Chapter 21
The game had ended and the boys stepped off to catch their breaths, just as they did after each round. Riku and Yata had picked a fairly difficult song, but still they stayed on medium. But even with that the song was challenging from the start. The end ranks were not as good as the other rounds with Yata only at a B and Riku sadly at a D.
"Maybe… Maybe I should sit out for a bit," Riku said, trying to catch his breath.
"You should probably get something to drink after all that. You still did really well," Sora replied. He gave an encouraging smile. "You're really good dancing at this game."
Riku felt his cheeks grow warm. He quickly averted his gaze, though he smiled without thought. "Thanks, though this isn't anything like normal dancing. But this is more fun."
"Yeah it is! Though other kinds of dancing are fun too. What other kinds of dancing do you know?" Sora asked, now very curious to know more about Riku.
"Mainly just how to waltz. That's really it," Riku replied.
"Still! Very cool!" Sora replied. "I would wanna see you dance a waltz sometime. I bet you'd look very handsome."
"Huh?" Riku asked, turning back to look at Sora. His cheeks were starting to grow a little warmer than before now.
Sora stared for a moment, wondering why Riku was looking at him so shocked. Then he realized his own words. Now redness in his cheeks was starting to show. "Not handsome, I-I mean… you know. Very proper… o-or regal. Or something. Ah! Not so say you aren't handsome, but ahah…"
Sora's face was flushed red now as he buried it into his hands. His heart was racing a mile a minute now. He hadn't even thought about what he had said until it was already out there. Now he felt like even more of a fool. He couldn't even bare to look back at Riku. He didn't want to see what Riku could have been thinking. But as he stayed there, regretting not thinking before saying, he could hear some snickering.
Sora moved his fingers to let one eye see through to the others. It was there he saw Yata with a huge grin across his face, looking right at Sora. All of Sora's worried and fears went away for the moment as he glared at Yata. He didn't even notice Riku, still with a shocked expression staring at him.
"Hey! Stop laughing Yata, it's not funny!"
"You bet it is funny," Yata replied. "You're acting like such a child."
Saru, upon seeing Riku's expression, went to taunt him at first, before realizing that his elder brother was too out of it to react. So Saruhiko walked up to Riku and slapped him across the face as hard as he could.
Now all eyes were on Saruhiko, including an angry looking Riku. "What the hell was that for!?"
"You're brain short-circuited, and I had a means to jump start it. Why not choose the more entertaining option." Saru responded, taking a few steps back from his brother.
Riku let out a sharp exhale from his nose. He could feel the burning sensation from the slap on his face, but he choose to ignore it. He knew better than to get aggravated at Saru. In a way he was thankful. It did in fact snap him out of his daze. Sora's fumbling complements really had caught him off guard. Even now he wasn't exactly sure what to think about it. He decided, like everything else he felt about this, he would think about it later.
"I think that was a bit uncalled for," Yata said, looking over to Saruhiko.
"'A bit' would be a understandment," Riku added, rubbing the side of his face.
Saru just shrugged before sitting down against the wall.
Sora looked at Riku, forgetting everything he said before. He only looked at Riku with a concerned look now. "You're not hurt are you?"
"It was just a slap," Riku replied. "It's far from the worse he has done. Still hurts a little, but it's not the end of the world."
"Why don't you just use a cure spell? I would assume you know how to do those,?" Yata said. "It would help alleviate the pain at least."
"Oh yeah, that is true. I kind of forget for a moment there," Riku said before casting a small healing spell over him.
"How do you forget something like that?" Yata asked.
"I mean I forgot you guys are okay with magic. You know there are still some who are opposed to it," Riku answered.
"True," Sora said. "I really gotta learn magic sometime."
"You're too lazy," Yata commented.
"I'm lazy now, but when I wanna do it, I'll do it," Sora replied while crossing his arms. "Now let's get to the next round of dancing! I guess it will be me against Saruhiko?"
Saruhiko sighed while standing back up from his spot on the floor. Without an audible word, just mutterings under his breath, he stepped up onto the dance platform and began to shuffle through the songs.
"I guess that's a 'yes' then," Sora said as he waited for Saruhiko to pick a song.
After cycling through the entire list of songs, twice, and almost timing out, Saru finally settled on a song that offered easy, medium and hard difficulties. After only a brief pause, he clicked over and selected the hard difficulty.
"Suddenly you want to go to hard mode?" Yata asked as he watched.
"Hey if he wants to go hard mode, then let him. It makes it more fun," Sora answered as he decided between medium and hard. "Hm, let's actually make this a fun challenge." Sora then confirmed his level on hard and the song set to begin.
They had chosen Hikari: Ray of Hope, and it began with freeze(hold) arrows paired with double-stepped arrows set to a fairly fast beat. Saru was able to mostly keep up with the song, his combo climbing until he ran into some trouble. He began to stumble when there were chains of crossovers intermixed with double-steps. While he didn't actually get a 'boo' or an 'almost', he couldn't keep his combo count up for longer than 7 in a row.
