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The relentless sun burned down on the group of friends as they made their way up to the beach. No macho beach this year, the Earth Defense Club had finally managed to find a place that was quiet and cozy, thanks to recommendations from the Student Council.
Yumoto kept complaining that last year’s trip had been a lot of fun and they should have returned there, but he had lost the voting.
Additionally, the boys had decided that they wanted to be among each other, since the club as such did not even really exist anymore now that En and Atsushi had graduated in spring. It was a miracle the two of them had found some time during what were summer holidays for the others to come to the beach one Saturday.
This was a summer reunion of sorts.
“This is awesome!”
Ryuu stretched, sunglasses in his face, cold drink ready to combat the heat. Behind him, Io looked around, scanning the location with keen eyes for rentable sunbeds, a beach shop and all the things a place like this should have. They planned on having a barbecue together, but a shop might come in handy if something was missing, or just for some ice cream. Although right now, it didn’t seem like anyone needed anything, they were all rather exhausted from the trip here already, since it was crushingly hot even though it wasn’t noon yet.
“It’s quite interesting that this beach is admission-free, despite being close to the best luxury resort in the area.”
Io knew a lot about the resort, but he had never thought that the beach strip behind it didn’t actually belong to the hotel and was open for everyone to visit. Maybe they tried to win more potential guests like this.
“Well, my friends”, Wombat started, clad in hat, sunglasses and a small pair of swim trunks, “the tourist guide does mention that, you just needed to open it.”
The pink alien flipped through the book in his paws until he found the right page, holding it up triumphantly.
“Who cares”, En yawned as he watched Atsushi blowing up a few air mattresses. He sat in the comfortable shadow of their big sunshade, guarding the cooling box full of drinks and materials for the barbecue.
“This place is really great”, Atsushi commented as he kept pumping air into the mattresses with a foot pump, trying to fan air to himself to combat the sweat rolling down his face, “we need to thank Kin-chan and the others later.”
Everyone nodded.
Yumoto rushed past the others and right into the sea.
Ryuu watched him splash around in the water and took a sip of his drink. He offered it to Io, who came to join him, wiping some sweat from his brows.
The other boy picked up the bottle. He wasn’t really a friend of carbonated drinks, but with temperatures like these, a cold coke was indeed quite refreshing.
He leaned his shoulder against Ryuu’s.
The pink haired boy sighed.
“I don’t know, but it’s still kinda weird we’re the sempais now. I mean, we’ve been for Yumoto anyway, but… you know.”
He felt Io shrug against him.
“You’ve been saying that since the beginning of this school term and I still think nothing has really changed. You’re getting quite sentimental over this.”
Ryuu scratched his head, picked up his bottle again and had a drink. Almost empty. It was just too damn hot today.
“Guess you’re right.” He stretched again. It was really time to get away from this thought, they were on summer vacation after all. Summer break was supposed to be the time to relax and not think of school.
“Let’s have fun!”
He hurried back to the cooling box, drew out some ice cream and handed everyone a package, reserving the strawberry flavored one for himself. Then he picked up one of the air mattresses and followed Yumoto into the ocean.
After a while, however, the sun became unbearable and instead of relaxing on the floating mattress, he decided to go for a swim.
The water was wonderful, neither to cold nor too warm, and it had been quite a while since Ryuu had gone for a swim. He dove, enjoying the ocean’s gentle embrace. He wasn’t out very far and as such couldn’t go very deep, but that was fine. He might favor the mountains and the snowboarding that was only possible up there, but during summer, he could easily switch to a mind that was about swimming and beach volleyball.
At some point he almost collided with Yumoto’s feet, who dangled from the boy’s tube he used to stay afloat. Apparently, the blonde could still not swim, but didn’t fear the vast sea either.
He reached the surface for breath, greeting Yumoto.
“Oh, sempai”, the younger boy greeted him with an innocent smile, “I think your mattress is getting away.”
He pointed into the direction where Ryuu had last seen it and he seemed to be right; Ryuu could hardly see the floating mattress anymore and it seemed to stray further away with each wave.
“Crap!”
He chased after his raft, hoping it would not be washed away into the wide ocean, as he had no intention of going after it for too far, only an idiot would do that.
It was just a raft after all.
But the closer he came, the better he could make out a figure on it, making him wonder for a moment whether Yumoto had confused somebody else on a mattress for Ryuu’s. However, as he got even closer, it turned out he knew the silhouette that he could barely make out against the sun reflecting in the water.
But the closer he swam, the more he could make the person out sitting on his mattress, surrounded by the glistering water, framing him in little twinkling stars.
Ryuu dove again, crossing the last few meters underwater. The float kidnapper appeared to not have noticed him yet.
When he surfaced again, the pink haired teen made sure to splash as much water into his friend’s face as possible. Of course, this provoked quite a reaction from the other boy, as Io protested quite loudly against this surprise attack.
Ryuu shook the water off his face and eyes and grinned at him.
“You have any excuse for stealing my float?”
Io swiped the water out of his face.
“It would have gotten away otherwise. These things are quite expensive and you just leave them alone like this, you could as well put your money into a bottle and throw it into the water.”
“Yeah sure”, Ryuu retorted with a grimace, “I know you didn’t bring one on your own, I bet you just wanted to try it once.”
“Why should I buy something like this? I’d use it about once in a year, that’s quite a waste.”
Oh well, there was not much arguing with Io when it came to spendings and the usefulness of them. And then again, Io probably did save Ryuu’s mattress from disappearing into the wide ocean, it was well possible.
“Well, whatever. I still need to punish you for stealing mine!”
And with that, Ryuu started another splash attack, throwing as much water at his friend as he could manage. Io tried to shield himself for a moment, then realized it was fruitless, digging his arms into the sea for a counterattack.
The fight went on like that for a bit, with Ryuu secretly surprised that Io had let himself be wrapped into this. In fact, the was so much into this all of a sudden that he lost balance and fell off the float into the water, continuing to battle here for another bit until both of them signalized to each other that they were running out of stamina.
In the end, both of them were clinging to the mattress, gasping for air.
“See?”, Ryuu started, “and you didn’t want to come with us at first. Sometimes having fun is more important than making money, right?”
“I suppose”, Io sighed, still trying to catch some air.
They were on opposite ends of the float, which made it hard for them to climb onto it at the same time. They gave up after a few seconds, Ryuu kept lazily hanging onto one side of it. The sun burned down onto both of them, making the endeavor even more exhausting, and probably brought some sunburn too.
The boys looked at each other and reached unspoken mutual understanding that they neither wanted to keep climbing, at least this way, nor did either of them want to swim back now, it was just too much. Another second of eyes locked, then Ryuu snuck in a quick kiss.
He took Io enough by surprise for the boy to start blushing, which was barely visible under his already heated and sweating face, but Ryuu knew exactly where he had to look.
This was great. It’s how the summer was supposed to be spend right? At the beach with friends, under the sun, with fun and barbecue and the most dear person.
Io sighed a little, smiled and returned the kiss as fast as the first one had come.
Later in the evening, after the main part of the barbecue had already been done and the group sat around the last remains of the coal for a little more warmth now that the sun was gone completely, Io and Ryuu snuck away for a little into a quiet corner for themselves.
“See? It was good coming with us after all, wasn’t it?”
The pink boy squeezed Io’s hand.
They looked at each other again, despite the shadows of the night making this a little hard. After another kiss they silently decided to have a look at the stars, shining over them.
There were two shooting stars.
Io returned the squeeze.
“Yeah, the beach was fun after all.”