FIC: Shibuya 109, Niou/Kirihara, NC17 (3/5)
Title: Shibuya 109 (3/5)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 32 000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Eight months later, and Kirihara is more confused about Niou than ever. Sequel to Six Percent Doki Doki
Author's Notes: Written for pixxers' birthday- Happy Birthday, Pix! &hearts
This fic has been truncated into five parts due to length: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
In the middle of the afternoon on a school day, the arcades are empty of everyone except social rejects, university students with too much time, and delinquents skipping school.
Kirihara reckons he's one of the latter. Normally, it would make him snicker and feel pleased with himself to be sitting at a Street Fighter machine and jabbing away at the joysticks, so fast that the avatars can't keep up.
Today, he feels worse than ever.
He beats the yakuza gangster into a bloody pulp. The avatar groans and sprays blood across the pavement on the screen. Kirihara grinds his teeth and growls, pummeling punches into his tattooed gut over and over, moving his hands so fast with the joystick and buttons that the yakuza finally arches his back, then slumps back.
His avatar prances across the screen, muscles bulging and lip curled up. Kirihara's street fighter is every bit the heterosexual man: huge muscles, chiseled pecs, wife-beater and black pants with a cool belt that has a skull on the buckle. The chicks in the game fawn all over him, big boobs heaving and long eyelashes and blonde hair and…
Kirihara leans back in his seat. The screen flashes. Play again? He rummages around in his pocket. His fingers are numb and his tendons are cramped from playing for three hours straight. He pulls out a couple token five yen coins and some silvery single yens. Not enough to scrounge for anything, let alone another round.
"Fuck," he whispers.
And to boot, he doesn't have enough for the bus home. Kirihara sinks lower, sliding off the sweaty vinyl seat onto the grimy floor. The arcade is hot and the flashing lights and dull glow of the UFO catchers across the aisle only seem to increase the temperature, making him shiver with a hot flash. He closes his eyes and wishes he could crawl under a rock and wake up to normal life. A normal life where he could go to the street courts by the elementary school and play with Niou-senpai, just a volley or something, and then they could go out for tempura ramen and kiss behind the train tracks, in that abandoned lot where no one goes except the occasional tomcat and tumbleweed plastic bag. Niou would be hot all over, his tongue on fire and his skin melting under Kirihara's tongue.
"Akaya…" Niou would murmur. His hands would be in Kirihara's pants and they'd make out in a sticky mess of hands and sloppy kisses until they came on the cracked pavement.
Instead, Kirihara's huddled under a street fighter machine in an arcade like a loser in the middle of the afternoon and a pimply worker pushes a broom past him. The arcade worker looks at Kirihara, then he looks away. He pushes the dirt pile past and dust clouds up. Kirihara sneezes.
"There you are."
Kirihara peeks out from under the seat. Carefully, he raises his eyes from the pair of legs standing in front of him. Jackal smiles at him-although his lips are tight and polite-when he waves. Marui-senpai bounces out from behind him.
"Yukimura's so pissed off with you," Marui says. "But, we reminded him that health comes first. Even for mental kids."
Kirihara can't even bring himself to shout "Oi!" He holds his knees tighter to his chin until he can't breathe.
Jackal thwops Marui on the head for him. Sorta. "I reminded him of that-not we-Bunta."
Marui pops a bubble. He raises his elbows behind his head and pretends to lean back, his torso all stretched out as far as he can make it. "Yeah, well, I helped."
Kirihara holds his breath. His throat seizes up, so he hugs his legs tighter still, until his lungs push out and his knees start to buckle under the pressure popping in his ears, his eyes, the need to gasp for air growing by the second. The lights swirl in a kaleidoscope pattern of yellows and reds and greens all melding into one.
"Hey," Jackal says.
Kirihara can feel his face expanding and purpling. He shakes his head and buries it in his hands. He's acting like a dumb kid and he knows it, but he's not talking and they're not making him. Finally, he bursts open and sucks in air, then whips his head around to glare. "What do you want?" he asks. He coughs and gasps again. Jackal and Marui look at each other. When Kirihara crawls out of the game and stands up, they back away.
Marui raises his hands and a white flag of his hanky. "Don't get too close," he says.
"Gay germs, right?!" Kirihara snaps.
Marui's laugh is as tight and forced as Jackal's smile. "Just being careful, Akaya. You never know."
Kirihara turns around and walks into an adjacent aisle of games. He swipes his hand on the tops of the seats, making a pointed effort to spread his germs on as many as he can. He doesn't need to turn around to know his senpais are following-he can hear their sneakers squeaking on the floors and Marui's gum smells like fake apples, a tell-tale sign he's there when Kirihara sits down at the Nascar Racing game. He touches the joystick and the music starts. Cars swerve and rev their engines, but he has nothing to play with. He sighs and his throat feels thick, like he's about to cry and be fucking girly all over again.
"Where's Niou?" he asks. The voice that echoes in his ears isn't his own: it's older and colder and lower and hollow, most of all. Inside, Kirihara cringes. On the outside, he just shifts his eyes to his senpais and swallows.
"He was at practice," Jackal says.
"He ate lunch with Yagyuu," Marui says. "I think. Look, Akaya, don't worry about him. Let the Love Master and his Loyal Apprentice in the Arts of the Female Flesh take you out and fix this problem-"
"Oi!" Jackal shouts. "I'm not an appren-"
Kirihara slams his fist down onto the joystick. It snaps off and rolls onto the floor, but the noise is so loud that Jackal and Marui both jump a foot. Kirihara's hand vibrates from the impact. The joystick taps his sneaker, snapped off right in the middle. "I'm not interested!" he shouts. "Just leave me alone!"
He's breathing hard, panting nearly, and his heart smashes into his ribs, doki doki turned violent. Kirihara clenches his jaw and his eyes snap open as wide as they can. Blood rushes through his body, throbbing up into his brain and filling him up, filling his eyes with the bloodlust that he wanted to control so much. He glares at Marui, then he glares at Jackal and he curls his lip up.
"Just LEAVE ME ALONE!" he screams.
Silence follows. Time slows, in a way, and the game machines stop singing their pixilated songs. The lights blinking on and off slow to an indeterminate haze, neither on nor off, but a dim glow that only seems to highlight the twisted looks on Marui and Jackal's faces.
In a small voice, Marui says, "We just wanted to help you."
"We're your friends," Jackal adds. "We don't want to see you get hurt anymore."
"Bullshit," Kirihara says. He stomps out of the arcade and turns to the left to go home. He stomps a block or two down the street, fists balled and shoes smashing into the sidewalk before it occurs to him that a) his feet ache and b) he forgot his bags at the arcade.
Under the Lucky Star theme song playing overhead by the DDR mat, Kirihara shuffles back to his senpais. His tennisbag is piled up beside Marui and Jackal's. Jackal bites his lip, then, with an awkward sigh, he pats Kirihara on the back.
"Still not interested in checking out the chicks at Shibuya 109?" Marui offers.
Kirihara shakes his head. But he does manage to find the voice to mumble, "Can I borrow 500 yen?"
***
Figures that Niou would be back with Yagyuu.
Niou always liked Yagyuu best anyway. First love and all. Niou thought Kirihara was Yagyuu when they kissed that first time. He probably wished Kirihara was Yagyuu all along. Maybe that was why Niou closed his eyes when they kissed. Maybe that was why Niou almost never said Kirihara's name when he came. Maybe that explains everything.
Kirihara folds the list over and back again in his hands. He takes it between his two hands; the fold down the middle has started to split at the top where the paper has worn thin, but he can't bring himself to shred the list. He wants to. He wants to tear the motherfucking stupid list to be number one into a hundred million bits and flush them down the toilet. It's pointless. Everything is pointless.
These past eight months have meant nothing to Niou.
Kirihara heaves. Kirihara sniffles. Kirihara groans and shakes his head, but he can't cry. He's played sick for two days and now it's the weekend. He's shit at pretending, unlike Yagyuu. Today was probably nice. Spring weather, trees in blossom and fruit buds beginning to form, flowers out and pollen and romance in the air but he's trapped in his bedroom on the fourth floor of the apartment complex all because of his own fault.
Kirihara pulls at the list, breaking the soft fold another centimeter or two.
