FIC: Thus Spoke Atobe (Atobe-centric + Hyoutei, PGish--Happy Birthday, Atobe!)
Title: Thus Spoke Atobe
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 4600
Rating: PGish
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Warning: Contains het, bad puns and Oshitari Yuushi.
Summary: Atobe may have found his soulmate. Or not.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to ensein for inspiration. Written for Atobe's birthday-Happy Birthday, Atobe Keigo!
Atobe remains firmly convinced that he will meet his soulmate on the tennis courts. He will be in the French Riviera, just docked from a cruise, and he will be no younger than twenty. The sun will be sparkling off the white plaster houses and the azure waters. He'll be playing tennis with himself, lonely, looking for a partner and she will show up at the villa, dressed in a tennis skirt, crisp white socks and blue runners.
Atobe will look at her and ask her for a game, in fluent French. She'll answer in fluent German and it will be love at first sight-
When Atobe pushes his Dior sunglasses back and smiles at her, of course.
Atobe does not expect anything less.
He does not expect the Greek professor to announce that there is a new student joining the class, from Nagoya. There are eight of them, and Oshitari is asleep over his textbook. The door opens. Atobe leans on his elbow and looks over.
She walks in. There's a mop of stringy black hair covering her glasses. She bows her head and introduces herself in a mumble.
Atobe clicks his tongue. "We can't hear you if you speak like that," he says. She lifts her head and narrows her eyes. Through pop-bottle glasses, they look owlish and cross-eyed when she frowns.
"I said 'my name is Kikuchi Kikuko'," she says. Her face is covered in acne. It makes Atobe's skin crawl when she sits across the seminar table from him. He can see distinct pustules all over her forehead and cheeks.
Gross, he thinks. Atobe reaches for his pen and his palm is clammy. He clicks it and ink spurts out the end, all over his Aeschylus notes.
Kikuchi-san sniffs. Atobe can't be bothered to glare. She's nothing but a hick from Nagoya.
"Let's start with Agaememnon," the professor says. Atobe doesn't raise his hand. He opens his mouth-he's always the first to speak in class.
Kikuchi says, "Θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ' ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων, φρουρᾶς ἐτείας μῆκος, ἣν κοιμώμενος στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν ἄγκαθεν..."
She inflects. Atobe twitches.
"Did I mispronounce something?" she asks him. Her pimples move. She snorts and wipes her nose. "Is there something wrong with your eye?"
Atobe's tie starts to choke him. He looks at his notes. It looks like Shishido's chicken scratch. He has the clauses all wrong and he forgets what the hell the first word means. Noun? Verb? Vocative? What the hell is an upsilon?
Thus begins Atobe's down-going.
***
As student representative of the first year students in Hyoutei Senior High School, Atobe makes it his business to know his fellow students.
He glances down the hallway. His pass is tucked into his pocket. Tacking it to his shirt pocket would be unthinkable. Atobe checks his cellphone. He looks up. His shoes-genuine Italian leather, of course-clack on the wood floor.
She comes out of the library with a stack of books pressed to her flat chest and those ugly glasses halfway down her pimply nose. Atobe clears his throat. She walks right past him.
"Excuse me," he says.
"Are you having problems with the Plato?" she asks.
Atobe's cheeks feel hot. He laughs it off and waves his hand. A door slides open at the other end of the corridor. He stiffens and checks, but there's no one else in sight.
Her canvas runners squeak on the floor. Her sweat socks are bunched around her bony ankles. Atobe curls up his lip. Then, he remembers himself.
"So," he says, "do you like tennis?"
This stops her. Her books fall from her hands and crash onto the floor, scattering homework notes. Pages scatter. Atobe picks one up and reads it.
δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
"Sappho?" he asks.
She grabs the sheet from him. Stringy hair hangs in her eyes when she glares. The nearest classroom door slides open and several students stick their heads out. Atobe is alone in the hallway with the new, weird nerd from Nagoya. Oshitari raises his eyebrows. The other students start to snicker. Atobe's face is on fire. He snaps his fingers, but the whispering continues.
"What are you, a lesbian, or something?" he asks. Atobe stands up as tall as he can and looks down his nose. When Kikuchi-san stands up, she's at eye level and she smells like cheap soap, the sort someone might buy from a chain store like Matsumoto Kiyoshi.
Atobe shudders at the thought.
Kikuchi-san purses her lips. Dead skin flakes onto the pimples on her chin.
Gross! Atobe thinks. His pulse quickens.
"I hate tennis," she says. "It's boring." She walks down the hallway, away from him, and her shoes squeak so loud that Oshitari and his classmates collectively cringe.
Atobe backs up into a row of lockers. His chest stings.
***
He slugs balls across the net. They smash onto the purple pavement and leave large black scorches.
Atobe wipes sweat from his forehead. He can feel the beginnings of a pimple bumping to the surface. Atobe scowls. He mutters under his breath. "Sheisse…"
Oshitari asks, "Did you run into Tezuka recently?"
Atobe slams another ball. Mozart strains dance over the courts from the loud speakers. Atobe's skull throbs.
"Maybe it's girl problems," Mukahi says.
Atobe's mole twitches. He fumbles with a ball.
Oshitari laughs behind him. "Hn, don't be silly, Gakuto," he says. "Atobe doesn't like girls."
Atobe balls his fist. He throws the ball aside. It hits Shishido in the back of the head. Atobe yells, "Shut up, you stupid Neanderthal!"
Mukahi falls off the bench he was frog-sitting on. Oshitari keeps laughing. Atobe stomps off the courts. He stomps toward the club house. Under the gleaming marble column (imported from the Peloponnesus, how fitting), he walks straight into someone.
"Watch where you-"
She looks at him with cross-eyes. Atobe cringes. "He who submits to fate without complaint is wise," she says.
Atobe pretends to wipe off his t-shirt. It's dark with sweat anyway. He snorts.
"It's Euripides, in case you didn't know," she says. She turns heel with her canvas shoes and leaves Atobe to eat dust motes.
He assumed it was Plato.
***
Kikuchi Kikuko is the only girl in Greek class. That doesn't mean anything, Atobe reminds himself. Except that he can impress each and every other girl in his year with a line or two of Homer, delivered in the cafeteria in his perfect Attic pronunciation.
But, he's not in the mood.
