Author's Notes: Relatively minor interaction between Ootori and Hikari. This chapter's mostly centred on Kikumaru's and Hikari's rather odd friendship. There are also some scenes with the Seigaku regulars, but again, no romance there.

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Previously:

She clenched her fists by her sides and glared up at him. Damn that bastard and his height! "…fine." She ground out, ignoring the superior look he gave her. "I said… that there was a particular bar… that Ootori-san kept playing wrong…" She muttered grudgingly.

Cue the second collective gasp, this time from everyone in the room (except Atobe, Oshitari and Ootori himself). Ootori Choutarou, the aspiring pianist whose talent was just a bit behind Atobe's, making a mistake? That was totally unheard of!

"Care to elaborate on that, onna?" Atobe asked as he flipped his hair.

Tsutano resisted the urge to punch him. "…Ootori-san played a G-sharp, instead of a G-flat."

Chapter 3 – Trip to Seigaku

Ootori blinked at her statement and tentatively went over his composition in his mind. Hm… The only part where there was a G-sharp was the chorus… And it seems fine… He furrowed his eyebrows. What if I put a G-flat like that girl said…?

He was still standing near the piano, so he reached over to test it out. His expression cleared. It indeed sounds better… Even though the mistake is very minor… That girl… She's got really good hearing…

The silver-haired boy stole a glance at the girl, who was frowning at Atobe. She looked like any ordinary Hyotei female student wearing her uniform, which consisted of a white formal shirt, a mid-thigh brown skirt, white socks and dark-brown shoes.

That's when he noticed something. Wait, she's wearing a tie? He took a double-take. Don't girls normally wear bows instead? His brown eyes flittered over to a random girl, and sure enough, that one was wearing a bow. Briefly Ootori wondered if girls wearing ties were allowed, before he decided not to dwell on it and glanced at her again.

He noted that she was rather… short, as Atobe was a little over a head taller than her. If she stood next to me, she would probably look rather small… Her cinnamon-brown-coloured hair was gathered up in a high-ponytail, with her long, wispy fringe falling gently into her eyes. Despite the lack of expression on her face, her dark-blue eyes were sparkling with tolerated annoyance as she exchanged banters with Atobe.

At that point, someone accidentally jostled him, making him tune himself back into the current situation.

"You're an arrogant, narcissistic person, Atobe-san… And that's putting it lightly. I would have called you something much, much worse if I wasn't being nice." The girl, whom he still had no idea what her name was, was extremely calm. So calm that it was actually pretty freaky.

"If insulting Ore-sama is considered 'nice', I think you may have to check your level of intelligence, onna." Atobe replied coolly, brushing a hand through his hair.

The girl raised an eyebrow. "Your level of intelligence can't possibly be any higher than mine if you keep calling me 'onna', Atobe-san."

Everyone watched as Atobe fell silent for a few moments. The girl didn't seem to mind; She merely rolled her eyes and looked down, absorbed in a music sheet she held in her hands.

"Onna."

The brunette didn't acknowledge him, since that wasn't her name in the first place.

"…onna." Atobe was next to her again, poking her shoulder to get her attention.

The girl's eye twitched and slowly glanced up. "Is there anything you need, Atobe-san?"

"Hai… Ore-sama would like to know your name." He spared her one of his most charming smiles, which no girl he knew could resist.

Silence ensued as the Advanced Music students anticipated her reply.

"That is for me to know… and not for you to find out." She smirked, seemingly not noticing the jaws dropping around her, including Atobe's.

Riiiiiing…

"That's my cue…" She muttered, knowing that Sakaki-sensei let his music students leave whenever they wanted to after the bell rung, so she could get away right then. She swung her backpack over her shoulder and walked towards the door, ignoring the stunned crowd.

Ootori blinked rapidly at her retreating back and started after her, slowly making his way through. When she got past the door-frame, he caught up with her and grasped her arm gently. "C-chotto matte!"

The girl glanced at him, vague curiosity shown on her face. "Hai, Ootori-san?"

"A-ano… Arigatou for pointing out the mistake in my music…" He murmured sheepishly, bowing low to her. "You have really good hearing…"

She blinked, obviously not expecting that. "Oh… It's nothing much…" She began to gently tug her arm away from Ootori. He immediately let go as though he had been burnt, having realized that he had just held a girl's arm, causing a light blush to dust over his face.

