FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 8/63
Title: Rewind Forward (8/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
The Nationals might consume the conscience of the regulars, but Niou doesn’t forget about other things. Other things named Yagyuu Hiroshi.
The following Thursday it rains all day. It rains a lot of days in the summer, but it usually lets up for part of the afternoon or rains only intermittently during the morning. It rains right through morning classes. It rains through lunch and Niou eats his cold rice and leftover chicken in a stair well because the roof isn’t sheltered. It rains the entire afternoon, drizzling down the windows of the chemistry lab as Niou titrates acid into a weak base solution that turns a bright pink.
It rains when Niou dashes between the school and the tennis clubhouse, holding his homework notes above his head because he left his umbrella in his tennis locker. The sky is so dark that the sun might as well have set. Niou waits inside the entrance, along with the regulars and the dozens and dozens of other students on the team.
Nishiki runs inside, dripping wet. His blazer is soaked and his hair is plastered to his forehead. “Practice is cancelled,” he announces.
“What?” the three monsters shout, all in unison.
Niou looks across the room. Jackal catches his eye and he rolls his own. Niou snickers.
“Can’t we use one of the gyms?” Yukimura asks.
Nishiki shakes his head. “Basketball team has the one booked and the volleyball team is in the other.”
“What about the high school gyms?” Sanada presses.
Nishiki shakes his head again. “Both in use. I asked.”
“The elementary school gym?” Yanagi asks.
Nishiki sighs and keeps shaking his head. “Look, I asked about those, too. And there’s the after school program there. Practice is cancelled. We’re not going to shrivel up and die if we take the night off.”
The look on Yukimura’s face says otherwise. Niou can see his eyes shining with unshed tears and his lip quivers. He sniffs, grabs Yanagi and Sanada by the arms, and marches out of the clubhouse.
Niou’s own school uniform is soaked, sticking uncomfortably wet to his skin. Because he needs his umbrella anyway, he hangs around until Nishiki unlocks the regulars’ changing room for him. Niou fishes his umbrella out of his locker, peels off his school uniform, and changes into his shorts and t-shirt before putting his jacket on too.
Nishiki locks the door behind Niou. “Huh,” he says, staring outside the window.
The sky has cleared. The sun peaks through clouds that swish across the sky streaks of purple and grey. Niou swings the door open. It drips water onto him, but he shakes his hair out.
The courts glimmer with water droplets. Everything smells thick of nitrates and worms and wet earth. Niou shrugs.
It is the first tennis practice off in months. Niou can’t help but grin. The courts are empty. Nishiki doesn’t even bother to practice a few swings. His figure disappears out towards the campus gates, near the bus stops.
Niou could do the same.
Or he could play tennis.
Or even better. Niou slings his tennis bag over his left shoulder and walks across the campus grounds. He has no idea where to go, but wandering past the wide running track he can see balls flying overhead, arcing across the myriad sky.
“Perfect,” he whispers.
The golf club occupies a stretch of green grass near the east side of the school, where a ridge looks out over the track. All of the team members wear yellow t-shirts and olive pants and Niou thinks the whole lot of them look like dorks.
But he looks for a specific megane dork. To see if Yagyuu Hiroshi actually is just as dorky as he seems.
As soon as Yagyuu spots a glint of glasses and a bland looking expression, the side-parted hair perfectly combed over, he laughs under his breath. “Fucking megane dork.”
Niou lurks behind a tree, watching as rounds of golfers take turns hitting balls from the ridge across the grass. They pull their clubs back, then swing, all with calculated, precise motions, slow and steady. Niou yawns. How dull.
“Yagyuu-senpai,” one of the golfers calls as he walks by, pulling his golfbag behind him, “Good work!”
Yagyuu doesn’t seem to listen to his kouhai much. He looks out across the field, out across the orange sky and the fluffy pink clouds swimming across above them. The sun hangs low on the horizon. Yagyuu shields his eyes, takes one last look, then brings his golfclub down to the tee. Yagyuu makes a couple swings, practice for his shot.
Almost like tennis, in a way.
Niou pushes himself off the tree trunk and starts to walk over, his hands in his pockets and a small smirk on his face. “Yagyuu Hiroshi,” he says, making sure his voice is loud and clear.
