Smile

I smile lots, lots of stuff makes me smile. Sleeping and pretty things and the park and sleeping and tennis and sweets and Buchou all make me smile. Buchou is always funny when I smile at him, he goes all red and slinks away. I like red, and cats slink and I like cats, so when he slinks away I smile more. Then all my team mates laugh, and them laughing makes me happy and I smile even more.

Akutagawa Jiroh sat up and stretched, looking around. This wasn't his bedroom…

"Jiroh!" a high voice yelled from somewhere below him. "Why are you up a tree? Come home, it's almost lunch!"

Oh yeah, he was up a tree in the park, hiding from his sister and clearly not doing a very good job of it as she had now found him.

I have to smile a lot at home, nobody else does very much. Nana-san smiles at me, but she's always busy or out running errands. Ruriko doesn't like smiling; she says she wants to look 'elegant' for Buchou. I told her she had to smile because otherwise she'd get wrinkles and Buchou – grey hair or not – doesn't seem the type to go for wrinkles. She hit me.

He could have sworn he had two pens when he left the house…Buchou wouldn't have taken one that morning, he had his own pens, hmm…where was Momo-kun? He must have forgotten to give him his pen back, that was a shame. Oh well, he had lots of pens at home just like it.

"Jiroooooh! Get out of that tree and come home! Nanami-san was already making lunch when I came to find you!" Jiroh sighed and, holding his book to his chest, half jumped and half fell out of the tree. The red-headed little girl grabbed his hand and pulled him home.

Mom doesn't smile anymore either; I can't remember when she last smiled. I think it was before Ruriko was born, back when Dad and Tokutaro were around. Yeah, before she hired Nana-san to live with us and do all the chores and things.

Dad never smiled much either, or Tokutaro. That's weird.

"Lunch. Jiroh." Ruriko pushed her big brother into a chair and ran off to wash up and change into a pretty dress for lunch. Jiroh never understood this; why wear nice clothes for eating if you were only going to spill stuff down yourself? Then again he never wore particularly fancy clothing; he could fall asleep in a muddy puddle or something and that would be a waste. A young woman in a plain dress and apron laid food out on the table and beamed at Jiroh.

"Hello Jiroh, are you well?"
"Oh yeah, Nana-san, I'm great" he grinned back at her and took a sandwich from one of the plates on the table. "I've been thinking, I have to write about smiling for my project, right? Do you know why Mom doesn't smile much anymore? She looks pretty when she smiles"

Nana looked at the boy sadly and ruffled his hair. Her mistress' son was so naïve and sweet, unlike Ruriko who was, as cute as she could be, very annoying. Jiroh was like her own child, and she wanted to keep him as a child for as long as she could. "I don't know, Jiroh, I really don't know. If you're stuck on your project, why don't you read one of your manga things? You've got so many, there has to be something that can help you, right?"

Jiroh nodded, mouth too full of sandwich to say anything.

Since I was very little, Dad always said I was lazy. He told Mom I slept too much and should be active like all the other kids, but I couldn't help it. Tokutaro was three years older than me and he was perfect, he was top of his class and in all the sports teams. I always wanted him to teach me how to do sports, but I was too tired. Mom and Dad fought a lot about me.

When I was eight, I remember spending a lot of time in a big room with lots of people in. Nana told me once this was a courtroom and we were sitting through custody stuff, but I slept through most of that. Me being diagnosed with narcolepsy was the last straw and Dad said he didn't care about taking any of the money; he wanted a clean break without taking a penny with him. Apparently Tokutaro stood up in the middle of the room and said he wanted to be with dad, and it was ruled that Mom would have me and Ruriko, who wasn't born, as well as all the stuff, and Dad would take Tokutaro and just go. This is what Nana says happened, anyway, Mom told her because she wasn't there and I was asleep. After that Mom decided that I needed to make friends and I couldn't be taught at home anymore so she sent me to Hyoutei.