What would that accomplish? Yanagi-voice asks him.
Oh shut up! Kirihara thinks. Go away!
Yanagi-voice laughs. Akaya, no one will hate you forever. What does being a shut-in and tearing up lists accomplish?
Kirihara scowls. He doesn't answer, and this only eggs on his Yanagi-voice more.
If you want to be number one, if you truly want it 109%, then why aren't you channeling your anger into something productive? What does being gay have to do with playing tennis?
Kirihara looks at his ceiling. The cobwebs in the corners sway as his curtains move, flipping in and out with the breeze through his window. He purses his lips. Kirihara refuses to admit the Yanagi-voice might have a point, but it doesn't matter anyway, because Yanagi-voice probably already knows.
He can practically hear the voice in the back of his brain smirking at him.
You can't hide forever, Yanagi-voice says.
Then, he goes quiet. Kirihara rolls onto his side. He looks at the posters peeling off his walls. There's an old Grand Auto Theft with a red Ferrari with tape on the corners, and a couple flyers for video game releases, too, folded lines bisecting them once, twice in a cross down the center. There's even a small poster with Andy Roddick that Yukimura gave him in junior high school.
"I have two," Yukimura said. "Maybe this will inspire you."
Right now, Kirihara feels the exact opposite of inspired. He lays listless on his back, sighing and sniffling. His chest hurts, pressing down on his lungs and spine and slowly crushing the air from inside. Each breath gets harder and harder the more he thinks about Niou. Kirihara doesn't even have any pictures of them together.
Once, after video games and darts at the arcade, they walked by a purikura in the subway shopping arcade. Kirihara looked at Niou, hoping they could duck inside. It would have been cheesy, sure, to have pictures of themselves making v signs and bunny ears, with exclamation marks and rainbow bubbles and hearts all around the picture borders. But it would have been something tangible to hold onto.
Instead, Niou looked away. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kept walking. His wallet chain jingled on his hip. Kirihara could have reached out and dragged him-Niou was and is thin and lighter than him-but he didn't.
He hesitated over things as much as Niou did nothing.
And now, looking back, Kirihara closes his eyes, the shudder running through his body making his chest heave. He swallows. His mouth is dry, despite the humidity in the air. It's dusk and an amber sun peeks through his window, flooding the room with orange light that tinges everything gold.
Insects start to filter into his bedroom. They land on Kirihara's arms, black specs on his tanned skin. They crawl all over, a bit like the sadness creeping through his muscles, making him heavier and heavier and unwilling to get up when he hears his sister shout through the doorway.
"Stupid! There's a call for you!"
Kirihara stares at the little black fly on his arm, rubbing its feelers. The fly itches and Kirihara slaps it, smashing it dead to his skin in one fell swoop. A brief burst of satisfaction flares in his belly, but the memory of the bug's microscopic pattering lingers and he itches the spot, smearing the insect across.
Another fly lands, this time on his knee. Kirihara narrows his eyes, but he does nothing except watch it. His sister yells again, banging on the doorway so loud that his walls shake. The fly skips across the fine hairs on his leg. Kirihara reaches for it with quick reflexes, grabbing it by the ass and squeezing until the front pops.
"Hey! Aka-brat! There's a call for you I said!"
"Fuck off," Kirihara grumbles. He wipes the bug guts on his sheets and flops back down on his pillows. They are damp from his perspiration, from lying here all afternoon. His leg itches. His arm crawls. His heart sinks deeper and deeper and he almost wishes that he could do something like the switch.
Yagyuu and Niou have a connection from years ago. They knew each other well enough to pretend to be each other. Kirihara doesn't even have enough of a connection to break up with Niou proper. He starts to sniffle again. His throat bobs, hard enough to hurt and his insides have twisted up so tight that even though his stomach churns and bile froths at the back of his mouth, thinking about eating makes him feel barfier than ever.
Senpai, why? Why can't I be as good as Yagyuu?
"NOT THE COREOPSISES!"
Kirihara blinks. The shrill voice, from somewhere outside, sounds vaguely familiar. Another shrieking moan follows, this time prompting Kirihara to roll off his bed to check it out. He peels his back from the sheets, cringing at the rank teenage stink that follows, and he shuffles toward his window. Before Kirihara gets halfway there, his foot hits something, tangles, and he lands face-fist on the cool flooring. Kirihara grunts, a half-laugh forced from his mouth out of autonomic habit. As he looks around, he can see the cables from his video game console wrapped around his feet. He sighs through his nose and rips them off. Then, he lifts himself up to the window sill and looks outside.
There, at the front of the building in the boxy cement planters full of weedy flowers and green things, is Yukimura.
Kirihara blinks again. Buchou…?
He's curious enough-puzzled, more like-to leave his bedroom. He's curious enough to bypass his sister's questions and her ridiculous polka dot dress and bangles up to her elbows. She jingles as she walks, eyes narrowed and perm a foot high above her head. "Where are you going?" she asks. She puts a hand on the door latch as Kirihara pulls his sneakers on.
"Nowhere," he mutters. He pulls her hand off the latch. She puts it back on. He pulls it off again and jabs her in the ribs-the distraction makes her shriek and back away so that Kirihara can run out the door and slam it behind himself.
Yukimura is still crouched by the planter when Kirihara approaches. He scuffs his toe on the pavement. The sound makes Yukimura turn around. In the gloaming light, his eyes blaze red and demonic. The shears in his hand flash, shwooking through the flower he was hacking away at.
"Yukimura-buchou," Kirihara says.
"Look at this mess!" Yukimura says. Kirihara blinks. Yukimura throws his hands up and Kirihara keeps a close eye on those scissors that he waves around. The ground is mess of dead bits of flowers and plants circled around Yukimura and his tennisbag.
Yukimura huffs. He pushes up his headband, although he's wearing a blue tracksuit instead of his tennis uniform. Kirihara doesn't ask if Yukimura just finished playing a match with Sanada or someone at a street court because Yukimura starts talking first.
"Firstly, whatever moron tends your building knows dick all about flowers otherwise he'd deadhead these coreopsises."
Yukimura speaks another language-he's always been good at English and shit. Kirihara stares at him blankly. Yukimura snips away at the plants, going for the kill with a little cackle and scary, white-rimmed eyes. "Secondly," he says, as the flowers and dead bits of grass fly back over his shoulder, "whoever planted these in the first place should know that there are better flowers for this zone than coreopsises."
He looks at Kirihara and raises an eyebrow, as if Kirihara should know exactly what he means. Yukimura adds, "I mean, duh."
Kirihara laughs a little. Then, he says, "Huh?"
Yukimura throws a deadhead flower at Kirihara. It sticks to the gross old white t-shirt he's been wearing since yesterday morning. Kirihara looks down at it and pulls it off his chest. Yukimura shakes his head, but he's smiling.
"Lucky for your apartment sup, I have a spare pair of shears with me for emergencies like this," Yukimura says.
Kirihara shifts his eyes right, then left. No one else is around, except a little ankle biter from the apartment building across the street playing with a beach ball in the middle of the empty road. He takes a seat on the edge of the cement planter, and he plants his feet flat to the ground. Kirihara exhales. He looks out to the west, in the direction of Fuji-san and the sun, growing steadily redder as Yukimura snips.
"Buchou," he mumbles.
"Hn?"
"Am I off the team for skipping practice?" he asks.
What he doesn't ask is: Am I off the team for being a fag?
It's practically the same question anyway.
Yukimura sets his scissors down. He stands up and wipes the bits of cut brush off his thighs. He pushes his headband up, covering the line of sweat that had formed on his brow. "Akaya," he says.
Kirihara swallows. His heart stops beating, his ears already can hear the words and the apologetic tone in Yukimura's voice. The insect song and the low bellows of the lone bullfrog in the distance swell. Kirihara hangs his head. He knew the answer already.
Akaya, you need to find somewhere else to play.
"Akaya, you owe me a game."
For the longest time, Kirihara stares at Yukimura. The first crickets of the evening chirp in the beats of silence. Yukimura's words echo in his ears first. Then they filter down into his brain and the blood stops rushing so hard to his skull. Kirihara remembers to close his mouth before a bug flies in.
"Eh?"