Yagyuu blinks. His lenses flash. His club drops and he looks over.
Niou steps across a patch of wet grass. The toes of his sneakers are damp. “That’s your name, right?” he adds, when Yagyuu continues to stare at him with a blank, bland expression.
Yagyuu keeps looking at him, with dark eyes boring into Niou’s. Niou’s hands feel damp and warm in his pockets. He turns them over and wipes his palms along the inside lining.
“Yes,” he says after a long pause. “What do you want?”
Niou clicks his tongue. “Do you skip golf practice often?” he asks.
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up his nose. A defense mechanism, shielding himself behind his lenses. “Do you skip tennis practice often?” he asks.
Niou can play this game. He wants to grin from ear to ear, but he bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself. “It was cancelled,” he says, sighing dramatically.
Yagyuu makes a noise like a grunt. “I see,” he looks back down at his club, then says, “Excuse me.”
“No,” Niou says.
Yagyuu blinks. “Pardon me?”
Such a gentleman! Such manners! Niou wants to rub his hands together with glee. Yagyuu Hiroshi is even stuffier than his own family! Yagyuu tries to ignore Niou’s presence as he swings his golfclub back, but mid-swing, Yagyuu pauses.
“Do you mind watching me?” he asks. “It is very distracting.”
“Not at all,” Niou says. He brushes alongside a hedge and starts to pull leaves off the branches, shredding them up and tossing them to the ground. The ground is studded with small holes, all leftover from golf tees.
“If you like tennis so much, why’d you join the golf club?” Niou asks.
Yagyuu’s eye twitches. He’s irritated. Niou is thrilled.
“I enjoy golf,” Yagyuu says.
“That’s not what I asked,” Niou says. “You were at the Regionals.”
Yagyuu’s back goes stiff and if it were possible, he stands up straighter than even Sanada could ever manage. “Come with me,” Niou says. Not until the words hang in the air, awkward between the two of them, does Niou realize what he’s just said. His face feels warm. He tries to ignore that, but when Yagyuu says “Fine”, everything feels even warmer.
At this time of day, the tennis courts have a sort of aura of beauty to them, empty and forlorn in some ways, but comforting and familiar and homely in other ways. Niou falls into step with Yagyuu, who walks tentatively across the soggy clay.
Yagyuu carries his golfclubs. Niou carries his tennis bag. They stop at a metal post of one of the nets. Yagyuu looks at him. “I don’t know if I want to join the tennis club or not,” he says.
Niou turns, with a soft sigh on his lips. “Just take a look,” he says. “Maybe our courts are a lot smaller than the golf greens you dorks use, but it feels big during a game.” Niou thinks about it for a moment, closing his eyes and channeling the feeling of play in his thoughts. He can smell the rubber and the sweat. He can hear the cheers of crowds and the swish of pompoms of cheerleaders. He can see clear across the net, to imaginary players, maybe wearing Hyoutei uniforms, maybe in Yamabuki green. They are so far away, standing at the baseline, waiting to start.
“It feels incredibly big,” he admits. “And you can run and run and run, but you can’t always catch up to the ball. This is my battleground.”
“Battleground?” Yagyuu echoes. “Isn’t that a big dramatic?”
Niou snorts. “I play with Sanada and Yukimura. You can’t tell me those two don’t have some sort of samurai blood in them.”
“Don’t golf dorks have any fighting spirit?” Niou asks. He looks out the corner of his eye at Yagyuu, whose bland expression flickers.
Yagyuu frowns for a millisecond. Enough time for Niou to see it. Barely.
“When it comes to spirit, it doesn’t matter if it’s golf or tennis,” Yagyuu snaps, his voice rising. Then it falls back to his dulcet tones. Maybe his voice is changing, too, still. Maybe he’s just angry, either way, he adds, “Or are you implying that I don’t have any at all?”
Niou laughs. “I don’t know. You’re the one who keeps dropping out before you test it out in tennis.”
“I don’t want to hear anymore about this!” Yagyuu shouts. Before Niou can open his mouth to reply, Yagyuu stomps off, his golf shoes squelching mud and clay in their path across the court.
Niou stands in the same place until the sun has set. Yagyuu’s words echo in his mind, the tone of his voice rising, angry, irritated.
