Author's Note: Seems whenever I get stressed out, I return to this story for comfort lmao
250 Dark Stars
(When you are young they assume you know nothing
But I knew you, playing hide-and-seek and giving me your weekends
I knew you, your heartbeat on the highline, once in twenty lifetimes)
...
An tapped her foot. The clinic had ended on Saturday, and they'd arrived back at the school that night, in time for everyone to go home and get enough sleep for the first day of Prefecturals. Unfortunately, she hadn't needed to—she'd been benched.
Actually, she'd been put in Singles 2, which was technically a step up, but meant she wouldn't get to play, all the same. This early on, the thought of not winning in straight matches was ludicrous.
"It's not fair," she groused to Shimizu as they stood along the fence watching Katsuragi make short work of Singles 3. "I don't understand why you benched me."
Takamiya and Watanabe, standing nearby, exchanged a glance, and in unison took three large steps backwards, just in time for Shimizu to round on An and say with uncharacteristic sternness, "First of all, you don't need to understand. You're not in charge."
An winced, wishing she'd backed away like Takamiya and Watanabe had. Shimizu was usually so silly that An had taken to treating her with less deference than she deserved, as an upperclassman and as vice-captain.
"Second of all," she'd continued, "while you were off being a glorified maid for the boys' team, I'm guessing you didn't think to actually play any of the freakishly good male players at that clinic, did you?" When An said nothing, Shimizu laughed a little in exasperation, and asked, "You don't realize, do you? The sort of advantage you have over the rest of us? By virtue of being Yukimura Sayoko's Bestest Ever Friend, you have unlimited access to Yukimura Seiichi."
She tilted her head to indicate Katsuragi, who'd just whipped a stellar forehand down the line. "You want to beat Katsuragi? You want to beat me? Have Yukimura start hitting with you. Either you'll get better fast, or he'll beat the will to live out of you. Either way, don't you ever come at me again with that 'it's not fair' garbage. You're not entitled to shit."
"Yes, Shimizu-fukubuchou," An muttered, thoroughly chastened.
Shimizu held An's gaze, as if trying to determine if the message had really sunk in, before she clapped An on the shoulder, spun on her heel, and skipped away, humming off-key to a Lady Gaga song.
Takamiya and Watanabe stepped back up, the former to pat An sympathetically on the back and the latter to say waspishly, "Despite what Shimizu says, Yukimura isn't a tool to be used. He's very busy, and you shouldn't bother him too much."
To An's surprise, Takamiya came to her defense, asking mildly, "Don't you and Sanada-kun play together often?"
"That's different and you know it. Sanada and I are friends."
"Can't Tachibana-kun and Yukimura-kun be friends?"
With what seemed genuine bafflement, Watanabe asked, "How could they be?"
~x~
That bewildered How could they be? stuck with An all throughout Katsuragi's match. Was it truly so inconceivable that Yukimura might take an interest in An outside of his sister's interest in her?
"What're you looking so down about? Miss me that much?"
An had moved to sit by herself in the grass, and looked up now to find Kirihara standing over her, his tennis bag slung over his shoulder and a bottle of juice in each hand. His hair was more tousled than usual, and his face flushed, as if he'd woken late and literally sprinted to the tournament grounds for fear of being disqualified, barreling through traffic and bowling over old ladies, and the image made her feel so fond of him that she asked, "What would you do if I said yes?"
She thought perhaps the color in his cheeks deepened, but must have imagined it, because his voice was steady as he said blithely, "I'd get you in touch with that weirdo girl from 2-D who got a lifesize cardboard cutout of me made." He frowned. "The photo she used for it didn't even get my good side."
"You've got a good side?"
"Of course I do," he said with great indignation, plopping down beside her, "it's my left side, isn't that obvious?" He turned his face from side to side so she could compare.
"Hmm," said An, "maybe. Can you send me the photo the other girl used? I want to make not a lifesize cardboard cutout, but a miniature one. Just big enough to be really satisfying to step on."
"And to think that in my mad dash to get here, I still took the time to stop and buy you the stupid juice you like. See if I give it to you now."
For the first time, she realized that one of the bottles of juice he was holding was strawberry passionfruit guava explosion, her very favorite juice which was very hard to find. "How did you know that was my favorite?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"I thought to myself, 'what's the stupidest flavor imaginable, and then what's an even stupider flavor than that,' and I got that one." When she continued to stare at him, he sighed and said, "You told me, genius, remember? One time in class? When you were rambling on about whatever it is you're ever rambling on about? You were there, and I was there, and Rui was there, and even Yukimura's little sister was there? Remember?"
"I don't," said An honestly, "but you did... and you went and found it for me?"
