AN: i dont like to do homework
Thao Nhi- its fine, english is the only other language i can read as well. i thought i made it clear, but there was actually 2 games going on in the last chapter so thats why when it was sanae's team against hyuuga's it was 3-1 while the tsubasa and saya's team versus misaki/ayame/wakabyashi team was 0-0. if you have any more questions just drop by my tumblr. there should be a link to it in my profile.
yeah i dont captain tsubasa
Chapter 12: Combinations
"How are you so good at this?"
Ayame shrieked as she was beaten by Tsubasa again. They've been playing FIFA 15 for some rounds now, and every single time Tsubasa always won. As everyone could see, it's been pissing her cousin to no end. It's actually hilarious watching Ayame try and outmaneuver Tsubasa's team, but he always managed to beat her.
She was half-sitting, half-laying between Tsubasa's legs, using him as a pillow while she was reading something on her phone. He had his arms around her while he clutched the controller, not minding that she was technically in his way of playing. Well, not really, not when Tsubasa's been winning.
"I don't really know," he smiled sheepishly. Then, he confessed, "Actually I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just pressing random buttons and try to see what happens."
"Wha- Arrrgh!" Ayame cried in frustration. "You mean to tell me, you've been playing with no damn clue how to play this game and you keep on fucking winning?"
"Pretty much."
"Fu- I hate you!" she declared while she threw a random pillow towards Tsubasa, and considering Ayame's lack of aim, naturally it hit her.
"Hey!" Sanae cried and she turned to face her cousin. She was minding her own business here.
"Tell your boyfriend to stop brining his soccer sense to a video game!" Ayame demanded from her. "It's unfair."
She rolled her eyes and looked away from her. "Just stop being a sore loser and accept that he's better at you. Besides, I don't control Tsubasa."
"But you're his girlfriend!" Ayame tried to argue. "You have influence over him. Use it for the greater good."
She gave her cousin a blank look before turning away. Ayame seemed to have understood her and backed down, opting to pout and crossed her arms instead.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," she remarked.
"You don't really know what you're doing, Tsubasa-kun?" Misugi-kun asked. He was in the rec room with them because he said that it was pretty boring just being in his room. And he didn't seem to mind their position, as if he already knew what was going on with her and Tsubasa, even though they haven't said anything at all. Huh, maybe it comes naturally when you're dating someone. Yayoi-chan and he have been dating longer than she and Tsubasa did.
"He really doesn't know what he's doing," Misaki-kun answered. He was there with them because he said that it would be fun to see Ayame get trashed by Tsubasa again. Of course, Ayame was even more heated to play against Tsubasa to prove him wrong. As it turned out, she proved him right instead.
"That's amazing," he declared incredulously.
"Is it really?" Tsubasa asked, "I mean I just thought everyone does it? Doesn't everyone just push random buttons to get the game going?"
"No!" Ayame cried. "You're supposed to press the buttons that would make the best combinations against your opponent. It is an art form."
"Chill," Kisugi-kun placated. "Just- just chill okay. It's only a game."
"A game?" her cousin sounded scandalized and she's going to make another huge deal out of this. Again. "Is that all this is to you? A game?"
"Isn't it what it is?" Misugi-kun pointed out.
Ayame gasped and turned to him, an offended look on her face. She knew she was going to blow this out of proportion again, just because she wanted to mess with the poor boy. She lived with her cousin for a long time to figure out what she was thinking.
"How about you let him try?" she interrupted, laying her phone on her stomach. Its better this way than making the poor boy flustered. Sometimes, she could be the biggest pain. "You've been at it even before Tsubasa and I came here. Let someone else play. In fact, why don't you help me grab the cookies I was baking. They should be done by now."
She stood up from her spot and went to where Ayame sat on the floor, pulling her up to take her with her to the kitchen.
"What? No-" Ayame tried to protest, refusing to stand up.
"Yes, you will, dear cousin of mine," Sanae said. "Besides, you can play that game anytime. It's not like it can walk and leave you."
"Nooooo!" Ayame whined as she pulled her out of the room. She wasn't actually fighting back, probably the prospect of eating cookies before everyone else. What a glutton.
The last thing they heard was Wakabayashi-kun trying to explain the game's mechanics to Misugi-kun.
"I can't believe the chefs let you use the kitchen," Ayame told her as she stopped her melodramatics and actually started walking like a normal person
She shrugged as they turned around a corner, "Well, I guess they remember when we were here two years ago. I did do a lot of cooking back then. Good for my nerves. I was huge nervous wreck back then and you know how cooking calms me down."