Atobe lounges on his favourite couch in the student council room. He picks at his lunch. Roast beef from the cafeteria restaurant sticks between his teeth. The jellied pudding melts in its bowl. Atobe sighs.
His chest aches. He's listless and tired and wide awake all at once. Atobe dials Kabaji's cellphone. No answer. He sighs again. Atobe touches his forehead. It's clammy to the touch. He hisses at the sting from a pimple, which has yet to surface.
Gross…
The low breathing makes him sit up straight and whip his head around. Oshitari pushes his glasses up and smirks. He smells like mayonnaise and fried food. Cheap food from somewhere off-campus.
Just as gross…
"Atobe," he says.
"Go away," Atobe says. He waves his hand. Oshitari hovers.
So Atobe leaves.
The library isn't very busy at lunch. Girls whisper when Atobe descends the spiral staircase. He smiles-not at them, but it makes their whispering louder, excited. Jeweled light from the stained glass windows glides over the tops of bookcases.
Atobe's stomach tightens when he sees someone in the German section, hunched over a textbook. Hair hangs over her face and she's got the posture of an old man. Atobe clears his throat.
She looks at him. Her glasses hang off the end of her pointy nose.
Atobe looks around. There's no one else in the near vicinity. Still, his heart pounds and his palms are sweaty. He flips his hair back, but his throat is dry. He clears it again.
She blinks at him, myopic and indifferent.
And then, Atobe hears the low breathing. He stiffens. He panics. He grabs a book off the shelf and opens it, pretending to read. An eye starts back at him from the other side of the book shelf. The eye gleams and chuckles under its breath. The smell of mayonnaise is thick.
"Have you acquired a new friend?" Oshitari pokes his head around the end of the book shelf. He looks at Kikuchi-san. The crooked smile he flashes at Atobe makes Atobe feel sick.
Atobe snorts. "As if." As if *I* would be friends with someone like that! Atobe looks at her and shudders. Her acne looks redder than ever under the ruddy kaleidoscope sunshine.
Oshitari hums. His kansai-ben is thick and unintelligible as ever today. "Have you acquired a new skill?" he asks.
Atobe rolls his eyes.
Oshitari nods to Atobe's book. "Is that Goethe good?"
"Of course, you idiot," he says. He walks past Oshitari. His nose scrunches up from the stink cloying to Oshitari's uniform. Kikuchi-san doesn't pay attention to either of them.
Oshitari smiles. His grin spreads from ear to ear. "It must be even better upside-down."
***
One of the hounds paces outside the door. She whines. Her claws scratch the floor, then they clack as she resumes her pacing.
Atobe sips his drink. It's flat and tasteless. His face burned all through Greek class as Oshitari leered and laughed at him with a little smirk. His face burned all through German class when Oshitari asked-in garbled half-English, half-German, no less-if Atobe's favourite author was Goethe.
Atobe glares at the wall. He leans back against the edge of the bathtub. The bubbles in the tub remind him of acne. He pats down the lumpy bumps and they spill into the air.
Then, he drops his glass. It shatters on the floor.
"Sheisse," he says.
He dunks his head under the water's surface. Someone calls his name. The water muffles the sound. Atobe lifts his head. There is something ripe in the air.
"-I'll clean up Milly's accident in no time, Master Keigo," the maid's voice says on the other side of the doorway.
Atobe makes a face. In the reflection of the mirror, he looks like a frog. Atobe scowls even more.
***
Shishido invites them camping.
Being pragmatic, Atobe takes the opportunity to clear his mind. There's nothing that two nights in a Swiss-style chalet in Yamanashi won't do for a person. Atobe has the housekeeper pack his favourite pair of slippers and his silk pajamas. It is, after all, autumn, and the nights are getting cooler.
The chauffeur drops him off at the designated meeting point. The chauffeur drives off. Atobe waits. He checks his cellphone, but there is no signal. He looks around. There is nothing but the brilliant crimson of maple trees among the bushy pines. The air is filled with the scent of-
An insect buzzes around Atobe's head. He curls his lip. He tries to swat it, but it keeps flying around. This Swiss-style chalet must be in a very rustic location. Atobe hasn’t seen a single car pass by the highway.
He waits. And then he smells the stench of teenagers: sour sweat and cheap ramen noodles. Down the highway, he squints. Shishido shouts. Ohtori waves.
Ohtori? Atobe thinks. As far as he was told, this was a high schoolers only camping trip.
Everyone else has heavy backpacks strapped over their shoulders. Atobe stares at them. Jiroh stares back. Ohtori beams. Shishido's face is dripping with sweat. Beads splash onto the ground. Atobe steps back.
"Uh, we’re going camping," Shishido says.
Atobe lifts his chin. He raises his eyebrows. "Obviously."
Shishido looks at Oshitari, who looks at Gakuto, who starts to snicker.
"Heathens," Atobe mutters.
***
The tent is cold. And wet. And leans over into a ravine. Atobe shivers. He hugs his knees. The silk pajamas do nothing against the frigid temperatures. Ohtori offered his sleeping bag.
"It's okay, Atobe-senpai," he said, "I don't need it."
It smells like animals. Atobe shivers some more. Oshitari and Mukahi have flashlights out and a bag of popcorn. They crunch. They wave their flashlights and laugh. "Look, Gakuto," Oshitari drawls, "It's a parrot."
Atobe is too cold to roll his eyes. Oshitari makes stupid shadows with his hands. Mukahi moves and crawls over the bag of popcorn. Each crunching kernel makes Atobe cringe even more.
He is trapped here for thirty-six more hours.
Mukahi says, "Hey Yuushi, listen to this!"
The long, drawn-out fart is the most disgusting sound Atobe has ever heard. He gags. Oshitari claps. The tent door opens and Jiroh wanders inside, zipped into a sleeping bag like a large, blue nylon mummy.
"I can't sleep," he says. Oshitari shoves over into Atobe. Atobe's face is pressed to the side of the tent. It's cold and damp. He can't feel his toes. His slippers are satin and soaked through with sweat.
"Can't sleep?" Mukahi asks.
Jiroh yawns. "Ohtori and Shishido are too damn loud."
Atobe gags again.
Mukahi snickers. "Hey, who do you guys have crushes on?"
Atobe refuses to listen to this rabble. He closes his eyes and huddles. An insect buzzes in his ear. The weather is cold up in the mountains, but the frost hasn't set in yet and killed the bugs.
Damn.
