PoT Fic: "Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp" 4/5 (PG-13) - All-Cast Ensemble
Title: "Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp" 4/5 
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: All-Cast Ensemble, mostly gen with a few slashy overtones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,487, for this chapter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Boys in dorms. Lots of them. No spoilers unless the Selection Camp arc from the anime still counts.
Summary: Behind the scenes in all the dorms of the Junior Invitational Selection Camp.
Notes: See Chapter 1.
Notes 2: Written for writing_fest. The scenes in this chapter use the prompts: 'grocery shopping', "There's only room for one of us here", "You should give me three good reasons to stay", "I don't know where the hell I put them.", and 'going for broke'.
Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp
by Kantayra
Chapter Four
***
The Legend of Sakuno the Brave: Shopping Wars
“What else is on the list?” Ann asked, leading the shopping entourage.
“Squash,” Sakuno read off, “and that’s it.”
“Vegetable aisle,” Ann noted. “Sharp left.”
Dan, who was pushing the cart, managed to make the turn even with the squeaky right wheels.
“Greens, tomatoes…” Ann walked down the aisle. “Does anyone see any?” She frowned.
Sakuno and Dan looked around. “There,” Dan finally pointed to the bottom shelf, where only four squash remained.
“Barely enough,” Sakuno said and reached for the first one.
At that point, however, they were stopped by an angry voice. “Hey, we were here first!”
Ann, Sakuno, and Dan looked up to see three children about their age. The girl in the front had a long ponytail and her arms crossed over her chest.
“Those are ours,” she insisted.
Ann stood right up to her. “We got here first,” she insisted.
“Oh, yeah? Well, we need them more,” the girl countered.
“We need them for tennis camp,” Ann countered haughtily.
The girl blinked at her surprise. “We need them for tennis camp, too!”
“Nuh-uh,” Ann retorted. “You just stole our idea. It wasn’t even convincing, either.”
“Hey!” the girl objected. “I’ll have you know that I’m Araki Riko, and I’m a first-year in the Ginka girls’ tennis club.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m Tachibana Ann, and I’m a second-year at Fudomine.”
“Fudomine? Weren’t you unseeded or whatever?”
“We advanced to Nationals,” Ann retorted.
“You just got lucky in the draw!”
“Didn’t your team forfeit to Seigaku?” Dan scratched his head.
“Who are you?” one of the Ginka boys chimed in. “Another Fudomine?” The boy puffed up his chest. “I’m Satoh Koji, and I’ve got two years karate experience, so you’d better not talk trash about our senpais.”
Dan blinked at him. “But Ginka really did resign to Seigaku.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Riko insisted. “We called the vegetables first, so they’re ours. We need them to make dinner for our team’s away camp.”
“Come to think of it…” Ann said thoughtfully. “Why isn’t anyone at Ginka at the Invitational Camp? Oh, right, because it’s invitational!”
Riko gasped. “Why, you!”
“Why, you!” Ann glared right back.
“Akutsu-senpai, save us!” Dan squealed.
Koji’s eyes widened in alarm. “Akutsu’s here? Akutsu from Yamabuki?” He grabbed Riko’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here!”
“I’m not going without my squash,” Riko insisted.
“Well, you’ll have to get through me to get it,” Ann retorted.
“Fine. Let’s settle this, then.”
“Tennis?” Dan guessed.
“Is there another way?” Koji blinked in surprise.
“Uh… Guys?” The third member of the Ginka party, a little, dark-haired girl with glasses, cut in meekly.
“Not now, Yasuko. I have to show this Fudomine girl what Ginka’s made of,” Riko boasted.
“But guys…” Yasuko pressed.
“Leave these two to us,” Koji instructed her.
Yasuko whimpered and watched as Sakuno picked up the squash from the shelf, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly ridiculous conflict between the rest of them, and wheeled the cart over to the check-out line.
“But what’s the point of fighting if they’ve already bought the squash?” she sighed.
No one listened to her.
“I’ll show you,” Riko announced, “I’ve got a serve that will knock you silly.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, my brother is Tachibana Kippei, and he’s been teaching me for years.”
“Didn’t he get his ass kicked by Rikkaidai?”
“Didn’t your whole team get their asses kicked by Echizen?”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I-”
“Uh… Guys?” Sakuno said softly on the other side of the check-out line, in a way frighteningly similar to Yasuko.
Ann and Dan looked over in surprise.
“I’ve already bought the supplies.” Sakuno smiled at them. “We have to get back to make dinner.”
“Hey!” Koji protested. “They stole those right out from under our noses!”
“Bye!” Ann gave Riko an evil smirk and took off.
“I’ll say hello to Akutsu-senpai for you,” Dan said.
Koji gulped.
Riko just snorted. “Just like them to run off. I guess I can’t blame them for being terrified of Ginka’s might.”
Yasuko just sighed wearily.
***
The Kirihara/Kamio Wars: Conflict Mediation
“You heard what I said!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I dare you to say it to my face!”
“I just did! What, are you deaf as well as weak?”
“That’s it! I’ve had it!”
“Well, I’ve had it, too!”
“There’s only room for one of us here!”
“Let’s settle this once and for all!”
A fight broke out in the middle of the common room, the fifth that day, in fact.
Ohtori sat on the couch and pouted. “I’ve got so much homework over the break,” he complained. “I’m never going to get it done at this rate.”
Shishido grunted and glared when a stray elbow jabbed him in the side, causing him to spill his juice all over the armrest of the sofa.
“Die, die, die!” Kirihara yelled.
“In your face, you freaking nut-job!” Kamio jammed Kirihara’s face right into the open jar of dip at the center of the table.
“Hey!” Kikumaru’s face fell. “I was going to eat that!”
Oishi sighed. “We’re trying to play a game here.” He shifted out of the way just in time for Kamio and Kirihara to roll right on by him.
“I see your twenty and raise you fifty,” Echizen informed Momoshiro.
“I’ll see that and raise you another fifty,” Momoshiro grinned, froze, and turned around and scowled when a stray thrown pillow from the fight whapped him in the back of the head.
“Heh,” Echizen snickered, looked down at his full house, and accepted the bet.
Kirihara and Kamio continued to roll on, kicking and thrashing, until they crashed into the coffee table. They knocked it, and everything on it, onto the floor, and then started rolling and kicking and thrashing on that, too.
Kajimoto sighed.
Sengoku scratched his head. “This really is getting out of hand.”
“We should put a stop to it,” Kajimoto agreed.
“Us?” Sengoku blinked at him in alarm.
“They’re our roommates.” Kajimoto shrugged and got up. “On three.”
Sengoku scrambled to his feet.
“One, two, three.” Kajimoto grabbed Kirihara by the scruff of the neck and yanked him, flailing, back off Kamio. Sengoku tackled Kamio back down to the ground at the same time and sat on him so he couldn’t resume the fight.
“Let me go,” Kirihara snarled and tried to pull free of Kajimoto’s grasp.
“Let me at him!” Kamio squirmed under Sengoku.
It seemed to be the only thing they could agree on.
“Okay,” Kajimoto said wearily. “We’ve all given you plenty of opportunities to behave like adults, and you’ve failed epically every time. Honestly, it’s not that long a camp. Can’t you two be civil for just a couple of weeks?”
Kirihara sulked, and Kamio scowled.
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Sengoku decided.
“Why am I not surprised?” Kajimoto agreed. “A little help?”
Oishi, Kikumaru, Shishido, Ohtori, Momoshiro, and Echizen had all been sitting back, enjoying the spectacle. Now, though, Kikumaru, Shishido, and Echizen immediately pretended that they were too busy doing whatever they were doing to help out. Oishi, Ohtori, and Momoshiro all leapt at that chance, though, so it all worked out.
“I’ll go get the duct tape,” Momoshiro announced and ran from the room.
“I’ll take this side,” Oishi decided, “and you do that one.”
Ohtori nodded in agreement.
Now that the danger of actual work was over, Kikumaru, Shishido, and Echizen watched in fascination.
Momoshiro returned a minute later with two industrial-sized rolls of duct tape. He handed one to Oishi and one to Ohtori.
Kirihara’s eyes widened. “Hey, what are you guys doing?”
Kamio tried to struggle, but Sengoku refused to let him up.
“Until you two learn,” Kajimoto said darkly, “this is how we’re going to do things.”
Kirihara gulped. Kamio’s eyes widened.
“Boys?” Kajimoto said. “Get to it.”
Oishi and Ohtori both grabbed the sticky end of their duct tape, stuck it to the floor at opposite corners of the room, and began to unroll it toward each other, until they’d created a gray line of duct tape that bisected the room along the diagonal. Kajimoto held Kirihara on one side of the line, and Sengoku sat on Kamio on the other side.
“Just like our doubles’ technique,” Momoshiro grinned at Echizen.
Echizen snorted and rolled his eyes.
“There,” Kajimoto concluded. “You two have to stay on your own sides. Will that be a problem?” He fixed Kirihara with an icy glare.
Kirihara wisely shook his head.
“Whatever,” Kamio complained. “Just get off me!”
Kajimoto and Sengoku exchanged a look and a nod, and they let their respective roommates go. Kirihara and Kamio straightened themselves out, mostly from the fight earlier, and then Kamio huffed off in one corner with his headphones and Kirihara stuck up his nose in the far corner and returned to his tennis magazine.
“We might just be geniuses,” Sengoku considered the newly-pacified common room.
Kajimoto allowed a hesitant nod.
Of course, it only lasted about five minutes.
“I see you poking the line with your toe!” Kamio accused. “Stay on your own side!”
“The line is no one’s side,” Kirihara smirked. “I can touch it however much I want.”
“Well, then I guess there’s no rule against me doing this!” Kamio hurled a couch cushion at Kirihara’s head.
Kirihara ducked. “Hey!” he protested.
“What?” Kamio taunted him. “I never left my side!”
Kajimoto and Sengoku exchanged a weary sigh.
“I guess there really is only room for one of them here,” Sengoku concluded.
“So it would seem,” Kajimoto agreed and was hit right in the face by Kirihara’s flying shoe.
***
Do the Roommate Shuffle: Twinfighting
“Well, I happen to like my haircut,” Atsushi insisted.
“It makes you look boring,” Ryo retorted.
“Wow,” Oshitari watched and snagged a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Atobe’s lap.
At that, Atsushi snapped. “At least I don’t look like a girl.”
Ryo’s eyes widened, and his cheeks flushed. “I-I do not,” he stammered.
“Amazing…” Atobe breathed, popping a kernel into his mouth.
“Yes, you do,” Atsushi couldn’t back down on his insult once he’d started it. It was one of the fundamental laws of brotherhood.
“Well, at least I didn’t cry at the end of Death Note.”
“Brother fights are always the best entertainment,” Oshitari commented. He snagged more popcorn.
“Oh yeah, well, who wet the bed at summer camp when we were nine?”
“So, you were the one who needed a month of lessons before you could get an overhand serve over the net.”
“They always know the best dirt on each other,” Atobe agreed.
“At least I don’t kiss my Federer poster to sleep every night. Ryo’s in love.”
Ryo sputtered. “That’s just for luck.”
“Yes,” Kabaji seconded.
“Sure, it is. Not only do you look like a girl, but you act like one, too.”
“That’s it!” Ryo exclaimed. “I can’t take it anymore. You’ve been acting like a dick ever since you switched schools.”
“Come on, catfight,” Oshitari chanted under his breath. “Catfight, catfight…”
“I’ve been a dick?” Atsushi demanded. “You’ve always acted like you owned me. Well, guess what? I’m my own person, and I won’t let you order me around anymore.”
“If you hate me that much, then why don’t you run away and move out again?” Ryo retorted snottily. “After all, that seems to be the only thing you can do right.”
“Lean in just a little bit closer,” Atobe pleaded.
“Fine, then, I will,” Atsushi huffed.
“Yeah, right,” Ryo huffed back. “I dare you.”
“The great thing about twins making out is that it’s like watching someone have sex with themselves,” Oshitari sighed wistfully.
“Fine, then. You should give me three good reasons to stay, or I’m leaving,” Atsushi threatened.
“Like I’d want you around anyway,” Ryo retorted.
Atobe let out a longing little moan. “I’d have sex with me in a heartbeat.”
“Yes,” Kabaji and Oshitari agreed together, rather ambiguously. They both reached into Atobe’s lap at the exact same time…for more popcorn, of course.
“I’m gone, then,” Atsushi announced, turning his back on Ryo.
“Fine.” Ryo’s glared turned toward the fascinated Hyotei audience. “You, there.” He pointed to Oshitari. “You still need a roommate, right?”
“Uh?” Oshitari’s head was still filled with certain visions of people making out with themselves, with him in the middle.
“Good,” Ryo concluded with a satisfied smirk. “Oshitari’s my roommate now. We’re going to have the best time.”
“Oh, yeah?” Atsushi concluded. “Well, then, I’ll move in with Wakato. I hear he does a perfect imitation of you…being a dick!”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“It’s over, then.”
“Done.”
“I’m never talking to you again.”
“Great, because I don’t want to ever talk to you again, either.”
“Let’s go to bed, Oshitari,” Ryo turned on his heel to leave.
“Unfortunately, he doesn’t mean it in the good way,” Oshitari sighed and got up off the couch. At least he was spared from the weird stain this evening.
“Lucky bastard,” Atobe teased.
Oshitari glared at him and headed off after Ryo back to his dorm room.
“So, that’s your half of the room,” Ryo informed him once he had shut the door behind them. “Try to keep it clean.”
“All right…” Oshitari said and lay back on the bed. He let out a long, relaxing sigh.
“And be quiet,” Ryo ordered.
Oshitari blinked. “Sure.” He shifted over onto his side.
“I said quiet,” Ryo complained.
Across the hall, things were proceeding roughly the same way with Wakato and Atsushi.
“I can hear you turning the pages!” Atsushi complained. “And something on your side of the room smells.”
Wakato tried not to bang his head on the wall.
Back in Ryo and Oshitari’s room, Oshitari was finally getting fed up. “What can I do that won’t disturb you?” he finally demanded.
Ryo considered him for a second. “Don’t you think Atsushi’s just being a whiny baby, ditching me like this?”
Oshitari sighed wearily.
“He’s always like this,” Ryo insisted. “He’s so touchy about everything. Like, whenever I suggest we do anything, of course I’m ordering him around. But when he does it? If I say anything, that just means that I don’t respect him, and blah-blah-blah, and…”
Oshitari tuned right out.
Across the hall, Wakato was doing the same.
“He thinks he’s the boss of me, just because he’s, like, two minutes older,” Atsushi whined. “Like that makes any difference whatsoever. Hell, for all we know, the nurses accidentally switched us up in the delivery room, and I’m the older one. It’s not like anyone could tell.”
Wakato began to go into a boredom-induced coma.
“And it’s always my fault,” Ryo concluded with a huff back in the other room.
“How, uh, terrible for you,” Oshitari tried to sound sympathetic.
“Terrible?” Ryo blinked at him. “Are you calling Atsushi terrible?”
“Uh…” Oshitari was very confused.
“How dare you smack-talk about my brother!” Ryo glared.
“I didn’t say anything!” Oshitari insisted. “I was just agreeing with you.”
“Humph,” Ryo sulked and looked at Oshitari suspiciously.
Across the hall, Wakato unwisely said, “He sounds like a control freak.”
“Hey!” Atsushi complained. “That’s my brother you’re talking about!”
“Uh… Huh?” Wakato blinked.
“That’s it!” Ryo announced.
“I can’t stand this anymore!” Atsushi leapt to his feet.
In perfect unison, they flung open the doors to their respective rooms.
“I’ve got three reasons for you!” Ryo announced. “One: Oshitari.” He pointed back to where Oshitari sat, bewildered, on the bed.
“Well, I’ve got one, too,” Atsushi agreed. “Two: Wakato.” Wakato looked equally perplexed.
“And three,” Ryo concluded.
“The only other option,” Atsushi began.
“Is…” they said in unison.
Amane was watching all of this from his doorway at the end of the hall. “Yeah, you don’t want to room with me,” he agreed. “You two are a twinning couple.” He snorted at his own joke.
Ryo and Atsushi shuddered in unison.
“Let’s be roommates again, okay?” Ryo offered.
“Okay,” Atsushi agreed. “I know! I can braid my ribbon into your hair.”
“Okay,” Ryo agreed.
Somehow, Oshitari managed to get shoved out of their room, and the door slammed behind them.
“Twins,” Wakato blinked in disbelief.
“So weird,” Oshitari agreed.
“That’s what happens when two people get so intertwinned,” Amane snorted.
Wakato gave him a disgusted look and slammed his door shut again.
Oshitari sighed wearily. Down the hall lay the lumpy, stained couch and more mocking commentary from Atobe. There was really only one thing to do: be brave. “Look,” Oshitari said wearily to Amane, “I’ve tried rooming with everyone else, and I don’t want to sleep on the couch again. Can I be your roommate?”
Amane considered this for a second. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Oshitari winced and waited for it. Waited… Waited…
“I should warn you, though,” Amane scratched his head, “I snore.”
Oshitari kept waiting. Finally, he opened his eyes at Amane. “No pun?” he finally demanded in disbelief.
Amane snorted and rolled his eyes. “You don’t actually believe I talk entirely in puns all the time, do you?”
“Well…” Oshitari couldn’t remember Amane saying anything else at camp so far.
“That’s just a safety measure,” Amane assured him.
“A safety measure?” Oshitari asked skeptically and stepped into Amane’s room.
“Otherwise,” Amane agreed, “I might end up having to room with one of those nuts.”
“My thoughts in a nutshell,” Oshitari snorted.
Amane snorted back.
Back in their room, Ryo and Atsushi just scowled at the abnormal amount of snorting occurring down the hall.
***
The High Life: A Brief Mystery
Tezuka stood outside the door to the coaches’ office and coughed pointedly. Inside, shuffling and swearing could be heard. Tezuka sighed and glanced at his watch. The time was 7:56 AM. They didn’t have much longer. He reached out and rapped his knuckles on the door.
“Breakfast is almost over. We need to start practice.”
Louder swearing sounded, and then Hanamura accused, “This is all your fault!”
“I don’t know where the hell I put them,” Sakaki sighed wearily.
Tezuka knocked again for good measure, in case they somehow hadn’t heard him.
“Oh, come on in, already,” Hanamura snapped.
Tezuka braced himself and stepped inside. “It’s almost eight,” he informed them and glanced around the office. All the drawers in the file cabinets were wide open, and papers were strewn everywhere. Tezuka’s eyes widened. “Did-?”
Hanamura finished for him. “Sakaki lose all the player evaluation files? Why, yes, he did.”
Sakaki fixed her with an unamused stare. “I left them on the desk yesterday afternoon, where we always put them.”
“I thought you just said you didn’t know where you put them?” Hanamura smiled at him viciously.
Sakaki scowled. “Someone must have taken them.”
Hanamura’s eyes widened. “Well, it certainly wasn’t me.”
“There are three keys to this office,” Sakaki said succinctly. “Yours, mine, and Ryuzaki’s, which Tezuka is currently in possession of. I know that I didn’t take them. The suspects are you and Tezuka. Do the math.”
Tezuka did the math and very pointedly did not meet either of their eyes.
Hanamura smiled sweetly. “Oh, I did,” she promised, “and the obvious solution is that you’re lying. Either you lost them, or you took them yourself.”
Tezuka took a cautious step back out the door.
“Why would I take them?” Sakaki demanded.
“To give Hyotei’s players an advantage,” Hanamura concluded smugly.
Sakaki let out a bored sigh. “That doesn’t make any sense. If I wanted to do that, I could just tell them the contents of the files.”
Tezuka took another step.
“Well, then, why would I steal them?” Hanamura demanded, hands on hips.
“Obviously to feed them into your ridiculous coordination models,” Sakaki said smugly.
Tezuka bolted for it while neither of them was looking. In the distance, he could hear Hanamura’s next burst of outrage. He headed for the courts because, while the list of suspects was nearly endless, all the people who could do anything about it would be diligently practicing already.
Sure enough, Oishi was on A-Court when he arrived, demonstrating some kind of formation for Kikumaru in his notebook.
Tezuka coughed pointedly.
Oishi looked up and handed Kikumaru his notes to study before he jogged over to Tezuka. “Are we ready to begin practice?” he asked eagerly.
Tezuka’s eyes darted around. The coast seemed to be clear. He was grateful, not for the first time, that Inui wasn’t in his group. “Someone took the player files from the coaches’ office last night. One of the only three keys was sitting on my desk.”
Oishi’s eyes widened as he put two and two together. “I-I didn’t see anything, but… Tezuka, that could have been anyone.”
“Was it anyone in this group?” Tezuka demanded.
Oishi bit his lip. “I can’t really see it… Kirihara, maybe? Although I don’t want to accuse him. And, really, I have no reason to accuse him. Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone-”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Tezuka ordered.
Oishi nodded.
Tezuka grimaced and headed over to F-Court. F-Court had all the ball machines set up today. There were only two in use, however. Shinjoh was on the far side of the court, seemingly oblivious to all else around him. Atobe had grabbed the nearest machine and seemed to be doing some mildly concerning precision training that involved the far left corner. For a moment, Tezuka was too absorbed in trying to decipher Atobe’s attack to continue with his mission. However, even tennis had to wait for some things.
Tezuka headed pointedly for Atobe’s ball machine. He knew Atobe saw him, because Atobe never missed these things, but Atobe didn’t break his stride once until Tezuka had flicked the machine off.
Atobe snorted with amusement at him and walked over to his water bottle. Tezuka followed after him.
“Miss me?” Atobe teased after he’d taken a deep, satisfying drink.
Tezuka snorted. “I need your, er,” his eyes flicked off to the side, “assistance.”
“Tezuka, you know anything I can give is yours,” Atobe smirked.
Tezuka sighed. It was too early for Atobe. “Someone took the files from the coaches’ office last night. They must’ve gotten the key from my room.”
“Well,” Atobe drawled thoughtfully, “I certainly wasn’t in your room last night because of any key.”
Tezuka fought against the twitching of his lips. Atobe seemed to notice it anyway.
“What’s really fascinating here is that you’ve come to me about this,” Atobe considered.
“I need you to make sure it wasn’t anyone in your group,” Tezuka said blandly.
“Ah, of course.” A devilish glint lit up Atobe’s eyes. “But still, who would really want to take such things? Data players, I would think. All of whom are in Sanada’s group. Yet you came to me first. Like I said: fascinating.”
Damn Atobe and his perceptiveness.
“So I’m back to my original question,” Atobe concluded. “Miss me?”
Tezuka snorted and walked off. He couldn’t completely conceal the red in his cheeks, however.
Sanada’s group, if Tezuka recalled correctly (and he did), was in the weight room first thing that morning. Tezuka knew he was on to something when he arrived at the weight room and not even Sanada was training yet. Clearly, something was amiss with the universe.
There weren’t many places a group of nine teenage boys could disappear to, however, and Tezuka soon tracked them back to the cafeteria, which they’d never left.
“Where did you get that?” Sanada was glaring, with fists clenched. So far, nothing was unusual.
“Listen to this,” Mizuki smirked and held out a manila folder in front of him to read. Aha! “‘Sanada Genichiro’s obsessive discipline clearly derives from his displaced homoerotic desires-’”
“What?” Sanada bellowed and lunged for him. Pages went flying in the ensuing shuffle.
Tezuka paid little attention to where Sanada now had a screaming Mizuki in a headlock. He caught both Inui and Yanagi’s hands instants before they could descend upon the fallen pages. “Gentlemen,” he said calmly, “I believe those belong back in the coaches’ office?”
Inui’s face fell.
Yanagi sniffled a little.
