Chapter Ten
He stretched, curved his right arm up, and tried to bend back further, his spine protesting with a series of 'crack' sounds. Sheepishly, he straightened, and tried it again.
"No, no, Rukawa-kun," Mrs. Takuhiro chastened laughingly. She stepped over to his left side and then pulled his hand back so that the arm position spread to a further degree, and then poked a spot on his lower back firmly.
"This," she instructed, "is where you feel the flow. Remember the Paso Doble is a fierce dance, a matador dance! It has to feel," and she gestured with her own arms, "big. As if you own the world, Rukawa-kun."
He closed his eyes slightly, visualized what she was saying, and then dropped into the position. She walked around him and adjusted the stretch of his fingers, pushing his ankle closer to him so that the overall look was compact, and then nodded in approval.
Ever since he had revealed his identity to her, Mrs. Takuhiro had been determined that he should rightfully learn the male's role in partner dancing. Of course, since everyone knew him as Ruiya, he had changed his lessons to alternate Fridays, when the studio was closed until the evening, when it opened for students to practice. A public's night, if you would call it that. He still went to the recreation club in disguise, but changed out when he got there, that was all.
Rukawa appreciated his teacher's efforts to no end. Discovering this side of himself was new, but he thrived in this precise, unknown direction. They had become close, over the months, and she had just about taken the place of his surrogate mother, since his own mother had moved to America to be with his father. Rukawa Matsuda had been posted to San Francisco to oversee a new branch of the company a little over three years ago, just when he had started high school, and he had chosen to remain here.
"Yes, yes, that's it. Work on that. Now, have you been practicing your samba…?"
*** ***
An hour and a half later, he was exhausted, dripping with perspiration. Mrs. Takuhiro went outside, and he slumped on the couch, trying to catch his breath, only looking up when he noticed her feet in front of him.
"Here," she handed him a dry towel, indicating that he should mop himself up. He had forgotten to bring his own today.
"Thank you."
She settled beside him, wiping her brow with a faded yellow rag of her own. A comfortable silence hung between them.
"The redhead…Hanamichi Sakuragi…you know that boy from school, Rukawa-kun?"
He blinked, startled at the sudden question. After a moment, he folded the towel neatly over one hand, and leaned back, his head thudding dully against the wall as he closed his eyes. "He is in the basketball team, too."
She chuckled beside him. "And yet he does not recognize you?"
Rukawa grinned slightly in spite of himself. "He almost did, the first time."
Mrs. Takuhiro nodded, still laughing a little. "Well, he has potential, you know. I've dropped in often enough on your lessons with him. A little awkward, not sure of himself, but natural nonetheless."
He shrugged. "I suppose so."
She looked at him, her plump cheeks creased in a smile. "And this 'Prom Night' he keeps talking about…are you not going, Rukawa-kun?"
Rukawa resisted the urge to shrug again, and settled for scratching his wrist noncommittally instead. "I'll drop by and take a look later. I suppose."
His teacher clucked in mock sternness. "Such indifference to a day which is supposed to be special for all you boys and girls! Don't you have a nice girl waiting to go with you?" she cocked an eyebrow at him.
He laughed genuinely this time. "No, not really. There's no one I want to go with anyway." He glanced at the clock, and felt his eyes widen. It was five-thirty! The dance started at six.
She followed his gaze, and rose in alarm. "Look at the time! Shoo! Go and get ready, young man. Use the shower right there. I've already switched the heater on for you. The first of the lot who come to practice will be arriving any minute now."
*** ***
Hanamichi looked at himself critically in the mirror. It was five-thirty, and he was would take exactly half an hour to get to the school. He looked at the pile of loose change on top of the dresser, and decided spontaneously to take a cab instead.
He hadn't had much to wear, really. Hanamichi didn't keep a lot of formal clothing. In fact, he didn't own any that still fit him, last piece of said formal clothing being the graduation attire he had kept since his kindergarten years.
So Hanamichi had done the wisest thing he could have done. He went to his mother, who had promptly pulled out a trunk of his father's old clothes from a dusty corner in the storeroom.
He had nearly, embarrassingly, spilled into tears at the sight of a familiar blue-and-green checkered jacket that he remembered had seemingly permanently adorned the elder Sakuragi's shoulders, but collected himself just in time.
Dad always said I would sooner go out naked than wear that jacket.
He was right.
Laughing with his mother at the memories, they had dug through the various items in the numerous cardboard boxes, considering and discarding about five years worth of miscellaneous outfits, before finally settling on what he was wearing now.
It was nothing spectacular, really. Just a half-open white dress shirt tucked into loose black pants, with plain silver cufflinks and a semi-formal, emerald green turtleneck underneath.
But it was enough.
His digital clock beeped alarmingly, and he looked up, jolted from a particular memory in which he had stolen this same shirt a long time ago and been dwarfed in it. He bit back a curse, and flew over the mess on the ground.
Argh! I'm late!
*** ***
Rukawa paid the taxi-driver, and then shifted over to push open the door. The sound of pop music blasting in the air greeted him, along with a large, colorfully painted banner that screamed 'Shohoku Annual School Prom' in neon pink letters. Grimacing slightly, he lugged his leather bag over his shoulder and turned, swinging the taxi door close and stepping away as the cab drove off.
The school was bustling with activity as the evening sun dipped over the horizon, flaming the sky with spectacular shades of burning orange. Excited chatter, laughter and streamers bedecked the scene, and he walked slowly towards the more or less deserted entrance to the gym. There was a locker room there, and he resolved to make that spot his hideout for the night lest any particularly energetic schoolmate try to cajole him into doing anything he didn't want to do.
It was only when he had set his bag down, looked in the mirror, and noticed a smudge of light mascara staining the corner of his eye, that he heard the voices outside.
"…Yes! It's going to be hilarious!"
Female laughter, tinkling with a semblance of malice, filled the air. "He's going to be –so– embarrassed, Yumiko-san!"
Yumiko? Where have I heard that name?
He walked to one of the bathroom stalls, grabbed a roll of toilet paper, and made his way back to the sink, wetting the material and raising it to his face to remove the traces of his make-up. The conversation outside continued in hushed whispers, obviously oblivious to the listening basketball captain within the isolated locker room.
"Oh, god, I don't even want to think of what he's going to wear. Luckily I told him he didn't have to bring flowers. Can you imagine? He might have gotten sunflowers!"
Rukawa rolled his eyes in spite of himself as he rewet the tissue. What was wrong with sunflowers anyway?
"The best part is going to be the show later," a confident, snide voice interrupted. "Just wait until Sujowa announces that he's prom king! I'll be nowhere in sight of course. And he's going to be standing there, alone, the poor dear—" the tone switched to a mocking one, "—with nobody to dance with and everybody watching him. Pitiful, abandoned, Sakuragi Hanamichi. I don't think even his thick-skinned ego would excuse him out of this one—"
Rukawa froze.
The voices trailed off, and he knew they had left. Dropping the tissue into the sink, he gazed towards the door of the locker room. My god. Yumiko…that's the cheerleader who asked Hanamichi to the dance.
She and everyone else…they're planning to make a fool of him.