Notes: Multiple chapters today because they're short and because otherwise I'll forget to update. XD

Archive: No.

Reviews: ... I don't know what to write here anymore XD

About Us

Chapter 12

By Miki

"Yuuta!"

Yuuta spun around on his heel, turning towards the sound of Mizuki's voice and seeing his manager stalking across the lobby floor to see him. "Er… Yes?" he asked, wondering what he could have done.

"Sign this," Mizuki demanded, pushing a piece of paper at him and putting his hands on his hips.

Yuuta stared down at the page Mizuki had handed him. It was a leave slip, already filled in for Friday night. He shifted on the spot, wishing he'd already written back to Atobe's message and wishing he hadn't decided to call instead.

Behind him, Atsushi and Yanagisawa strolled back into the lobby. "Hey Yuuta, you signed in already?" Atsushi asked.

Yuuta turned around and nodded.

"It's a team bonding exercise," Mizuki interrupted, putting his hands on Yuuta's cheeks and turning him back to look at him. "I expect you there."

Yuuta winced, watching as Mizuki delivered leave slips to Atsushi and Yanagisawa as well, disappearing off down the hallway behind the office.

"What's this, da ne?" Yanagisawa questioned, his eyes quickly scanning the text. "Paint balling, da ne? That sounds painful, da ne."

Atsushi looked just as apprehensive, but Yuuta noted the way he turned around and used the front desk pen to sign his name at the bottom of the form.

Yuuta stared at his own form, feeling sorry for himself and wondering why things turned out like this. He guessed he could ask Atobe if he could go out on Saturday night instead, but he'd been thinking – even if he'd told his brother no, the last time he'd asked – that he might go home for the weekend again. Sometimes he just missed the privacy of his own room compared to the busyness and the constant noise and commotion of the dormitory here.

"I bet we'll come out with bruises, da ne," Yanagisawa stated, taking the pen from Atsushi and signing his form too. "Hey, Yuuta, you have to come too, da ne. I'm not going and getting shot at if you're not, da ne."

Atsushi stared at Yuuta until he sighed, resigning himself to bruises on his body and paint in his hair. He guessed there really wasn't a way out of it, even if he had already messaged Atobe back about tomorrow. He didn't know why Mizuki thought they needed more team bonding, but he was their manager after all, and it wasn't as though just because they'd missed nationals this year, they wouldn't be a team after next year. Of course, the third years wouldn't be here anymore, but Yuuta would be. He'd probably end up playing Mizuki's and Akazawa's roles next year, and maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to practise now.

He dutifully took the pen from Yanagisawa and signed his form, noting that they'd be back late. Perhaps it was the fact that they hadn't gotten into nationals which had spurred on Mizuki's training sessions, intent that if he couldn't take them to nationals this year, they'd get there next year.

Yuuta just wondered how Atobe was going. If they were under pressure at St Rudolph for losing, then perhaps the pressure for Hyoutei to keep winning was worse.

(S)

"Syuusuke?"

Yumiko pushed Syuusuke's door wide open, noting the textbooks strewn across his bed. "Hm?" he answered, giving her a glance.

Yumiko thought he looked distracted and the phone at his side was a giveaway as to why. "Are you waiting for a phone call?" she asked.

"Not particularly," he smiled, though Yumiko suspected the opposite. He was probably waiting for a call from Tezuka or Kawamura since phone calls from the two seemed to have become regularity on Thursday nights. She suspected Tezuka asked about answers to maths homework while Kawamura used his English homework as an excuse to talk about other things, though really, she knew that if Kawamura really just wanted to talk to Syuusuke more often, all he had to do was ask.

"Have you called Yuuta yet?" she asked then, remembering it was Thursday night and if Yuuta wanted to come home for the weekend, he'd probably have to put in his leave slip tonight.

Syuusuke shook his head. "Not yet. Is there anything you want me to tell him?"

Yumiko paused. "No, but I'll have the phone when you're finished." She had a few calls to make for work and she wasn't going to use her mobile for them.

"I hope he doesn't bring Atobe home again with him," Syuusuke said, by way of answering.

Yumiko walked further into the room, looking out of the window. "I don't think he will," she responded, though she wondered.

It reminded her that she hadn't gotten that favour from Atobe yet and she wasn't intending to let it slip. She didn't really feel like crème brulee, and she couldn't really say there weren't a lot of other things she'd rather spend her time doing, but she wanted to talk to Atobe without Yuuta around. Even if she had told Syuusuke to let Yuuta do things for himself, she was still just a little too curious about Atobe to let the opportunity pass her by. She decided she'd probably make that call to Atobe first, before her business dealings.