But he sounded intrigued, too. Niou shakes his head at the thought, but he can’t shake it from his mind.
On Monday morning, Yagyuu Hiroshi shows up at the tennis clubhouse.
***
“He’s your responsibility,” Yukimura says.
Niou looks at Yagyuu, who holds a folded uniform in his hands, courtesy of Nishiki-buchou. Then he looks back at Yukimura. “I didn’t bring him here,” he says.
“No one else invited him!” Yukimura says, his voice rising to a crack. He clears his throat, his face not even pink.
Yagyuu just looks at Niou, his eyes narrowing so slightly that no one else seems to notice. You convinced me, he seems to accuse Niou. It’s your fault.
“Can you even play?” Yukimura asks. He looks down his nose at Yagyuu, but Yagyuu is a bit taller, so really, Yukimura just looks up at him like an angry little freshman would.
“Yes,” Yagyuu says.
“You can practice with him,” Yukimura tells Niou. “Look, he can barely hold his racket, Sanada.”
Sanada grunts. “I saw him play in gym. He’s not bad.”
“Good enough for the team?” Yanagi asks, smiling at Yukimura and Sanada.
“He’s pretty good.” The regulars all whip their heads around. Jackal stands in the doorway to the clubhouse, checking his watch and frowning. He nods at Yagyuu. Yagyuu nods back.
“Really Yagyuu-senpai?” Kirihara starts. Niou glances down at him. Kirihara throws himself up from the bench where he had been tying his shoelaces.
“You know him? Niou asks.
“I tutor Kirihara-kun in English,” Yagyuu says. He adjusts his glasses and shifts his grip on his racket handle. Niou would think Yagyuu is nervous, except his voice is even and calm and his expression even moreso.
“And Literature, too,” Kirihara adds. “And we played a few times after, remember? Yukimura-buchou, he could be really good.”
Yukimura’s chest puffs up at the compliment. Nishiki’s deflates. “Hey!” he snaps, smacking Kirihara on the side of the head. Kirihara yelps, rubbing his ear and muttering that he didn’t do anything.
“He’s still your responsibility, Niou. We don’t accept members in the middle of the season, even just in the club.” Yukimura sniffs. Sanada hands Yukimura his racket. Yanagi walks off with his clipboard and the three of them leave, making for the regulars’ courts to practice.
Niou scuffs his shoe on the side of the clubhouse, kicking off a chunk of mud from his sneaker sole. He shoves his hands into his pockets. The Nationals start in three days and now he’s stuck with Yagyuu, who probably can’t play that well and why can’t he just practice with the freshmen and learn how to play with them?
“Yukimura’s an ass,” he mutters.
Nishiki laughs. He heard Niou. Niou frowns even more.
“Niou, just go practice with those three on the regulars courts. Yagyuu, go with Jackal and Marui. You’ll get on with them,” Nishiki says.
Marui stretches as he walks up beside Jackal and sends Niou a glower. He picks the front of his teeth, licking his lips.
“This one work?” Jackal asks.
“Not sure yet,” Marui says. “I think I underbaked it last night, but the chocolate protein bars added a good taste.”
Niou doesn’t even want to know what the hell Marui is talking about.
“Have fun with that loser,” he tells Yagyuu.
“Fuck you!” Marui shouts, but Niou just ignores him as he shuts the gate to the regulars’ courts behind himself, smiling when the latch clicks, the sound of separation from the masses, and from that fatty twit, Marui.
Niou doesn’t watch Yagyuu play, not Monday, not Tuesday, not Wednesday. Like the rest of the regulars, his priority is the Nationals. And his sloppy form. Niou doesn’t want to change it. It works on the court. It works in practice. Nishiki-buchou doesn’t correct it, the coach doesn’t correct it, but Yukimura doesn’t stop bitching about it.
“Stand up straight!” he’ll shriek. “Eyes on the other court. Do NOT let your eyes leave the ball, Niou, I don’t care if Sanada picks his nose before he serves or not!”
“I don’t pick my nose before I serve,” Sanada grumbles.
Yanagi chuckles under his breath. “You did once last week, Genichirou.”
“And twice yesterday,” Niou adds.
“Do you count those things, Niou-senpai?” Kirihara asks.
