Waking up with the Sun Chapter 3: Lollipops pt. 2
I currently have 3 more chapters under the Lollipops umbrella, but they'll be spread out to fit in with Waking up with the Sun later on.
"Hahi!? Hino-senpai! What are you doing here?!" Haru pointed an accusing finger at the older girl, who was wearing a simple one-piece suit that rather accentuated her features. The top part of the suit looked like a large bow that fit her really well, the strap being much thinner than the suit she usually wears, showing her tan lines.
Hazuki lowered her sunglasses and pulled the lollipop that had been sitting on her tongue out, using it to point back, "I didn't know we were on a first name basis, but I'm actually here for leisure. The team is having a beach day and I went to buy snacks." Hazuki promptly lifted a (rather large) bag of candies, chips, and other assortments and grinned. Haru looked down to her chest and pouted, but it didn't go unnoticed by her senpai. Hazuki pulled off her sunglasses and winked, "Sports swimsuits are a lot tighter than regular ones. It helps with the fluid dynamics to have as little drag as possible." Haru turned red.
Kyoko, who had been standing next to Haru clapped her hands and smiled, "You must be Hazuki-san! Tsuna-kun and my brother have told me all about you!"
Hazuki cocked her head to the side, "Brother?"
"Yes! My name is Sasagawa Kyoko and my big brother is Ryohei!"
Hazuki took some rapid steps forward and squished Kyoko's cheeks, surprising the both of them, "But you're so cute! How can you be related to that… weirdo…"
Kyoko giggled and smiled sweetly, confused at why the other girl was calling her brother weird. He was just enthusiastic!
"So what are you two up to now?" the older girl asked, sticking the lollipop back into her mouth.
Haru explained what happened after Hazuki left, and the girl had a hard time believing the story. She walked with the two younger girls towards where their friends were at, since it was in the same general direction as her teammates, rolling her eyes at the incredibly obvious stares and commentary from some boys nearby.
"Look, Tsuna-kun! Guess who we ran into!" Haru greeted, waving at the boy and his friends.
"Ahhh? Hazuki-san, what are you doing here?"
"I heard you failed your test, so I'm here to make you swim harder. Breaststroke is my stroke, yanno?" the older girl replied with a straightforward glare and a monotone voice. The younger boy made a sort of squealing sound in anguish, and she broke out laughing, unable to keep a straight face.
"I'm kidding, jeez. I'm here with my teammates. We're having a beach day and just relaxing, calm down…"
Hazuki waved at the other guys, greeting them. Yamamoto waved back enthusiastically and Gokudera just gave a glance in her direction. I'll take what I can get…
She turned to the other girls, ready to explain that she had to leave after their short time together, only to face a very enthusiastic Ryohei, who exclaimed something about being a lifeguard.
You're kidding me, right.
"Are you sure you're qualified for that sort of job?" she looked at him with dismay, hand on a cocked hip, lollipop stored to the side of her cheek, giving her a slight lisp. Ryohei furrowed his eyebrows and shot his fist into the air, shouting something along the lines of pushing himself as a swimmer to the limit. She didn't pay attention.
Their interaction was cut short by the cries of a little child who was being bullied by three very large men, all with gross faces. Hazuki sneered as they approached the group, turning her nose upward when Ryohei introduced them as former boxing club members.
She ignored most of the conversation as she pulled her cellphone out of the plastic bag in her hand, sending a text message to her friends, who were still waiting on those snacks. She flipped her phone close and looked up to see a very creepy looking guy with a square jaw and messy chopped hair, staring at her chest, and the other two guys creeping on Kyoko and Haru. She glared as he turned to face Gokudera, who wanted to start a fight, and explained that they were going to race instead.
Ryohei volunteered but was instantly shut down. Really for the better.
"I'll swim for your team, Tsuna," Hazuki said as she craned her neck, wearing that same disgusted face she made when she first met them, only this time she looked more angry than anything else.
The older guys laughed.
"You gonna have a girl swim for you? Man, what kind of guy are you, Tuna?!" one of them jeered.