Remembering she'd once been in middle school like Syuusuke and she'd once been buried in a sea of textbooks rather than in memos and papers and faxes and stacks of paperwork made her feel a little nostalgic. She glanced back at her brother, her eye suddenly catching sight of a small book half hidden under one of the texts on his bed. It was the book she'd come in looking for and she reached for it to pick it up, about to tell him off for having taken it.

The ring of the telephone cut off anything she would have said though.

Syuusuke almost never picked up the phone before two rings, even if he was right next to it. It gave Yumiko a moment to grasp her book and wave it in his face before she exited the room. She'd been looking for it for a while and she'd had a funny feeling that her brother had simply borrowed it without saying anything. Her gut feelings were usually right, so as she walked down to her room, she flicked through the pages, noting the bookmark halfway through.

She reconsidered calling Atobe for a moment. Did she want to call him now? It was already a Thursday night and the weekend would probably be the best time for her to catch up with him, unless she wanted to rush it after work one day. A moment later, she realised she didn't have Atobe's number anyway and stuck her head back around Syuusuke's doorway to ask him.

It might have been easier to ask Yuuta for it, but Syuusuke was on the phone to Tezuka already and it meant Yuuta wouldn't be able to protest if he didn't know anything. When she asked Syuusuke, however, he looked as though he almost wanted to protest.

(S)

"Nee-san."

Yumiko looked up from her book, taking the phone from Syuusuke's outstretched hand. It had only been ten minutes or so since she'd been into his room to retrieve her book, and she was still poking through the pages whilst lounging on the sofa in front of the TV, looking for the spot she'd last left off at. Syuusuke had shuffled her two bookmarks around, probably not recognising the sales receipt for her bookmark and taking it for his own.

She finally found her spot on page 44, and remembered why she'd abandoned the book the week before in the first place. It was boring.

"Everything okay?" she asked, noting her brother's expression.

It told her that, no, not everything was okay, but Yumiko wasn't about to delve into the list of reasons why Atobe was not a suitable suitor for Yuuta so she didn't press further. Knowing Syuusuke, she just knew he was keeping a list up there somewhere and she knew it was what he was currently thinking over.

He told her as much as he sat down on the chair opposite the sofa, giving her a level look. "Tezuka seemed curious as to why you would want Atobe phone number."

Yumiko smiled. "For a good cause," she answered, though she knew Syuusuke already thought he knew why she wanted it.

Getting to know Atobe better wasn't a good cause in his book although he did oblige her, standing up again to drop a folded piece of paper into her lap.

"He's coming over on Saturday night," Syuusuke said, shaking his head slightly.

"Who?" Yumiko asked, a little confused. "Atobe? Did you talk to Yuuta already?"

"No," Syuusuke replied, opening his eyes. "Tezuka."

"Oh?" Yumiko said, wondering what Yuuta would think.

He never said it, but she'd always gotten the impression that he always expected Syuusuke to pay him attention when he was at home, even if he complained more than enough about it. The few times some of the boys from Seigaku had come over at the same times Yuuta had come home, he'd looked distinctly uncomfortable and had crept off to his bedroom and holed himself up in there for hours when normally he'd be in a vegetative state in front of the television instead.

She knew a lot of the discomfort came from the fact that he'd started off attending middle school at Seigaku, but the other part of it… she wasn't so sure about. It was perhaps because apart from Saeki, he and Syuusuke had never really shared their friends.

At any rate, Syuusuke certainly didn't get along that well with Yuuta's friends from St Rudolph either. Asking him to stay in the same room with Mizuki was like asking for a war to erupt, even if lately the animosity between them seemed to have subsided a little bit, perhaps because Syuusuke had found a new dislike in Atobe.

"You're going to call Yuuta now, aren't you?" Syuusuke asked.

Yumiko tilted her head a little, looking at him. "You didn't call already?"

Syuusuke shook his head.

Yumiko shrugged in reply, waiting until her brother had gone upstairs again before unfolding the paper in her lap. She conceded it was probably a little odd doing things this way, but no matter. She dialled Atobe's number, listening to the ring tone and fiddling with her book.

Atobe took nearly eight rings to pick up the phone, by which time Yumiko was wondering whether there was something to be said about making people wait on the other end of the phone line.

"Yuuta," Atobe answered, surprising Yumiko.

She grinned to herself, tucking her knees up under her and pushing her book aside. "No, actually this is Yumiko, not Yuuta," she corrected, hearing what sounded like a noise of dissatisfaction from Atobe. He sounded as though she'd just cut off something of a scolding. "I was just wondering if your offer of afternoon tea still stands," she explained.

