"Across the Courts"
04. For the Love of Sweets
As far as Marui was concerned, Valentine's Day was the one love of his life, but it never occurred to him that that special day fell on a weekend this year.
##
There was only one day—with the exclusion of his birthday—that made Marui Bunta bound up at the first sound of his alarm, already as happy as ever. Violet eyes gleamed as he ran a comb through his vivid red hair and slipped on his tie in preparation for school. Briefly, he glanced with gushing love at the calendar, which showed the month of February (there was an enlarged photo of a cheesecake, displaying its creamy white texture in its full glory, and that was quite adorned with glistening berry sauces) and the day of the 14th marked (rather, circled in the shape of a heart with a fat red marker, complete with doodles of little baby hearts and roses) on a Thursday.
With only a buttered toast (slathered with jam and honey) in his mouth, he rushed out the door with his school bag swung over his back, not noticing how empty and quiet the house seemed for a weekday. His mind was utterly filled with the thought of all those chocolates. Oh yes; that day was the one and only Valentine's Day. As far as Marui was concerned, it was the one love of his life, for it was only on Valentine's Day that he could get all the free sweets he could ever have wished for. Who cared if all these sweets came from rabid fan girls screaming, "We love you, Marui-samaaaaaaa!" while gravitating towards him at light speed? Marui was perfectly content to just accept all the (many) gifts and happily consume them all (usually it would take him two months to finish; it was quite a pity that he could finish his Halloween candies in a mere half a month).
It was only when he reached Rikkaidai that he first realized the signs of Something Wrong. He stopped abruptly at the gates and looked around the empty campus.
"Where is everyone?" Marui said blankly in great confusion.
"Marui-kun?" someone suddenly spoke up from behind him.
"Huh?" Marui said, whipping around and immediately recognizing the identity of the speaker. "Oh! Good morning, Takahashi-sensei!"
"What are you doing here?" the Rikkaidai principal, a man in his forties questioned, an expression of confusion equal to Marui's on his face. "It's Saturday."
"Saturday??" Marui exclaimed. "You can't be serious!!"
His mind rushed back to the image of the calendar on his wall. Surely, as clear as day, he recalled that it was Thursday the 14th of February that was flamboyantly marked and circled in vibrant red ink. Was the phenomenon of Something Wrong messing with his mind? (However, unbeknownst to the volley specialist, a certain Trickster had switched the calendar in his room with an identical one from last year, even exactly copying the red markings around the 14th. That, apparently, would explain Marui's apparent confusion with the days. But as that would be another story, we will leave that aside and return to our young hero.)
The principal frowned.
"I am quite serious, Marui-kun," the man said stiffly. "Now please head on back home and come to school on Monday. Good day."
With that, the principal left the flustered boy as he headed towards his original destination. (Why the principal had decided to walk past the school on a weekend would be a complete mystery to us as well.) Marui merely gaped at the man's retreating back. Then he returned to gaping at the empty campus. Then he would have sat down and bawled himself out at the sorrowful prospect of receiving no chocolates at all today, but as Marui Bunta was a member of the Rikkaidai tennis team, the absolute kings, he would handle himself in a dignified manner.
As such, he opted for rushing straight towards the house of Jackal Kuwahara, his doubles partner.
##
Jackal stared. Then he blinked. And stared some more. For Marui was pouting at him with such big, glassy eyes. Never before, in all their time as teammates, had he ever seen cheerful Marui look so despondent. And without chewing any bubblegum.
"Jackaaaaaal," Marui was wailing. "It's Saturday!"
"I'm… aware of that," Jackal said awkwardly.
Marui scowled at the other boy's apparent indifference.
"Valentine's Day is on a Saturday this year!" the redhead proclaimed loudly, waving his arms for effect.
"I see… Um, would you like to come in?"
Marui's scowl deepened, wondering how someone so oblivious to the endless joys and sheer sweet delicacy of Valentine's could exist on this earth, but decided to accept the invitation anyway. He stomped into Jackal's house and, without stopping to gaze in wonder at the unique Brazilian decorations he usually gaped at, planted himself at the kitchen table. In his huffiness, he failed to note the strangely strained expression on his doubles partner's face, as though the latter boy was trying not to burst out in uncharacteristic laughter.
"Would you like some chocolates I saved from Halloween?" Jackal asked rather tentatively.