Tezuka fixed them with his sternest stare.
“Of course,” Inui finally agreed slowly. “Our own notes are far superior anyway, I’m sure.”
“Agreed,” Yanagi said, sounding equally disheartened. “After all, they’re only detailed reports written by experienced, professional coaches.”
They both whimpered in unison at the loss.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Fuji bent down beside Tezuka and helped him pick up the pages.
Saeki soon joined them.
Kawamura, Yuta, and Kaidoh all stood around watching Mizuki begging for mercy, debating whether they should intervene to save his life.
“I think Mizuki was trying to impress Inui and Yanagi,” Saeki surmised.
“So he took the key from my suite last night,” Tezuka agreed.
Fuji smiled. “He also got all Sakaki’s data on me. He quoted it to me this morning.” He handed the papers he’d collected to Tezuka.
“Oh?” Saeki asked curiously and handed over his own papers. “What did it say?”
“Apparently,” Fuji tapped his chin in thought, “that I have a hot ass.”
Tezuka made it a point not to stick around after that. He snuck back into the building where the coaches were housed. In the meantime, Hanamura and Sakaki’s argument had migrated to the break room, and they were now tearing that up in the hopes that Sakaki had left the files there.
Tezuka slipped surreptitiously past the open door and returned to the office. He let himself in with his key and set the stack of papers down on the end table, just behind a potted fern, where conceivably Sakaki and Hanamura might have missed them earlier.
Tezuka was about to leave, but froze with his hand still hovering over the files. Glancing quickly behind him, he determined there was no danger. He flipped to Fuji’s page. It most certainly did not say that he had a hot ass. With that confirmed, he flipped to Sanada’s. There at the top, in Coach Sakaki’s crisp, elegant writing were the words, “Sanada Genichiro’s obsessive discipline clearly derives from his displaced homoerotic desires, combined with his severe issues of inadequacy.”
Tezuka tried not to smirk and flipped the file back shut. Then he called down the hall, “I think I’ve found them!”
Sakaki and Hanamura came running, glaring at each other all the while.
“Ah, see!” Sakaki insisted. “I told you I left them here. You must have been blind to miss them.”
“Me?” Hanamura growled. “You were supposed to leave them on the desk.”
Tezuka flipped open a tennis magazine and pretended to read it, while humming to himself under his breath. Needless to say, it never occurred to either of them to blame him.
***
The Five Trials of Sanada Genichiro: Going for Broke
Sanada glared down at his hand: ace, king, queen, jack, ten. Then he looked up at Fuji. Fuji was smiling beatifically. Sanada grumbled under his breath, pulled his hat down further over his eyes, and considered his options.
It was true that Fuji was evil incarnate and had unholy luck. Sanada had seen Yanagi’s calculations, and it was the only reasonable explanation for half the occurrences that surrounded Fuji. Clearly, diabolical forces were at work in Fuji’s favor.
However, Sanada felt quite capable of himself and his hand. He could win this. Carefully, he made his decision and ground out, “Got any aces?”
Fuji smiled wider. “Go fish.”
Sanada swore under his breath and drew from the deck. He got a worthless four. He glared at it, but no matter how much glaring he did, it didn’t turn into anything useful.
“Got any kings?” Fuji asked in response.
Sanada cursed some more and handed it over.
Fuji put down the pair and claimed two more of the coins in the pot. “Your turn.”
At that point, Saeki wandered in. “Are you two still playing?” he asked in disbelief. He gave Sanada a clap on the shoulder. “Just give it up, man. You’re never going to beat him.”
“I won’t if I slack off like you suggest,” Sanada snarled at him.
Saeki help up his hands in apology and sat back to watch. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think this sort of betting is supposed to be done with poker instead.”
Fuji nodded in agreement. “We were playing that, but Sanada insisted that the fact that I had more experience was giving me an unfair advantage. So we switched to this.”
Saeki snickered behind his hand.
“Got any jacks?” Sanada finally asked.
“Go fish.”
Sanada grumbled and picked up an eight.
“Got any tens?” Fuji smiled.
Sanada fixed him with a suspicious look and checked surreptitiously over his shoulder. There were no reflective surfaces behind him, and he knew the deck wasn’t rigged because it was Mizuki’s deck and Sanada had shuffled it. Of course, Sanada wouldn’t put it entirely past Mizuki to have a rigged deck, but he would never conspire with Fuji, of all people, about it. If anything, he’d be conspiring against Fuji.
The only explanation was Fuji’s unholy luck. Sanada forked over his ten.
Fuji put down the pair and took two more coins from the pot. Fuji only had two cards left, before he won it all.
“Eights?” Sanada guessed.
“Go fish!” Fuji beamed.
Sanada barely restrained the urge to give him twenty laps for smugness. However, Sanada would secretly have known that those laps were really for beating him, and that was just unacceptable.
Sanada got a five.
“Any fives?” Fuji asked brightly.
Sanada swore and practically threw the freshly-drawn card at him.
“With my luck today, I should play Sengoku,” Fuji teased. He only had one card left now.
Sanada glared at it, at Fuji, and at his own meager stack of pairs. Even if he guessed the card right, he would still lose the game. However, at this point, it wasn’t about winning anymore. It was about just guessing one damn card correctly. It shouldn’t have been physically possible for all of Sanada’s pairs to be lucky draws, but they were. Just once he wanted to see Fuji fork a card over instead of smiling and pedantically telling him to “go fish.”
“I want a queen,” he finally stated.
Saeki snorted into his hand.
Fuji’s lips quirked. “Go fish.”
Sanada got a six. He was pretty sure it was statistically impossible to have such a random assortment of cards in his hand.
Fuji tapped his final card with the tip of his index fingers. “Got any twos?”
“No!” Sanada practically laughed aloud. “Go fish.”
Fuji’s smile widened, and he reached out and picked up the top card from the deck. “Oh, lucky me, it’s my two,” he said happily, showing the final pair to Sanada.
Sanada tried not to wail too much in despair when the entire pot went into Fuji’s very large collection.
“So, should we call it a night?” Fuji suggested, eying Sanada’s two-hundred remaining yen.
Sanada gritted his teeth and bared it. “One more game.”
Fuji blinked at him. “You don’t have enough to play…”
“Then you put in the same, and winner takes all,” Sanada insisted.
Saeki groaned. “Just give up while you still have the two-hundred yen,” he advised.
“Slacker!” Sanada accused him.
Saeki rolled his eyes and went off to see what the sane people were doing. Watching Sanada lose was funny at first, but after a while it was just painful.
“If that’s what you want…” Fuji finally said carefully. He put in two-hundred yen as well.
He moved to reshuffle, but Sanada took the cards from him. “I’m shuffling.”
“Whatever you like,” Fuji agreed.
Sanada dealt and swore when he saw that he didn’t have any pairs in his opening hand.
Fuji smiled and put down a pair of threes…and a pair of nines…and a pair of jacks. “I’d forgotten just how much fun this game is,” he told Sanada over his one remaining card.
Sanada gritted his teeth and stared at that one card. He really didn’t care. He just had to beat Fuji, just once. “Aces?” he guessed hopefully.
Fuji paused, stared down at his card, and then looked quickly up at Sanada. His eyes blinked open in surprise, and the smile dropped from his face.
Sanada held his breath.
And then Fuji smiled again. “Just kidding! Go fish.” The instant Sanada had drawn, he asked, “Any fours?”
Of course, Sanada did.
“I demand a rematch,” he insisted, even though Fuji now held all the coins and he was left with nothing.
Fuji considered him for a moment, like a cat might consider its struggling prey, and then he tossed Sanada a pity coin. “Just because you’re so pretty,” Fuji teased.
Sanada blushed but dealt again anyway…
It wasn’t until three in the morning that Yanagi finally awoke to Sanada slinking back into their room.
“Genichiro?” he asked blearily.
“Go back to bed,” Sanada ordered.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I know,” Sanada grumbled. “Just go to sleep.”
“And why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
“Shut up!” Sanada growled.
Yanagi wisely did and went back to sleep with a smirk.
