Hi everyone! Author eunjus2 here! Thnx for the reviews, they feed my mailbox and make me much happier!
Again I made a (too) long story which I split up into two parts!
Enjoy and don't forget to review!
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"Haha! Now I only have Yagyuu-senpai and Yanagi-senpai left to beat and then I'll be going straight to the Finals!" Kirihara laughed as he walked beside Jackal in the schoolyard. "Piece of cake!"
It was the beginning of a new, glorious day at Rikkai and the previous night Kirihara had managed to clobber Jackal big-time. The wall versus the demon… does that give you a clue of who might've won? Oh glorious morning indeed.
"If ya don't watch it we'll be taking our righteous revenge at you behind the lockers after practice!" Pop. Marui was still sporting a nice, purple black-eye.
"I'd like to see you try fatty-senpai!"
"Akaya! Respect your senpai or you'll be running laps until your legs fall off!"
Kirihara winced. Sanada-fukubuchou's voice travelled a little too easy over the schoolyard. Many of the students arriving to school quickly turned their heads towards the source of the voice. Which they would've done anyway since Sanada arrived together with Yukimura and Yanagi.
And Yukimura, especially when together with Sanada and Yanagi, would be the closest to a deity that Rikkai would ever have. But lately, his image as an angel outside the courts had gotten stained.
And the reason for it was pushing his way through the crowd as we speak… er, I mean read.
Niou Masaharu, the boy who was called the Trickster of the courts. And he was acting it outside of the courts too, to the despair of his surroundings.
Yagyuu had already arrived to school and was now waiting for his (former) doubles-partner at the entrance. He noticed the other boy had forgotten to button his shirt. Again, and he had also forgotten to brush his hair.
As Niou walked up to him and spoke Yagyuu noted a little more satisfied, that his friend at least had remembered to brush his teeth.
"Good morning Niou-kun" Yagyuu greeted.
"Morning…" Niou yawned and rubbed his eyes. "And Hiroshi, please don't say anything about my tie cuz it's just too early to-"
"What… happened to your tie, Niou-kun?"
And Niou was just about to answer when Yukimura passed by. And the captain gave him the Glare of the Century.
"Uh… Nothing. Nothing happened to my tie" Niou quickly said.
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FLASHBACK
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Niou jogged over to Yukimura's house. It was past five p.m. and school was over a long time ago. For Niou, school hadn't even begun that day because he had overslept – courtesy of Yukimura who'd called him in the middle of the night, screaming in his ear that they'd 'sort this damn mess up and explain it all to Renji and Genichirou' before morning practice.
Morning practice, which happened to start at the ungodly hour of six o'clock in the morning. Because of the upcoming Nationals, or at least that was Yukimura's excuse. Niou suspected their captain had planned it like that just to be able to torture them.
So when he accidentally overslept and then had to call to excuse himself while Yukimura wasin class… well, Niou had the choice of coming over to Yukimura's house after school or lose his spot on the Regulars.
"You're lucky neither Genichirou nor Renji went to practice today" Yukimura snapped as soon as he threw the front door open. "Otherwise you would've been dragged back to the courts and run laps until you fainted!"
"Uh… why do they get to skip practice and I don't?"
"For your information, Renji's been training with Akaya at another court outside of school and Genichirou…"
"What about 'Genichirou'?"
"…That damn first-year hit him in the head with a ball so I excused him from practice. And I made the first-year run your laps."
Niou snickered. But stopped when he caught the look on Yukimura's face.
"Don't you dare" the captain hissed. "I've had another of those calls from a worried teacher, and I was only lucky my parent's weren't at home."
"Can I come in?" Niou wondered. "The neighbors might get suspicious if we do all the talking on your doorstep…"
Yukimura stepped aside and let the other boy in. That's when Niou noticed that Yukimura was still wearing his school uniform. And Yukimura realized that Niou wasn't.
"Where's your uniform?" he said.
"At home?"
"But you're supposed to have come over here directly from school! Or at least that's what Renji and Genichirou are thinking and they're both coming over here in half an hour!"
"Well, just tell'em I overslept because our crazy buchou had to call me in the middle of the night to talk about his problems!" Niou exclaimed.
"No way!" Yukimura snapped, and started shoving Niou towards the stairs leading to his bedroom on the second floor. "We're gonna look as perfectly normal as possible – I don't want anything to differ from the ordinary when we do this!"
Yukimura forcibly dragged Niou into his room and rummaged around in the closet until he found an extra set of pants and a shirt which he threw to Niou.
"I don't have a spare tie though" Yukimura said thoughtfully.
"I think this'll do great" Niou sighed, and turned to leave.
"Wait! Where're you going?"
"The little girls' room?"
Niou wasn't entirely sure why he put up with their buchou any longer. Except for the fact that the fragile-looking boy could beat the hell out of anyone on the courts, and that Sanada probably could do the same for their captainoutside the courts.
"Oh… sorry. Go on."
When Niou had gone to the bathroom, Yukimura went downstairs to the living room and lay down on the sofa with a heavy sigh. If he was lucky, they'd explain everything to his best friends, and then it would only be a matter of time before the problem had solved itself.
Which meant no more odd phone calls from worrying teachers, something he'd had to hide from his parents and little sister. And no more blushing girls wishing him and Niou luck in the corridors.
And especially no Sanada or Yanagi who'd try to give him 'the Talk' or trying to give some of Sanada's older brother's condoms to him!
"I'm downstairs!" he shouted as he heard Niou exit the bathroom.
"How do I look?" the Trickster asked, doing a ballerina twirl in front of Yukimura.
"… please don't do that."
"Okay" Niou smirked, and sat down on the sofa.
"You look great. It's really useful that we've got the same size, don't you think?"
"… can't I just borrow you tie?"
"Masaharu, can't you just shut up and sit still without doing anything rash?!"
"No need to use that tone buchou!"
Both of them sighed and simultaneously glared at the other. They hadn't even tried to start explaining this whole mess to the two other members of the tennis team coming over in a few minutes, and things were already starting to look bad.
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TO BE CONTINUED NEXT CHAPTER