Happiness is a Dynamical System for the Community!
Title: Happiness is a Dynamical System (often with missing parameters)
Author: hamigua
Recipient: The Community
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Set three years post-Canon, the Seigaku tennis team remains intact throughout high school. With a change in seasons, leaves fall but friendships bloom.
Notes: A huge thank-you to my beta! This is a work of fiction borrowing the characters and world from the series Prince of Tennis by Konomi Takeshi. No ownership is claimed and no profit is being made.
「Kyouju」
22:33
「…」
22:57
「Probability of you being in the shower at this hour… 2.5%」
23:29
「Please reply when you return」
23:31
「I will try again later」
23:32
It has been four days.
"Sadaharu! There's a phone call for you!"
"I'll be right down!" Inui answers his mother, without moving from his desk. His pen scratches quickly but without pause until he reaches the end of the line and completes his thought. The small circle lands thick across the drop of ink he had spilt earlier and covers it nicely. Good. The chance of falling short was only in the single digits.
Inui stands to push the chair out and back in, four legs scraping splinters from the ground, subtle grooves on the wood floor, no more than three centimetres wide and seven years old. Leaving the page open to dry, he heads over to the living room to relieve his mother of the phone. 4.29 seconds. It still falls within the believable range of 'coming as soon as possible.'
He takes the phone with a nod to his mother, and states his name and presence into the receiver.
"Ah! Inui-nya~!"
"...Kikumaru," Inui acknowledges, more polite than keen. Wrong number? No. The excessive permutations shoot the probability down near zero. He does not even entertain the thought of an accidental speed dial: that button is reserved for Oishi. 100%.
"So!" Kikumaru interrupts his thoughts, demanding attention away from numbers. "...How are you?"
Inui answers, "Good," but does not pursue conversation. He is patient.
"Um... There's this maths test tomorrow and... iwaswonderingificouldborrowyournotes?"
There is it.
He breathes softly into the receiver, but agrees. "I'll scan the pages from this week and e-mail them to you. I can have it to you within the next half hour."
His scanner sits beside his desk, already warmed up from frequent usage whenever he finishes a page from his notebook to be archived in bytes. His mother's opinion was that one day, the ever expanding, skyscraper-ridden city of notebooks would topple over and crush her only son. After seven years in the making, the city overcrowded its mayor's residence and Inui had to admit defeat. City plans were redrawn and relocated to the ill-accessible underground basement. A second hard drive took its place.
"Awesome! Thanks! You're the best- nya~!" Kikumaru tells him, for the third time this month. "Anything I can do for you, just tell me and I'll do it!" he promises, again. He does not see Inui's forming smile from the other side of the line.
Inui banks the promise to collect on a later date. "Then, I will get you those notes and leave you to your studies," he says, knowing that there will be no study until Kikumaru has notes in hand. They are not in the same class so he cannot verify first hand, but Inui suspects he knows what Kikumaru gives precedence over notes to during class.
Goodbyes are exchanged and Inui walks back to his room, the computer screen dim but still lit. He touches the mouse before the machine can fall entirely asleep, and sets it aside for a clear table on which to flip through his notebook. Numbers and graphs are easily distinguishable from the wall of written characters on all other subjects' pages. His notes are, of course, supplemented with his own knowledge and outside research, but no doubt the most comprehensive out of the rest of the team's. Kikumaru must be desperate.
The correct page is barely selected and placed on the plastic to scan when the phone again sounds from the living room. "I'll get it," Inui calls to his mother, modulating the level of his voice to reach her wherever she is in the house. He selects the grey 'SCAN' and allows the machine to do its job while he retrieves the phone.
"I said half an hour, Kikumaru-"
"I'll make sure to pass on the message, Hakase."
Inui nearly drops the phone. "Renji," he says, surprise leeching into his voice despite his best attempts to suppress it. "You have my personal number," he continues, accusation at a level only Yanagi can detect.
"I apologize, Sadaharu." Inui would have forgiven him even if he hadn't. "My cellphone has met an unfortunate end, so I have just recently acquired a new model and number, and wasn't able to access unread messages prior. E-mail encryption aside, you ignore unlisted calls to your mobile," Yanagi recalls, accusation on his side now, "so there was no choice but to hope your mother picks up at home. The probability was 78%," he verifies the percentage in Inui's mind, "given the time and day of week."