This time she knew he blushed. "I didn't scour the city for it, okay," he snapped, "I just knew that one shop near the tournament grounds has it, and I thought—I mean, I didn't think anything, I didn't even buy it, okay, I just stole it off some guy, so don't read into it." He threw the unopened bottle at her with such a sharp snap of his wrist that had her reflexes not been honed by years of tennis, she'd have been smacked in the face.
As it was, she caught it, and echoed with a smile, "You stole it off some guy?"
"I did, yeah. He was walking along carrying juice in one hand and a sack of money in the other, you know the kind with a dollar sign on it, like you see in cartoons, and I cornered him in an alley and he went to give me the money and I said no, give me the juice, and he said please no, my daughter is dying of strawberry passionfruit guava explosion withdrawal, I have to get this to her straightaway, just take the money, and I said—"
"You bought me my favorite juice," An interrupted, still smiling.
"Oh, shut up about it," he muttered, still blushing, and—and before she even knew what she was doing, she'd leaned over and hugged him, laying her cheek against his chest. Even through his jersey, she could feel the heat of his skin, the hard planes of his muscles.
—Until he shoved her away, saying with some alarm, "You can't just hug a guy in public, Jesus, I've got a reputation to uphold, don't you understand that?"
She glared at him, the tender fondness she'd felt vanishing like dew in the morning sun. "What, do you expect me to hug you in private? In your dreams, Kirihara, you don't—"
"Kirihara-kun," someone interrupted, "could I speak with you please?"
They turned to see Masuda Ema, the sub-regular Kirihara had gone on a double date with, standing there with her arms crossed, a gaggle of her friends clustered a few feet away, as if for moral support. She had shoulder-length dark hair held back with a butterfly clip, and long thick lashes. Her pink lips were pursed.
Kirihara and An traded a look, before the former said easily, "Sure," rising with all the dexterity expected of an elite athlete. He wasn't graceful the way Yukimura was, yet there was a natural flow to the way he moved, like snowmelt running down a mountain or a predator stalking through the grass. Like he was most in his element when he was in action, like Newton's laws of motion were for him mere suggestions.
There had always been a certain lawlessness about him, and An could admit to herself—and to no one else—that it wasn't entirely unappealing.
Kirihara and Masuda withdrew to talk some distance away. An was no expert in body language, but it didn't seem to be going well: Masuda was using her hands a lot, gesturing more and more vigorously, while Kirihara had shoved his in his pockets, his shoulders squared and the set of his jaw increasingly mulish.
"Do you guys know what they're talking about?" An asked Masuda's friends, who were watching and whispering.
The three of them—and that made An wonder if she even had as many as three friends at Rikkai now, over the past couple weeks she'd mostly stopped hanging out with Hiyono and Kiko—didn't seem keen on answering, but finally one said, with a wary respectfulness An hadn't thought others would ever view her as being due, "We're not sure, Tachibana-san."
An didn't believe her, but didn't press the issue.
A moment later, Masuda strode away from Kirihara and away from the Rikkai crowd in general, her arms hugged to her chest and her head down, so it was difficult to see her face. Her friends went after her, jogging to catch up and touch her arms, speak to her softly, and one even turned to shoot Kirihara a nasty look—once they'd got a safe distance away, of course.
"That went well," An observed as Kirihara returned to fling himself down beside her again, scowling.
"You're telling me. Can you believe her?"
"It depends on what she said, like did she cite her sources or have fun visual aids to illustrate her points or—"
"She said I've betrayed her trust," he sneered, lying down to pillow his head on his interlaced fingers, "said I've been sneaking around behind her back with Yukimura's sister, can you imagine? All because somebody from Hyotei or Seigaku saw me carrying her at the clinic and spread the news, but what was I supposed to do, just leave her on the floor? Or let Atobe carry her? Yukimura would have killed me."
An recalled Sayoko's head cradled on Kirihara's thighs, her long hair fanned out and her lips parted, her beautiful face even more beautiful in repose. She recalled Kirihara gathering her up into his arms and carrying her to the infirmary as easily as if she weighed nothing and as carefully as if she were spun of sugar.
If she'd witnessed the scene without knowing the context, she'd have made assumptions, too.
"We've only gone on three dates," Kirihara continued, his lip still curled, "what trust is there to betray? I don't owe her anything." When An only stared at him, he insisted again, with a queer blend of urgency and resentment, "I don't owe anyone anything."
But that was not what had given An pause. She'd been doing the math in her head—three dates? Assuming the first one had been that double date exactly two weeks prior, and discounting the week they'd been at the clinic, he and Masuda had gone out basically every other day.
