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After four trains, three highway buses, and a very incorrect shortcut on an overgrown trail to an abandoned graveyard, the members of Fudoumine finally arrived to the Tachibana family’s shared vacation home in Oita prefecture. Kamio rather thought that it made the road to Nationals look easy.
Or at least the road to last year’s nationals. With Tachibana, anything had felt possible, even making it all the way down to Kyushu in on a junior high school kid’s budget.
“Next time, let’s just send Akira ahead to find the damn place,” Sakurai groaned, hiking up his backpack.
With a slightly breathless laugh, Kamio said, “Like an army scout?”
“Maybe something like a scout dog,” Ibu said.
He bristled. “Are you calling me a dog?!”
“I said something like a scout dog. You don’t have the discipline. A military scout dog, in addition to covering a good amount of area, can detect any enemy within 1000 feet. You’re very loyal and sort of shaggy, but I think you’d only succeed in scaring off birds, Akira.”
“Come on guys, we’re nearly there. Tachibana-san is doing us this favor, we don’t want to keep him and An-chan waiting,” Ishida said. Kamio felt his large hand fall onto his back. Though he sagged, it was a welcome weight.
“Even after retiring from the club, Tachibana-san is trying to help us prepare for our next season with Kamio-buchou,” Mori gave Kamio a friendly shove on their way up the hill toward the modest looking cabin.
“You made it!” An emerged from the cabin a goddess, wearing an apron and her electric smile. The potent combination had Kamio clenching and unclenching his tennis bag to resist putting on his headphones and running a few laps. He swallowed thickly in preparation to say something, anything, since he was technically now Fudoumine’s captain and should probably be offering some elegant lines of gratitude.
“Somehow – Akira would never pass obedience training,” Ibu offered, walking past An and slipping off his shoes.
An laughed, gluing the boys to her side. “It’s all right, neither did Gokutora.”
“Um…uh…we brought some simple stuff,” Kamio held out a shopping bag filled with snacks provided by the team and some onigiri that he had helped his mother make the night before. An took it with a stunning grin to vindicate all of his sister’s teasing.
“Something smells great in here,” Uchimura took off his hat. “Where can we put our stuff?”
“Oh – Nii-chan and I were just finishing up lunch. Down the hall and to the left – it’s just a small study, but you guys can put your things in there,” An pointed out to Ishida, who had helpfully started bringing everyone’s things together. “I have to go back in the kitchen to finish up.”
With that prompting, Fudoumine’s former Captain popped his head in from the kitchen. His strained smile reminded Kamio of the time that Ibu started giving recommendations to a referee for deodorant brands during a court change. The Tachibanas were probably descended from some kind of saint.
The beatific smile that An showed Tachibana basically confirmed that theory. “Don’t be silly. Come and say hi to everyone, I’ll take care of everything in the kitchen.”
Far from appreciating that sweetness, Tachibana’s smile stiffened. Sweat lined his brow. “All right then…everything is finished, really, you just need to stir the curry.”
“Nice – curry!” Uchimura grinned, straightening his hat as he brought his things toward the spare room.
“Hey frontkiller, you stay out of that kitchen,” Mori teased. He flicked Uchimura’s hat from his head and darted ahead in the hallway.
“You’re the curry obsessed one!” Uchimura grumbled and picked up his hat.
“Really! Just stir, An-chan. Nothing needs to be added!” Tachibana called to An’s retreating back.
Laughing gently, she said, “I can handle it, I promise. Greet everyone, already.”
Tachibana scratched his head and finally turned to Kamio, who bowed. “Thanks for having us,” he said. “We’re in your care for three days.”
The strained expression on Tachibana’s face smoothed over. He bridged the gap between them with a clap on the shoulder. “I wish it were longer. Thanks for coming all the way down here. It’s a good place to train and we’re happy to have the company while our parents are visiting relatives.”
“Do you come here often?” Kamio asked.
“Akira, you sound like the middle age men in my mother’s soap operas. Stop hitting on Tachibana-san.” Ibu stepped up next to Kamio and made a bow of his own. “Hello, Tachibana-san. Thank you for having us.”
Amused, Tachibana said, “Hello, Ibu-kun.” He greeted Shinji similarly while Kamio sputtered about definitely not having a bald spot. Tachibana interrupted this by answering his question. “We used to come here more as a family, but it was harder from Tokyo. I feel very refreshed, and I hope you’ll find some energy for the new season too.”
