I'm alive! I'm so sorry for the wait, I wanted to regularly publish but I've been very busy writing and finishing this fanfiction in French, but now I'm gonna have some time to keep translating it~
So please enjoy :D
The few students who passed in the corridor during the interclass did not pay more than necessary attention to the first year who seemed to be lost there. Leaning against the wall of the 2-1 classroom and facing her, Suna didn't mind the few glances in their direction that penetrated his field of vision. The only thing that intrigued him was the reason why she had asked him to leave the room to join her. And considering the glances she kept throwing at Nagano Ritsuka and her other comrades, she didn't seem to want to talk.
"And so, why did you want me to come if Nagano-san was busy?" he asked, his tone punctuated by a certain impatience.
"Oh yes, that's right, sorry!" Akemi answered by shaking her head, as if reattached to reality – and the grimace that stretched her face for a second didn't escape the teen, who had to restrain a slight sarcastic laugh.
She glanced one last time to the class, before facing him completely. A fine malicious smile dressed her lips, and by seeing it, Suna could realize that she indeed seemed in better shape than the day before. It indeed seemed hard to feel worse – he had even wondered if she was still alive on the train, considering how pale she was – but she looked like a totally different person.
"In fact..." she began in a hesitant voice.
Her azure gaze flickered over the students around them, looking for any attentive ear that might hear the conversation that was about to follow.
"What's your opinon of Ricchan?"
Akemi held back a grimace as she realized that she had perhaps gone a little too directly, and it was not at all what she had planned. But her elder clearly didn't seem to be the type to like to beat around the bush. And if she wanted to get an idea of what the boys thought of her best friend, it was best to just ask one of those, after all.
"What?" he asked spontaneously, blinking a few times.
"Ritsuka, you know her a little, don't ya? She's been in your class for eight months, so I wanted to know what's your thought about her!
"I don't know, why would even you ask?"
His thin brown eyebrows were furrowed, reflecting the incomprehension that seemed to tickle him. But Akemi couldn't tell him about the situation: she didn't want to expose her best friend's feelings in this way. First of all, because Ritsuka might be angry with her when she would learn about it, and moreover because the possibility that it would reach Kita's ears through her fault was perhaps not the best prospect.
"I can't tell you, sorry! But it's just between us two, don't worry."
"I don't talk to her that much...," he thought slowly and nonchalantly. "I just know she's on the girls' team, so we've already talked about volleyball a bit."
Silence; before he adds in a flat, dull voice:
"Ah, and we once had group work together."
A new silence crashed on their shoulders.
"Okay, but that doesn't really tell me what you think of her... Do you think she's pretty? Interesting?"
Ritsuka was interesting. And she was pretty. She was the first to know it and to think so. Both feminine and athletic, she had a charm that was impossible to miss. The fine features of her face emphasized the emerald shine of her eyes, and her rather short hair, the maximum length she allowed herself for volleyball, gave her both an air of maturity and candor at the same time. Akemi had often said to herself that her calm air, sometimes almost reserved at the limit of the shyness, also offered her a touching side, which she was, herself, deprived.
But even if she knew all this, as being her point of view, a confirmation would be useful.
"I don't know," mumbled a Suna who only wanted to go back to sleep on his desk. "She's cool, I think."
"That sucks, it doesn't help me at all," Akemi mumbled with a sulky pout, before recovering herself by realizing that she had to speak better to an elder.
She didn't have time to add anything before the bell indicating the end of class rang in their ears. She swelled her cheeks out in disappointment that the conversation had led to absolutely nothing, but then resigned herself to the fact that the students in 2-1 were already going inside, and she wouldn't have a chance to talk to Ritsuka either – the reason she had come all the way here in the first place.
"Bye," Suna said before going inside without waiting for an answer.
And before she had time to understand anything, he had already slipped away to slump back on his table. At the back of the room, the azure eyes of the teenager hit the questioning ones of her best friend, to whom she addressed a wide guilty smile accompanied by a wave of the hand before disappearing to go back to class, and this under Suna's glance. The high school student swallowed, somewhat disturbed by this conversation they had just had, before turning with discretion towards his classmate who was sitting calmly in her place, and who awoke in him many questions.
Why on earth did this girl – whose name he still did not know – come to speak to him about her?
With all this, Akemi hadn't progressed at all. Not only she had not learned anything from Suna, but it seemed that she had attracted Ritsuka's attention, which she had tried to avoid. Indeed, shortly after she had joined her classroom, her friend had sent her a message on Line to ask her what she was doing in front of her class. And if she had spent the afternoon to consider the message and to think about her answer, the night had fallen before she had even found it.
So it was as she was lying in bed, just before she started to work on her homework, that she had simply answered that she was coming to see her to chat when the bell rang. And since her best friend seemed to have believed it, she was reassured to think that she must not have seen her with the volleyball player.
"Akemi!" her mother shouted from the first floor. "Are you coming to help me empty the dishwasher?"
A long sigh escaped the teenager, as she could finally settle down after her Japanese exercises. If she wasn't afraid of getting a new bump while the first one was finally diminishing, she would probably have let her head fall against her desk. But she obediently got up, threw her smartphone on her bed, before leaving her room to rush down the stairs.
"Misa isn't back yet?" she asked when she entered the kitchen.
"She's at a friend's house working on her homework," explained her mother, Fumiya Youko, who was already busy preparing the meal.
Akemi answered a simple "okay" before grabbing the still slightly warm plates from the dishwasher. It was not uncommon for her sister to wander right and left as part of her revisions and classes. As the treasurer of the student council, she had always been more invested than she was in her academic success in order to live up to her role, but also to the demands of their family - and despite all the effort she put into her revisions, Akemi noticed the gap between their grades every term.
"Misaki told me that you're both going to eat at my mother's house this weekend," Youko said in a soft voice.
A nostalgic smile came to stretch Youko's face, without her turning her head in his direction. However, she didn't need to say anything to guess what she could think about, because if time had passed, since these years when Youko hadn't spoken to her mother, after her marriage, she still kept a melancholy that she tried as much as possible to hide.
"Yeah, I didn't really wanna go there but Misa agreed before telling me so…"
A certain amusement passed over the surface of Youko's blue eyes at the honesty and spontaneity of her daughter. Obviously, this would not be the most fun weekend of her life, but she was used to regularly go to her grandmother's house. And then, deep down, she got along with her sincerely, when the latter didn't start criticizing her son-in-law for no reason, the volleyball or the teenager's results in math...
Yes, it would absolutely not be a fun week-end at all.
I hope you liked this chapter :3 I enjoy writing Akemi and Suna together so much ahah T.T
Don't hesitate to fav/follow, and to leave a review, it would mean a lot for me c:
