[cueto]
FOR THE LACK OF SKILLS
by ka0richan
╦╦
Valentine’s Day was fast approaching - two minutes in fact, before the hand struck midnight and the tower bells chimed.
Tezuka Kunimitsu was in his pajamas. He should have been in his bed hours ago; instead he was in his chair, staring intently with furrowed brows at a neatly wrapped box that could not appear anymore harmless. The white wrapping paper, curving ever so slightly at the edges, was tied with thin ribbons lined with golden thread.
Five additional strokes blinked onto the screen of his digital clock, signaling the next day. A frown twitched at his lips and he relaxed a brow, drawing his face into contemplation as he forced his gaze away from the delicate ribbons to his desk light. It was still on; illuminating the darkened room, casting shadows onto the walls, slivering through the crack underneath his door. His grandfather usually woke up around that time for a drink of water, perhaps tea, even to walk around the house or stroll by the back gardens. It wouldn’t be good if he saw Tezuka still up not doing homework but staring blankly at a nine by sixteen by three centimeter box.
It also wasn’t very productive to sit and stare at something that wasn’t going to move on its own, he reasoned with himself. He was tired and Valentine’s Day was going to be long and busy with early morning practice, lunchtime Student Council meeting, and an insufferable amount of giggling girls and bragging boys. He’d be lucky to squeeze in six hours of sleep. With a sigh Tezuka reached out a hand, careful not to touch the bow, and hovered a finger by the switch of his lamp. He stood up slowly, so that his chair wouldn’t roll loudly against the floor, and pressed the button.
The light inverted beneath his eyelids as his room was swamped in darkness. He blinked a few times to clear his vision and cast one final glance at the box reflecting the green glow of time off its glossy white paper before treading across the room to his bed.
╦╦
Tezuka fidgeted with the strap of his bag nervously. Somehow, not of his own freewill, the box managed to burrow itself into his schoolbag. It was lined against his books and the ribbons were slightly crushed, but Tezuka was too busy trying to figure out how his hand had picked it up and transported it from his desk to the inside of his bag to care too much about its placement. It didn’t bode well when he couldn’t figure out why his body moved on its own volition, but at least it hadn’t wanted to carry the thing around in plain sight. Such a thing would be too obvious on such a day after all.
At a quarter past six he was three kilometers from the school, which meant about another hour before people started showing up to practice. Tezuka slid his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Perhaps not, he thought again. He had a feeling a few girls would show up frightfully early to raid their interest’s shoe locker. It was, he admitted, possibly for the same reason he left his house half an hour earlier than usual.
It didn’t explain how he was standing in front of a shoe locker of a seemingly arbitrary number that contained a pair of clean white slippers a few sizes too small to be his own. Or at least, the logics that pointed to the simple conclusion didn’t match up quite as well with his impression of the situation as he had thought; there was no reason for him to be nervous, to have a box of chocolates in his bag, to be standing in front of a locker that was not his own. And yet there he was: gripping the flap of his book bag; staring with furrowed brows at the open space as if it would bite him if he made one wrong move; contemplating the consequences of his actions should he choose to let his arm do what it clearly wanted to do and what he really did not think would be a wise decision.
The sounds of shoes pattering against the linoleum floor shocked him from his deliberation. Tezuka closed the compartment door with an audible bang and fled.
╦╦
Tezuka mentally cursed himself for the duration it took him to move from the school entrance to the clubroom. His mental tirade halted when he saw a few girls in front of the clubroom, bent over or crouched down by the door, very obviously trying to pry it open. He paused for a moment. Usually-it happened too many times for him to care to keep count of-he’d rebuke them for breaking and entering, so to speak. Considering that it was Valentine’s, their intentions were obvious. He wasn’t so cruel as to force them to leave and therein lay another problem: he had absolutely no idea what to do in such a situation. After a blink of contemplation he settled with clearing his throat.
The girls ceased shoving and pushing at one another, simultaneously jumped up, and spun around so quickly he had to suppress a wince as their long hair lashed against their faces. One girl squeaked out something he thought was his name, but the pitch of her voice was too high for him to really tell.
As he was about to say something, the other two girls ran. He closed his mouth, a puzzled expression creasing his brow. The girl that had squeaked earlier flushed. She was paused in the motions of running and looked as if she wanted to say something. Tezuka inwardly wondered if the words that came out of her mouth would be at a pitch he’d be able to understand and felt immensely guilty afterwards for having such nasty thoughts.
When the silence had stretched out to an unbearable length of time, Tezuka made to speak again. Upon uttering the first syllable he was met with her shrinking back and zooming away. He noticed her shoulder-length hair as she spun around, the ends curling with an unnatural perm. She was definitely from his Math class; the girl who was always sitting next to Oishi. Tezuka wondered if she liked Oishi, but dismissed the thought when he realized he didn’t really care.
He moved forward to unlock the clubroom, entered, and set his bag down by the bench to change. It was when he zipped up his jacket that he noticed an open can of Ponta in an otherwise empty pigeon hole. He frowned and assumed there was still some drink left inside.
it would be so easy, the thought occurred to him, to place the box inside; no one would see him, and no one could possibly guess it was him. He looked down at the box sparkling innocently inside his bag. He frowned and looked back to the shelf. He continued to look back and forth, as if each time he shifted his eyes a revelation would come.
The door slammed open.
Tezuka froze and his heartbeat accelerated to an alarming rate.
“Tezuka!” Oishi exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.
Tezuka’s breath was caught in his throat and he felt as if he’d just been caught in the act of doing something extremely incriminating.
“Happy Valentines!” Oishi greeted cheerfully.
Tezuka nodded stiffly. Thankfully nothing else betrayed him besides the slightly strangled look in his eyes. Oishi however was in an exceedingly bright mood and didn’t seem to notice his friend’s apprehension.
Oishi asked him politely, “Have you received any chocolates yet?”
Tezuka eyed him, wondered why Oishi sounded so sure he’d get chocolates in the first place, and shook his head in a negative.
“Oh.” Oishi’s bubble of joy deflated. He didn’t know that Tezuka had arrived to school at an ungodly hour-most of which was spent standing in front of a shoe locker-or how he’d scared away the girls in front of the clubroom. Perhaps if he did he wouldn’t be feeling unnecessarily guilty as he looked down at the small pile of red and pink covered chocolates in his hands. “Uh, Tezuka, I…” He trailed off, not knowing what to say.
Tezuka raised a brow. Did Oishi really think he wanted to be burdened with gifts from students who he rarely interacted with on a daily basis, much less on a personal level? He was about to say something-or maybe nothing-just as Inui walked through the wide open door.
There was a pause in the monotonous mumblings-“Tezuka, Oishi,”-before the musings of percentages and probabilities and chocolates resumed.
When Inui sat down on the bench, Tezuka caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a list of names. Most of them were crossed off in neat black ink. Tezuka hoped it was only a list of names of the people Inui suspected had given him the tiny chocolate heart sitting in the direct center on his notebook. He didn’t want to think about what else it could be if it weren’t.
Members of the Tennis Club slowly trickled in, bringing with them excited chatter. Shaking his head, Tezuka pulled the flap over his bag and clicked it into place. He stood up, walked over to his shelf, and slid the bag in neatly. He couldn’t help but glance to his left at the shelf with the can of Ponta with a considering expression on his face. The owner would be late to practice again. He breathed in through his nose, and pushed his bag further back until it hit the wall. He stared sternly at his hand when he felt it twitch with the need to open the bag and pull out the box. With brows furrowed, he resisted.
Just as he was on his way out however, Tezuka felt compelled to take the half-full can and throw it out. He did.
Behind him Inui quickly jotted down a flurry of thoughts on a newer page, his mumblings growing more and more incoherent as the first years around him hurried to change into their uniforms.
╦╦
During his free period Tezuka could be found in the library; partly to work on his essay, mostly to avoid his classmates. A freshman class was booked into the library too-English if he remembered correctly.
The sounds of the boisterous babble and violent shushes heralded the arrival of said class. Tezuka looked up, brow lowering a fraction as the noise pervaded through the tall bookshelves. With a sigh he gathered up his pile of books and headed to the silent study room. It was a struggle with the generous number of books he carried, but he managed to wrestle the door open with an elbow. He kicked it shut behind him, relishing in the silence as the latch bolt slid into the jamb.
He moved towards his work area but was startled to see someone sitting on the far side of the room, right next to the wall with head cushioned in his arms. The room had many windows, but bent over like that the boy could easily escape the librarian’s notice. Tezuka looked out the window and deduced that, most likely, he was part of that English class. The class had dispersed off into different sections of the library; some on the computers, some by the bookshelves or newspaper archive, some sitting at the tables.
He set down the books with an intentional bang. The student started awake and shifted his head to look for the source of the disturbance. Tezuka was surprised to see the bleary face of one Echizen Ryoma, and almost choked on his breath when Echizen blinked drowsily up at him, mumbling, “Buchou.”
He steeled his resolve and thinned his lips. “Echizen. This place is reserved for the seniors.”
Echizen stared at him blankly, blinking once, twice. It didn’t look like anything was registering.
After a moment of awkward silence-Tezuka certainly thought it awkward-Echizen scoffed and flopped back down.
Tezuka was at a loss with what to do, and slightly miffed that the younger teen had just brushed him off. He settled for taking a seat and reopening the previous book he’d been reading. Silently, he entertained thoughts of making Echizen run more laps tomorrow morning; he had been unusually tardy to practice for more days than Tezuka tolerated.
He chased the thoughts away and focused his mind on the task at hand. If Echizen was going to ignore him, then he would ignore Echizen.
After rereading the same line for the fifth time, the words were starting to blur together. Somehow, with Echizen dozing off just a few seats down, his concentration became absolutely abysmal. He put the book down and closed his eyes. Tezuka inhaled, and then said, “Echizen.”
There was no answer. He must have fallen asleep again, Tezuka thought with disapproval.
Then: “Hhmmm?”
The sound did strange things to Tezuka, but he forced himself to look at the younger student. He felt his chest constrict at the sight of a single golden eye peeking out from beneath his fringe.
“Shouldn’t you be working with your class?” he tried to say without gritting his teeth together.
Echizen shifted his body around to prop his cheek up on a palm. Tezuka could see both eyes now, half-lidded and lazy.
“Done,” Echizen answered with a quirk of his lips.
Tezuka looked disbelieving. “Oh?”
“Oral presentation,” Echizen enlightened him.
Tezuka knew very well Echizen didn’t have to try very hard to excel in English, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to be lazy. Improvisation could only take you so far; Echizen probably hadn’t even bothered practicing his speech, whatever topic, yet.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Echizen asked, still staring intently at him. Tezuka returned the stare with a deadpan and didn’t bother to reply.
Echizen raised a brow.
Tezuka looked down at the book and stubbornly attempted to read it. He almost went cross-eyed after reaching the third sentence and not a single word registered through his mind.
A crinkling sound of foil had Tezuka looking at Echizen from the corner of his eyes.
Echizen noticed. He offered the bundle in his hands to Tezuka. “Want some?”
Tezuka eyed it apprehensively. The sheer pink material encasing the foiled chocolates and the thick red ribbon was unmistakably a Valentine’s gift.
“Some girl with long hair gave it to me,” Echizen said casually after Tezuka still hadn’t moved to take one. He propped one heart-shaped block into his mouth.
Tezuka had a sinking feeling that Echizen had no idea about how important the tradition of Valentine’s Day was in Japan. It struck him as a casual occasion in America, but in Japan… Tezuka frowned. Well, it certainly wasn’t his place to lecture Echizen.
“She was very nice.”
Or perhaps Echizen did know and thought he was being polite by offering some to his captain. Tezuka’s frown deepened.
He didn’t take any chocolates. “You shouldn’t be eating in the library,” Tezuka said reprovingly for lack of anything else to say.
Echizen blinked, and then narrowed his eyes. “Che.”
Tezuka resolutely spent the rest of the time painstakingly straining his eyes over pages upon pages of words and sentences and paragraphs, not really absorbing in anything but the presence of the freshman sleeping two chairs away.
Perhaps it was time to get his eyes checked again.
He placed a hand on his chest and felt the racing pulse. His heart too.
╦╦
Lunch was a tedious affair. The Student Council Meeting was full of the usual things; complaints, discussion for solutions of said complaints, inward musings of tennis, chocolate talk here and then, more complaints.
Tezuka closed his eyes and attempted to think of anything relating to tennis.
He didn’t know why he thought of the silent study room instead, full of nerves and thick with tension and a suddenly inappropriate place to attempt to do work.
Somehow, that was sounding like a much better place to be than inside a classroom full of student representatives.
╦╦
Tezuka saw Echizen changing his shoes as he exited the school building. Both his hands clutched at the strap of his bag, squeezing it so tightly his knuckles turned white. He could feel it, the weight of the box weighing down his shoulder, his mind, his heart.
He tried to tell himself to stop being so melodramatic, because it was stupid to be stressing so much over a box on a day that perhaps, all too likely, no longer held any real meaning within the material word.
Tezuka forced himself to release the wrangled strap and continue on his way. By the time he was heading towards the gate, he was hyperaware of Echizen following behind him at a sedate pace. His heart sped up and he cursed it for being so uncooperative.
Taking in a deep breath, he swung his bag behind him and kept his hands fisted by his side.
The sound of a heavy thud gave him feeling of a feather upon his shoulder, made Tezuka feel as if the weight of the world was no longer dragging him down.
“Buchou,” said Echizen.
He realized a second later that, not quite literally but very similarly, it has.
“You dropped this.” Echizen bent down to pick it up. Tezuka spun around so quickly his bag whipped around him like a disfigured cloak. He tried to say something, to stop the other from touching it, but his voice died on his tongue at the sight of thin, slender fingers curling around the box.
He sucked in a breath and spluttered around, uttering a few syllables that made no sense when linked together.
Echizen straightened and removed the hand in his pocket to brush the dirt off the white paper.
“Heeeh.”
There were rarely any times when Tezuka panicked. Now was one such time; rare and strange and utterly embarrassing. He blurted out in one breath something too fast to be coherent with pitch too high to be understood.
Echizen raised a brow in bewilderment, taking note of the light dusting of pink that colored Tezuka’s cheeks.
“Are you all-”
Tezuka hightailed.
“-right?” Echizen stood in the dust, blinking with confusion at the retreating back.
“Well,” he murmured to himself when his captain was no longer in sight. He took a moment to study the package. It looked harmless enough, and even had a tag attached to the elaborate purple bow threaded with gold-nothing gaudy like all the red and pink.
Deciding it couldn’t hurt, he opened the tiny card to see if Tezuka really did get a gift from a girl-his girlfriend?
His brows shot up when he saw his name written in a neat column in a very familiar script.
“Well,” he uttered again, this time dragging out the vowel.
A small smirk curled up the corner of his lips.
╦╦
On White Day, Tezuka robotically walked to school at an insanely early time. The last month had been hell-self-induced perhaps-and something he sorely wished would just end.
It probably didn’t help that he avoided Echizen like the plague, finding every excuse he could to send the freshman away whenever he approached, or if he could help it, have Oishi or the nearest regular unknowingly play interference should Echizen appear to show signs of coming closer. A ten foot radius was acceptable. Any closer and Tezuka would automatically begin to twitch or be overcome with the urge to flee-basic instincts were not something easily repressed after all.
Everyone noticed his apprehension, his paranoia. Fuji went as far as to call him a “big fluffy panda bear” when he turned up to practice late one morning, hair mussed and looking like he was lacking a month’s worth of sleep.
True, yes, but not something he appreciated. To say he never enjoyed his position as captain as much as he did then was an understatement; watching his team running laps upon laps around the same tennis courts was very therapeutic.
A feeling of dread settled over him like a persistent gloomy raincloud as he entered the school building. He walked into a door at one stage, but for the most part was able to make it to his shoe locker in one piece.
Grumbling, he simultaneously slipped out of his shoes and bent down to pick them up while opening the compartment door.
Tezuka staggered back-whether it was due to his inability to multitask or the shock of seeing something where his shoes were supposed to be was unclear-and his shoes fell to the floor with a resounding clack that traveled all the way down the long empty hallway. The echoes bounced and rebounded off the walls and made his head throb even more than it usually did.
As sleep-deprived as he was, Tezuka was sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Unmistakably, sitting at the center of his locker was a hat, familiar and white with the trademark [F] printed in Seigaku colors.
With knotted brows, Tezuka reached out a tentative hand to pick it up. He looked under it. There was nothing but empty space. Even his shoes were missing, he realized through the faint buzzing in his mind.
Tezuka turned the hat over and saw written on the underside of the brim in thick permanent marker:
YOU OWE ME PONTA
“So,” a sly voice whispered from behind him, just below his ear.
Tezuka hacked on the oxygen he was inhaling and spun around to look at the culprit.
“Gonna stop being a dork?” Echizen asked with a smirk that was both endearing and infuriatingly smug.
Tezuka scowled.
by ka0richan
╦╦
Valentine’s Day was fast approaching - two minutes in fact, before the hand struck midnight and the tower bells chimed.
Tezuka Kunimitsu was in his pajamas. He should have been in his bed hours ago; instead he was in his chair, staring intently with furrowed brows at a neatly wrapped box that could not appear anymore harmless. The white wrapping paper, curving ever so slightly at the edges, was tied with thin ribbons lined with golden thread.
Five additional strokes blinked onto the screen of his digital clock, signaling the next day. A frown twitched at his lips and he relaxed a brow, drawing his face into contemplation as he forced his gaze away from the delicate ribbons to his desk light. It was still on; illuminating the darkened room, casting shadows onto the walls, slivering through the crack underneath his door. His grandfather usually woke up around that time for a drink of water, perhaps tea, even to walk around the house or stroll by the back gardens. It wouldn’t be good if he saw Tezuka still up not doing homework but staring blankly at a nine by sixteen by three centimeter box.
It also wasn’t very productive to sit and stare at something that wasn’t going to move on its own, he reasoned with himself. He was tired and Valentine’s Day was going to be long and busy with early morning practice, lunchtime Student Council meeting, and an insufferable amount of giggling girls and bragging boys. He’d be lucky to squeeze in six hours of sleep. With a sigh Tezuka reached out a hand, careful not to touch the bow, and hovered a finger by the switch of his lamp. He stood up slowly, so that his chair wouldn’t roll loudly against the floor, and pressed the button.
The light inverted beneath his eyelids as his room was swamped in darkness. He blinked a few times to clear his vision and cast one final glance at the box reflecting the green glow of time off its glossy white paper before treading across the room to his bed.
╦╦
Tezuka fidgeted with the strap of his bag nervously. Somehow, not of his own freewill, the box managed to burrow itself into his schoolbag. It was lined against his books and the ribbons were slightly crushed, but Tezuka was too busy trying to figure out how his hand had picked it up and transported it from his desk to the inside of his bag to care too much about its placement. It didn’t bode well when he couldn’t figure out why his body moved on its own volition, but at least it hadn’t wanted to carry the thing around in plain sight. Such a thing would be too obvious on such a day after all.
At a quarter past six he was three kilometers from the school, which meant about another hour before people started showing up to practice. Tezuka slid his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Perhaps not, he thought again. He had a feeling a few girls would show up frightfully early to raid their interest’s shoe locker. It was, he admitted, possibly for the same reason he left his house half an hour earlier than usual.
It didn’t explain how he was standing in front of a shoe locker of a seemingly arbitrary number that contained a pair of clean white slippers a few sizes too small to be his own. Or at least, the logics that pointed to the simple conclusion didn’t match up quite as well with his impression of the situation as he had thought; there was no reason for him to be nervous, to have a box of chocolates in his bag, to be standing in front of a locker that was not his own. And yet there he was: gripping the flap of his book bag; staring with furrowed brows at the open space as if it would bite him if he made one wrong move; contemplating the consequences of his actions should he choose to let his arm do what it clearly wanted to do and what he really did not think would be a wise decision.
The sounds of shoes pattering against the linoleum floor shocked him from his deliberation. Tezuka closed the compartment door with an audible bang and fled.
╦╦
Tezuka mentally cursed himself for the duration it took him to move from the school entrance to the clubroom. His mental tirade halted when he saw a few girls in front of the clubroom, bent over or crouched down by the door, very obviously trying to pry it open. He paused for a moment. Usually-it happened too many times for him to care to keep count of-he’d rebuke them for breaking and entering, so to speak. Considering that it was Valentine’s, their intentions were obvious. He wasn’t so cruel as to force them to leave and therein lay another problem: he had absolutely no idea what to do in such a situation. After a blink of contemplation he settled with clearing his throat.
The girls ceased shoving and pushing at one another, simultaneously jumped up, and spun around so quickly he had to suppress a wince as their long hair lashed against their faces. One girl squeaked out something he thought was his name, but the pitch of her voice was too high for him to really tell.
As he was about to say something, the other two girls ran. He closed his mouth, a puzzled expression creasing his brow. The girl that had squeaked earlier flushed. She was paused in the motions of running and looked as if she wanted to say something. Tezuka inwardly wondered if the words that came out of her mouth would be at a pitch he’d be able to understand and felt immensely guilty afterwards for having such nasty thoughts.