"Ah."

Yumiko noted, not without amusement, that Atobe sounded just a little put off.

"Of course, I haven't forgotten," he continued, "though I'm rather busy at the moment so I'm not sure-"

"How's tomorrow afternoon for you?" Yumiko cut in. He'd offered the afternoon tea, but if they were going to do it, she'd rather it were on her own terms. Allowing a boy like Atobe to dictate terms to her and tell her to juggle her schedule around his was not in her intentions.

"I have a work meeting until four, but I could meet you afterwards, if the time's convenient for you," she offered.

Atobe sounded even less enthusiastic then. "Actually I won't be free tomorrow afternoon," he answered a little haughtily.

Yumiko didn't think he was used to other people calling the shots around him, and that was fine, but she couldn't help but wonder how Yuuta put up with someone like him.

"I suppose I could make time to see you on Saturday, though it would have to be after practise and before my evening commitments," he conceded.

Yumiko smiled. Saturday worked for her.

"Saturday would be good for me," she answered, "although, there is just one thing…"

(S)

Yumiko marked down Saturday, 4:30 PM in her diary, tossing the phone onto the chair opposite as she stretched out along the sofa, lying on her back and picking up her book again.

Then she changed her mind, glancing at the clock, and had to get back up again to pick up the phone. Yuuta's number was on speed dial so she pressed the buttons automatically, waiting for the call to connect. It did, but what she got on the other end wasn't the sound of the phone ringing. It was the beeping that signalled his phone was already engaged.

She tossed the phone aside and picked up her book again, wondering if she'd ever get past page 44 and whether or not she was simply reading the book now because she didn't want to make her other phone calls yet.

(S)

Atobe put his phone on his desktop and marked down Saturday, 4:30 PM in his diary.

The ink cartridge in his fountain pen seemed to be running low, so his number '3' had a funny look to it where the ink had suddenly hit an air block. He pulled it apart with annoyance, staring at the ink cartridge and turning it upside down to see a pathetic dribble of ink down one side of the inside of the clear cartridge. Then he scrummaged through his top drawer, looking for the packet of replacements and not finding any.

Yumiko's phone call had surprised him… Perhaps less so because he hadn't expected her to call, but because he'd expected it to be Yuuta. He felt odd counting the days between talking with Yuuta or seeing him, but he did it almost automatically every time he flipped open his phone now and every time he looked at his message archives, he realised the number of unsent messages had gone up by one or two, or sometimes three.

It had taken him three tries to write a message that sounded decent when he read it aloud, and he'd sent that to Yuuta in the afternoon and he still hadn't gotten a reply.

In the end, he'd settled for something short and to the point, but he was starting to wonder if it had been too short. It wasn't a stretch of Atobe's imagination to think Yuuta might have been peeved by it. Yuuta could be… somewhat sensitive at times, Atobe thought.

He wasn't used to waiting.

As he scrummaged through his drawer some more, he wondered why he hadn't noticed it was so messy before. There was a box of paperclips he'd left open and now there were multicoloured plastic-coated paperclips dispersed throughout the drawer, something which annoyed him to no end.

His finger hit something sharp when he least expected it, and he pulled his hand from the drawer quickly, feeling the sharp pain setting in where it was bleeding. An open safety pin sat in the midst of the paperclips.

Atobe couldn't see why things just couldn't cooperate with him. Why was it so hard for things to just work out?

He glared at his phone again, but the display on the screen hadn't changed at all. No new messages. No missed phone calls. But of course, he didn't really need to look at it again to check it. He'd been doing that all day and he knew he hadn't missed anything from Yuuta.

In fact, he thought, his social life as a whole had been disturbingly quiet these past two weeks. Shishido and Ootori were absorbed in whatever it was that they did with each other, while Gakuto and Oshitari had been irksome trying to stick their noses where they weren't wanted, and yet Atobe couldn't really say anything had changed to trigger the lull in his socialising. They were all just preoccupied with training, in a way.

Finally pulling the entire drawer out of his desk and turning it upside down on the desk's surface, Atobe found the box of ink cartridges. He pushed his drawer back in to the old desk and tossed bundles of pens and pencils back in, leaving the mess of clips on his desk in front of him.

Yumiko was a mystery to him. Atobe had always thought Fuji Syuusuke was a little on the strange side, but then he'd met Yuuta, who was far more straight forward in everything he did and said, and Atobe had thought that Syuusuke must have been the odd one out in his family.

He knew now that he'd been wrong about that, but it still struck him as strange that Yuuta, being the youngest, hadn't turned out a lot more like his siblings. Weren't siblings supposed to turn out similarly?

