noticed her brother's love for her. After all, it was very obvious.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Hatsuko said, slapping a hand to her forehead. "Break was over when I came here but I totally forgot because someone scared me half to death," she added, looking pointedly at Sakuragi.
Sakuragi looked around and scratched his chin.
"Who?" he asked.
"Oh no! We're ten minutes late," Haruko gasped, looking at her watch. "Sakuragi-kun, I have to go otherwise sensei will scream more than usual. Bye Hatsuko."
"Haruko-san, matte!" Sakuragi shouted as the girl tossed the basketball to him and ran down the hall and around the corner.
"Nii-chan, don't you have to go too?"
Sakuragi looked at his sister and said, "Yeah, but the sensei is afraid of me so no sweat. What about you?"
"The fact that Rukawa-kun and I received a detention slip this morning for being late won't make a difference if I'm late or not," Hatsuko answered. "Nee, Nii-chan, when you said your sensei is afraid of you, you mean you didn't get punished?"
"Of course not!" he laughed again.
"I won't wait for you again then," she pouted and walked off.
"Oi, our deal! Hey! Hatsuko!"
~*~*~*~*~
"Shohoku… fight!"
"UI!"
"Sakuragi-san, is Hatsuko-san coming to watch our practice today?" Kazuo asked Sakuragi eagerly, when they were split into teams to practice shots, offense and defense.
"Iya, I sent her home already. She didn't have training with her team today," Sakuragi answered, concentrating on his shot.
He tried a jump shot but it missed.
"Kuso!"
"Sakuragi-san, you know…" Kazuo started.
However, before he could finish, Ayako came over and whacked his head with her paper fan.
"Get back to practice, Rukawa Kazuo!" she yelled.
"Ayako-san!"
Sakuragi looked over at the gym door to make sure that Haruko was looking at him but he found something else instead. When everyone was busy and was ignoring him, which was often, he sneaked out of the gym.
However, Rukawa did see him sneak out and frowned under his bangs.
"Rukawa, here!" Ryota called, asking for a pass.
"Uh," he replied, passing the ball.
"Hey, where's Hanamichi?" Ryota asked, looking around when he noticed the silence.
Rukawa shrugged and continued with his practice.
Author's note: None.
Disclaimer: Slam Dunk is © Inoue Takehiko and all its other companies. This fanfiction is © Hitora. It is not allowed to be put up on any other site without permission. Other characters in this fiction belongs to Hitora.
Chapter 5: Beginning of Change
"Onii-san, why were you home so late last night?" Kazuo asked his brother sleepily when he entered the kitchen, scratching his head and causing his already tousled shaggy raven black hair to become messier.
Rukawa merely shrugged as he spooned the last of his cereal into his mouth and got up to leave for school.
"Okaa-san, I'm leaving," he told his mother in a monotonous voice. Turning to Kazuo, he raised his eyebrows in question.
"Huh?"
"School. You coming?"
Kazuo's sleepy eyes widened.
"It's Monday?! Aah! I'm going to be late!" Kazuo yelled, rushing back to his room.
"D'aho," Rukawa muttered, rolling his eyes.
In his room, Kazuo struggled to change into his uniform. His eye caught the scrunchie he picked up yesterday. Thinking about it, he grinned and blushed a little.
"Kazuo, Kaede has already left! You might want to hurry," his mother shouted from the kitchen.
"Hai, hai!" he shouted, hopping on one foot as he tried to pull on his sock. "Onii-san is so impatient," Kazuo grumbled under his breath.
~*~*~*~*~
"Kuso, where's my scrunchie?" Hatsuko muttered while looking around her room.
With ten minutes left before school started, Hatsuko rushed to her brother's room.
"Nii-chan! You don't want to be late again, do you?" Hatsuko yelled, banging on Sakuragi's bedroom door repetitively until her hand hurt. "Nii-chan!! Nine minutes!"
Sakuragi opened the door with a frown. He was already wide awake and fully dressed.
"Why make such a racket in the morning?"
"Er… cos I thought you were still asleep?"
"Tsk tsk tsk," Sakuragi smiled, shaking his index finger at his little sister. "Do no underestimate the punctuality of a tensai."
"What does punctuality have to do with being a tensai?" Hatsuko asked, a bemused expression on her face.
"Nothing! Just wanted to remind you that your Nii-chan is a tensai and that we're going to be late," Sakuragi answered, laughing and running out of the house.
"NII-CHAN!"