Yukimura holds a dandelion that he's uprooted. Bits of dirt fall from the roots, black across his hands. The head has gone to seed already and, as Yukimura looks at him and raises an eyebrow, it is a perfect puff.
Until Yukimura blows it right in Kirihara's direction.
Kirihara shrieks. Yukimura starts to laugh again and he throws the rest of the plant at Kirihara. "You owe me a game," he repeats. His voice hardens a little and his smile falls into something more serious when Kirihara finishes wiping the seed heads from his front.
"And if you don't pay me back," Yukimura says. His voice drops another octave. On cue, the sun dips lower behind a cement block of apartments. Shadows descend on Yukimura's face, flicking like firelight when his teeth flash. Kirihara shivers.
"If you don't pay me back, I'll kick your ass and you won't get a chance to be number one."
Kirihara gulps.
***
The Niou problem doesn't go away.
Kirihara doesn't know how to fix it.
On Monday, he goes to practice.
"200 laps!" Sanada shouts. "Tarundoru!"
Kirihara winces. The team snickers at him, but they stop when Yukimura shows up.
"Just 100's fine," he says. "Sanada."
Sanada stomps off. In a transient way it feels good to see Yukimura telling Sanada off. Normally, Kirihara would snicker and try to skive off a couple laps, just because he could. Whenever Sanada and Yukimura get pissed at each other, they're distracted. They don't notice him.
Today, Kirihara runs his laps without a word. All 100. He runs them without hesitating or stopping, even when his muscles burn and his lungs feel like they're gonna explode any second. His ribs itch. His throat is dry and the sun is warm, but at least there's a soft breeze that makes the morning bearable.
He tries to push all other thoughts away except for the simple counting of his laps when he sees Niou work on stretches. Niou's back is to him until Kirihara rounds a net post and runs along the opposite baseline. Niou leans out, stretching to touch his toes. Yagyuu pushes on his back and he ducks down, murmuring something to Niou. Kirihara's heart catches in his throat. The doki doki beat inside lodges at the back of his mouth-and not in a good way.
Because Niou turns around, his face softened and the light playing with his hair, the breeze lifting it up and his eyes are only for Yagyuu. Kirihara pushes his legs harder. He sprints past Niou and Yagyuu and looks straight ahead.
He can't look at Niou anymore.
The only thing left is tennis now.
Kirihara crumples to a finish, five minutes before the class bell. He rests his hands on his knees and catches his breath. Inhale, exhale, three times, and then he looks up and his eyes focus in on the nearest person in view. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the hem of his t-shirt. Kirihara grabs his racket. A ball rolls over to his foot, stopping at the inside of his sneaker when he lifts his toes to catch it.
Urayama Shiita rushes over and bends down to grab the ball.
"Hey, kid," Kirihara says. He curls his lip up into the meanest sneer he can muster. His fingertips already tingle with the anticipation of a game. His racket feels lighter than ever in his hand. It bounces against the clay court.
Urayama looks at him. He takes a step back. The swirl on the top of his head uncurls. His cheeks are flushed from the sun, but the blood drains from his face when Kirihara starts to chuckle. It's a forced noise, but it does the trick. No more of this "fag" shit.
"Get on the court," Kirihara says.
Urayama shivers in his shoes. His knees shake. There are whispers behind Kirihara and all around the courts, swirling around like a ghostly wind. "Faggot" "Freak" "Gross" "Asslicker". Kirihara lifts his racket straight out and up. He throws his head back and something rushes up out from him, so fast and so hard that he can't stop it.
It's not until he hears a shrill laugh so eerie and echoing that his blood goes cold that Kirihara realizes it's him doing the laughing.
He wipes the courts with Urayama's carcass within two games. Kirihara's body burns. His eyes are so full of blood that when he wipes the sweat from his face, it's tinged pink.
Urayama's friends carry his body off the courts. There is a dark, stained patch where he fell by the net. Kirihara breathes in and his chest puffs up. He looks down at the spot. The smell of blood and burnt rubber is thick in the air. The cicadas have gone quiet. Kirihara breathes in again, but his chest is empty.
Then, he collapses.
***
He's failed another math quiz.
Kirihara looks at the mark. He doesn't remember writing the test. His face doesn't flush with shame. When the girls that Kimi-kun is friends with start to snicker and point and call him a dumb faggot, Kirihara looks up. His mouth and jaw hurt from clenching his teeth so long today. Kirihara's shoulders ache from stiffness. His stomach is cold. It sits in his gut like a frozen weight.
"Please show up for your tutoring session this afternoon," the teacher tells him-in front of the whole class, no less.
Kirihara ignores him. Instead, he goes to tennis practice. He waits by the door of the clubhouse. One by one, his teammates emerge, favouring him with various smirks or scowls or grimaces. Kirihara watches them with an even expression.
I'll crush you, he thinks.
The next player comes out. I'll crush you too, Kirihara thinks. I WILL be number one!
He waits until he sees a head of dark hair and a flash of lenses. The sky is swirling, growing darker and moodier by the minute. Kirihara tightens his grip on his racket. He takes a deep breath and gathers himself. He's as tall as Yagyuu and he looks Yagyuu straight in the eye, nose to nose-they're the same height. With a little snort, Kirihara says, "I want a game."
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up. Somehow, he wedges a hand between their bodies and slides it up over the bridge of his nose. He's buying time with a small distraction. Kirihara smacks Yagyuu's hand away so fast that the slapping sound bounces between them. He pulls his hand back from the recoil. Yagyuu's eyes are wide and his face pale.
"Kirihara-kun," he says.
Kirihara clenches his teeth. "I said I want a fucking game senpai!"
Yagyuu steps to the side. Kirihara does the same. Yagyuu blinks and steps the other way, trying to duck around Kirihara, but he's not quick enough. Wherever he steps, Kirihara is there.
Kirihara starts to laugh. The sound grows louder and louder until his mouth is wide open and his middle hurts from laughing. Then, as soon as it started, he stops. Kirihara glares.
"Are you too much of a gentleman to back out?" Kirihara asks.
Yagyuu opens his mouth. Then he closes it. With a frown, he says, "Fine. One game."
There is no crowd gathered around them like last year when Niou-Kirihara pair played Yanagi-Yagyuu pair. Even now, Kirihara can't shake the nagging little feeling in the back of his mind about Yanagi-senpai and that one, stray ball he didn’t return.
But Yanagi isn't playing. Niou isn't around. There are no masses parting for Niou, with his bleached hair and his swagger. There is no one but Kirihara standing across from Yagyuu on a spare court, one of the back courts that aren't swept very often. Leaves and twigs lay scattered across the baseline. Kirihara kicks them away with his sneakers as he bounces the ball. Yagyuu stands straight and tall at the baseline of his court.
His girlfriend isn't pressed to the chainlink fence with stars in her eyes.
Neither is Niou. But he isn't on Kirihara's side either, as much as Kirihara searches, in vain, in these last few moments before he throws the ball up and slugs his racket into the serve. He doesn't need to Self-Actualize to beat Yagyuu, he knows this, but still the blood pumps through his system and tension tightens in his chest, pushing on his lungs as they pound against his heart.
Yagyuu's lips twitch. He expected Kirihara to throw himself into this game. He steps back and volleys the shot with ease. His back is straight and his swing back long, but it's no laser. Kirihara narrows his eyes. The tight smile Yagyuu has only makes Kirihara grip his racket tighter, inching his hand up the handle further until it's almost at the frame.
He runs at an angle and stops, right on the balls of his toes. Short shot, punted over the net that has a high arc into the sky. The ball disappears into the late yellow sun for a moment. Yagyuu squints and shields his eyes. The ball starts to fall, nearly vertical, and only then does Yagyuu run for it with his racket flat to the ground. The shot bounces off his racket. Yagyuu swings again, but the shot's a foul.
Kirihara snorts. His eyes blaze and his pupils bulge. He's probably in bloodshot mode, he can't tell for certain. When he glances down at his hand, the veins in his wrist and forearm pulse and throb, flushing his skin darker. There is something swirling around him and making his steps lighter, making his cackle carry on the thick, dusty air.
"My point, senpai," he says.