As always, comments are much appreciated.
Chapter Five
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: All-Cast Ensemble, mostly gen with a few slashy overtones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,487, for this chapter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Boys in dorms. Lots of them. No spoilers unless the Selection Camp arc from the anime still counts.
Summary: Behind the scenes in all the dorms of the Junior Invitational Selection Camp.
Notes: See Chapter 1.
Notes 2: Written for writing_fest. The scenes in this chapter use the prompts: 'grocery shopping', "There's only room for one of us here", "You should give me three good reasons to stay", "I don't know where the hell I put them.", and 'going for broke'.
Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp
by Kantayra
Chapter Four
***
The Legend of Sakuno the Brave: Shopping Wars
“What else is on the list?” Ann asked, leading the shopping entourage.
“Squash,” Sakuno read off, “and that’s it.”
“Vegetable aisle,” Ann noted. “Sharp left.”
Dan, who was pushing the cart, managed to make the turn even with the squeaky right wheels.
“Greens, tomatoes…” Ann walked down the aisle. “Does anyone see any?” She frowned.
Sakuno and Dan looked around. “There,” Dan finally pointed to the bottom shelf, where only four squash remained.
“Barely enough,” Sakuno said and reached for the first one.
At that point, however, they were stopped by an angry voice. “Hey, we were here first!”
Ann, Sakuno, and Dan looked up to see three children about their age. The girl in the front had a long ponytail and her arms crossed over her chest.
“Those are ours,” she insisted.
Ann stood right up to her. “We got here first,” she insisted.
“Oh, yeah? Well, we need them more,” the girl countered.
“We need them for tennis camp,” Ann countered haughtily.
The girl blinked at her surprise. “We need them for tennis camp, too!”
“Nuh-uh,” Ann retorted. “You just stole our idea. It wasn’t even convincing, either.”
“Hey!” the girl objected. “I’ll have you know that I’m Araki Riko, and I’m a first-year in the Ginka girls’ tennis club.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m Tachibana Ann, and I’m a second-year at Fudomine.”
“Fudomine? Weren’t you unseeded or whatever?”
“We advanced to Nationals,” Ann retorted.
“You just got lucky in the draw!”
“Didn’t your team forfeit to Seigaku?” Dan scratched his head.
“Who are you?” one of the Ginka boys chimed in. “Another Fudomine?” The boy puffed up his chest. “I’m Satoh Koji, and I’ve got two years karate experience, so you’d better not talk trash about our senpais.”
Dan blinked at him. “But Ginka really did resign to Seigaku.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Riko insisted. “We called the vegetables first, so they’re ours. We need them to make dinner for our team’s away camp.”
“Come to think of it…” Ann said thoughtfully. “Why isn’t anyone at Ginka at the Invitational Camp? Oh, right, because it’s invitational!”
Riko gasped. “Why, you!”
“Why, you!” Ann glared right back.
“Akutsu-senpai, save us!” Dan squealed.
Koji’s eyes widened in alarm. “Akutsu’s here? Akutsu from Yamabuki?” He grabbed Riko’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here!”
“I’m not going without my squash,” Riko insisted.
“Well, you’ll have to get through me to get it,” Ann retorted.
“Fine. Let’s settle this, then.”
“Tennis?” Dan guessed.
“Is there another way?” Koji blinked in surprise.
“Uh… Guys?” The third member of the Ginka party, a little, dark-haired girl with glasses, cut in meekly.
“Not now, Yasuko. I have to show this Fudomine girl what Ginka’s made of,” Riko boasted.
“But guys…” Yasuko pressed.
“Leave these two to us,” Koji instructed her.
Yasuko whimpered and watched as Sakuno picked up the squash from the shelf, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly ridiculous conflict between the rest of them, and wheeled the cart over to the check-out line.
“But what’s the point of fighting if they’ve already bought the squash?” she sighed.
No one listened to her.
“I’ll show you,” Riko announced, “I’ve got a serve that will knock you silly.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, my brother is Tachibana Kippei, and he’s been teaching me for years.”
“Didn’t he get his ass kicked by Rikkaidai?”
“Didn’t your whole team get their asses kicked by Echizen?”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I-”
“Uh… Guys?” Sakuno said softly on the other side of the check-out line, in a way frighteningly similar to Yasuko.
Ann and Dan looked over in surprise.
“I’ve already bought the supplies.” Sakuno smiled at them. “We have to get back to make dinner.”
“Hey!” Koji protested. “They stole those right out from under our noses!”
“Bye!” Ann gave Riko an evil smirk and took off.
“I’ll say hello to Akutsu-senpai for you,” Dan said.
Koji gulped.
Riko just snorted. “Just like them to run off. I guess I can’t blame them for being terrified of Ginka’s might.”
Yasuko just sighed wearily.
***
The Kirihara/Kamio Wars: Conflict Mediation
“You heard what I said!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I dare you to say it to my face!”
“I just did! What, are you deaf as well as weak?”
“That’s it! I’ve had it!”
“Well, I’ve had it, too!”
“There’s only room for one of us here!”
“Let’s settle this once and for all!”
A fight broke out in the middle of the common room, the fifth that day, in fact.
Ohtori sat on the couch and pouted. “I’ve got so much homework over the break,” he complained. “I’m never going to get it done at this rate.”
Shishido grunted and glared when a stray elbow jabbed him in the side, causing him to spill his juice all over the armrest of the sofa.
“Die, die, die!” Kirihara yelled.
“In your face, you freaking nut-job!” Kamio jammed Kirihara’s face right into the open jar of dip at the center of the table.
“Hey!” Kikumaru’s face fell. “I was going to eat that!”
Oishi sighed. “We’re trying to play a game here.” He shifted out of the way just in time for Kamio and Kirihara to roll right on by him.
“I see your twenty and raise you fifty,” Echizen informed Momoshiro.
“I’ll see that and raise you another fifty,” Momoshiro grinned, froze, and turned around and scowled when a stray thrown pillow from the fight whapped him in the back of the head.
“Heh,” Echizen snickered, looked down at his full house, and accepted the bet.
Kirihara and Kamio continued to roll on, kicking and thrashing, until they crashed into the coffee table. They knocked it, and everything on it, onto the floor, and then started rolling and kicking and thrashing on that, too.
Kajimoto sighed.
Sengoku scratched his head. “This really is getting out of hand.”
“We should put a stop to it,” Kajimoto agreed.
“Us?” Sengoku blinked at him in alarm.
“They’re our roommates.” Kajimoto shrugged and got up. “On three.”
Sengoku scrambled to his feet.
“One, two, three.” Kajimoto grabbed Kirihara by the scruff of the neck and yanked him, flailing, back off Kamio. Sengoku tackled Kamio back down to the ground at the same time and sat on him so he couldn’t resume the fight.
“Let me go,” Kirihara snarled and tried to pull free of Kajimoto’s grasp.
“Let me at him!” Kamio squirmed under Sengoku.
It seemed to be the only thing they could agree on.
“Okay,” Kajimoto said wearily. “We’ve all given you plenty of opportunities to behave like adults, and you’ve failed epically every time. Honestly, it’s not that long a camp. Can’t you two be civil for just a couple of weeks?”
Kirihara sulked, and Kamio scowled.
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Sengoku decided.
“Why am I not surprised?” Kajimoto agreed. “A little help?”
Oishi, Kikumaru, Shishido, Ohtori, Momoshiro, and Echizen had all been sitting back, enjoying the spectacle. Now, though, Kikumaru, Shishido, and Echizen immediately pretended that they were too busy doing whatever they were doing to help out. Oishi, Ohtori, and Momoshiro all leapt at that chance, though, so it all worked out.
“I’ll go get the duct tape,” Momoshiro announced and ran from the room.
“I’ll take this side,” Oishi decided, “and you do that one.”
Ohtori nodded in agreement.
Now that the danger of actual work was over, Kikumaru, Shishido, and Echizen watched in fascination.
Momoshiro returned a minute later with two industrial-sized rolls of duct tape. He handed one to Oishi and one to Ohtori.