On the other hand, Sora was keeping up with the motions a little better. He was not perfect, far from it. He also couldn't keep a straight running combo for very long. But his at least got up to 15 before he would slip up and had to start over. When it came to the more complicated moves, he managed to get through most of them, but there was still a few steps of it that he would fail.
This continued on for the rest of the song, which ended with a jump freeze. As the song wound to a close, the two were given time to catch their breaths before the game tallied their scores.
Sora had ended with a final score of a B, while Saru surprisingly finished with an A-.
Sora stepped off the platform and grabbed his water bottle. He proceeded to chug down the water as fast as he could until the bottle was empty. He laughed in between breaths. "Guess… I guess I should have bought more water… bottles."
"You did good though," Riku said. This time he was going to give a compliment back to Sora, after all he had done so far for him. "That was a challenging song, but you looked like you had fun."
Sora nodded. "It's it such a cool song! It's one of my favorites on there," Sora then turned around to look at Saruhiko. "Oh! Are you doing okay Saruhiko? You also did really well! Great job!"
"'m fine," Saru mumbled out, still breathing a bit hard from having exerted himself a bit more than usual today.
Yata looked at Saruhiko carefully. "You going to be okay? If you need a water bottle, I guess I can go grab one. One for everyone I assume?"
Saru didn't give an answer, just sat down on the edge of the dance platform so that he could rest for a bit. At that reaction, Yata walked off to get some water bottles without another word.
"What are we going to do after this? I didn't think to ask before," Riku said. "Or are we just going to spend all day here?"
"Hmm," Sora hummed, bringing a hand to his chin. It was apparently that he also had not thought of what to do afterwards. "Go for food somewhere? Like maybe later on go to someplace for dinner?"
Riku hadn't considered that as an option. How long had it been anyways since they got here? Riku already lost track of time. He glanced up to the clock on the wall to see that the time said that it was a quarter past three. Far more time had gone by that he originally thought.
He cleared his throat and looked back to Sora. "So you'd still wanna hangout after this? For… dinner?"
"Yeah, I mean why not. We are all getting to know each other today, and dinner is another great place for conversation," Sora replied.
Saru's input was to flop backwards onto the dance platform with a groan of annoyance. While that usually would have caused some harm, Saruhiko didn't appear to be bothered by his own action. He laid there, looking rather exhausted, but also a bit peaceful.
"Where would we even go?" Riku asked, seeing that Saru was going to have no real input on the topic.
"I don't know… we would have to think about that," Sora said as he saw Yata returning with four water bottles. "Hey Yata! Where should we all go for dinner tonight?"
"What? Who said we are going to dinner?" Yata asked.
"I did," Sora declared, pointing to himself. "I think it would be fun."
"I don't understand how you think something like that could be fun," Yata replied before holding out a water bottle to Saruhiko.
Saru accepted the bottle with a murmured thanks before sitting up and taking some sips.
Yata blinked for a moment, a little surprised hearing a form of thanks from the boy. But he shrugged it off quickly and handed out the remaining bottles to Riku and Sora.
"Where would we even go?" Yata finally asked. He looked between everyone. "Anyone have an interest in anything?"
"I dunno," Sora replied casually.
Riku thought for a moment. Thinking where they could possibly go. There were plenty of different restaurants to go to, all of them varying in different food. But the choice was still hard on what to pick. Riku then realized that he didn't even know what the others liked. He knew Saru's likes and dislikes, albeit his likes in food were few. But he knew nothing about the other two. There was still so much they didn't know about one another.
"Well Saru is a bit of a picky eater, so that may lessen put choices a bit," Riku finally answered.
"He's picky about his video games and food?" Yata questioned. "What else do we need to know about him?"
"I'm into to guys too, if that's what you're curious about." Saru retorted, sitting upright.
Everyone stared at him in silence.
Yata blinked after a moment, but he kept his gaze locked with Saru. Once another moment passed, he realized what he was doing. He averted his gaze to the ground. He began to rub the back of his neck. "Uh, not what I was expecting… but um… g-good for you… and stuff…"
Saru just stood up, placing his partially drunk water bottle on the ground next to the machine. "Am I done with this game now?" He asked, changing the topic while gesturing to the dance machine.
"You haven't gone against Yata though. That's the last combination we gotta do!" Sora said.
With a sigh, Saru stepped up onto the platform once again, and began flipping through the songs quickly.
"Can you really do another song after that last one though? Aren't you a little exhausted?" Yata asked before stepping up to the platform.
"Just get this over with already." Saru retorted, selecting Survive, a fast song that had the options medium, hard, and expert.
"Fine fine," Yata sighed. He thought for a moment, listening to the preview snippet of the song at the difficulty menu. "Are you going to challenge yourself again, or are you already too tired for that?"
Saruhiko flashed Yata a challenging smirk before clicking over to, and selecting Expert.
Yata narrowed his eyes, trying to read Saruhiko's thoughts. But he only found himself annoyed by the smirk. "All right, if you are going to be like that…" Yata mumbled and also picked Expert, though he wasn't exactly sure how well he would do. He had never played this particular song before and from the sound of the song it was going to be hard… very hard.
