[fic] talk like an open book
Jan. 29th, 2021 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhodochrositetalk like an open book
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: zaizen & koharu (r63) & yuuji (r63), unrequited zaizen->kenya, background shiraishi/kenya and koharu/yuuji
rating: g
word count: 2.7k
zaizen experiences adolescent angst and gets gaymentored by nyota rbrs. set post nats, pre u17, i think i fucked up the timeline slightly but don't even worry about it
-
Yuuri ambushes him right as he’s stepping out of the clubroom, loping derangedly out of the bushes as though she’d been lying in wait for him there and slinging an arm around Zaizen’s shoulders like a human lasso. Zaizen splutters under the sudden weight, and splutters again when it doubles, as Haruko attaches herself to his other side and bears down on his arm with all her not-inconsiderable might.
"Zaizen-chan," Haruko trills. "We haven't seen you in for~e~ver! You aren't avoiding us, are you?"
"We had a practice match ten minutes ago, Haruko-senpai," Zaizen says, discreetly trying to tug his arm free before Haruko dislocates his shoulder.
Yuuri waves dismissively. "That's tennis. We've barely spent any actual time together. Haruko’s feeling unloved and I won’t stand for it! Let’s go get parfaits!”
"I can't, I'm busy."
"With what?” Haruko taps her chin with a finger. “I know you've already finished all your homework for the week like a good little scholar, plus… mmm… none of your classes have any ongoing assignments right now.”
"It's really weird that you know that," Zaizen informs her. "And I have—" His mind blanks. "Blog stuff. Uploading… you wouldn't get it.”
“You can do your “uploading” and whatever after. Come on, I’ll treat.” Without waiting for an answer, Yuuri starts manhandling Zaizen down the path, Haruko gleefully tagging along for the ride and cooing over how powerful Yuuri’s biceps are or something horrible like that. It’s two against one, which is manifestly unfair, but as the universe appears to have assigned him this as his particular lot in life he has no choice but to allow himself to be half-carried out of the school gates and all the way to the café that is Haruko’s favourite afterschool date spot. It really has been a while. The last time Zaizen came here with them must have been before Nationals.
With Yuuri’s wallet in hand, Haruko orders for everyone before sliding into the booth opposite Zaizen, pressed flush hip to shoulder with Yuuri, though it's definitely too hot for that kind of physical proximity. Yuuri turns the red of a boiled prawn and adjusts the open collar of her uniform shirt.
"I got one for us to share," Haruko tells Yuuri. "You don't mind, do you?" Yuuri shakes her head so violently her bandana seems in danger of flying clean off. "And shiratama dango for our Zaizen-chan."
"Thanks, senpai. Didn't know you remembered."
"Of course she did! Haruko is a genius with a 200 IQ, you know," Yuuri says proudly.
“I do know, Yuuri-senpai,” Zaizen says. “You tell me every day.”
"Such a flatterer," Haruko sighs, mock-swooning further into Yuuri's side. Yuuri's arm curls around Haruko's waist and she stares down at Haruko with such a luminescently besotted expression Zaizen has to clear his throat to remind them he's still there. Not that he thinks they've forgotten. Really the opposite; Haruko and Yuuri are never happier or more demonstrative when they have a captive audience.
The arrival of their orders, Haruko and Yuuri’s joint giant strawberry-pink monstrosity, Zaizen's own parfait heaped with shiratama dango and red bean, instantly hoists his mood up. He inhales half of it in five seconds flat. "Now, now, not so fast, watch out for the brain freeze," Haruko warns, right as the spike of pain hits the back of Zaizen's skull. He bites back a grimace, and presses his tongue to the sugary roof of his mouth, waiting for it to subside.
"Wish you were as happy to see us as you are to see that parfait," Yuuri grumbles. She licks her spoon clean and brandishes it at Zaizen like a weapon.
