Chapter Text
act i
the gentle warmth of spring;
the unforgiving heat of summer;
and the undoing of apathy
and many other things;
this shouldn't be happening.
( oh but it is. )
chapter one
❝my reputation isn’t exactly squeaky clean❞
It’s hard to be quiet when Amara de la Garza has a group of middle schoolers clambering behind her.
But she tries.
They follow her obediently down the concrete pathway that snakes through Airi Park, chittering amongst themselves.
They usually aren’t doing this. By now, the kids should be knee-deep in a game and probably trash-talking each other (and she has to mediate, even if she tells them to keep it nice). But upon arrival at their regular spot, she found them huddled under a tree, pouting; a look to the left showed her the orange tape marking off the clearing, the people in neon green and orange vests with their hard hats, and the messy, arrangements of piles of dirt and grass.
A pipe repair, one of the construction workers said. And Amara knew that it’d be a while before they got their old spot back again.
Now, they’re hot on her heels as she tries to find an area that’s open enough for them to play but also a reasonable distance away from the street, lest they accidentally kick the ball too far and hit a car — or worse, a person.
She takes her time. No one is occupying much of the park because it’s still cool.
She should be training and practicing, ideally, with the team back at Machida, but they’ve been working relentlessly since winter and she thinks she deserves a break — especially since this is the one week without school or practice that she’s getting before her third year starts.
She slowly comes to a halt, seeing the open clearing of grass first, then the occupied bench in front of it next.
A guy sits there and his head is slightly tilted toward the sky, though she can’t imagine he’s getting any sufficient sunlight because the tree next to the bench makes it spotty. But he’s broad-shouldered, with light brown skin showing on the nape of his neck, chestnut brown hair curling loosely there.
There’s courtesies, she thinks as she takes a step forward, especially here, when it’s quiet and the hustle and bustle of deep city dwelling is more or less muted; a homely neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and she, a guest, isn’t going to disturb the peace if she can help it.
But the ringleader of the group, a third year girl named Inaba, teeters forward so that her shoulder brushes Amara’s. “Senpai —?”
Amara sighs ruefully. “Yeah, alright, hold on and settle down.”
She steps off the path and the grass sinks under her shoes. It’s been surprisingly rainy but they’re still in an odd transition of winter and spring.
The kids hang back like they’ve been told and keep their voices low. Good.
If Inaba is the ringleader amongst her peers, then Amara is the leader of their little group in its entirety. It’s for a multitude of reasons but the main ones being that she is older, wiser, and unfortunately, entering her last year of high school.
Her experience awes them, often, despite the fact that she’s only been playing since the tail end of first year and the beginning of second. It’s a surprising amount of pressure to have a gaggle of fourteen and fifteen-year-olds watching your every move and mimicking it because they think it’s right.
She goes over to the bench, catching a small spot of sunlight that peeks in from within the canopy of leaves. It warms her back, seeping in through her hoodie and jeans and burning the nape of her exposed neck. She touches the hot skin absently and comes to stop, clearing her throat to gain the attention of the current occupant of the bench.
Her prior observations told her it was a guy and seeing him up-close — broad-shouldered, an undeniably powerful build, short brown hair, and an unfairly pretty face — makes her nervous.
She ignores the barest of flutters in her chest when his eyes open (had he been sleeping?) and she’s chained down under a pair of hazel eyes.
“Would you mind if me and my kids played soccer here?” She jabs a thumb to the clearing to their right, its grass deep green and finely-cut, perfect conditions for a good game of soccer. “It’s alright if not.” She smiles and tries to appear friendly, even though this guy hasn’t outwardly reacted to anything she’s said.
He stares for a few seconds and she starts to feel uncomfortable, water bottle slippery under her fingers, shifting her weight from foot to foot, but her minute movements seem to jar him back to reality because his eyes snap to the clearing she’s gesturing to before flickering back to her. He clears his throat. “It’s fine.”
His voice surprises her. It’s deep and soothing, but the notes of quiet tempt her to lean in, like she’s trying to hear him better, even though she can hear him just fine from their proximity.
She looks over to the kids, holding up a hand, and they hurry over to the field, jumping straight into a game. She reluctantly takes a seat on the other side of the bench, keeping a respectable amount of distance between them. She sets her water bottle beside her on the bench, sliding her phone out from her back pocket to set on her lap.
An awkward silence ensues.
Even if he says he’s fine with it, she feels like they’re inconveniencing him. She winces as one of the kids starts yelling loudly about a foul play (it wasn’t) and feels obligated to turn her head and smile sheepishly.
“If I’d known they’d be this loud, I would’ve found another place to play,” she says and he looks at her, then at the clearing.
“It’s fine,” he repeats, but it’s curt this time so she clamps her mouth shut and focuses on the game unfolding in front of her.
Little rude, she can’t help but think, trying not to be so put-out by it. She tries to think back to a few minutes ago, wondering whether she’d broken any social rules, but she can’t find anything that’s out of place.
Maybe he’s just like that. He doesn’t seem like the most pleasant guy, so . . .