Niou smiles at him. Sometimes there are things Kirihara doesn’t need to know. Like how Niou might be able to gain an advantage over anyone, over Sanada, over Kirihara himself. Kirihara always licks his lips before he attacks. It took Niou two shots to determine that. Kirihara wears his game like he wears his emotions on his face.
Niou practices from sun-up until sun-down. He watches the sun rise as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom, before anyone else in his family is awake. He watches the sun set, purple and orange streaks over a greenish smog to the Tokyo east, as he rides the bus home. He doesn’t sleep much. He plays tennis. He hits balls. He dreams of serving and he’ll wake up with his hands clutching a pillow, ready to hurl it across the room.
He has to think tennis. He has to play it.
Niou wants to play at the biggest games of the year. He might joke around and put worms in Sanada’s sneakers when he can, but he can be serious, too, when he wants to be. All he has to do is channel his parents, those boring, dorky meganes, who act just like Yagyuu.
Yagyuu, for his part, seems to take to Marui and Jackal, forming an unofficial, loose sort of trinity, like Yanagi, Yukimura and Sanada. Niou watches them enter the changing rooms talking together. He watches them leave, still talking. He watches them walk to the bus stop, steps in unison, with Marui bouncing ahead of them, his cheeks stuffed with that sweetly revolting-smelling apple bubble gum.
Pop!
“That was a cool serve you did today, Yagyuu,” Marui says.
Pop!
Niou can feel his eye twitch.
“I worked on it last night with Jackal-kun,” Yagyuu says. Niou can almost hear him fix his glasses.
Pop!
“Hey, you guys wanna come over and try my latest thing? It’s part of my plan,” Marui says.
Pop!
Niou wants to pop one of those damn bubbles in Marui’s bloated face.
“Niou-senpai, why are you shaking that bench?” Kirihara asks him, popping up from behind Niou.
Niou lets go of the bench. He looks down and he can see marks where his fingernails pressed half-moons into the wood. And there are splinters pricking the skin of his fingertips, biting and sharp.
He bites his nails down to the quick in bed that night. His fingers bleed, naked and raw, and it hurts to wash his hands and hold his racket come morning. Yanagi hands him a ziploc bag full of bandaids in the afternoon as they change for practice.
“These might help for tomorrow,” he says.
Niou takes the bag. “As if I could forget.”
***
Niou doesn’t forget. He sets his alarm, 5:30am wake-up, three times, double-checking the volume as his sister bangs on his door. “Turn that down! I’m trying to do my homework, Masaharu!”
Niou checks the volume one more time, pleased with the blaring radio static blurs out the sound of his sister’s continued yelling.
“Here, all clean,” his mother says when she pushes through his doorway, handing Niou his uniform. When her back is turned, Niou brings it to his nose and breathes in deep the smell of laundry detergent, not sweat, and of dryer sheets, not dirt.
He packs his tennisbag full of waterbottles and sportsades, a new pack of griptape and a spare canister of balls. His father gives him a two thousand yen note, which Niou tucks into a pocket inside his tennisbag.
And then, at ten, despite his heavy-handed yawning, Niou locks the bathroom door and opens a fresh box of hair dye. His scalp is raw and peeling behind his ears where he has scratched it. It burns when it touches his skin. He hisses and cringes, squeezes his eyes shut to keep the tears from coming.
And in the end, he walks out of the bathroom with his hair wrapped up in a towel, bleached white and fresh.
“Now it stinks in there,” his brother complains. “I wanted to go to the bathroom.”
“So take a piss,” Niou says, waving him in.
“Don’t use that language,” his mother calls from downstairs. “Please, Masaharu.”
His bed beckons. Niou doesn’t bother to say something back to his mother or brother, because he knows he needs his sleep. He drags his feet to and from school each day, through practice and he keeps up, but the Nationals…the feeling is something Niou doesn’t know how to quantify it. It presses his chest. It twists his stomach. The more he thinks about tomorrow, about what will dawn with the light, the more his mind races and worries.
He’d been cocky in practice, but had it been enough? Is he good enough for the Nationals? For the finals?
Is Rikkai Dai?
Is this what drives Yukimura- the fear of imperfection, or the drive for perfection?