Inui listens intently to the Yanagi's meticulous description of how he lost the phone. He paints his picture without leaving out any details, from the angle of the sun with respect to the horizon, to the exact numbered rib Kirihara had slammed into and knocked the two off balance, off the trail, and into Murphy's river. The phone cannot be saved. Inui sympathizes appropriately: it is a constant struggle.
"The past cannot be helped," Inui pacifies his friend. There is always data to be learned from events such as these, so neither ever believes there to be such a thing as wasted time. But there were times when even Kirihara transcends data. "The unanswered text did leave me concerned; you usually keep Sunday afternoons free. Kirihara did not factor into my calculations... You two were-"
"Mental training." Yanagi's response comes a fraction of a second faster than Inui anticipates. Inui does not question whose. "It is good to be with that type of person sometimes, Sadaharu. You will learn a lot. Try it when you have time."
'Time' triggers the memory of a promise. Inui makes another, "I will keep that in mind. But Kikumaru is waiting on me at the moment and I shouldn't keep him any longer."
He receives Yanagi's number and goodbyes, and makes it back to his room before the screen fully dims a second time. The compressed pixels of the preview image look harsh and jagged as most things are when ill-represented. Inui saves it to his temporary documents folder and leans down to flip the notebook to the other side. He straightens up, and the machine whirs quietly as he minimizes the window to pull up his e-mail.
Five minutes and several keystrokes later, Inui looks over his e-mail to make sure the attachment is secure and message free from errors. He double spaces the postscript to separate it more clearly from the body of the paragraph, looks it over one more time, and sends.
P.S. I will take you up on your promise tomorrow. Will you go out with me?
Perhaps it can be better worded, but any later, and he will have to wait another hour and a half for the natural sleep cycle to reset. It will have to do.
Oishi gives him this look all through practice the next day.
He does not speak up, and Inui does not indulge him in asking. It is hard enough as it is trying to win doubles, let alone against the Golden Pair, that he cannot afford to divert any more attention from Kikumaru's classic netplay.
He and Kaidoh break serve early on, but eventually lose the match 4-6. Unlike in singles, it is infinitely harder when you can't control the second person on your side of the court. It is still a close game though, and Inui is all the happier to update his data on his teammates' skills. Oishi, whose frown- worried, as it were- belies his victory, says something to Kikumaru, but the exchange is lost to Tezuka's call for the players to finish any games in progress so the nets can be rolled up and stored at the end of practice. Inui takes the opportunity to watch the remaining games, but most are already on the verge of finishing, and there is no choice but to get out of the sun and pack his things.
Kikumaru is in the locker room when Inui emerges from the showers, bouncing a tennis ball on the inside of his shoes like in kebane, if only the ball didn't bounce and roll like it did. He catches the ball in mid-air and shoves it into his pocket, leaving a grey smear of court-dust against his white shorts. Though autumn, it is still fairly warm, and he has decided against changing back into his gakuran, unlike Inui has.
Thanks! And OK!
was Kikumaru's response to the e-mail the night before. "And OK" is Kikumaru's conviction now, neither doubting nor questioning Inui's request despite all of Oishi's precautions. "If you don't have plans, let's go to the park!" Kikumaru suggests, unaccustomed to asking. There isn't more "out" than outside, so Inui agrees, remembering the park closest to the school.
There stand ginkgo trees, symbolic of Tokyo, but as Inui waits beneath while Kikumaru tries to grab ahold of one of the branches, he can see the nuts that had prematurely ripened and lie scattered on the ground. It has been uncharacteristically warm for the season. He takes care not to step on any, disappointed that he missed the bulk of the harvest and the opportunity to enrich his working recipes.
The park itself holds less interest to him. He has not been in a park since he was much younger. The slides had borne no interest to him aside from the lesson of friction when wearing short pants, and the jungle gym was illogical and refused to conform to his predictions of momentum and timing. He is too tall now, to return and conquer them with any measure of satisfaction.
"Do you want to play?" Kikumaru asks, catching his eyes and following them to the towers and bridges. And the small group of five-year-olds populating the wood chips. Maybe not. "How about Hide-and-go-seek?"
He grins and Inui grins. There is a certain level of genius required to play this game.
There is no way he will lose.
