[Fic] SlamDunk: Quality Education (with Sex-ed and Rukawa)
I really had intended this to be a short, crack-ish little piece that would cushion me as I wriggled out of my writing hiatus. FAILURE. This thing was born as a response to Mei's bad-fic post after mocking the wide-spread fanon misinterpretation of Rukawa's interest/knowledge about sex: Sex god he ain’t, bitches. However, after three months of more art-shnazz than the written crack, I'm a firm believer that this piece is as half-assed as they come. Not only did I suffer horrible writer's identity-crisis (I FELT SO UNFUNNY, SO UNSPARKLY THAT IT HURT... and not in a good way either D8), but I just kept on adding bits and transitional pieces to it until it exploded on me. (But whatever it lacks in wit, it makes up for in length, right? Not… )
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Title: Quality Education
Series/Characters: [SlamDunk!] Rukawa
Disclaimer: May Takehiko Inoue continue to roll in the royalties.
Word Count: 4,318
Notes: This be gen since there's only Rukawa and no signs of crazy, sexy bed partners, alas. Contains lots of basketball-based innuendo, for which I am going to hell. Also, I took the liberty of researching up Japan's sex-ed and... found this particularly informational FUCKING DISTURBING site with pictures from a textbook. Go bleed your eyes out have a look, yah? :D
Dedications: To my mistress-darling meitachi. Your journal was the spawning ground for the bottom-line idea, after all. BEHOLD THE FRUITS OF OUR, uh...
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Quality Education
by kasugai gummie
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When an eleven-year-old Rukawa first woke to the discomfort of wet sheets clinging to his nether-regions, he blinked groggily, cleaned himself as best he could without having to get out of bed, and promptly fell back asleep. No curiosity spared; no questions asked.
Just like that.
Even come the morning after, Rukawa’s bed failed to see much sympathy from its occupant and lay forgotten with the remnants of the boy’s first wet dream congealing in the middle for quite awhile. It wasn’t until Rukawa’s mother entered his room an eternity later, conveniently armed with a laundry basket, that the mattress received any relief.
“Kaede...”
Rukawa needed to leave soon if he was to make it to school on time, but the concerned tone in which his name was called gave him pause. Rukawa looked up from his half-laced shoes to see his mother approach him cautiously, an anxious furrow etched into her brow.
“Did something happen to you last night that you’d like to talk about?” she asked as she neared him. “Are you okay?”
Something had happened to him last night? Talk about? Question mark? Stilling his fingers for the moment, Rukawa thought back to between the time his head hit the pillow and when he woke up, curled away from the sticky stain near the middle of his cover.
He came up with a blank.
Rukawa continued to stare at the almost pleading look just a few feet away though, trying to figure out the problem for a moment longer before ultimately writing off his mother’s consternation. He went back to lacing-up his sneakers.
“No,” he said with a careless shrug.
His mother however, brave woman that she was, remained undaunted (for the moment) and pushed on. “Are you sure, Kaede?” she pressed, holding the sheets out further away from herself so that the discolored splotch was facing her son.
It was then that Rukawa noticed the mess that was his dirty bed sheets draped across his mother’s arms, not that it made any more sense however. He frowned at his feet before looking up again. “I’m sorry my sheets got dirty?” he hazarded, staring up at her with those sharp, pretty eyes that completely failed to register the significance of the soiled linen she now clutched to her chest.
Unsurprisingly, Rukawa’s mother was beginning to feel rather bewildered herself.
When she’d first discovered the thin canvas with telltale fluids smeared like a Rorschach test into its creased folds, she was understandably taken back. Her only son was growing up all of a sudden, had hit that key point in his developmental years just the night before. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a daughter, or that she wasn’t as experienced with the mechanics of male puberty as was practical-she was his mother and determined to be the source of compassion et voice of knowledge for his most turbulent years.
So, here she was, intent on following the script provided to her by her maternal instincts and more than prepared to support her child through his headlong crash into teenage adolescence-but then there he was, depressingly oblivious (or could it be blissfully ignorant?) to the proof of his puberty in her arms.
Rukawa wasn’t following the script at all. Whereas he was supposed to be embarrassed, he wasn’t; whereas he was supposed to feel insecure about the changes his poor body was going through, he didn’t; and whereas he was supposed to try and prevent others finding out about what happened in the wee hours of morning, he had left the evidence right where whatever unknowing passerby (like herself) might see it.
“...never mind then. You’re going to be late for school dear,” she murmured belatedly, giving Rukawa an absent pat on the head before turning back towards the laundry room seeming very lost and confused.
On the contrary, Rukawa felt no such weight of failed obligations and easily dismissed the unresolved confrontation with a shrug and a sigh. It wasn’t the first time his mother made no sense after all, something he attributed to her lack of interest in basketball. He watched as she rounded the corner and when he couldn’t even hear her slipper-muffled footsteps any longer, finished tying his shoes.
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When a thirteen-year-old Rukawa first discovered porn, it was, like any other case of adolescent porn discovery, purely by accident. He had stumbled over his father’s stash of Assist magazines one day, a tall pile of glossy covered reports that detailed the international world of basketball. Next to the coffee table and tapes of that year’s NBA playoffs he’d crouched, flipping through the various issues until, maybe halfway into the stash, he reached a magazine that most certainly did not belong there.
“Pu-re bo-yo pen-to hao-su...” he read aloud, annunciating the foreign sounds carefully and scrutinizing the contents before deciding that the near-naked ladies from cover-to-cover where about as interesting as a slam-dunk to the head. Digging deeper into the collection, he found a total of five more volumes of similar ilk-enough porn to make an inexperienced lecher orgasm without ever touching his over-imaginative weenie.
