Ah, now that my life has calmed down just a little bit, I have more time to devote to Lunar Eclipse. That being said, here is chapter seven.
Lunar Eclipse
Chapter Seven
It was around 11:45 by the time the boys had cleaned the gym enough for the team to go home. While everyone else was still packing their bags, Tsukishima was already halfway through the gym door, willingly oblivious to the rest of his teammates' antics. Headphones over his ears, he pressed a few times on the screen of his smartphone to begin whatever song he was using to tune out the world, and stuck the phone in his pocket. Hand on the strap of the duffel bag he had slug over his shoulder, Tsukishima strode out of the gym. Sugawara jogged to catch up with him.
"Hey, Tsukishima! I almost missed you!"
The taller boy stopped in his tracks and turned to look at his teammate behind him, pulling the headphones down from his ears in the process.
"Hm? Oh, hello, Sugawara."
"Hey, uh, I was wondering... since Yamaguchi isn't here to walk home with you, would you mind some company on your way back?" For a fleeting moment, Tsukishima looked almost stunned.
"Sure. If you want." Sugawara smiled as the pair left the school.
The night air was crisp and unsettled, whipping the boys' hair as they walked along the sidewalk under the light of the full moon. Trees rustled around them as the wind dragged its massive hand through their rough green leaves like a toddler at the park. The sound they made was loud and harsh-sounding and Sugawara tried to tune it out, refusing to let his concern ruin his good mood. Failing utterly, Sugawara turned to his teammate.
"Hey, Tsukishima, you think we're going to have a storm? This wind is really kicking up." Tsukishima looked for a moment at Sugawara, and then at the wind ripping through the leaves in the trees above his head.
"It's possible. Let's hope we get home before then. I hate getting caught in the rain."
"Yeah..." Sugawara's voice trailed as he kicked a small pebble along the sidewalk. His teammate's face was so hard to read. Everything he said sounded serious. He could never tell if Tsukishima was angry, sarcastic, or just bored. The confusion made it difficult for him to determine if he'd said something somehow offensive.
Just as Sugawara opened his mouth to attempt to communicate again, Tsukishima's cell phone broke the silence. The setter's ears were suddenly filled with the muffled sound of the start-up jingle to an obscure mobile game. Sugawara had heard about it online, but he hadn't known anyone (except, apparently, Tsukishima), who'd played it. He didn't know much about the game, except that it was notoriously difficult.
The taller blond pulled the phone out of his pocket at the sudden recognizable noise. He tapped the smartphone's screen, shutting off the tune, and put the phone to his ear.
"Mom," Tsukishima said, "Yes, I know it's late... Yeah... It's fine, Suga is walking with me...No, I don't know anything about Yamaguchi's father... Yes, we'll be home within the next twenty minutes... Bye."
"Is everything okay?"
"Yes, my mother is just concerned that our practice ran so late. Thanks to Hinata and Kageyama's fooling around, we got out forty-five minutes after I told her we would."
"Yeah, sorry about that. They can be hard to control." Sugawara paused.
"So, uh, speaking of mothers, I just remembered that my mom asked me to pick up some soda she really likes on my way home. Would you mind if we stopped somewhere?" Tsukishima shrugged, apparently fairly unconcerned about the request.
"It doesn't matter to me. Coach's store is just down the street."
"Well, actually, coach's store doesn't carry the brand she likes. The convenience store a few streets over does, though, if that's okay. I promise it won't take more than a few minutes."
"Okay. Point it out when we get there." Tsukishima replaced the headphones over his ears.
As the duo turned at a street corner, Sugawara left his sidewalk pebble to kick a new one. He didn't think that walking home with Tsukishima would be this stressful. Tsukishima didn't seem to have an opinion on anything. Everything he felt was always heavily guarded, suppressed to the point of being stoic. It was like he wore a sort of veil at all times. He always acted so noncommittal about everything and everyone around him that it made him extremely hard to read. If his teammates' antics ever did get to him, Tsukishima never let on that he was anything more than mildly irritated. He was the last person Sugawara wanted to see angry because he figured he'd never see it coming.
