FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 33/63
Title: Rewind Forward (33/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
His shoulders shaking, rocking back and forth as his head lolls limply wakes Niou up. As does the sound of his mother saying “Masaharu! Masaharu! Get up! You have your tennis tournament today!”
Niou snaps his eyes open. And then promptly rolls onto the floor, tangled up in his damp sheets. His mother flings the curtains open, blinding him with bright light. He groans and covers his face.
“Breakfast is downstairs. You’re going to be late again, Masaharu! Hurry up!”
Niou groans again. It was the second time is as many days that he’s slept and not remembered a thing, except he doesn’t feel rested now either. Knots of nervousness tie up his stomach and his heart burns with acid, his throat, too, even though he hasn’t eaten a thing.
He has a bad feeling that Sanada will pair him and Yagyuu again. And unlike round one with Ginka, Niou doesn’t think the round two team will cop out with cowardice. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and breathes carefully through his nose.
He has to do it. He has no choice. He can leave tennis once the season is over in September, but until then, he has to put up with Yagyuu, if for no other reason that to win that gold Nationals medal and help keep their promise to Yukimura.
Niou pulls his uniform on. He runs to the bathroom, grabs one of his sister’s pink elastics, ties his hair back and entirely skips brushing his teeth. He flies down the stairs, so fast he nearly trips over the bottom two steps. He runs into the kitchen, grabs the mochi from his mom. Shoving both into his mouth, he runs to the door, shoves his shoes on, flings his tennisbag over his back and runs like hell to catch the first bus he can.
Of course…Rikkai doesn’t need to know that he busted his ass to get to school on time to catch the bus to the sports park. As soon as the bus pulls up to the school gates, Niou strolls, pretending the complete opposite as he saunters into the parking lot, hands in his pockets and his eyes sharp on Sanada.
It gives him time to catch his breath. It gives him time to have the awful realization that he and Yagyuu will be doubles one sink into his bones. He’s seen this all before, an exact repeat of last weekend with round one: Kirihara being a pest on the bus, Marui snacking, Jackal snoozing, Yagyuu sitting next to Yanagi, thin-lipped and stony-faced.
Niou is stuck sitting beside Sanada this time. Perfect. He shoves his knees up against the seat, purposely digging them in to bother Marui, who sits in front of him. He slouches and snorts and gives Sanada little glares out of the corner of his eyes. When Niou notices the tell-tale dark mark on Sanada’s neck, right where his collar meets his neck and his t-shirt doesn’t always quite cover when he shifts in his seat, Niou grinds his teeth.
He hates that Sanada has Yukimura. He hates that Sanada has someone who loves him. Who doesn’t care he’s a guy. Who doesn’t care he’s an asshole. Who kisses him hard enough to leave marks on his neck.
“Fuck you,” Niou whispers.
“What was that?” Sanada growls.
Niou shrugs. He continues to glare at Sanada the entire drive. It gives him something to do, to nominally keep his mind off Yagyuu as long as he can because it makes Niou feel ill, it makes the mochi churn in his stomach and his heart sink down down down, so low that the bus might as well be driving over it, the way it stops whenever Yagyuu half-turns in his seat and Niou gets a glimpse of the side of Yagyuu’s neck, of his dumb up-turned collar, of his jawline and lips.
The bus pulls into an empty parking lot, the first there, naturally, because of Sanada and Yanagi’s anal planning of everything. Niou shakes his head.
“Oi! Wait!” Marui shrieks as they start to pile off the bus and grab their bags. “My gum’s lost its flavour.” Niou has the displeasure of watching Marui hock his wad of disgusting chewing gum up and smear it onto the bottom of his seat, then rush off the bus and let Sanada and Niou off last.
Niou scuffs his feet on the pavement. He sighs. He waits for Sanada to announce the lineup. It’s a drawn-out affair. First, Kirihara whines.
“I’m thirsty,” he moans. “I’m so thirsty!” He coughs and clutches his throat and asks Yanagi where a vending machine is.
“And, uh…” Kirihara shifts his eyes and chews his lips. If it wasn’t for the fact his hair was a curly mess, he’d almost look cute and sweet when he mumbles, “can I have 150 yen, senpai?”
Yanagi reaches into his pocket and gives Kirihara a couple 100 yen coins. And then the entire team needs to wander off and keep an eye on the wonderchibi because there’s no way in hell he’s going to go off on his own today and pick some shit with another team and cost them the regionals.
Kirihara runs ahead of them, making a beeline for the little picnic shelter area lined with vending machines and temporary food stands, now just being set up by their middle-aged proprietors.
“Jackal!” Sanada yells.
Jackal looks at Sanada, then he looks away, up to Kirihara. “Yeah yeah yeah,” he grumbles, right before he breaks off into a dash after their little ace.
They sit under the picnic shelter, waiting for the other teams to arrive. Kirihara gulps his fanta and Jackal mutters, “He didn’t need the sugar. It’s only going to make him go nuts again.”
Sanada snorts. Yanagi says nothing, but turns pointedly to Kirihara, who’s busy cackling over Marui’s bubbleblowing prowess.
Marui blows another bubble, and the stink of apple makes Niou want to heave. Marui blows it bigger and bigger: tennis ball-sized and then it pokes into his nose and pops, gum plastered to his stunned face.
It would make Niou snicker, if it wasn’t for the fact that right the same moment, Sanada signs the lineup form.
“I’ll go sign in,” he says.
Yagyuu, sitting closest to Sanada and Yanagi, turns his head to the sheet and then his eyes narrow. He must be reading the names; there’s no question about it, not when he stands up fast enough to knock his plastic chair over backward.