***
"Hey Atobe," Mukahi says, "who do you have a crush on?"
Atobe shivers. His breath makes clouds in front of him. He whips himself out with as much dignity as he can muster. Being reduced to pissing in the woods makes his skin crawl.
"What are you talking about?" he says.
"You kept Jiroh up half the night," Mukahi says. "Poor guy."
"What are you talking about?" Atobe snaps.
"Dunno…" Mukahi says. He stretches his arms up over the back of his head. Ohtori and Shishido come out of their tent together. Ohtori beams when he says good morning to Atobe. Shishido has red bug bites all over his neck.
"Some chick named…Kukuko, maybe?" Mukahi says. He narrows his eyes and has the same creepy smile as Oshitari.
Atobe sucks in a breath. He says nothing. His eye twitches.
"The one you whacked off to all night," Mukahi adds.
Atobe's mouth hangs open.
By the fire, Oshitari squats and flips something over on the pan he has roasting. "Okonomiyaki?" he offers.
***
In the land of culture and civilization, Atobe phones Kabaji.
"I need your help," he says.
***
Girls fall at the feet of Atobe Keigo. Seas part and mountains rise.
Atobe enters the library. He descends the spiral staircase. He holds his head up high and smiles at the multitudes that turn his way. Atobe sets down the bag on the table and leans on a hand, palm-down on the desk.
"Guten tag," he says.
She looks up. Her eyes shift to the bag on the table, then back to her notes. Atobe pushes the bag closer.
"In my beneficence-as first year representative," he says, lest she get the wrong idea, "these are for you."
She takes the socks from the bag. Her brow furrows. Long stringy hair moves with her scalp. "You can keep them," she says.
Atobe sputters.
"By the way," she says. She sniffles and wipes her nose with a rumpled Kleenex from her pocket. Atobe is too busy staring, slack-jawed, to think about the grossness of that. "You have dog hairs on your blazer."
She picks an Afghan hair off his blazer. Her fingers brush against his arm. There is ink staining her fingertips, but it doesn't leave a mark on Atobe's shirt.
That doesn't explain the faint throb in his arm all through Greek.
***
His declivity is terrible.
Oshitari invites himself over one evening. He has a small paper bag in his hands. Atobe lies back on the pillows on his bed. He has a headache. He's had a headache since tennis this afternoon.
"What do you want?" he asks.
Oshitari deposits the paper bag onto Atobe's bed. It falls over when Atobe sits up. A box of acne medicine spills out.
Atobe looks at Oshitari. Oshitari looks at the painting on the wall, the Botticelli nude. He licks his lips.
"She says she doesn't want that," Oshitari says. "She also says that you should stop harassing her and focus on your schoolwork."
"She?" Atobe asks.
Oshitari drags his eyes from the painting. He looks at Atobe with a cocked eyebrow, as though Atobe were stupid. Or naïve. Which he most certainly is neither.
"So I took the liberty of leaving some Shakespeare in her locker," Oshitari says. "Girls like that."
***
Two days later, Oshitari invites himself over for a second time. He has an envelope in his hands. It's stained with mayonnaise.
Atobe says, "Go away, cretin."
Oshitari says, "This is for you." He sets the envelope down on Atobe's bed. Atobe curls his lip. Oshitari walks around his bedroom and touches everything, including the Persian cat curled up on the settee.
Atobe opens the envelope. He wipes his hands off with his Burberry handkerchief. "Noli me perturbare?" he says.
"It's all Greek to me," Oshitari says. He pushes his glasses up. He touches Atobe's clear folder of homework. Oshitari pulls a sheet out and says, "Marked by Kikuchi Ki-"
Atobe leaps over the settee and lands on top of Oshitari. He wrestles. Oshitari squirms. His glasses are crooked and Atobe's head hurts when he bonks it against the settee leg. The cat slinks off. "Give that to me!" Atobe snaps.
Oshitari looks at him. He ought to look foolish with his glasses bent, but instead, Atobe flushes.
"Are you saving your homework that she marked in class?" Oshitari laughs.
Atobe scowls. "Shut up."
"Hn, you're a bit of a romantic, too," Oshitari says.
Atobe rolls his eyes. The flush creeps down his neck. He's sweating under his satin robe. Oshitari takes his glasses off and sets them on Atobe's desk.
"It's Latin, actually," Atobe says.
Oshitari keeps laughing at him. "Did you know her father owns a fake designer goods factory?"
***
Atobe tucks the homework sheet under his pillow. Her handwriting is blocky and small. He rubs his face in his pillowcase and sees her face. She frowns at him. Without the pizza face, she might be all-right looking.
He dreams that he's prancing through a field of flowers. It's autumn, so they are death flowers, of course, red puffs that cling to his pants. Atobe spins around. He snaps his fingers and the heavens open in a blaze of warm sunlight that streams down onto him.
Atobe looks up. Across the field, he can see her, hunched over and sullen. She doesn't look at him when he walks up to her. His heart flutters like the breeze over the meadow.
"Will you come to Athens with me?" Atobe asks, in perfect Greek.
Socrates would be proud.
"Will you walk under the Acropolis by my side?" Atobe asks. He offers his arm, the perfect gentleman, and he looks down his nose with a smirk.
"I have homework to do," she says.
Atobe wakes up. He removes his hand from his pajama pants and looks down. He groans. He slaps his hand to his forehead and groans again when he realizes what the stickiness between his fingers is.
***
"What the hell are you doing now?" Shishido asks.
Mukahi whizzes by on a skateboard. Oshitari clings to his waist. Atobe sniffs.
"Dude, are those Yuushi's glasses?" Mukahi asks.
"Of course not," Atobe says.
Oshitari winks at Atobe.
***
She's in the library. She's hunched over her Greek homework-two weeks ahead. Atobe is impressed. His chest feels weird and tight. The sweater-vest makes his skin itch. The wool must be poor quality.
He clears his throat.
She reaches for her pencil case. Atobe bites his lip. It's covered in Louis Vuitton print, but the pull says Luois Button instead. Atobe's eye twitches. His skin itches more. He scratches his neck and the glasses slide down his nose.
"I could buy you real Louis Vuitton, you know," Atobe says. The narrow look she gives him makes Atobe swallow. His voice nearly cracks. His palms are so sweaty that they slide off the edge of the table.
"I don't like brand names," she says.
"Me neither," Atobe says, awfully quickly.