Kikumaru goes to hide upon Inui's instruction, and Inui makes sure his cell phone is secure and away from any source of water before he slides both tennis bags under the park bench, sits down, and closes his eyes. The numbers come readily, inverted white on black. He counts down from 300 instead of up, and imagines a second monitor upon which he brings up statistics and probability.
Hide-and-go-seek is very much a numbers game. He may not know the park as well as Kikumaru does, but he does know Kikumaru. He knows the most likely places his friend would hide taking into account the terrain of this kingdom of wood chips, and where Kikumaru believes that Inui believes that Kikumaru believes no one will ever find him.
Two, one, zero.
Blurred vision fades quickly as Inui's eyes readjust to unimpeded sight, his body already moving towards the playground. Mothers give strange looks to the boy who would easily break the play set's upper height restriction had there been one. Undoubtedly the same look they gave Kikumaru, huddled up in the connecting tunnel, with a face of genuine surprise to come face to face with Inui so soon after "zero."
And, undoubtedly, Kikumaru responds with the same grin.
"Mo~ve, Onii-san!" comes a chorus of voices from behind him, and Inui makes the mistake of backing out of the way, Kikumaru lost in grade schoolers flooding in like air evacuating the vacuum of a tennis ball canister. Like air, it is a wonder none of them collide, but Inui is well familiar with how Kikumaru spirits away, untracked at the net. He will have to amend his playtime data with bodily distractions later.
Why suggest Hide-and-go-seek if he really meant Tag? Inui wonders to himself as small children watch wide mouthed in wonder at, to them, a giant forgoing the pole, leaping off the platform, and giving chase. Tag is also a component in the game, he amends again. It is a minor component, the more prominent being the search at which he would not lose. It is also the component Kikumaru banks on, dodging nimbly between players in the middle of a soccer game and leaving Inui to mouth apologies on their behalf, taking the straight path through with trust that the children will get out of the way.
The ball doesn't, and in the two step detour, Inui loses sight of Kikumaru again.
Away from the field, Inui stops and makes a full scan. On the 84th degree, he spots Kikumaru, perched on the high branches of the ginkgo tree he had marked when they first entered the park. Crossed ankles dangle above Inui's head as he stands below, out of reach even if he were to take a running jump.
"Remember third year in middle school?" Kikumaru asks smugly. He doesn't need to explain. Echizen and his first match. Data against skill. Inui opens his mouth, but before any words can come out, Kikumaru injects: "You look like you're having fun now too."
Really now? The smile Inui gives in return is unconvincing. But... It had been an entertaining afternoon, and Yanagi wasn't wrong that Kikumaru could expand his data so much further. So he relents, "It was fun. Why don't you come down now?"
"Nope~" Kikumaru refuses, the tip of his tongue poking out from between a grin. "Game's not over yet."
Inui sighs. "I will not be able to reach you. And with the time it takes to scale the tree to your height," he does the calculations mentally but keeps the numbers to himself, "you would have already gotten off and be on your way to the next post. This game, I concede to you."
"You're giving up?" Rather than disappointed, Kikumaru sounds hopeful. Perhaps Inui has quit prematurely. No, the numbers predict an infinite loop, and even with added parameters as the setting sun and chance of nightly rain. He does not want his phone to get wet.
Inui steps aside, showing his full intention of surrender. "The term is 'wild-goose chase.' Even data has its limits against a futile cycle."
Kikumaru appears satisfied. "...C'mere," he motions Inui closer to the trunk of the tree.
Inui obliges curiously, also warily.
Not warily enough.
"CATCH!!!"
All 58.2 kilograms of Kikumaru Eiji comes hurtling down at Inui, whose arms outstretch reflexively with thanks only to countless, toppling, notebook stacks. Kikumaru bounds to his feet and brushes himself off like a cat who pridefully climbs up a tree and cannot get back down without a human springboard.
So very much like a cat.
"You stink," Inui informs Kikumaru, reaching up to knock off the raw ginkgo topping his hair like dragées.
"Rude~" Kikumaru responds, sticking his tongue out at Inui goodnaturedly. "No more than you. But yeah, Sis is gonna squawk if I come home like this. Gotta beat her home and get the shower first..."
He follows Inui back to the park bench to retrieve their things. Inui checks that his phone is still intact, then shoulders his bag. Kikumaru lifts the straps of his own up with his shoe and hangs it over crossed arms, away from his nut-infused clothes. "I felt real good about that test today, so let's play tomorrow too!"
