Sorry for the late update! I was planning for this chapter to be a match in the Kantou Semifinals, but I'm still trying hard to complete it. So, to placate you for a while, here is an omake chapter!

"I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!" yelped Suzume, dashing through the school gates. Suddenly, the petite auburn-haired girl fell flat on her face. "Itai..." She looked at what had tripped her up. It was an old racket, dusty from lying on the ground.

"Huh?" Suzume picked it up. "I wonder if it belongs to one of the sempai-tachi..." She was interrupted from her thoughts by the school bell. "Aaaahhh!" The racket was thrown quickly into her bag.

"Muranaka-san, could you please answer this question?" Suzume sighed and stood up. She had already spent the better part of the first lesson standing outside the classroom.

But Lady Luck just wasn't on her side today. As she got on her feet, her leg got tangled up with the strap of her bag. "Eeep!" the girl went down like a ninepin. The tables which were unfortunate enough to be close by were overturned as well. Indeed, this was not Suzume's day.

"Ohayou, Tsuki-sempai..." muttered Suzume, sinking into a chair next to her double's partner in the canteen.

"Ohayou, Suzume-chan. Why the sullen look?"

"I have got to be jinxed. Nothing today has gone right yet."

"That bad?"

Suzume sighed deeply. "Yup... Oh yeah," she grabbed the racket from the bag, "Could you help me to see whose this is? As far as I know, it doesn't belong to one of the first-years."

"Okay."

"Thanks, Tsuki-sempai! I better get back to class now. Don't want to be late again." Suzume sped off. The rest of her day was spent in relative peace. The same could not be said of Tsuki, though.

A drenched Tsuki sat down next to Sumiko.

"Tsuki-chan! What happened?"

"The water sprinklers in the school garden decided to switch on when I was taking a short stroll during recess."

"That's really unlucky."

"Tell me about it... By the way, this isn't your racket, is it? Suzume-chan found it."

"Good morning, class."

Tsuki hastily put the racket away at the teacher's arrival, accidentally poking it into Sumiko's ribs in the process. Due to the shock, the brown-haired girl overbalanced and collapsed onto the floor.

"Is there anything wrong, Fuji-san?"

"Iie, sensei."

"Is this yours?"

Yuzuki and Yuzuyu shook their heads at Tsuki's question. "Maybe it's Izumi-chan's!" Yuzuki snatched the racket out of her hand and was off like a shot with her twin.

"Izumi-chan! Is this yours?"

Just at that moment, Yuzuki accidentally stepped on a stray tennis ball and knocked down Yuzuyu. The racket flew out of her hand and hit Izumi squarely on the head.

"Itai... What was that?" Izumi rubbed her forehead, glaring at the offending object.

"A racket, apparently." Natsumi picked it up. A piece of heavy curtain fell on top of her. "Nani?"

"Gomen!" yelled a student from the second floor of the school building. They had apparently been decorating the room when the cloth had slipped out of the window.

The eight members of the girls' regulars sat in a circle with the racket in the center.

"This thing is bad luck."

"It made me trip two times."

"I got watered."

"It poked me hard and I overbalanced."

"I fell down."

"I was pushed down together in the fall."

"It hit me on the head."

"I wouldn't have been there if not for this thing."

"It's the cursed racket." The seven unfortunate girls looked in surprise at Michiko.

"The cursed racket? I've heard about the story from my brother. The time when the boys had found a cursed racket. Eiji-sempai had actually been bleached with paint."

"That wasn't the true one. But this racket... I wonder..."

"What should we do to it?"

"I want to investigate it."

"You can bring it back then, Wakana-sempai."

The girls chatted happily while they walked back home. Michiko accidentally bumped against the side of the bridge, and the racket slipped out of her bag which had somehow become unzipped. They watched as it plunked into the water and disappeared.

"Well, apparently that's the end of it," commented Sumiko. How wrong she was!

Downriver, a certain brown-haired teen picked it up. "Saa, what is this?"

O_O

This chapter was based off episode 99 in the anime, 'The Cursed Racket'.

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