"Ne, what's your name?" He asked, tilting his head a bit. If his fangirls were with them, they would have squealed over how kawaii he looked. "I don't wish to call you 'onna' like Atobe-sempai did…"

For the first time since that lesson started, the girl smiled. It was a rather wry smile, but a smile nevertheless. "Watashi no namae wa Tsutano Hikari desu."

He slowly returned the smile, only his was more sincere. "It's nice to finally know your name, Tsutano-san. Ja ne."

"Ja ne, Ootori-san." He watched as she turned on her heel, continued walking and disappeared around the corner.

"Kari-chaaaaan!" The second Tsutano walked out of Hyotei's front gates, she was immediately pounced upon by her over-active childhood friend.

"Itai!" Her relatively-short legs nearly buckled under the extra weight and she tried to pry the red-headed boy off her. "Eiji-nii, you're not made of feathers, you know!"

Kikumaru shifted his body weight so that it would not rest entirely onto her, but kept his arms wrapped around her shoulders affectionately. He gently steered her in the right direction of his school, which was a thirty-minutes-walk away. "How was school today, nya?"

"Argh…" She groaned, reaching her hands up to massage her temples lightly. "Don't remind me about it. He's still an ass, no matter how rich and good at tennis he is."

A grin slowly spread across the boy's face, knowing exactly who she was referring to. "Hoi, hoi, what did Atobe do now?"

Tsutano recounted what happened during Music lesson just a few moments before, purposely leaving out the part where Ootori stopped her. She was still pretty surprised with that encounter, and had no idea what to make of it.

"Bwahahaha!" Kikumaru was laughing so hard that he was actually crying. They were now halfway through a park, which was a short-cut that he had discovered in his 1st year. "Atobe really had a spotlight shining on him on that mini-stage?" When she nodded, he continued, "He's soooo full of himself, ne?"

The smaller girl nodded vigorously, a mockingly-serious expression on her face. "Hai. We should send him to a place where there are no mirrors in it for a full day."

"He won't last for even a minute, nya!" Kikumaru snickered, before noticing something off about their current route. Eh… Where's that pretty row of bushes by the right? "Mou, wrong turn, wrong turn! We're supposed to go right!"

For the rest of the journey to Seigaku, Kikumaru told Tsutano about the interesting situations that his team had gotten into that day, such as how Fuji Syuusuke, who was immune to most forms of Inui Juice, had nearly been poisoned by Inui Sadaharu's Aozu, and how Kawamura Takashi destroyed his classroom by accident when a fellow student passed him the tennis racket he left on a bench.

Despite the hilarity of how absurd Kikumaru's team was, Tsutano only let tiny smirks adorn her features. She was not the type to show much emotion in the first place, and it took a lot to get her to laugh, or to even just smile. She was too sensible; It was a quality that derived both admiration and annoyance. There was barely anyone who bothered to look past that cold shell of hers.

Kikumaru often wondered how to get his childhood friend to smile genuinely, and actually try to get to know her better. He decided if there was anyone who could do that, he was definitely something.

"Nya, we're here~" Kikumaru sang out, bouncing through the front gates of Seishun Gakuen with a wide, childish smile. He tugged onto Tsutano's arm lightly. "Hoi, hoi, Kari-chan, come on! Walk faster!"

"…hai… Eiji-nii… Are you sure I'm allowed to be here right now?" Tsutano asked cautiously, noting the suspicious looks she was getting from other Seigaku students. She was not used to attention; Rather, she often repelled it instead. "Everyone's staring."

The boy grinned at her. "I know, I know! That's why I brought one of your T-shirts and your slippers in my bag for you to change!"

"…Eiji-nii… Did you take them from my house?"

"Hai, hai! Why do you ask?"

"…won't that be considered theft for breaking into my house?"

Kikumaru screeched to a halt instantaneously. "E-e-eh? I never thought of it that way before!" He paused. "Demo… Weren't you the one who gave me your spare house key?" He turned to look at Tsutano with larger-than-usual kitten eyes. "You gave it to me the day before you started elementary school! Remember? Remember?" He started to shake the girl by her shoulders in his anxiety.

"Hai, I remember…" She slowly pried his fingers off her. "I was just kidding about the theft thing." She smirked in amusement as she walked ahead of him. "Your reaction was as expected, Eiji-nii."