“I’m not playing with him,” Yagyuu says.
Sanada doesn’t turn around. “Yes, you are,” he says as he walks off. Yagyuu is left standing there, fist balled so tight that his knuckles look bluish.
Niou’s guts slither to the cold cement floor. He closes his eyes and tries to swallow the lump in his throat. He bites down on his lip, refusing to give up. This is just like round one, then, only Nashigari Gakuen, their opponents, actually show up. Nashigari Gakuen actually stand on the other side of the net from Rikkai. Yes, they’re shaking and their teeth chatter even though the thermostat read 30-something this morning in the shade. Nashigari Gakuen sweat like pigs, and it’s not just from the heat.
Doubles two is a breeze. Sure Marui huffs and puffs and poses his way to a victory. Sure Jackal picks up the defensive slack and lets Marui use his dumbass post balls and tightrope walking shit. Sure they both feel the need to bump hips and grin and point at their opponents.
“Aren’t I genius?” Marui calls out, when he hits yet another lob and seals yet another game. “Aren’t my moves brilliant?”
Jackal is the one to take the match point. He must be picking up on Marui’s ridiculous, self-absorbed theatrics because he yells “FIYAAAAAAAAH!” at the top of his lungs and the Nashigari Gakuen players stand rooted to the baseline, shaking their heads and scrunching their foreheads because Doubles two is just so….
“Genius,” Marui says.
Full of crap, Niou thinks.
He spent the entire time trying to push thoughts of his own game away. He didn’t look at the clock ticking away, Doubles two finishing in fifteen minutes, almost to the second. He didn’t keep glancing at Yagyuu, sitting on the other side of Yanagi, as far away from Niou as he could be. He didn’t grind his fingers into the hard wooden bench until slivers started to prick his skin and make his fingertips bleed. He didn’t guzzle half his waterbottle, either, in a vain attempt to quash the lump in his throat, which seems to have expanded to his stomach and mouth as soon as Doubles one is announced.
“Doubles one, please report to the courts. Doubles one, please report to the courts.”
Niou can’t breath. He unzips his racket, almost mechanical in motions: slow and jerky. He forces his feet to move, one in front of the other. He’s supposedly Rikkai’s master of trickplay, but he knows he won’t pull any swindles today.
Racket in his left hand, he walks down the bleachers to the court. Yagyuu stands by the coach’s bench.
There aren’t words to describe the expression on his face.
Niou freezes. His body is so tense, his shoulders stiff, his hands sweaty and his chest has gone numb. His belly is so tangled up with anger and shame and all of the memories of that day that it’s a wonder his knees aren’t wobbling, too.
Yagyuu is his downfall.
Bile stings the back of Niou’s throat. He can’t do anything more than wait for Yagyuu to make the first decision play-wise. He’s fucked so many things up. Niou won’t push it with Yagyuu.
The Nashigari players wait on their side of the court, shaking and white-faced, but tapping their feet and frowning too. Yagyuu’s slitted eyes slowly shift to Niou. In an aloof and pompous tone, he says, “Please keep to your side and stay the fuck off mine.”
So that is their game plan.
To each their own.
Niou takes the left court, reading Yagyuu’s cue on the right. He takes the net when Yagyuu bends down low near the baseline. Nashigari has the first serve. For the briefest instant, Niou closes his eyes and tries to find some sort of peace with everything that has happened.
He plays.
Yagyuu plays more.
It is Yagyuu who takes the offensive, running forward close to the net but never close to Niou. It is Yagyuu who grunts and groans on his follow-throughs. He’s a gentleman, yes, and he keeps his word: he doesn’t take one step outside his right-hand side. His foot doesn’t touch the centerline even once. Yagyuu starts off fast, nearly the first shot he makes and shoots laser after laser after laser at Nashigari. Their opponents scramble around the court, shouting at each other to “Get the fucking ball!”
“I have it!” the one- the shorter player with long hair- yells. “I see it!” He runs, but the laser slams into his mid-court before his toes have so much as pivoted to step forward.
Yagyuu, always the gentleman, smiles as his point is announced. “There are some shots that even if you read them, you can’t return them,” he says.
It sounds like something Yanagi would say. Niou doesn’t want to know why Yagyuu would copy Yanagi’s speech patterns. It’s obvious. Yagyuu hangs out with everyone but him now.
Niou spent two weeks wallowing in misery in his bedroom and somehow, despite the crowds cheering “Go go Rikkai Dai!”, despite the bright sun and the constant assault of Yagyuu’s lasers, Niou is alone. The tennis court has never felt more vast than it does now, miles and miles of endless green clay, the net stretched from one end of the earth to the other, the other players pea-sized ants, running around like insects trying to dodge Yagyuu’s storm.
Once, twice, maybe a few times more, Niou hits a stray ball. They’re all easy lobs or volleys because everything, everything seems to be sucked up by Yagyuu, who, trance-like, almost glows as his arms swing back time and time again, his lasers like lightning, burning through the already too-hot air.
Yagyuu is ten feet and a hundred miles away from Niou at the same time.
They win 6-0.
Yagyuu keeps his promise. Even at the net, smiling politely and shaking the hands of their opponents, he doesn’t come any closer to Niou, he doesn’t cross the line that divides them.
Niou hunches his shoulders. Fourteen minutes of play could have been an hour, he doesn’t know. He walks off the court, avoiding Sanada’s “Go shake their hands!”, avoiding Kirihara’s confused pout, avoiding his entire team when he grabs his tennisbag and leaves the stands.