Kirihara’s eyes widened. “Hey, what are you guys doing?”
Kamio tried to struggle, but Sengoku refused to let him up.
“Until you two learn,” Kajimoto said darkly, “this is how we’re going to do things.”
Kirihara gulped. Kamio’s eyes widened.
“Boys?” Kajimoto said. “Get to it.”
Oishi and Ohtori both grabbed the sticky end of their duct tape, stuck it to the floor at opposite corners of the room, and began to unroll it toward each other, until they’d created a gray line of duct tape that bisected the room along the diagonal. Kajimoto held Kirihara on one side of the line, and Sengoku sat on Kamio on the other side.
“Just like our doubles’ technique,” Momoshiro grinned at Echizen.
Echizen snorted and rolled his eyes.
“There,” Kajimoto concluded. “You two have to stay on your own sides. Will that be a problem?” He fixed Kirihara with an icy glare.
Kirihara wisely shook his head.
“Whatever,” Kamio complained. “Just get off me!”
Kajimoto and Sengoku exchanged a look and a nod, and they let their respective roommates go. Kirihara and Kamio straightened themselves out, mostly from the fight earlier, and then Kamio huffed off in one corner with his headphones and Kirihara stuck up his nose in the far corner and returned to his tennis magazine.
“We might just be geniuses,” Sengoku considered the newly-pacified common room.
Kajimoto allowed a hesitant nod.
Of course, it only lasted about five minutes.
“I see you poking the line with your toe!” Kamio accused. “Stay on your own side!”
“The line is no one’s side,” Kirihara smirked. “I can touch it however much I want.”
“Well, then I guess there’s no rule against me doing this!” Kamio hurled a couch cushion at Kirihara’s head.
Kirihara ducked. “Hey!” he protested.
“What?” Kamio taunted him. “I never left my side!”
Kajimoto and Sengoku exchanged a weary sigh.
“I guess there really is only room for one of them here,” Sengoku concluded.
“So it would seem,” Kajimoto agreed and was hit right in the face by Kirihara’s flying shoe.
***
Do the Roommate Shuffle: Twinfighting
“Well, I happen to like my haircut,” Atsushi insisted.
“It makes you look boring,” Ryo retorted.
“Wow,” Oshitari watched and snagged a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Atobe’s lap.
At that, Atsushi snapped. “At least I don’t look like a girl.”
Ryo’s eyes widened, and his cheeks flushed. “I-I do not,” he stammered.
“Amazing…” Atobe breathed, popping a kernel into his mouth.
“Yes, you do,” Atsushi couldn’t back down on his insult once he’d started it. It was one of the fundamental laws of brotherhood.
“Well, at least I didn’t cry at the end of Death Note.”
“Brother fights are always the best entertainment,” Oshitari commented. He snagged more popcorn.
“Oh yeah, well, who wet the bed at summer camp when we were nine?”
“So, you were the one who needed a month of lessons before you could get an overhand serve over the net.”
“They always know the best dirt on each other,” Atobe agreed.
“At least I don’t kiss my Federer poster to sleep every night. Ryo’s in love.”
Ryo sputtered. “That’s just for luck.”
“Yes,” Kabaji seconded.
“Sure, it is. Not only do you look like a girl, but you act like one, too.”
“That’s it!” Ryo exclaimed. “I can’t take it anymore. You’ve been acting like a dick ever since you switched schools.”
“Come on, catfight,” Oshitari chanted under his breath. “Catfight, catfight…”
“I’ve been a dick?” Atsushi demanded. “You’ve always acted like you owned me. Well, guess what? I’m my own person, and I won’t let you order me around anymore.”
“If you hate me that much, then why don’t you run away and move out again?” Ryo retorted snottily. “After all, that seems to be the only thing you can do right.”
“Lean in just a little bit closer,” Atobe pleaded.
“Fine, then, I will,” Atsushi huffed.
“Yeah, right,” Ryo huffed back. “I dare you.”
“The great thing about twins making out is that it’s like watching someone have sex with themselves,” Oshitari sighed wistfully.
“Fine, then. You should give me three good reasons to stay, or I’m leaving,” Atsushi threatened.
“Like I’d want you around anyway,” Ryo retorted.
Atobe let out a longing little moan. “I’d have sex with me in a heartbeat.”
“Yes,” Kabaji and Oshitari agreed together, rather ambiguously. They both reached into Atobe’s lap at the exact same time…for more popcorn, of course.
“I’m gone, then,” Atsushi announced, turning his back on Ryo.
“Fine.” Ryo’s glared turned toward the fascinated Hyotei audience. “You, there.” He pointed to Oshitari. “You still need a roommate, right?”
“Uh?” Oshitari’s head was still filled with certain visions of people making out with themselves, with him in the middle.
“Good,” Ryo concluded with a satisfied smirk. “Oshitari’s my roommate now. We’re going to have the best time.”
“Oh, yeah?” Atsushi concluded. “Well, then, I’ll move in with Wakato. I hear he does a perfect imitation of you…being a dick!”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“It’s over, then.”
“Done.”
“I’m never talking to you again.”
“Great, because I don’t want to ever talk to you again, either.”
“Let’s go to bed, Oshitari,” Ryo turned on his heel to leave.
“Unfortunately, he doesn’t mean it in the good way,” Oshitari sighed and got up off the couch. At least he was spared from the weird stain this evening.
“Lucky bastard,” Atobe teased.
Oshitari glared at him and headed off after Ryo back to his dorm room.
“So, that’s your half of the room,” Ryo informed him once he had shut the door behind them. “Try to keep it clean.”
“All right…” Oshitari said and lay back on the bed. He let out a long, relaxing sigh.
“And be quiet,” Ryo ordered.
Oshitari blinked. “Sure.” He shifted over onto his side.
“I said quiet,” Ryo complained.
Across the hall, things were proceeding roughly the same way with Wakato and Atsushi.
“I can hear you turning the pages!” Atsushi complained. “And something on your side of the room smells.”
Wakato tried not to bang his head on the wall.
Back in Ryo and Oshitari’s room, Oshitari was finally getting fed up. “What can I do that won’t disturb you?” he finally demanded.
Ryo considered him for a second. “Don’t you think Atsushi’s just being a whiny baby, ditching me like this?”
Oshitari sighed wearily.
“He’s always like this,” Ryo insisted. “He’s so touchy about everything. Like, whenever I suggest we do anything, of course I’m ordering him around. But when he does it? If I say anything, that just means that I don’t respect him, and blah-blah-blah, and…”
Oshitari tuned right out.
Across the hall, Wakato was doing the same.
“He thinks he’s the boss of me, just because he’s, like, two minutes older,” Atsushi whined. “Like that makes any difference whatsoever. Hell, for all we know, the nurses accidentally switched us up in the delivery room, and I’m the older one. It’s not like anyone could tell.”
Wakato began to go into a boredom-induced coma.
“And it’s always my fault,” Ryo concluded with a huff back in the other room.
“How, uh, terrible for you,” Oshitari tried to sound sympathetic.
“Terrible?” Ryo blinked at him. “Are you calling Atsushi terrible?”
“Uh…” Oshitari was very confused.
“How dare you smack-talk about my brother!” Ryo glared.
“I didn’t say anything!” Oshitari insisted. “I was just agreeing with you.”
“Humph,” Ryo sulked and looked at Oshitari suspiciously.
Across the hall, Wakato unwisely said, “He sounds like a control freak.”
“Hey!” Atsushi complained. “That’s my brother you’re talking about!”
“Uh… Huh?” Wakato blinked.
“That’s it!” Ryo announced.
“I can’t stand this anymore!” Atsushi leapt to his feet.
In perfect unison, they flung open the doors to their respective rooms.
“I’ve got three reasons for you!” Ryo announced. “One: Oshitari.” He pointed back to where Oshitari sat, bewildered, on the bed.
“Well, I’ve got one, too,” Atsushi agreed. “Two: Wakato.” Wakato looked equally perplexed.
“And three,” Ryo concluded.
“The only other option,” Atsushi began.