"You did say you'd treat," Zaizen says, scooping up another mouthful of parfait. "Don't get mad over your own bribe."
"Oh, Zaizen-chan, cruel as always," Haruko says. Her mouth pulls down in an exaggerated pout. "It makes me wonder if there's something I'm lacking…"
"No way! You're the most perfect girl in the world," Yuuri says firmly. "You're sweeter than any parfait."
Zaizen is going to die. Haruko gasps and clasps her hands in front of her chest. “Yuu-chan!”
“Haruko!”
“Yuu-chan!”
“Haruko!”
As Haruko and Yuuri are liable to repeat this routine ad infinitum if allowed to proceed uninterrupted, Zaizen takes the opportunity to mull over the sorry state of his emotional life. Zaizen has, in fact, been avoiding them—Haruko moreso than Yuuri, but Yuuri takes the whole one-flesh-one-mind thing very seriously and is never too far from Haruko's vicinity—for reasons that are a roughly sixty-forty split between knowing that Haruko will see through him within two minutes of conversation, and not wanting to test if he can handle the patented Haruko-and-Yuuri saccharine loved-up modus operandi. The most pathetic part of this is that nothing has even happened. There’s no catalyst to explain why, though he can’t pinpoint when precisely it happened, one day he had a reasonable handle on this overgrown crush and the next every single thing Kenya did made him momentarily breathless with agonised longing. Kenya’s so generous with touch it’s almost too obvious to respond to the constant deluge of pokes and elbows and hip nudges and wrist grabs and over-the-top kiss attempts, but Zaizen’s stupid heart still stutters each time Kenya’s skin makes contact with his own.
And the smaller things. The scent of Kenya’s shampoo. The peachy, soft-looking skin exposed at the nape of his neck when he bends down to retie his shoelaces. How his eyes crinkle up in laughter. What he looks like lit up with concentration on the other side of the net. Actually Zaizen’s becoming increasingly convinced it won’t even require Haruko’s extraordinary perception to tell. More and more often he finds himself checking his reflection in a sudden fit of manic fear that the secret is visible on him, somehow. As if the force of it is so violent it’s rearranged his facial features into a billboard screaming DISGUSTINGLY IN LOVE WITH OSHITARI KENYA. It feels too big to be contained within just his body. Even as he bats away Kenya’s affection he’s soaking it up in desperate gratitude, terrified all the while that Kenya will find out and everything between them, all this wealth of ease, will change.
So Kenya’s incredible obliviousness is equal parts blessing and curse. He’s moving through the world on double speed, Shiraishi said once, during the early days of the Kenya-Ishida doubles combination when they hadn’t quite figured out each other’s rhythms yet and Kenya had just collided into Ishida for the hundredth time that practice and bounced right off him like he’d hit a trampoline. SORRY, GIN! Kenya was yelling, gesticulating wildly as if he were also apologising via interpretative dance. I DIDN’T SEE YOU—
It’s like he reacts to things before they happen, and then by the time they happen he gets caught off-guard, you know? Shiraishi finished. Such a softness in his eyes. By that point Zaizen was already aware he was rapidly approaching the cliff’s edge of total lunacy regarding Kenya, and also that Shiraishi had been solidly over it at least a year longer than him, this particular gap between them fixed and unbridgeable. Zaizen mumbled something like Kenya-san should be more careful and Shiraishi laughed and said, maybe he’d listen if he heard it from you.
Dangerous words, the kind that might give a stupid heart stupid hopes. Zaizen had shoved it down very deep and resolved never to think about it again, but it won't stop resurfacing, resilient and unkillable as the weeds growing around the courts. Maybe if Kenya heard it from Zaizen. Maybe if—
“—Zaizen-chan? Helloooo, Zaizen-chan, are you in there?”
Zaizen blinks twice and refocuses. Haruko and Yuuri are staring at him, impassioned declarations of nomenclature apparently on hold. “Alright, something’s definitely up,” Yuuri announces. “Usually you would have stopped us by now."
