Disclaimer: I so very much wish I did, but I don't.

Chapter 25

-Friday, night-

Ryoma woke up by degrees. His head felt like it had a rock band playing between his ears, his mouth felt like it was packed with cotton, and pretty weird-tasting cotton at that. He was lying on something smooth and a little hard; that ruled out his bed, which was a comfortable haven he wouldn't mind spending the rest of his life in if his baka Oyaji could leave him alone for that long.

If he wasn't in bed, where was he? He couldn't hear anything for the constant throbbing in his head. Still woozy, he peeled open both eyes slowly, and quickly shut them tight again. He didn't see much, just a lot of darkness, but the darkness was swirling and making him dizzy.

He threw an arm over his eyes, trying to get rid of the spiraling movement of nothingness that he could still see even with his eyes closed.

Reaching out with the other arm, he patted the area to his side, trying to find out what he was lying on. It felt like rough plastic, a little hard when he tried to press down on it. Unable to deduce what it was, he reached out further. And his questing fingers encountered warm, soft flesh.

That got him wide-awake quick as a shot! He sat up, trying to ignore the heaviness in his head as he backed away from the unknown being beside him. It was so dark he couldn't see who or what it was. He tried to listen hard for human sounds, like breathing or something, but he couldn't detect anything. Ryoma had a heart-stopping moment when he wondered if it was a corpse. Someone was DEAD and lying beside him!

Ryoma was all confused and not just a little panicked. He tried to remember how he got here, to this dark place somewhere and lying beside someone or something he didn't know. Now that he was trying to recall the events before then, the strange taste left on his tongue quickly reminded him.

He remembered the bottled drink Fuji passed to him after practice; he had seen through the clear plastic that it was colorless and he had assumed it was just water. Then he had gulped it down in his thirst, only realizing after the third swallow that the liquid tasted somewhat off for plain water. Just as he was thinking that he suddenly felt weak in the knees and his vision had gone black. Thinking back, Ryoma would lay down money that it was another Inui concoction, an innocent looking one that was colorless but potent. He mentally scribbled a sarcastic note to himself to compliment Inui on his latest achievement.

This was no time to be thinking of ways to get back on the two scheming senpai. Ryoma thought hard about how to get out of his current predicament.

Cautiously reaching out his hands to explore around him, very cautiously in case he felt another dead being near him, he tried to see if there was anything useful on the surface he was sitting on. There, what was that? It felt cold, heavy and was a cylindrical shape. He took hold of it and tried to identify it by feel. There was a gurgle as he picked it up which made it feel like water. Holding the object in both hands, he discovered that it was a bottle of water; he could distinctly feel the cap that could be twisted off.

Why was there a bottle of water in the middle of a very dark space where he was, definitely, dumped by his senpai-tachi after they knocked him unconscious with a homemade mixture that would most probably make the toxic chemical list if authorities found out about it?

Setting the water down near his knee, he reached out again to the area he found it in. This time, he knocked down something that hit the ground with a muted thud. Quickly reaching forward to catch hold of the object before it rolled away or something, Ryoma found out by the tips of his fingers that he was most probably holding a battery torch. He flicked the switch to see it worked. It did, sending a beam of welcome light through the heavy darkness.

Glad that he could now actually see anything, Ryoma quickly pointed the torch in the direction of the strange thing he felt earlier. His jaw dropped when he saw the soft and warm flesh he touched earlier belonged to none other than Ryuuzaki Sakuno.

Scrambling to her side in one quick movement, he hurriedly checked if she was still alive. She was still breathing, albeit taking really shallow, quiet breaths. Heaving a sigh of relief, Ryoma sat down beside her prone body and continued checking out their surroundings.

They were lying on a gym mattress on the floor of some kind of storeroom. He had no idea if they were still in Seigaku high school, but they were definitely near some kind of educational institution that used this room as storage for old gym equipment.

He saw a balance beam against one wall, and there were some old netball vests hanging off it. There were a few cages full of basketballs, soccer balls and volleyballs pushed into the corner, and more gym mattresses leaning against the wall beside the one they were on. It was a rather cramped space; their mattress took up all the limited floor space.

On a corner of the mattress near where he was, there were a few bottles of water and some bread and chocolate, which a certain tennis tensai probably left out of the goodness in his heart, Ryoma thought cynically.

After checking that Sakuno was still breathing, he got off the mattress and went to check out the door. It was well and truly locked, probably secured by chains and padlocks on the other side. He didn't think Fuji would leave out such details in his pranks. Just to try his luck, Ryoma pounded on the door for a while, but there was no answering call from the outside just as he expected. His torchlight picked out a narrow slotted ventilation window high above the door. There was no hope of getting out through that.

He checked his watch and saw that it was after 10pm. He had been out of it for about four hours. If they were still on campus, there would be no one around to let them out at this time of night.

There came a soft moan from behind him. Sakuno was waking up. Ryoma quickly went back to her side, careful not to point the torchlight into her eyes.

"Daijoubu?" He crouched down next to her, helping her to sit up.

"Aa? Ryoma?" Sakuno sounded surprised but she didn't sound frightened. Good, because Ryoma wouldn't know what to do with a hysterical female even in the best of circumstances. And they were hardly in privileged conditions at the moment.

Sakuno was looking around slowly and asked him worriedly, "Koko, doko? What happened to us?"

Well, he didn't have the answer to that! "Saa…."

He sat down beside her, resigned to spending a long night trapped in an unknown space, with the girl he cared for right next to him.

Put that way, it really didn't sound too bad.

Then he remembered that terrible fight he had started and because of that, Sakuno had been ignoring him for the past two weeks ………