Chapter 7

"No! No more mackerel! I'm sick and tired of eating that fish every time we come over, you sit your ass down while I make something a little more edible!"

Rei flinched as he heard the yelling coming from Haru's kitchen. Nagisa looked mildly amused, but Makoto was worried about the loud noises. Were they both all right? He got to his feet to check on them, but Rei gestured for him to sit back down. "Her bark is worse than her bite," he promised. As the prefectural tournament neared, Sayuri's sweet and flirtatious side had been giving in to a more stress-induced temper. Rei had learned to stay out of her fire zone.

"She's just stressed out," Gou assured them, with a sigh. "Her times have been getting slower lately and Sayuri-chan seems to buckle a bit under pressure. I think she'll be fine."

Rei folded his legs, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "Sayuri's never really been under pressure before. She normally doesn't care about things like academics or competitive sports. I think this is the first time she's really wanted to do well at something; and there's a lot of competition at the women's 200 m freestyle."

Gou beamed. "Rei-kun, you're so observant! Sayuri-chan is so lucky to have someone who cares about her as much as you do!"

Rei flushed, wondering if he was deserving of that praise. He certainly cared about Sayuri, but he was under a lot of pressure of his own, and hadn't been doing much to alleviate hers. He pushed his glasses up on his nose as Haru re-entered the room. His blue eyes were glinting dangerously.

"Kick Sayuri-chan out of the club," he said bluntly, looking at Makoto.

Makoto laughed hesitantly. "Haru-chan, we can't just kick her out of the club-"

"Why not?"

"Because she's a good swimmer and she's Rei-chan's girlfriend," Makoto replied patiently. "Besides, we want this club to get as big as it can, and we won't get there if we kick out perfectly good people."

Haru glared. "Fine. Keep her out of my house then. I'm going to take a bath." He stood up and left, causing Rei to sigh and push his glasses up his nose. Haru and Sayuri had been clashing quite often of late, mainly because she kept trying to force him to change his unhealthy lifestyle and because Haru didn't like change. Rei got to his feet too, quietly going to the kitchen where Sayuri was making rice balls.

"You made Haruka-senpai mad," Rei told her with a sigh, putting his arms around her waist from behind and resting his chin on her shoulder. Sayuri made a purring noise and curled back against him, while her hands worked on making the balls of rice. "He's gone off to take a bath."

"Good for him," Sayuri grumbled, setting another rice ball down on the tray. She glanced at the stove. "Can you stir the curry?"

Rei nodded, taking the spatula and stirring the curry gently. He leaned closer to it and took a sniff. It smelled fine, but he could distinctly tell… "Is that mackerel?" he asked, pointing at the fish chunks. "I thought you were tired of mackerel?"

"I am. I was going to make something else, but guess what?" she moved over to Haru's fridge and yanked open the door, revealing nothing but rows and rows of mackerel. "He doesn't have anything else in the house. Baka! How he maintains those muscles with such a terrible diet…"

Rei shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. He stirred the curry again and watched as Sayuri continued to make rice balls with a renewed vigor. He was a little relieved when she finished and handed him the tray to take out to the others. Rei hurried into the room as Sayuri followed him, carrying the mackerel curry, and handing it out to everyone.

"Wow! Sayuri-chan, this is great! I didn't know you could cook!" Nagisa cooed happily, stuffing rice into his mouth. "Rei-chan is so lucky, he's going to have a wife that cooks so well!"

Rei frowned at his friend. "Shut up, Nagisa."

Sayuri smiled, a bit of her temper drifting away as she sat cross-legged next to Rei and bumped her shoulder against his lightly. "Don't worry, darling, I'll cook you whatever you want," she promised, kissing him quickly. Rei's cheeks flushed red.

"Don't do that in public," he muttered.

Sayuri laughed. "It's not public, it's just Haru-senpai's house. I'm sure he doesn't care, he's in the bath anyway. Idiot probably jerks off to the water too," she muttered, before pausing, her chopsticks half-way up to her mouth. "Really, though. I wonder if he even has porn."

Makoto flushed when Sayuri turned and looked straight at him. "Why are you looking at me?"