Thus, like every other case of first-time exposure to x-rated material, Rukawa had experienced his through bat-blind luck alone. Unlike every other case of first-time exposure however, his consequential reaction followed anything but the norm; unlike other healthy males his age, Rukawa had absolutely no intention of keeping them in his possession for future perversions. Rather than springing a raging hard-on at the sight of big boobies and provocative poses, Rukawa remained unbothered and unaffected and totally uncurious. He did give all the magazines a dutiful once-over though-to make sure that there was truly no basketball related material in them-then decided to bring those objects of discrepancies to his father’s attention.
He found both his parents in the kitchen, his mother preparing dinner and his father reading what most likely was the sports section. Without much pomp (or tact, for that matter), Rukawa dropped the six worn issues of Playboy Penthouse in front of his father.
The newspaper lowered just enough to allow a pair of eyes to look over, before dropping completely in rustled disarray.
“These were mixed in with your basketball magazines,” Rukawa reported, patting the stack with the type of matter-of-fact gravity only children possessed. “I would’ve put them away for you, since mama always complains how you’re too disorganized, but I didn’t know where they’re supposed to go...”
Rukawa senior’s eyes bugged out at the hint of nipple peeping next to the steady tempo tapped out by his son’s long-boned fingers. “How?” he choked out, shock bleaching his face to an unhealthy pallor.
Rukawa tilted his head to one side and regarded his spluttering father for a moment. “Because I wanted to read the latest issues of Assist,” he finally replied, gesturing to the lesser stack of non-porn held against his side.
There wasn’t much that his father could say to that so he asked the next most burning question on his mind.
“But why are you giving them back to me?!”
…which proved to be a notable mistake. The sharp schlick of a knife rasping against bone, followed by a pointed thunk, proved to be as good of an interruption as any. The older Rukawa male stiffened in his seat, flickering his gaze from the pile of jollies to the meat cleaver that was now jabbed headfirst into the wooden carving board and oscillating ominously. The younger merely watched as his mother picked up the knife again when she was sure that she had their undivided attention.
“Kaede is a good boy,” Rukawa’s mother said without turning. “And Mama has some things that need to be discussed with Papa. So…”
Rukawa took the hint. Much to his father’s combined horror and relief, he left the room without a backward glance, mind already focused on the articles he wanted to read. Behind him, the pointed thuds of heavy metal on the kitchen counter began in earnest.
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When a sixteen-year-old Rukawa sat through his first school sponsored sex-lesson, he managed to listen to almost five minutes of the presentation before his head naturally gravitated towards his desk and initiated what would be the start of a beautiful friendship.
“-male organ is then stimulated, yes, just like that-”
Long lashes touched close and opened again to half-mast just in time to see the unwitting girl who volunteered to help stick a trembling hand between the two large white bodies of the demonstration dummies.
“-and what Marisu-san is now touching is the scrotum, which contains the-”
Shohoku had very nice desks Rukawa decided, nicer than Ryonan’s at least (and that he kind of lacked any proof to support his opinion didn’t matter). His head was well supported, the surface cool, and the drone of “sperm,” “fertilization” and “fallopian tubes” faded into a comfortable white noise.
“-blah as you can imagine, ejaculation occurs when blah-”
Despite the absolutely riveting show of life-sized dolls being forced into a mock orgasm at the front of the room, Rukawa’s eyelids refused to hold out any longer. Thus, by slipping into a heavy doze only ten minutes into the hour, Rukawa completely missed the crowning glory of the visual portion.
... only to be whacked awake with one of the disproportionate sex-dummies two minutes later. Needless to say, Rukawa was most displeased and almost hospitalized the culprit with said sex-dummy-turned-weapon as a result.
Despite the scolding he received from the principal on the propriety of respecting one’s elders however (during of which he introduced his head to the back of his chair-Shohoku really did have nice furniture overall), Rukawa’s habit of shutting down during sex-education had been made and set. No matter how many times he was flagged by the disciplinary committee or how many times his teacher risked his well being (life-expectancy) to make him pay attention, his topic-induced narcolepsy was unavoidable. Throughout the entire week, Rukawa somehow managed to sleep through anything of importance, much to his classmates’ amusement and teacher’s hernia-aggravating frustration.
Consequently, Rukawa failed miserably when the time came for exams. And though nobody from the classroom setting found it odd, his parents were certainly surprised when they were called in for an impromptu conference.
“Rukawa-san… I am very sorry to have to be the one to tell you this but... your son, while an excellent member of our basketball team, has displayed some very disturbing habits. If you would like to see his latest test grades-”
And it was then that the Rukawas finally realized (i.e. admitted to themselves) that their son wasn’t exactly normal per se.
That very same day, when Rukawa returned from basketball practice, he found his parents seated in the living room and sharing identically disturbed expressions.
“Kaede,” his mother began, “we’ve found about your recent problems at school and-”
“-we need to talk,” finished his father. “A long, overdue talk about... about...”
Rukawa walked further into the room, unslung his duffel bag by the coffee table devoid of any magazines and sat down in the armchair opposite to his parents. Though not offering any words of his own, his entire manner was expectant, prompting them to continue. He cocked his head to the side when both parents exchanged not-so-identical looks at his silence. If he didn’t know better (and it is safe to presume that he didn’t) Rukawa would’ve thought that they had absolutely no idea of how to continue with their “talk.” Things got rolling again after a not-so discreet jab to his father’s ribs however, courtesy of his mother.