When the silence had stretched out to an unbearable length of time, Tezuka made to speak again. Upon uttering the first syllable he was met with her shrinking back and zooming away. He noticed her shoulder-length hair as she spun around, the ends curling with an unnatural perm. She was definitely from his Math class; the girl who was always sitting next to Oishi. Tezuka wondered if she liked Oishi, but dismissed the thought when he realized he didn’t really care.
He moved forward to unlock the clubroom, entered, and set his bag down by the bench to change. It was when he zipped up his jacket that he noticed an open can of Ponta in an otherwise empty pigeon hole. He frowned and assumed there was still some drink left inside.
it would be so easy, the thought occurred to him, to place the box inside; no one would see him, and no one could possibly guess it was him. He looked down at the box sparkling innocently inside his bag. He frowned and looked back to the shelf. He continued to look back and forth, as if each time he shifted his eyes a revelation would come.
The door slammed open.
Tezuka froze and his heartbeat accelerated to an alarming rate.
“Tezuka!” Oishi exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.
Tezuka’s breath was caught in his throat and he felt as if he’d just been caught in the act of doing something extremely incriminating.
“Happy Valentines!” Oishi greeted cheerfully.
Tezuka nodded stiffly. Thankfully nothing else betrayed him besides the slightly strangled look in his eyes. Oishi however was in an exceedingly bright mood and didn’t seem to notice his friend’s apprehension.
Oishi asked him politely, “Have you received any chocolates yet?”
Tezuka eyed him, wondered why Oishi sounded so sure he’d get chocolates in the first place, and shook his head in a negative.
“Oh.” Oishi’s bubble of joy deflated. He didn’t know that Tezuka had arrived to school at an ungodly hour-most of which was spent standing in front of a shoe locker-or how he’d scared away the girls in front of the clubroom. Perhaps if he did he wouldn’t be feeling unnecessarily guilty as he looked down at the small pile of red and pink covered chocolates in his hands. “Uh, Tezuka, I…” He trailed off, not knowing what to say.
Tezuka raised a brow. Did Oishi really think he wanted to be burdened with gifts from students who he rarely interacted with on a daily basis, much less on a personal level? He was about to say something-or maybe nothing-just as Inui walked through the wide open door.
There was a pause in the monotonous mumblings-“Tezuka, Oishi,”-before the musings of percentages and probabilities and chocolates resumed.
When Inui sat down on the bench, Tezuka caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a list of names. Most of them were crossed off in neat black ink. Tezuka hoped it was only a list of names of the people Inui suspected had given him the tiny chocolate heart sitting in the direct center on his notebook. He didn’t want to think about what else it could be if it weren’t.
Members of the Tennis Club slowly trickled in, bringing with them excited chatter. Shaking his head, Tezuka pulled the flap over his bag and clicked it into place. He stood up, walked over to his shelf, and slid the bag in neatly. He couldn’t help but glance to his left at the shelf with the can of Ponta with a considering expression on his face. The owner would be late to practice again. He breathed in through his nose, and pushed his bag further back until it hit the wall. He stared sternly at his hand when he felt it twitch with the need to open the bag and pull out the box. With brows furrowed, he resisted.
Just as he was on his way out however, Tezuka felt compelled to take the half-full can and throw it out. He did.
Behind him Inui quickly jotted down a flurry of thoughts on a newer page, his mumblings growing more and more incoherent as the first years around him hurried to change into their uniforms.
╦╦
During his free period Tezuka could be found in the library; partly to work on his essay, mostly to avoid his classmates. A freshman class was booked into the library too-English if he remembered correctly.
The sounds of the boisterous babble and violent shushes heralded the arrival of said class. Tezuka looked up, brow lowering a fraction as the noise pervaded through the tall bookshelves. With a sigh he gathered up his pile of books and headed to the silent study room. It was a struggle with the generous number of books he carried, but he managed to wrestle the door open with an elbow. He kicked it shut behind him, relishing in the silence as the latch bolt slid into the jamb.
He moved towards his work area but was startled to see someone sitting on the far side of the room, right next to the wall with head cushioned in his arms. The room had many windows, but bent over like that the boy could easily escape the librarian’s notice. Tezuka looked out the window and deduced that, most likely, he was part of that English class. The class had dispersed off into different sections of the library; some on the computers, some by the bookshelves or newspaper archive, some sitting at the tables.
