Week 5

Monday

Rukawa finds out come Monday morning that he no longer has just one class with Sakuragi, but that he has all six classes with the idiot.

Tuesday

God, someone please shoot him.

Wednesday

Sakuragi gives him a granola bar. He has no idea why Sakuragi chose to give him a granola bar, but he just did, and it was during lunch period, saying "here" and just walking away and throwing back an "I don't want it."

He threw it against the wall to see if it would explode.

It fell back to the ground with a safe-sounding plop.

He opened it.

He sniffed it.

The seal looked real enough. Didn't look like it was tampered.

He ate it.

It was pretty good.

Thursday

"Is he sick?"

He was now overhearing a close by conversation carried out by Sakuragi's four thug friends.

The one with the mustache says, "Yeah, he seems different, like he's…"

"Distracted." Mito answers.

"He hasn't said anything about Haruko." The one with the bleached hair provides and they all nod along.

"Yeah, weird." The porky one adds.

"It almost seems like Sakuragi likes another girl." Mito says half-jokingly and then all of them get quiet.

"Oh man, he's cheating on Haruko." The guy with the bleached hair says.

"What a rotten scumbag." The porky one shakes his head in outright disapproval.

Rukawa wonders why everyone is so interested in Sakuragi's love life and then his brain provides the reasonable thought that these guys just don't have hobbies. Not everyone knows the joys of basketball, so he mustn't hold it against them for their ignorance, but that doesn't mean he has to like them, because since they're Sakuragi's friends, it's obvious they share in his stupidity.

"He's got himself a new girlfriend. I wonder if she's hotter than Haruko."

Tch. These guys were completely stupid and…who the hell was Haruko?

Friday

He comes early to the basketball court and finds Mitsui and Kogure practicing together.

Although…

Practicing doesn't seem to be quite the right word to use here, as practicing would consist of them looking at where they were shooting the ball instead of looking at each other!

Mitsui misses a couple of baskets, which knowing the compulsive jackass, you would think he'd be convulsing on the floor in pathetic anger and feelings of unworthiness right about now.

However that isn't the case, as he just keeps on missing more baskets, but doesn't seem to care at all, not when Kogure smiles at him and touches his hand instead of making a grab for the ball.

Rukawa has to wonder what the hell these two are doing if they aren't playing a practice game of basketball.

Seriously.

He's confused, because if you have a basketball in your hand, the only logical thing to do is to get it in the hoop, and to score more points than your opponent and to win --and if you happen to look really cool while doing it, well that's just how some things work out--but that didn't seem to be the goal that these two were setting out for.

This didn't feel like practice at all, and Rukawa, for all his denseness felt suddenly like he was intruding on something that he really shouldn't be.

Kogure laughed and propelled himself forward like he was trying to steal the ball, except he hadn't stolen anything but the breath from Mitsui, as both of them were knocked off balance and landed on the floor together with Kogure practically straddling Mitsui and Mitsui grinning like an idiot.

"Ahem." He made his presence known before he was scarred for life, because he was finally, finally starting to get what the fuck was going on between these two.

"Oh Rukawa-kun, I didn't see you there." Kogure, the happy bastard called to him and Mitsui was turning two shades of red, and rolling off the floor and helping Kogure up.

They were staring at each other again, and if Rukawa wasn't so uncomfortable, he would have told them to stop making googly eyes at each other and to get off the damn court and give him the ball—wiped first—and let him practice, because if they weren't going to use the court properly, then they shouldn't have any problems with him going right on ahead and making himself comfortable.

Saturday

He was practicing his free throws at the outside basketball court when he spotted something red in his periphery.

Something red and tall.

But when he looked it wasn't there anymore.

He went back to practicing, but the entire time he could feel eyes on him.

It didn't affect his game, as nothing could do that, but it still sort of…bothered him.

Maybe, somebody else wanted to use the court.

Hmmph. They'd just have to wait until he was done.

He'd worked up a good sweat fifteen minutes into his practice and he didn't know if it was the way the early morning sun was shinning, or that thing that happened at the corner of your eyes, but he could swear that red and tall something was back again.

Although when he looked it wasn't there anymore.

This was going to annoy him.

He turned around and he could see it again.

What the hell was that?

Was his eyesight getting bad?

He'd always been blessed with great eyesight; maybe it was catching up with him.

Maybe he'd have to go get a checkup soon.

And throughout all of this, he could still see that red and--what the hell was that?

He made it look like he was going to shoot the ball, but suddenly he turned around, intent on finding out what that thing was.

However, he was only faced with nothing but air and the empty half of the court.

He turned back around and sighed, thinking that maybe Kogure had had a point when he'd said he was too tense. Maybe if he took a water break and-

THUMP!

That thump wasn't just any thump, as Rukawa brought a hand up and passed it over the area that the mysterious flying basketball had just collided into, effectively denting his head!

He turned around and saw Sakuragi with a smirk and he almost felt nostalgic for a moment, before it was violently beat down with the unending rage that he felt right now.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, his hand still cupping the back of his head.

"Ain't it obvious." Sakuragi answered smugly, and Rukawa for another second there felt relief, because this was strangely something that he could expect from Sakuragi. It was like the past weeks' weirdness had finally come to an end.

"Get off, I'm using the court." He said, and turned back to play his practice game.

"You get off. This is my court." Sakuragi said and pointed at himself.

"I'm not getting off this court." He said finally, already zoning out into practice mode.

"Well then I'm not either!" Sakuragi shot back.

Well it wasn't like he was going to be playing full court. So whatever.

They could play on the same court.

They were on the same team. It didn't matter.

Except after that, for some weird reason, he kept missing free throws.

Oh no.

Sunday

The panic hadn't caught up to him yet.

He was waiting for it though, because if Kogure and Mitsui's stupidity was contagious, then he was obviously infected.

Yesterday, he couldn't pull off one decent free throw, because his attention had not been entirely on his side of the court. He noticed that Sakuragi had improved tremendously in the three months that he started to play. It was almost sickening and he had felt a pang of jealousy for a stupid second. He wasn't supposed to feel jealous.

That was…

Stupid.

So Sakuragi had some talent, some was the key word here.

While he had…a lot of talent, a lot being the key word on this side of the fence.

He shouldn't be bogged down by something so trifle.

There was nothing to worry about.

Except, he was coming back to that weird thought of 'who the hell was Haruko?'