...Err. Hello, again. I feel kind of bad for disappearing completely for several months. I'm not back for long, either. Frankly, I haven't had much will or inspiration to write since new years, and when there's no inspiration everything I write is just really, really bad. If I get any more ideas for this set of stories then I'll post them. Likewise, if anybody has a prompt or a suggestion they'd like me to write for them, I can try... but I won't guarantee anything. I apologize for my rather sad lack of effort... Anyway, I wanted to post something for today, for one of my favorite characters. It was kind of slapped together and it doesn't really make much sense (not to me, anyway, and I wrote it. yikes. why am I posting this again?), so bear with me... Anywhoo. On with the story...
Title: Oblivious
Date Written: 05-05-07
Warnings:Jiroh. ...yeah. That's all the warning you need, really. :P
Disclaimer: I've waited for months and months, but I still don't own Prince of Tennis. Drat.
Jiroh's head was resting on something hard.
It was kind of odd, because he was sure that when he'd curled up on the courtside bench he'd been using his jacket as a pillow. His things didn't normally disappear out from under him even when he was sleeping—almost everyone in the tennis club liked him enough to curtail the usual Hyoutei ambition and cruelty for his case, and those who didn't had learned quickly that Atobe, as the captain, took care of his regulars, especially the one regular who never fought back. Even the most competitive members of the pre-regular team didn't like laps all that much. So it wasn't very likely that someone had taken his jacket. Of course, it also wasn't all that unusual for him to wake up in a place completely different from where he'd fallen asleep, either.
The cold thing digging into his cheek, however, that is the—he cracked an eye open for the purpose of further investigation—spoon, was another matter entirely.
…why was he lying on a spoon?
"Ah! He's awake."
Jiroh blinked and raised his head groggily to look at the speaker. The spoon, still desperately clinging to its newfound friend, valiantly stuck to his cheek for a few seconds before losing its grip and falling with a clack to the table. Jiroh spared it a glance, noting its sudden loneliness and abject misery, before looking back over the table—which was, yes, hard, cold and… oh, yuck, just a bit sticky—to meet the gaze of his waiting teammates.
They were all staring at him. Hopefully it wasn't because he had table-gunk in his hair.
Actually, it probably wasn't because of the gunk. They were staring at him kind of… expectantly.
Jiroh blinked and, armed with a brilliant comment for every situation, opened his mouth.
"Huh?"
There were a couple of exasperated sighs, something that sounded like an amused chuckle coming from Oshitari, and a soft comment of "well, at least senpai is awake now," from somewhere off to his left.
"Jiroh, you dope, we've been trying to wake you up for like ten minutes," said Gakuto, rolling his eyes.
"Huh?" Jiroh said again. "Is practice over? Did I miss anything?"
He yawned and then, glancing down at the table again and noting the forlorn spoon and the rather girly pink napkin it was sitting on, wrinkled his brow.
"Um, where are we?"
Shishido answered him this time, smirking slightly.
"The ice-cream parlor down the road from school. You know, the one with that Triple-Decker brownie chocolate…" Shishido faltered with the long name, "…thing that you said you wanted to try."
Suddenly, Jiroh was wide awake.
"The Triple-Decker Chocolate Brownie Fudge-Cake Bonanza Explosion?!" he shouted, jumping up and smacking his hands down on the table, accidentally hitting the spoon and sending it flying through the air before it fell, abandoned, to the floor. He leaned forward with wide eyes.
"But didn't Atobe say we couldn't come here 'cause it would make us all fat and we wouldn't be able to play tennis anymore?!" He blinked again. "Eh? Hey, where is Atobe, anyway?"
"His highness deigned to give us his permission, just for today," replied Gakuto sourly, "but he wouldn't come. Apparently ice-cream is for low-lives."
"I believe the exact word he used, Gakuto, was 'plebian,'" said Oshitari, still looking amused as he picked up the spoon and put it back on the table. "Followed by the assertion that… ah, 'if the entire team wishes to gorge on badly made confectionaries than far be it from ore-sama to stop you, but if you intend to supply Jiroh with copious amounts of sugar, than ore-sama would rather prefer moving to China than being in the restaurant at the time.'"
