As Sakuragi and Mitsui walked back to their room, they were both sweating profusely after the game. They kicked their shoes off at the door and stepped inside. Not having the habit of wearing socks, Sakuragi's was leaving damp, almost wet footprints in his wake as he walked into the room.
Then he felt something crackled at the bottom of his feet.
'Not a cockroach again?' he thought to himself, rolled his eyes and lifted his right foot up to see. To his delight there was no cockroach, but a neatly folded pink sheet of paper now stuck to the flat of his foot.
"What's this?" Mitsui nosed in.
Sakuragi peeled the folded paper off his feet, the side what touched his foot was now damp from the sweat.
With a swift hand Mitsui took it from Sakuragi's hand, "What's this? A… a confession letter? For you?"
'No it can't be,' the once-MVP then thought to himself, 'This guy had been rejected 50 times, so there can't be an exception now… maybe… just maybe… it is for… me?'
"For whom is it?" asked Sakuragi.
"Look at the name." Mitsui said; he had to narrow his eyes just to read.
The scraggy letters were awful. It looked like some apes were trying to write with its left foot.
"A…." Mitsui blurted out, "A… ka…"
"AKAGI!" they gasped as they looked at each other as their jaw dropped. "A love confession for the gorilla!?"
For the love of heaven they could not believe it.
"Well, I guess there is a first to everything…" said Mitsui, contemplating.
They both looked at each other, and laughed out so hard their stomachs hurt.
"But why is it here?" asked Sakuragi now, a tear in his eye. He was right, why was it sent here? They both thought for a while.
It was Mitsui who deciphered it first, "Well, I guess whoever that wrote this, did not know that Akagi had changed room!"
Sakuragi looked at him perplexed.
"Remember, because you couldn't stay in the same room with Rukawa or Kiyota, they moved you here and Akagi had to move to Maki's room?"
Sakuragi's eyes widened as he came to the same realization, this Mitsui guy was a true genius!
They gave each other a High-Five and took the slightly damp (from sweat of Sakuragi's foot, mind you) and crumpled piece of paper to Akagi's and Maki's shared room. The stench of the musky, cheesy, saltiness of sweaty feet wallowing too long in sport shoes reeked from the paper. Combined with the original sweet vanilla scent, this odd concoction now reminded both of them of a rotting rat, guts bloating and all in the summer heat.
Akagi was a little annoyed when his teammates knocked on his door. He was in the process of trying to take a shower before he headed for the pool.
'What do these two want this time?' he thought to himself.
"Here," Sakuragi shoved the pink folded square into his face as the door opened, he was pinching it with only two fingers, "It's for you!"
Akagi thought he smelt a whiff of something odd, but took no notice of it.
"What's this?" he frowned at the trouble-makers, "A joke?"
"A confession," Mitsui, seemed to notice Akagi's annoyance at their presence, retorted, "It is a confession! For you!"
"A confession?" he narrowed his eyes, "for me?"
Akagi's mind went blank for a short second. He had never received a confession before, not once in his life. Unlike the junior Ace of his team whose locker tended to be swamped with all sort of envelops in various kinds of pastel shades, women tended to be scared of him.
"From whom?" he asked now.
"Who knows?" Mitsui shrugged, "Maybe a female gorilla!"
"Or Uozumi, the monkey boss!" Sakuragi chimed in.
They both laughed hysterically now, not noticing the vain popping out of Akagi's temper.
They promptly received a knock on their head, each, before Akagi slammed the door on them.
"What, that gorilla…." Muttered Sakurag, realized that Akagi wasn't going to entertain them any further, returned to his room with his senior.
Sat on his bed, Akagi began to notice that the so-called confession emitted a stench he couldn't yet quite place. He gingerly opened the letter, controlling the churn of his stomach, and gapped.
"What's this?"
The handwriting was bad. So bad, that it looked more like mutilated stick figures on a battlefield than any sort of Japanese writing he had ever seen. He squinted so hard trying to read the words until his irises hurt. Combined with the now identified rotting smell of warm blooded animal permeated the room, the whole experience made him ill.
His first confession letter and he was sick to the stomach.
Though he was curious, he couldn't bear looking at the writing for one more second or else he would suffer migraine for the rest of his life; he tossed it to the side.
The smell was slowly making his earlier lunch creeping back up his esophagus.
Whoever that wrote this letter must have some sort of morbid obsession. He thought.
At this point, Maki walked into the room. He stood at the door, and his brows immediately knotted together.
"Urgh, what is this smell? It is putrid!" he complained; "a rat died in here?"
"It's…" Akagi hesistated a little, "it is from that." He gestured with his chin to the pink paper, now unfolded and on their shared bedside table. Maki, no stranger to confession letter, being the king and all, immediate knew what it was.
"Why would anyone give such a disgusting smelling confession letter?"
"I don't know," shrugged Akagi, "It is not like I get confession every day."
Maki wanted to say he figured, but held his tongue.
After some serious man-to-man talk and pondering of what to do with the letter, the one that Akagi couldn't read without an oxygen mask on, and leaving it in the room would mean none of them would step in there again, they decided on the inevitable.
As much as it pained him to do it, Akagi had to throw his first confession letter in the bin farthest away from the sleeping hall lest everyone lose sleep.
Close to the clinic, that was.
A few hours later….
A hand was trembling as it picked up the discarded love letter. The other hand was pinching the nose to stop the stench.
Tear streamed down squinting eyes.
The perpetrator of this atrocity would not be forgiven!