"Because you're his best friend," she replied simply.

"I-I really don't know," Makoto choked out, before putting more food in his mouth. "This is really good, Sayuri-chan, can you teach me the recipe sometime? My siblings would love it."

"Hai, hai," Sayuri muttered. "Go ahead, change the topic. Sure, I'll give you the recipe."

They finished eating, and it wasn't long before everyone decided to go their own way, with a promise to turn up early the next morning for swim practice. There were only a few days left until the tournament, and Gou was making them practice as much as possible. Sayuri was quiet as Rei walked her home, their hands entwined. She glanced up at him when they reached her gate.

"It's still early," she said, smiling lightly at him. "Do you mind coming up for a few minutes? I want to show you something."

Rei hesitated. What did she want to show him? The last time Sayuri said something like that, she'd shown him a piece of lingerie that she'd bought; a black negligee that made Rei blush even when she was just holding it up to her body and twirling around. Had she put it on, he probably would have had a heart attack. "Sure," he muttered, watching as she unlocked the front door. "Isn't anybody home?"

"Both my parents work late on Wednesdays," she explained, letting him in before closing the door behind them. She winked at him lightly. "I'm not going to take advantage of you or anything, you're perfectly safe, darling."

Rei rolled his eyes, following Sayuri as she led him up to her room. It was large and slightly girly; the walls were painted a light shade of purple and she had colorful pillows strewn across the bed in different shapes and sizes. "Gomen. It's a bit of a mess," Sayuri muttered, pushing aside some books on a desk. She fumbled around with a number of belongings before finally extracting a small photo frame.

Rei took it, noticing that there were about twelve girls in the picture, standing in two rows and smiling at the camera. He spotted Sayuri's tangle of brown hair immediately, at the bottom row and smiled. "This was you in middle school."

Sayuri shook her head. "Close. Last year of elementary, actually. You didn't know me then."

"Oh. What is this, is it a choir group? I didn't know you could sing."

"Not very well," Sayuri laughed. "But my mother made me join the choir anyway. I wasn't a great singer, but I really loved the people there. We became really close, and we had an amazing teacher. There was a competition at the end of the year. We practiced day and night for it. Everyone was so sure we would win."

Rei looked up at Sayuri, noticing how her green eyes were shining. "Did you?"

"No. We placed fourth," she replied simply. "It was the worst feeling of my life. I'd never wanted something so badly, or felt so disappointed. After we lost the competition, things turned sour. A lot of the girls started fighting and blaming each other. After we left elementary school, none of us kept in touch."

"I'm sorry," Rei muttered, handing her back the photo. Sayuri smiled sadly and put it back on her table.

"After that, I stopped caring. I never tried to join a choir; that's why I took up track in middle school, which was where you and I met," she reminded him. Rei nodded. Despite being a member of the track team, Sayuri had never practiced hard. She didn't win races, nor did she seem to care. He'd always thought she was a slacker, but… "After the choir, I started feeling like there was no point in putting in so much effort into something, only to be met by disappointment. I figured that if I didn't care, I couldn't be upset when I lost."

Rei looked up at her, surprised. "I didn't know that about you," he said quietly.

Sayuri sighed. "The reason I'm telling you this is because I haven't wanted to win at anything since the choir disaster. Until now. I want us to do well at prefecturals. Not just me. I don't care if I lose my race, as long as the swim club does well as a whole. And I'm scared, because I know I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment again."

"That's not true," Rei replied sharply. "So what if we don't do well at prefecturals? We'll try again for the next competition. We're not going to bicker and split up like your choir group, Sayuri. We'll help each other improve."

Sayuri smiled at him, moving closer and resting her head on his shoulder as Rei put his arms around her. "I know. I'm sorry, I'm just being silly. I joined the swim club on some stupid whim, I didn't expect to get so emotionally involved in its success."

Rei kissed the top of her head gently, pressing his cheek to her hair. Sayuri sighed and snuggled closer to him, enjoying the scent of his cologne and the faint hint of chlorine from their practice earlier. "Don't worry. We're going to do great. I'll make sure of it," Rei promised.

Sayuri smiled up at him. "I trust you."