“I’m feeling it already,” Ishida said, now bereft of baggage and stretching. “Clean air, mountains.”
“Indeed,” Tachibana smiled. “I think I’m going to go check on An-chan, help her finish the preparations for lunch.” He greeted Ishida and disappeared into the kitchen.
Once Tachibana was out of earshot, Kamio scowled at Ibu. “You’re going to go bald first.”
Ibu put a hand on his head and looked vaguely alarmed. “My father is bald. Tetsu, I will have to borrow your bandana. Please teach me how to tie it properly, or else those rumors about Fudoumine being some kind of gang might spread again. Though I think that the entire school can be considered dangerous when the lunch bell rings. A first year girl stepped on my foot. What if she broke it, disabling me for the next match--”
“What kind of first year girl is heavy enough to break your foot?” Sakurai asked.
“Maybe she looks like Tetsu,” Ibu suggested. “We could send first year girls like that to Seigaku.”
“Shinji, we JUST got rid of all the rumors about playing dirty.”
“Who said anything about playing dirty? I want Tetsu to take my grip tape back from Echizen.”
“I’m not going to do that, Shinji,” Ishida said patiently.
“No – the girl version of you.”
“There’s no girl version of me!”
“Right,” Ibu said, gaze full of doubt.
Kamio didn’t have time to worry about whether or not Ibu was being sarcastic. Or if he even knew how to be sarcastic. Because when An came out to announce lunch, every thought escaped his mind.
Then his nose caught a hint of the curry in Tachibana’s arms and his stomach roiled in rebellion. He had never seen Japanese curry looking quite that black.
“It’s not just for looking,” An laughed and nudged at Kamio’s back. “Sit down, we have enough space for everyone in the yard.”
Kamio swallowed, helpless to do anything but just that. The team followed the ominous smell to the long, plastic table that had been propped up behind the house. He sat down between An and Ibu, and watched the stew crawl like a small animal from Tachibana’s ladle into each bowl.
“Pass them down, An-chan,” Tachibana said, a little grim faced for the occasion as he commanded the distribution of portions.
“I heard that the meals in foreign prisons—Ow. Did you really have to elbow me at the same time? That was quite rude. Akira, with pointy elbows like yours, no wonder that everyone thinks we’re a delinquent school.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my elbows!”
“You’re practically armed at all times with those bad boys,” Sakurai reached over Ibu to give Kamio a playful shove.
“Tachibana-san, Akira attacked me with a weapon at the table. I think that we should all use him as target practice after lunch time. Regular repetition with moving targets will help to improve our aim overall.”
“Hey Shinji, isn’t the tennis ball a smaller moving object to practice with anyway?” Mori scratched his hair.
“Boys,” An leaned over the table and buttoned the lip of every male with her smile. “Aren’t we lucky to be able to all have lunch together on such a beautiful day? We’ve been through so much this year and made it all the way to Nationals.”
“Well said. You should all be very proud of yourselves,” Tachibana raised his glass of juice. “To a wonderful year, and to friendships that will last much longer.”
Besotted, they all drank. The powerful words of Tachibana Kippei almost cleansed the pungent stench of the overcooked sludge before each one of them. Almost.
“I guess it’s probably okay if we don’t live much longer,” Sakurai whispered to Kamio, who watched as the brave player dared the first bite. Not one to lose on speed, Kamio followed.
And after that, it was kind of a blur. His memories of the meal were hazy and scattered, but he did remember powering bite after bite of the curry, promising An-chan that it was delicious.
When he came to, it was evening and he sat crowded around a toilet with Ibu and Ishida.
“What happened…” he grumbled and hiccupped. Just in case more than a hiccup wanted to fight its way up, he clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t look at me,” someone cried from the shower. It sounded like Mori, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Do An-chan and Tachibana-san know….?”
“I think there was actually alcohol in that curry. Tachibana-san went straight to sleep.”
“Sakurai says An-chan is still in her room. They both have stomachs of steel….”
Then Ibu started to hurl. Kamio scooted behind him to gather up blue strands with an elastic band.
“Not a man bun,” Ibu said, with effort. “My sister said that if I ever fell prey to hipster nonsense…that she would…she would,” he genius dedicated a moment to the toilet. “Give me fringe like a Japanese doll while I slept. While I like horror movies, I never wanted to star in one. Though I think that I would look very well on camera, with the sharp angles of my face and the additional ten pounds. If this were a horror movie, Akira, you would definitely die first.”