Atobe picked up the paperclips scattered over his desk as he thought about it. The thought that he could have had siblings had never really occurred to him before. He wondered what it would have been like to have any. Would the house have been noisier somehow? Or would there have been more maids to look after them?

He didn't normally bother talking with the maids or the butlers much and even conversations with his mother tended to be restricted to mealtimes now. He could hardly imagine having anyone else constantly in the house with whom he'd actually be expected to spend time. It was an odd thought.

What did Yumiko want to get out of meeting up with him on Saturday? He realised he'd been the one to offer the invitation in the first place, but he hadn't really anticipated that she'd take him up on it, and he was half annoyed that she had. Not to mention, on top of that, she was asking him not to tell Yuuta about it.

He couldn't imagine why, unless she wanted to ask him something she knew Yuuta would object to…

Atobe glared at his phone. He was annoyed he'd picked up Yumiko's call at all, really, but it had been coming from Yuuta's home number so in his stupidity, he'd assumed perhaps something had happened to make Yuuta go home. He ought to have known better since it wasn't even the weekend yet.

As he kept glaring at it, it rang, catching him off guard. He was about to turn it off, having had enough conversation for one night, when he realised the caller ID read 'Yuu'.

He flipped it open and managed to stop himself just before saying "Yuuta" again. He wasn't about to do it for a second time in one night because with his luck, as of late, it might as well be Mizuki on the other end of the phone.

"Atobe speaking," he said instead, trying not to get his hopes up.

"Hi…" the voice said on the other end, and Atobe nearly breathed a sigh of relief.

"How are you?" he asked, resuming picking up the paperclips on his desk. He pressed the phone as close as possible to his ear, trying to hear if there was anything going on in the background on Yuuta's end.

"I'm… okay?" Yuuta supplied, not bothering to hide his confusion. Atobe rarely asked him how he was during their conversations. He tended to keep observations about Yuuta's health to the times he felt like interrogating him over it, like when Yuuta had been sick.

Atobe waited for a lengthier explanation, but none was forthcoming and he sat down in his chair. "So," he prompted. "I didn't get a response from you about dinner tomorrow."

"Ah… right," Yuuta replied, awkward. "I thought I'd call you instead, but you've been engaged for a while."

Atobe jolted. "Right," he clarified. Yuuta wouldn't have known it was because he'd been talking to Yumiko. He wasn't at home and Yumiko certainly wouldn't have told him. "I was just talking to our coach," he lied.

Yuuta was sitting on the edge of his bed as he spoke. He tensed a little, pulling his feet up and sitting cross-legged instead of letting his feet dangle above the floor. He didn't really want to think about tennis actually. He didn't like the thought that Atobe felt like he was on another level of play entirely. He didn't like the thought that if Atobe watched him play, he'd see all the holes in his game where he was trying to improve. So he changed the topic; it was easier that way. "So anyway… About dinner on Friday…"

"Tomorrow, you mean," Atobe clarified.

"Same thing," Yuuta grumbled, just glad he didn't have anything else to say about tennis. "I… don't think I can come tomorrow, so would Saturday be okay for you?"

Atobe paused. "No… I have a family dinner on Saturday."

"Oh," Yuuta said, and Atobe wondered if he couldn't have expressed his sentiments any better.

"Well… Afternoon maybe?" Yuuta started, a little hesitantly.

"No," Atobe replied, shaking his head to himself.

He'd already committed himself to meeting Yumiko, and as she'd asked him not to tell Yuuta, he assumed that meant he couldn't exactly bring Yuuta either.

"I… Just let me see if I can juggle anything," he replied, wondering if Yuuta could tell he was hiding something. He wasn't a particularly transparent person, so he hoped the answer was 'no'.

"Oh, well… Okay then… I guess I'll go home on Saturday then," Yuuta mumbled. "We have a team bonding exercise tomorrow so that's why…"

He leaned back on the bed, leaning back on his hand. "Anyway, you must be really busy huh? You still have nationals coming up so…" Yuuta babbled. "I'll talk to you later."

"No, that's not…" Atobe sighed.

"So, see you Atobe-san," Yuuta hurried on, hanging up as Atobe put his fingers to his temple.

He finished picking up all the paperclips on his desk, replaced the ink cartridge in his pen and pulled out his homework, throwing himself into the history of the shogunate era, trying not to think about how annoyed he felt.

Why was it that things with Yuuta just didn't go smoothly? He'd been wrong to think that trying to get the courage to kiss Yuuta was the hard part.

Trying to date him was damn near impossible.

.tbc.