***
The bathroom at this Tokyo sports park is just as dingy, just as smelly and rancid as that one in Kanagawa. The bathroom here has a similar grungy cement floor and squat toilets filled with piss and toilet paper and buzzing flies. The smell alone makes Niou nearly heave as he clutches the sides of a porcelain sink.
He doesn’t cry this time. His eyes are dry, but inside, he’s bleeding. His chest is stabbed with something: guilt, anger, shame. It doesn’t matter what because it’s the same horrible feeling that makes his stomach shudder as he pushes back the urge to just cry. He digs his hands harder into the sink, shaking with anger, shaking the sink so hard that the cocking on the wall starts to crack and pull and if he wanted, he might very well be able to yank the sink out from the wall and throw it into one of the festering toilets.
Not until the afternoon announcement is called does Niou leave. Not one person entered the bathroom the entire time he stood at the sink, hurt and heaving and shaking. Full proof that freaks like him deserve to be alone.
Niou walks back to the picnic shelter. His cellphone buzzes in his pocket, the first time he’s bothered to pay attention to it, but he has no desire to listen to Sanada’s latest rant. Niou flips it open, then shuts it immediately.
He walks by a line of players, in a multitude of coloured uniforms, biting their bottom lips and wiggling awkwardly. At the end of the line sits a pair of green port-o-potties. They stink like shit baking in the hot sun, too.
Rikkai is exactly where Niou knew they would. They’re all creatures of habit, even him. Sanada scowls, but spares Niou the lecture. “We play Fudomine next,” he says.
Niou leans against a wooden pillar. He can feel Yagyuu’s eyes boring into his brain, drilling a hole straight through his skull. His temple throbs. Niou looks away.
“Who the hell are they?” Kirihara asks.
“Yeah!” Marui adds, spewing melon down the front of his jersey. He swallows, then repeats himself.
“No one important,” Sanada says.
“So what’s the game plan?” Jackal asks.
Yanagi’s lips quirk. “They frontload their lineups,” he says, closing the portable DVD player he must have used to show Yagyuu something. Yagyuu nods and Yanagi goes on. “Their captain plays singles three, not one. Their strongest doubles will be doubles two.”
“We should give them the same courtesy,” Yagyuu says.
“That was the plan,” Yanagi says.
Sanada looks at Niou, then Yagyuu. Niou’s insides shrivel up, frozen cold when he hears those next words Sanada says, “Niou, Yagyuu-”
“No!”
Yagyuu slams his fist on the plastic table, so hard that Marui’s cooler jostles on the edge and Jackal has to dive to catch it.
“I will NOT play with that guy!” Yagyuu says. “Sanada-kun, I refuse.” Yagyuu looks around, breathing hard for a few seconds. The silence is lengthy and heavy, heavier than the muggy air that sticks to their skin, heavier than the feeling inside Niou.
The feeling of utter failure.
“Pair me with anyone but him!” Yagyuu snarls.
“Why won’t you play with Niou?” Sanada asks.
Niou clutches the wooden post for leverage. Months and months of his disgusting little secret have come down to this, a second windfall, now that the entire team will find out. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. Everything in the world stops as a deafening rush fills Niou’s head with a throbbing agony.
“I won’t play with him,” Yagyuu finally says. He doesn’t explain anything further and Sanada doesn’t ask. But the pain doesn’t leave Niou. The rushing in his ears doesn’t stop, it only seems to intensify when Sanada nods and says something about Jackal and the lineup he just filled out is scratched out and re-done.
Vaguely, Niou is aware of what happens that afternoon. Vaguely, he is aware of Fudomine, this no-name team in cheesy black and red 90s uniforms that look second-hand. Vaguely, he is aware of scores announced and players named: Sanada-Yanagi pair vs Kamio-Ibu pair. Yagyuu-Kuwahara pair vs Ishida-Sakurai pair. Kirihara vs Tachibana.
The names mean nothing. The scores are all rehearsed, all expected, 6-0, 6-0, 6-1. The sound of the emergency health service workers running onto the court after Kirihara’s game doesn’t faze Niou, neither does the sound of Marui’s constant bubbleblowing in the stands beside him.
Nothing matters except Yagyuu.
Niou tried to pretend. He tried to lie to himself and believe that tennis was more important than his first and only friend, his first and only love. He tried to pretend that he could almost get over Yagyuu’s shock, Yagyuu’s rejection.
But he can’t. He can’t sit here and nod and smirk and be aloof and sneaky and make fun of people behind their backs anymore. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.
Seeing Yagyuu tap Kirihara’s fist as they leave the stands kills him. Seeing Yagyuu speak to Jackal and smile and high-five him over their win stabs darts to his heart that make Niou stumble and stagger and nearly walk into some chibi in a cap and over-sized Seigaku jersey. Seeing Yagyuu smile and chat and laugh with the rest of the team and not him?
Niou shakes his head. His throat is thick, that lump dry and woolen and sour, bile-tasting. His eyes are full, pricked with threatening tears and he doesn’t care anymore.
He wants Yagyuu back. In whatever form he can get.
That isn’t hard to understand at all.
***
He skips the bus ride home.
It’s agony to know Yagyuu played with someone other than him. It’s agonizing to wait any longer.
He’s been a trickster all his life: changeable, mutable, adaptable.
Niou finds himself wandering around Tokyo somewhere. He must have caught a train at some point, he doesn’t remember, but his pocket has less change than this morning, that much he can tell as he fingers the lone 500 yen coin inside. The district he walks through, bumping into rushing crowds, it’s filled with blinking signs and the blaring cutesy music of girlie arcades. There’s a department store on the corner of the block, people streaming in and out as the street pulses with life and bicycles ringing their bells and small white trucks stopping for pedestrians and young guys with pubes on their chins trying to fob free packets of Kleenex off to everyone within arm’s reach.