With that, she tries her best to shrug it off.
A distraction comes in the form of a text from her friend, Chihiro, to the groupchat she and their other friend, Chiyo, share.
pollito
hase keeps talking abt the girl hes seeing its so annoying
pollito
remind me why i specifically have to keep following him (｀_´)ゞ
technically i was fine with u unfollowing him but chiyo was the one who wanted to see whether he would try to gloat abt his hookups
beans
and? i was right
pollito
has it occurred to u genius that maybe he only does it bc he knows that IM following him
beans
that did occur to me yes
pollito
and its not lik i dont get enough info from practice!!!!! we r on the same team u know :/
beans
anyways who’s his new girl
pollito
..... hirayama
second year right
pollito
yeah shes really nice its too bad she got caught up w a douche like hase (;_;)
pollito
if only she knew what u had gone thru amara...
beans
well that’s what happens when she and hase keep their mouths shut abt it
excuse me for not wanting to air out our dirty laundry
beans
what does that even mean
She sighs, idly scratching her cheek.
it means im glad the rest of the school doesnt know and i have no wish to tell them abt what went down between me n hase
pollito
its not like its incriminating for u tho
well my reputation isnt exactly squeaky clean and i wouldnt put it past the ones who prefer hase over me to twist the narrative
beans
hmm thats a good point
beans
anyway i suppose you can unfollow him hiro theres no real need to see anything more
pollito
thank god Σ(-᷅_-᷄๑)
beans
coming back for dinner amara?
probably dont wait up tho
beans
alrighty
Chiyo — and their other friend, Chihiro — don’t know that she does this; they know where she goes, of course, a precaution, but they don’t know she comes here to see the kids and act as their referee (and unofficial mentor, but seeing as she’s three years their senior, it might as well be official).
There’s no particular reason; Chiyo hasn’t asked and she thinks Hiro was probably instructed not to ask, either.
She appreciates it. There are some things she likes to keep close to her chest.
The kids are her secret, a group of young, impressionable students that don’t hesitate to seek her out, despite her being foreign. It’s not just that, though. Despite her impact on them (and theirs on her), they’re lax about this arrangement they have going on, knowing full well that she’s liable to disappear completely one day when the school year starts and where will she get something like that?
She shakes her head, putting her phone down, unceremoniously shoving any lingering thoughts about her ex-boyfriend from her mind; it gets easier to ignore the stranger sitting on the other side of the bench, especially when the kids start turning to her for foul plays (they’re still not legitimate fouls).
The sun begins to slip lower in the sky, until it’s shining directly upon the clearing and the bench, its warm rays warming her skin. She basks in the feeling, relaxing.
The stranger shifts on the bench. Before she can glance at him, her phone vibrates again.
beans
make sure you text us when ur on ur way back
i wouldnt forget u know i hate riding the subway alone :/
beans
just wanted to make sure
pollito
text us if anything
beans
call us actually
pollito
so she can get stared at by every person on the train???
beans
so she can just listen to us talk dummy and if anything happens we’ll hear it
lol thank u guys ill text but if anything else ill call <3
She sets her phone back down but knocks her water bottle off the bench in the process. She winces as it falls onto the ground soundlessly, clippings of grass clinging to the condensation-slick plastic.
Before she can reach for it, the stranger is one step ahead of her, leaning down, long, slim fingers wrapping loosely around the cap and plucking it off the ground. She takes the bottle from the stranger, ignoring the loose grass and dirt sticking to it.
“Thank you,” she says with a perfunctory bow of her head.
The stranger nods and says nothing else.
She sets the bottle back onto the bench and wipes her hand on the denim of her jeans to smear away the grass clippings and the condensation.
He stands in one fluid motion, hitching the grey duffle bag over his shoulder, and she blinks at how tall he is, his frame looking even more powerful because of it.
She drags her eyes away from him and focuses on the kids, on the way the sun is dipping further and further, its light tinting orange with each inch that it falls.
He leaves with little preamble, walking the way that she and the kids had come, and it’s weirdly difficult to banish curious thoughts about him.
He’s weird, she reminds herself. Offstandish and weird. Prime reasons to not be curious about him.
It’s easier to think such a thing when he’s gone.
❖
It seems to be his spot.
And that makes her feel even worse.
Unfailingly, he’s there, seated on the right end of the bench, closest to the pathway that snakes through the park. She and the kids arrive later than he does, at around three-thirty since she has some obligations to attend to earlier in the day, and they always end up leaving after him, too.
He lives in the area, she assumes, since he comes here like clockwork.
He never does anything, though.
He sits on the bench and his head tilts up and he’s contemplative. He’s thinking about something. Or he’s getting lost in the intricate patterns of the tree leaves and branches above them. Or he’s on his phone, fingers moving over the keyboard. Either he’s writing poetry in his notes or he’s texting someone. She thinks it’s the latter.
But today, three days after they’ve moved to this clearing, something changes.
He’s tired.