“Why would I die first?” Kamio huffed and pushed away. It was a little too quick for his stomach, so he lay on the floor to let himself settle.
“Hell, I know this one,” Ishida burped and covered his mouth. “You’re the fastest.”
“Tetsu…when you die, please give me your bandana.”
Leaning back against the sink, Ishida said, “What makes you think I’m gonna die at all?”
Ibu folded his arms on the toilet and rested his forehead in them. “It’s obvious. You’re very prepared to sacrifice yourself. You were going to ruin your arm for a junior high school tennis match.”
Ishida frowned. “It wasn’t just a junior high school tennis match.”
“I know,” Ibu said.
“We know,” Kamio corrected.
Ishida smiled. A retching noise drew their attention to the Totoro curtain. “Tatsunori, did you just barf in the shower?”
“I hate you guys,” he groaned.
-
Kamio woke up feeling very much like a small animal had died in his mouth. After ten minutes of drinking from the sink and killing a very large sports drink, he almost resembled a human.
“Hey, Shinji,” he poked his prone friend. His eyes fluttered, flashing slivers of white to accentuate the drool dripping from the side of his mouth.
“We could’ve had a great haunted house at the cultural festival if we built it around Shinji sleeping,” Uchimura said. He rolled over on his futon and took a picture for posterity.
A fully dressed Ishida returned to the bathroom to nudge the remaining, still futons. “Come on guys. Breakfast and exercises, we don’t want to lose time.”
“Guys, breakfast is ready,” An said from the kitchen.
“It smells good,” Sakurai said.
And it wasn’t a lie. But it had smelled good yesterday too, at first. He exchanged glances with Kamio and they warily wandered into the kitchen to see what An-chan had put together.
There was a big pot of miso that both smelled and looked very much like miso, a rice cooker brim with fluffy white rice, a perfectly grilled fish for each person, and a bowl full of salad.
Despite the previous day’s trauma, Kamio’s stomach rumbled with appreciation. He looked at An and the sun coming in from the window framed her head like a halo. Either an angel was coming to take her away or the black curry had been more powerful than he realized.
“Thank you for putting all of this together,” he said earnestly. Since Atobe’s party, he had been wary of Tachibana’s cooking and he appreciated the rescue from another experience like yesterday.
“Oh, I didn’t do much, it was--” An started, only to be interrupted by Tachibana, taking the ladle from her hand to help with the dishes.
As Tachibana spooned things out, An passed them around, leaning over and making her combination of camisole and apron particularly deadly. While Kamio tried to keep his eyes anywhere else, he stared a little too long at Mori and his bedhead and the guy stuck his tongue out at him. But no one could be mad for long, not with a delicious breakfast after a night of vomiting and empty bellies.
“It was a feast!” they complimented after breakfast. As a team, they assembled in the kitchen to clean up and went outside for stretches. Kamio alone hung back in the room, rummaging through his back for his portable speaker.
He jogged outside into the sunlight and set up the system where they had eaten just twenty minutes before. “Got the playlist. Whenever you’re ready to show us today’s stretches, Tetsu.”
Ishida flexed playfully. “I’m always ready, hit it.”
Kamio pressed play and they all watched, transfixed, as Ishida waved his strong arms about, showing off different ranges of motions and important positions.
“Someday, I’ll have muscles like that,” Uchimura whispered.
“Hah, maybe some day when you grow up.”
“How much do you think he can lift?”
“Probably Akira in one hand and Shinji in the other.”
“Tetsu is so cool and strong,” Tachibana himself eagerly joined their gossip, seemingly pleased to be on the other end of it. The younger boys looked at him, eyes wide with surprise.
“He would be even cooler if he put on a skirt and went to Seigaku,” Ibu said, nodding seriously with his arms crossed.
Like a tennis match, all of the stares bounced flatly over to Ibu.
“Sometimes I don’t know if I’m in tennis training or a women’s restroom,” An whispered, making Kamio jump two feet in the air.
“Okay, are you guys ready for stretching?” Ishida asked, smile wide.
Sheepishly, Tachibana put his hands together. “Sorry, I came late from the bathroom, if you could do it one more time?”
“Of course, Tachibana-san,” Ishida called in a loud voice, and bowed.
As Kamio hit rewind on the music, he gave Tachibana a thankful thumbs up for the save. His hero inclined his head serenely and went back to observing Ishida.