Niou falls asleep with the word “both” floating on his lips.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
The Nationals might consume the conscience of the regulars, but Niou doesn’t forget about other things. Other things named Yagyuu Hiroshi.
The following Thursday it rains all day. It rains a lot of days in the summer, but it usually lets up for part of the afternoon or rains only intermittently during the morning. It rains right through morning classes. It rains through lunch and Niou eats his cold rice and leftover chicken in a stair well because the roof isn’t sheltered. It rains the entire afternoon, drizzling down the windows of the chemistry lab as Niou titrates acid into a weak base solution that turns a bright pink.
It rains when Niou dashes between the school and the tennis clubhouse, holding his homework notes above his head because he left his umbrella in his tennis locker. The sky is so dark that the sun might as well have set. Niou waits inside the entrance, along with the regulars and the dozens and dozens of other students on the team.
Nishiki runs inside, dripping wet. His blazer is soaked and his hair is plastered to his forehead. “Practice is cancelled,” he announces.
“What?” the three monsters shout, all in unison.
Niou looks across the room. Jackal catches his eye and he rolls his own. Niou snickers.
“Can’t we use one of the gyms?” Yukimura asks.
Nishiki shakes his head. “Basketball team has the one booked and the volleyball team is in the other.”
“What about the high school gyms?” Sanada presses.
Nishiki shakes his head again. “Both in use. I asked.”
“The elementary school gym?” Yanagi asks.
Nishiki sighs and keeps shaking his head. “Look, I asked about those, too. And there’s the after school program there. Practice is cancelled. We’re not going to shrivel up and die if we take the night off.”
The look on Yukimura’s face says otherwise. Niou can see his eyes shining with unshed tears and his lip quivers. He sniffs, grabs Yanagi and Sanada by the arms, and marches out of the clubhouse.
Niou’s own school uniform is soaked, sticking uncomfortably wet to his skin. Because he needs his umbrella anyway, he hangs around until Nishiki unlocks the regulars’ changing room for him. Niou fishes his umbrella out of his locker, peels off his school uniform, and changes into his shorts and t-shirt before putting his jacket on too.
Nishiki locks the door behind Niou. “Huh,” he says, staring outside the window.
The sky has cleared. The sun peaks through clouds that swish across the sky streaks of purple and grey. Niou swings the door open. It drips water onto him, but he shakes his hair out.
The courts glimmer with water droplets. Everything smells thick of nitrates and worms and wet earth. Niou shrugs.
It is the first tennis practice off in months. Niou can’t help but grin. The courts are empty. Nishiki doesn’t even bother to practice a few swings. His figure disappears out towards the campus gates, near the bus stops.
Niou could do the same.
Or he could play tennis.
Or even better. Niou slings his tennis bag over his left shoulder and walks across the campus grounds. He has no idea where to go, but wandering past the wide running track he can see balls flying overhead, arcing across the myriad sky.
“Perfect,” he whispers.
The golf club occupies a stretch of green grass near the east side of the school, where a ridge looks out over the track. All of the team members wear yellow t-shirts and olive pants and Niou thinks the whole lot of them look like dorks.
But he looks for a specific megane dork. To see if Yagyuu Hiroshi actually is just as dorky as he seems.
As soon as Yagyuu spots a glint of glasses and a bland looking expression, the side-parted hair perfectly combed over, he laughs under his breath. “Fucking megane dork.”
Niou lurks behind a tree, watching as rounds of golfers take turns hitting balls from the ridge across the grass. They pull their clubs back, then swing, all with calculated, precise motions, slow and steady. Niou yawns. How dull.
“Yagyuu-senpai,” one of the golfers calls as he walks by, pulling his golfbag behind him, “Good work!”
Yagyuu doesn’t seem to listen to his kouhai much. He looks out across the field, out across the orange sky and the fluffy pink clouds swimming across above them. The sun hangs low on the horizon. Yagyuu shields his eyes, takes one last look, then brings his golfclub down to the tee. Yagyuu makes a couple swings, practice for his shot.
Almost like tennis, in a way.
Niou pushes himself off the tree trunk and starts to walk over, his hands in his pockets and a small smirk on his face. “Yagyuu Hiroshi,” he says, making sure his voice is loud and clear.