“I was just thinking,” Zaizen says. “You could try it too sometime, senpai.”
“Hey! What’s with this rude kouhai, huh—”
“Well, what’s on your mind?” Haruko leans forward. “You can cry into your Haruko-senpai’s bosom about it. Girl troubles? Boy troubles?”
“Oi, oi, no bosoms,” Yuuri calls.
"No thanks, Haruko-senpai," Zaizen says flatly. “It’s not anything like that. I’m—planning out my next blog post.”
Haruko narrows her eyes. This is the critical moment. Zaizen summons every last ounce of disaffected teenage energy within him and returns her gaze directly, evenly, impassively. He doesn’t even blink. After a while Haruko purses her lips and sits back, and just as Zaizen’s letting out a breath and spooning the last of the dango into his mouth, Haruko exclaims, “Ohoho! So it is like that, Zaizen-chan! You thought you could hide it from me, but I’m onto you. You’re in love.”
Zaizen chokes, half on the mochi in his throat and half on misery. This is exactly why he didn’t want to come. “What are you even saying…”
“Zaizen has a crush!” Yuuri bellows delightedly, slamming a fist down on the table. Zaizen winces.
“No I don’t—not so loud, senpai—”
Undeterred, Yuuri bulldozes forward. “So who is it? Do we know them? Gotta be another player, right? Your age? Older than you? Someone from Seigaku? Man, our team really has a weird thing for Seigaku.”
Morosely, Zaizen pushes the edge of his spoon through the small pool of melted ice-cream collecting at the base of his parfait glass. “Please give up, senpai,” he says.
“Don’t be silly,” Haruko says, swatting Yuuri’s shoulder, and then, like she isn’t sentencing Zaizen to excruciating gory death à la the insane one from Rikkaidai (... the more insane one? Respectfully, that team is full of freaks) except maybe slightly more metaphorical, adds: “Obviously it’s Kenya-kun.”
The spoon slips in Zaizen’s grip, clatters back into the glass. He sinks down in his seat and wishes the death in question was as literal as Kirihara Akaya’s back at Nationals. His insides churn like a concrete truck. It’s—shouldn’t it feel like a weight lifted, to hear it said out loud? But there’s only a dully encroaching dread.
Sometimes, late at night when his eyes hurt too much to keep killing off his vision on his phone in the dark and he’s feeling especially self-pitying, he’ll imagine what it might be like to confess. High off a doubles victory in some tournament, the wrecking-ball rush of endorphins and adrenaline smashing down his brain-to-mouth filter. Kenya will throw his arms around him in celebration, maybe even try to lift him up to spin him around, and that’s when he’ll blurt it out, the words spilling over: Kenya-san, I like you. How nauseous he’ll feel, the shocking relief of two years’ worth of pressure let out at last. Kenya's mouth will part in shock, all of him backlit by the sun and mysteriously in soft focus, so beautiful it’ll hurt to look at him, and he’ll say—
That’s generally when Zaizen’s self-preservation instincts kick in and cut the mental cameras. Zaizen isn’t a dreamer. In the Shitenhoji vocabulary of demented idealism this makes him a defeatist, though he isn’t that either; he has a healthy respect for his own skills. Zaizen’s no data specialist, but he’s got good instincts, match routes unfolding or closing up with every shot, and he knows an unwinnable set of circumstances when he sees it.
“Huh? Kenya? But Kenya’s—” Yuuri snaps her mouth shut, eyes wide.
Suddenly Zaizen is so tired he wants nothing more than to put his head down on his arms against the table and go to sleep on the spot. The exhaustion of the afternoon catching up to him all at once. “I know,” Zaizen says.
“Zaizen…” Yuuri says awkwardly.