Rukawa senior coughed his throat awkwardly and threw an irritated look at his wife but managed to finish his previously abandoned sentence. “We need to talk about your recent performance in certain subjects, boy,” he started again. “Your teacher showed us your test scores and also informed us that you’ve slept through most of the material for this week in the special sex-education unit. Never mind that I was very much the same during my own high school years-”
“It’s not natural,” Rukawa’s mother cut in (much to her husband’s furthered annoyance). “But we’re here to help since this is one thing that shouldn’t go unsaid. Your teacher offered you another chance to learn the material on your own and retake the exam and Mama and Papa will be the ones teaching you this time. No matter how boring it is, you’ll be grateful later, Kaede.”
Rukawa made a noncommittal sound, which his mother took as an affirmative and his father heard as a negative. In reality, it was just a yawn disguised as a sigh, but his parents were much too preoccupied with divvying up the more enviable topics to make the proper distinction.
“Mama will re-introduce you to the basics and your father will explain to you about the differences between a man and a woman-”
“Wait, wait. I thought we agreed that I would only cover the basics and you go into the mechanics of-”
“Don’t be difficult, dear. You should take more responsibility over Kaede’s other interests. Aside from basketball.”
“What do you mean aside?”
Sliding out of his seat, Rukawa picked up his bag and headed towards the front door. “I’m going to the street courts,” Rukawa announced and left before they could say voice any oppositions they might have had.
As Rukawa left on his bike in what was a beeline to the basketball courts, his mother turned to his father and delivered a good, solid smack to the arm.
“This is all your fault,” she said accusingly. “Fix it.”
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Trying to explain the basics of pubescent hormones and sex to someone who just didn’t care was tricky business-more so when that someone required an otherwise irrelevant set of vocabulary when approaching the topic in order for him to pay attention (much less understand).
Rukawa senior sighed heavily, for the first time in his life experiencing the slightest twinge of regret-no matter how insignificant the amount-for having nurtured his son’s single-minded drive for basketball to this extent.
But when the boy’s full focus snapped to him the moment he brought forth what was to be his teaching device, he had no choice but to carry through with the plan of translating the most basic human instincts into terms that his son would identify with.
“Kaede, this is a ball-”
A moment of “of course it is” silence settled thick and heavy between them before Rukawa senior shook off his doubts and got back on track. Reaching over to the innocuous pile of “teaching” supplies by his side, the older man pulled out the next prop essential to his lesson.
“-and this is a hoop.”
His son remained silent, looked suspicious, but was still awake and attentive. So far so good.
But next came the hard part.
“Now, despite what you may believe, they’re no different than a boy and girl,” Rukawa senior finished lamely. Inside however, he was cringing for all he was worth-he knew very well that any other person would be questioning his credentials by now. Even his son seemed skeptical of his analogies and that made everything even worse.
The recent memory of his wife a wielding paring knife against his collegiate jersey (he would have to relocate all his valuables elsewhere after this) was more than enough to egg him on, though.
“And like any game of basketball, when a boy and girl come together under certain circumstances-”
“Sex.”
“-yes. That circumstance. Very good. Oh god... Anyway, the main point-” Rukawa senior closed his eyes against the attention focused his way and bounced the ball into the wavering net, “-is to score.”
He sounded incredibly absurd, he realized, as he was cutting corners like no other. And yet, despite omitting a lot of nasty little details that should never be vocalized while he held a basket in one hand and ball in the other, he was sure that he’d never be able to think of his favorite sport in the same way ever again.
“What’s the point?” Rukawa asked, expression still that of doubt.
“Well, in the case of the boy and girl, when the person with the ball scores, you get a baby.”
“... so the point of sex is for a boy to put his ball into the girl’s hoop. And in order for the game to be won, you need to score enough until a baby comes out?”
“Exactly!” Rukawa senior exclaimed, uncaring that Rukawa’s understanding of human reproduction might still not be normal enough to intermingle with the rest of society. All he saw was the light at the end of a dark and scary and mortifying tunnel. Now if he could only gather the rest of his stuff and make his escape while he could...
“But you can’t have two hoops on one side,” his son interjected, unaware of his father’s plight. Having picked up the ball, he now spun it on his index finger while toying with the strings of the net with his other hand. “According to mom, the ball is supposed to be put into a hole. And if the hoop is to represent a hole in the body…” Sharp eyes narrowed and the ball was flicked into the hoop. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Rukawa said flatly. “Besides, what happens if the other team scores on you?”
“Well, actually... you have a point there, and... and as for the other team scoring-”
There was no escape and somewhere, in the back of Rukawa senior’s head, the sound of a brain breaking echoed like the death scream of a beached whale.
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A few near, albeit highly improbable, years later... (read: should Chance ever capitalize on a decidedly questionable sense of humor...)
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When a twenty-year-old Rukawa finally revisited Shohoku High School after two years in the United States, one of which he spent debuting in the pro-circuitry, he had not expected to spend more than an hour or two on the school grounds.
He found Anzai-sensei in the teacher’s lounge, nursing a cup of tea and imitating his favorite form of statue-ism. The Buddha-reincarnate didn’t look surprised at all when he made his presence known and waved Rukawa in from the doorway where he lingered.
“Rukawa-kun, it’s so nice to see you again. Still playing basketball?”
Rukawa snorted, a what could have passed as a fond smirk quirking his mouth. “Of course.”
“And how are the opponents there? Are they challenging?”
“They’re good,” Rukawa said simply.
White whiskers twitched over a faint curl of heat and Anzai-sensei smiled approvingly. “That’s good to hear.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, since everything seemed right in their immediate world. That is, everything was right until the staccato taps of dress-shoes hurried down the hall outside and came to an abrupt stop in front of the lounge’s open doorframe.