"Yeah you were," Ayame agreed. "But we weren't complaining. We get to be guinea pigs for all those mouth-watering food you made. It was a good thing we trained every day or else we would have been obese from all those sugar you feed us."
"Hey, we're athletes," she reasoned, getting closer to the kitchen, "We need all the energy we need."
They entered the room, and immediately the smell of her cookies reached their nose. The lemon scent smelled delicious when it was together with the smell of the sugar cookies.
"Oh Sanae-chan!" One of the cooks, Mitaka-san, greeted her. "We hope you didn't mind, we took out your cookies out of the oven when the ringer dinged. You weren't here yet but we thought you would have wanted it out of it. Don't worry we haven't touched anything. We do have to admit it was kind of hard for us to stop ourselves from grabbing one."
"Thank you, Mitaka-san, everyone," she told them. "I just have to sprinkle powdered sugar on them then we could start eating them."
"Sweet!" Ayame-chan answered as she thanked another of the cooks for giving her some plates for the cookies.
She smiled and proceeded to grab the powdered sugar offered to her. She chatted with the cooks as she sprinkled the white sugar on top of the cookies, Ayame putting them on the plates. Of course, her cousin already stole a couple, but she didn't really mind. She made sure she made enough for all them. That is if they all control themselves. You never know with constantly hungry teenagers.
After giving the chefs a share of the sweets, the two of them went back to the rec room, each carrying a tray full of cookies.
When they arrived, the boys seemed to be all into the game, which was a little weird. Usually some of them would be laughing their asses off, or doing something else. They were never usually that focused on it.
She looked at the TV and everything suddenly made sense. Tsubasa and Misugi-kun haven't played for that long yet, but neither of them have scored yet. Compared to Tsubasa's and Ayame's game where you already knew that Tsubasa was going to win from the first 30 seconds, this one was intense.
Apparently, when you put two soccer geniuses and let them play a soccer video game, then their soccer senses also shows itself.
Thus, the FIFA 15 war between Tsubasa and Misugi-kun was born.
She shook her head and set the tray on the coffee table and grab a couple before plopping to sit beside Tsubasa. She didn't know whether he noticed her since he was so engrossed into the game, but it turned out he did because he took the cookie she offered to him with his mouth without turning his eyes away from the TV.
She rolled her eyes before taking a bite out of her cookie. Ugh, boys and video games. But she had to admit, this was the first time Tsubasa got into a video game. Most of the time, he would be playing half-heartedly. He didn't really put in any effort in doing it, and most of the time he didn't even care but winning. Maybe it because he didn't like staying still.
But dang, this game with Misugi-kun was pretty intense. She knew that the guy just learned how to play a few minutes ago. How in the world was he doing as well as Tsubasa? Is this just a thing, that soccer geniuses could play FIFA just as well as they could on the field?
"I smelled something delicious," Hoshi-chan bounded into the room, almost running over Izawa-kun and Rika-chan, who also seemed to have noticed the smell of the cookie she made.
"Did Sanae-chan make something again?" Midori-chan peered inside the room, accompanied by some of the girls who seemed to have also noticed the smell of food.
"Yep," Misaki-kun answered as he stole a cookie from Ayame's hand, nibbling on it. "Hmm. Lemon sugar cookies this time."
"Awesome!"
Soon enough, everyone arrived having smelled something delicious and immediately attacked the tray of cookies. It was a good thing she made a ton of cookies because she didn't one batch of cookies would have fit all of them. Not when all of them were constantly hungry teenagers. Well, at least there were still a few that was left. She wanted to give some to the coaches and the remaining cookies would hopefully be enough for them.
Most of everyone who grabbed cookies didn't leave the rec room, opting to watch the ongoing war of FIFA between Tsubasa and Misugi-kun. Throughout the whole commotion of everyone scrambling for cookies, they never strayed from their game. It looked like they didn't care about anyone at all at this moment. They both managed to score but it was tie of 1-1 and game was almost over.
She still thinks they have no idea what in the world they were doing.
She could hear everyone making a betting pool around her, and since they couldn't use any money, they used the cookies instead.
Why was she teammates with all these people again?
But, she knew she wouldn't trade them for the world. They were her team, no one else could ever replace them.
She turned back to watch the game, joining everyone in cheering.