Pharmacy and Beauty is on the second floor of the department store.
Niou breaks his 1000 yen bill on the single box of dye. The cashier wraps it up in a pristine white plastic bag, taped at the handle. “Thank you for shopping here,” she says, all faux cheer and a toothy, crooked smile.
The bag is crumpled before Niou manages to walk back to the nearest train station. He’s been here before, maybe, but still he has to follow the arrows to the line he needs to get back home to Yokohama. Salarymen bump into him, random gaijin brush his tennisbag, focused entirely on their maps instead of the obvious romanji signs.
He gets home to weather he doesn’t remember: the sky is darkened with heavy grey clouds again, never that far away during summer. Zelkova and maple trees rustle with the warm breeze that picks up, lifting Niou’s sweaty hair with salty air off the ocean. Niou doesn’t even bother to hide the plastic bag from his family’s view. He doesn’t care what they think anymore.
He only cares about one thing.
Change, as a process, often takes time. Niou refuses to be patient. Some change happens in an instant: an earthquake, a tsunami, even Yagyuu’s laser beam can change the pace of a tennis game in a flash.
He locks himself in the bathroom. He runs the tap. He opens the box and grabs the first towel on the rack, draping it over his shoulders without even taking his uniform t-shirt off. He doesn’t have time anymore.
He won’t let things sit this way any longer now.
Mid-way through the dye, his mother knocks on the door. “Masaharu? Did you win your games?”
Niou ignores her. She can make of it what she will.
“What are you doing in there?” she asks. “Supper is almost-”
“I’m not hungry,” Niou says through his teeth.
There are no more questions. He can hear the sound of dishes clinking and his perfect, fucking family talking in soft tones downstairs, happy enough without his presence.
The bathroom stinks when he’s finished. Niou chucks the box and everything else in the garbage bin. Burnable garbage or not, he doesn’t care. The face in the mirror is someone he doesn’t know. A scared kid with a round chin and a mole, whose mouth trembles a little too much, who blinks bloodshot eyes a little too often. The kid has disheveled wet black hair that needs brushing.
Niou combs his hair for the first time since he was twelve. The process is awkward and strange, but then so is this stranger who looks at him, pleading with him to fix things at whatever the cost. He makes a part on the side and slides the comb over and over through his dark hair until it sticks and holds.
He creeps back into his room and pulls a shirt from his closet- non-descript, some polo shirt his mother bought months ago that he’s never worn. Buttoned up all the way, he can feel the collar choking him, but nowhere near as much as the perpetual ache. His only clean pants are his school uniform pants, hanging in his closet, ironed smooth with a crease. Niou pulls them on, pulls them up on his hips and slides a belt through the loops.
Without a noise, he leaves. He catches the bus around the street corner and no one recognizes him. No one would. He has become another faceless teenager and that is exactly what he wants. To be able to ride the bus across town without any stares, without any judgments, and it gives him time to think. Not about what to say to Yagyuu- that, he doesn’t know.
He thinks about what Yagyuu means to him. His friendship, the time they shared together as teammates and friends means everything to Niou. He wants it back. He wants to be the friend and the teammate that Yagyuu wants around.
The trickster has folded his hand of cards and stepped away from the game. This new-old Niou, this scared Niou who is desperate enough to go this far, has replaced him.
As soon as Niou steps off the bus the rain starts. The world seems darker than it should and the streetlights are dulled, muted by the fat, warm drops that fall from the brackish sky. The ends of his hair that started to curl up and dry on the bus are flattened out again, just the way they should be.
He knows how to get to Yagyuu’s house as well as he knows his own. Even without having been here for a month, as soon as Niou passes the garden wall with the dripping hibiscus vines and sees the scrappy lemon trees in planters on the porch behind the iron gate, he swallows his pride and his fear and opens the gate. Inside, the lights are dim in most rooms and the Jaguar in the driveway is gone- a little white Toyota sits in its place.
His hand shakes as he presses the buzzer. Blood rushes to his head as the rain rushes down around him, splattering on his polo shirt, splattering on his sneakers, splattering on his face- the tears he’s denied himself.
“Yes?” she asks.
Niou opens his mouth. Words come. They feel as alien as he does now, but it doesn’t matter. “I’m here to see Hiroshi,” he says. “Please,” he adds.
She lets him inside. She smiles at him, her lips looking deeper red than ever in the dim lamplight of the house inside. She shuffles backward in a pair of furry slippers and says, “Oh, are you from the tennis team too?”
Her tropical perfume wafts around in the air, memories of an easier past. She doesn’t recognize him: not as old Niou, not as Niou. He’s someone else entirely to her.
It’s easiest that way.
Niou nods.
“Hiroshi’s upstairs,” she says. “He’s been really surly lately.” She frowns and shakes her head. “Maybe it’s a teenage thing, I don’t know.”
Niou doesn’t either. She leaves, claiming that her tea is ready when really, she probably just doesn’t want to deal with any friends of her sons when the sounds of a tv drama in another room at the other end of the house are much more enticing.
His feet are leaden as he climbs the stairs, one slow step at a time. Niou tries to take one last breath before he knocks on that door, the one with the Hiroshi’s Room plaque, but he fails utterly. His hand falls forward, slipping up even such a simple action as knocking.
The door opens.
Niou falls to his knees. He falls to his elbows, his face pressed against the threshold of Yagyuu’s bedroom. He has no dignity left, none at all and he can feel something hot and wet on his face when he begs.