"Why I oughtta-" Hazuki was stopped by Haru, hands balled into fists as Haru politely asked her to calm down. It would be Yamamoto, Gokudera, and Tsuna racing instead. Ryohei would be referee.
"I like you, you're spunky…" the same one with the jaw smirked, leaning down to her eye level. She was about to tell him off when he turned on his heels to face his friends. Her eyes widened in the rage of being ignored and had to be held back by both Kyoko and Haru this time. The lollipop in her mouth crunched and the stick fell out, "I'M GONNA WHOOP YOU SO BAD TH-"
Bye the time she had actually calmed down, the race had already started, and she yelled out, "It's obviously a trap! So be careful! And kick their asses!"
She turned back to Haru and Kyoko, and sighed, "I gotta go anyway. Pray for them for me, ne?" Haru and Kyoko nodded in affirmation, but not before the three exchanged numbers. For those girlie times or something. She was about to turn to Ryohei, but decided against it, not really wanting to deal with anything 'extreme' right now.
Hazuki was about 4 metres past where the race was when she heard a loud 'Reeeboooorrrrrnnnn' echo, and turned just in time to see Tsuna throw the jaw guy into the distant waters.
By the time she made it back to her friends, they were already ticked off at the delay.
"Sorry! I ran into those people I met at the pool yesterday. What a bunch of weirdos."
"Really, as if you're one to talk, Hinotaku."
"Don't call me that!"
Hazuki threw the bag of snacks at her co-captain after pulling out a frog wallet that was an exact replica of the one owned by Naruto, and stuck her tongue out.
::Break::
"Okay now this is just getting to be plain creepy."
Tsuna scratched his head as Haru and Kyoko marveled at the handmade goodies that adorned the pleasant looking stand. He happened to be walking around the festival, babysitting Lambo and I-pin, only to run into Gokudera and Yamamoto, Reborn and Futa, and Haru and Kyoko, only to turn to see that Hazuki and some other girls were running a stand diagonal to the choco-banana stand they were at. They were all wearing matching jackets over casual clothes. Hazuki's hair was in a loose pony-tail, the rest of her hair adorning her round face, accented with a rather large hair bow. Her outfit under the jacket reminded Tsuna of something he'd seen in a photo of the Harajuku district of Tokyo. The biggest difference from when they met previously was that she was wearing thick, pink-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down her nose.
It's a club fundraiser for team jackets. She gestured to the few other girls that occupied the stand, some busy on their phones, some idling around. None of them bothered to look up. The ones we have are outdated and ugly, and the school said that the only way we can get new ones is if we raise the money ourselves. Said money was guarded by an older looking guy who looked to be much more invested in his phone than in protecting their cashbox. He's my older cousin. My aunt has a medicine stand down the way and asked him to help us because of a string of robberies that have occurred within the past few hours.
Their quick catch-up was paused as Hibari and his disciplinary committee stopped by, collecting a fee from the Midori students' stand. He was paid begrudgingly and walked away. I feel bad for you, having to deal with that at Namimori all the time.
Haru and Kyoko said their goodbyes to the groups, Haru spending a little more time at Hazuki's booth recognizing some of her classmates, and wishing them luck before going around the festival with Futa. Tsuna inwardly cried, wishing he could spend the fireworks show with Kyoko.
The festival passed by slowly. Painfully slowly. Tsuna watched as Gokudera scared off potential customers, and Future I-Pin stopped by, mentioning something about a delivery for Kawahira-san. With some advice here and a little feng shui there, things got exponentially better. This earned an angrily shouted message from across the way about crowd control. Tsuna brought over a bunch of choco-bananas as a form of apology and the complaint was dismissed easily. Her weakness must be food.
Yamamoto had just left, as well as Gokudera when Tsuna sat down to relax, and just as soon as that, a mysterious figure stole the cash box from right under his arm and ran off.
Hazuki watched the events unfold as soon as they did, recognizing the thief as one of the guys from the beach, and grabbed a metal pipe, an excess piece they had found when setting up their stand, and was about to run after Tsuna, hoping to get revenge for the events that transpired earlier.