"...Alright," Inui agrees. Tomorrow is the weekend, so time is more easily made up. There are pages of reflection to type up when he returns home, so he lets Kikumaru choose their activity.
"A club!" is the suggestion, and, "The one with music and dancing!" is the clarification when prompted. All music is formula, and Inui enjoys discerning each instrumental component with no preference to genre. Dancing... is good cardio. He'll figure it out.
"Then, tomorrow at noon, at the bus stop," Inui sets the date. "I had fun today."
A thousand suns cannot parallel Kikumaru's smile. "Good!!!"
He has always been like that.
The music is loud, and depending on the guitar solo or which musician is screaming into the microphone, varies from ten to fifteen decibels over what is comfortable for the human ear. He can hardly hear himself think. The drinks are overpriced at 500 yen, for what is half water and half modified sucrose, and the ventilation system is insufficient for the amount of people crowding the dance floor. Maybe this is why Kikumaru is always so loud and bouncy, Inui notes to take down later.
"Do you know how to dance?" Kikumaru shouts to be overheard in the rare few seconds the music dies down to change bands.
Rather than have his voice overtaken, Inui gives a shrugging nod in conveyance: "Of course. If I know the theory, nothing is impossible."
Kikumaru pulls him towards an open space where they won't get jostled around, and falls naturally into the rhythm of the music. In the locker room showers, Oishi often tells him it is dangerous to bounce on the wet floors, but it doesn't stop him from belting out pop into the shower head. It is an instinctual dancing, dictated by whim instead of rule. While Inui observes and tries to match him, there is no algorithm for where to place your feet, how to move your body, or what to do with your hands.
The deep bass permeates his body, and Inui feels a bit sick.
Then the taiko starts.
The scattered beat of the drums permeate his body and his heart races to keep pace with all at once. Then it merges. It is a deafening beat, steady as the one in his chest and pounding like the one in his head, and if he closes his eyes, everything washes away from the world except the beat, beat, beat of the drums. It becomes his own heart, pushing blood through his body. The matching cadence binds everyone in the room, a collective heartbeat thrumming with multiplied power and purpose.
And silence.
His heart reclaims his chest, merely a patter just by itself. He feels empty.
"Oh~ That was pretty good!" Kikumaru touches Inui's arm and he freezes, unaware that he had been moving.
"You as well." Inui adjusts his glasses before it can creep further down the bridge of his nose. The recommenced, booming vibrations aren't helping either. "But I think I'll step out for some air now."
"-? ...--?"
Inui cups a hand over his ears. "What?"
"I SAID: 'HUH? DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG?'"
Inui takes a step back. "What?" he repeats. His brain churns forextraneous parameters he may have overlooked, but the only thing he finds out of place is how upset Kikumaru appears. "Let's go outside. Talk to me." When data is insufficient, only the primary source is reliable.
The air outside is warm and heavy, but a better exchange for the air inside. Kikumaru mumbles something about, "...Oishi said," and Inui wonders if his ear drums have blown out from less than an hour of club music.
"Oishi said?" he repeats, prompting Kikumaru to speak up. There is little worse than mistranscribed data.
"Oishi said you looked worried... or lonely... or off, or something. Since last week."
Last week was when Yanagi stopped returning his messages. Oishi has never seemed the type, but Inui wants to be sure. "He has my data?"
"No~!" Kikumaru shoves Inui playfully with an unvoiced, 'Not everyone is like you!' "Oishi's just the type of person that notices these things. A proper vice captain, right? And because he's your friend. And I'm your friend!"
Oh.
So tag in the park, dancing in the club...
"And I'm supposed to cheer you up. And I... didn't do a very good job?"
"You did a very good job," Inui reassures, and he isn't just saying it. He has been able to remedy a lot, and that his teammates worry for him, it is hard not to be touched. "I want to thank you, and Oishi as well." Kikumaru looks up with hope. "Juice..."
"Ack! You are happy!"
But they laugh, and make promises for smoothies for three, somewhere in the mall where there are plenty of trusted vendors and first aid stations.