“Please take me back,” he whispers. “Yagyuu, please take me back…”
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
His shoulders shaking, rocking back and forth as his head lolls limply wakes Niou up. As does the sound of his mother saying “Masaharu! Masaharu! Get up! You have your tennis tournament today!”
Niou snaps his eyes open. And then promptly rolls onto the floor, tangled up in his damp sheets. His mother flings the curtains open, blinding him with bright light. He groans and covers his face.
“Breakfast is downstairs. You’re going to be late again, Masaharu! Hurry up!”
Niou groans again. It was the second time is as many days that he’s slept and not remembered a thing, except he doesn’t feel rested now either. Knots of nervousness tie up his stomach and his heart burns with acid, his throat, too, even though he hasn’t eaten a thing.
He has a bad feeling that Sanada will pair him and Yagyuu again. And unlike round one with Ginka, Niou doesn’t think the round two team will cop out with cowardice. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and breathes carefully through his nose.
He has to do it. He has no choice. He can leave tennis once the season is over in September, but until then, he has to put up with Yagyuu, if for no other reason that to win that gold Nationals medal and help keep their promise to Yukimura.
Niou pulls his uniform on. He runs to the bathroom, grabs one of his sister’s pink elastics, ties his hair back and entirely skips brushing his teeth. He flies down the stairs, so fast he nearly trips over the bottom two steps. He runs into the kitchen, grabs the mochi from his mom. Shoving both into his mouth, he runs to the door, shoves his shoes on, flings his tennisbag over his back and runs like hell to catch the first bus he can.
Of course…Rikkai doesn’t need to know that he busted his ass to get to school on time to catch the bus to the sports park. As soon as the bus pulls up to the school gates, Niou strolls, pretending the complete opposite as he saunters into the parking lot, hands in his pockets and his eyes sharp on Sanada.
It gives him time to catch his breath. It gives him time to have the awful realization that he and Yagyuu will be doubles one sink into his bones. He’s seen this all before, an exact repeat of last weekend with round one: Kirihara being a pest on the bus, Marui snacking, Jackal snoozing, Yagyuu sitting next to Yanagi, thin-lipped and stony-faced.
Niou is stuck sitting beside Sanada this time. Perfect. He shoves his knees up against the seat, purposely digging them in to bother Marui, who sits in front of him. He slouches and snorts and gives Sanada little glares out of the corner of his eyes. When Niou notices the tell-tale dark mark on Sanada’s neck, right where his collar meets his neck and his t-shirt doesn’t always quite cover when he shifts in his seat, Niou grinds his teeth.
He hates that Sanada has Yukimura. He hates that Sanada has someone who loves him. Who doesn’t care he’s a guy. Who doesn’t care he’s an asshole. Who kisses him hard enough to leave marks on his neck.
“Fuck you,” Niou whispers.
“What was that?” Sanada growls.
Niou shrugs. He continues to glare at Sanada the entire drive. It gives him something to do, to nominally keep his mind off Yagyuu as long as he can because it makes Niou feel ill, it makes the mochi churn in his stomach and his heart sink down down down, so low that the bus might as well be driving over it, the way it stops whenever Yagyuu half-turns in his seat and Niou gets a glimpse of the side of Yagyuu’s neck, of his dumb up-turned collar, of his jawline and lips.
The bus pulls into an empty parking lot, the first there, naturally, because of Sanada and Yanagi’s anal planning of everything. Niou shakes his head.
“Oi! Wait!” Marui shrieks as they start to pile off the bus and grab their bags. “My gum’s lost its flavour.” Niou has the displeasure of watching Marui hock his wad of disgusting chewing gum up and smear it onto the bottom of his seat, then rush off the bus and let Sanada and Niou off last.
Niou scuffs his feet on the pavement. He sighs. He waits for Sanada to announce the lineup. It’s a drawn-out affair. First, Kirihara whines.
“I’m thirsty,” he moans. “I’m so thirsty!” He coughs and clutches his throat and asks Yanagi where a vending machine is.
“And, uh…” Kirihara shifts his eyes and chews his lips. If it wasn’t for the fact his hair was a curly mess, he’d almost look cute and sweet when he mumbles, “can I have 150 yen, senpai?”
Yanagi reaches into his pocket and gives Kirihara a couple 100 yen coins. And then the entire team needs to wander off and keep an eye on the wonderchibi because there’s no way in hell he’s going to go off on his own today and pick some shit with another team and cost them the regionals.
Kirihara runs ahead of them, making a beeline for the little picnic shelter area lined with vending machines and temporary food stands, now just being set up by their middle-aged proprietors.
“Jackal!” Sanada yells.
Jackal looks at Sanada, then he looks away, up to Kirihara. “Yeah yeah yeah,” he grumbles, right before he breaks off into a dash after their little ace.
They sit under the picnic shelter, waiting for the other teams to arrive. Kirihara gulps his fanta and Jackal mutters, “He didn’t need the sugar. It’s only going to make him go nuts again.”
Sanada snorts. Yanagi says nothing, but turns pointedly to Kirihara, who’s busy cackling over Marui’s bubbleblowing prowess.
Marui blows another bubble, and the stink of apple makes Niou want to heave. Marui blows it bigger and bigger: tennis ball-sized and then it pokes into his nose and pops, gum plastered to his stunned face.
It would make Niou snicker, if it wasn’t for the fact that right the same moment, Sanada signs the lineup form.
“I’ll go sign in,” he says.
Yagyuu, sitting closest to Sanada and Yanagi, turns his head to the sheet and then his eyes narrow. He must be reading the names; there’s no question about it, not when he stands up fast enough to knock his plastic chair over backward.