She looks at his shoes. Then she raises her eyebrows. Her glasses slip down her nose, too. She looks a bit horsey.
"I have homework to do," she says.
Atobe's pants feel tight. He gathers his dignity and stomps off. Oshitari is three bookshelves away. He has his hands on a girl's chest and a stupid smile on his face.
"Sorry about that," he drawls. The girl covers her mouth to giggle. "I can't see very well right now," Oshitari adds.
Atobe throws the glasses at him.
***
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe slams a tennis ball over the net. It skims the top. Jiroh starts to clap.
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe slugs a ball across the court. It smashes into the net pole with a ping. Jiroh gasps. The ball makes a perfect vertical parabola.
Atobe rubs his hands together. His knuckles are white. He can see his breath and he can't feel the tips of his ears.
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe glares at him.
Jiroh has a sly smirk. "You wanna come over and watch some hot movies with Gakuto and me?"
Atobe says "Yeah right."
He's ready to throw a ball up for another serve when Jiroh slinks closer.
"We’re gonna rent Revenge of the Sex-Deprived Sensei," Jiroh says. "The chick is really hot and has glasses. You'd like it."
The ball drops to the ground.
***
Atobe is fully and utterly ashamed the moment he steps into the video rental store. He hides under his sunglasses and behind his scarf. Jiroh and Gakuto have no shame as they openly snicker and grab the DVD title from the shelf.
Atobe slinks down another aisle. His eyes go wide as he reads the titles. Atobe picks up one with a megane nerd girl on the cover. She has massive tits and her mouth is thrown open. Sexy Secretary: Back-door Documents. He turns tail and walks straight into someone else. His sunglasses slide across the floor. Atobe lifts his head and she is staring at him.
His heart pounds against his ribs. His thick coat does nothing to muffle it. She looks down at the DVD in his hand.
"This is not mine," Atobe says.
Her mouth is wide open and her hair is thrown back over her forehead.
Atobe's mouth is dry. Especially since her glasses fell off, too, and she's staring at him with black, close-set eyes, as though she can see into his soul and his heart and his True Form and-
"Hey Atobe!" Jiroh calls. "We got Sex-Deprived Sensei and the sequel!" He grins in his gormless way.
She walks away. Her cheap sneakers squeak.
Atobe says, "Scheisse."
***
His woe is deep.
Atobe phones Kabaji.
"Munehiro is out," his mom says. "He has a date with a girl from the model ship club."
Atobe sighs.
One of the Afghans howls somewhere in the belly of the house. The Persian stretches on the end of Atobe's bed. She leaves a trail of long, white hairs that cling to his pillows.
It is a waning moon outside. The street courts will be closed. Tezuka is in Germany-bastard!-and there's no one else around worthy of playing. Atobe drums his fingers on the BMW door. He's a lost soul. Her spurning twists the dagger in his chest each time she inflects in Greek or compounds words in German.
Atobe is surrounded by plebians who mock his plight. It would be easy to walk into the school cafeteria and smile at one of the girls who bats eyelashes his way. But she would not speak German. She would not read Greek in that rhythmic lilt that makes his heart pitter-patter. She would not turn away from him as though she really, truly doesn't care.
Woe is Atobe.
The driver drives around until Atobe says stop. Ginza is a multicoloured murkiness of half-lights. Atobe wanders. The department stores are lit up with displays of diamonds and Siberian furs, Cristal and Prada-real brands.
White-gloved porters open doors for him. Atobe takes the elevator two flights to the clothing floor. He walks through the racks of underpants and sighs. His shoulders slump. The smell of fried food drifts up from the basement. Atobe thinks of Oshitari and sighs again. His stomach rumbles.
There is a display of sweat socks under a neon sign advertising a sale. Atobe's breath catches. His own socks slip down around his ankles.
"Atobe."
Atobe stands up straight.
"Oh," he says, "it's you."
Sanada scowls.
Atobe looks down at the bag of sweat socks in Sanada's hands. He grabs it. "Store brand socks?" he asks.
Sanada says nothing.
"How lame," Atobe says. He sneers. Sanada says whatever and grabs another bag of socks.
"Atobe-kun?"
The sound is melodious over the repetitive jingle playing on the store PA. Sanada looks. Atobe is nearly transported to another realm of Pure Forms. There is Pure Atobe, who is perfect, and there is Pure Kikuchi-san, who is likewise just as perfect and they are studying together, in the library, writing notes in German and laughing over Goethe and Shakespeare, first editions that Pure Atobe buys because they, too, are Pure Forms and-
"Are you buying socks?" she asks. She looks at Sanada, but ignores his hulking mass. Sanada smirks at Atobe and flips his cellphone open as he walks away.
"Er…" Atobe says.
"Those are my favourite brand," she says. Her Nagoya accent is thick. "It's my favourite philosopher."
"Er…" Atobe says. His loins quiver.
She keeps looking at him with cross-eyes. Under the greenish fluorescent store lights, her skin looks less red. She has her school uniform on. She probably came from cram school. Her knobby knees knock and her socks hang down around her canvas shoes.
"I was buying them for you," Atobe says. He might be suave, except for the fact the bag of socks slips from his clammy hands.
She picks it up and their fingers brush. Kikuchi says, "Θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ' ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων, φρουρᾶς ἐτείας μῆκος, ἣν κοιμώμενος στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν ἄγκαθεν..."
And Atobe says, "κυνὸς δίκην, ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν."
Atobe looks down at the bag of socks.
The label says SOCKrates.
So maybe it's not the French Riveria and there is no turquoise water and Niçoise salads. There isn't any tennis and Atobe can't speak much French, anyway. There isn't even a private villa with rustic olive groves in the distance.
He's standing in a department store under lights that turn his stomach. He's holding a package of cheap sweat socks and Sanada's behind him. The department store smells like a combination of plastic and fried food and the store jingle loops around again.
This isn’t what Atobe expected at all.
But he doesn't expect Kikuchi-san to hold out her fake Louis Vuitton school bag and say, "You can hold this for me."
"Okay," Atobe says.
"I have homework to do," she says.
"Okay," Atobe says.
A little voice shouts "ηὕρηκα!" in the back of his mind. It sounds suspiciously like Oshitari.
They leave the department store, glowing above them, and walk into the basement depachika. Atobe holds the fake Louis Vuitton in one hand. He holds her hand in the other, and he holds his head up high.