「I will try again later」
Sep 28
「Hakase」
19:49
「...」
19:50
「I'll talk to you tomorrow」
19:50
「Good night, Sadaharu」
19:50>
Author: hamigua
Recipient: The Community
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Set three years post-Canon, the Seigaku tennis team remains intact throughout high school. With a change in seasons, leaves fall but friendships bloom.
Notes: A huge thank-you to my beta! This is a work of fiction borrowing the characters and world from the series Prince of Tennis by Konomi Takeshi. No ownership is claimed and no profit is being made.
「Kyouju」
22:33
「…」
22:57
「Probability of you being in the shower at this hour… 2.5%」
23:29
「Please reply when you return」
23:31
「I will try again later」
23:32
It has been four days.
"Sadaharu! There's a phone call for you!"
"I'll be right down!" Inui answers his mother, without moving from his desk. His pen scratches quickly but without pause until he reaches the end of the line and completes his thought. The small circle lands thick across the drop of ink he had spilt earlier and covers it nicely. Good. The chance of falling short was only in the single digits.
Inui stands to push the chair out and back in, four legs scraping splinters from the ground, subtle grooves on the wood floor, no more than three centimetres wide and seven years old. Leaving the page open to dry, he heads over to the living room to relieve his mother of the phone. 4.29 seconds. It still falls within the believable range of 'coming as soon as possible.'
He takes the phone with a nod to his mother, and states his name and presence into the receiver.
"Ah! Inui-nya~!"
"...Kikumaru," Inui acknowledges, more polite than keen. Wrong number? No. The excessive permutations shoot the probability down near zero. He does not even entertain the thought of an accidental speed dial: that button is reserved for Oishi. 100%.
"So!" Kikumaru interrupts his thoughts, demanding attention away from numbers. "...How are you?"
Inui answers, "Good," but does not pursue conversation. He is patient.
"Um... There's this maths test tomorrow and... iwaswonderingificouldborrowyournotes?"
There is it.
He breathes softly into the receiver, but agrees. "I'll scan the pages from this week and e-mail them to you. I can have it to you within the next half hour."
His scanner sits beside his desk, already warmed up from frequent usage whenever he finishes a page from his notebook to be archived in bytes. His mother's opinion was that one day, the ever expanding, skyscraper-ridden city of notebooks would topple over and crush her only son. After seven years in the making, the city overcrowded its mayor's residence and Inui had to admit defeat. City plans were redrawn and relocated to the ill-accessible underground basement. A second hard drive took its place.
"Awesome! Thanks! You're the best- nya~!" Kikumaru tells him, for the third time this month. "Anything I can do for you, just tell me and I'll do it!" he promises, again. He does not see Inui's forming smile from the other side of the line.
Inui banks the promise to collect on a later date. "Then, I will get you those notes and leave you to your studies," he says, knowing that there will be no study until Kikumaru has notes in hand. They are not in the same class so he cannot verify first hand, but Inui suspects he knows what Kikumaru gives precedence over notes to during class.
Goodbyes are exchanged and Inui walks back to his room, the computer screen dim but still lit. He touches the mouse before the machine can fall entirely asleep, and sets it aside for a clear table on which to flip through his notebook. Numbers and graphs are easily distinguishable from the wall of written characters on all other subjects' pages. His notes are, of course, supplemented with his own knowledge and outside research, but no doubt the most comprehensive out of the rest of the team's. Kikumaru must be desperate.
The correct page is barely selected and placed on the plastic to scan when the phone again sounds from the living room. "I'll get it," Inui calls to his mother, modulating the level of his voice to reach her wherever she is in the house. He selects the grey 'SCAN' and allows the machine to do its job while he retrieves the phone.
"I said half an hour, Kikumaru-"
"I'll make sure to pass on the message, Hakase."
Inui nearly drops the phone. "Renji," he says, surprise leeching into his voice despite his best attempts to suppress it. "You have my personal number," he continues, accusation at a level only Yanagi can detect.
"I apologize, Sadaharu." Inui would have forgiven him even if he hadn't. "My cellphone has met an unfortunate end, so I have just recently acquired a new model and number, and wasn't able to access unread messages prior. E-mail encryption aside, you ignore unlisted calls to your mobile," Yanagi recalls, accusation on his side now, "so there was no choice but to hope your mother picks up at home. The probability was 78%," he verifies the percentage in Inui's mind, "given the time and day of week."