"It was nice of buchou to give us permission," Ohtori said, smiling, while Gakuto snickered at Oshitari's impersonation of their arrogant captain.
"Yeah, well, it would be nicer if he wasn't such a bastard about it."
"Shishido-san!!"
"What? It's true! He doesn't really have a right to tell us not to come here in the first place! Besides, he could at least come himself. And he didn't have to drag Kabaji and Hiyoshi away, too. I mean, what's the point of a party if no one's going to show up?"
"Party?" Jiroh tilted his head in confusion. "Party for what?"
The blank stares he was receiving told him that he had missed something.
"Aw, man, come on," said Shishido, in disbelief. "Tell me you're not serious!"
"Senpai…" Ohtori's said, gently, "You don't know?"
Jiroh shook his head.
Thunk. Oshitari just barely managed to move the same well-traveled spoon out of the way before Gakuto's head impacted with the table and sent the abused object catapulting into the air once again.
"Jiiiroooooh," the redhead whined, slightly muffled. "Can't you stay awake long enough to remember what day it is?"
"Day?"
"Well, we should start there, at any rate," said Oshitari. He was smiling again, patiently. Jiroh liked Oshitari's patient smile; it meant he wasn't in a particularly sadistic mood, and when Oshitari was not in a sadistic mood he was usually very funny and nice. Of course, he could be funny when he was feeling sadistic, too, it was just always at someone else's expense. "Jiroh, can you tell me the date?"
"Um. April… twenty… third?"
"You dork, you're not even in the right month!" said Gakuto, exasperated.
"Eh?"
"It's May Fifth, Jiroh."
"…EH?!"
Ohtori smiled at him.
"Happy Birthday, Jiroh-senpai."
-------------
By the time Jiroh had finished his second Triple-Decker Chocolate Brownie Fudge-Cake Bonanza Explosion he was almost literally bouncing off the walls and the rest of the team had rediscovered why it was that Atobe normally forbade them to give the volley specialist anything containing sugar. He would have felt bad about the mess he was making, but frankly the look on Shishido's face when Ohtori had informed him that he had chocolate on his cheek was just too priceless. It was even funnier when the silver-haired second-year had tried to wipe off said chocolate with his bright pink napkin, causing Shishido's face to turn almost the exact same shade.
Likewise, Gakuto's complaints that he would never get the chocolate goop out of his hair, Oshitari's subsequent promise to help him wash it, and Shishido's general reaction to the comment, were enough to make up for the gigantic tip they had to leave the waitress to compensate for their… festivities.
When they finally left the ice-cream parlor, covered in chocolate syrup, worn out from damage-control and just generally tired—well, except for a certain hyper blonde, who hadn't been more awake all day—Jiroh held back for a moment. Swiftly, before anyone could notice, he went back to their table, rescuing one particularly battered spoon, and putting it safely in his pocket. After all, he thought before running to catch up with his teammates, it would be lonely without him.
To make the day even better, after he went home Jiroh got a call from Atobe. He spent an entire half hour on the phone with his captain, even managing to get the promise of a tennis game out of him before they hung up.
Birthdays were awesome, Jiroh reflected, setting his new spoon in front of his desk calendar, the day circled in bright red and proceeded by a line of thick Xs. He grinned and picked up his red pen, marking through the day just like he did every night.
Yeah, birthdays were awesome.
Author's Note: I think one of the reasons this story turned out to be so strange is because my characterization of Jiroh has been kind of... morphing, and I'm trying to figure it out. The Jiroh in "Freedom", "Grandeur", and "The Art Room Incident", for instance, doesn't really act much like the Jiroh in "Speculation", "Spectacles", and to some extent "Resemblance". I've been trying to figure out why I've made him seem so different in different stories, and barring the general flaws of my characterization, I think I've come to a conclusion. Which is that they are the same person, but that Jiroh is a whole lot smarter than people give him credit for and that he likes being smarter than people give him credit for. In other words, he likes people to think that he's utterly oblivious but that doesn't mean it's true. Of course, it didn't really come out that well in this particular story. I'm still not entirely sure if I shouldn't just scrap the last three paragraphs...
Woah. Sorry for the ramble. The point is, Happy Birthday to Jiroh! And as always, thanks for reading!!