“I’m not playing with him,” Yagyuu says.
Sanada doesn’t turn around. “Yes, you are,” he says as he walks off. Yagyuu is left standing there, fist balled so tight that his knuckles look bluish.
Niou’s guts slither to the cold cement floor. He closes his eyes and tries to swallow the lump in his throat. He bites down on his lip, refusing to give up. This is just like round one, then, only Nashigari Gakuen, their opponents, actually show up. Nashigari Gakuen actually stand on the other side of the net from Rikkai. Yes, they’re shaking and their teeth chatter even though the thermostat read 30-something this morning in the shade. Nashigari Gakuen sweat like pigs, and it’s not just from the heat.
Doubles two is a breeze. Sure Marui huffs and puffs and poses his way to a victory. Sure Jackal picks up the defensive slack and lets Marui use his dumbass post balls and tightrope walking shit. Sure they both feel the need to bump hips and grin and point at their opponents.
“Aren’t I genius?” Marui calls out, when he hits yet another lob and seals yet another game. “Aren’t my moves brilliant?”
Jackal is the one to take the match point. He must be picking up on Marui’s ridiculous, self-absorbed theatrics because he yells “FIYAAAAAAAAH!” at the top of his lungs and the Nashigari Gakuen players stand rooted to the baseline, shaking their heads and scrunching their foreheads because Doubles two is just so….
“Genius,” Marui says.
Full of crap, Niou thinks.
He spent the entire time trying to push thoughts of his own game away. He didn’t look at the clock ticking away, Doubles two finishing in fifteen minutes, almost to the second. He didn’t keep glancing at Yagyuu, sitting on the other side of Yanagi, as far away from Niou as he could be. He didn’t grind his fingers into the hard wooden bench until slivers started to prick his skin and make his fingertips bleed. He didn’t guzzle half his waterbottle, either, in a vain attempt to quash the lump in his throat, which seems to have expanded to his stomach and mouth as soon as Doubles one is announced.
“Doubles one, please report to the courts. Doubles one, please report to the courts.”
Niou can’t breath. He unzips his racket, almost mechanical in motions: slow and jerky. He forces his feet to move, one in front of the other. He’s supposedly Rikkai’s master of trickplay, but he knows he won’t pull any swindles today.
Racket in his left hand, he walks down the bleachers to the court. Yagyuu stands by the coach’s bench.
There aren’t words to describe the expression on his face.
Niou freezes. His body is so tense, his shoulders stiff, his hands sweaty and his chest has gone numb. His belly is so tangled up with anger and shame and all of the memories of that day that it’s a wonder his knees aren’t wobbling, too.
Yagyuu is his downfall.
Bile stings the back of Niou’s throat. He can’t do anything more than wait for Yagyuu to make the first decision play-wise. He’s fucked so many things up. Niou won’t push it with Yagyuu.
The Nashigari players wait on their side of the court, shaking and white-faced, but tapping their feet and frowning too. Yagyuu’s slitted eyes slowly shift to Niou. In an aloof and pompous tone, he says, “Please keep to your side and stay the fuck off mine.”
So that is their game plan.
To each their own.
Niou takes the left court, reading Yagyuu’s cue on the right. He takes the net when Yagyuu bends down low near the baseline. Nashigari has the first serve. For the briefest instant, Niou closes his eyes and tries to find some sort of peace with everything that has happened.
He plays.
Yagyuu plays more.
It is Yagyuu who takes the offensive, running forward close to the net but never close to Niou. It is Yagyuu who grunts and groans on his follow-throughs. He’s a gentleman, yes, and he keeps his word: he doesn’t take one step outside his right-hand side. His foot doesn’t touch the centerline even once. Yagyuu starts off fast, nearly the first shot he makes and shoots laser after laser after laser at Nashigari. Their opponents scramble around the court, shouting at each other to “Get the fucking ball!”
“I have it!” the one- the shorter player with long hair- yells. “I see it!” He runs, but the laser slams into his mid-court before his toes have so much as pivoted to step forward.
Yagyuu, always the gentleman, smiles as his point is announced. “There are some shots that even if you read them, you can’t return them,” he says.
It sounds like something Yanagi would say. Niou doesn’t want to know why Yagyuu would copy Yanagi’s speech patterns. It’s obvious. Yagyuu hangs out with everyone but him now.
Niou spent two weeks wallowing in misery in his bedroom and somehow, despite the crowds cheering “Go go Rikkai Dai!”, despite the bright sun and the constant assault of Yagyuu’s lasers, Niou is alone. The tennis court has never felt more vast than it does now, miles and miles of endless green clay, the net stretched from one end of the earth to the other, the other players pea-sized ants, running around like insects trying to dodge Yagyuu’s storm.
Once, twice, maybe a few times more, Niou hits a stray ball. They’re all easy lobs or volleys because everything, everything seems to be sucked up by Yagyuu, who, trance-like, almost glows as his arms swing back time and time again, his lasers like lightning, burning through the already too-hot air.
Yagyuu is ten feet and a hundred miles away from Niou at the same time.
They win 6-0.
Yagyuu keeps his promise. Even at the net, smiling politely and shaking the hands of their opponents, he doesn’t come any closer to Niou, he doesn’t cross the line that divides them.
Niou hunches his shoulders. Fourteen minutes of play could have been an hour, he doesn’t know. He walks off the court, avoiding Sanada’s “Go shake their hands!”, avoiding Kirihara’s confused pout, avoiding his entire team when he grabs his tennisbag and leaves the stands.