One word frees us
Of all the weight and pain in life,
That word is Love
-Socrates
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 4600
Rating: PGish
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Warning: Contains het, bad puns and Oshitari Yuushi.
Summary: Atobe may have found his soulmate. Or not.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to ensein for inspiration. Written for Atobe's birthday-Happy Birthday, Atobe Keigo!
Atobe remains firmly convinced that he will meet his soulmate on the tennis courts. He will be in the French Riviera, just docked from a cruise, and he will be no younger than twenty. The sun will be sparkling off the white plaster houses and the azure waters. He'll be playing tennis with himself, lonely, looking for a partner and she will show up at the villa, dressed in a tennis skirt, crisp white socks and blue runners.
Atobe will look at her and ask her for a game, in fluent French. She'll answer in fluent German and it will be love at first sight-
When Atobe pushes his Dior sunglasses back and smiles at her, of course.
Atobe does not expect anything less.
He does not expect the Greek professor to announce that there is a new student joining the class, from Nagoya. There are eight of them, and Oshitari is asleep over his textbook. The door opens. Atobe leans on his elbow and looks over.
She walks in. There's a mop of stringy black hair covering her glasses. She bows her head and introduces herself in a mumble.
Atobe clicks his tongue. "We can't hear you if you speak like that," he says. She lifts her head and narrows her eyes. Through pop-bottle glasses, they look owlish and cross-eyed when she frowns.
"I said 'my name is Kikuchi Kikuko'," she says. Her face is covered in acne. It makes Atobe's skin crawl when she sits across the seminar table from him. He can see distinct pustules all over her forehead and cheeks.
Gross, he thinks. Atobe reaches for his pen and his palm is clammy. He clicks it and ink spurts out the end, all over his Aeschylus notes.
Kikuchi-san sniffs. Atobe can't be bothered to glare. She's nothing but a hick from Nagoya.
"Let's start with Agaememnon," the professor says. Atobe doesn't raise his hand. He opens his mouth-he's always the first to speak in class.
Kikuchi says, "Θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ' ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων, φρουρᾶς ἐτείας μῆκος, ἣν κοιμώμενος στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν ἄγκαθεν..."
She inflects. Atobe twitches.
"Did I mispronounce something?" she asks him. Her pimples move. She snorts and wipes her nose. "Is there something wrong with your eye?"
Atobe's tie starts to choke him. He looks at his notes. It looks like Shishido's chicken scratch. He has the clauses all wrong and he forgets what the hell the first word means. Noun? Verb? Vocative? What the hell is an upsilon?
Thus begins Atobe's down-going.
***
As student representative of the first year students in Hyoutei Senior High School, Atobe makes it his business to know his fellow students.
He glances down the hallway. His pass is tucked into his pocket. Tacking it to his shirt pocket would be unthinkable. Atobe checks his cellphone. He looks up. His shoes-genuine Italian leather, of course-clack on the wood floor.
She comes out of the library with a stack of books pressed to her flat chest and those ugly glasses halfway down her pimply nose. Atobe clears his throat. She walks right past him.
"Excuse me," he says.
"Are you having problems with the Plato?" she asks.
Atobe's cheeks feel hot. He laughs it off and waves his hand. A door slides open at the other end of the corridor. He stiffens and checks, but there's no one else in sight.
Her canvas runners squeak on the floor. Her sweat socks are bunched around her bony ankles. Atobe curls up his lip. Then, he remembers himself.
"So," he says, "do you like tennis?"
This stops her. Her books fall from her hands and crash onto the floor, scattering homework notes. Pages scatter. Atobe picks one up and reads it.
δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
"Sappho?" he asks.
She grabs the sheet from him. Stringy hair hangs in her eyes when she glares. The nearest classroom door slides open and several students stick their heads out. Atobe is alone in the hallway with the new, weird nerd from Nagoya. Oshitari raises his eyebrows. The other students start to snicker. Atobe's face is on fire. He snaps his fingers, but the whispering continues.
"What are you, a lesbian, or something?" he asks. Atobe stands up as tall as he can and looks down his nose. When Kikuchi-san stands up, she's at eye level and she smells like cheap soap, the sort someone might buy from a chain store like Matsumoto Kiyoshi.
Atobe shudders at the thought.
Kikuchi-san purses her lips. Dead skin flakes onto the pimples on her chin.
Gross! Atobe thinks. His pulse quickens.
"I hate tennis," she says. "It's boring." She walks down the hallway, away from him, and her shoes squeak so loud that Oshitari and his classmates collectively cringe.
Atobe backs up into a row of lockers. His chest stings.
***
He slugs balls across the net. They smash onto the purple pavement and leave large black scorches.
Atobe wipes sweat from his forehead. He can feel the beginnings of a pimple bumping to the surface. Atobe scowls. He mutters under his breath. "Sheisse…"
Oshitari asks, "Did you run into Tezuka recently?"
Atobe slams another ball. Mozart strains dance over the courts from the loud speakers. Atobe's skull throbs.
"Maybe it's girl problems," Mukahi says.
Atobe's mole twitches. He fumbles with a ball.
Oshitari laughs behind him. "Hn, don't be silly, Gakuto," he says. "Atobe doesn't like girls."
Atobe balls his fist. He throws the ball aside. It hits Shishido in the back of the head. Atobe yells, "Shut up, you stupid Neanderthal!"
Mukahi falls off the bench he was frog-sitting on. Oshitari keeps laughing. Atobe stomps off the courts. He stomps toward the club house. Under the gleaming marble column (imported from the Peloponnesus, how fitting), he walks straight into someone.
"Watch where you-"
She looks at him with cross-eyes. Atobe cringes. "He who submits to fate without complaint is wise," she says.
Atobe pretends to wipe off his t-shirt. It's dark with sweat anyway. He snorts.
"It's Euripides, in case you didn't know," she says. She turns heel with her canvas shoes and leaves Atobe to eat dust motes.
He assumed it was Plato.
***
Kikuchi Kikuko is the only girl in Greek class. That doesn't mean anything, Atobe reminds himself. Except that he can impress each and every other girl in his year with a line or two of Homer, delivered in the cafeteria in his perfect Attic pronunciation.
But, he's not in the mood.
Atobe lounges on his favourite couch in the student council room. He picks at his lunch. Roast beef from the cafeteria restaurant sticks between his teeth. The jellied pudding melts in its bowl. Atobe sighs.