I don't remember Tokutaro much, I remember someone patting my head while I was asleep, and I woke up and Mom said him and Dad had gone. I don't really miss him; I spent most of my time with him asleep. Ruriko doesn't even know Tokutaro ever existed, it's easier that way.

What does this have to do with smiling?

Oh yeah, since then Mom doesn't smile much, a while after Dad and Tokutaro left and Ruriko was born, she hired Nana-san. Nana-san lives with us and does all the chores and things, and she used to play with Ruriko and take us shopping. Poor Nana-san, she does everything while Mom sits in her room and mopes. I hope she stays with us forever.

Well, she most likely would, since the Akutagawas actually had around the same amount of money – if not more – as the Atobes. Jiroh just didn't flaunt it as much.

Jiroh had his own floor of the house, first one above the ground floor so he only had one flight of stairs to fall asleep on. His bedroom, bathroom, random room for storing objects, and his manga room. He loved his manga room; Hundreds and hundreds of little books, arranged by series, alphabetic order, genre, he would even dare to say he had more manga than Atobe had underwear. He settled on a beanbag with a little stack of one of his all time favourites: Imadoki.

He loved that series so much; he could just connect with it so well. Especially the female lead, who with all the troubles she had in her life, stayed happy, pursued love, and remembered to always smile. She was Jiroh's imaginary friend when he was little, as he couldn't be bothered to make up his own, and if she was real Jiroh would want to marry her.

Jiroh's trail of thought wandered, what would happen if Tanpopo was real and she met Atobe? Well, first Atobe would tell her she couldn't dress herself, then tell her to wash her hands if she'd been playing around with flowers in case she got any of his nice things all muddy. After that he'd most likely point out that her hair didn't suit her, her school was totally inferior to Hyoutei, and she had a rubbish taste in boyfriends.

"Jiroh?" Gah, Ruriko, just when things were getting fun. "You fell asleep, and Nanami-san says that Atobe-sama is coming over! He called you but your phone was downstairs, see. Now I'm going to brush my hair and find a pretty dress to wear!" she did a little twirl and a curtsey as Jiroh, bleary eyed, yawned.

"You're already wearing a pretty dress, Ruriko"

"I want to put on a prettier one, silly. Atobe-sama is going to be my husband someday, because he's a handsome prince and I'm a pretty princess!" She skipped away, as her big brother idly flung a pen at her.

"You do that, but when I grow up I wanna marry Buchou too…"

Now, back to Tanpopo and Atobe having that fabulous catfight.

Buchou makes me smile lots and lots because he is awesome. Jiroh woke up to find Atobe sitting on a beanbag beside him, writing in his project. Even when I fall asleep at practice in the middle of the courts Buchou doesn't get mad at me because I'm special like that.

"Stop writing in my book, Buchou!" the blond squealed and tried to retrieve the book at no avail. Atobe kept writing.

It's also probably because Buchou was a complete arse to me when I first joined Hyoutei because I was narcoleptic and he thought I was lazy and after the captain gave him a good talking to at the end of first year he's been trying to make up for being so obnoxious ever since, but since anyone who is mean to me is going straight to hell because I'm so cute there's probably no point so why does he keep being nice to me?

"I said stop! Give it baaaaaack!" Atobe stood up, silently, and continued writing in Jiroh's project. He wasn't even bothering to use Jiroh's blue gel pen, making it incredibly obvious that it wasn't Jiroh writing at all.

Well, probably because I'm so cute Buchou decided he wanted to protect me, and after Buchou was really horrible and read my project while I was sleeping he found out a load of stuff that makes him really impressed that I can keep smiling all the time. Most likely of all, it's because I have the most beautiful smile in the whole world and Buchou is in love with me.

Atobe put the book down, knelt before Jiroh – who was still on his beanbag – and pulled him into a kiss; a long, lingering kiss that Jiroh quite a while to register. Atobe smiled, stroked his cheek softly, and left.

Jiroh spaced out for a while, and picked up his book.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!