***
The bathroom at this Tokyo sports park is just as dingy, just as smelly and rancid as that one in Kanagawa. The bathroom here has a similar grungy cement floor and squat toilets filled with piss and toilet paper and buzzing flies. The smell alone makes Niou nearly heave as he clutches the sides of a porcelain sink.
He doesn’t cry this time. His eyes are dry, but inside, he’s bleeding. His chest is stabbed with something: guilt, anger, shame. It doesn’t matter what because it’s the same horrible feeling that makes his stomach shudder as he pushes back the urge to just cry. He digs his hands harder into the sink, shaking with anger, shaking the sink so hard that the cocking on the wall starts to crack and pull and if he wanted, he might very well be able to yank the sink out from the wall and throw it into one of the festering toilets.
Not until the afternoon announcement is called does Niou leave. Not one person entered the bathroom the entire time he stood at the sink, hurt and heaving and shaking. Full proof that freaks like him deserve to be alone.
Niou walks back to the picnic shelter. His cellphone buzzes in his pocket, the first time he’s bothered to pay attention to it, but he has no desire to listen to Sanada’s latest rant. Niou flips it open, then shuts it immediately.
He walks by a line of players, in a multitude of coloured uniforms, biting their bottom lips and wiggling awkwardly. At the end of the line sits a pair of green port-o-potties. They stink like shit baking in the hot sun, too.
Rikkai is exactly where Niou knew they would. They’re all creatures of habit, even him. Sanada scowls, but spares Niou the lecture. “We play Fudomine next,” he says.
Niou leans against a wooden pillar. He can feel Yagyuu’s eyes boring into his brain, drilling a hole straight through his skull. His temple throbs. Niou looks away.
“Who the hell are they?” Kirihara asks.
“Yeah!” Marui adds, spewing melon down the front of his jersey. He swallows, then repeats himself.
“No one important,” Sanada says.
“So what’s the game plan?” Jackal asks.
Yanagi’s lips quirk. “They frontload their lineups,” he says, closing the portable DVD player he must have used to show Yagyuu something. Yagyuu nods and Yanagi goes on. “Their captain plays singles three, not one. Their strongest doubles will be doubles two.”
“We should give them the same courtesy,” Yagyuu says.
“That was the plan,” Yanagi says.
Sanada looks at Niou, then Yagyuu. Niou’s insides shrivel up, frozen cold when he hears those next words Sanada says, “Niou, Yagyuu-”
“No!”
Yagyuu slams his fist on the plastic table, so hard that Marui’s cooler jostles on the edge and Jackal has to dive to catch it.
“I will NOT play with that guy!” Yagyuu says. “Sanada-kun, I refuse.” Yagyuu looks around, breathing hard for a few seconds. The silence is lengthy and heavy, heavier than the muggy air that sticks to their skin, heavier than the feeling inside Niou.
The feeling of utter failure.
“Pair me with anyone but him!” Yagyuu snarls.
“Why won’t you play with Niou?” Sanada asks.
Niou clutches the wooden post for leverage. Months and months of his disgusting little secret have come down to this, a second windfall, now that the entire team will find out. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. Everything in the world stops as a deafening rush fills Niou’s head with a throbbing agony.
“I won’t play with him,” Yagyuu finally says. He doesn’t explain anything further and Sanada doesn’t ask. But the pain doesn’t leave Niou. The rushing in his ears doesn’t stop, it only seems to intensify when Sanada nods and says something about Jackal and the lineup he just filled out is scratched out and re-done.
Vaguely, Niou is aware of what happens that afternoon. Vaguely, he is aware of Fudomine, this no-name team in cheesy black and red 90s uniforms that look second-hand. Vaguely, he is aware of scores announced and players named: Sanada-Yanagi pair vs Kamio-Ibu pair. Yagyuu-Kuwahara pair vs Ishida-Sakurai pair. Kirihara vs Tachibana.
The names mean nothing. The scores are all rehearsed, all expected, 6-0, 6-0, 6-1. The sound of the emergency health service workers running onto the court after Kirihara’s game doesn’t faze Niou, neither does the sound of Marui’s constant bubbleblowing in the stands beside him.
Nothing matters except Yagyuu.
Niou tried to pretend. He tried to lie to himself and believe that tennis was more important than his first and only friend, his first and only love. He tried to pretend that he could almost get over Yagyuu’s shock, Yagyuu’s rejection.
But he can’t. He can’t sit here and nod and smirk and be aloof and sneaky and make fun of people behind their backs anymore. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.
Seeing Yagyuu tap Kirihara’s fist as they leave the stands kills him. Seeing Yagyuu speak to Jackal and smile and high-five him over their win stabs darts to his heart that make Niou stumble and stagger and nearly walk into some chibi in a cap and over-sized Seigaku jersey. Seeing Yagyuu smile and chat and laugh with the rest of the team and not him?
Niou shakes his head. His throat is thick, that lump dry and woolen and sour, bile-tasting. His eyes are full, pricked with threatening tears and he doesn’t care anymore.
He wants Yagyuu back. In whatever form he can get.
That isn’t hard to understand at all.
***
He skips the bus ride home.
It’s agony to know Yagyuu played with someone other than him. It’s agonizing to wait any longer.
He’s been a trickster all his life: changeable, mutable, adaptable.
Niou finds himself wandering around Tokyo somewhere. He must have caught a train at some point, he doesn’t remember, but his pocket has less change than this morning, that much he can tell as he fingers the lone 500 yen coin inside. The district he walks through, bumping into rushing crowds, it’s filled with blinking signs and the blaring cutesy music of girlie arcades. There’s a department store on the corner of the block, people streaming in and out as the street pulses with life and bicycles ringing their bells and small white trucks stopping for pedestrians and young guys with pubes on their chins trying to fob free packets of Kleenex off to everyone within arm’s reach.