Yagyuu touches the bridge of his nose. His arms are crossed and his smile has slipped. He rolls the ball over in his hand, then he slugs it at Kirihara. Kirihara leans left and reaches for it. Felt burns his palm, but he doesn't grimace. Instead, the sensation only energizes him more when Yagyuu's lips thin. Electricity ripples down Kirihara's spine, from his eyeballs to his toes. He runs back to the net, throws the ball up and serves in a rush, so fast that Yagyuu doesn't have time to turn around and make the shot.
The ball zooms past Yagyuu, like a laser. It smashes into the chain link fence behind the baseline. For a beat, there is nothing but silence and Yagyuu's perfect part whipping up. Then, the loud metallic crash rings in the air.
Kirihara laughs. "30-0 now, Yagyuu-senpai!" he shouts. Yagyuu walks up to the net with his racket tucked under his armpit. Kirihara swings his racket around in his hand, making fast circles that sing in the air. His wrist slips and the racket flies off and up, smacking into the net post with a loud ping. Kirihara laughs again; the sound is shrill and high-pitched. He can't stop the shaking in his belly or the tense curl of his hands. He jogs to pick up his racket. He looks at Yagyuu, who looks at him with a deeper frown than before.
"Afraid to lose to a fag?" Kirihara asks. He bears his teeth, curling his lip up. Blood rushes in his ears and he can barely hear the little click Yagyuu makes with his tongue.
"Kirihara-kun, I don't think this is really necessary," Yagyuu says.
Kirihara points his racket at Yagyuu. The frame nearly smacks Yagyuu in the arm, but he's quick too. He can pretend to be Niou who can mimic anyone. Yagyuu side-steps out of the way. His nostrils flare. The cowlick at the back of his head flutters and his eyes narrow. Kirihara's back is to the sun. A long, dark shadow with messy hair casts over Yagyuu's face, hiding the left side. He's two-faced, but it's Kirihara's shadow, with the demon eyes, that lurks over half of Yagyuu.
"Shut up and fucking play!" Kirihara says. In a low voice, he whispers, "I'll fucking crush you, Yaaaaaagyu-senpai."
Yagyuu stiffens.
Kirihara pulls a ball from his pocket. He skips back to his baseline when he hears Yagyuu call out his name. Kirihara glances back over his shoulder, flashing Yagyuu the sickest leer he can manage. It pulls at his cheeks and his eyes burn from being so wide. The blood pumping through his skull, pumping through his face and burning his body scarlet makes every pore on his body alive and humming. Kirihara can hear the fitful rustling of the trees and he can practically feel the tense cord between Yagyuu and himself. Yagyuu's body is a board: he's almost as uptight as Sanada-fukubuchou.
Kirihara bends his knees. He raises his arm to throw the ball. Yagyuu calls his name again. "Kirihara-kun!"
"WHAT?" Kirihara yells.
Yagyuu's face is a blank mask, but he holds his fingers to his glasses. "If this is about Niou-kun-"
"JUST PLAY THE FUCKING GAME!" Kirihara screams. He throws the ball and slams his racket down onto it. The recoil pulses through his arm, so strong and so fast that Kirihara stumbles backward as the ball barrels through the air. Yagyuu's quick this time and his back is already stiff and straight. Yagyuu's eyes snap open, as wide as they can, and he leans back, steps back and Kirihara knows what he's doing and he's already running because he can return this damned laser beam, he's done it a hundred times before and-
The air stirs behind his ear. There is a hot burst of something. Kirihara turns, in slow-motion, to see the yellow beam floating past his body. He cups his ear, the skin burned, and he watches the ball lodge itself into the chain link fence on his side of the court.
Kirihara waits. He turns and the boiling anger inside him simmers down a notch. Yagyuu poses with his arm raised and his racket pointed, but he doesn't say "Adoo".
Instead, he says, "Don't you have a tutoring session?"
"Fuck you," Kirihara murmurs. His hand aches. He looks down at it, seeing his fist clenched and his knuckles white. His body shakes with pumping blood and his heart slams into his ribcage. Kirihara itches his chest, but the low burn in his breastbone remains no matter how hard he scratches. It would be so easy to throw another ball and serve it into Yagyuu's expressionless face. It would be so easy to knock his glasses off and crush them under his sneaker. The lenses would crack and the frames would bend and the sound of the glasses snapping under his weight would be beautiful.
But Kirihara remembers Yukimura telling him over the years that he can control this. All he needs to do is breathe and focus. Kirihara exhales. His fist remains tight at his thigh. He walks up to the net. Yagyuu takes a step back. He walks across the court, around the net post. Yagyuu takes another step back. Kirihara balls his other fist and he seethes through his nose, breathing hard on Yagyuu. They are face-to-face and close enough to kiss.
Kirihara grabs Yagyuu's flipped collar. Yagyuu's eyes widen and his mouth curls up. "What are you doing?" he snaps.
It would be so easy to slug his fist into Yagyuu's prim face. It would be so easy to punch him in the gut and see Yagyuu cringe and cry the way Kirihara's done these past weeks. Kirihara can even feel the tell-tale tingle on the back of his neck that other teammates are watching-good. He shivers. Yagyuu tugs at Kirihara's hand.
"Akaya!" Jackal shouts.
Kirihara doesn't turn around. He tightens his grip on Yagyuu's collar. Yagyuu's on his toes and a bead of sweat slithers down the inside of his cheek, right next to his nose.
"AKAYA!" Marui yells.
Yagyuu's nostrils flare. For a second, his wide eyes narrow into slits and Kirihara can see his bared teeth through the small sneer Yagyuu makes. Well? Yagyuu asks. Kirihara shoves his fist into Yagyuu's collarbone. His body is hard and unyielding. On his toes, Yagyuu has a height advantage of an inch or two. He looks down his nose at Kirihara.
A crow caws in one of the nearby trees.
"Akaya!"
It is Niou's voice.
Kirihara lets go of Yagyuu.
Yagyuu has something Kirihara will never have anyway.
***
His sister looks at him. She's got tin foil in her hair and she stinks. Kirihara glares at her and slams the door. He kicks his sneakers off and they hit the wall with a dull thump. There are no sounds from the kitchen and it's only MTV Japan on the tv, playing shitty idol pop that his bitch sister warbles along to.
"Aka-chan," she says. "Your friend called. Don't you have a frigging cellphone anymore?"
He shoves her shoulder. A piece of tin foil flutters to the floor. "Oi!" she shouts. Kirihara stomps past her. He slams his bedroom door, too. Only when the smell of fried pork filters under his doorway and he can hear the smoke detector go off (his mom must be home now) does he crawl out.
Kirihara avoids their stares at the supper table. He takes a stack of cutlets and stabs them with his chopsticks. Under the table, the cat weaves through his legs. Kirihara kicks it. Dumb cat! It feels good to hear the cat yowl and run off, its bell collar jingling.
The pork sits in a greasy lump in his stomach. Kirihara stuffs his face and his stomach churns. His sister glares at him. His mom flicks the channels on the tv. She picks her nails and says something about dad being away until next week again, but she can't remember where.
"At least we're not getting any more prank calls," she says. She purses her lips. The lipstick has worn thin around her lips, but there is still a distinct dark outline tracing them. "Why did those people keep phoning you, babykins?"
Kirihara cringes. His mother blinks. He leaves the table and scrapes his chair back as loud as he can. "I'm not a BABY!" he shouts.
The cat paws at his doorway all night. Kirihara ignores the howls and scratching. He rolls onto his side. The picture tacked on his wall of the tennis team-the only picture he's got of Niou-keeps staring at him otherwise. Niou sits next to Yagyuu and makes bunny ears behind Yagyuu's head. Kirihara stands on the other side of the photo, grinning from ear to ear.
Kirihara dreams about shooting lasers into Yagyuu's head. He cackles and grins when Yagyuu falls down onto the ground, blood oozing from a hole in his forehead. But when Kirihara looks up, he sees Niou standing exactly where Yagyuu had been.
There is a hole cut through Niou's forehead too. He looks at Kirihara with dark eyes. Now, they aren't hidden by his hair. Niou's mouth opens and his lips move. Kirihara doesn't understand. The light in Niou's eyes dim and the reflecting sheen-of life-fades.