Even Yuuri, the staunchest optimist Zaizen has ever known, has nothing to offer him. It’s not like Zaizen hadn’t known it was hopeless, but the confirmation stings anyway. “I know, okay? You don’t have to say anything. I know Kenya-san is—I have eyes, I can see the way he—with Shiraishi-buchou. Even if buchou can’t,” he can’t help adding, a touch bitterly.
But every time it rises it’s impossible to maintain the resentment for long. He loves Shiraishi too, he can't help it. The ridiculous lengths Shiraishi’s always gone to just to make Zaizen laugh. Even now Shiraishi will still go pink with pleased gratification when Zaizen can't stifle a smile fast enough in response to one of his gags. Shiraishi, ever the dependable captain, has been looking out for him since the start. In fact, Zaizen thinks it worries Shiraishi more when he’s not needed. But what can Zaizen even ask for? Shiraishi to not exist? As long as Shiraishi is there, Kenya will never, ever look at Zaizen.
Haruko reaches across the table, and Zaizen lets her braid their fingers together. "Is it that bad?" she asks. “I wasn’t sure.”
"I—" have no idea what you're talking about, is what Zaizen means to say, but what comes out of his mouth is, stiffly, “Yeah.”
“Are you gonna tell him?” Yuuri says.
Zaizen fixes his eyes on a trail of condensation dripping down the side of the glass. “What’s the point? It’s not like I have a chance.”
“To let it out! You'll feel better. And Kenya isn't the kind of guy who would hate you if he, like… knew. How you felt.”
“Yeah, but still." Zaizen swallows. "Things would have to change."
“Oh, Zaizen-chan,” Haruko says, squeezing Zaizen’s hand. The terrifying acuity of Shitenhoji’s best gamemaker gleaming out of her eyes, no less keen for its sympathy. “It’s only your first love. You’ll have other loves. You’re cute and handsome and everyone will want to be with you. I know, I know, you don’t want everyone,” Haruko adds, lifting a finger daintily. “You only want Kenya-kun.”
“I didn’t say that,” Zaizen mutters.
“It might feel like the end of the world now, but in a few years time you won’t even remember it,” Haruko continues, as if Zaizen hadn’t spoken at all. “The capacity of the human brain to recall pain, or really any kind of immediate perceptual memory, is ve~ry limited.”
Zaizen exhales carefully, through his teeth. “Look, senpai, no offense, but I just—I don’t want to hear it from you. Right now.”
It’s difficult to bear the attempt at comfort when it comes from Haruko and Yuuri with their first love success story, the miracle of fortune that drew them together. No matter how many times Zaizen reasons with himself that it's weird and terrifying to encounter the person you'll be with for the rest of your life at the age of twelve, he struggles to remember the logic when he’s watching Shiraishi and Kenya alternate tentative wistful glances at each other, sick to his teeth with envy.
Haruko squeezes his hand again, and then withdraws. “Alright. Say, did we tell you about the meeting we overheard the other day between Osamu-chan and the principal? Yuu-chan, you remember, don't you?" and seamlessly they launch into an animated impromptu reenactment at their typical inappropriate volumes. It has the air of a performance ramped up for his benefit, the kindness of routine.
He knows his own part, too. When they finish he lets the silence drag on for a beat too long before saying, "Interesting story, senpai," straightfaced. The anchor of a well-practised skit settling him; so he's Shitenhoji, after all.
“Stoic as ever,” Yuuri complains, but the glance she exchanges with Haruko is saturated with blatant relief.
It's past sunset, now, the sky outside deep orange, some of the heat of the afternoon draining away. Cool change coming in, or something. As they’re standing up to leave, Haruko says, “Did you see Kurarin’s message about that special training camp?”
“In the LINE chat? Yeah, I did,” Zaizen says.
“Sounds so~o~o exciting, don’t you think? Will you go?”
Zaizen slings his school backpack over his shoulder and thumbs the strap of his tennis bag. The summer is already over. He doesn’t see the value in prolonging the inevitable. “No,” Zaizen says. “I don’t think I will.”