She was unexpectedly stopped by Reborn, who had appeared out of nowhere. He smirked and told her to stand down and stay where she was, mentioning something along the lines of 'family'. For some reason or another, she listened to the baby and decided to just walk around the festival instead.
This town is way too small. Hazuki backed away from one of the prize-winning stands, hoping to avoid another ~fateful encounter~, but she bumped into someone behind her, and lost her balance, falling onto a pile of precariously placed prizes on a nearby stand. The commotion caused one Sasagawa Ryohei to look up from his extremely concentrated game of catching goldfish right after he had scooped one out of the water. His pause to look up delayed his ability to put the fish in the plastic bag filled with water, and the paper net broke, and he was left right where he started.
Dismissing the game, he greeted Hazuki very loudly, wondering where she had run off to earlier when they were at the beach. He had wanted to challenge her to a race once more, but she had long been gone after the little incident with his former upperclassmen.
Well thank god I left when I did. She did notice that this was the first time she'd seen him fully clothed, since their last encounters involved him wearing Speedos. And she marveled at the putrid shade of orange he wore as a t-shirt.
"I gotta challenge you at something! Come on, anything! It'll be extremely awesome!"
Hazuki stuck her pinky up her nose and made a face, "Ugh. Does everything have to be to the extreme with you?"
He made a slight face of disgust to her unfeminine action, but smiled and pumped his fist, "HELL YEAH!"
"You're causing a scene will you quiet down?!" she grabbed his arm and pulled it down, trying to quell the walking talking commotion that was Sasagawa Ryohei, and pulled two lollipops out of her jacket pocket, promptly shoving the first one she unwrapped into his mouth, hoping to shut him up. It did. She unwrapped the second one and stuck it between her teeth and cheek, and motioned for him to follow her, continuing her trip throughout the night's festivities.
The two had not walked 4 feet when they heard a loud explosion coming from the top of the hill where the shrine sat, but Hazuki dismissed it as probably some stupid accident.
Not much later they ran into Kyoko and Haru, now with one added child she met earlier, and Hazuki was close to just leaving the group of four behind in interest of returning to her teammates. The little boy had spoken up before she could turn, mentioning something about the fireworks starting soon, and Ryohei grabbed her arm before she could protest, dragging her through the crowd to get to the top of the hill.
"It'll be a race to the extreme!"
She could barely manage to pry her arm out of the boxer's strong grip, and resigned to the race, easily keeping up with his running speed. Going to karaoke with the girls would just have to wait until later, I guess.
She found herself out of breath by the time they were atop the stairs, only to be greeted by a mass pile of unconscious people, and a half naked Tsuna, that detail being the first comment she made when she was able to compose herself. What the hell.
Just as she finished text messaging her friends about her little predicament (earning a fury of replies setting off her text tone, which turned to be a barrage of Objection!), Kyoko, Haru, and Futa had made they way to the top of the stairs, arriving at the perfect time as the fireworks started no more than 3 seconds later. Reborn had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, as well as 2 other children.
Haru motioned for Hazuki to sit next to her, and she plopped down on the grass, admiring the display in the night sky. She pulled out another lollipop, and now the moment was just right.
The group had split up when they arrived at their respective stands, Hazuki apologizing sheepishly to her teammates, who had already began cleanup. Tsuna was relieved to find that the stand they worked at was still intact, and he and his friends quickly dismantled the structure, finishing about a minute after Hazuki and her friends did. The captain of the Midori Swim team was now with a woman he suspected to be her aunt, and her older cousin, saying their goodbyes to the other girls.
The nice ending to an eventful day couldn't get any better, but did somehow remain eventful as Gokudera and Ryohei had contests of who could carry the most. Kyoko stressed over Ryohei overexerting himself, and Haru simply ignored the boys, paying more attention to the two children that filled her arms, and Reborn who sat upon her shoulders.
I'm not touching the Varia Arc. That's 31 episodes. No.