Yagyuu blinks. His lenses flash. His club drops and he looks over.
Niou steps across a patch of wet grass. The toes of his sneakers are damp. “That’s your name, right?” he adds, when Yagyuu continues to stare at him with a blank, bland expression.
Yagyuu keeps looking at him, with dark eyes boring into Niou’s. Niou’s hands feel damp and warm in his pockets. He turns them over and wipes his palms along the inside lining.
“Yes,” he says after a long pause. “What do you want?”
Niou clicks his tongue. “Do you skip golf practice often?” he asks.
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up his nose. A defense mechanism, shielding himself behind his lenses. “Do you skip tennis practice often?” he asks.
Niou can play this game. He wants to grin from ear to ear, but he bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself. “It was cancelled,” he says, sighing dramatically.
Yagyuu makes a noise like a grunt. “I see,” he looks back down at his club, then says, “Excuse me.”
“No,” Niou says.
Yagyuu blinks. “Pardon me?”
Such a gentleman! Such manners! Niou wants to rub his hands together with glee. Yagyuu Hiroshi is even stuffier than his own family! Yagyuu tries to ignore Niou’s presence as he swings his golfclub back, but mid-swing, Yagyuu pauses.
“Do you mind watching me?” he asks. “It is very distracting.”
“Not at all,” Niou says. He brushes alongside a hedge and starts to pull leaves off the branches, shredding them up and tossing them to the ground. The ground is studded with small holes, all leftover from golf tees.
“If you like tennis so much, why’d you join the golf club?” Niou asks.
Yagyuu’s eye twitches. He’s irritated. Niou is thrilled.
“I enjoy golf,” Yagyuu says.
“That’s not what I asked,” Niou says. “You were at the Regionals.”
Yagyuu’s back goes stiff and if it were possible, he stands up straighter than even Sanada could ever manage. “Come with me,” Niou says. Not until the words hang in the air, awkward between the two of them, does Niou realize what he’s just said. His face feels warm. He tries to ignore that, but when Yagyuu says “Fine”, everything feels even warmer.
At this time of day, the tennis courts have a sort of aura of beauty to them, empty and forlorn in some ways, but comforting and familiar and homely in other ways. Niou falls into step with Yagyuu, who walks tentatively across the soggy clay.
Yagyuu carries his golfclubs. Niou carries his tennis bag. They stop at a metal post of one of the nets. Yagyuu looks at him. “I don’t know if I want to join the tennis club or not,” he says.
Niou turns, with a soft sigh on his lips. “Just take a look,” he says. “Maybe our courts are a lot smaller than the golf greens you dorks use, but it feels big during a game.” Niou thinks about it for a moment, closing his eyes and channeling the feeling of play in his thoughts. He can smell the rubber and the sweat. He can hear the cheers of crowds and the swish of pompoms of cheerleaders. He can see clear across the net, to imaginary players, maybe wearing Hyoutei uniforms, maybe in Yamabuki green. They are so far away, standing at the baseline, waiting to start.
“It feels incredibly big,” he admits. “And you can run and run and run, but you can’t always catch up to the ball. This is my battleground.”
“Battleground?” Yagyuu echoes. “Isn’t that a big dramatic?”
Niou snorts. “I play with Sanada and Yukimura. You can’t tell me those two don’t have some sort of samurai blood in them.”
“Don’t golf dorks have any fighting spirit?” Niou asks. He looks out the corner of his eye at Yagyuu, whose bland expression flickers.
Yagyuu frowns for a millisecond. Enough time for Niou to see it. Barely.
“When it comes to spirit, it doesn’t matter if it’s golf or tennis,” Yagyuu snaps, his voice rising. Then it falls back to his dulcet tones. Maybe his voice is changing, too, still. Maybe he’s just angry, either way, he adds, “Or are you implying that I don’t have any at all?”
Niou laughs. “I don’t know. You’re the one who keeps dropping out before you test it out in tennis.”
“I don’t want to hear anymore about this!” Yagyuu shouts. Before Niou can open his mouth to reply, Yagyuu stomps off, his golf shoes squelching mud and clay in their path across the court.
Niou stands in the same place until the sun has set. Yagyuu’s words echo in his mind, the tone of his voice rising, angry, irritated.