Each day after tennis practice that week before the clinic, An had gone straight home to do homework and eat takeout in her aunt's empty apartment, while Kirihara had been doing… what? Had they gone out for coffee, or to see movies? Had he held open doors for her, held her hand? Had he kissed her? Had he been gentle and sweet? Or—
"I'm spiraling out," she realized aloud in horror.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"So anyway," he went on, unperturbed, "she starts accusing me of all sorts of things, even—" He looked quickly at her and then just as quickly away, a glancing bullet of a look, a shot lined up but not followed through on.
"Even what?"
It was his turn to say, "Nothing," and An recalled Takamiya explaining, Many people assume you and Kirihara are, if not together, not not together. She and Katsuragi had cited it as a reason no one dared ask An out. Had Masuda made a similar assumption? Had An and Kirihara's friendship obstructed a romantic relationship of his?
She smiled a little to herself, feeling strangely victorious. If she was doomed to die alone, it was only fair he was too.
"Well, come on, then," she said, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. "Katsuragi-senpai's just won, so our match is over. I gotta go shake hands, but afterwards I'll help you warm up." She'd never actually played against him—their make-believe match by the park notwithstanding—and thought perhaps she ought to take Shimizu's advice and utilize the resources available to her.
How could that be? Watanabe had asked so incredulously of An and Yukimura being friends, but nobody could deny that, against all odds, An and Kirihara's friendship was a real thing, a solid one, a bond formed and as yet unbroken—
—Although An very strongly considered breaking it when she offered him a hand up and he used it to pull her down. "What the hell is your problem," she yelped as she went sprawling in the grass.
"What the hell is yours!" he returned, indignant. "You gave me your hand—"
"Not for you to drag on with your full weight—"
"It's not my fault you've got noodle arms, do you even lift—"
"Tachibana!" Fuyumi yelled with a face like thunder. It was the first time An had heard her quiet captain raise her voice, and she shrank in on herself, cringing as she realized both teams were already lined up at the net. An was the only player missing, an absence highlighted by the spectacle she and Kirihara were making.
"Sorry, Fuyumi-buchou," she called as she raced over, trying to ignore onlookers' gawking and Kirihara's snickering. He was, she'd discovered, utterly immune to public embarrassment, which explained a lot; if a good group shaming could have beaten the brass nerve out of him, surely Sanada would have arranged one long ago.
Once the end-of-match formalities had concluded, Kirihara led her to an empty court and took up position on one side of the net, saying with what could have been either a grin or a smirk, "Let's see what you've got, Tachibana."
"For starters, I've got a pretty face, as you can see, the kind that might not launch a thousand ships, but at least a few canoes and a paddleboat or two, and—hey!" she protested when his serve went hurtling past her.
"You talk too much," he told her smugly. "Too much to launch my canoe, that's for sure."
"You probably don't even have a canoe, only arm-floaties shaped like ducklings or unicorns or mer—hey stop it," she protested as another ball zoomed past her, "what ever happened to warming up short?"
He made a face, but obligingly—since when was he obliging?—fed the ball to her forehand. She tapped it back, and they began a soft short court rally, gradually moving back until they were behind their respective baselines and taking full swings. Kirihara's shots became harder and heavier, but hers did too, and when she planted her feet and nailed a backhand right down the line, Kirihara watched it go by and laughed.
For one horrible moment, she thought it was the prelude to sneering, to taunting, to jeers of Is that the best you can do, I could hit shots like that in elementary school, but as he produced a new ball from his pocket, Kirihara said with a grin, "Not bad, Tachibana's little sister."
It was the first time he'd ever addressed her as such, and the first time the moniker didn't irritate her. That demotion from person to accessory-to-another-person had always made her feel small, but the warm way Kirihara said it made her feel bigger than she'd ever been. Like he'd seen her brother's skill in her, seen a resemblance worth noting and praising.
Kirihara often said mean things with no real malice, but he never said nice things for no reason, and something in her chest lit up like Tokyo at night, lit up like a phone on a bedside table at three a.m. when you finally, finally got that text you'd been waiting for and it was worth waiting for, it was worth it, it was better than you'd ever hoped.
He kept grinning at her, and she grinned back, and something lit up in him, too.
Though they didn't play for points, soon enough An was sprinting for each ball as if it were a Grand Slam final, not because she necessarily wanted to impress him but because she wanted to play with him, because tennis was fun when you tried, fun when you cared, fun when the person on the other side of the net was having fun too.
An knew that Yukimura had been born to play tennis, but she saw then that Kirihara had been born to make tennis look worth playing. The elation on his face could have sold a thousand tickets to the Japan Open; the green flash of his eyes could have convinced a whole generation to pick up racquets for the first time.