Only when Kirihara wakes, panting and gasping and covered in a cold sweat, does he remember that Niou's eyes reflected Kirihara's own glowing red.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 32 000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Eight months later, and Kirihara is more confused about Niou than ever. Sequel to Six Percent Doki Doki
Author's Notes: Written for pixxers' birthday- Happy Birthday, Pix! &hearts
This fic has been truncated into five parts due to length: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
In the middle of the afternoon on a school day, the arcades are empty of everyone except social rejects, university students with too much time, and delinquents skipping school.
Kirihara reckons he's one of the latter. Normally, it would make him snicker and feel pleased with himself to be sitting at a Street Fighter machine and jabbing away at the joysticks, so fast that the avatars can't keep up.
Today, he feels worse than ever.
He beats the yakuza gangster into a bloody pulp. The avatar groans and sprays blood across the pavement on the screen. Kirihara grinds his teeth and growls, pummeling punches into his tattooed gut over and over, moving his hands so fast with the joystick and buttons that the yakuza finally arches his back, then slumps back.
His avatar prances across the screen, muscles bulging and lip curled up. Kirihara's street fighter is every bit the heterosexual man: huge muscles, chiseled pecs, wife-beater and black pants with a cool belt that has a skull on the buckle. The chicks in the game fawn all over him, big boobs heaving and long eyelashes and blonde hair and…
Kirihara leans back in his seat. The screen flashes. Play again? He rummages around in his pocket. His fingers are numb and his tendons are cramped from playing for three hours straight. He pulls out a couple token five yen coins and some silvery single yens. Not enough to scrounge for anything, let alone another round.
"Fuck," he whispers.
And to boot, he doesn't have enough for the bus home. Kirihara sinks lower, sliding off the sweaty vinyl seat onto the grimy floor. The arcade is hot and the flashing lights and dull glow of the UFO catchers across the aisle only seem to increase the temperature, making him shiver with a hot flash. He closes his eyes and wishes he could crawl under a rock and wake up to normal life. A normal life where he could go to the street courts by the elementary school and play with Niou-senpai, just a volley or something, and then they could go out for tempura ramen and kiss behind the train tracks, in that abandoned lot where no one goes except the occasional tomcat and tumbleweed plastic bag. Niou would be hot all over, his tongue on fire and his skin melting under Kirihara's tongue.
"Akaya…" Niou would murmur. His hands would be in Kirihara's pants and they'd make out in a sticky mess of hands and sloppy kisses until they came on the cracked pavement.
Instead, Kirihara's huddled under a street fighter machine in an arcade like a loser in the middle of the afternoon and a pimply worker pushes a broom past him. The arcade worker looks at Kirihara, then he looks away. He pushes the dirt pile past and dust clouds up. Kirihara sneezes.
"There you are."
Kirihara peeks out from under the seat. Carefully, he raises his eyes from the pair of legs standing in front of him. Jackal smiles at him-although his lips are tight and polite-when he waves. Marui-senpai bounces out from behind him.
"Yukimura's so pissed off with you," Marui says. "But, we reminded him that health comes first. Even for mental kids."
Kirihara can't even bring himself to shout "Oi!" He holds his knees tighter to his chin until he can't breathe.
Jackal thwops Marui on the head for him. Sorta. "I reminded him of that-not we-Bunta."
Marui pops a bubble. He raises his elbows behind his head and pretends to lean back, his torso all stretched out as far as he can make it. "Yeah, well, I helped."
Kirihara holds his breath. His throat seizes up, so he hugs his legs tighter still, until his lungs push out and his knees start to buckle under the pressure popping in his ears, his eyes, the need to gasp for air growing by the second. The lights swirl in a kaleidoscope pattern of yellows and reds and greens all melding into one.
"Hey," Jackal says.
Kirihara can feel his face expanding and purpling. He shakes his head and buries it in his hands. He's acting like a dumb kid and he knows it, but he's not talking and they're not making him. Finally, he bursts open and sucks in air, then whips his head around to glare. "What do you want?" he asks. He coughs and gasps again. Jackal and Marui look at each other. When Kirihara crawls out of the game and stands up, they back away.
Marui raises his hands and a white flag of his hanky. "Don't get too close," he says.
"Gay germs, right?!" Kirihara snaps.
Marui's laugh is as tight and forced as Jackal's smile. "Just being careful, Akaya. You never know."
Kirihara turns around and walks into an adjacent aisle of games. He swipes his hand on the tops of the seats, making a pointed effort to spread his germs on as many as he can. He doesn't need to turn around to know his senpais are following-he can hear their sneakers squeaking on the floors and Marui's gum smells like fake apples, a tell-tale sign he's there when Kirihara sits down at the Nascar Racing game. He touches the joystick and the music starts. Cars swerve and rev their engines, but he has nothing to play with. He sighs and his throat feels thick, like he's about to cry and be fucking girly all over again.
"Where's Niou?" he asks. The voice that echoes in his ears isn't his own: it's older and colder and lower and hollow, most of all. Inside, Kirihara cringes. On the outside, he just shifts his eyes to his senpais and swallows.
"He was at practice," Jackal says.
"He ate lunch with Yagyuu," Marui says. "I think. Look, Akaya, don't worry about him. Let the Love Master and his Loyal Apprentice in the Arts of the Female Flesh take you out and fix this problem-"
"Oi!" Jackal shouts. "I'm not an appren-"
Kirihara slams his fist down onto the joystick. It snaps off and rolls onto the floor, but the noise is so loud that Jackal and Marui both jump a foot. Kirihara's hand vibrates from the impact. The joystick taps his sneaker, snapped off right in the middle. "I'm not interested!" he shouts. "Just leave me alone!"
He's breathing hard, panting nearly, and his heart smashes into his ribs, doki doki turned violent. Kirihara clenches his jaw and his eyes snap open as wide as they can. Blood rushes through his body, throbbing up into his brain and filling him up, filling his eyes with the bloodlust that he wanted to control so much. He glares at Marui, then he glares at Jackal and he curls his lip up.
"Just LEAVE ME ALONE!" he screams.
Silence follows. Time slows, in a way, and the game machines stop singing their pixilated songs. The lights blinking on and off slow to an indeterminate haze, neither on nor off, but a dim glow that only seems to highlight the twisted looks on Marui and Jackal's faces.
In a small voice, Marui says, "We just wanted to help you."
"We're your friends," Jackal adds. "We don't want to see you get hurt anymore."
"Bullshit," Kirihara says. He stomps out of the arcade and turns to the left to go home. He stomps a block or two down the street, fists balled and shoes smashing into the sidewalk before it occurs to him that a) his feet ache and b) he forgot his bags at the arcade.
Under the Lucky Star theme song playing overhead by the DDR mat, Kirihara shuffles back to his senpais. His tennisbag is piled up beside Marui and Jackal's. Jackal bites his lip, then, with an awkward sigh, he pats Kirihara on the back.
"Still not interested in checking out the chicks at Shibuya 109?" Marui offers.
Kirihara shakes his head. But he does manage to find the voice to mumble, "Can I borrow 500 yen?"
***
Figures that Niou would be back with Yagyuu.
Niou always liked Yagyuu best anyway. First love and all. Niou thought Kirihara was Yagyuu when they kissed that first time. He probably wished Kirihara was Yagyuu all along. Maybe that was why Niou closed his eyes when they kissed. Maybe that was why Niou almost never said Kirihara's name when he came. Maybe that explains everything.
Kirihara folds the list over and back again in his hands. He takes it between his two hands; the fold down the middle has started to split at the top where the paper has worn thin, but he can't bring himself to shred the list. He wants to. He wants to tear the motherfucking stupid list to be number one into a hundred million bits and flush them down the toilet. It's pointless. Everything is pointless.
These past eight months have meant nothing to Niou.
Kirihara heaves. Kirihara sniffles. Kirihara groans and shakes his head, but he can't cry. He's played sick for two days and now it's the weekend. He's shit at pretending, unlike Yagyuu. Today was probably nice. Spring weather, trees in blossom and fruit buds beginning to form, flowers out and pollen and romance in the air but he's trapped in his bedroom on the fourth floor of the apartment complex all because of his own fault.
Kirihara pulls at the list, breaking the soft fold another centimeter or two.
What would that accomplish? Yanagi-voice asks him.
