Comfort Zone

In which Takashima has some thoughts about Room 5

Takashima Rei had arranged to house Sawamura Eijun in Room 5 for a good reason: Kuramochi Youichi. The assistant coach's first visit to Sawamura's home had been an eye-opener in terms of the family's startlingly violent expressions of love, and the moment she saw Grandfather Sawamura knocking the kid clear across the living room in his tremendous affection for him, she knew which dorm room Eijun would occupy once she convinced him to take up Seidou's invitation. Because Kuramochi would make him feel right at home.

She had been sure the stubborn boy would be swayed in Seidou's favour. His parents, grandfather and childhood friends, especially that sensible, pretty girl called Wakana, knew a private Tokyo school was beyond his family's financial reach. But an invitation to enrol, coupled with the school's alumni-funded grants for talented players, meant the Sawamuras' expenses for Eijun's education, board and miscellaneous living expenses in the costly capital city would be less than what they'd fork out for tuition alone if they begged a good private school in Nagano to accept him. The latter would have been his only other realistic recourse after the brawl he had so impulsively started at his middle school's final baseball match.

He had eventually been convinced to go to Seidou – but by Miyuki Kazuya more than any of the factors she had counted on. Miyuki had been the joker in her pack she hadn't known was lurking, waiting to be drawn, until he had announced his presence during Sawamura's visit to the school.

It had delivered the desired result. Seidou had acquired a valuable left-handed pitcher at a time when the team was mired in a pitching crisis. And he was settling in well after a rough start, no thanks to his rubbing the coach the wrong way on the first day of term. Through his plain dumb luck and endearing forthrightness, however, he had reversed disaster by somehow rubbing Kataoka the right way – while they were both stark naked in the bath.

Takashima smiled to herself as she recalled how, a couple of weeks ago, she had overheard Sawamura loudly recounting the episode to Kominato Haruichi in vivid technicolour near the vending machines, complete with the detail that "… Coach Shades is hung like a horse, Harucchi!" – which the sakura-haired first-year had promptly declared horribly TMI. The younger Kominato had firmly ended the conversation there, adding that he, Haruichi, was now going to have bad visions of a disturbingly well-endowed and very naked kantoku playing on a loop in his head – "Aagh, thanks a lot, Eijun-kun!".

Takashima didn't mind images of a naked, hung-like-a-horse Kataoka Tesshin playing in a loop in her own head. The man was delicious – just her type – tall, muscular, no-nonsense, dangerous looking and baseball-mad. But no mixing business with pleasure, she told herself. Focus on the team.

Well, she had been right about the player-bonding mechanics in relation to Sawamura's rooming arrangements. Kuramochi was indeed giving him a familiar environment, with Masuko Tooru as a balance to ensure things never got out of hand (unless Sawamura ate his pudding). A few times, she had passed by their room when the door was held ajar by curious boarders watching Kuramochi punish Sawamura with some unbreakable wrestling hold – and the younger boy had coped as he had with Grandfather's attacks. He'd pulled faces, protested a bit (all right, sometimes a lot and very loudly) and flailed frantically, but otherwise let his flexible joints ease into the discomfort. In short, his psyche was perceiving Kuramochi as family – even his most outrageous attacks were being accepted as routine interaction.

Very different, wasn't it, from how shell-shocked he had been after Miyuki had flown at him for putting Chris down? Or how he had squirmed, scarlet-faced, when Miyuki had put his arm around him during his first visit to Seidou? In comparison with Kuramochi's extensive assaults, Miyuki had barely touched Sawamura – yet, Sawamura's reaction had been disproportionately intense.

Come to think of it, he didn't respond to anyone the way he did to Miyuki. Despite his adoration of Chris (the sort of crush that normally made teenagers hyper-self-conscious), he had been totally insensitive to his third-year senpai's private space. After he had learnt the truth about Chris' injury, the whole school had seen him pursuing the older boy in a bid to be forgiven, and it had quickly reached Takashima's ears how Sawamura had intruded on Chris' bath, lurked outside his toilet cubicle, and essentially made an irresistible pest of himself. If Chris had been a girl, it would have blown up into a case of sexual harassment faster than she could have snapped her fingers.

