Chapter Eighty Three: Snug as a Bug

Disclaimer: I do not own Eyeshield 21.

Song Playing: Sleep Tight by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Theme 49: Cold

"What is that supposed to be?"

Not only did his sudden intrusion on her personal time cause her to visibly jump from her seat but it caused her to drop several stitches. Letting out an uncharacteristic curse that would have made the team blush, she spun around to glare at her unwanted visitor.

Hiruma didn't even have the courtesy to blink in surprise when she snapped at him. "Would it kill you to make a little noise?"

He gave her knitting project a pointed stare. "Would it kill you to make something less offensive to look at?"

Deciding the best course of action was to ignore him completely, her current alternative plan was to stab him with her needles, she returned back to her work. Grumbling, she fumbled through putting her dropped stiches back onto her needle. As far as she was concerned the quarterback didn't know what he was talking about. Sure the yarn was an… unconventional combination of yellows and oranges but it wasn't that bad. Besides it had been a gift from her neighbor to practice her less than stellar knitting skills on.

Therefore, while it may not have been a color she personally would have chosen, it was soft and warm and free and so she really had no room to complain.

But she really really could have done without Hiruma staring at her over her shoulder.

She had managed to finagle four of her seven dropped stiches back onto her needle before deciding that she couldn't be bothered with the other three before he spoke up again. "Seriously. What is it?"

"It's a scarf." At least it was supposed to be. If she were honest with herself her scarf looked more like a tight mess of spaghetti that an article of clothing. Still, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that her project was going anything less than swimmingly.

Unfortunately she wasn't fooling anyone. Least of all Hiruma. "Really?"

"Yes." She was convinced she was going to crack a molar if she clenched her jaw any harder.

A pause.

And because he never could resist a stab at pointing out her faults he had to follow up with an, "Are you sure?"

Even though she knew both her mother and dentist would be disappointed with her Mamori found herself grinding her teeth together in a valiant effort not to strangle him with her partially finished scarf. "Yes."

After that he seemed fairly content to ignore her in favor of working on something on his laptop. It was another half an hour before Mamori found herself rapidly running out of yarn. Deciding that it was long enough, she bound of the edge and weaved in the tail. Holding it out she scrunched her nose. It was too tight in certain spots and too loose in others. It was also very noticeable where she had dropped her stiches. Overall her scarf wasn't as neat as she had hoped but passable enough that she didn't feel too disappointed at the results.

This feeling lasted all of thirty seconds.

Then Hiruma had to look up and nearly laughed himself sick at her handiwork. From then on she only felt equal parts rage and embarrassment. Shoving her scarf into her sewing basket, she stormed out of the room.

Three days later she had turned the room upside down looking for it only to come up empty handed. She had hoped to show her neighbor so that the elderly woman could explain to her what she had done wrong and how to improve the next time around but apparently that wasn't happening. She did one more half-hearted search of the clubhouse before resigning herself to the fact that Cerberus had somehow gotten a hold of it.

Which meant that the scattered remains of her scarf were probably littered across the neighborhood.

Or, more likely, he had eaten it.

If he had eaten it she really hoped she wasn't the one to find the proof of it when she went to clean the field of his messes. With a sigh she packed her things and went home.

It was years later that a fresh out of college Mamori found herself with some rare but much needed downtime. Feeling uncharacteristically lazy, she settled herself down with a bowl of noodles and turned on her small television. After several seconds of channel surfing she stumbled upon an American football game. A wave of nostalgia swept over her and she stopped her search for something to watch.

Then she recognized who was playing.

By complete coincidence she had managed to find not only a live feed of a football game, but one where she personally knew one of the players. What a small world it was. Mamori found herself focusing extra hard for any signs of her former quarterback.

As it turned out she didn't have to look hard at all. She managed to catch the very tail end of the second quarter and right into the halftime interview with Hiruma. It must have been absolutely freezing out because he was bundled up in a heavy coat, a thick hat shoved onto his spikey head, and wrapped around his neck was-

"That's my scarf!" Slamming her bowl onto the table top Mamori yelled accusingly at the screen.

She had no idea what they were talking about as she found herself too agitated to listen properly. For years she had wrongfully assumed that Cerberus had seen fit to destroy her knitting attempt, only to find out that the blonde who had ridiculed it had apparently stolen it. The evidence of his theft was coiled around his scrawny neck in its unmistakable yellow-orange glory. That jerk. That asshole. "That son of a bitch!"

Mamori had clearly spent a little too much time around said son of a bitch over the years. Not only had her profanity filter fallen down a very slippery slope but her tolerance level for his antics were at a record low. Which is how she found herself not just letting matters go as she would have only several years ago. Instead she found herself viciously dialing an all too familiar number and watching him answer her call smack dab in the middle of his interview.

It was immensely satisfying to be able to watch his face change as she laid into him about his brazen theft of her personal knitting project. At least it was immensely satisfying until he started laughing at her which was about the time the interview abruptly went to a commercial break.

Thus she found herself not enjoying a low key day off liked she had planned but instead engaged in an intense quarrel with one very aggravating quarterback as if they were still a couple of kids in school and not two theoretically well-adjusted adults on completely different continents.