His chest aches. He's listless and tired and wide awake all at once. Atobe dials Kabaji's cellphone. No answer. He sighs again. Atobe touches his forehead. It's clammy to the touch. He hisses at the sting from a pimple, which has yet to surface.
Gross…
The low breathing makes him sit up straight and whip his head around. Oshitari pushes his glasses up and smirks. He smells like mayonnaise and fried food. Cheap food from somewhere off-campus.
Just as gross…
"Atobe," he says.
"Go away," Atobe says. He waves his hand. Oshitari hovers.
So Atobe leaves.
The library isn't very busy at lunch. Girls whisper when Atobe descends the spiral staircase. He smiles-not at them, but it makes their whispering louder, excited. Jeweled light from the stained glass windows glides over the tops of bookcases.
Atobe's stomach tightens when he sees someone in the German section, hunched over a textbook. Hair hangs over her face and she's got the posture of an old man. Atobe clears his throat.
She looks at him. Her glasses hang off the end of her pointy nose.
Atobe looks around. There's no one else in the near vicinity. Still, his heart pounds and his palms are sweaty. He flips his hair back, but his throat is dry. He clears it again.
She blinks at him, myopic and indifferent.
And then, Atobe hears the low breathing. He stiffens. He panics. He grabs a book off the shelf and opens it, pretending to read. An eye starts back at him from the other side of the book shelf. The eye gleams and chuckles under its breath. The smell of mayonnaise is thick.
"Have you acquired a new friend?" Oshitari pokes his head around the end of the book shelf. He looks at Kikuchi-san. The crooked smile he flashes at Atobe makes Atobe feel sick.
Atobe snorts. "As if." As if *I* would be friends with someone like that! Atobe looks at her and shudders. Her acne looks redder than ever under the ruddy kaleidoscope sunshine.
Oshitari hums. His kansai-ben is thick and unintelligible as ever today. "Have you acquired a new skill?" he asks.
Atobe rolls his eyes.
Oshitari nods to Atobe's book. "Is that Goethe good?"
"Of course, you idiot," he says. He walks past Oshitari. His nose scrunches up from the stink cloying to Oshitari's uniform. Kikuchi-san doesn't pay attention to either of them.
Oshitari smiles. His grin spreads from ear to ear. "It must be even better upside-down."
***
One of the hounds paces outside the door. She whines. Her claws scratch the floor, then they clack as she resumes her pacing.
Atobe sips his drink. It's flat and tasteless. His face burned all through Greek class as Oshitari leered and laughed at him with a little smirk. His face burned all through German class when Oshitari asked-in garbled half-English, half-German, no less-if Atobe's favourite author was Goethe.
Atobe glares at the wall. He leans back against the edge of the bathtub. The bubbles in the tub remind him of acne. He pats down the lumpy bumps and they spill into the air.
Then, he drops his glass. It shatters on the floor.
"Sheisse," he says.
He dunks his head under the water's surface. Someone calls his name. The water muffles the sound. Atobe lifts his head. There is something ripe in the air.
"-I'll clean up Milly's accident in no time, Master Keigo," the maid's voice says on the other side of the doorway.
Atobe makes a face. In the reflection of the mirror, he looks like a frog. Atobe scowls even more.
***
Shishido invites them camping.
Being pragmatic, Atobe takes the opportunity to clear his mind. There's nothing that two nights in a Swiss-style chalet in Yamanashi won't do for a person. Atobe has the housekeeper pack his favourite pair of slippers and his silk pajamas. It is, after all, autumn, and the nights are getting cooler.
The chauffeur drops him off at the designated meeting point. The chauffeur drives off. Atobe waits. He checks his cellphone, but there is no signal. He looks around. There is nothing but the brilliant crimson of maple trees among the bushy pines. The air is filled with the scent of-
An insect buzzes around Atobe's head. He curls his lip. He tries to swat it, but it keeps flying around. This Swiss-style chalet must be in a very rustic location. Atobe hasn’t seen a single car pass by the highway.
He waits. And then he smells the stench of teenagers: sour sweat and cheap ramen noodles. Down the highway, he squints. Shishido shouts. Ohtori waves.
Ohtori? Atobe thinks. As far as he was told, this was a high schoolers only camping trip.
Everyone else has heavy backpacks strapped over their shoulders. Atobe stares at them. Jiroh stares back. Ohtori beams. Shishido's face is dripping with sweat. Beads splash onto the ground. Atobe steps back.
"Uh, we’re going camping," Shishido says.
Atobe lifts his chin. He raises his eyebrows. "Obviously."
Shishido looks at Oshitari, who looks at Gakuto, who starts to snicker.
"Heathens," Atobe mutters.
***
The tent is cold. And wet. And leans over into a ravine. Atobe shivers. He hugs his knees. The silk pajamas do nothing against the frigid temperatures. Ohtori offered his sleeping bag.
"It's okay, Atobe-senpai," he said, "I don't need it."
It smells like animals. Atobe shivers some more. Oshitari and Mukahi have flashlights out and a bag of popcorn. They crunch. They wave their flashlights and laugh. "Look, Gakuto," Oshitari drawls, "It's a parrot."
Atobe is too cold to roll his eyes. Oshitari makes stupid shadows with his hands. Mukahi moves and crawls over the bag of popcorn. Each crunching kernel makes Atobe cringe even more.
He is trapped here for thirty-six more hours.
Mukahi says, "Hey Yuushi, listen to this!"
The long, drawn-out fart is the most disgusting sound Atobe has ever heard. He gags. Oshitari claps. The tent door opens and Jiroh wanders inside, zipped into a sleeping bag like a large, blue nylon mummy.
"I can't sleep," he says. Oshitari shoves over into Atobe. Atobe's face is pressed to the side of the tent. It's cold and damp. He can't feel his toes. His slippers are satin and soaked through with sweat.
"Can't sleep?" Mukahi asks.
Jiroh yawns. "Ohtori and Shishido are too damn loud."
Atobe gags again.
Mukahi snickers. "Hey, who do you guys have crushes on?"
Atobe refuses to listen to this rabble. He closes his eyes and huddles. An insect buzzes in his ear. The weather is cold up in the mountains, but the frost hasn't set in yet and killed the bugs.
Damn.
***
"Hey Atobe," Mukahi says, "who do you have a crush on?"