Ah… now she remembered that when Sawamura's grandfather had rung to inform her that Eijun would go to Seidou, the elderly man had been laughing about how his grandson had barged into Wakana-chan's bathroom the night before to announce his decision – while she was naked in the tub – totally oblivious to her need for privacy.

Putting away her files and leaving the staff room for the day, Takashima chuckled to herself as the pieces fitted together concerning this aspect of Sawamura's personality: the kid had no notion of self-consciousness, and scarcely understood what invasion of personal space meant. He wasn't naturally a touchy-feely boy, but he didn't make a big deal about being touched either, maybe because he had been conditioned by his family to be as stoic about physical contact as a non-stoic boy could be.

Except, of course, when it came to Miyuki.

Miyuki was someone to be grabbed and shaken in a temper, but not a person he felt it was safe to be touched by.

It wasn't because he disliked Miyuki – dislike wasn't the issue here. Even in the days when he had detested Chris, he had hardly reacted to Chris spending a good half-hour touching him all over at their first stretching session, except to grumble about how long it was taking as he wanted to pitch. But the older boy had carried on painstakingly examining his new charge's joints, registering potential points of weakness that could lead to injury if the kid wasn't careful. Ah, Chris, you look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, but you liked getting your hands all over that pliable body, didn't you? And it always amuses and bemuses you how innocently Sawamura takes it every time you plant your hands on his thighs and hips to help him find the points of balance and strength in his pitching form, and he fails to notice that you keep those strong catcher's paws on him longer than necessary…

Outwardly, then, Sawamura regarded Kuramochi as a bullying older brother while having a crush on Chris and slogging for acknowledgement as a pitcher by Miyuki. But Takashima had just scratched the surface to deduce that the boy's subconscious had probably slotted both Kuramochi and Chris into the same category of harmless people who were on his side – like Wakana-chan, maybe. Or those monkeys famous in his home prefecture for soaking in the hot springs with humans in winter.

Whereas Miyuki was in some other class altogether – very likely sitting alongside the dangerous black bears which ambled out of the mountains to steal Nagano farm animals. A mental image of the bespectacled Miyuki in a bear suit, flexing fake claws and producing a pretend-growl shot into her head, and she nearly laughed out loud.

From the administration building, she walked towards the music room for a quick meeting with the bandmaster and the cheerleading coach about a parent's complaint regarding the appropriateness of the music played and one variation of the cheerleaders' costumes at a recent match. But first, she made a detour to the dorms. She was no longer concerned about whether Sawamura was adjusting – he was doing well. What worried her now was how Kuramochi appeared of late to be indulging in too much of a good thing – the cheetah who'd got the cream.

At the dorms, she found most of the doors closed. It was that time of evening after training, when the boys would take a quick shower to get the surface grime off (so schoolmates wouldn't gripe about how bad they smelt), then do homework in their rooms before dinner. Once they'd let the food digest, the hardworking ones would be back out there in the indoor training facility or gym, working on anything needing that one percent more of accuracy, strength, endurance or speed to make them a shade better for the next day, the next match, the next opportunity. Only after that would they wash thoroughly, soak in the bath, and settle down for the night.

Takashima suspected that though it was technically homework time, the occupants of Room 5 were doing anything but that. She was right. As she neared the closed door, she heard scuffling noises and thumps, accompanied by loud protests: "Ow – oww! Cheetah-senpai! St-stop that… hey – watch where you're putting your foot! – no no no, not the other foot too! Aagh!"

This was when Kuramochi would normally cackle like a hyena and tease Sawamura about Wakana or tick him off for putting himself forward. But this evening, only wordless grunts came from the second-year. It made her want to press her ear to the door to listen better, and she was leaning forward, trying to inch closer without letting the clicking of her high heels give her away, when…

"Takashima-sensei?" came a puzzled voice from a few metres behind her.

Damn. She'd just been busted by Masuko Tooru. Who must have nipped out to the snack vending machine.

"Masuko-kun," she said evenly as she straightened up and turned around, adjusting her spectacles with two fingers to the bridge.

"Good evening, Takashima-sensei," the big-built third baseman greeted her with some bewilderment.

"Masuko-kun, I heard alarming sounds coming from your room, and wanted to be sure that Kuramochi-kun wasn't actually murdering Sawamura-kun."