Yukimura made tennis look like a religion. Kirihara made it look like a celebration.
So caught up was she in the tropical storm that was Kirihara Akaya that she didn't notice a stray ball had rolled behind her feet. Turning to hit a forehand, she slipped on it, and went down hard, falling to her knees and catching herself on the heels of her hands, the impact jolting up through her forearms.
In the space of exactly two seconds, Kirihara vaulted over the net and sprinted to kneel beside her, only to ask with a casualness that belied the urgency of his reaction, "Hey, are you all right?"
She was, she knew that immediately; at worst she'd have scraped palms and sore knees. But she was touched, and pleased, by the concern, and in her mind's eye she saw Marui guiding Sayoko carefully down the mountain, his body curved around hers like a crescent moon, and saw Kirihara carrying Sayoko to the infirmary, her hair tumbling over his shoulder like the curtain coming down after a play.
She heard herself say, "May—Maybe not. My ankle hurts pretty bad."
"Which one? Let me see," he said immediately, and when she stuck out her left foot, he probed at her ankle with a brisk familiarity that spoke of years of sports therapy. He frowned, and said mostly to himself, "Seems fine…"
"It probably is then," she said quickly, extracting it from his grip and making to stand up, "I'm sure it's fine—"
Very gently, he held her down, saying, "No, don't stand on it, I'll call the medic they keep on hand—"
"No," she said, appalled that one white lie was looking likely to snowball into a big deal that would make her out to be either a liar or an absolute wuss, even though of course she should have seen that coming, what had she been thinking, "no, really, it's fine, it doesn't hurt anymore, I promise."
"Are you just trying to act tough?" he demanded. "Because I get it, you're the biggest and the baddest to ever set foot in this tennis park, I swear I'm not trying to treat you like a little girl or whatever, but you have to take injuries seriously, especially ankle ones—"
If you'd asked thirteen-year-old Tachibana An if she could envision herself one day having Kirihara Akaya fussing over her and insisting injuries were no laughing matter, she would have laughed herself sick.
As it was, she took his face in her hands so she could look him square in the eye and say, "Kirihara. I promise you. I'm okay."
She felt the heat that rose in his cheeks, and he jerked his face out of her grasp, his curls falling into his eyes as he muttered, "Whatever. If your ankle turns out to be sprained and you miss the rest of the season and Shimizu kills you for messing up the lineup and you come back to haunt me as a ghost, don't say I didn't warn you and don't expect to be best ghost friends. You won't even rank among my top ten favorite ghosts."
"Who will I be competing with for that honor?" she asked, smiling, as he helped her to her feet, and he began rattling off a list of movie and video game ghosts, assuring her they were all much cooler and scarier than she would ever be as a ghost, but he didn't drop her hand until they'd walked all the way back across the court to collect their things, and even then he only did so to take her bag for her.
"You shouldn't put extra weight on the ankle," he said in explanation and with asperity as they started toward the Rikkai boys' court, "but don't think you won't owe me for this. Next week you'll be carrying my bag, and it will be filled with bricks. Just piles and piles and piles of bricks."
"It's a good thing, then," she returned, smiling sunnily and sipping the juice he'd bought her, "that I'm the biggest and baddest to ever set foot in this tennis park, isn't it?"
~x~
They arrived just in time for Kirihara to line up at the net with the others, and as An was looking around for Sayoko, she spotted her friend Kiko motioning to her frantically from behind the bleachers. When An walked over, Kiko said with relief, "Thank God you're finally here, do you know if Yukimura-senpai likes dark chocolate?"
"Uh… no?"
"No as in you don't know, or no as in he doesn't like it?"
"The first one? Did you bake something for him?"
From behind her back Kiko produced a small box beautifully wrapped in yellow tissue paper, and admitted, "I made him cookies, and wanted to give them to him before the match, but I chickened out. Giving him something I made is a lot scarier than just wishing him luck."
"Yukimura-senpai's not scary," An said, only to realize as she said it how deeply untrue it was, and wince.
"Can you help me give them to him?" asked Kiko anxiously. "Please?" Her large hazel eyes were full of hope, and An got just a taste of what Sayoko put up with every day: being seen as an easy in with Yukimura. Being treated as an access point to someone greater.
It wasn't a nice feeling.
"Sure, and then once the matches are over, we could hang out? Get bubble tea or something?"
"Oh," said Kiko, uncertainly, "I sort of—I sort of assumed you'd hang out with Yukimura Sayoko all day, and got movie tickets for this afternoon with some of the other sub-regulars, it's assigned seats and our row's full, but if we try to buy another ticket right now maybe—"
"No, don't worry about it," An said, feeling a discomfiting mix of both disappointment and relief. "Next time. The boys are just getting ready to play now, let's go deliver some cookies."