All of them failed to notice all four coaches peering inside the room, big grins on their faces.
She stretched her arms up one last time before proceeding to walk towards the benches where the coaches told them to gather. They all just got finished warming up and it was time for their coaches to tell them who're going to be team this time. Hopefully they finally learned what happened a few days ago and won't be putting Noriko-chan and Hyuuga-kun in a team together.
She stopped to stand beside Tsubasa, who gave her hand a light squeeze in greeting. She squeezed back and let go soon after.
Natsukawa-san was scanning over the clipboard of the list of teams for today. It's been like this for the past days, and it's quite amusing waiting for them to call out the names and the team they were going to be in. Considering their teammates, they usually have a wide variety of reactions and some of them are quite hilarious.
"Okay," Natsukawa-san drawled as she looked up from the paper. "I think you guys would like the lineup for today's teams. I mean I, personally, am excited for it. You don't usually see these kinds of people play together and I wished I was in your age group just so I could be play against thi-"
"Coach, you're rambling."
"Oh, sorry," she apologized sheepishly. She coughed, trying to hide her embarrassment and continued, "Anyway, here are the teams for today. In the red jerseys-"
She started listing the people for the red team and it was quite an interesting team. All the two teams seemed to have pretty interesting combinations as well.
"In the blue jerseys; defenders are: Soda, Yuzawa, Ishizaki, and Mori. Midfielders: Oozora, Nakazawa, Miyahara, and Sawada. Forwards: Nitta and Nanami. Your goalkeeper will be Wakashimazu-kun."
Wait, did she say she was in a team with Tsubasa?
"Oh hey, we're finally in a team together," her boyfriend remarked casually beside her.
Well, she guessed that answered her question.
"Huh," she said. "I guess we are."
She didn't know why she sounded so nonchalant about this when she was actually screaming inside. She's been waiting for ages for this opportunity to happen. This was the first time they would be teaming up together because even though they wanted to do it back in Nankatsu, their friends wouldn't let them because they said that it was going to be unfair. They didn't even let them team up, how in the world would they know it was going to be unfair? Well now they're in a team and they couldn't say anything about it.
They each got a blue jersey and put it on, quickly running towards their team, who was huddled together with huge grins and smirks on their mouths.
"We got this in the bag guys," Ishizaki-kun proudly declared.
"How are you so sure, senpai?" Nitta-kun asked skeptically.
"Because we have these two in our team," he said right as he pointed to Sanae and Tsubasa. "They're practically the best duo we're going to get."
"T-that's actually kind of true," Hoshi-chan replied. "When you think about it, a combination with Tsubasa-kun and Sanae-chan sounds like best thing to ever happen when you're in a team with them. But if you're up against them, well, kiss your chances goodbye."
"We're not that bad," Tsubasa denied. "I mean, it's our first time that we're going to be playing in the same team. We don't exactly know how each other moves."
She nodded in agreement, while the team looked at each other with unbelieving looks.
"Trust us, Tsubasa-kun," Yumi-chan replied. "You guys know each other more than you believe and that just cemented it to me how we're going to win this match."
"Yeah, I finally realized it to," Nitta-kun agreed, bouncing in his place from excitement.
"Oh come on guys, it's not going to be that easy. We're just two people," she said, "We shouldn't be able to that hard to go up against."
"That's because you don't know the experience of playing against yourself, Nakazawa-san," Wakashimazu-kun answered. "If you have, maybe you'll be able to realize how impossible it is to beat your combination with Tsubasa will be."
She only frowned, unbelieving of his statement because they were told to go to their places.
They didn't know how their combination would work. Surely, they won't be that good to beat a team easily, right?
The whistle blew and the soccer ball was in play.
Whatever, she's not going to get worked up about that issue. She was finally playing with Tsubasa and she would damn sure enjoy this.
Sharing a glance with Tsubasa, they got to work and let their instincts take over.
This was going to be a fun match.
In the end, they won 5-1.
End Chapter
AN: ugh the ending was super rushed and im so sorry for it. its just that im too tired and i wanted to finish this chapter to work on the next one since i want to start on the next arc. also if i work on the next arc, i can work on more what i actually want to write. mainly their transition from second years to third years because i have huge plans for that one. also so i can get closer to actually work on the world youth arc because i can only wait so much. so please forgive my rushing.
anyway, i still do hope you enjoyed this chapter even though it was kind of crappy. thanks for reading and hope you review.