Authors Notes: This chapter is dedicated to one of my friends who's been reading these drabbles ever since I started writing them. Her birthday was last week, so this is a belated present for her. Subaru is one of her favourite characters so, she has been anticipating when this chapter would be coming out.
Subaru's Chapter
Balls and Bloody noses
Wataru had never been very good at playing basketball. If anything, Soccer had always been his thing. He would usually leave the basketball playing to Subaru. He had been having trouble in school lately. With what? Basketball. He could excel in any other sport he could play in but, It had always been basketball that he's been having trouble doing. His older brothers all decided that the best way to at least help him along with basketball in gym class was to have Subaru teach him to at least play better. Yes Subaru was busy with classes as well as his upcoming University championships, but he (begrudgingly) accepted tutoring Wataru in Basketball. So now here they were playing basketball at the nearby recreation centre against each other.
"Okay, now take the ball and and bounce it like this."
Wataru watched as his older brother showed him how to cross pass the ball with ease. He nodded and tried to imitate him as best as he could. No one said that it was going to be easy. Sometimes he would get it right away, and other times, the ball would bounce away from him from a badly timed bounce. Once Subaru thought that Wataru had enough of that, he suggested that he tried playing against him. A ten year against a college student. Like that wasn't going to end in tears.
Wataru was a lot shorter and smaller than his big brother, which meant that he was going to have some trouble keeping up with him. But thanks to playing soccer all the time when he wasn't busy gaming, Wataru has learned how to weave in, out and around people. He might a kid, but at least he was fast. And he was going to use it to his advantage no matter what. He ran up to Subaru and managed to steal the ball from him just as he was going to shoot it into his basket. He traveled back to Subaru's basket and jumped as high as he could to shoot the ball into the other side.
The ball rolled around on the rim for a while and wobbled slightly to one side. Waiting for it to fall was torturous. After what seemed like an eternity, it wobbled into the basket.
"I'm not going to lose to you!" the younger boy declared as he got a hold of the ball.
"Fine, I'm not losing to you to you too!"
Oh it was on alright. And none of them were intending on going easy on each other. Even if they were brothers, they weren't going to hold anything back. And that included basketball too. So they began to play more aggressively than ever. Their scores fluctuated between the two, sometimes tying neck to neck, and other times one upping each other. Now it came down to this next shot. If Wataru got this next shot, then he would win. He started moving forward with the ball in hand, dribbling it a lot better than he did when he first started out. He manages to shoot another basket, only to lose his footing with the shiny wooden floor and tumble forward, landing on his knees first, and then on his face last.
Subaru ran over to him, ignoring the fact that Wataru had just scored against him. Wataru sat up with a whimper and a sniffle, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. The tip of his nose had some scratches on it, and there was blood gushing out of one of his nostrils. One of his knees was now missing some skin off of the surface and was bleeding as well, but not as badly as his nose. Despite his injuries, Wataru still bit back his tears, trying to look tough and manly in front of his big brother.
"I'm okay." he insisted when he shakily tried to stand back up.
"I'm okay I'm okay I'm okay…"
He was trying his hardest to fight the tears back as he limped over to where the ball was. His knee ached with every step he took, and he was beginning to drip blood on the floor. Subaru stopped him before he took another step. He then guided the younger boy back to the bench on the other side of the gym and got out a first aid kit from his gym bag. The first thing to take care of was his nose, which he cleaned up pretty well despite not being a doctor like Masaomi. Next he handed some tissues to Wataru for him to stem the bleeding with. Next he disinfected his knee (which earned him a lot of tears and hissing from the younger boy) and slapped a large hello kitty bandaid over the scrape.
After 5 minutes, the bleeding finally stopped, but Wataru wasn't allowed to play for 2 hours for fear that he might make his nose bleed again. He was lucky he didn't break his nose when he fell on his face. After cleaning the blood off the floor, Subaru decided that they had enough basketball for one day and decided to go home. Wataru was disappointed, but cheered up when Subaru treated him to ice cream.
"You're really starting to improve kiddo." he said as he sucked on his Popsicle.
"Really? I am?"
"Of course. You just need to practice more at school. If there's anything you're stuck with, you can come ask me about it."
Several sessions later, Wataru was now playing circles around his classmates, and he had his big brother to thank for that.