An led her to where Yukimura had taken a seat on the coach's bench. "Yukimura-senpai?" When he turned toward her with a smile, she indicated Kiko with a tilt of her head and said, "My friend Kiko has got something to give you."
Her face scarlet red, Kiko held the box out to him with two shaking hands and squeaked, "Yukimura-senpai, pl-please accept these cookies I made for you."
Yukimura stood and took the box from her, saying graciously, "Thank you very much, Kiko-chan. I'm honored." He gave her a beautiful smile, really seemed to give it to her as part of some bizarre gift swap, some heartfelt gesture made transactional, and Kiko, impossibly, turned even brighter red and scurried away.
Yukimura let the smile fade as he set the box on the bench, and An asked, "You don't like cookies, do you?"
"Not particularly," he answered as he sat back down, "but I'll see if Sayoko wants them, and worst comes to worst I'll give them to Marui."
Marui, passing by to step onto the court with Jackal, said loftily, "I am not a garbage disposal." He paused. "But I will take them, yes. Put them by my bag, and to wash them down, how about," he cut a glance at Kirihara, his violet eyes shining with mirth, "a delicious delicious bottle of ice-cold refreshing strawberry pass—"
Kirihara chucked a tennis ball at him, which Marui batted away with his racquet, smirking.
"Akaya," Jackal chided, just as Sanada snapped "Akaya," and the referee said sternly, "Oi, the match is starting, you can't throw things onto the court."
Kirihara ignored them all in favor of shooting a death glare at Marui while slowing drawing a finger across his throat, and Marui clapped his hands to his throat as if it really had been slit, miming exaggerated death throes as his racquet clattered to the ground. Jackal, with a long-suffering sigh, picked it up for him.
His death throes complete, Marui pressed the back of his hand to his forehead in a manner strongly reminiscent of a Victorian woman in need of smelling salts, and collapsed in an artful pile on the court. When Jackal, completely unfazed, moved to step over him, Marui's hand shot out to grab him by the ankle as he croaked, "Jackal, please, remember to tell my story."
"Your throat's been slit," Jackal said, shaking him off and continuing on, "how are you talking?"
"I'm already a ghost, obviously, I should not have to explain the subtle nuances of my performance to—"
"Marui," said Sanada ominously, his arms folded as, beside him, Watanabe suppressed giggles, and An was shocked by the change in her, now that the girls' matches were finished, "if you drop a single point after all this, you will be running laps around the tournament grounds until the sun goes down."
Marui shot up at once, calling, "Jackal, did you hear that? Sanada says if we drop even one point, we have to run—"
"He said you, not we, I was ten feet away—"
"Look at the opposing team," Yukimura murmured. Laughter lurked in his low voice, low enough for An's ears alone, lingering behind him as she was. "They must not have been able to hear over the crowd, I suspect they think Marui was acting out their imminent demise at our hands."
Sure enough, the boys facing Marui and Jackal had gone pale, and clutched their racquets as if they might need to physically defend themselves with them.
An beamed at the back of his head, thrilled to share a private joke with him. "Marui-senpai's got range, you should make sure the drama club doesn't poach him."
He turned his head to smile at her fondly, a smile she thought—but didn't know, how could she ever know?—was warmer and truer than the one he'd given Kiko, and asked, "Where is Sayoko?"
An faltered. "I actually—I was going to ask you the same thing?"
"She didn't come watch the wrap-up of the girls' matches?"
"No, or if she did, I didn't see her."
"Hmm," said Yukimura, not smiling any longer.
"Do you want me to go look for her?" An offered, already digging out her phone to shoot Sayoko a text, though Sayoko had never been very good about responding.
"No, that's all right, thank you. I'm sure she's around."
An thought about Sayoko sitting in an infirmary bed and crying for her brother, sobs racking her body as she wept, I let him down, it should have been me. She wondered if, upon returning home from the clinic, the Yukimura siblings had sat down and talked out their issues, but given what she knew about each of them, she didn't think it likely.
She hoped Sayoko was okay.
She went and sat down with Shimizu, who'd also come to watch the boys play, and was rummaging through Marui's racquet bag. Without looking up, she asked, "Do you want some of Marui's Korean barbecue-flavored potato chips, or some of Marui's beef jerky?"
"I can see you stealing from me," Marui shouted from on court, winning a point with a volley he didn't even bother looking at to execute perfectly, "and don't you dare eat the beef jerky, it was expensive."