“Where the hell is ev-Anzai-san! Where is my secretary because oh my god, class ten is loose and we’re in deep shi-”
When Shohoku’s principal suddenly noticed Rukawa, his eyes alit with wild relief that was rather scary. “Are you the substitute my secretary called the school board for? You’ll need to come with me now, because the shit is deepen-”
“Your secretary is hospitalized for having sustained a head injury from a stray soccer ball,” Anzai informed the frazzled man primly. “Her relatives called in yesterday, remember?”
Rukawa stood up and moved away as unobtrusively as was possible. “I’m only here to visit,” he affirmed.
The principal looked dismayed but for only a moment. “It’s just for today, since we’ll definitely find a more permanent replacement for tomorrow. Besides, we’ll pay you,” he said, reaching for the hem of Rukawa’s shirt again.
Had Rukawa not been Rukawa (read: had he been Sakuragi or Mitsui), he would’ve laughed in the other’s face. However, that being not the case, he only frowned. “I don’t have a teaching license,” he said, growing frustrated with the tenacity of the older man. Not even the most persistent of his fans set off his underdeveloped survival instincts like this. “I graduated from Shohoku two years ago.”
“Even better! You’re familiar with our sex-education curriculum then!”
“I agree. I’m sure you’ll do fine, Rukawa-kun,” Anzai added. He nodded his encouragement at his ex-charge and the double chin bounced like a tangible echo.
Rukawa stared from the zen-like white-haired old man to the scrawny, disheveled-looking principal, and back. Volumes of disbelief were projected from the single eyebrow he arched at them.
“Ho, ho, ho.”
As luck would have it, Rukawa’s simple visit to pay his respects to his former coach lasted thirty minutes-but he never made it out Shohoku’s front gates until five hours later.
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The boys and girls of first year class ten all knew that their professor was due for retirement very soon. The man was nearing sixty after all, looked like a well-preserved fish snack on his better days, and had an average of least one heart attack every other week.
But they never expected for their teacher to suddenly up and leave without so much a post-it note memo. When the first period had ended with still no apparent signs of authority, class ten didn’t so much as panic as they did rejoice. However, after the first minute of contained chaos and a visit from the visibly stressed principal, the smarter members of the class figured that the current subject of study might have been what spurred the poor man into sudden flight. The less rational members, on the other hand, came up with the oddball theory that their teacher’s unspoken past had finally caught up to him in the form of vengeful foreign intelligence agencies because who knew what he’d done during his prime.
Regardless, their freedom was very short-lived for a tall stranger, whom they supposed to be their temporary substitute, also accompanied their principal.
“As a visiting alumni, Rukawa-san has graciously offered to begin this most important unit with you while we arrange for a more permanent replacement. So until then, please show him the proper respect and courtesy you showed your previous instructor.” Thus saying, the principal hurried away (fled) and left behind the unimpressed basketball player with a class of freshmen in his charge.
There was a moment of measuring tension while students and unwilling substitute sized each other up. Once the freshmen got a good look at their interim instructor however, the customary reactions (so very predictable that it was shameful) ensued almost immediately.
The girls tittered behind their hands, giggling and murmuring like the flock of garishly plumaged birds they were. In fact, once in a while, the closest one to the teacher’s desk would giggle, a high trill of embarrassed delight accompanied by a pretty blush.
The boys, on the other hand, proved to be less welcoming. Instead of remaining in a random dispersion around the room, they all gravitated together until they were all huddled collectively in a corner-anything to get away from the barrage of hearts and sparkling colors that rolled off the girls in endless waves. Power in numbers, they reasoned while pressed against the walls, because the realization of self-preservation as it was just didn’t sit too well with their precious, machismo selves.
(And god help the poor sod who’d accidentally blocked the view of no less than three girls mere minutes ago. Left to bleed himself into a vegetative state, his comrades were hapless to do nothing more than wish his soul some better luck, next time on the karmic wheel.)
Despite this blatant act of gender segregation however (no matter how willing both sides were to alienate indiscriminately), the boys’ own overwhelming wave of resentment wasn’t directed towards those silly creatures at all. Rather, the actual target of all their adolescent envy was that despicably good-looking stranger-tall, dark, and devastatingly gorgeous-now standing at the front of the room. It was all his fault, really. Never mind that he looked just about as enthusiastic of being there as they were of seeing him.
Then, when the stranger parted his lips to speak, a few of the girls in the front-most row actually fainted and were summarily rolled off to the side so that those in the back rows could surge on forward in a mad scramble to claim the vacancies.
“Shut up.”
Everybody did.
“Sit down.”
They did that too.
Rukawa frowned imperceptibly at the sea of hearts, stars, and shimmering rainbows crawling his way. How a little visit to his alma mater somehow morph into a last-minute favor of substituting for a health class teacher gone AWOL, he still couldn’t quite figure out. Resisting the urge to indulge in his shrug-and-sigh combo of Obvious Dismissal, the Shohoku alumni managed to refocus his waning attention elsewhere. Disregarding the endless admiration and unvoiced offerings of fertile ovaries with practiced ease, he took one last disapproving glance at the curriculum of which detailed content must’ve been what caused its speedy abandonment in the first place.
He was still going to need complementary teaching visuals though, and those disfigured dolls were about as useful to him as Sakuragi was as a point guard. Which was not at all.
Reaching behind the teacher’s desk to where he’d dropped his bag, Rukawa pulled out his key teaching object of choice and raised his voice just the slightest.
“Today’s lesson is sex,” he announced flatly.