"Eh? Kari-chaaaaan! Don't do that!" He whined, chasing after the girl. "You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"Best of one set match, Kikumaru-Oishi pair vs Kaidoh-Momoshiro pair…" Tsutano, who was now clad in a slim-fitting light-blue T-shirt, a pair of brown shorts that she wore beneath her skirt and her blue flip-flops, raised her voice ever-so-slightly, but still managed to sound flat all the same.

Perched on the high-chair, the girl had a bored look on her face as she acted as the umpire for that practice match, since Kikumaru forced her to do so. When they were younger, he had taught her the basics and theories of tennis, since the only good quality she possessed was her ultra-sensitive hearing. Other than that, her hand-eye coordination wasn't exactly up to average standards.

"Mou, Kari-chan, don't behave like that…" Kikumaru pouted at his friend's expression, knowing that despite her disinterested look, she was really just sulking on the inside. "I'm sure that our match is gonna be real interesting, ne Oishi?"

"E-eh?" Oishi Syuuchirou blinked at his doubles partner, mildly confused, but just went along with what he said. "Ano… Hai, Eiji…"

Tsutano raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment; Instead, she continued, "Kaidoh-Momoshiro pair service play!"

"Ne, Tsutano-chan, why do you always put Mamushi's name first for the pairing?" Momoshiro Takeshi whined, pointing an accusing finger at the girl. "Do you like that snake-dude more than me?"

Before she could reply, Kaidoh Kaoru hissed, "Who would like a baka with a bottomless-pit for a stomach? Fsshhuu…"

"You wanna fight, Mamushi?" Momoshiro challenged, glaring at his eternal rival.

Kaidoh glared back with the same amount of intensity. "I can take you on right here, right now, fsshuu…"

"Oh yeah? Well–"

"Urusai!" Both of them jumped at the sound of Tsutano's voice. She had been silently watching the exchange, twitching all the way, but she had enough of their rivalry. After all, there was not one time, not one time, when she visited Seigaku and the two did not fight. "The both of you stop this at once before I tell both your fan-clubs that the two of you are in love with each other!"

"G-gomen, Tsutano-chan…" Momoshiro scratched his cheek sheepishly, not wanting to ever experience that. Having known the girl since they were 1st-years, he knew that he should take her threats seriously. Hell hath no fury like a Tsutano Hikari scorned indeed.

Kaidoh shot a dark look which said, "This is all your fault and you know it" at the other boy. "Fshh… Gomen, Tsutano-chan…"

Oishi breathed an audible sigh of relief. At least Hikari-chan knows how to handle them…

Kikumaru was merely grinning at the spectacle before him like a five-year-old boy on a sugar-high.

With the possible fight between Momoshiro and Kaidoh warded off, the practice match finally began. It had started off as a light rally, but fifteen minutes later, it turned into an all-out-war between the two pairs.

At that point of time, the match score was 3-All. Just as it was about to be even more heated up, the five of them heard a loud, arrogant voice that rang throughout the courts. "Be awed by Ore-sama's presence!"

Kikumaru, who had been mid-air in Acrobatic Play when that statement was heard, quickly landed on his feet with a barely muted thump, blinking at the newcomers with mild surprise. Oishi was fiddling with the handle of his racket, his worried gaze constantly shifting between the more-rigid-than-usual buchou Tezuka Kunimitsu in the other court and the people who had just arrived.

Kaidoh absently caught the tennis ball in his hand, not noticing that it was getting red after coming into contact with the friction from the spinning ball. Momoshiro raised an eyebrow, in an effort to look nonchalant in the intruders' presence.

In the meantime, whatever expression Tsutano had on her face, even if it was mere boredom, completely dropped. Oh dear Kami-sama…

Standing near the entrance were the Hyotei tennis regulars, including a non-regular Taki Haginosuke. The leader of the pack, the only-and-only Atobe Keigo, was standing in front of them with one of his drop-dead-gorgeous smirks gracing his features.

Author's Notes: What's Atobe doing in Seigaku? You'll find out when the next chapter is posted.

Reviews are welcome. If you don't know any of the Japanese honorifics or phrases I've used, just ask me in a review. Thank you.

.:Iced Hearts:.

Published: 19th August 2011.