The song didn't seem all that difficult at the start, a few, three arrow crossovers followed by a jump hold, but within a few moments, it was as if arrows had exploded all over the screen. It wasn't long before Yata's gauge dropped from passing, to red, to having outright failed as he couldn't truly keep up with the chaos that was the arrows for this song. He would have lasted about 43 seconds before he should have ended, but because Saru was still going, Yata was forced to suffer through the madness. Saruhiko was fairing quite a bit better than Yata, his performance bar still in the green. Every few steps he missed an arrow, although it appeared as if it was intentional.
Shortly after Yata's bar dropped to failing, Riku began to notice faint wisps of orange flickering off of Saru as well as a faint, clock shaped reflection of lights on his left wrist. He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but remained quiet as the song continued. He kept his eyes locked now on Saru, specifically his wrist were he had seen the orange glow.
The song ended and Yata immediately stumbled off the platform and dropped to the floor. He reached for his water bottle, huffing deeply and began to chug it down as fast as he could. Between each swig of water he took in several deep breaths, though his heart was still pounding rapidly.
Saru practically collapsed off of the platform, making a small grunt of pain when he hit the floor.
Sora laughed seeing the two of them so tired. But he knew that he would do the exact same thing if he were in their position. Riku on the other hand still was quiet. He had analyzed Saru the entire dance and he was sure he had come to his conclusion.
Their scores had finished totaling on the screen. Yata had failed, a large red F on his side. Saru, on the other hand, had a B-.
"H… Ho… How did y-y… you manage... B rank…?" Yata asked, still clearly out of breath.
Riku stepped forward. "I think I can answer that."
He walked over to where Saru still laid and grabbed his left wrist. Saru made no effort to resist, still far too exhausted. Riku pushed up the sleeve of Saru's jacket. On his wrist was an orange glowing clock, though it was quickly fading.
"Wait…" Yata said, turning his head to look. "Is that… haste magic?"
"Saruhiko cheated?" Sora questioned.
Riku scoffed before letting go of Saru's wrist. "Seems like it. Couldn't just play fairly could you?"
" 'billty to 'hance 'sycal 'billty not chetin." Saru mumbled out, having exhausted both his physical stamina and mana.
"Like hell it is!" Yata shouted, jumping to his feet. "If someone enhances themselves in a race, it's creating, so this is just the same!"
" 's not same. No outside interference, 'nd didn't say no 'agic."
Yata gritted teeth and started to walk over to where Saruhiko still laid. Riku stepped in front of the exhausted younger brother. "Don't. Saru may have done something stupid, but no need to take it out on him. I'll make sure to have a talk with him later about it."
Saruhiko just grumbled out some insult directed towards Riku.
Riku sighed and then yanked Saru to his feet by the collar of his shirt. He glared hard at him, but said no more. It was easy to tell he was upset though.
"It's still not fair," Yata grumbled.
"Just leave it," Riku answered quickly. "There can be a more proper and fair rematch another day. And we can all make sure Saru doesn't use any magic."
"We can hang out again?" Sora asked excitedly.
"Huh?" Riku mumbled, not even realizing his statement from before. It only took a few seconds before it set in. "Oh… Yeah uh I guess so. This has been fun."
Sora pumped a fist into the air. "All right!"
Saruhiko mumbled something about not wanting any more social interaction with people for the next month.
"You don't have to come," Yata said, looking over at Saruhiko "Personally if those two just wanna hang out on their own, that's fine by me."
"Aw, but it's more fun I think if all four of us hang together. This day had been really fun so far," Sora started to say, looking over at the other two. "And I wanna have more fun days like these."
Yata shrugged. "I guess… it hasn't been that bad today… aside from the monkey here cheating at a dancing game."
"See?" Sora said with a laugh. "This is a lot of fun, and we still have plenty more fun ahead! Now come on, let's go find more games to play!"
Sora then started to walk off, waving his hand for the others to follow. Riku laughed slightly before he started to follow behind, happy to see Sora still has so much enthusiasm. Yata, who already was pretty much immune to Sora's peppiness started to walk after them, not looking back if Saruhiko was following or not. He figured there wasn't much point trying to drag him along or argue with him to come play more games after everything else.
Saruhiko just flopped back down on the floor, closing his eyes as he listened to the three walk further away.
*The empty pizza box lay open on the table while Hikari finished munching on the last slice*
"Hope that you've enjoyed the read."
"Now before I let you go, I have a small announcement to make."
"With Riku out for the next few weeks and with no backlog left for this story, there will not be an update on this until mid-August."
"Don't freat however, for those of you who are interested, I will be filling this weekly update with a new story that Riku and I have been working on."
"It will only be for these few weeks, and then will return to Shadows when we can work on it again."
"I apologize for such a long author's note, and please follow, favorite and or review if you would."
"We do like to know that there are people interested in our story."
"Until next time, nyah~"
:3