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: zaizen & koharu (r63) & yuuji (r63), unrequited zaizen->kenya, background shiraishi/kenya and koharu/yuuji
rating: g
word count: 2.7k
zaizen experiences adolescent angst and gets gaymentored by nyota rbrs. set post nats, pre u17, i think i fucked up the timeline slightly but don't even worry about it
-
Yuuri ambushes him right as he’s stepping out of the clubroom, loping derangedly out of the bushes as though she’d been lying in wait for him there and slinging an arm around Zaizen’s shoulders like a human lasso. Zaizen splutters under the sudden weight, and splutters again when it doubles, as Haruko attaches herself to his other side and bears down on his arm with all her not-inconsiderable might.
"Zaizen-chan," Haruko trills. "We haven't seen you in for~e~ver! You aren't avoiding us, are you?"
"We had a practice match ten minutes ago, Haruko-senpai," Zaizen says, discreetly trying to tug his arm free before Haruko dislocates his shoulder.
Yuuri waves dismissively. "That's tennis. We've barely spent any actual time together. Haruko’s feeling unloved and I won’t stand for it! Let’s go get parfaits!”
"I can't, I'm busy."
"With what?” Haruko taps her chin with a finger. “I know you've already finished all your homework for the week like a good little scholar, plus… mmm… none of your classes have any ongoing assignments right now.”
"It's really weird that you know that," Zaizen informs her. "And I have—" His mind blanks. "Blog stuff. Uploading… you wouldn't get it.”
“You can do your “uploading” and whatever after. Come on, I’ll treat.” Without waiting for an answer, Yuuri starts manhandling Zaizen down the path, Haruko gleefully tagging along for the ride and cooing over how powerful Yuuri’s biceps are or something horrible like that. It’s two against one, which is manifestly unfair, but as the universe appears to have assigned him this as his particular lot in life he has no choice but to allow himself to be half-carried out of the school gates and all the way to the café that is Haruko’s favourite afterschool date spot. It really has been a while. The last time Zaizen came here with them must have been before Nationals.
With Yuuri’s wallet in hand, Haruko orders for everyone before sliding into the booth opposite Zaizen, pressed flush hip to shoulder with Yuuri, though it's definitely too hot for that kind of physical proximity. Yuuri turns the red of a boiled prawn and adjusts the open collar of her uniform shirt.
"I got one for us to share," Haruko tells Yuuri. "You don't mind, do you?" Yuuri shakes her head so violently her bandana seems in danger of flying clean off. "And shiratama dango for our Zaizen-chan."
"Thanks, senpai. Didn't know you remembered."
"Of course she did! Haruko is a genius with a 200 IQ, you know," Yuuri says proudly.
“I do know, Yuuri-senpai,” Zaizen says. “You tell me every day.”
"Such a flatterer," Haruko sighs, mock-swooning further into Yuuri's side. Yuuri's arm curls around Haruko's waist and she stares down at Haruko with such a luminescently besotted expression Zaizen has to clear his throat to remind them he's still there. Not that he thinks they've forgotten. Really the opposite; Haruko and Yuuri are never happier or more demonstrative when they have a captive audience.
The arrival of their orders, Haruko and Yuuri’s joint giant strawberry-pink monstrosity, Zaizen's own parfait heaped with shiratama dango and red bean, instantly hoists his mood up. He inhales half of it in five seconds flat. "Now, now, not so fast, watch out for the brain freeze," Haruko warns, right as the spike of pain hits the back of Zaizen's skull. He bites back a grimace, and presses his tongue to the sugary roof of his mouth, waiting for it to subside.
"Wish you were as happy to see us as you are to see that parfait," Yuuri grumbles. She licks her spoon clean and brandishes it at Zaizen like a weapon.
"You did say you'd treat," Zaizen says, scooping up another mouthful of parfait. "Don't get mad over your own bribe."