“Is…” they said in unison.
Amane was watching all of this from his doorway at the end of the hall. “Yeah, you don’t want to room with me,” he agreed. “You two are a twinning couple.” He snorted at his own joke.
Ryo and Atsushi shuddered in unison.
“Let’s be roommates again, okay?” Ryo offered.
“Okay,” Atsushi agreed. “I know! I can braid my ribbon into your hair.”
“Okay,” Ryo agreed.
Somehow, Oshitari managed to get shoved out of their room, and the door slammed behind them.
“Twins,” Wakato blinked in disbelief.
“So weird,” Oshitari agreed.
“That’s what happens when two people get so intertwinned,” Amane snorted.
Wakato gave him a disgusted look and slammed his door shut again.
Oshitari sighed wearily. Down the hall lay the lumpy, stained couch and more mocking commentary from Atobe. There was really only one thing to do: be brave. “Look,” Oshitari said wearily to Amane, “I’ve tried rooming with everyone else, and I don’t want to sleep on the couch again. Can I be your roommate?”
Amane considered this for a second. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Oshitari winced and waited for it. Waited… Waited…
“I should warn you, though,” Amane scratched his head, “I snore.”
Oshitari kept waiting. Finally, he opened his eyes at Amane. “No pun?” he finally demanded in disbelief.
Amane snorted and rolled his eyes. “You don’t actually believe I talk entirely in puns all the time, do you?”
“Well…” Oshitari couldn’t remember Amane saying anything else at camp so far.
“That’s just a safety measure,” Amane assured him.
“A safety measure?” Oshitari asked skeptically and stepped into Amane’s room.
“Otherwise,” Amane agreed, “I might end up having to room with one of those nuts.”
“My thoughts in a nutshell,” Oshitari snorted.
Amane snorted back.
Back in their room, Ryo and Atsushi just scowled at the abnormal amount of snorting occurring down the hall.
***
The High Life: A Brief Mystery
Tezuka stood outside the door to the coaches’ office and coughed pointedly. Inside, shuffling and swearing could be heard. Tezuka sighed and glanced at his watch. The time was 7:56 AM. They didn’t have much longer. He reached out and rapped his knuckles on the door.
“Breakfast is almost over. We need to start practice.”
Louder swearing sounded, and then Hanamura accused, “This is all your fault!”
“I don’t know where the hell I put them,” Sakaki sighed wearily.
Tezuka knocked again for good measure, in case they somehow hadn’t heard him.
“Oh, come on in, already,” Hanamura snapped.
Tezuka braced himself and stepped inside. “It’s almost eight,” he informed them and glanced around the office. All the drawers in the file cabinets were wide open, and papers were strewn everywhere. Tezuka’s eyes widened. “Did-?”
Hanamura finished for him. “Sakaki lose all the player evaluation files? Why, yes, he did.”
Sakaki fixed her with an unamused stare. “I left them on the desk yesterday afternoon, where we always put them.”
“I thought you just said you didn’t know where you put them?” Hanamura smiled at him viciously.
Sakaki scowled. “Someone must have taken them.”
Hanamura’s eyes widened. “Well, it certainly wasn’t me.”
“There are three keys to this office,” Sakaki said succinctly. “Yours, mine, and Ryuzaki’s, which Tezuka is currently in possession of. I know that I didn’t take them. The suspects are you and Tezuka. Do the math.”
Tezuka did the math and very pointedly did not meet either of their eyes.
Hanamura smiled sweetly. “Oh, I did,” she promised, “and the obvious solution is that you’re lying. Either you lost them, or you took them yourself.”
Tezuka took a cautious step back out the door.
“Why would I take them?” Sakaki demanded.
“To give Hyotei’s players an advantage,” Hanamura concluded smugly.
Sakaki let out a bored sigh. “That doesn’t make any sense. If I wanted to do that, I could just tell them the contents of the files.”
Tezuka took another step.
“Well, then, why would I steal them?” Hanamura demanded, hands on hips.
“Obviously to feed them into your ridiculous coordination models,” Sakaki said smugly.
Tezuka bolted for it while neither of them was looking. In the distance, he could hear Hanamura’s next burst of outrage. He headed for the courts because, while the list of suspects was nearly endless, all the people who could do anything about it would be diligently practicing already.
Sure enough, Oishi was on A-Court when he arrived, demonstrating some kind of formation for Kikumaru in his notebook.
Tezuka coughed pointedly.
Oishi looked up and handed Kikumaru his notes to study before he jogged over to Tezuka. “Are we ready to begin practice?” he asked eagerly.
Tezuka’s eyes darted around. The coast seemed to be clear. He was grateful, not for the first time, that Inui wasn’t in his group. “Someone took the player files from the coaches’ office last night. One of the only three keys was sitting on my desk.”
Oishi’s eyes widened as he put two and two together. “I-I didn’t see anything, but… Tezuka, that could have been anyone.”
“Was it anyone in this group?” Tezuka demanded.
Oishi bit his lip. “I can’t really see it… Kirihara, maybe? Although I don’t want to accuse him. And, really, I have no reason to accuse him. Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone-”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Tezuka ordered.
Oishi nodded.
Tezuka grimaced and headed over to F-Court. F-Court had all the ball machines set up today. There were only two in use, however. Shinjoh was on the far side of the court, seemingly oblivious to all else around him. Atobe had grabbed the nearest machine and seemed to be doing some mildly concerning precision training that involved the far left corner. For a moment, Tezuka was too absorbed in trying to decipher Atobe’s attack to continue with his mission. However, even tennis had to wait for some things.
Tezuka headed pointedly for Atobe’s ball machine. He knew Atobe saw him, because Atobe never missed these things, but Atobe didn’t break his stride once until Tezuka had flicked the machine off.
Atobe snorted with amusement at him and walked over to his water bottle. Tezuka followed after him.
“Miss me?” Atobe teased after he’d taken a deep, satisfying drink.
Tezuka snorted. “I need your, er,” his eyes flicked off to the side, “assistance.”
“Tezuka, you know anything I can give is yours,” Atobe smirked.
Tezuka sighed. It was too early for Atobe. “Someone took the files from the coaches’ office last night. They must’ve gotten the key from my room.”
“Well,” Atobe drawled thoughtfully, “I certainly wasn’t in your room last night because of any key.”
Tezuka fought against the twitching of his lips. Atobe seemed to notice it anyway.
“What’s really fascinating here is that you’ve come to me about this,” Atobe considered.
“I need you to make sure it wasn’t anyone in your group,” Tezuka said blandly.
“Ah, of course.” A devilish glint lit up Atobe’s eyes. “But still, who would really want to take such things? Data players, I would think. All of whom are in Sanada’s group. Yet you came to me first. Like I said: fascinating.”
Damn Atobe and his perceptiveness.
“So I’m back to my original question,” Atobe concluded. “Miss me?”
Tezuka snorted and walked off. He couldn’t completely conceal the red in his cheeks, however.
Sanada’s group, if Tezuka recalled correctly (and he did), was in the weight room first thing that morning. Tezuka knew he was on to something when he arrived at the weight room and not even Sanada was training yet. Clearly, something was amiss with the universe.
There weren’t many places a group of nine teenage boys could disappear to, however, and Tezuka soon tracked them back to the cafeteria, which they’d never left.
“Where did you get that?” Sanada was glaring, with fists clenched. So far, nothing was unusual.
“Listen to this,” Mizuki smirked and held out a manila folder in front of him to read. Aha! “‘Sanada Genichiro’s obsessive discipline clearly derives from his displaced homoerotic desires-’”
“What?” Sanada bellowed and lunged for him. Pages went flying in the ensuing shuffle.
Tezuka paid little attention to where Sanada now had a screaming Mizuki in a headlock. He caught both Inui and Yanagi’s hands instants before they could descend upon the fallen pages. “Gentlemen,” he said calmly, “I believe those belong back in the coaches’ office?”
Inui’s face fell.
Yanagi sniffled a little.
Tezuka fixed them with his sternest stare.