More girls swooned and the dark pulsating aura around the boys grew impressively. However, once he raised his hand high, there seemed to be a pause-a hint of hesitant confusion that leaked into the classroom atmosphere.
Rukawa continued like a runaway semi, expression impassive and basketball held aloft. “This is a ball...”
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Fin
Completed: 06/12/06
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Will now attempt to finish IC smut-fic. Right... @_@
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Title: Quality Education
Series/Characters: [SlamDunk!] Rukawa
Disclaimer: May Takehiko Inoue continue to roll in the royalties.
Word Count: 4,318
Notes: This be gen since there's only Rukawa and no signs of crazy, sexy bed partners, alas. Contains lots of basketball-based innuendo, for which I am going to hell. Also, I took the liberty of researching up Japan's sex-ed and... found this particularly informational FUCKING DISTURBING site with pictures from a textbook. Go bleed your eyes out have a look, yah? :D
Dedications: To my mistress-darling meitachi. Your journal was the spawning ground for the bottom-line idea, after all. BEHOLD THE FRUITS OF OUR, uh...
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Quality Education
by kasugai gummie
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When an eleven-year-old Rukawa first woke to the discomfort of wet sheets clinging to his nether-regions, he blinked groggily, cleaned himself as best he could without having to get out of bed, and promptly fell back asleep. No curiosity spared; no questions asked.
Just like that.
Even come the morning after, Rukawa’s bed failed to see much sympathy from its occupant and lay forgotten with the remnants of the boy’s first wet dream congealing in the middle for quite awhile. It wasn’t until Rukawa’s mother entered his room an eternity later, conveniently armed with a laundry basket, that the mattress received any relief.
“Kaede...”
Rukawa needed to leave soon if he was to make it to school on time, but the concerned tone in which his name was called gave him pause. Rukawa looked up from his half-laced shoes to see his mother approach him cautiously, an anxious furrow etched into her brow.
“Did something happen to you last night that you’d like to talk about?” she asked as she neared him. “Are you okay?”
Something had happened to him last night? Talk about? Question mark? Stilling his fingers for the moment, Rukawa thought back to between the time his head hit the pillow and when he woke up, curled away from the sticky stain near the middle of his cover.
He came up with a blank.
Rukawa continued to stare at the almost pleading look just a few feet away though, trying to figure out the problem for a moment longer before ultimately writing off his mother’s consternation. He went back to lacing-up his sneakers.
“No,” he said with a careless shrug.
His mother however, brave woman that she was, remained undaunted (for the moment) and pushed on. “Are you sure, Kaede?” she pressed, holding the sheets out further away from herself so that the discolored splotch was facing her son.
It was then that Rukawa noticed the mess that was his dirty bed sheets draped across his mother’s arms, not that it made any more sense however. He frowned at his feet before looking up again. “I’m sorry my sheets got dirty?” he hazarded, staring up at her with those sharp, pretty eyes that completely failed to register the significance of the soiled linen she now clutched to her chest.
Unsurprisingly, Rukawa’s mother was beginning to feel rather bewildered herself.
When she’d first discovered the thin canvas with telltale fluids smeared like a Rorschach test into its creased folds, she was understandably taken back. Her only son was growing up all of a sudden, had hit that key point in his developmental years just the night before. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a daughter, or that she wasn’t as experienced with the mechanics of male puberty as was practical-she was his mother and determined to be the source of compassion et voice of knowledge for his most turbulent years.
So, here she was, intent on following the script provided to her by her maternal instincts and more than prepared to support her child through his headlong crash into teenage adolescence-but then there he was, depressingly oblivious (or could it be blissfully ignorant?) to the proof of his puberty in her arms.
Rukawa wasn’t following the script at all. Whereas he was supposed to be embarrassed, he wasn’t; whereas he was supposed to feel insecure about the changes his poor body was going through, he didn’t; and whereas he was supposed to try and prevent others finding out about what happened in the wee hours of morning, he had left the evidence right where whatever unknowing passerby (like herself) might see it.
“...never mind then. You’re going to be late for school dear,” she murmured belatedly, giving Rukawa an absent pat on the head before turning back towards the laundry room seeming very lost and confused.
On the contrary, Rukawa felt no such weight of failed obligations and easily dismissed the unresolved confrontation with a shrug and a sigh. It wasn’t the first time his mother made no sense after all, something he attributed to her lack of interest in basketball. He watched as she rounded the corner and when he couldn’t even hear her slipper-muffled footsteps any longer, finished tying his shoes.
___________________________________________________________
When a thirteen-year-old Rukawa first discovered porn, it was, like any other case of adolescent porn discovery, purely by accident. He had stumbled over his father’s stash of Assist magazines one day, a tall pile of glossy covered reports that detailed the international world of basketball. Next to the coffee table and tapes of that year’s NBA playoffs he’d crouched, flipping through the various issues until, maybe halfway into the stash, he reached a magazine that most certainly did not belong there.
“Pu-re bo-yo pen-to hao-su...” he read aloud, annunciating the foreign sounds carefully and scrutinizing the contents before deciding that the near-naked ladies from cover-to-cover where about as interesting as a slam-dunk to the head. Digging deeper into the collection, he found a total of five more volumes of similar ilk-enough porn to make an inexperienced lecher orgasm without ever touching his over-imaginative weenie.
Thus, like every other case of first-time exposure to x-rated material, Rukawa had experienced his through bat-blind luck alone. Unlike every other case of first-time exposure however, his consequential reaction followed anything but the norm; unlike other healthy males his age, Rukawa had absolutely no intention of keeping them in his possession for future perversions. Rather than springing a raging hard-on at the sight of big boobies and provocative poses, Rukawa remained unbothered and unaffected and totally uncurious. He did give all the magazines a dutiful once-over though-to make sure that there was truly no basketball related material in them-then decided to bring those objects of discrepancies to his father’s attention.