Inui listens intently to the Yanagi's meticulous description of how he lost the phone. He paints his picture without leaving out any details, from the angle of the sun with respect to the horizon, to the exact numbered rib Kirihara had slammed into and knocked the two off balance, off the trail, and into Murphy's river. The phone cannot be saved. Inui sympathizes appropriately: it is a constant struggle.
"The past cannot be helped," Inui pacifies his friend. There is always data to be learned from events such as these, so neither ever believes there to be such a thing as wasted time. But there were times when even Kirihara transcends data. "The unanswered text did leave me concerned; you usually keep Sunday afternoons free. Kirihara did not factor into my calculations... You two were-"
"Mental training." Yanagi's response comes a fraction of a second faster than Inui anticipates. Inui does not question whose. "It is good to be with that type of person sometimes, Sadaharu. You will learn a lot. Try it when you have time."
'Time' triggers the memory of a promise. Inui makes another, "I will keep that in mind. But Kikumaru is waiting on me at the moment and I shouldn't keep him any longer."
He receives Yanagi's number and goodbyes, and makes it back to his room before the screen fully dims a second time. The compressed pixels of the preview image look harsh and jagged as most things are when ill-represented. Inui saves it to his temporary documents folder and leans down to flip the notebook to the other side. He straightens up, and the machine whirs quietly as he minimizes the window to pull up his e-mail.
Five minutes and several keystrokes later, Inui looks over his e-mail to make sure the attachment is secure and message free from errors. He double spaces the postscript to separate it more clearly from the body of the paragraph, looks it over one more time, and sends.
P.S. I will take you up on your promise tomorrow. Will you go out with me?
Perhaps it can be better worded, but any later, and he will have to wait another hour and a half for the natural sleep cycle to reset. It will have to do.
Oishi gives him this look all through practice the next day.
He does not speak up, and Inui does not indulge him in asking. It is hard enough as it is trying to win doubles, let alone against the Golden Pair, that he cannot afford to divert any more attention from Kikumaru's classic netplay.
He and Kaidoh break serve early on, but eventually lose the match 4-6. Unlike in singles, it is infinitely harder when you can't control the second person on your side of the court. It is still a close game though, and Inui is all the happier to update his data on his teammates' skills. Oishi, whose frown- worried, as it were- belies his victory, says something to Kikumaru, but the exchange is lost to Tezuka's call for the players to finish any games in progress so the nets can be rolled up and stored at the end of practice. Inui takes the opportunity to watch the remaining games, but most are already on the verge of finishing, and there is no choice but to get out of the sun and pack his things.
Kikumaru is in the locker room when Inui emerges from the showers, bouncing a tennis ball on the inside of his shoes like in kebane, if only the ball didn't bounce and roll like it did. He catches the ball in mid-air and shoves it into his pocket, leaving a grey smear of court-dust against his white shorts. Though autumn, it is still fairly warm, and he has decided against changing back into his gakuran, unlike Inui has.
Thanks! And OK!
was Kikumaru's response to the e-mail the night before. "And OK" is Kikumaru's conviction now, neither doubting nor questioning Inui's request despite all of Oishi's precautions. "If you don't have plans, let's go to the park!" Kikumaru suggests, unaccustomed to asking. There isn't more "out" than outside, so Inui agrees, remembering the park closest to the school.
There stand ginkgo trees, symbolic of Tokyo, but as Inui waits beneath while Kikumaru tries to grab ahold of one of the branches, he can see the nuts that had prematurely ripened and lie scattered on the ground. It has been uncharacteristically warm for the season. He takes care not to step on any, disappointed that he missed the bulk of the harvest and the opportunity to enrich his working recipes.
The park itself holds less interest to him. He has not been in a park since he was much younger. The slides had borne no interest to him aside from the lesson of friction when wearing short pants, and the jungle gym was illogical and refused to conform to his predictions of momentum and timing. He is too tall now, to return and conquer them with any measure of satisfaction.
"Do you want to play?" Kikumaru asks, catching his eyes and following them to the towers and bridges. And the small group of five-year-olds populating the wood chips. Maybe not. "How about Hide-and-go-seek?"
He grins and Inui grins. There is a certain level of genius required to play this game.
There is no way he will lose.