"Ah," Masuko said, clarity returning to his bulldog-like face as he swallowed her explanation. "They do that all the time – but don't worry. Sawamura-chan – er, Sawamura-kun – has never been injured because of Kuramochi's… sparring training."

"That's good. We don't want any casualties."

"I'll make sure no one dies," Masuko intoned seriously.

"I'm counting on you, Masuko-kun."

By this time, the other two boys had worked out that a teacher was outside, probably to complain about the noise, and the room door was flung open by a flustered Sawamura, a scowling Kuramochi right behind him.

"Takashima-sensei!" Sawamura yelled. "We apologise for the ruckus! It won't happen again!"

"Speak for yourself, Uzamura!" Kuramochi snapped at him. "You were the only one making noise!"

"I was yelling at you to stop!"

"Yell politely next time and I'll think about it!"

"Playing with each other?" Takashima gave them a small, ironic smile, upon which she noted the flush of red appearing high on Kuramochi's angular cheekbones, while Sawamura dramatically but naively protested that there was nothing playful about being assaulted by one's senpai.

So she added another question, a non-rhetorical one this time: "Sawamura-kun, what offence did you commit this time to get Kuramochi-kun all over you?"

"That's what I wanted to ask cheetah-senpai!" Sawamura yowled, eyes going as round as a moggy's. "Senpai usually tackles me for being noisy, or impolite, or not giving him my phone to text Wakana, or out-gaming him, or –"

"In other words, just about anything," Takashima remarked.

"But this time, I didn't do anything other than yawn and stretch after one page of homework – did I, Kuramochi-senpai?!"

"The sight of you with your arms outstretched and your mouth wide open got Kuramochi-kun so worked up that he simply had to pin you to the floor," Takashima said flatly, arching an eyebrow at Kuramochi.

"Yes! That's exactly what… hmm… hey…" Sawamura murmured, shooting a slightly narrowed glance at his roommate as the wheels turned in his head and it began to occur to him for the first time that this might be at least a little bit unusual.

"Kuramochi-kun?" Takashima queried.

An embarrassed scowl from the cheetah was followed by a growled-out answer: "Yawning so loudly and stretching so excessively after a grand total of five minutes of homework is asking for it if he isn't putting in serious effort not to waste baseball practice time by getting stuck in extra classes like Furuya for failing his tests."

"Hey! Just because I –" Sawamura objected, ending the turning of wheels in his head as he swallowed the predator's reply hook, line and sinker, as quickly as Masuko had imbibed Takashima's reason for having her ear to the room door.

"I'm very sorry, Takashima-sensei," Masuko quickly bowed to her. "I'll keep both my kouhai in line."

"Yes, please," the assistant coach said. "But I do understand that boys need some non-baseball-related release for their… frustrations, shall we say?"

She looked straight at Kuramochi, and her suspicions were confirmed as the flush on his cheeks deepened. Ha! That kid – he'd always been as impressed by her breasts as Miyuki and Sawamura were, and everyone knew he was forming a long-distance crush on Wakana-chan via Sawamura's mobile phone – but he was turning out to be a switch hitter through and through. Batting left and batting right… like Miyuki batting left and throwing right… or maybe, Takashima thought, she was to blame – after all, she had recruited these boys. Perhaps she had an eye not only for talent, but also for kids who would first ogle her cleavage, then progress to fondling one another. (Except Chris-kun, of course – he'd been too proper to leer at her, but had simply gone straight to getting his hands all over Sawamura.) How coincidental that the three most outstanding senior boys she had personally brought in – Chris, Miyuki and Kuramochi – were taking a keen interest in the most recent kid she'd secured.

I've unconsciously chosen players who naturally have terrific chemistry with one another, she thought as she walked away from the dorms. Not good – we can't risk a catfight over one clueless kitten. But maybe, just maybe, all this hormonal madness will give the team an extra kick of energy?

It didn't escape her notice that Miyuki had arrived at the corner of the adjacent dorm wing two minutes ago. Against her sense of professionalism, it nearly made her laugh. The kid had half-concealed himself in the stairwell entrance, and the glimpse she had of his face told her he was torn between being entertained by how interesting this whole Room 5 set-up was, envying Sawamura for his roommate's tasty abuse, and wanting to throttle all the snark out of his only-friend-forever Kuramochi Youichi for being perfectly placed to get intimately familiar with every inch of Sawamura Eijun's body.