Routine memorized, the friends gathered in front of Ishida to stretch in time with the music. They ran through it twice for good measure.
“What do you want to do, Kamio-buchou?” Tachibana asked, eyes smiling down at the flabbergasted Kamio. It felt so strange, hearing Tachibana refer to him as captain.
“Uhm…” Kamio bounced on his heels, struggling to remember the itinerary that he had slaved over. “Well, I thought that we should do the kind of things that we can’t do anywhere else. So a hike with weights in the morning, and practice matches in the afternoon?”
Though they could technically do practice matches without Tachibana and An, he genuinely missed playing tennis with his former Captain. An occasionally showed up at the street courts, but it had been some time since they shared the court with Tachibana. Kamio knew he wasn’t the only one among them who felt that way.
Tachibana considered, “Sure, there’s a flat area that we can set up a net.”
Kamio beamed. “All right then. I’ll get our lunch. Everybody, make sure you bring lots of water and your weights.”
“Bringing the weights all the way here wasn’t enough, now we’re bringing them up a mountain. What is the point of weights? Why not build something useful that ways a specific amount, so it could have a function aside from being heavy?”
“You work on that, Shinji,” An patted the genius on the shoulder. “You have my support.”
Elegant features stern, Ibu reminded her, “The patent will belong to me.”
An laughed as she walked away to get her things together. Ibu followed, explaining the patent system in intricate detail as he did so.
Everything gathered, Kamio waited outside for the rest of the team to come together. Tachibana came out first. He wore a warm expression and a shirt in Fudoumine pink.
“I missed this,” Tachibana admitted, his eyes on his former teammates as they repacked their bags.
Kamio looked up at Tachibana. He didn’t seem quite so far away anymore. “So do we,” he said. “The clubhouse is always open to you.”
Tachibana nodded. But he hadn’t been back since and Kamio understood. Things just weren’t the same. So Kamio continued, “And this is nice too. We…we don’t really need a training camp, to hang out.”
For the first time since they started talking, Tachibana turned toward Kamio with a question on his face. The kind of scrutiny that would normally have made him waver made him bold instead. “You should come to the street courts with An-chan next time.”
“Yeah?” Tachibana said, a real question.
“Definitely.”
Tachibana smiled.
Kamio thought about that smile during the hike. He thought about what it meant, that Tachibana needed to be invited. Now that he was the Captain, he felt like he could begin to understand. Tachibana had been dealing with abused juniors, who needed the freedom to choose as much as they needed a leader. Since they had been (maybe, slightly, just a little bit) overly worshipful, Tachibana wanted to give them a place to release the intense motivation to win and just enjoy tennis.
Just because it made sense didn’t mean it was right. As they all stood at the top of the mountain together, taking in the view from the highest peak, Kamio hoped very much that Tachibana understood that now.
“Here seems like a good spot for lunch,” Kamio suggested.
“View’s definitely not bad,” Mori said, sitting down and unstrapping the weights from his ankles.
“Speak for yourself. I just see a bunch of sweaty boys,” An joked. She withdrew a blanket from her backpack and spread it wide on the rock.
As Kamio flushed and stammered, An took the neatly wrapped bento box from his hands. “I’m kidding, Kamio-kun. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“Nowhere she’d rather be than eating your handmade bento,” Sakurai teased Kamio, whose blush was starting to match his hair.
“M-my mom helped!” he crossed his arms and sat down in a huff.
“Thank goodness,” Ibu sat down next to Kamio. He found the tea in Ishida’s backpack and started to pour and distribute glasses to everyone. “I can’t imagine what high speed onigiri would have looked like. My sister made an onigiri plush in home economics last year. It was lumpy and left little bits of fluff everywhere. Maybe something like that. I don’t want to eat cotton, Kamio. I could never become a stuffed animal like that.”
“Or at all,” Mori said.
“Well, there’s taxidermy,” Sakurai pointed out.
“Gross!” Uchimura complained.
“Guys, we are eating,” Ishida added.
“I would never make high speed onigiri – it’s about rhythm, not speed,” Kamio said emphatically.
“Wow, so late with the comeback,” Sakurai said flatly.
“Would you rather continue talking about taxidermy?” Tachibana asked, biting into one of the onigiri.
“Okay, no.”
“These are pretty good,” Ishida said, clapping Kamio on the back. “Whatever rhythm you used, Kamio-buchou, it worked pretty well.”
Kamio smiled with the praise – but it was short lived.