Atobe shivers. His breath makes clouds in front of him. He whips himself out with as much dignity as he can muster. Being reduced to pissing in the woods makes his skin crawl.
"What are you talking about?" he says.
"You kept Jiroh up half the night," Mukahi says. "Poor guy."
"What are you talking about?" Atobe snaps.
"Dunno…" Mukahi says. He stretches his arms up over the back of his head. Ohtori and Shishido come out of their tent together. Ohtori beams when he says good morning to Atobe. Shishido has red bug bites all over his neck.
"Some chick named…Kukuko, maybe?" Mukahi says. He narrows his eyes and has the same creepy smile as Oshitari.
Atobe sucks in a breath. He says nothing. His eye twitches.
"The one you whacked off to all night," Mukahi adds.
Atobe's mouth hangs open.
By the fire, Oshitari squats and flips something over on the pan he has roasting. "Okonomiyaki?" he offers.
***
In the land of culture and civilization, Atobe phones Kabaji.
"I need your help," he says.
***
Girls fall at the feet of Atobe Keigo. Seas part and mountains rise.
Atobe enters the library. He descends the spiral staircase. He holds his head up high and smiles at the multitudes that turn his way. Atobe sets down the bag on the table and leans on a hand, palm-down on the desk.
"Guten tag," he says.
She looks up. Her eyes shift to the bag on the table, then back to her notes. Atobe pushes the bag closer.
"In my beneficence-as first year representative," he says, lest she get the wrong idea, "these are for you."
She takes the socks from the bag. Her brow furrows. Long stringy hair moves with her scalp. "You can keep them," she says.
Atobe sputters.
"By the way," she says. She sniffles and wipes her nose with a rumpled Kleenex from her pocket. Atobe is too busy staring, slack-jawed, to think about the grossness of that. "You have dog hairs on your blazer."
She picks an Afghan hair off his blazer. Her fingers brush against his arm. There is ink staining her fingertips, but it doesn't leave a mark on Atobe's shirt.
That doesn't explain the faint throb in his arm all through Greek.
***
His declivity is terrible.
Oshitari invites himself over one evening. He has a small paper bag in his hands. Atobe lies back on the pillows on his bed. He has a headache. He's had a headache since tennis this afternoon.
"What do you want?" he asks.
Oshitari deposits the paper bag onto Atobe's bed. It falls over when Atobe sits up. A box of acne medicine spills out.
Atobe looks at Oshitari. Oshitari looks at the painting on the wall, the Botticelli nude. He licks his lips.
"She says she doesn't want that," Oshitari says. "She also says that you should stop harassing her and focus on your schoolwork."
"She?" Atobe asks.
Oshitari drags his eyes from the painting. He looks at Atobe with a cocked eyebrow, as though Atobe were stupid. Or naïve. Which he most certainly is neither.
"So I took the liberty of leaving some Shakespeare in her locker," Oshitari says. "Girls like that."
***
Two days later, Oshitari invites himself over for a second time. He has an envelope in his hands. It's stained with mayonnaise.
Atobe says, "Go away, cretin."
Oshitari says, "This is for you." He sets the envelope down on Atobe's bed. Atobe curls his lip. Oshitari walks around his bedroom and touches everything, including the Persian cat curled up on the settee.
Atobe opens the envelope. He wipes his hands off with his Burberry handkerchief. "Noli me perturbare?" he says.
"It's all Greek to me," Oshitari says. He pushes his glasses up. He touches Atobe's clear folder of homework. Oshitari pulls a sheet out and says, "Marked by Kikuchi Ki-"
Atobe leaps over the settee and lands on top of Oshitari. He wrestles. Oshitari squirms. His glasses are crooked and Atobe's head hurts when he bonks it against the settee leg. The cat slinks off. "Give that to me!" Atobe snaps.
Oshitari looks at him. He ought to look foolish with his glasses bent, but instead, Atobe flushes.
"Are you saving your homework that she marked in class?" Oshitari laughs.
Atobe scowls. "Shut up."
"Hn, you're a bit of a romantic, too," Oshitari says.
Atobe rolls his eyes. The flush creeps down his neck. He's sweating under his satin robe. Oshitari takes his glasses off and sets them on Atobe's desk.
"It's Latin, actually," Atobe says.
Oshitari keeps laughing at him. "Did you know her father owns a fake designer goods factory?"
***
Atobe tucks the homework sheet under his pillow. Her handwriting is blocky and small. He rubs his face in his pillowcase and sees her face. She frowns at him. Without the pizza face, she might be all-right looking.
He dreams that he's prancing through a field of flowers. It's autumn, so they are death flowers, of course, red puffs that cling to his pants. Atobe spins around. He snaps his fingers and the heavens open in a blaze of warm sunlight that streams down onto him.
Atobe looks up. Across the field, he can see her, hunched over and sullen. She doesn't look at him when he walks up to her. His heart flutters like the breeze over the meadow.
"Will you come to Athens with me?" Atobe asks, in perfect Greek.
Socrates would be proud.
"Will you walk under the Acropolis by my side?" Atobe asks. He offers his arm, the perfect gentleman, and he looks down his nose with a smirk.
"I have homework to do," she says.
Atobe wakes up. He removes his hand from his pajama pants and looks down. He groans. He slaps his hand to his forehead and groans again when he realizes what the stickiness between his fingers is.
***
"What the hell are you doing now?" Shishido asks.
Mukahi whizzes by on a skateboard. Oshitari clings to his waist. Atobe sniffs.
"Dude, are those Yuushi's glasses?" Mukahi asks.
"Of course not," Atobe says.
Oshitari winks at Atobe.
***
She's in the library. She's hunched over her Greek homework-two weeks ahead. Atobe is impressed. His chest feels weird and tight. The sweater-vest makes his skin itch. The wool must be poor quality.
He clears his throat.
She reaches for her pencil case. Atobe bites his lip. It's covered in Louis Vuitton print, but the pull says Luois Button instead. Atobe's eye twitches. His skin itches more. He scratches his neck and the glasses slide down his nose.
"I could buy you real Louis Vuitton, you know," Atobe says. The narrow look she gives him makes Atobe swallow. His voice nearly cracks. His palms are so sweaty that they slide off the edge of the table.
"I don't like brand names," she says.
"Me neither," Atobe says, awfully quickly.
She looks at his shoes. Then she raises her eyebrows. Her glasses slip down her nose, too. She looks a bit horsey.
"I have homework to do," she says.