He found both his parents in the kitchen, his mother preparing dinner and his father reading what most likely was the sports section. Without much pomp (or tact, for that matter), Rukawa dropped the six worn issues of Playboy Penthouse in front of his father.
The newspaper lowered just enough to allow a pair of eyes to look over, before dropping completely in rustled disarray.
“These were mixed in with your basketball magazines,” Rukawa reported, patting the stack with the type of matter-of-fact gravity only children possessed. “I would’ve put them away for you, since mama always complains how you’re too disorganized, but I didn’t know where they’re supposed to go...”
Rukawa senior’s eyes bugged out at the hint of nipple peeping next to the steady tempo tapped out by his son’s long-boned fingers. “How?” he choked out, shock bleaching his face to an unhealthy pallor.
Rukawa tilted his head to one side and regarded his spluttering father for a moment. “Because I wanted to read the latest issues of Assist,” he finally replied, gesturing to the lesser stack of non-porn held against his side.
There wasn’t much that his father could say to that so he asked the next most burning question on his mind.
“But why are you giving them back to me?!”
…which proved to be a notable mistake. The sharp schlick of a knife rasping against bone, followed by a pointed thunk, proved to be as good of an interruption as any. The older Rukawa male stiffened in his seat, flickering his gaze from the pile of jollies to the meat cleaver that was now jabbed headfirst into the wooden carving board and oscillating ominously. The younger merely watched as his mother picked up the knife again when she was sure that she had their undivided attention.
“Kaede is a good boy,” Rukawa’s mother said without turning. “And Mama has some things that need to be discussed with Papa. So…”
Rukawa took the hint. Much to his father’s combined horror and relief, he left the room without a backward glance, mind already focused on the articles he wanted to read. Behind him, the pointed thuds of heavy metal on the kitchen counter began in earnest.
___________________________________________________________
When a sixteen-year-old Rukawa sat through his first school sponsored sex-lesson, he managed to listen to almost five minutes of the presentation before his head naturally gravitated towards his desk and initiated what would be the start of a beautiful friendship.
“-male organ is then stimulated, yes, just like that-”
Long lashes touched close and opened again to half-mast just in time to see the unwitting girl who volunteered to help stick a trembling hand between the two large white bodies of the demonstration dummies.
“-and what Marisu-san is now touching is the scrotum, which contains the-”
Shohoku had very nice desks Rukawa decided, nicer than Ryonan’s at least (and that he kind of lacked any proof to support his opinion didn’t matter). His head was well supported, the surface cool, and the drone of “sperm,” “fertilization” and “fallopian tubes” faded into a comfortable white noise.
“-blah as you can imagine, ejaculation occurs when blah-”
Despite the absolutely riveting show of life-sized dolls being forced into a mock orgasm at the front of the room, Rukawa’s eyelids refused to hold out any longer. Thus, by slipping into a heavy doze only ten minutes into the hour, Rukawa completely missed the crowning glory of the visual portion.
... only to be whacked awake with one of the disproportionate sex-dummies two minutes later. Needless to say, Rukawa was most displeased and almost hospitalized the culprit with said sex-dummy-turned-weapon as a result.
Despite the scolding he received from the principal on the propriety of respecting one’s elders however (during of which he introduced his head to the back of his chair-Shohoku really did have nice furniture overall), Rukawa’s habit of shutting down during sex-education had been made and set. No matter how many times he was flagged by the disciplinary committee or how many times his teacher risked his well being (life-expectancy) to make him pay attention, his topic-induced narcolepsy was unavoidable. Throughout the entire week, Rukawa somehow managed to sleep through anything of importance, much to his classmates’ amusement and teacher’s hernia-aggravating frustration.
Consequently, Rukawa failed miserably when the time came for exams. And though nobody from the classroom setting found it odd, his parents were certainly surprised when they were called in for an impromptu conference.
“Rukawa-san… I am very sorry to have to be the one to tell you this but... your son, while an excellent member of our basketball team, has displayed some very disturbing habits. If you would like to see his latest test grades-”
And it was then that the Rukawas finally realized (i.e. admitted to themselves) that their son wasn’t exactly normal per se.
That very same day, when Rukawa returned from basketball practice, he found his parents seated in the living room and sharing identically disturbed expressions.
“Kaede,” his mother began, “we’ve found about your recent problems at school and-”
“-we need to talk,” finished his father. “A long, overdue talk about... about...”
Rukawa walked further into the room, unslung his duffel bag by the coffee table devoid of any magazines and sat down in the armchair opposite to his parents. Though not offering any words of his own, his entire manner was expectant, prompting them to continue. He cocked his head to the side when both parents exchanged not-so-identical looks at his silence. If he didn’t know better (and it is safe to presume that he didn’t) Rukawa would’ve thought that they had absolutely no idea of how to continue with their “talk.” Things got rolling again after a not-so discreet jab to his father’s ribs however, courtesy of his mother.
Rukawa senior coughed his throat awkwardly and threw an irritated look at his wife but managed to finish his previously abandoned sentence. “We need to talk about your recent performance in certain subjects, boy,” he started again. “Your teacher showed us your test scores and also informed us that you’ve slept through most of the material for this week in the special sex-education unit. Never mind that I was very much the same during my own high school years-”
“It’s not natural,” Rukawa’s mother cut in (much to her husband’s furthered annoyance). “But we’re here to help since this is one thing that shouldn’t go unsaid. Your teacher offered you another chance to learn the material on your own and retake the exam and Mama and Papa will be the ones teaching you this time. No matter how boring it is, you’ll be grateful later, Kaede.”