Oh shut up! Kirihara thinks. Go away!
Yanagi-voice laughs. Akaya, no one will hate you forever. What does being a shut-in and tearing up lists accomplish?
Kirihara scowls. He doesn't answer, and this only eggs on his Yanagi-voice more.
If you want to be number one, if you truly want it 109%, then why aren't you channeling your anger into something productive? What does being gay have to do with playing tennis?
Kirihara looks at his ceiling. The cobwebs in the corners sway as his curtains move, flipping in and out with the breeze through his window. He purses his lips. Kirihara refuses to admit the Yanagi-voice might have a point, but it doesn't matter anyway, because Yanagi-voice probably already knows.
He can practically hear the voice in the back of his brain smirking at him.
You can't hide forever, Yanagi-voice says.
Then, he goes quiet. Kirihara rolls onto his side. He looks at the posters peeling off his walls. There's an old Grand Auto Theft with a red Ferrari with tape on the corners, and a couple flyers for video game releases, too, folded lines bisecting them once, twice in a cross down the center. There's even a small poster with Andy Roddick that Yukimura gave him in junior high school.
"I have two," Yukimura said. "Maybe this will inspire you."
Right now, Kirihara feels the exact opposite of inspired. He lays listless on his back, sighing and sniffling. His chest hurts, pressing down on his lungs and spine and slowly crushing the air from inside. Each breath gets harder and harder the more he thinks about Niou. Kirihara doesn't even have any pictures of them together.
Once, after video games and darts at the arcade, they walked by a purikura in the subway shopping arcade. Kirihara looked at Niou, hoping they could duck inside. It would have been cheesy, sure, to have pictures of themselves making v signs and bunny ears, with exclamation marks and rainbow bubbles and hearts all around the picture borders. But it would have been something tangible to hold onto.
Instead, Niou looked away. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kept walking. His wallet chain jingled on his hip. Kirihara could have reached out and dragged him-Niou was and is thin and lighter than him-but he didn't.
He hesitated over things as much as Niou did nothing.
And now, looking back, Kirihara closes his eyes, the shudder running through his body making his chest heave. He swallows. His mouth is dry, despite the humidity in the air. It's dusk and an amber sun peeks through his window, flooding the room with orange light that tinges everything gold.
Insects start to filter into his bedroom. They land on Kirihara's arms, black specs on his tanned skin. They crawl all over, a bit like the sadness creeping through his muscles, making him heavier and heavier and unwilling to get up when he hears his sister shout through the doorway.
"Stupid! There's a call for you!"
Kirihara stares at the little black fly on his arm, rubbing its feelers. The fly itches and Kirihara slaps it, smashing it dead to his skin in one fell swoop. A brief burst of satisfaction flares in his belly, but the memory of the bug's microscopic pattering lingers and he itches the spot, smearing the insect across.
Another fly lands, this time on his knee. Kirihara narrows his eyes, but he does nothing except watch it. His sister yells again, banging on the doorway so loud that his walls shake. The fly skips across the fine hairs on his leg. Kirihara reaches for it with quick reflexes, grabbing it by the ass and squeezing until the front pops.
"Hey! Aka-brat! There's a call for you I said!"
"Fuck off," Kirihara grumbles. He wipes the bug guts on his sheets and flops back down on his pillows. They are damp from his perspiration, from lying here all afternoon. His leg itches. His arm crawls. His heart sinks deeper and deeper and he almost wishes that he could do something like the switch.
Yagyuu and Niou have a connection from years ago. They knew each other well enough to pretend to be each other. Kirihara doesn't even have enough of a connection to break up with Niou proper. He starts to sniffle again. His throat bobs, hard enough to hurt and his insides have twisted up so tight that even though his stomach churns and bile froths at the back of his mouth, thinking about eating makes him feel barfier than ever.
Senpai, why? Why can't I be as good as Yagyuu?
"NOT THE COREOPSISES!"
Kirihara blinks. The shrill voice, from somewhere outside, sounds vaguely familiar. Another shrieking moan follows, this time prompting Kirihara to roll off his bed to check it out. He peels his back from the sheets, cringing at the rank teenage stink that follows, and he shuffles toward his window. Before Kirihara gets halfway there, his foot hits something, tangles, and he lands face-fist on the cool flooring. Kirihara grunts, a half-laugh forced from his mouth out of autonomic habit. As he looks around, he can see the cables from his video game console wrapped around his feet. He sighs through his nose and rips them off. Then, he lifts himself up to the window sill and looks outside.
There, at the front of the building in the boxy cement planters full of weedy flowers and green things, is Yukimura.
Kirihara blinks again. Buchou…?
He's curious enough-puzzled, more like-to leave his bedroom. He's curious enough to bypass his sister's questions and her ridiculous polka dot dress and bangles up to her elbows. She jingles as she walks, eyes narrowed and perm a foot high above her head. "Where are you going?" she asks. She puts a hand on the door latch as Kirihara pulls his sneakers on.
"Nowhere," he mutters. He pulls her hand off the latch. She puts it back on. He pulls it off again and jabs her in the ribs-the distraction makes her shriek and back away so that Kirihara can run out the door and slam it behind himself.
Yukimura is still crouched by the planter when Kirihara approaches. He scuffs his toe on the pavement. The sound makes Yukimura turn around. In the gloaming light, his eyes blaze red and demonic. The shears in his hand flash, shwooking through the flower he was hacking away at.
"Yukimura-buchou," Kirihara says.
"Look at this mess!" Yukimura says. Kirihara blinks. Yukimura throws his hands up and Kirihara keeps a close eye on those scissors that he waves around. The ground is mess of dead bits of flowers and plants circled around Yukimura and his tennisbag.
Yukimura huffs. He pushes up his headband, although he's wearing a blue tracksuit instead of his tennis uniform. Kirihara doesn't ask if Yukimura just finished playing a match with Sanada or someone at a street court because Yukimura starts talking first.
"Firstly, whatever moron tends your building knows dick all about flowers otherwise he'd deadhead these coreopsises."
Yukimura speaks another language-he's always been good at English and shit. Kirihara stares at him blankly. Yukimura snips away at the plants, going for the kill with a little cackle and scary, white-rimmed eyes. "Secondly," he says, as the flowers and dead bits of grass fly back over his shoulder, "whoever planted these in the first place should know that there are better flowers for this zone than coreopsises."
He looks at Kirihara and raises an eyebrow, as if Kirihara should know exactly what he means. Yukimura adds, "I mean, duh."
Kirihara laughs a little. Then, he says, "Huh?"
Yukimura throws a deadhead flower at Kirihara. It sticks to the gross old white t-shirt he's been wearing since yesterday morning. Kirihara looks down at it and pulls it off his chest. Yukimura shakes his head, but he's smiling.
"Lucky for your apartment sup, I have a spare pair of shears with me for emergencies like this," Yukimura says.
Kirihara shifts his eyes right, then left. No one else is around, except a little ankle biter from the apartment building across the street playing with a beach ball in the middle of the empty road. He takes a seat on the edge of the cement planter, and he plants his feet flat to the ground. Kirihara exhales. He looks out to the west, in the direction of Fuji-san and the sun, growing steadily redder as Yukimura snips.
"Buchou," he mumbles.
"Hn?"
"Am I off the team for skipping practice?" he asks.
What he doesn't ask is: Am I off the team for being a fag?
It's practically the same question anyway.
Yukimura sets his scissors down. He stands up and wipes the bits of cut brush off his thighs. He pushes his headband up, covering the line of sweat that had formed on his brow. "Akaya," he says.
Kirihara swallows. His heart stops beating, his ears already can hear the words and the apologetic tone in Yukimura's voice. The insect song and the low bellows of the lone bullfrog in the distance swell. Kirihara hangs his head. He knew the answer already.
Akaya, you need to find somewhere else to play.
"Akaya, you owe me a game."
For the longest time, Kirihara stares at Yukimura. The first crickets of the evening chirp in the beats of silence. Yukimura's words echo in his ears first. Then they filter down into his brain and the blood stops rushing so hard to his skull. Kirihara remembers to close his mouth before a bug flies in.
"Eh?"