Pharmacy and Beauty is on the second floor of the department store.
Niou breaks his 1000 yen bill on the single box of dye. The cashier wraps it up in a pristine white plastic bag, taped at the handle. “Thank you for shopping here,” she says, all faux cheer and a toothy, crooked smile.
The bag is crumpled before Niou manages to walk back to the nearest train station. He’s been here before, maybe, but still he has to follow the arrows to the line he needs to get back home to Yokohama. Salarymen bump into him, random gaijin brush his tennisbag, focused entirely on their maps instead of the obvious romanji signs.
He gets home to weather he doesn’t remember: the sky is darkened with heavy grey clouds again, never that far away during summer. Zelkova and maple trees rustle with the warm breeze that picks up, lifting Niou’s sweaty hair with salty air off the ocean. Niou doesn’t even bother to hide the plastic bag from his family’s view. He doesn’t care what they think anymore.
He only cares about one thing.
Change, as a process, often takes time. Niou refuses to be patient. Some change happens in an instant: an earthquake, a tsunami, even Yagyuu’s laser beam can change the pace of a tennis game in a flash.
He locks himself in the bathroom. He runs the tap. He opens the box and grabs the first towel on the rack, draping it over his shoulders without even taking his uniform t-shirt off. He doesn’t have time anymore.
He won’t let things sit this way any longer now.
Mid-way through the dye, his mother knocks on the door. “Masaharu? Did you win your games?”
Niou ignores her. She can make of it what she will.
“What are you doing in there?” she asks. “Supper is almost-”
“I’m not hungry,” Niou says through his teeth.
There are no more questions. He can hear the sound of dishes clinking and his perfect, fucking family talking in soft tones downstairs, happy enough without his presence.
The bathroom stinks when he’s finished. Niou chucks the box and everything else in the garbage bin. Burnable garbage or not, he doesn’t care. The face in the mirror is someone he doesn’t know. A scared kid with a round chin and a mole, whose mouth trembles a little too much, who blinks bloodshot eyes a little too often. The kid has disheveled wet black hair that needs brushing.
Niou combs his hair for the first time since he was twelve. The process is awkward and strange, but then so is this stranger who looks at him, pleading with him to fix things at whatever the cost. He makes a part on the side and slides the comb over and over through his dark hair until it sticks and holds.
He creeps back into his room and pulls a shirt from his closet- non-descript, some polo shirt his mother bought months ago that he’s never worn. Buttoned up all the way, he can feel the collar choking him, but nowhere near as much as the perpetual ache. His only clean pants are his school uniform pants, hanging in his closet, ironed smooth with a crease. Niou pulls them on, pulls them up on his hips and slides a belt through the loops.
Without a noise, he leaves. He catches the bus around the street corner and no one recognizes him. No one would. He has become another faceless teenager and that is exactly what he wants. To be able to ride the bus across town without any stares, without any judgments, and it gives him time to think. Not about what to say to Yagyuu- that, he doesn’t know.
He thinks about what Yagyuu means to him. His friendship, the time they shared together as teammates and friends means everything to Niou. He wants it back. He wants to be the friend and the teammate that Yagyuu wants around.
The trickster has folded his hand of cards and stepped away from the game. This new-old Niou, this scared Niou who is desperate enough to go this far, has replaced him.
As soon as Niou steps off the bus the rain starts. The world seems darker than it should and the streetlights are dulled, muted by the fat, warm drops that fall from the brackish sky. The ends of his hair that started to curl up and dry on the bus are flattened out again, just the way they should be.
He knows how to get to Yagyuu’s house as well as he knows his own. Even without having been here for a month, as soon as Niou passes the garden wall with the dripping hibiscus vines and sees the scrappy lemon trees in planters on the porch behind the iron gate, he swallows his pride and his fear and opens the gate. Inside, the lights are dim in most rooms and the Jaguar in the driveway is gone- a little white Toyota sits in its place.
His hand shakes as he presses the buzzer. Blood rushes to his head as the rain rushes down around him, splattering on his polo shirt, splattering on his sneakers, splattering on his face- the tears he’s denied himself.
“Yes?” she asks.
Niou opens his mouth. Words come. They feel as alien as he does now, but it doesn’t matter. “I’m here to see Hiroshi,” he says. “Please,” he adds.
She lets him inside. She smiles at him, her lips looking deeper red than ever in the dim lamplight of the house inside. She shuffles backward in a pair of furry slippers and says, “Oh, are you from the tennis team too?”
Her tropical perfume wafts around in the air, memories of an easier past. She doesn’t recognize him: not as old Niou, not as Niou. He’s someone else entirely to her.
It’s easiest that way.
Niou nods.
“Hiroshi’s upstairs,” she says. “He’s been really surly lately.” She frowns and shakes her head. “Maybe it’s a teenage thing, I don’t know.”
Niou doesn’t either. She leaves, claiming that her tea is ready when really, she probably just doesn’t want to deal with any friends of her sons when the sounds of a tv drama in another room at the other end of the house are much more enticing.
His feet are leaden as he climbs the stairs, one slow step at a time. Niou tries to take one last breath before he knocks on that door, the one with the Hiroshi’s Room plaque, but he fails utterly. His hand falls forward, slipping up even such a simple action as knocking.
The door opens.
Niou falls to his knees. He falls to his elbows, his face pressed against the threshold of Yagyuu’s bedroom. He has no dignity left, none at all and he can feel something hot and wet on his face when he begs.
“Please take me back,” he whispers. “Yagyuu, please take me back…”