Breathing I
Chapter 4: Stubborn, Not Clumsy
Sakuno hated stairs. She hated them with a passion. They were the foul succubus waiting to seduce her into shame and dishonor. She had promised her father the last time she had sent a classmate to the hospital, which had been a long time ago when she hadn't fully realized her own strength in terms of normal second graders, that she would never again use the heightened abilities her rigorous training had given her. She had promised she would act like any normal girl. Stairs were therefore evil.
They loomed at her in the most ominous of ways every time she looked at them. In between class, they called to her every time she passed, which was often considering there were four flights in the main hallway alone.
I bet you can't climb me in a single bound, they whispered as she walked past.
A little squirt like you could never conquer me in one perfectly executed leap, they sighed as she gazed up the steps.
No one will ever claim my entire length with one flying jump, the especially alluring three floor spiral staircase in the library would murmur as she picked out a nice romance novel Tomoka had suggested.
It was a challenge to the prowess of her abilities. And because it was a challenge, she had trouble walking away. She knew she could do all the things the stairs whispered were impossible, but the only way she could silence those damnable mutterings was to act. But she had promised her father she would not act, that she would be normal and not challenge stairs to a duel in jumping height.
So, yes, she hated stairs. Not for the challenge she couldn't accept, but for the humiliation their temptation caused.
The first few steps, she could handle. It was easy to resist with a prepared mind. But usually by the fifth step, her walls started breaking down. She started to make excuses. She would get there faster if she jumped up to the landing instead of climbing ever so slowly up step after step after step. She would be preventing wear on the steps and thereby making it safer and more cost efficient for the whole school. It was in the school's best interest that she leap the stairs. The whole student body would be better off if she leaped up the stairs. So, by the ninth step, her body, pulling off her mind's justifications, had already decided to jump to the next landing.
It was then that the mind renounced its earlier thinking and firmly reminded the body of her promise. In that moment of conflict between desire and honor, body and mind, she tripped over her own two feet, too many wires crossing in promotion of two conflicting reactions.
Yes, everyone in school knew she couldn't walk up stairs without tripping. Everyone knew it happened before she had even gotten halfway up. Yes, they laughed at her whenever they saw it happen. Thankfully, it was not a malicious laugh, but one that shrugged at her clumsiness and sympathized with her plight.
But she wasn't clumsy. Everyone at the dojo knew her form to be the most graceful, sans her father and grandfather. She knew where every foot and every finger was at any exact moment. She could even tell you which way her braids were hanging. But no one at school knew that.
She was fine with that. It wasn't the end of the world if a few kids thought she was clumsy. It was the dojo that mattered. That fact didn't stop her from blushing madly every time someone laughed. And it never ended.
The stairs kept whispering. She kept tripping. And one time Ryoma saw. It was one of the few times she had heard him laugh. She knew it was him right away. There was no mistaking the voice she had strained to hear from a crowded fan section of a stadium. She had almost cried at that moment. It wasn't fine if Ryoma thought she was clumsy.
But as she looked up at those stupid stairs and cursed her stubbornness to never back down from a challenge, she knew there was nothing for it. She only sighed, wiping away the unfallen tears, picked herself up from the stairs, rubbing the forearm that had broken her fall and would now be bruised, and had calmly walked up the rest of the steps, admitting defeat this time. Stairs-9,874, Sakuno-0.
"Daijoubou, Ryuuzaki?"
She was surprised to see a hand that time. While Ryoma had laughed at her, he had also offered to help her get back up.
She took his hand, but was careful to use her own muscles getting up, simply holding his hand as she stood on her own. After all, she wasn't weak and she would rather die than have him feel that way about her.
"Why are you so clumsy?" he had asked in an unusual show of curiosity in her non tennis-related self.
"B-because I'm stu-stubborn and I-I…I don't back down," she had muttered quietly with a grand blush.
He had looked at her with confusion, but when she didn't bother to explain herself, he shrugged and lost interest. They walked to class together. Sakuno was glad for it, because the challenge of the stairs whispering across her neck always seemed to lessen whenever she was around other people.
That didn't stop her from tripping on the next flight of stairs, though.