Chapter 5 – One loss per day

"Hey Suzu, wait up!", someone called after me.

I sighed. Can´t they just leave me alone? I already had enough for one day, thanks to that guy..

Nerved, I still turned around to see Mari.

"What is it?", I asked politely.

"That Shiro guy! Isn´t he the one, who we had fought yesterday?", Mari asked.

I shrugged: "Yep, that´s him."

Suddenly she started to beam: "Oh my god, I knew it! If I had known that he is so cool, I would have definitely talked to him sooner!"

My eyes grew bigger: "What are you talking about? He isn´t cool at all."

"What?! Are you blind? Just look at him! He is good at turf war, he is smart and really good looking! All the girls are head over heels for him, already!", the bright blue Inklinggirl tried to convince me.

I just rolled my eyes and went to the locker room. What was so awsome about that guy? Yeah, he knew some things and got lucky at turf war. But he didn´t really seem special looking to me..

I sat myself down on a bench and got rid of my uniform. Instead I took my purple shirt and my black, short pants and put them on. I also changed my normal shoes into sneakers and went directly to the gym after that.

"You were so cool on the News! I saw the whole thing and the video material, too!", a girl from my class squeeled.

Another one joined her: "Yeah and you are pretty smart as well! But you have to be, right? You did beat Suzu after all!"

I looked to the other side of the gym, where the boys usually hanged out. And I immediately regrettet it. A big swarm of girls had built up around Shiro, while he smiled like an idiot and scratched his head.

Are they serious? Wow, he answered a couple of questions in class. I´m so impressed!...

NOT!

Like for real.. What was so special about him?

Fortunately Mrs. Anderson entered the gym and ended that idiocy.

"Today we will exercise some more for our sports day, which takes place the day after tomorrow. So everyone grab a Splat Charger, while I will decide who will be in which team.", she announced.

Like we were told, everyone stood up to get their weapon. When it was my turn to grab my gear, someone already offered me a Splat Charger by holding it out to me.

"Here.", was all what the person said.

I looked up to stare directly at Shiros grey eyes.

Was this a test? Or did he manipulate that gun so I wouldn´t be able to win?

I shook my head. He wouldn´t have had the time to do this.

So I harshly took the weapon and hissed: "I could have grabbed that by myself, you know?"

And with that I went back to the girls´side and sat down.

It seemed like forever for PE to end, since Mrs. Anderson didn´t pair me up with anyone, because in her eyes I was more advanced than the others..

But eventually she agreed to let me at least fight at the last battle. And guess who my opponent was? Yep, Shiro.

I grinned to myself. I wouldn´t let him win again! This time it was my turn to shine and to finally get my revenge on him!

At first everything went super well. Instead of heading directly to Shiro to splat him, I stayed behind and let the others rush forward. I was the one who painted our base and the area near it with our colour. But I still was very carefull, since our gym wasn´t that big like a normal battlefield in turf or ranked battle. When every single spot was finally coloured in our paint, I also rushed forward to help my teammates. And again I tried to keep my distance from Shiro. I hated to admit it, but I did respect him for beating me the last time. So I went after my other enemys and it was really fun to do so, because I managed to splat Lukas a bunch of times which kind of got me my self-respect back.

And then the last thirty seconds started. It looked very good for our team. Most of the gym was splatted with our colour, so the only task to do was to keep our opponents busy to prevent them to get any territory back. But all of a sudden all of my teammates got splattet and therefore they warped back to our base.

"What happened?!", I screamed into the communicator.

"Sorry. Shiro suddenly rushed towards us and got us splattet, one after another. Be careful, he might be heading towards you now.", an Inkling informed me.

I gulped: "Listen guys. I will take care of him. You just take care of the others, got it?"

With that I kept on going towards the enemy´s base. But with the information in the back of my head that Shiro might be near by, I was being very careful. So I splattet every spot which was painted in the enemy´s colour, but was also conscious of my surroundings.

Suddenly I heared a splatting sound right behind me. Quickly I turned around to be indeed confronted by Shiro trying to splat me. The next thing I did was to shoot and jump like crazy, as well.

"Stop!", our teacher screamed to end the battle.

In the end whether Shiro nor I were able to shoot each other.

Exitedly everyone waited for the results to be announced. Who did win? Shiro´s group or mine? I had to say that I had mixed feelings about this battle. On the one hand our team did a great job. Most of the time we had the upper hand of this fight. On the other hand Shiro really messed around the situation in these few, last seconds..

"Wow. This sure was a tight battle. However the winner with one percent more covered ground is team purple!", Mrs. Anderson exclaimed.

All the girls in the audience started to cheer Shiro´s name, while I looked at my hands in disbelief.

Why? Why did I loose again?

I started to tremble.

Shiro however walked up to me and once again hold his right hand in front of me.

"This sure was a tight battle! Good work!", he smiled.

Tears started to flow down my cheek.

I raised my head to look directly at him and shot him a glare.

Furthermore I smacked his hand away and stormed out of the gym.