Rukawa made a noncommittal sound, which his mother took as an affirmative and his father heard as a negative. In reality, it was just a yawn disguised as a sigh, but his parents were much too preoccupied with divvying up the more enviable topics to make the proper distinction.
“Mama will re-introduce you to the basics and your father will explain to you about the differences between a man and a woman-”
“Wait, wait. I thought we agreed that I would only cover the basics and you go into the mechanics of-”
“Don’t be difficult, dear. You should take more responsibility over Kaede’s other interests. Aside from basketball.”
“What do you mean aside?”
Sliding out of his seat, Rukawa picked up his bag and headed towards the front door. “I’m going to the street courts,” Rukawa announced and left before they could say voice any oppositions they might have had.
As Rukawa left on his bike in what was a beeline to the basketball courts, his mother turned to his father and delivered a good, solid smack to the arm.
“This is all your fault,” she said accusingly. “Fix it.”
___________________________________________________________
Trying to explain the basics of pubescent hormones and sex to someone who just didn’t care was tricky business-more so when that someone required an otherwise irrelevant set of vocabulary when approaching the topic in order for him to pay attention (much less understand).
Rukawa senior sighed heavily, for the first time in his life experiencing the slightest twinge of regret-no matter how insignificant the amount-for having nurtured his son’s single-minded drive for basketball to this extent.
But when the boy’s full focus snapped to him the moment he brought forth what was to be his teaching device, he had no choice but to carry through with the plan of translating the most basic human instincts into terms that his son would identify with.
“Kaede, this is a ball-”
A moment of “of course it is” silence settled thick and heavy between them before Rukawa senior shook off his doubts and got back on track. Reaching over to the innocuous pile of “teaching” supplies by his side, the older man pulled out the next prop essential to his lesson.
“-and this is a hoop.”
His son remained silent, looked suspicious, but was still awake and attentive. So far so good.
But next came the hard part.
“Now, despite what you may believe, they’re no different than a boy and girl,” Rukawa senior finished lamely. Inside however, he was cringing for all he was worth-he knew very well that any other person would be questioning his credentials by now. Even his son seemed skeptical of his analogies and that made everything even worse.
The recent memory of his wife a wielding paring knife against his collegiate jersey (he would have to relocate all his valuables elsewhere after this) was more than enough to egg him on, though.
“And like any game of basketball, when a boy and girl come together under certain circumstances-”
“Sex.”
“-yes. That circumstance. Very good. Oh god... Anyway, the main point-” Rukawa senior closed his eyes against the attention focused his way and bounced the ball into the wavering net, “-is to score.”
He sounded incredibly absurd, he realized, as he was cutting corners like no other. And yet, despite omitting a lot of nasty little details that should never be vocalized while he held a basket in one hand and ball in the other, he was sure that he’d never be able to think of his favorite sport in the same way ever again.
“What’s the point?” Rukawa asked, expression still that of doubt.
“Well, in the case of the boy and girl, when the person with the ball scores, you get a baby.”
“... so the point of sex is for a boy to put his ball into the girl’s hoop. And in order for the game to be won, you need to score enough until a baby comes out?”
“Exactly!” Rukawa senior exclaimed, uncaring that Rukawa’s understanding of human reproduction might still not be normal enough to intermingle with the rest of society. All he saw was the light at the end of a dark and scary and mortifying tunnel. Now if he could only gather the rest of his stuff and make his escape while he could...
“But you can’t have two hoops on one side,” his son interjected, unaware of his father’s plight. Having picked up the ball, he now spun it on his index finger while toying with the strings of the net with his other hand. “According to mom, the ball is supposed to be put into a hole. And if the hoop is to represent a hole in the body…” Sharp eyes narrowed and the ball was flicked into the hoop. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Rukawa said flatly. “Besides, what happens if the other team scores on you?”
“Well, actually... you have a point there, and... and as for the other team scoring-”
There was no escape and somewhere, in the back of Rukawa senior’s head, the sound of a brain breaking echoed like the death scream of a beached whale.
___________________________________________________________
A few near, albeit highly improbable, years later... (read: should Chance ever capitalize on a decidedly questionable sense of humor...)
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When a twenty-year-old Rukawa finally revisited Shohoku High School after two years in the United States, one of which he spent debuting in the pro-circuitry, he had not expected to spend more than an hour or two on the school grounds.
He found Anzai-sensei in the teacher’s lounge, nursing a cup of tea and imitating his favorite form of statue-ism. The Buddha-reincarnate didn’t look surprised at all when he made his presence known and waved Rukawa in from the doorway where he lingered.
“Rukawa-kun, it’s so nice to see you again. Still playing basketball?”
Rukawa snorted, a what could have passed as a fond smirk quirking his mouth. “Of course.”
“And how are the opponents there? Are they challenging?”
“They’re good,” Rukawa said simply.
White whiskers twitched over a faint curl of heat and Anzai-sensei smiled approvingly. “That’s good to hear.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, since everything seemed right in their immediate world. That is, everything was right until the staccato taps of dress-shoes hurried down the hall outside and came to an abrupt stop in front of the lounge’s open doorframe.
“Where the hell is ev-Anzai-san! Where is my secretary because oh my god, class ten is loose and we’re in deep shi-”
When Shohoku’s principal suddenly noticed Rukawa, his eyes alit with wild relief that was rather scary. “Are you the substitute my secretary called the school board for? You’ll need to come with me now, because the shit is deepen-”
“Your secretary is hospitalized for having sustained a head injury from a stray soccer ball,” Anzai informed the frazzled man primly. “Her relatives called in yesterday, remember?”