He wondered if Yamaguchi had ever seen him angry. He knew they were most likely friends before high school, but how long had they really known each other? If Yamaguchi stuck around through Tsukishima's permanent cold shoulder, maybe he'd seen a softer side of his teammate that Sugawara never had? Yamaguchi was such a sweet, good-natured guy. Sugawara found it hard to believe that Tsukishima could spend so much time with someone like Yamaguchi and not care about him.
"Hey, Tsukishima?" Tsukishima pulled his headphones down again. There was a split second when Sugawara thought he saw a moment of annoyance pass over his teammate's face, but he decided that he'd probably imagined it.
"Hm?"
"Did Yamaguchi say anything about his dad before he left? I'm worried about him."
Sugawara was afraid that bringing up someone so close to him would push his Tsukishima over the edge, but the damage was not as bad as he feared. Tsukishima simply stayed silent for several seconds. When he finally did speak, his voice was strained, ever so slightly.
"Nothing that would ease your concern." They turned another street corner. Sugawara found another pebble.
"Oh, well, I hope his dad's okay. Strokes can be pretty nasty. My grandmother had one when I was in elementary school. She lost control of the left half of her body and was in rehab for a while to help her walk and feed herself again. I wasn't really old enough to understand what was happening at the time, but my dad was pretty broken up for a while." Sugawara stopped talking when he noticed the vaguely constipated look that his teammate was giving him.
"Uh - that's not to say that all strokes have to be that nasty! Sometimes people make a full recovery almost immediately and there's no lasting damage!"
"Right." Tsukishima put his headphones back over his ears and looked away. Sugawara sighed and looked back down at the pebble he was kicking down the sidewalk. That conversation could have gone a lot better. He wondered what he had to say to get through to someone like Tsukishima. He wanted to make sure his teammate was handling Yamaguchi's situation alright. Maybe...maybe he was prying too much. Maybe the best way to get to know him was to simply let him be, to be in his proximity and let Tsukishima get comfortable being around him. The duo walked the rest of their trek with nothing but the harsh wind to fill their ears.
Sugawara and Tsukishima reached the convenience store after several more minutes of silence.
"This is the place. It's okay, I know where they keep the soda, so it should only be a few minutes. Especially since it's so late, there shouldn't really be very many customers." Sugawara opened the right-hand door, and the pair entered the store.
The first thing that hit Sugawara when he entered the store was the blinding neon lights, a stark contrast to the midnight darkness outside. A fraction of a second later, his eyes had adjusted, and he peered around the store. He had lots of fond memories of this particular convenience store. Sugawara's mother had grown up in another area of Japan, miles away from the Miyagi Prefecture. When Sugawara was little, his mother loved to tell him the story of how she'd met his father when the two were at university. Their university's cafeteria had this hard-to-find brand of soda that they sold regularly, and his mother loved it so much, that she scarcely drank anything else, other than water and coffee after the occasional all-nighter. His father often told her that one of the first things about her that he first found adorable was her obsession with that soda. He proposed to her their senior year, and when they moved to Torono Town, she was afraid that she would never be able to find the soda again. Lo and behold, they came upon this store when Sugawara was a toddler. His mother had found the soda in the back of the cooler, and was so happy she started crying. His father laughed with her, and even though Sugawara was too young to know what was going on himself, he looks back fondly on the story as a teenager.
They became regulars at the store after that day. Whenever they went on a trip it was always the first place they stopped on the way out of town, and the last place they stopped in the way back - perfect bookends. Sugawara was on a first name basis with every cashier who had ever worked there since that time, simply because his parents always stopped in to talk. He remembered it annoying him when he was kid, mostly because their conversations always lasted for an hour or more, and Sugawara was often tired and wanted to go home.
Of course, it was never all bad. Several times he remembered seeing other kids stuck there while their parents talked. He played with them whenever they would let him. He had fond childhood memories of playing hide and seek behind shelves, and pretending the white floor tiles were lava, jumping from colored square to colored square in gleeful abandon. In retrospect, Sugawara felt like he never truly appreciated those times as a kid. Looking back on them now, he felt like they were a rare treasure, locked safely away in a sealed time capsule, forever entrapping the atmosphere of innocence within its walls. He wanted to keep those memories forever.