“My sister likes to practice the rhythm for Shakira’s music. I hope that it wasn’t Hips Don’t Lie. That’s not a very good rhythm for onigiri, Kamio. I don’t think it’s necessary to use the hips in any way for that.”
Mori laughed, choking on his onigiri. Uchimura whacked the middle of his back.
“Hey, that’s basically as bad as taxidermy,” Sakurai groaned.
Grinning wickedly, An said, “You all could go back to talking about Ishida-kun’s muscles. That was very cute.”
Every one of them blushed. With the exception of Ibu, who leaned closer to An and said, “An-chan. Would you let Tetsu borrow your school uniform for an undercover mission?”
Ibu was assailed with grass and tennis balls until everyone had finished up lunch and recovered for the trek down the mountain. Despite the additional (useless, in Ibu’s opinion) weight, Kamio felt like he was walking on air. He played music aloud from his phone and demonstrated different, goofy dance moves the whole way down. Watching Tachibana pretend to go down stairs was his new favorite thing in the whole entire world. Ibu had refused to learn the Drive the Car dance, because he was too young to drive.
They reached the house around mid-afternoon and, after a quick break, broke into groups to play some tennis. Their prop up nets weren’t great and the dirt hardly made for an awesome court, but because they were together, it was the best tennis. For once, he was glad when An-chan started to sneak around and take picture (as long as she didn’t spend any time with Seigaku’s Fuji – Momoshiro was bad enough!).
After Tachibana and Sakurai achieved their victory over Mori and Uchimura, Tachibana stretched. “I should get started on dinner.”
“I can help!” Kamio, Uchimura, and Ishida all said at the same time. Mori just looked queasy.
“That’s all right, I set everything to marinate earlier this morning. The yakitori and vegetables should be ready for the skewers pretty quickly.”
“You boys just wash up, I’ll take care of it,” An winked, and ran off to the kitchen before anyone could protest that she had done enough already with breakfast.
“I had better hurry,” Tachibana looked worried. “I mean, wash up, so that An-chan doesn’t have to do everything by herself. You guys can just take care of the nets here, since we won’t be using them tomorrow.”
Eager to avoid a repeat of yesterday, Kamio put his hand on Tachibana’s forearm. “That’s okay. We can put the nets away tomorrow and all help with the cooking.”
“You really don’t have to--”
“Oops!” Mori declared. Though really he had tossed the net over Tachibana’s head on purpose. Kamio met Mori’s eyes and nodded. They could absolutely not have another toilet party.
While Tachibana untangled himself from the net, Kamio quickly snatched Uchimura’s hat and launched it into the woods with all of his might. The frontkiller went to protest, but Ishida clamped a hand over his mouth.
Urgently, Kamio said, “Tachibana-san! Uchimura’s hat blew away, we have to help him find it!”
“I’m sure that you can band together and find the hat,” Tachibana said patiently, his gaze shifting to the house.
Kamio shook his head. “No, um, it’s a lucky hat. It’s really important that we have it for next season, please look.”
“The hat used to belong to a blond, so your presence will attract it,” Ibu offered, rather under the impression that he was helping.
“That hat has always been mine!”
“Wow – what an interesting sounding bird. I heard that the cuckoo can make all sort of human noises,” Mori kicked Uchimura, who laughed nervously.
Kamio looped his arm around Tachibana’s wide back and steered him toward the woods. “Please, Tachibana-san. We really need your help.”
Faced with the begging mugs of his former teammates, the fight seeped out of Tachibana. That was the only way that Kamio could have successfully dragged the stronger boy over to fiddle around with the bushes. Though they stalled as long as possible, providing false leads and pushing each other into shrubs, Tachibana eventually found Uchimura’s hat stuck on a low treebranch.
“It was always mine,” Uchimura said while he jammed the cap on his head. As if anyone had ever really doubted it.
“Right,” Ibu said, eying him suspiciously.
“Now that’s taken care of, I’m really needed in the kitchen,” Tachibana said, smiling shakily. Kamio had no idea why, but Tachibana ran back to the house as though it were on fire.
“Well. We tried,” Ishida sighed.
“It is really sweet of him, though. That he doesn’t want to make An-chan cook on her own,” Mori said.
“We should really try to help them,” Kamio said, itching to sprint back to the house.
“I agree, as soon as we wash off all of this dirt. Do you want to add to our host’s burden?” Ishida whapped Kamio with his sweaty bandana.