Kikumaru goes to hide upon Inui's instruction, and Inui makes sure his cell phone is secure and away from any source of water before he slides both tennis bags under the park bench, sits down, and closes his eyes. The numbers come readily, inverted white on black. He counts down from 300 instead of up, and imagines a second monitor upon which he brings up statistics and probability.
Hide-and-go-seek is very much a numbers game. He may not know the park as well as Kikumaru does, but he does know Kikumaru. He knows the most likely places his friend would hide taking into account the terrain of this kingdom of wood chips, and where Kikumaru believes that Inui believes that Kikumaru believes no one will ever find him.
Two, one, zero.
Blurred vision fades quickly as Inui's eyes readjust to unimpeded sight, his body already moving towards the playground. Mothers give strange looks to the boy who would easily break the play set's upper height restriction had there been one. Undoubtedly the same look they gave Kikumaru, huddled up in the connecting tunnel, with a face of genuine surprise to come face to face with Inui so soon after "zero."
And, undoubtedly, Kikumaru responds with the same grin.
"Mo~ve, Onii-san!" comes a chorus of voices from behind him, and Inui makes the mistake of backing out of the way, Kikumaru lost in grade schoolers flooding in like air evacuating the vacuum of a tennis ball canister. Like air, it is a wonder none of them collide, but Inui is well familiar with how Kikumaru spirits away, untracked at the net. He will have to amend his playtime data with bodily distractions later.
Why suggest Hide-and-go-seek if he really meant Tag? Inui wonders to himself as small children watch wide mouthed in wonder at, to them, a giant forgoing the pole, leaping off the platform, and giving chase. Tag is also a component in the game, he amends again. It is a minor component, the more prominent being the search at which he would not lose. It is also the component Kikumaru banks on, dodging nimbly between players in the middle of a soccer game and leaving Inui to mouth apologies on their behalf, taking the straight path through with trust that the children will get out of the way.
The ball doesn't, and in the two step detour, Inui loses sight of Kikumaru again.
Away from the field, Inui stops and makes a full scan. On the 84th degree, he spots Kikumaru, perched on the high branches of the ginkgo tree he had marked when they first entered the park. Crossed ankles dangle above Inui's head as he stands below, out of reach even if he were to take a running jump.
"Remember third year in middle school?" Kikumaru asks smugly. He doesn't need to explain. Echizen and his first match. Data against skill. Inui opens his mouth, but before any words can come out, Kikumaru injects: "You look like you're having fun now too."
Really now? The smile Inui gives in return is unconvincing. But... It had been an entertaining afternoon, and Yanagi wasn't wrong that Kikumaru could expand his data so much further. So he relents, "It was fun. Why don't you come down now?"
"Nope~" Kikumaru refuses, the tip of his tongue poking out from between a grin. "Game's not over yet."
Inui sighs. "I will not be able to reach you. And with the time it takes to scale the tree to your height," he does the calculations mentally but keeps the numbers to himself, "you would have already gotten off and be on your way to the next post. This game, I concede to you."
"You're giving up?" Rather than disappointed, Kikumaru sounds hopeful. Perhaps Inui has quit prematurely. No, the numbers predict an infinite loop, and even with added parameters as the setting sun and chance of nightly rain. He does not want his phone to get wet.
Inui steps aside, showing his full intention of surrender. "The term is 'wild-goose chase.' Even data has its limits against a futile cycle."
Kikumaru appears satisfied. "...C'mere," he motions Inui closer to the trunk of the tree.
Inui obliges curiously, also warily.
Not warily enough.
"CATCH!!!"
All 58.2 kilograms of Kikumaru Eiji comes hurtling down at Inui, whose arms outstretch reflexively with thanks only to countless, toppling, notebook stacks. Kikumaru bounds to his feet and brushes himself off like a cat who pridefully climbs up a tree and cannot get back down without a human springboard.
So very much like a cat.
"You stink," Inui informs Kikumaru, reaching up to knock off the raw ginkgo topping his hair like dragées.
"Rude~" Kikumaru responds, sticking his tongue out at Inui goodnaturedly. "No more than you. But yeah, Sis is gonna squawk if I come home like this. Gotta beat her home and get the shower first..."
He follows Inui back to the park bench to retrieve their things. Inui checks that his phone is still intact, then shoulders his bag. Kikumaru lifts the straps of his own up with his shoe and hangs it over crossed arms, away from his nut-infused clothes. "I felt real good about that test today, so let's play tomorrow too!"