Atobe's pants feel tight. He gathers his dignity and stomps off. Oshitari is three bookshelves away. He has his hands on a girl's chest and a stupid smile on his face.
"Sorry about that," he drawls. The girl covers her mouth to giggle. "I can't see very well right now," Oshitari adds.
Atobe throws the glasses at him.
***
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe slams a tennis ball over the net. It skims the top. Jiroh starts to clap.
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe slugs a ball across the court. It smashes into the net pole with a ping. Jiroh gasps. The ball makes a perfect vertical parabola.
Atobe rubs his hands together. His knuckles are white. He can see his breath and he can't feel the tips of his ears.
"Hey Atobe," Jiroh says.
Atobe glares at him.
Jiroh has a sly smirk. "You wanna come over and watch some hot movies with Gakuto and me?"
Atobe says "Yeah right."
He's ready to throw a ball up for another serve when Jiroh slinks closer.
"We’re gonna rent Revenge of the Sex-Deprived Sensei," Jiroh says. "The chick is really hot and has glasses. You'd like it."
The ball drops to the ground.
***
Atobe is fully and utterly ashamed the moment he steps into the video rental store. He hides under his sunglasses and behind his scarf. Jiroh and Gakuto have no shame as they openly snicker and grab the DVD title from the shelf.
Atobe slinks down another aisle. His eyes go wide as he reads the titles. Atobe picks up one with a megane nerd girl on the cover. She has massive tits and her mouth is thrown open. Sexy Secretary: Back-door Documents. He turns tail and walks straight into someone else. His sunglasses slide across the floor. Atobe lifts his head and she is staring at him.
His heart pounds against his ribs. His thick coat does nothing to muffle it. She looks down at the DVD in his hand.
"This is not mine," Atobe says.
Her mouth is wide open and her hair is thrown back over her forehead.
Atobe's mouth is dry. Especially since her glasses fell off, too, and she's staring at him with black, close-set eyes, as though she can see into his soul and his heart and his True Form and-
"Hey Atobe!" Jiroh calls. "We got Sex-Deprived Sensei and the sequel!" He grins in his gormless way.
She walks away. Her cheap sneakers squeak.
Atobe says, "Scheisse."
***
His woe is deep.
Atobe phones Kabaji.
"Munehiro is out," his mom says. "He has a date with a girl from the model ship club."
Atobe sighs.
One of the Afghans howls somewhere in the belly of the house. The Persian stretches on the end of Atobe's bed. She leaves a trail of long, white hairs that cling to his pillows.
It is a waning moon outside. The street courts will be closed. Tezuka is in Germany-bastard!-and there's no one else around worthy of playing. Atobe drums his fingers on the BMW door. He's a lost soul. Her spurning twists the dagger in his chest each time she inflects in Greek or compounds words in German.
Atobe is surrounded by plebians who mock his plight. It would be easy to walk into the school cafeteria and smile at one of the girls who bats eyelashes his way. But she would not speak German. She would not read Greek in that rhythmic lilt that makes his heart pitter-patter. She would not turn away from him as though she really, truly doesn't care.
Woe is Atobe.
The driver drives around until Atobe says stop. Ginza is a multicoloured murkiness of half-lights. Atobe wanders. The department stores are lit up with displays of diamonds and Siberian furs, Cristal and Prada-real brands.
White-gloved porters open doors for him. Atobe takes the elevator two flights to the clothing floor. He walks through the racks of underpants and sighs. His shoulders slump. The smell of fried food drifts up from the basement. Atobe thinks of Oshitari and sighs again. His stomach rumbles.
There is a display of sweat socks under a neon sign advertising a sale. Atobe's breath catches. His own socks slip down around his ankles.
"Atobe."
Atobe stands up straight.
"Oh," he says, "it's you."
Sanada scowls.
Atobe looks down at the bag of sweat socks in Sanada's hands. He grabs it. "Store brand socks?" he asks.
Sanada says nothing.
"How lame," Atobe says. He sneers. Sanada says whatever and grabs another bag of socks.
"Atobe-kun?"
The sound is melodious over the repetitive jingle playing on the store PA. Sanada looks. Atobe is nearly transported to another realm of Pure Forms. There is Pure Atobe, who is perfect, and there is Pure Kikuchi-san, who is likewise just as perfect and they are studying together, in the library, writing notes in German and laughing over Goethe and Shakespeare, first editions that Pure Atobe buys because they, too, are Pure Forms and-
"Are you buying socks?" she asks. She looks at Sanada, but ignores his hulking mass. Sanada smirks at Atobe and flips his cellphone open as he walks away.
"Er…" Atobe says.
"Those are my favourite brand," she says. Her Nagoya accent is thick. "It's my favourite philosopher."
"Er…" Atobe says. His loins quiver.
She keeps looking at him with cross-eyes. Under the greenish fluorescent store lights, her skin looks less red. She has her school uniform on. She probably came from cram school. Her knobby knees knock and her socks hang down around her canvas shoes.
"I was buying them for you," Atobe says. He might be suave, except for the fact the bag of socks slips from his clammy hands.
She picks it up and their fingers brush. Kikuchi says, "Θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ' ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων, φρουρᾶς ἐτείας μῆκος, ἣν κοιμώμενος στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν ἄγκαθεν..."
And Atobe says, "κυνὸς δίκην, ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν."
Atobe looks down at the bag of socks.
The label says SOCKrates.
So maybe it's not the French Riveria and there is no turquoise water and Niçoise salads. There isn't any tennis and Atobe can't speak much French, anyway. There isn't even a private villa with rustic olive groves in the distance.
He's standing in a department store under lights that turn his stomach. He's holding a package of cheap sweat socks and Sanada's behind him. The department store smells like a combination of plastic and fried food and the store jingle loops around again.
This isn’t what Atobe expected at all.
But he doesn't expect Kikuchi-san to hold out her fake Louis Vuitton school bag and say, "You can hold this for me."
"Okay," Atobe says.
"I have homework to do," she says.
"Okay," Atobe says.
A little voice shouts "ηὕρηκα!" in the back of his mind. It sounds suspiciously like Oshitari.
They leave the department store, glowing above them, and walk into the basement depachika. Atobe holds the fake Louis Vuitton in one hand. He holds her hand in the other, and he holds his head up high.
One word frees us
Of all the weight and pain in life,
That word is Love
-Socrates