Marui shot him a withering glare, under which the usually-stoic defense specialist flinched and backed away.
"It's Valentine's Day," the volley genius snapped, his voice growing increasingly louder with each word as he resumed his wild arm-waving. "You don't go around eating leftover chocolate when you could get free, fresh chocolates from doting fans! Why do you still have chocolate from nearly four months ago, anyway? And yet—"
"'—today is a Saturday. I can't get Valentine chocolates when there's no school,' is what you were going to say… right?" someone finished.
Marui started and stared at the direction from which he heard the eerily familiar voice that had correctly predicted his every word. Yanagi Renji, the master, stepped out from the shadows of a house plant in the corner of the kitchen, his lidded eyes looking calmly in the direction of the redhead.
"Yanagi!" Marui said, startled. "Why are you here?"
"Why our strategist is here is not important," another voice put in, also coming from the same direction. "What's important is that you're here."
And Niou Masaharu stepped out from the shadows of the house plant, his eyes gleaming under the streaming sunlight.
"Heh, Yanagi really did make a correct prediction as to which house you would run to," the silvery-haired boy smirked.
Marui nearly toppled off his chair at the sight of the Trickster.
"Wha—Niou?? What are you talking about?"
"Hey, hey, Niou-senpai… can we finally give them to Marui?" Kirihara Akaya suddenly chimed in, also popping up from behind the house plant.
"Have patience, Akaya," Yagyuu Hiroshi said sternly as he slipped out of the shadows of the house plant and pushed up his glasses by the bridge. "We have to follow the plan."
"Hehe, this is turning out to be rather fun, right, Sanada?" Yukimura Seiichi smiled, emerging from behind the plant as well, along with the silently brooding fukubuchou.
"What the hell is going on!!" Marui screamed, dreadfully confused and having forgotten his original frustration. "And how can so many of you hide behind that small, dingy house plant??"
"Well," Niou drawled, clearly enjoying seeing Marui's state of franticness, "you said you wanted chocolates from your 'doting fans,' right? Since you won't be getting any from our classmates today, we thought that we, as your fans for today, would give you our chocolates."
"Specially homemade!" Kirihara added happily, bouncing over and shoving a large, heart-shaped red box with glittering pink ribbons (there was a live rose stuck into the knot of the bow; Kirihara later said that he had managed to snip one from the nearby park before heading to Jackal's house) into Marui's shocked face. "Here you go, Marui-senpai!"
"Ah…"
And thus Marui was subjected to receiving garishly ornate, extraordinarily bright boxes of all shapes and sizes (though Sanada's was a small, humble one black in color with a burgundy ribbon consisting of what he muttered was actually store-bought chocolate) from his teammates. Kirihara had even given Marui a huge fluffy teddy bear that had a patch of strawberry-red fur on its head, a yellow jersey as its shirt, and a transparent, apple-green sphere stuck to its mouth; Marui thought that its resemblance to himself was quite startling.
##
The entire scheme of Something Wrong with Marui's Saturday Valentine, as it turned out, was laid out by none other than the original perpetrator of Marui's calendar glitch, with the assistance and data of Yanagi. The other members of the tennis team joined in for the fun of it, though Sanada had to be coerced and prodded until he finally and grudgingly agreed; he claimed that he did so solely for the sake of Yukimura.
As we slowly leave the Rikkaidai team to their own devices, it would perhaps be best to note that Marui was secretly elated to receive chocolates on a Valentine's Day over the weekend in spite of his original state of numb shock. He did, however, make a personal note to not try Niou's chocolates for fear that the Trickster had "accidentally" slipped some strange substance into them. Additionally, Akutagawa Jirou from Hyoutei, to Marui's surprise, had also arrived knocking on the redhead's door ("Sugoi! I found Marui-kun! Marui-kuuuun!") and exuberantly given him homemade cake and chocolates. Marui personally found it disturbing that the other boy had somehow found his address all the way in Kanagawa.
On the whole, Marui admitted that the Valentine chocolates he received were quite delicious. He would, after all, do anything for the love of sweets.
Fin
A/N: Crack is far from being my forte; I hope this not-really-a-drabble turned out alright. Happy Valentine's Day (:
Disclaimer: Konomi Takeshi owns PoT.
.moose