Ibu stared, transfixed. “You really do have a head under there, Tetsu.”
“You’ve seen my head before, Shinji!”
“Hm, it still surprises me every time,” said the genius, as he turned and walked back to the house.
“Where did he even come from?” Mori said, incredulous gaze fixed to Ibu’s back.
“He was dropped off at the tennis club door in a basket, fully grown and just like that,” Sakurai said.
“Aliens,” Uchimura concluded.
Kamio laughed and said, “That’s what he’d want you to think.” Then, he ran ahead to catch up to Ibu and hopefully beat the others in to wash up.
-
Around midnight Kamio was curled up around the toilet again with Mori and Ishida on either side of him.
“Hey, is Shinji even alive?” he groaned.
“I think he passed out in the shower.”
“Nnnn,” Mori complained. “We’re gonna have to drag him back into the futon.”
Kamio shivered, another pang wrenching his stomach. “Tetsu, you do it. Or Masaya. I don’t even understand how that guy is okay.”
“Must be all the ramen he eats,” Mori guessed.
Sakurai peeked in, “Are you guys okay in there?”
“Take Shinji back to the futon, noodle head,” Ishida said, grumpy.
“Wow, Tetsu, you have a head under that bandana,” Sakurai drawled, mimicking Ibu’s shock from earlier.
Ishida threw a roll of toilet paper at Sakurai, who laughed and closed the door quickly.
“Shut up, you idiots, people are sleeping,” Kamio hissed.
“We have received an order from Kamio-buchou,” Sakurai whispered obnoxiously. “Of course I will obey. What does buchou command?”
Having no energy to fight the sarcasm, Kamio glared weakly and said, “Take Shinji back to bed. Then die.”
“Yes, Kamio-buchou sir.”
Kamio watched, eyes heavy as Sakurai dragged Ibu from the shower into the bathroom. He didn’t remember passing out himself. He only very vaguely remembered waking up to Sakurai and Ishida pulling him back into his own futon. Though he tried to mumble some kind of thanks, he wasn’t entirely sure he succeeded.
Oh well, he thought. I can thank them in the morning.
-
The next morning, Kamio stood at the sink, hair askew as he scrubbed violently at his hands. While dragging him to bed, Ishida, Mori, and Sakurai had written Kamio-buchou across his knuckles and then on his left hand penis hand and on his right hand other penis hand.
“You assholes, what if An-chan had seen!”
“Don’t worry, Kamio-buchou,” Sakurai clapped Kamio on the back. “An-chan has very good, high quality pictures.”
Kamio turned vibrantly red to match his hair. “I’m not even left handed, you idiots!”
“Exactly. Akira, right-handed people more commonly masturbate with the left hand, as it feels more like someone else doing it,” Ibu said. The genius hadn’t really recovered from two nights of sickness. He sat by the toilet, limp and gaunt while Kamio threw his fit.
Kamio paused mid-yelling. He couldn’t really scream at Ibu when he was that pale. “Is that from experience?”
“No. I overheard some of the third year girls talking about it in the lunch line,” Ibu said quietly. “I had been trying to trade one of them for yakisoba-pan.”
Sakurai coughed, “Why were they even talking about that?”
Ibu shrugged, “Why do you guys talk about how cute An-chan is? How cool Tachibana-san is?”
Sputtering, Kamio said, “Why are you talking like you don’t do exactly the same thing?!”
That silenced Ibu, who then said, “Fair,” and vomited intensely.
The smell vacated the bathroom. With the excuse of having to clean his hands (really, what kind of pen had they used!), Kamio stayed with Ibu until he could safely be moved back to his futon with a barf bag.
-
“It’s really too bad that Shinji was too sick to come along,” Tachibana said, looking troubled as they waited at the bus stop just off of the main road. Kamio wasn’t really feeling stellar himself. None of them were, after two nights of queasiness and little sleep, but as long as he could move, he would stay at Tachibana’s side.
Fortunately, Sakurai spoke up, “He’ll be okay with An-chan looking after him.”
Tachibana looked doubtful, but Kamio clapped him on the shoulder. “We’re only going to be out for a couple hours. It’s probably best that we spend the afternoon near the house anyway.”
That prompted a small smile from Tachibana. The bus came, and a short ride brought them to a lake with an old, rickety canoe rental shop. The canoes inside looked almost as old, but since the owner gave them a good deal, Kamio didn’t care. Worst came to worst, they could all swim.