Yukimura holds a dandelion that he's uprooted. Bits of dirt fall from the roots, black across his hands. The head has gone to seed already and, as Yukimura looks at him and raises an eyebrow, it is a perfect puff.
Until Yukimura blows it right in Kirihara's direction.
Kirihara shrieks. Yukimura starts to laugh again and he throws the rest of the plant at Kirihara. "You owe me a game," he repeats. His voice hardens a little and his smile falls into something more serious when Kirihara finishes wiping the seed heads from his front.
"And if you don't pay me back," Yukimura says. His voice drops another octave. On cue, the sun dips lower behind a cement block of apartments. Shadows descend on Yukimura's face, flicking like firelight when his teeth flash. Kirihara shivers.
"If you don't pay me back, I'll kick your ass and you won't get a chance to be number one."
Kirihara gulps.
***
The Niou problem doesn't go away.
Kirihara doesn't know how to fix it.
On Monday, he goes to practice.
"200 laps!" Sanada shouts. "Tarundoru!"
Kirihara winces. The team snickers at him, but they stop when Yukimura shows up.
"Just 100's fine," he says. "Sanada."
Sanada stomps off. In a transient way it feels good to see Yukimura telling Sanada off. Normally, Kirihara would snicker and try to skive off a couple laps, just because he could. Whenever Sanada and Yukimura get pissed at each other, they're distracted. They don't notice him.
Today, Kirihara runs his laps without a word. All 100. He runs them without hesitating or stopping, even when his muscles burn and his lungs feel like they're gonna explode any second. His ribs itch. His throat is dry and the sun is warm, but at least there's a soft breeze that makes the morning bearable.
He tries to push all other thoughts away except for the simple counting of his laps when he sees Niou work on stretches. Niou's back is to him until Kirihara rounds a net post and runs along the opposite baseline. Niou leans out, stretching to touch his toes. Yagyuu pushes on his back and he ducks down, murmuring something to Niou. Kirihara's heart catches in his throat. The doki doki beat inside lodges at the back of his mouth-and not in a good way.
Because Niou turns around, his face softened and the light playing with his hair, the breeze lifting it up and his eyes are only for Yagyuu. Kirihara pushes his legs harder. He sprints past Niou and Yagyuu and looks straight ahead.
He can't look at Niou anymore.
The only thing left is tennis now.
Kirihara crumples to a finish, five minutes before the class bell. He rests his hands on his knees and catches his breath. Inhale, exhale, three times, and then he looks up and his eyes focus in on the nearest person in view. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the hem of his t-shirt. Kirihara grabs his racket. A ball rolls over to his foot, stopping at the inside of his sneaker when he lifts his toes to catch it.
Urayama Shiita rushes over and bends down to grab the ball.
"Hey, kid," Kirihara says. He curls his lip up into the meanest sneer he can muster. His fingertips already tingle with the anticipation of a game. His racket feels lighter than ever in his hand. It bounces against the clay court.
Urayama looks at him. He takes a step back. The swirl on the top of his head uncurls. His cheeks are flushed from the sun, but the blood drains from his face when Kirihara starts to chuckle. It's a forced noise, but it does the trick. No more of this "fag" shit.
"Get on the court," Kirihara says.
Urayama shivers in his shoes. His knees shake. There are whispers behind Kirihara and all around the courts, swirling around like a ghostly wind. "Faggot" "Freak" "Gross" "Asslicker". Kirihara lifts his racket straight out and up. He throws his head back and something rushes up out from him, so fast and so hard that he can't stop it.
It's not until he hears a shrill laugh so eerie and echoing that his blood goes cold that Kirihara realizes it's him doing the laughing.
He wipes the courts with Urayama's carcass within two games. Kirihara's body burns. His eyes are so full of blood that when he wipes the sweat from his face, it's tinged pink.
Urayama's friends carry his body off the courts. There is a dark, stained patch where he fell by the net. Kirihara breathes in and his chest puffs up. He looks down at the spot. The smell of blood and burnt rubber is thick in the air. The cicadas have gone quiet. Kirihara breathes in again, but his chest is empty.
Then, he collapses.
***
He's failed another math quiz.
Kirihara looks at the mark. He doesn't remember writing the test. His face doesn't flush with shame. When the girls that Kimi-kun is friends with start to snicker and point and call him a dumb faggot, Kirihara looks up. His mouth and jaw hurt from clenching his teeth so long today. Kirihara's shoulders ache from stiffness. His stomach is cold. It sits in his gut like a frozen weight.
"Please show up for your tutoring session this afternoon," the teacher tells him-in front of the whole class, no less.
Kirihara ignores him. Instead, he goes to tennis practice. He waits by the door of the clubhouse. One by one, his teammates emerge, favouring him with various smirks or scowls or grimaces. Kirihara watches them with an even expression.
I'll crush you, he thinks.
The next player comes out. I'll crush you too, Kirihara thinks. I WILL be number one!
He waits until he sees a head of dark hair and a flash of lenses. The sky is swirling, growing darker and moodier by the minute. Kirihara tightens his grip on his racket. He takes a deep breath and gathers himself. He's as tall as Yagyuu and he looks Yagyuu straight in the eye, nose to nose-they're the same height. With a little snort, Kirihara says, "I want a game."
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up. Somehow, he wedges a hand between their bodies and slides it up over the bridge of his nose. He's buying time with a small distraction. Kirihara smacks Yagyuu's hand away so fast that the slapping sound bounces between them. He pulls his hand back from the recoil. Yagyuu's eyes are wide and his face pale.
"Kirihara-kun," he says.
Kirihara clenches his teeth. "I said I want a fucking game senpai!"
Yagyuu steps to the side. Kirihara does the same. Yagyuu blinks and steps the other way, trying to duck around Kirihara, but he's not quick enough. Wherever he steps, Kirihara is there.
Kirihara starts to laugh. The sound grows louder and louder until his mouth is wide open and his middle hurts from laughing. Then, as soon as it started, he stops. Kirihara glares.
"Are you too much of a gentleman to back out?" Kirihara asks.
Yagyuu opens his mouth. Then he closes it. With a frown, he says, "Fine. One game."
There is no crowd gathered around them like last year when Niou-Kirihara pair played Yanagi-Yagyuu pair. Even now, Kirihara can't shake the nagging little feeling in the back of his mind about Yanagi-senpai and that one, stray ball he didn’t return.
But Yanagi isn't playing. Niou isn't around. There are no masses parting for Niou, with his bleached hair and his swagger. There is no one but Kirihara standing across from Yagyuu on a spare court, one of the back courts that aren't swept very often. Leaves and twigs lay scattered across the baseline. Kirihara kicks them away with his sneakers as he bounces the ball. Yagyuu stands straight and tall at the baseline of his court.
His girlfriend isn't pressed to the chainlink fence with stars in her eyes.
Neither is Niou. But he isn't on Kirihara's side either, as much as Kirihara searches, in vain, in these last few moments before he throws the ball up and slugs his racket into the serve. He doesn't need to Self-Actualize to beat Yagyuu, he knows this, but still the blood pumps through his system and tension tightens in his chest, pushing on his lungs as they pound against his heart.
Yagyuu's lips twitch. He expected Kirihara to throw himself into this game. He steps back and volleys the shot with ease. His back is straight and his swing back long, but it's no laser. Kirihara narrows his eyes. The tight smile Yagyuu has only makes Kirihara grip his racket tighter, inching his hand up the handle further until it's almost at the frame.
He runs at an angle and stops, right on the balls of his toes. Short shot, punted over the net that has a high arc into the sky. The ball disappears into the late yellow sun for a moment. Yagyuu squints and shields his eyes. The ball starts to fall, nearly vertical, and only then does Yagyuu run for it with his racket flat to the ground. The shot bounces off his racket. Yagyuu swings again, but the shot's a foul.
Kirihara snorts. His eyes blaze and his pupils bulge. He's probably in bloodshot mode, he can't tell for certain. When he glances down at his hand, the veins in his wrist and forearm pulse and throb, flushing his skin darker. There is something swirling around him and making his steps lighter, making his cackle carry on the thick, dusty air.
"My point, senpai," he says.