He set down the books with an intentional bang. The student started awake and shifted his head to look for the source of the disturbance. Tezuka was surprised to see the bleary face of one Echizen Ryoma, and almost choked on his breath when Echizen blinked drowsily up at him, mumbling, “Buchou.”
He steeled his resolve and thinned his lips. “Echizen. This place is reserved for the seniors.”
Echizen stared at him blankly, blinking once, twice. It didn’t look like anything was registering.
After a moment of awkward silence-Tezuka certainly thought it awkward-Echizen scoffed and flopped back down.
Tezuka was at a loss with what to do, and slightly miffed that the younger teen had just brushed him off. He settled for taking a seat and reopening the previous book he’d been reading. Silently, he entertained thoughts of making Echizen run more laps tomorrow morning; he had been unusually tardy to practice for more days than Tezuka tolerated.
He chased the thoughts away and focused his mind on the task at hand. If Echizen was going to ignore him, then he would ignore Echizen.
After rereading the same line for the fifth time, the words were starting to blur together. Somehow, with Echizen dozing off just a few seats down, his concentration became absolutely abysmal. He put the book down and closed his eyes. Tezuka inhaled, and then said, “Echizen.”
There was no answer. He must have fallen asleep again, Tezuka thought with disapproval.
Then: “Hhmmm?”
The sound did strange things to Tezuka, but he forced himself to look at the younger student. He felt his chest constrict at the sight of a single golden eye peeking out from beneath his fringe.
“Shouldn’t you be working with your class?” he tried to say without gritting his teeth together.
Echizen shifted his body around to prop his cheek up on a palm. Tezuka could see both eyes now, half-lidded and lazy.
“Done,” Echizen answered with a quirk of his lips.
Tezuka looked disbelieving. “Oh?”
“Oral presentation,” Echizen enlightened him.
Tezuka knew very well Echizen didn’t have to try very hard to excel in English, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to be lazy. Improvisation could only take you so far; Echizen probably hadn’t even bothered practicing his speech, whatever topic, yet.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Echizen asked, still staring intently at him. Tezuka returned the stare with a deadpan and didn’t bother to reply.
Echizen raised a brow.
Tezuka looked down at the book and stubbornly attempted to read it. He almost went cross-eyed after reaching the third sentence and not a single word registered through his mind.
A crinkling sound of foil had Tezuka looking at Echizen from the corner of his eyes.
Echizen noticed. He offered the bundle in his hands to Tezuka. “Want some?”
Tezuka eyed it apprehensively. The sheer pink material encasing the foiled chocolates and the thick red ribbon was unmistakably a Valentine’s gift.
“Some girl with long hair gave it to me,” Echizen said casually after Tezuka still hadn’t moved to take one. He propped one heart-shaped block into his mouth.
Tezuka had a sinking feeling that Echizen had no idea about how important the tradition of Valentine’s Day was in Japan. It struck him as a casual occasion in America, but in Japan… Tezuka frowned. Well, it certainly wasn’t his place to lecture Echizen.
“She was very nice.”
Or perhaps Echizen did know and thought he was being polite by offering some to his captain. Tezuka’s frown deepened.
He didn’t take any chocolates. “You shouldn’t be eating in the library,” Tezuka said reprovingly for lack of anything else to say.
Echizen blinked, and then narrowed his eyes. “Che.”
Tezuka resolutely spent the rest of the time painstakingly straining his eyes over pages upon pages of words and sentences and paragraphs, not really absorbing in anything but the presence of the freshman sleeping two chairs away.
Perhaps it was time to get his eyes checked again.
He placed a hand on his chest and felt the racing pulse. His heart too.
╦╦
Lunch was a tedious affair. The Student Council Meeting was full of the usual things; complaints, discussion for solutions of said complaints, inward musings of tennis, chocolate talk here and then, more complaints.
Tezuka closed his eyes and attempted to think of anything relating to tennis.
He didn’t know why he thought of the silent study room instead, full of nerves and thick with tension and a suddenly inappropriate place to attempt to do work.
Somehow, that was sounding like a much better place to be than inside a classroom full of student representatives.
╦╦
Tezuka saw Echizen changing his shoes as he exited the school building. Both his hands clutched at the strap of his bag, squeezing it so tightly his knuckles turned white. He could feel it, the weight of the box weighing down his shoulder, his mind, his heart.