“Hey Akira,” Mori said as they pulled a canoe toward the water. “Are you going to grip the oar with your penis hand, or your other penis hand?”
Kamio growled. “How about I slap you with both of them?”
Laughing, Mori said, “I should defect to Tachibana-san’s canoe for my personal safety.”
Tachibana made no comment. His eyes were smiling and stuck on Kamio’s hand. Though Kamio appreciated his valiant effort to refrain from laughing, he was glad to see his former captain cheered up.
“How about this,” Kamio grinned sharply. “We’ll race canoes. The winning canoe team gets to write on the hands of the losing canoe team.”
“Your hands are already written on, Kamio-kun. If you lose, you’ll have your face written on,” Tachibana said, growing more boyish in his competitiveness.
Kamio was surprised by the suggestion from the usually mature Tachibana. But it was all the more reason to say, “Bring it on!”
They attempted to organize the canoes by weight. Uchimura and Sakurai went with Tachibana while Ishida and Mori went with Kamio.
“We’re the fastest canoe for sure! You can’t win against our rhythm!” Kamio goaded while Ishida flexed jokingly behind him with the oars.
“Fff, against Tachibana-san, the front-killer, and yours truly? Good luck!” Sakurai grinned, hopping into the canoe.
In response, Kamio turned his phone’s music up all the way and put it in a plastic bag just in case. Kamio settled into the canoe, Mori at his front and Ishida at his back, and sat poised with the oars. They gave the honor of the count off to Tachibana, who seemed to be taking his sweet time.
“All right, first team to the little island and back wins. On one…two…three…GO!”
And the boys exploded, their racket-honed arms bending the oars to their will. They jeered at each other, shouting mostly about rhythm and penis hands until Kamio’s canoe managed to pull ahead.
But nearly twenty minutes in and they were only mostly to the island. “We can’t lose steam now,” Kamio encouraged his teammates. Sweat beaded his own forehead, but he focused on his rhythm and Mori and Ishida worked hard to match it.
The real problem came when Kamio’s phone rang. Ibu’s face came up on the screen with some techno jingle.
“Shit, shit, shit…” Kamio cursed, and fumbled around with his knees to answer the call. He failed the first time, but Ibu called again and he took his hand off the oar for just a second to answer.
Ibu coughed into the phone. “We made a fatal error. Come home right away. Or send help.”
“You’re going to have to be more descriptive than that, we’re a little busy,” Ishida grunted, pulling most of the weight while Kamio readjusted to the grueling pace they set. Fortunately, he could match himself to them this time.
“Don’t you see, we have been sexist. Though my sisters call me a sexist all the time because I always make sure to walk them to the convenience store when it’s past dinner. But I would rather be sexist than let my little sisters walk alone, because there might be something worse than a bike thief. I heard that Momoshiro-kun once flashed a monk. I was very concerned.”
“Shinji, one, next time tell them it’s because you love them, not because they’re girls,” because really, any little sibling should be accompanied after dark. “And two, back up, what do you mean that we’ve been sexist.”
“Well Momoshiro-kun was very sexist in not calling An-chan properly by her name. It was very rude and--”
“Not Momoshiro, Shinji, US! Focus!”
“Ah. We’ve been assuming all along that Tachibana-san is the bad cook.”
“Yes…”
“But as we speak, I’m pretending to eat a soup made of uncooked rice with a teabag and dashi sprinkled on top. You should come home before she starts on the somen broth for tonight.”
Kamio fumbled his oar. Mori caught it before it was lost to the lake. “What?”
“I think it’s meant to be ochazuke, Akira. I’ve been putting this into the potted plant bit by bit. I hope that it does not kill the plant. I never learned whether or not rice is bad for other plants. Could you google it? I am not feeling so well.”
It made sense, it made so much sense. He panted, struggling with the truth as they rowed around the little island that marked their halfway point.
“We’re a little busy, Shinji!” Mori said. “We’re going around an island and headed back to shore, we’ll be back as soon as possible.”
Ibu coughed and shifted around in his blankets, “Make it sooner. I think she is cutting jalapenos instead of green onions for tonight. I don’t see how that’s a viable substitution. So I think that I will close my eyes and not see it at all.”
“No! Shinji, do NOT close your eyes. You have to hang in there and try to distract her,” Kamio demanded breathlessly.
“Easy for you to say, all that you’re doing is grunting.”
“RACING!”
“Grunting and racing, both things that you enjoy.”