Less than an hour later, after having won without dropping a single point, he exited the court to exclaim, "You ate it all? You didn't even save me a piece?"
An and Shimizu, both munching, looked at each other, before Shimizu made to spit the beef jerky she was chewing into her hand and offer it to him.
"Gross, no." Marui made a face. "Why does no one show me the deference I'm due as a genius? Today I even draped my jacket over my shoulders, just like Yukimura does! Why does no one respect me like they do him?"
"When Yukimura-senpai does that, it's cool," An explained as apologetically as one could with a mouth full of beef jerky, "but when you do it, it's just a bit sad and vaguely embarrassing."
"You're a bit sad and vaguely embarrassing," Marui retorted, crossing his arms and casting his gaze around the lower levels of bleachers where the team was gathered, with unaffiliated spectators in the higher levels. "Where's Sayoko? I need her to pretend to be my girlfriend, there's a new girl in the stands I'm trying to impress."
That explained that day's abundance of histrionics, and rather than tell him Sayoko was absent, An let him wander the stands with his hands cupped to his mouth, calling "Sayoko, Sayokoooooo," the way one would to a lost dog.
"He should know by now that having Sayoko-chan pretend to be his girlfriend inevitably backfires," Jackal sighed, sitting down on Shimizu's other side and taking a long swig of water.
"It's not the first time?" An asked, curious.
Shimizu smiled a little, ruefully, and said quieter than she usually spoke, "There's a part of him, I think, that's always wondered what might have happened if Yukimura Sayoko had ever, just once, looked up and really seen him, the way she sees Niou."
An glanced over at Niou, who stood checking his string tension and speaking lowly to Yagyuu. In such moments, when he wasn't actively trying to be cruel or cunning, he seemed more ghost than boy, barely there in such a way as to render him all but invisible, which was, perhaps, part of the trick to his impersonations and illusions.
Why did Sayoko see him so clearly, and not Marui, with all his color and cheer? An supposed it didn't much matter. You couldn't make yourself care about anyone, just as you couldn't stop yourself caring about someone, but—but she thought probably she should try to get past her crush on Yukimura. At this point, she didn't wonder at the probability of his ever liking her back, but at his being able to really like someone like that at all.
Kiko's feelings had made no impression on him, and An harbored no delusions as to her own making one. Watanabe, who'd presumably been besotted with him the longest and was, of the three of them, the closest to being in his league in terms of age, attractiveness, and tennis ability, hardly seemed to show up on his radar.
They were just stones skipping across the surface of his pond, occasionally creating a ripple here or there but never disturbing the waters below.
"Well, Sayoko's missing in action," Marui announced, descending the steps, "which means somebody else gets the honor of being my pretend girlfriend today. Who volunteers? Watanabe-chan?"
"I'll pass," she demurred, her hands folded in front of her.
Marui opened his mouth as if to try to cajole her into it, but when Sanada shot him a look, he said hastily instead, "Your loss, I am an excellent pretend boyfriend. Well, who else? Everybody knows Tsubame is my best friend—"
"And the beneficiary of your will," Shimizu added solemnly, though the effect was lessened somewhat by the potato chips she was now munching on.
"… I don't like that you keep reminding me, it makes me feel like I should be on the lookout for a tragic accident to befall me." When Shimizu's only reply was the crunch crunch of her chips, he eyed her, and said, "Now I really feel like I need to be on the lookout, but I'll save that for another day—today is the day I make Sakai Misaki fall in love with me, so that leaves you, An-chan."
"Sure," said An, "I'll do it, but I'll need to prepare for the role. What's my character motivation? Like, what's driving me to be your girlfriend? Am I in it for money? Power? Hair care tips?"
"Can't your motivation be that you're attracted to me?"
Yanagi, from where he stood on Sanada's other side, murmured without turning to face them, "The key to a good performance, I've read, is believability."
"Yanagi!" Marui exclaimed, scandalized, as An, Jackal, and Watanabe laughed and even Sanada dipped his head as if to hide a smile. Shimizu, who'd finished the chips and was dangling the bag over her wide-open mouth to catch the crumbs, used her free hand to pat Marui on the back sympathetically. "I expect better from you."
There was a definite mean streak in Marui, An knew, the same as in all the Rikkai regulars, but she suspected there was genuine kindness in him too, and it was most evident at times like this, when he brought the team together with his flamboyancy and his deep tolerance for being laughed at. For someone who often touted his own genius, he did not at all have a genius' fragile ego.
"Revenge," Kirihara piped up from a few bleacher seats above. He'd gone to sit with boys An recognized as having been regulars the year he was captain, and they seemed to be having a tense conversation, though not so tense he hadn't been listening in on Marui's theatrics. On his left was the boy who'd wanted An to go on the double date that Masuda had ended up going on instead, and he waved at her; on his right was a boy with hair dyed a shocking shade of purple, and he sneered at her.