Yagyuu touches the bridge of his nose. His arms are crossed and his smile has slipped. He rolls the ball over in his hand, then he slugs it at Kirihara. Kirihara leans left and reaches for it. Felt burns his palm, but he doesn't grimace. Instead, the sensation only energizes him more when Yagyuu's lips thin. Electricity ripples down Kirihara's spine, from his eyeballs to his toes. He runs back to the net, throws the ball up and serves in a rush, so fast that Yagyuu doesn't have time to turn around and make the shot.
The ball zooms past Yagyuu, like a laser. It smashes into the chain link fence behind the baseline. For a beat, there is nothing but silence and Yagyuu's perfect part whipping up. Then, the loud metallic crash rings in the air.
Kirihara laughs. "30-0 now, Yagyuu-senpai!" he shouts. Yagyuu walks up to the net with his racket tucked under his armpit. Kirihara swings his racket around in his hand, making fast circles that sing in the air. His wrist slips and the racket flies off and up, smacking into the net post with a loud ping. Kirihara laughs again; the sound is shrill and high-pitched. He can't stop the shaking in his belly or the tense curl of his hands. He jogs to pick up his racket. He looks at Yagyuu, who looks at him with a deeper frown than before.
"Afraid to lose to a fag?" Kirihara asks. He bears his teeth, curling his lip up. Blood rushes in his ears and he can barely hear the little click Yagyuu makes with his tongue.
"Kirihara-kun, I don't think this is really necessary," Yagyuu says.
Kirihara points his racket at Yagyuu. The frame nearly smacks Yagyuu in the arm, but he's quick too. He can pretend to be Niou who can mimic anyone. Yagyuu side-steps out of the way. His nostrils flare. The cowlick at the back of his head flutters and his eyes narrow. Kirihara's back is to the sun. A long, dark shadow with messy hair casts over Yagyuu's face, hiding the left side. He's two-faced, but it's Kirihara's shadow, with the demon eyes, that lurks over half of Yagyuu.
"Shut up and fucking play!" Kirihara says. In a low voice, he whispers, "I'll fucking crush you, Yaaaaaagyu-senpai."
Yagyuu stiffens.
Kirihara pulls a ball from his pocket. He skips back to his baseline when he hears Yagyuu call out his name. Kirihara glances back over his shoulder, flashing Yagyuu the sickest leer he can manage. It pulls at his cheeks and his eyes burn from being so wide. The blood pumping through his skull, pumping through his face and burning his body scarlet makes every pore on his body alive and humming. Kirihara can hear the fitful rustling of the trees and he can practically feel the tense cord between Yagyuu and himself. Yagyuu's body is a board: he's almost as uptight as Sanada-fukubuchou.
Kirihara bends his knees. He raises his arm to throw the ball. Yagyuu calls his name again. "Kirihara-kun!"
"WHAT?" Kirihara yells.
Yagyuu's face is a blank mask, but he holds his fingers to his glasses. "If this is about Niou-kun-"
"JUST PLAY THE FUCKING GAME!" Kirihara screams. He throws the ball and slams his racket down onto it. The recoil pulses through his arm, so strong and so fast that Kirihara stumbles backward as the ball barrels through the air. Yagyuu's quick this time and his back is already stiff and straight. Yagyuu's eyes snap open, as wide as they can, and he leans back, steps back and Kirihara knows what he's doing and he's already running because he can return this damned laser beam, he's done it a hundred times before and-
The air stirs behind his ear. There is a hot burst of something. Kirihara turns, in slow-motion, to see the yellow beam floating past his body. He cups his ear, the skin burned, and he watches the ball lodge itself into the chain link fence on his side of the court.
Kirihara waits. He turns and the boiling anger inside him simmers down a notch. Yagyuu poses with his arm raised and his racket pointed, but he doesn't say "Adoo".
Instead, he says, "Don't you have a tutoring session?"
"Fuck you," Kirihara murmurs. His hand aches. He looks down at it, seeing his fist clenched and his knuckles white. His body shakes with pumping blood and his heart slams into his ribcage. Kirihara itches his chest, but the low burn in his breastbone remains no matter how hard he scratches. It would be so easy to throw another ball and serve it into Yagyuu's expressionless face. It would be so easy to knock his glasses off and crush them under his sneaker. The lenses would crack and the frames would bend and the sound of the glasses snapping under his weight would be beautiful.
But Kirihara remembers Yukimura telling him over the years that he can control this. All he needs to do is breathe and focus. Kirihara exhales. His fist remains tight at his thigh. He walks up to the net. Yagyuu takes a step back. He walks across the court, around the net post. Yagyuu takes another step back. Kirihara balls his other fist and he seethes through his nose, breathing hard on Yagyuu. They are face-to-face and close enough to kiss.
Kirihara grabs Yagyuu's flipped collar. Yagyuu's eyes widen and his mouth curls up. "What are you doing?" he snaps.
It would be so easy to slug his fist into Yagyuu's prim face. It would be so easy to punch him in the gut and see Yagyuu cringe and cry the way Kirihara's done these past weeks. Kirihara can even feel the tell-tale tingle on the back of his neck that other teammates are watching-good. He shivers. Yagyuu tugs at Kirihara's hand.
"Akaya!" Jackal shouts.
Kirihara doesn't turn around. He tightens his grip on Yagyuu's collar. Yagyuu's on his toes and a bead of sweat slithers down the inside of his cheek, right next to his nose.
"AKAYA!" Marui yells.
Yagyuu's nostrils flare. For a second, his wide eyes narrow into slits and Kirihara can see his bared teeth through the small sneer Yagyuu makes. Well? Yagyuu asks. Kirihara shoves his fist into Yagyuu's collarbone. His body is hard and unyielding. On his toes, Yagyuu has a height advantage of an inch or two. He looks down his nose at Kirihara.
A crow caws in one of the nearby trees.
"Akaya!"
It is Niou's voice.
Kirihara lets go of Yagyuu.
Yagyuu has something Kirihara will never have anyway.
***
His sister looks at him. She's got tin foil in her hair and she stinks. Kirihara glares at her and slams the door. He kicks his sneakers off and they hit the wall with a dull thump. There are no sounds from the kitchen and it's only MTV Japan on the tv, playing shitty idol pop that his bitch sister warbles along to.
"Aka-chan," she says. "Your friend called. Don't you have a frigging cellphone anymore?"
He shoves her shoulder. A piece of tin foil flutters to the floor. "Oi!" she shouts. Kirihara stomps past her. He slams his bedroom door, too. Only when the smell of fried pork filters under his doorway and he can hear the smoke detector go off (his mom must be home now) does he crawl out.
Kirihara avoids their stares at the supper table. He takes a stack of cutlets and stabs them with his chopsticks. Under the table, the cat weaves through his legs. Kirihara kicks it. Dumb cat! It feels good to hear the cat yowl and run off, its bell collar jingling.
The pork sits in a greasy lump in his stomach. Kirihara stuffs his face and his stomach churns. His sister glares at him. His mom flicks the channels on the tv. She picks her nails and says something about dad being away until next week again, but she can't remember where.
"At least we're not getting any more prank calls," she says. She purses her lips. The lipstick has worn thin around her lips, but there is still a distinct dark outline tracing them. "Why did those people keep phoning you, babykins?"
Kirihara cringes. His mother blinks. He leaves the table and scrapes his chair back as loud as he can. "I'm not a BABY!" he shouts.
The cat paws at his doorway all night. Kirihara ignores the howls and scratching. He rolls onto his side. The picture tacked on his wall of the tennis team-the only picture he's got of Niou-keeps staring at him otherwise. Niou sits next to Yagyuu and makes bunny ears behind Yagyuu's head. Kirihara stands on the other side of the photo, grinning from ear to ear.
Kirihara dreams about shooting lasers into Yagyuu's head. He cackles and grins when Yagyuu falls down onto the ground, blood oozing from a hole in his forehead. But when Kirihara looks up, he sees Niou standing exactly where Yagyuu had been.
There is a hole cut through Niou's forehead too. He looks at Kirihara with dark eyes. Now, they aren't hidden by his hair. Niou's mouth opens and his lips move. Kirihara doesn't understand. The light in Niou's eyes dim and the reflecting sheen-of life-fades.
Only when Kirihara wakes, panting and gasping and covered in a cold sweat, does he remember that Niou's eyes reflected Kirihara's own glowing red.