But he sounded intrigued, too. Niou shakes his head at the thought, but he can’t shake it from his mind.
On Monday morning, Yagyuu Hiroshi shows up at the tennis clubhouse.
***
“He’s your responsibility,” Yukimura says.
Niou looks at Yagyuu, who holds a folded uniform in his hands, courtesy of Nishiki-buchou. Then he looks back at Yukimura. “I didn’t bring him here,” he says.
“No one else invited him!” Yukimura says, his voice rising to a crack. He clears his throat, his face not even pink.
Yagyuu just looks at Niou, his eyes narrowing so slightly that no one else seems to notice. You convinced me, he seems to accuse Niou. It’s your fault.
“Can you even play?” Yukimura asks. He looks down his nose at Yagyuu, but Yagyuu is a bit taller, so really, Yukimura just looks up at him like an angry little freshman would.
“Yes,” Yagyuu says.
“You can practice with him,” Yukimura tells Niou. “Look, he can barely hold his racket, Sanada.”
Sanada grunts. “I saw him play in gym. He’s not bad.”
“Good enough for the team?” Yanagi asks, smiling at Yukimura and Sanada.
“He’s pretty good.” The regulars all whip their heads around. Jackal stands in the doorway to the clubhouse, checking his watch and frowning. He nods at Yagyuu. Yagyuu nods back.
“Really Yagyuu-senpai?” Kirihara starts. Niou glances down at him. Kirihara throws himself up from the bench where he had been tying his shoelaces.
“You know him? Niou asks.
“I tutor Kirihara-kun in English,” Yagyuu says. He adjusts his glasses and shifts his grip on his racket handle. Niou would think Yagyuu is nervous, except his voice is even and calm and his expression even moreso.
“And Literature, too,” Kirihara adds. “And we played a few times after, remember? Yukimura-buchou, he could be really good.”
Yukimura’s chest puffs up at the compliment. Nishiki’s deflates. “Hey!” he snaps, smacking Kirihara on the side of the head. Kirihara yelps, rubbing his ear and muttering that he didn’t do anything.
“He’s still your responsibility, Niou. We don’t accept members in the middle of the season, even just in the club.” Yukimura sniffs. Sanada hands Yukimura his racket. Yanagi walks off with his clipboard and the three of them leave, making for the regulars’ courts to practice.
Niou scuffs his shoe on the side of the clubhouse, kicking off a chunk of mud from his sneaker sole. He shoves his hands into his pockets. The Nationals start in three days and now he’s stuck with Yagyuu, who probably can’t play that well and why can’t he just practice with the freshmen and learn how to play with them?
“Yukimura’s an ass,” he mutters.
Nishiki laughs. He heard Niou. Niou frowns even more.
“Niou, just go practice with those three on the regulars courts. Yagyuu, go with Jackal and Marui. You’ll get on with them,” Nishiki says.
Marui stretches as he walks up beside Jackal and sends Niou a glower. He picks the front of his teeth, licking his lips.
“This one work?” Jackal asks.
“Not sure yet,” Marui says. “I think I underbaked it last night, but the chocolate protein bars added a good taste.”
Niou doesn’t even want to know what the hell Marui is talking about.
“Have fun with that loser,” he tells Yagyuu.
“Fuck you!” Marui shouts, but Niou just ignores him as he shuts the gate to the regulars’ courts behind himself, smiling when the latch clicks, the sound of separation from the masses, and from that fatty twit, Marui.
Niou doesn’t watch Yagyuu play, not Monday, not Tuesday, not Wednesday. Like the rest of the regulars, his priority is the Nationals. And his sloppy form. Niou doesn’t want to change it. It works on the court. It works in practice. Nishiki-buchou doesn’t correct it, the coach doesn’t correct it, but Yukimura doesn’t stop bitching about it.
“Stand up straight!” he’ll shriek. “Eyes on the other court. Do NOT let your eyes leave the ball, Niou, I don’t care if Sanada picks his nose before he serves or not!”
“I don’t pick my nose before I serve,” Sanada grumbles.
Yanagi chuckles under his breath. “You did once last week, Genichirou.”
“And twice yesterday,” Niou adds.
“Do you count those things, Niou-senpai?” Kirihara asks.