"Oh, Zaizen-chan, cruel as always," Haruko says. Her mouth pulls down in an exaggerated pout. "It makes me wonder if there's something I'm lacking…"
"No way! You're the most perfect girl in the world," Yuuri says firmly. "You're sweeter than any parfait."
Zaizen is going to die. Haruko gasps and clasps her hands in front of her chest. “Yuu-chan!”
“Haruko!”
“Yuu-chan!”
“Haruko!”
As Haruko and Yuuri are liable to repeat this routine ad infinitum if allowed to proceed uninterrupted, Zaizen takes the opportunity to mull over the sorry state of his emotional life. Zaizen has, in fact, been avoiding them—Haruko moreso than Yuuri, but Yuuri takes the whole one-flesh-one-mind thing very seriously and is never too far from Haruko's vicinity—for reasons that are a roughly sixty-forty split between knowing that Haruko will see through him within two minutes of conversation, and not wanting to test if he can handle the patented Haruko-and-Yuuri saccharine loved-up modus operandi. The most pathetic part of this is that nothing has even happened. There’s no catalyst to explain why, though he can’t pinpoint when precisely it happened, one day he had a reasonable handle on this overgrown crush and the next every single thing Kenya did made him momentarily breathless with agonised longing. Kenya’s so generous with touch it’s almost too obvious to respond to the constant deluge of pokes and elbows and hip nudges and wrist grabs and over-the-top kiss attempts, but Zaizen’s stupid heart still stutters each time Kenya’s skin makes contact with his own.
And the smaller things. The scent of Kenya’s shampoo. The peachy, soft-looking skin exposed at the nape of his neck when he bends down to retie his shoelaces. How his eyes crinkle up in laughter. What he looks like lit up with concentration on the other side of the net. Actually Zaizen’s becoming increasingly convinced it won’t even require Haruko’s extraordinary perception to tell. More and more often he finds himself checking his reflection in a sudden fit of manic fear that the secret is visible on him, somehow. As if the force of it is so violent it’s rearranged his facial features into a billboard screaming DISGUSTINGLY IN LOVE WITH OSHITARI KENYA. It feels too big to be contained within just his body. Even as he bats away Kenya’s affection he’s soaking it up in desperate gratitude, terrified all the while that Kenya will find out and everything between them, all this wealth of ease, will change.
So Kenya’s incredible obliviousness is equal parts blessing and curse. He’s moving through the world on double speed, Shiraishi said once, during the early days of the Kenya-Ishida doubles combination when they hadn’t quite figured out each other’s rhythms yet and Kenya had just collided into Ishida for the hundredth time that practice and bounced right off him like he’d hit a trampoline. SORRY, GIN! Kenya was yelling, gesticulating wildly as if he were also apologising via interpretative dance. I DIDN’T SEE YOU—
It’s like he reacts to things before they happen, and then by the time they happen he gets caught off-guard, you know? Shiraishi finished. Such a softness in his eyes. By that point Zaizen was already aware he was rapidly approaching the cliff’s edge of total lunacy regarding Kenya, and also that Shiraishi had been solidly over it at least a year longer than him, this particular gap between them fixed and unbridgeable. Zaizen mumbled something like Kenya-san should be more careful and Shiraishi laughed and said, maybe he’d listen if he heard it from you.
Dangerous words, the kind that might give a stupid heart stupid hopes. Zaizen had shoved it down very deep and resolved never to think about it again, but it won't stop resurfacing, resilient and unkillable as the weeds growing around the courts. Maybe if Kenya heard it from Zaizen. Maybe if—
“—Zaizen-chan? Helloooo, Zaizen-chan, are you in there?”
Zaizen blinks twice and refocuses. Haruko and Yuuri are staring at him, impassioned declarations of nomenclature apparently on hold. “Alright, something’s definitely up,” Yuuri announces. “Usually you would have stopped us by now."