He tried to tell himself to stop being so melodramatic, because it was stupid to be stressing so much over a box on a day that perhaps, all too likely, no longer held any real meaning within the material word.
Tezuka forced himself to release the wrangled strap and continue on his way. By the time he was heading towards the gate, he was hyperaware of Echizen following behind him at a sedate pace. His heart sped up and he cursed it for being so uncooperative.
Taking in a deep breath, he swung his bag behind him and kept his hands fisted by his side.
The sound of a heavy thud gave him feeling of a feather upon his shoulder, made Tezuka feel as if the weight of the world was no longer dragging him down.
“Buchou,” said Echizen.
He realized a second later that, not quite literally but very similarly, it has.
“You dropped this.” Echizen bent down to pick it up. Tezuka spun around so quickly his bag whipped around him like a disfigured cloak. He tried to say something, to stop the other from touching it, but his voice died on his tongue at the sight of thin, slender fingers curling around the box.
He sucked in a breath and spluttered around, uttering a few syllables that made no sense when linked together.
Echizen straightened and removed the hand in his pocket to brush the dirt off the white paper.
“Heeeh.”
There were rarely any times when Tezuka panicked. Now was one such time; rare and strange and utterly embarrassing. He blurted out in one breath something too fast to be coherent with pitch too high to be understood.
Echizen raised a brow in bewilderment, taking note of the light dusting of pink that colored Tezuka’s cheeks.
“Are you all-”
Tezuka hightailed.
“-right?” Echizen stood in the dust, blinking with confusion at the retreating back.
“Well,” he murmured to himself when his captain was no longer in sight. He took a moment to study the package. It looked harmless enough, and even had a tag attached to the elaborate purple bow threaded with gold-nothing gaudy like all the red and pink.
Deciding it couldn’t hurt, he opened the tiny card to see if Tezuka really did get a gift from a girl-his girlfriend?
His brows shot up when he saw his name written in a neat column in a very familiar script.
“Well,” he uttered again, this time dragging out the vowel.
A small smirk curled up the corner of his lips.
╦╦
On White Day, Tezuka robotically walked to school at an insanely early time. The last month had been hell-self-induced perhaps-and something he sorely wished would just end.
It probably didn’t help that he avoided Echizen like the plague, finding every excuse he could to send the freshman away whenever he approached, or if he could help it, have Oishi or the nearest regular unknowingly play interference should Echizen appear to show signs of coming closer. A ten foot radius was acceptable. Any closer and Tezuka would automatically begin to twitch or be overcome with the urge to flee-basic instincts were not something easily repressed after all.
Everyone noticed his apprehension, his paranoia. Fuji went as far as to call him a “big fluffy panda bear” when he turned up to practice late one morning, hair mussed and looking like he was lacking a month’s worth of sleep.
True, yes, but not something he appreciated. To say he never enjoyed his position as captain as much as he did then was an understatement; watching his team running laps upon laps around the same tennis courts was very therapeutic.
A feeling of dread settled over him like a persistent gloomy raincloud as he entered the school building. He walked into a door at one stage, but for the most part was able to make it to his shoe locker in one piece.
Grumbling, he simultaneously slipped out of his shoes and bent down to pick them up while opening the compartment door.
Tezuka staggered back-whether it was due to his inability to multitask or the shock of seeing something where his shoes were supposed to be was unclear-and his shoes fell to the floor with a resounding clack that traveled all the way down the long empty hallway. The echoes bounced and rebounded off the walls and made his head throb even more than it usually did.
As sleep-deprived as he was, Tezuka was sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Unmistakably, sitting at the center of his locker was a hat, familiar and white with the trademark [F] printed in Seigaku colors.
With knotted brows, Tezuka reached out a tentative hand to pick it up. He looked under it. There was nothing but empty space. Even his shoes were missing, he realized through the faint buzzing in his mind.
Tezuka turned the hat over and saw written on the underside of the brim in thick permanent marker:
YOU OWE ME PONTA
“So,” a sly voice whispered from behind him, just below his ear.
Tezuka hacked on the oxygen he was inhaling and spun around to look at the culprit.
“Gonna stop being a dork?” Echizen asked with a smirk that was both endearing and infuriatingly smug.
Tezuka scowled.