To An, Kirihara went on, smirking, "Your character motivation is revenge."
"You're so right," An enthused, even as she wondered what she might have done to inspire hostility in one of his teammates. "My character's third-most favorite gym teacher was murdered—"
"—by a man with a moustache—" Kirihara nodded.
"—and a scar shaped like a Nintendo Switch—"
"—and it's taken years, but you've finally tracked him here to Kanagawa—"
"—and have devised an elaborate plan involving jellyfish venom and a full villain monologue complete with an opening dance number—"
"No, that's dumb, you can't dance for revenge—"
"Maybe you can't, but I actually have good footwork—"
"Are you drunk? You couldn't do a three-footed split-step, much less a one-footed split-step—"
"Akaya, stop real-flirting with my fake-girlfriend," Marui said crossly as Kirihara and An both flinched, "people will think I'm a cuckold, and judging by the look on your face, you don't know what that word means, so I'll let Jackal explain it to you while An-chan and I take a very visible stroll around the grounds."
"Her ankle's hurt, she can't just go walking around for the hell of it," Kirihara countered, crossing his arms in a very self-satisfied way as the sub-regulars on either side of him exchanged a glance.
Shimizu, who'd just taken a huge bite of a protein bar that she'd fished out of Marui's bag, made a sound like a strangled ostrich and began choking, and Jackal ran to fetch her water while Marui pounded her on the back, saying with concern, "Hang in there, this is such an undignified way to die, and we haven't even finalized me as the beneficiary on your will yet—"
To An's horror, Yukimura twisted around to ask sharply, "You hurt your ankle?" Before she could even reply, he'd stood up and exited the court, Sanada moving to take his place on the bench without being asked, a gear of a well-oiled machine slotting neatly into place.
An cursed herself for her attention-seeking white lie as, suddenly, she was the recipient of far more attention than she'd intended. "No, not really," she told Yukimura as everyone hastened to clear a path for him, "there's really no need—"
"Which ankle?" he asked calmly, coming and kneeling before her as Watanabe looked on with a face like she'd swallowed battery acid, and—and there was something about having Yukimura Seiichi down on one knee before her, looking up at her with those angel-blue eyes, that struck her absolutely dumb.
Wordlessly she indicated which, and he took her ankle onto his thigh, turning it this way and that with cool slim fingers as her face turned fire engine red. "Renji," he called, frowning, "can you come have a look? It looks all right to me, but you've always had a better eye."
"It looks all right because it is all right," An protested weakly as now Yanagi came over to poke and prod at her, and how embarrassing could this become? Would Sanada next be called over to offer a medical opinion?
Once Yanagi had concurred that there didn't seem to be anything wrong, Yukimura released her ankle and said, still frowning a little, "Well, all right then, but you still ought to take it easy for the next few days, so no parading her about the grounds, Marui."
Marui, now rubbing Shimizu's back as she chugged water, made a dismissive gesture, his violet gaze on Shimizu's face and his scheme long since forgotten.
Yukimura returned to take his seat on the bench, and An, pressing a hand to her cheek to feel the heat that lingered, turned her head just enough to glance behind her. Kirihara was watching her, she discovered, with the keen laser focus he employed on the court, unsmiling but not unhappy, as if he were trying to work out a puzzle, and she turned back around hastily, realizing too late—
—That she'd told Kirihara her left ankle was hurt, and shown Yukimura her right.
~x~
Once the boys' matches had wrapped up, Yukimura walked over to Niou, who lurked some distance away from everyone else, typing something into his phone, and asked, "Where is Sayoko?"
Niou stopped typing and, very slowly, raised his head. In asking that simple question, Yukimura had acknowledged something he otherwise never commented on: Niou and Sayoko's mutual awareness of each other, their shared secret scanning of groups and events to pick out the other's presence, as if they were the only ones whose heat signatures showed up in a world gone cold.
Yukimura wasn't entirely sure what his motive was in remarking upon it now—was it a challenge? A concession? Was he just unhappy? He was, he was so unhappy, but was this bold stroke a symptom or a solution?—and took consolation in knowing that Niou would be equally uncertain, and that it would bother him.
Yukimura had never had a complete understanding of Niou, not like he did of most of the rest of the team, where he could divine their fears and their dreams and how both could be used to get them to their shared goal which was Yukimura's goal that he'd shared it with them, shared it like a story, one he hadn't finished writing but the ending was set in stone, he just had to get them there, had to drive the action without driving anyone else away.