“I was just thinking,” Zaizen says. “You could try it too sometime, senpai.”
“Hey! What’s with this rude kouhai, huh—”
“Well, what’s on your mind?” Haruko leans forward. “You can cry into your Haruko-senpai’s bosom about it. Girl troubles? Boy troubles?”
“Oi, oi, no bosoms,” Yuuri calls.
"No thanks, Haruko-senpai," Zaizen says flatly. “It’s not anything like that. I’m—planning out my next blog post.”
Haruko narrows her eyes. This is the critical moment. Zaizen summons every last ounce of disaffected teenage energy within him and returns her gaze directly, evenly, impassively. He doesn’t even blink. After a while Haruko purses her lips and sits back, and just as Zaizen’s letting out a breath and spooning the last of the dango into his mouth, Haruko exclaims, “Ohoho! So it is like that, Zaizen-chan! You thought you could hide it from me, but I’m onto you. You’re in love.”
Zaizen chokes, half on the mochi in his throat and half on misery. This is exactly why he didn’t want to come. “What are you even saying…”
“Zaizen has a crush!” Yuuri bellows delightedly, slamming a fist down on the table. Zaizen winces.
“No I don’t—not so loud, senpai—”
Undeterred, Yuuri bulldozes forward. “So who is it? Do we know them? Gotta be another player, right? Your age? Older than you? Someone from Seigaku? Man, our team really has a weird thing for Seigaku.”
Morosely, Zaizen pushes the edge of his spoon through the small pool of melted ice-cream collecting at the base of his parfait glass. “Please give up, senpai,” he says.
“Don’t be silly,” Haruko says, swatting Yuuri’s shoulder, and then, like she isn’t sentencing Zaizen to excruciating gory death à la the insane one from Rikkaidai (... the more insane one? Respectfully, that team is full of freaks) except maybe slightly more metaphorical, adds: “Obviously it’s Kenya-kun.”
The spoon slips in Zaizen’s grip, clatters back into the glass. He sinks down in his seat and wishes the death in question was as literal as Kirihara Akaya’s back at Nationals. His insides churn like a concrete truck. It’s—shouldn’t it feel like a weight lifted, to hear it said out loud? But there’s only a dully encroaching dread.
Sometimes, late at night when his eyes hurt too much to keep killing off his vision on his phone in the dark and he’s feeling especially self-pitying, he’ll imagine what it might be like to confess. High off a doubles victory in some tournament, the wrecking-ball rush of endorphins and adrenaline smashing down his brain-to-mouth filter. Kenya will throw his arms around him in celebration, maybe even try to lift him up to spin him around, and that’s when he’ll blurt it out, the words spilling over: Kenya-san, I like you. How nauseous he’ll feel, the shocking relief of two years’ worth of pressure let out at last. Kenya's mouth will part in shock, all of him backlit by the sun and mysteriously in soft focus, so beautiful it’ll hurt to look at him, and he’ll say—
That’s generally when Zaizen’s self-preservation instincts kick in and cut the mental cameras. Zaizen isn’t a dreamer. In the Shitenhoji vocabulary of demented idealism this makes him a defeatist, though he isn’t that either; he has a healthy respect for his own skills. Zaizen’s no data specialist, but he’s got good instincts, match routes unfolding or closing up with every shot, and he knows an unwinnable set of circumstances when he sees it.
“Huh? Kenya? But Kenya’s—” Yuuri snaps her mouth shut, eyes wide.
Suddenly Zaizen is so tired he wants nothing more than to put his head down on his arms against the table and go to sleep on the spot. The exhaustion of the afternoon catching up to him all at once. “I know,” Zaizen says.
“Zaizen…” Yuuri says awkwardly.