Once Sugawara's reverie had dissipated he noticed that he had never seen the cashier before. She was a young woman, probably not much older than himself. She was a slightly heavier-set redhead with an award-winning smile, and Sugawara felt comfortable enough to strike up a conversation with her. Tsukishima awkwardly trailed behind Sugawara as he made a beeline for the register.
"Hey, I haven't seen you here before." The redhead looked a little flustered as her head shot up from behind a computer screen sitting on the counter slightly to Sugawara's left. She had freckles, he quickly noticed. And dimples. God, I am a sucker for dimples.
"Oh, hi. Sorry, did you need something?" Sugawara figured by the tone of her voice that she was much more scared than she intended on letting on, and he was determined to do something to calm her down.
"No, it's okay. My family and I are regulars here, and I haven't seen you working before. Are you new?" She relaxed a little.
"Yeah, actually I am. I just got the job last week." She was still nervous. Sugawara flashed her a smile.
"Hey, no need to be so tense. Is this your first job?" She relaxed a little more, letting loose a shy smile as she did so. Sugawara's heart melted into a puddle at his feet.
"No, actually, but it is my first time working the graveyard shift. I've never worked at a place like this overnight. And I'm way too big of a scaredy-cat on top of that, so I'm bound to be a little bit of a mess until I get myself settled. Uh, my name's Kiku, by the way." Kiku held her hand out across the counter. Sugawara took it in a gentle handshake.
"Koushi. Funny, you don't look like a chrysanthemum." He chuckled.
"And I suppose you always support your elders?" A small glint of amusement highlighted the airy quality of her voice. After a small pause she turned her attention to Tsukishima, who had been standing stoic through the whole conversation, pretending to be interested in some mint gum on the shelf built into the counter, down in front of the register.
"And what about you? Koushi, you haven't introduced me to your friend here." Tsukishima lifted his head. Kiku offered a hand to him, and he took it in a stiff handshake.
"Tsukishima."
"Moon island? That sounds more like a last name than a first name. If you don't want to tell me, that's completely okay, but it's hardly polite since your friend was so willing." Kiku said with a light smirk.
Tsukishima caught an annoyed scowl as it passed over his face and squashed it.
"Kei." he responded a little too quietly, "My first name is Kei." Kiku's face lit up.
"Firefly. It sounds magical. It's a shame you keep it so well hidden. Real fireflies are never afraid to show their light." Tsukishima took that opportunity to leave the conversation.
"Right. Well, I'll be in the back looking at the sodas." He made his way to the back of the store. Kiku and Sugawara both watched him leave, Kiku with an expression of confusion, Sugawara with slight exasperation. It was a few seconds before Kiku spoke up. Suddenly shy again, she fidgeted with a frayed green string on her apron.
"So, um, I'm sorry for offending him. Is he okay?" Sugawara turned to look back at her.
"Oh, yeah, Tsukishima's okay. He's just not very good with new people. He needs time to get used to you is all." Silence.
"I should probably go over with him. I am the one who dragged him here, after all."
"Sure, I understand." They waved a little awkwardly at each other as Sugawara turned around and followed Tsukishima to the coolers in the back of the store. Sugawara had hardly reached his teammate before the words escaped Tsukishima's mouth.
"Which brand does your mom like?" It didn't take long for Sugawara to notice the impatience and slight annoyance in Tsukishima's tone for taking the time to have a conversation with the cashier, especially since he'd promised the stop would be quick. For the first time, it occurred to Sugawara that he might have turned out just like his mother.
"Sorry about that," he began, suddenly lowering his voice to just above a whisper, "She's just so cute I couldn't really help myself." Tsukishima gave his teammate a look that registered to Sugawara as vaguely amused.
Unbeknownst to the boys, as they had their backs turned, poring over the sodas, another man had entered the store behind them.
Things are finally heating up a bit, aren't they? Constructive criticism is always appreciated :)