"...Alright," Inui agrees. Tomorrow is the weekend, so time is more easily made up. There are pages of reflection to type up when he returns home, so he lets Kikumaru choose their activity.
"A club!" is the suggestion, and, "The one with music and dancing!" is the clarification when prompted. All music is formula, and Inui enjoys discerning each instrumental component with no preference to genre. Dancing... is good cardio. He'll figure it out.
"Then, tomorrow at noon, at the bus stop," Inui sets the date. "I had fun today."
A thousand suns cannot parallel Kikumaru's smile. "Good!!!"
He has always been like that.
The music is loud, and depending on the guitar solo or which musician is screaming into the microphone, varies from ten to fifteen decibels over what is comfortable for the human ear. He can hardly hear himself think. The drinks are overpriced at 500 yen, for what is half water and half modified sucrose, and the ventilation system is insufficient for the amount of people crowding the dance floor. Maybe this is why Kikumaru is always so loud and bouncy, Inui notes to take down later.
"Do you know how to dance?" Kikumaru shouts to be overheard in the rare few seconds the music dies down to change bands.
Rather than have his voice overtaken, Inui gives a shrugging nod in conveyance: "Of course. If I know the theory, nothing is impossible."
Kikumaru pulls him towards an open space where they won't get jostled around, and falls naturally into the rhythm of the music. In the locker room showers, Oishi often tells him it is dangerous to bounce on the wet floors, but it doesn't stop him from belting out pop into the shower head. It is an instinctual dancing, dictated by whim instead of rule. While Inui observes and tries to match him, there is no algorithm for where to place your feet, how to move your body, or what to do with your hands.
The deep bass permeates his body, and Inui feels a bit sick.
Then the taiko starts.
The scattered beat of the drums permeate his body and his heart races to keep pace with all at once. Then it merges. It is a deafening beat, steady as the one in his chest and pounding like the one in his head, and if he closes his eyes, everything washes away from the world except the beat, beat, beat of the drums. It becomes his own heart, pushing blood through his body. The matching cadence binds everyone in the room, a collective heartbeat thrumming with multiplied power and purpose.
And silence.
His heart reclaims his chest, merely a patter just by itself. He feels empty.
"Oh~ That was pretty good!" Kikumaru touches Inui's arm and he freezes, unaware that he had been moving.
"You as well." Inui adjusts his glasses before it can creep further down the bridge of his nose. The recommenced, booming vibrations aren't helping either. "But I think I'll step out for some air now."
"-? ...--?"
Inui cups a hand over his ears. "What?"
"I SAID: 'HUH? DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG?'"
Inui takes a step back. "What?" he repeats. His brain churns forextraneous parameters he may have overlooked, but the only thing he finds out of place is how upset Kikumaru appears. "Let's go outside. Talk to me." When data is insufficient, only the primary source is reliable.
The air outside is warm and heavy, but a better exchange for the air inside. Kikumaru mumbles something about, "...Oishi said," and Inui wonders if his ear drums have blown out from less than an hour of club music.
"Oishi said?" he repeats, prompting Kikumaru to speak up. There is little worse than mistranscribed data.
"Oishi said you looked worried... or lonely... or off, or something. Since last week."
Last week was when Yanagi stopped returning his messages. Oishi has never seemed the type, but Inui wants to be sure. "He has my data?"
"No~!" Kikumaru shoves Inui playfully with an unvoiced, 'Not everyone is like you!' "Oishi's just the type of person that notices these things. A proper vice captain, right? And because he's your friend. And I'm your friend!"
Oh.
So tag in the park, dancing in the club...
"And I'm supposed to cheer you up. And I... didn't do a very good job?"
"You did a very good job," Inui reassures, and he isn't just saying it. He has been able to remedy a lot, and that his teammates worry for him, it is hard not to be touched. "I want to thank you, and Oishi as well." Kikumaru looks up with hope. "Juice..."
"Ack! You are happy!"
But they laugh, and make promises for smoothies for three, somewhere in the mall where there are plenty of trusted vendors and first aid stations.
「I will try again later」
Sep 28
「Hakase」
19:49
「...」
19:50
「I'll talk to you tomorrow」
19:50
「Good night, Sadaharu」
19:50>