“Just ask An-chan to do a puzzle or something, or read you a story, whatever.”
“Am I eight? Do you think An-chan reads the magazine that my sister has? Because I was reading about 59 ways to make him notice you, and I wasn’t able to finish and try any of them on Tachibana-san.”
“Why wouldn’t he notice you? I mean, your tennis is awesome and only getting better,” Kamio said, quite puzzled.
“Do you really think so, Akira?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have her read me the 59 ways just in case. Goodbye.”
“Shinji! Shinji! You gotta keep it up until we get home!” Kamio yelled.
“Give it up,” Ishida said, rowing hard. “He’s gone. We just gotta get our asses back as soon as possible.”
“Yeah…yeah…I can do that…”
Mori rolled his eyes, “Put the damn music back on Akira – they’ve pulled ahead.”
“They’ve – shit!” Kamio whirled his head around to see Tachibana’s canoe making faces at them on the way to the front. “Okay, okay, we can do this.”
“Ride the rhythm?” Ishida teased.
The music started up again, pumping sound and energy through his tired limbs. “Ride the rhythm, we got this!”
That rhythm powered up the boat, giving them the strength to hold neck and neck with their teammates. Their shoulders ached, every push of the oar against the water feeling like one of Ishida’s heavy hadokyuu shots. But they were all tired and delirious on competition and that kept them going all the way to the rocks.
Though it was a tie, they bickered the entire bus way home about milliseconds. Fortunately for Kamio’s face, the old man renting out the canoes hadn’t seen anything.
-
“And this is how you make somen broth,” Tachibana demonstrated, adding the final touches of kombu and katsuobushi to the simmering pot. Kamio and An-chan watched his expert movements with fascination.
“I didn’t realize it was so easy to do it homemade. I always just used the sauce from the store,” Kamio said.
Tachibana smiled, “Oh, that’s not bad either. We just don’t have any.”
“Nii-chan likes to make everything himself,” An-chan bragged, patting him fondly on the back. “I’m gonna go outside and help everyone else with the noodle slide.” She took out her phone and wiggled it about, hinting that she was going to take all of the pictures.
Kamio watched the sun bounce off her hair as she entered the yard, smiling and joking with her camera. It was contagious and he found himself smiling too. Bad cook or no, she was their An-chan and she had tried her best to take good care of them.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kamio asked, turning to Tachibana.
The former captain shrugged. “I love my sister. And honestly, I think she wanted to impress you guys almost as much as you want to impress her.”
Kamio flushed, mouth catching flies while he struggled with words.
“And I guess…I didn’t mind if you guys wanted to tease me for it,” Tachibana continued quietly. “It’s one of the great things about this team, that everyone can admire and play with each other so much.”
It was surprising, but not as surprising as it would have been before they made this trip. Since Kamio couldn’t quite bring himself to close his parted lips, Tachibana added, “Do you understand, captain penis hands?”
Kamio went furiously red, but with the kind of explosive energy that he would show any other member of the team. “Oh, you asked for it,” Kamio growled, taking up a marker. “Give me your hand.”
Tachibana put up his hands in surrender, backing away. “I’m cooking! You can’t get me while I’m cooking.”
“Oh, you’re more like a sitting target while you’re cooking,” Kamio bounced, a threatening grin splitting his features. “Are you going to finish up that sauce, or join the toilet party tonight.”
Tachibana froze, seemingly unable to decide on joy or horror as Kamio uncapped the marker and shouted. “HEY EVERYONE! I’M GOING TO WRITE ON KIPPEI-SAN!”
Just like that, the team raced to the yard door at the same time, eagerly trying to fit through the opening.
“Save Kippei-san!”
“No way, I want to write on Kippei-san first!”
“That’s not even good!” Sakurai complained, watching Kamio write curry hand on the laughing Tachibana. “You have to let me do the other hand!”
“I don’t have to do anything!”
“Give him a blond mustache!”
“No, Kippei-san has to be wearing an apron. An-chan, do you have an apron here? We need it and we need pictures,” Ibu suggested.
An-chan looked as pleased as Tachibana that they were using his first name. “I’ve got something with frills and flowers,” she said wickedly.
“Perfect. Maybe now Kippei-san should go undercover instead of Tetsu. Echizen would never expect it.”
“Shinji!” someone, or everyone yelled.
The previously domestic scene devolved into something more messy and chaotic. And while the sauce may have burned a little, the fun of it all was worth having too many cooks in the kitchen.