Love

Love is stupid

Kaidoh shut his notebook and hissed in frustration. Why love, of all words? What else could you say about it? It was stupid, that was all there was to it. It made perfectly sensible people say and do stupid things, it made stupid girls make stupid gifts for you every single stupid day.

Love was just stupid.

Love is just plain ridiculous, day in and day out girls stalk my team mates, insisting that they 'love' them. Couples being way way way too over the top in public don't notice when you glare at them or tell them to stop because they say they're just 'too in love' to get a room. Love is gross.

He sighed and pulled a face; love was everywhere for something so disgusting. Every book, every movie, even the cartoons Hazue always watched in the mornings had love in them. Cartoons! With comic blushes and little hearts and flowers and urgh.

Love is difficult, it's painful and confusing and horrible and it only leads to ruin. It destroys stable relationships and the only thing you get out of it is a broken heart and a whole world of hurt. It's so much more complicated than it is in cartoons, it's so much harder, it doesn't just involve finding someone good looking, it needs trust and time and

Oh ew

I sound like Oishi-senpai

Kaidoh's parents were in love, Kaidoh hoped. They never acted like it, but they were married so they had to be. Parents were just not affectionate like the people on subways or park benches or pretty much anywhere Kaidoh had the misfortune to be. Maybe it was a marriage thing, or just being older. All the people going O.T.T. in the middle of the street would mature one day and stop, right?

Maybe not Kikumaru-senpai. He'll be flinging himself at people past his seventies.

What exactly was love, anyway? Oishi-senpai and Kikumaru-senpai always talked about it and they would go on a long ramble of emotional crap that drove Kaidoh rather insane. But then, they were just rambly-emotional-crap people anyway, they could probably go off on an hour-long sappy tangent about anything. Inui-senpai preferred facts and figures to fluffy stuff, but he never gave Kaidoh a straight answer about anything either. He was always really vague and confusing, or he'd use painfully precise numbers and statistics and details and really really long words that made Kaidoh's head hurt.

Fuji-senpai said Kikumaru-senpai and Oishi-senpai were in love, but they weren't like the weird people who couldn't get a room. They acted pretty normal, they just talked and played tennis and acted like normal guys. Except perhaps those times when Kaidoh caught them looking at each other and not actually doing or saying anything for more than five minutes at a time, or when their embraces lasted a little too long, or when they would idly hold hands on the courts without noticing, like it was the most natural thing in the world for them.

Hell, maybe they were in love after all.

All the freaky girls say Kikumaru-senpai and Oishi-senpai are in love, which has something to it I guess, but they don't half spout some crap. Two weeks ago a girl came up to me and asked me if Fuji-senpai and Buchou were an 'item'. Blech. Fuji-senpai may be a little…forward with Buchou but that's just him, he's just a flirt anyway. Last week, another girl asked me about Echizen and Momoshiro. Echizen and Momoshiro?!

Yesterday, a group of girls approached me in the lunch room…

Aah, how Kaidoh wanted to forget that ever happened. He'd just been eating his lunch as normal when a girl ran over to him. "I love you" she'd said. Kaidoh knew the girl from his English class and found her pleasant enough, so rather than simply ignoring her he apologised and said he didn't return the sentiment. He was pretty pleased with himself for being so controlled. She took the news amicably and left, but then along came her friends…

"How dare you refuse Mi-chan!" one of them yelled, making the whole hall look at me. "She loved you with all her heart and you just brush her off!"

"She's lovely! How can you not accept her?!"

"I know" said one "Maybe he doesn't want her because he wants guys"

…"he spends all his time with Inui-san. He's in love with Inui-san! Kaidoh is in love with Inui-san!" That moment, everything froze. Why did she have to shout? Why did everyone else have to be quiet? Why did Inui have to come through the lunchroom door at that exact moment? Kaidoh had frozen, he'd blushed like a tomato, and he'd fled. Why did he run? Why didn't he go to Inui and explain things like a man?

Because he was in love with Inui-senpai?

NO

Instead, he'd run off and hidden for the rest of the day, then refused to speak to Inui during the whole of practice. That always worked, Kaidoh knew that, if you avoided something like that long enough, it would just go away.

And then he drew this god damn word!

Love hurts, a lot, especially when you know it's someone you can't have and will never have; it's just stupid and unnecessary, and the world would be a much better place without it. It makes you miss easy shots in tennis matches because you're looking the wrong way, it makes you trip yourself up during practice runs, just to feel the comforting touch of the person you pine for and to hear their voice full of genuine concern, like you're the only person in the whole world that matters to them.

Kaidoh's phone buzzed on the desk beside him. He picked it up.

Kaidoh-kun: the females in the lunchroom yesterday were behaving illogically, there is a 97.34 percent chance of their statements being unfounded. Training tomorrow? ~Inui

Love is stupid.

And I love it so much.