Rukawa stood up and moved away as unobtrusively as was possible. “I’m only here to visit,” he affirmed.
The principal looked dismayed but for only a moment. “It’s just for today, since we’ll definitely find a more permanent replacement for tomorrow. Besides, we’ll pay you,” he said, reaching for the hem of Rukawa’s shirt again.
Had Rukawa not been Rukawa (read: had he been Sakuragi or Mitsui), he would’ve laughed in the other’s face. However, that being not the case, he only frowned. “I don’t have a teaching license,” he said, growing frustrated with the tenacity of the older man. Not even the most persistent of his fans set off his underdeveloped survival instincts like this. “I graduated from Shohoku two years ago.”
“Even better! You’re familiar with our sex-education curriculum then!”
“I agree. I’m sure you’ll do fine, Rukawa-kun,” Anzai added. He nodded his encouragement at his ex-charge and the double chin bounced like a tangible echo.
Rukawa stared from the zen-like white-haired old man to the scrawny, disheveled-looking principal, and back. Volumes of disbelief were projected from the single eyebrow he arched at them.
“Ho, ho, ho.”
As luck would have it, Rukawa’s simple visit to pay his respects to his former coach lasted thirty minutes-but he never made it out Shohoku’s front gates until five hours later.
___________________________________________________________
The boys and girls of first year class ten all knew that their professor was due for retirement very soon. The man was nearing sixty after all, looked like a well-preserved fish snack on his better days, and had an average of least one heart attack every other week.
But they never expected for their teacher to suddenly up and leave without so much a post-it note memo. When the first period had ended with still no apparent signs of authority, class ten didn’t so much as panic as they did rejoice. However, after the first minute of contained chaos and a visit from the visibly stressed principal, the smarter members of the class figured that the current subject of study might have been what spurred the poor man into sudden flight. The less rational members, on the other hand, came up with the oddball theory that their teacher’s unspoken past had finally caught up to him in the form of vengeful foreign intelligence agencies because who knew what he’d done during his prime.
Regardless, their freedom was very short-lived for a tall stranger, whom they supposed to be their temporary substitute, also accompanied their principal.
“As a visiting alumni, Rukawa-san has graciously offered to begin this most important unit with you while we arrange for a more permanent replacement. So until then, please show him the proper respect and courtesy you showed your previous instructor.” Thus saying, the principal hurried away (fled) and left behind the unimpressed basketball player with a class of freshmen in his charge.
There was a moment of measuring tension while students and unwilling substitute sized each other up. Once the freshmen got a good look at their interim instructor however, the customary reactions (so very predictable that it was shameful) ensued almost immediately.
The girls tittered behind their hands, giggling and murmuring like the flock of garishly plumaged birds they were. In fact, once in a while, the closest one to the teacher’s desk would giggle, a high trill of embarrassed delight accompanied by a pretty blush.
The boys, on the other hand, proved to be less welcoming. Instead of remaining in a random dispersion around the room, they all gravitated together until they were all huddled collectively in a corner-anything to get away from the barrage of hearts and sparkling colors that rolled off the girls in endless waves. Power in numbers, they reasoned while pressed against the walls, because the realization of self-preservation as it was just didn’t sit too well with their precious, machismo selves.
(And god help the poor sod who’d accidentally blocked the view of no less than three girls mere minutes ago. Left to bleed himself into a vegetative state, his comrades were hapless to do nothing more than wish his soul some better luck, next time on the karmic wheel.)
Despite this blatant act of gender segregation however (no matter how willing both sides were to alienate indiscriminately), the boys’ own overwhelming wave of resentment wasn’t directed towards those silly creatures at all. Rather, the actual target of all their adolescent envy was that despicably good-looking stranger-tall, dark, and devastatingly gorgeous-now standing at the front of the room. It was all his fault, really. Never mind that he looked just about as enthusiastic of being there as they were of seeing him.
Then, when the stranger parted his lips to speak, a few of the girls in the front-most row actually fainted and were summarily rolled off to the side so that those in the back rows could surge on forward in a mad scramble to claim the vacancies.
“Shut up.”
Everybody did.
“Sit down.”
They did that too.
Rukawa frowned imperceptibly at the sea of hearts, stars, and shimmering rainbows crawling his way. How a little visit to his alma mater somehow morph into a last-minute favor of substituting for a health class teacher gone AWOL, he still couldn’t quite figure out. Resisting the urge to indulge in his shrug-and-sigh combo of Obvious Dismissal, the Shohoku alumni managed to refocus his waning attention elsewhere. Disregarding the endless admiration and unvoiced offerings of fertile ovaries with practiced ease, he took one last disapproving glance at the curriculum of which detailed content must’ve been what caused its speedy abandonment in the first place.
He was still going to need complementary teaching visuals though, and those disfigured dolls were about as useful to him as Sakuragi was as a point guard. Which was not at all.
Reaching behind the teacher’s desk to where he’d dropped his bag, Rukawa pulled out his key teaching object of choice and raised his voice just the slightest.
“Today’s lesson is sex,” he announced flatly.
More girls swooned and the dark pulsating aura around the boys grew impressively. However, once he raised his hand high, there seemed to be a pause-a hint of hesitant confusion that leaked into the classroom atmosphere.
Rukawa continued like a runaway semi, expression impassive and basketball held aloft. “This is a ball...”
___________________________________________________________
Fin
Completed: 06/12/06
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Will now attempt to finish IC smut-fic. Right... @_@