But he did know that, much like himself, Niou did not fit cleanly into the outline of a teenage boy that society had drawn. Where Yukimura could not be contained by such limits, could not—would not—make himself small enough to fit within them, Niou existed outside them. He was water that did not take the shape of its container, that slipped through the cracks even when there weren't any because he was the crack, the fault in the logic, the outlier on the scatter chart of what a boy ought to be.
Where Yukimura was more, Niou was other.
Niou, with that other look in his pale eyes, tipped his head toward the eastern quadrant of the tournament grounds, and with a soft word of thanks Yukimura went looking for his sister.
He found her standing alone on a tennis court, an overlarge racquet in one hand and a ball in the other, and the sight actually stopped him in his tracks. Looking down at what she was holding with an expression of quiet perturbation, perhaps, or defeat, she didn't notice him approach until he'd opened the gate to let himself onto the court, asking, "Whose racquet is that?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. She wore red canvas sneakers and a long-sleeved white dress, her hair up in a high ponytail but for a few strands framing her face. There were still shadows under her eyes. "Some guy lent it to me."
As he got closer, Yukimura saw that it was a Bosworth Tour 96 racquet, very pricy, and sighed internally. Its owner doubtlessly expected, in exchange, either a date with Sayoko or a favor from him, and only one of those things was actually on the table.
Before he could ask why she'd taken the racquet, she turned to look up at him and asked, in a very small voice, "Oniisan, will you play tennis with me?"
And just like that, they were five and six years old again, respectively, and their parents had bought two child-size tennis racquets, one blue and one pink, and Sayoko had insisted on the blue one so he'd agreed to use the pink because it seemed a small price to pay to make Sayoko happy.
She'd been happy back then, and so had he, and the specter of that past happiness became a present hurt, an ache in his chest, a constriction in his throat. He nodded, just once, and set his things down.
She tapped the ball over to him, and he tapped it back, and he couldn't remember another time when it had seemed so desperately, urgently important that he hit a shot not past someone but to them, right into their strike zone, right where they could hit it back.
That slow, soft rally seemed, right then, higher stakes than any match he'd ever played, because every shot exchanged felt like a bell rung, a door opened, a house lit up with holiday lights, illuminating rooms that had for years sat dark and empty.
Until Sayoko's backhand hit the net, and her face crumpled.
"Sayoko, it's okay, it's all right," he assured her quickly, procuring another ball from his pocket, holding it up like the antidote to a poison, like a flashlight in the night, "I've got another, it's all right—"
"You don't understand," she said thickly, looking at him from across the net with tears in her eyes, "I don't… I don't hate tennis." She swallowed hard, told him again, beseechingly, "Oniisan, I don't hate tennis."
He recalled a grim summer day three years past, recalled his parents taking him home from the hospital and sitting him down at the kitchen table and saying Seiichi, we know the Nationals are underway, we know how important tennis is to you, but—
No, he'd said, respectfully but firmly, you don't.
The doctors think it's too soon for you to—
It's not too soon, he'd said through his teeth, because in his heart he was terrified that it was already too late.
It's only tennis, had come a small, resentful voice from the doorway. There stood Sayoko, her shoulders hunched and her hair in her face, her eyes as lamplike and baleful as an alley cat's. It's just a stupid game. You shouldn't care so much about a game.
Yukimura had looked at her and said, truthfully and vengefully, Long time no see, Sayoko.
Immediately she'd begun crying, and spat, I hate tennis, I hate it, it's a terrible game and I hate it and I hate you, before fleeing the room and dashing up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door.
Looking at him now, Sayoko said again, miserably, "I don't hate tennis, Oniisan. I don't, I've never—I've never hated it, I couldn't ever. No matter how angry or sad or scared I ever was…" Her voice cracked, her hands shook. "Oniisan, you have—please, you have to understand, I don't—I don't—"
There she stood, clutching a stranger's racquet with an expression of absolute anguish on her face, but all Yukimura saw was a five-year-old girl swinging her first baby blue racquet and saying laughingly, Oniisan, Oniisan, the coach said there's something called doubles where two people play together. We can be on the same team!
His heart broke clean in two.
He dropped his racquet and strode up and reached over the net to bring her in to him, hold her close, and she clung to him, her tears darkening the front of his jersey. "I know, Sayoko," he told the top of her head, his own throat tight with unshed tears, "I understand. I know."
"You don't," she wept, clutching at him like a lifeline with the net between them, "Oniisan, you don't."
what if this story became a sayoko x marui x an love triangle. what then
Disclaimer: I do not own Prince of Tennis, or Taylor Swift's "cardigan" (lyrics at the top).