When Hatsuko raced out of the house, Sakuragi had already cycled a good distance away. Pouting, she pulled on her rollerblades, piled her hair on her head and put on a baseball cap so that it will not interfere with her as she race to catch up with her brother.
Sakuragi turned to look as a girl in a Shohoku uniform and a red baseball cap in a pair of rollerblades racing and struggling to catch up with him.
'Hatsuko?' he thought, grinning.
He turned a corner and almost collided with a speeding… bike?!
"Rukawa!!" he shouted, as he swerved his bicycle and tried to maintain his balance. 'Unusual of Rukawa to be wide-awake and cycling like any normal human being,' Sakuragi thought as they cycled abreast.
To Rukawa, he said, "Rukawa! You almost made Tensai injured! How dare you!"
Rukawa gave him a sidelong glance but otherwise, ignored him.
"You dare ignore Tensai?"
Hatsuko finally caught up to her brother and her eyes smiled with pleasure when she saw Rukawa with her brother. She liked he argued with her brother and made him irritated. It was really amusing to watch, though mean.
"Ohayou, Rukawa-san!" she greeted him cheerfully and she bladed in between the two.
Rukawa turned to look at Hatsuko and his eyes widened in shock. She looked almost like a female version of Sakuragi, with the red baseball cap on, but also not. He quickly nodded his greeting.
"Eh, Rukawa-san? Daijoubu ka?" Hatsuko asked, frowning a little as Rukawa took quite awhile to acknowledge her greeting.
"Ah. Daijoubu," he muttered.
Sakuragi frowned.
"I shall not grace that kitsune with my Tensai presence. Hatsuko, if you don't want your not-so-great-as-mine tensai skills to disappear, you might want to stay away from him. He's affecting my basketball skills," Sakuragi informed his sister, cycling ahead of them.
"D'aho. You need more practice," Rukawa said but Sakuragi was laughing too loudly to hear him.
"Nii-chan!" Hatsuko yelled at her brother, embarrassed. "Gomen ne, Rukawa-san. He's always like that," she apologized, turning to Rukawa.
"Iie. Not your fault. Actually, I'm quite used to his insults," Rukawa said.
Rukawa looked at the shocked look on the girl's face.
"Nani?"
"People told me that you were a man of few words except when you're arguing with Ni-chan and I believed them, until now," Hatsuko said.
"I talk when I want to or need to. No big deal," Rukawa replied.
"So… now, is your talking a want or need?" Hatsuko asked curiously, her brown eyes sparkling.
"Want, I guess. I don't need to speak to you," Rukawa said.
"I know but why want?"
As Rukawa stared at the road ahead, he knew that he was at wits end. Unlike her simple-minded brother, Hatsuko was witty and very hard to satisfy.
"I wanted to ask you about this," he quickly said, tapping her cap.
"Ah. I lost my one and only scrunchie and in order to catch up with Nii-chan, and without getting my hair in a mess or letting it get in my way, I put it on this morning," Hatsuko explained.
Rukawa sighed inwardly with relief. Thank goodness she didn't ask him more about his loquaciousness.
"Oh no! We're late," Hatsuko wailed as they came to the school gate.
Sakuragi was the only one there and he was waiting for them. He looked at them but shifted his gave to someone behind him. Kazuo was but a few feet away and he was glaring at him. Rukawa returned the glare and cycled into the school compound.
"Rukawa-kun?" Hatsuko turned and bladed backwards so that she was facing Kazuo. "Late too?"
"Uh-huh. I thought today was a Sunday," he said sheepishly.
Hatsuko giggled.
"Rukawa-kun no baka," she teased. "Hayaku. We're going to be really late."
"Hai, Hatsuko-san," Kazuo said as he parked his bike.
He glared at the retreating back of his brother as he entered the school building with the laughing Sakuragi. He clenched the scrunchie which he held in his right fist and the thought of his brother being chatty in the presence of Hatsuko made him envious.
"Rukawa-kun?" Hatsuko called to him, jolting him out of his thoughts.
Hatsuko pulled the cap off her head and her raven black hair cascaded pass her shoulders. Kazuo was awestruck by her beauty and could only stare with a slacked jaw.
"Rukawa-kun, ikuzo," she said, pulling his hand and leading him into the school building.
At her touch, Kazuo's heart fluttered. Realizing that he was still holding her scrunchie in his hand, he quickly stuffed it into his pocket and allowed her to pull him to their classroom.
~*~*~*~*~
Hatsuko was walking towards her classroom after their lunch break when she heard the dribbling of a basketball from the indoor entrance of the gym.
'Eh, who can that be?' she thought, curiously wondering who the person who was training so hard was.