Niou smiles at him. Sometimes there are things Kirihara doesn’t need to know. Like how Niou might be able to gain an advantage over anyone, over Sanada, over Kirihara himself. Kirihara always licks his lips before he attacks. It took Niou two shots to determine that. Kirihara wears his game like he wears his emotions on his face.
Niou practices from sun-up until sun-down. He watches the sun rise as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom, before anyone else in his family is awake. He watches the sun set, purple and orange streaks over a greenish smog to the Tokyo east, as he rides the bus home. He doesn’t sleep much. He plays tennis. He hits balls. He dreams of serving and he’ll wake up with his hands clutching a pillow, ready to hurl it across the room.
He has to think tennis. He has to play it.
Niou wants to play at the biggest games of the year. He might joke around and put worms in Sanada’s sneakers when he can, but he can be serious, too, when he wants to be. All he has to do is channel his parents, those boring, dorky meganes, who act just like Yagyuu.
Yagyuu, for his part, seems to take to Marui and Jackal, forming an unofficial, loose sort of trinity, like Yanagi, Yukimura and Sanada. Niou watches them enter the changing rooms talking together. He watches them leave, still talking. He watches them walk to the bus stop, steps in unison, with Marui bouncing ahead of them, his cheeks stuffed with that sweetly revolting-smelling apple bubble gum.
Pop!
“That was a cool serve you did today, Yagyuu,” Marui says.
Pop!
Niou can feel his eye twitch.
“I worked on it last night with Jackal-kun,” Yagyuu says. Niou can almost hear him fix his glasses.
Pop!
“Hey, you guys wanna come over and try my latest thing? It’s part of my plan,” Marui says.
Pop!
Niou wants to pop one of those damn bubbles in Marui’s bloated face.
“Niou-senpai, why are you shaking that bench?” Kirihara asks him, popping up from behind Niou.
Niou lets go of the bench. He looks down and he can see marks where his fingernails pressed half-moons into the wood. And there are splinters pricking the skin of his fingertips, biting and sharp.
He bites his nails down to the quick in bed that night. His fingers bleed, naked and raw, and it hurts to wash his hands and hold his racket come morning. Yanagi hands him a ziploc bag full of bandaids in the afternoon as they change for practice.
“These might help for tomorrow,” he says.
Niou takes the bag. “As if I could forget.”
***
Niou doesn’t forget. He sets his alarm, 5:30am wake-up, three times, double-checking the volume as his sister bangs on his door. “Turn that down! I’m trying to do my homework, Masaharu!”
Niou checks the volume one more time, pleased with the blaring radio static blurs out the sound of his sister’s continued yelling.
“Here, all clean,” his mother says when she pushes through his doorway, handing Niou his uniform. When her back is turned, Niou brings it to his nose and breathes in deep the smell of laundry detergent, not sweat, and of dryer sheets, not dirt.
He packs his tennisbag full of waterbottles and sportsades, a new pack of griptape and a spare canister of balls. His father gives him a two thousand yen note, which Niou tucks into a pocket inside his tennisbag.
And then, at ten, despite his heavy-handed yawning, Niou locks the bathroom door and opens a fresh box of hair dye. His scalp is raw and peeling behind his ears where he has scratched it. It burns when it touches his skin. He hisses and cringes, squeezes his eyes shut to keep the tears from coming.
And in the end, he walks out of the bathroom with his hair wrapped up in a towel, bleached white and fresh.
“Now it stinks in there,” his brother complains. “I wanted to go to the bathroom.”
“So take a piss,” Niou says, waving him in.
“Don’t use that language,” his mother calls from downstairs. “Please, Masaharu.”
His bed beckons. Niou doesn’t bother to say something back to his mother or brother, because he knows he needs his sleep. He drags his feet to and from school each day, through practice and he keeps up, but the Nationals…the feeling is something Niou doesn’t know how to quantify it. It presses his chest. It twists his stomach. The more he thinks about tomorrow, about what will dawn with the light, the more his mind races and worries.
He’d been cocky in practice, but had it been enough? Is he good enough for the Nationals? For the finals?
Is Rikkai Dai?
Is this what drives Yukimura- the fear of imperfection, or the drive for perfection?
Niou falls asleep with the word “both” floating on his lips.