Even Yuuri, the staunchest optimist Zaizen has ever known, has nothing to offer him. It’s not like Zaizen hadn’t known it was hopeless, but the confirmation stings anyway. “I know, okay? You don’t have to say anything. I know Kenya-san is—I have eyes, I can see the way he—with Shiraishi-buchou. Even if buchou can’t,” he can’t help adding, a touch bitterly.
But every time it rises it’s impossible to maintain the resentment for long. He loves Shiraishi too, he can't help it. The ridiculous lengths Shiraishi’s always gone to just to make Zaizen laugh. Even now Shiraishi will still go pink with pleased gratification when Zaizen can't stifle a smile fast enough in response to one of his gags. Shiraishi, ever the dependable captain, has been looking out for him since the start. In fact, Zaizen thinks it worries Shiraishi more when he’s not needed. But what can Zaizen even ask for? Shiraishi to not exist? As long as Shiraishi is there, Kenya will never, ever look at Zaizen.
Haruko reaches across the table, and Zaizen lets her braid their fingers together. "Is it that bad?" she asks. “I wasn’t sure.”
"I—" have no idea what you're talking about, is what Zaizen means to say, but what comes out of his mouth is, stiffly, “Yeah.”
“Are you gonna tell him?” Yuuri says.
Zaizen fixes his eyes on a trail of condensation dripping down the side of the glass. “What’s the point? It’s not like I have a chance.”
“To let it out! You'll feel better. And Kenya isn't the kind of guy who would hate you if he, like… knew. How you felt.”
“Yeah, but still." Zaizen swallows. "Things would have to change."
“Oh, Zaizen-chan,” Haruko says, squeezing Zaizen’s hand. The terrifying acuity of Shitenhoji’s best gamemaker gleaming out of her eyes, no less keen for its sympathy. “It’s only your first love. You’ll have other loves. You’re cute and handsome and everyone will want to be with you. I know, I know, you don’t want everyone,” Haruko adds, lifting a finger daintily. “You only want Kenya-kun.”
“I didn’t say that,” Zaizen mutters.
“It might feel like the end of the world now, but in a few years time you won’t even remember it,” Haruko continues, as if Zaizen hadn’t spoken at all. “The capacity of the human brain to recall pain, or really any kind of immediate perceptual memory, is ve~ry limited.”
Zaizen exhales carefully, through his teeth. “Look, senpai, no offense, but I just—I don’t want to hear it from you. Right now.”
It’s difficult to bear the attempt at comfort when it comes from Haruko and Yuuri with their first love success story, the miracle of fortune that drew them together. No matter how many times Zaizen reasons with himself that it's weird and terrifying to encounter the person you'll be with for the rest of your life at the age of twelve, he struggles to remember the logic when he’s watching Shiraishi and Kenya alternate tentative wistful glances at each other, sick to his teeth with envy.
Haruko squeezes his hand again, and then withdraws. “Alright. Say, did we tell you about the meeting we overheard the other day between Osamu-chan and the principal? Yuu-chan, you remember, don't you?" and seamlessly they launch into an animated impromptu reenactment at their typical inappropriate volumes. It has the air of a performance ramped up for his benefit, the kindness of routine.
He knows his own part, too. When they finish he lets the silence drag on for a beat too long before saying, "Interesting story, senpai," straightfaced. The anchor of a well-practised skit settling him; so he's Shitenhoji, after all.
“Stoic as ever,” Yuuri complains, but the glance she exchanges with Haruko is saturated with blatant relief.
It's past sunset, now, the sky outside deep orange, some of the heat of the afternoon draining away. Cool change coming in, or something. As they’re standing up to leave, Haruko says, “Did you see Kurarin’s message about that special training camp?”
“In the LINE chat? Yeah, I did,” Zaizen says.
“Sounds so~o~o exciting, don’t you think? Will you go?”
Zaizen slings his school backpack over his shoulder and thumbs the strap of his tennis bag. The summer is already over. He doesn’t see the value in prolonging the inevitable. “No,” Zaizen says. “I don’t think I will.”