She slowly walked to the gym door and peeked through a small opening. Her eyes scanned the area but she could not find anyone there.
"I thought I heard dribbling…" she muttered, still scanning the area from the opening.
Unsatisfied, she slid the door open.
"What are you doing?"
Hatsuko yelped and fell backwards. Right in front of her was her brother, crouching with a suspicious look on his face. His expression then turned to amusement and he laughed heartily.
"You should've seen the look on your face, Hatsuko," he said between laughs.
"Nii-chan!!"
Haruko walked out from behind the door, holding a basketball.
"Mou Sakuragi-kun. You're very mean. Even Onii-chan doesn't scare me like that," she said, referring to Akagi Takenori, the previous year's basketball captain.
"Haruko-san! We always play around like this. Isn't that right, Hatsuko?" Sakuragi replied urgently, his eyes begging her to agree.
"Um… that's right, Haruko-san. It's just a little game we play. Don't worry, I'll get Nii-chan good next time," Hatsuko said, stretching her hand out so that Sakuragi would pull her up.
"It's still mean though," Haruko insisted, as Sakuragi got up and pulled his sister up.
Sakuragi looked heartbroken.
"But it was a little funny," Haruko added, smiling.
"Haruko-san!" Sakuragi said gratefully, a large smile on his face.
"Nee, Haruko-san. How about helping me plan scare Nii-chan?" Hatsuko asked. "After all, I don't want to lose the game," she added, giving her brother a mischievous look.
"Okay! We girls can't lose to guys like him, ne?" Haruko agreed, grinning.
"Haruko-san!" Sakuragi exclaimed, his eyes tearing.
The girls began to laugh at the look on Sakuragi's face.
"Nee, what were you two doing in the gym? Playing basketball?" Hatsuko asked Haruko as the upset, super-deformed Sakuragi continued to cry.
"Iie, I was training Sakuragi-kun. We always train during our breaks, ne, Sakuragi-kun?" Haruko asked Sakuragi, who immediately perked up.
"Hai. Tensai actually doesn't need training but if Haruko-san insists, Tensai will do as she says," Sakuragi replied, punching a fist into the air.
Haruko giggled whereas Hatsuko shook her head. It was so obvious that her brother was in head-over-heels over Haruko and as Hatsuko looked at her, she wondered if she noticed her brother's love for her. After all, it was very obvious.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Hatsuko said, slapping a hand to her forehead. "Break was over when I came here but I totally forgot because someone scared me half to death," she added, looking pointedly at Sakuragi.
Sakuragi looked around and scratched his chin.
"Who?" he asked.
"Oh no! We're ten minutes late," Haruko gasped, looking at her watch. "Sakuragi-kun, I have to go otherwise sensei will scream more than usual. Bye Hatsuko."
"Haruko-san, matte!" Sakuragi shouted as the girl tossed the basketball to him and ran down the hall and around the corner.
"Nii-chan, don't you have to go too?"
Sakuragi looked at his sister and said, "Yeah, but the sensei is afraid of me so no sweat. What about you?"
"The fact that Rukawa-kun and I received a detention slip this morning for being late won't make a difference if I'm late or not," Hatsuko answered. "Nee, Nii-chan, when you said your sensei is afraid of you, you mean you didn't get punished?"
"Of course not!" he laughed again.
"I won't wait for you again then," she pouted and walked off.
"Oi, our deal! Hey! Hatsuko!"
~*~*~*~*~
"Shohoku… fight!"
"UI!"
"Sakuragi-san, is Hatsuko-san coming to watch our practice today?" Kazuo asked Sakuragi eagerly, when they were split into teams to practice shots, offense and defense.
"Iya, I sent her home already. She didn't have training with her team today," Sakuragi answered, concentrating on his shot.
He tried a jump shot but it missed.
"Kuso!"
"Sakuragi-san, you know…" Kazuo started.
However, before he could finish, Ayako came over and whacked his head with her paper fan.
"Get back to practice, Rukawa Kazuo!" she yelled.
"Ayako-san!"
Sakuragi looked over at the gym door to make sure that Haruko was looking at him but he found something else instead. When everyone was busy and was ignoring him, which was often, he sneaked out of the gym.
However, Rukawa did see him sneak out and frowned under his bangs.
"Rukawa, here!" Ryota called, asking for a pass.
"Uh," he replied, passing the ball.
"Hey, where's Hanamichi?" Ryota asked, looking around when he noticed the silence.
Rukawa shrugged and continued with his practice.
Author's note: None.