“Of course,” Inui finally agreed slowly. “Our own notes are far superior anyway, I’m sure.”
“Agreed,” Yanagi said, sounding equally disheartened. “After all, they’re only detailed reports written by experienced, professional coaches.”
They both whimpered in unison at the loss.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Fuji bent down beside Tezuka and helped him pick up the pages.
Saeki soon joined them.
Kawamura, Yuta, and Kaidoh all stood around watching Mizuki begging for mercy, debating whether they should intervene to save his life.
“I think Mizuki was trying to impress Inui and Yanagi,” Saeki surmised.
“So he took the key from my suite last night,” Tezuka agreed.
Fuji smiled. “He also got all Sakaki’s data on me. He quoted it to me this morning.” He handed the papers he’d collected to Tezuka.
“Oh?” Saeki asked curiously and handed over his own papers. “What did it say?”
“Apparently,” Fuji tapped his chin in thought, “that I have a hot ass.”
Tezuka made it a point not to stick around after that. He snuck back into the building where the coaches were housed. In the meantime, Hanamura and Sakaki’s argument had migrated to the break room, and they were now tearing that up in the hopes that Sakaki had left the files there.
Tezuka slipped surreptitiously past the open door and returned to the office. He let himself in with his key and set the stack of papers down on the end table, just behind a potted fern, where conceivably Sakaki and Hanamura might have missed them earlier.
Tezuka was about to leave, but froze with his hand still hovering over the files. Glancing quickly behind him, he determined there was no danger. He flipped to Fuji’s page. It most certainly did not say that he had a hot ass. With that confirmed, he flipped to Sanada’s. There at the top, in Coach Sakaki’s crisp, elegant writing were the words, “Sanada Genichiro’s obsessive discipline clearly derives from his displaced homoerotic desires, combined with his severe issues of inadequacy.”
Tezuka tried not to smirk and flipped the file back shut. Then he called down the hall, “I think I’ve found them!”
Sakaki and Hanamura came running, glaring at each other all the while.
“Ah, see!” Sakaki insisted. “I told you I left them here. You must have been blind to miss them.”
“Me?” Hanamura growled. “You were supposed to leave them on the desk.”
Tezuka flipped open a tennis magazine and pretended to read it, while humming to himself under his breath. Needless to say, it never occurred to either of them to blame him.
***
The Five Trials of Sanada Genichiro: Going for Broke
Sanada glared down at his hand: ace, king, queen, jack, ten. Then he looked up at Fuji. Fuji was smiling beatifically. Sanada grumbled under his breath, pulled his hat down further over his eyes, and considered his options.
It was true that Fuji was evil incarnate and had unholy luck. Sanada had seen Yanagi’s calculations, and it was the only reasonable explanation for half the occurrences that surrounded Fuji. Clearly, diabolical forces were at work in Fuji’s favor.
However, Sanada felt quite capable of himself and his hand. He could win this. Carefully, he made his decision and ground out, “Got any aces?”
Fuji smiled wider. “Go fish.”
Sanada swore under his breath and drew from the deck. He got a worthless four. He glared at it, but no matter how much glaring he did, it didn’t turn into anything useful.
“Got any kings?” Fuji asked in response.
Sanada cursed some more and handed it over.
Fuji put down the pair and claimed two more of the coins in the pot. “Your turn.”
At that point, Saeki wandered in. “Are you two still playing?” he asked in disbelief. He gave Sanada a clap on the shoulder. “Just give it up, man. You’re never going to beat him.”
“I won’t if I slack off like you suggest,” Sanada snarled at him.
Saeki help up his hands in apology and sat back to watch. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think this sort of betting is supposed to be done with poker instead.”
Fuji nodded in agreement. “We were playing that, but Sanada insisted that the fact that I had more experience was giving me an unfair advantage. So we switched to this.”
Saeki snickered behind his hand.
“Got any jacks?” Sanada finally asked.
“Go fish.”
Sanada grumbled and picked up an eight.
“Got any tens?” Fuji smiled.
Sanada fixed him with a suspicious look and checked surreptitiously over his shoulder. There were no reflective surfaces behind him, and he knew the deck wasn’t rigged because it was Mizuki’s deck and Sanada had shuffled it. Of course, Sanada wouldn’t put it entirely past Mizuki to have a rigged deck, but he would never conspire with Fuji, of all people, about it. If anything, he’d be conspiring against Fuji.
The only explanation was Fuji’s unholy luck. Sanada forked over his ten.
Fuji put down the pair and took two more coins from the pot. Fuji only had two cards left, before he won it all.
“Eights?” Sanada guessed.
“Go fish!” Fuji beamed.
Sanada barely restrained the urge to give him twenty laps for smugness. However, Sanada would secretly have known that those laps were really for beating him, and that was just unacceptable.
Sanada got a five.
“Any fives?” Fuji asked brightly.
Sanada swore and practically threw the freshly-drawn card at him.
“With my luck today, I should play Sengoku,” Fuji teased. He only had one card left now.
Sanada glared at it, at Fuji, and at his own meager stack of pairs. Even if he guessed the card right, he would still lose the game. However, at this point, it wasn’t about winning anymore. It was about just guessing one damn card correctly. It shouldn’t have been physically possible for all of Sanada’s pairs to be lucky draws, but they were. Just once he wanted to see Fuji fork a card over instead of smiling and pedantically telling him to “go fish.”
“I want a queen,” he finally stated.
Saeki snorted into his hand.
Fuji’s lips quirked. “Go fish.”
Sanada got a six. He was pretty sure it was statistically impossible to have such a random assortment of cards in his hand.
Fuji tapped his final card with the tip of his index fingers. “Got any twos?”
“No!” Sanada practically laughed aloud. “Go fish.”
Fuji’s smile widened, and he reached out and picked up the top card from the deck. “Oh, lucky me, it’s my two,” he said happily, showing the final pair to Sanada.
Sanada tried not to wail too much in despair when the entire pot went into Fuji’s very large collection.
“So, should we call it a night?” Fuji suggested, eying Sanada’s two-hundred remaining yen.
Sanada gritted his teeth and bared it. “One more game.”
Fuji blinked at him. “You don’t have enough to play…”
“Then you put in the same, and winner takes all,” Sanada insisted.
Saeki groaned. “Just give up while you still have the two-hundred yen,” he advised.
“Slacker!” Sanada accused him.
Saeki rolled his eyes and went off to see what the sane people were doing. Watching Sanada lose was funny at first, but after a while it was just painful.
“If that’s what you want…” Fuji finally said carefully. He put in two-hundred yen as well.
He moved to reshuffle, but Sanada took the cards from him. “I’m shuffling.”
“Whatever you like,” Fuji agreed.
Sanada dealt and swore when he saw that he didn’t have any pairs in his opening hand.
Fuji smiled and put down a pair of threes…and a pair of nines…and a pair of jacks. “I’d forgotten just how much fun this game is,” he told Sanada over his one remaining card.
Sanada gritted his teeth and stared at that one card. He really didn’t care. He just had to beat Fuji, just once. “Aces?” he guessed hopefully.
Fuji paused, stared down at his card, and then looked quickly up at Sanada. His eyes blinked open in surprise, and the smile dropped from his face.
Sanada held his breath.
And then Fuji smiled again. “Just kidding! Go fish.” The instant Sanada had drawn, he asked, “Any fours?”
Of course, Sanada did.
“I demand a rematch,” he insisted, even though Fuji now held all the coins and he was left with nothing.
Fuji considered him for a moment, like a cat might consider its struggling prey, and then he tossed Sanada a pity coin. “Just because you’re so pretty,” Fuji teased.
Sanada blushed but dealt again anyway…
It wasn’t until three in the morning that Yanagi finally awoke to Sanada slinking back into their room.
“Genichiro?” he asked blearily.
“Go back to bed,” Sanada ordered.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I know,” Sanada grumbled. “Just go to sleep.”
“And why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
“Shut up!” Sanada growled.
Yanagi wisely did and went back to sleep with a smirk.
As always, comments are much appreciated.
Chapter Five