She’s in the middle of a mindless game on her phone when she sees his head tilt back in her peripheral vision and a furtive glance shows that his eyes have fluttered shut. Slivers of sunlight slip through the canopy, leaf-shaped patches of gold decorating the smooth brown skin of his face, thick eyelashes casting shadows over the dark, grey circles underneath his eyes.
A group of pigeons fly overhead. She rips her eyes away from him. He’s tired, give him some peace, she chastises herself. She makes a face as she flubs and dies in the game but a piercing yell from the clearing spooks her.
The stranger jerks at the noise, head snapping back up, and while she rapidly assesses the situation on the clearing (someone has tripped but they’re okay, being pulled to their feet by another kid), she hears him sigh.
Something niggles at her brain again and she turns to him with a grimace.
“I’m really sorry,” she says quietly. “I promise we’ll be out of your hair as soon as they’re done with construction on the other field.”
He takes a minute to respond, reaching up to press his thumb and index finger into his eyes, another sigh escaping his lips.
She really does feel bad. He’s evidently tired and their perpetual presence here — one that isn’t so quiet — is disturbing him.
“It’s fine,” he says, dropping his hand back into his lap, looking more alert now.
“We’re basically ruining any peaceful downtime you had,” she mumbles, shutting off her phone, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s another cool day, so she wears her Monte Vista Volleyball hoodie and jeans. She fingers the hoodie string absently. “They’re loud for a group of middle schoolers.”
She should stop talking. Even if a part of her is painfully curious and wants to befriend this mysterious figure, she — of all people — knows when to take a hint and shut up.
“Kids,” he says evenly and she thinks that pretty much sums it up.
“I can get them to be quieter,” she pauses and her eyes flicker to the circles under his eyes again. “It’s probably the least I can do.”
“It’s not like I should be sleeping in public,” he tells her and it’s almost wry in nature but his voice is still, more or less, monotonous. His eyes don’t convey much, looking emptier the more she tries to find something.
His response still stirs a small laugh from her.
She clears her throat, tempering her laughter. “Still,” she says, “sleepless nights aren’t fun. Or whatever it is you do. If this is your time to recuperate —” she gestures to the clearing “— then my apologies. It’s probably not fun.”
He glances at her and she feels like he’s trying to say something, to form a question, and maybe it’s wishful thinking to even delude herself like that, but she pushes on.
“I used to not be able to sleep when I first came here,” she continues. “Stayed up the entire night for my first day. I managed to live through the first half of the day but I slept through lunch.”
Homesickness hits hard at the worst of times but it’s never been as bad as when she first came here two years ago.
(Even despite the situation at home.)
“An exchange student,” he states and she nods, sending a bracing smile to him. He doesn’t return it, instead adding, “Your Japanese is pretty good.”
She snorts softly. “Pretty good?”
“A little accented.”
Honest.
“Only been here two years. It’s hard to shake, I’m afraid.” She tilts her head. His features have a distinctly foreign touch to them and his Japanese is perfect. Hm.
He tilts his head. “Where are you from?”
Is he forcing conversation because it’s the polite thing to do and I’m clearly not from here or is he actually . . . interested?
She crosses her legs. “The US. San Antonio, Texas.” He’s watching her now, and while his eyes still look a little vacant, he’s mindlessly turned his body towards her.
He’s interested.
But they haven’t even exchanged names yet. And she gets the feeling that they probably won’t.
“Came here on a soccer scholarship.” She nearly wants to ask if he has any sort of foreign ancestry but holds her tongue.
Maybe unconsciously, his eyes flicker to her hoodie then back to her face, and she hastens to elaborate. “I played volleyball in my freshman year at my school in Texas. That’s why I have this —” she tugs on the hoodie “— we don’t have a girls soccer team, so volleyball was the next best thing. And I couldn’t get onto the volleyball team at my high school here because the lineup is basically airtight, but the soccer team was in dire need of some players, so,” she shrugs, “I took the opportunity.”
“What about you? Do you play —?” She’s been talking a lot. She doesn’t want it to seem like she’s soaking up all the attention for herself.
“Baseball,” he tells her and it makes sense. The powerful build, the powerful tendons and muscles she can see in his arms.
“Let me guess — catcher?”
She hopes he doesn’t get the wrong idea. She’s not looking to cross-examine him; she’s just curious.
He nods and turns away, his gaze straying to the treetops, clusters of verdant set against the light grey overcast hanging in the sky.
“I don’t play anymore,” he says, and her curiosity peaks, but she keeps her mouth shut. This bothers him. She sees it in the way his brow darkens and he holds himself stiffer.
She pulls a leg underneath her, letting her foot hang a few inches above the grass. She rotates her foot slowly, feeling the blades of grass giving way under her shoe.
It’s too much to ask of him, when they’re strangers, and they don’t even know each other’s names or where they live and go to school.
A part of her thinks that should make it even easier.
No strings attached, an anonymity that is able to relax their nerves, sated with the thought that, without this park, they wouldn’t have even met.
But her openness is a thing of the West, so she settles with the silence that blankets them.
❖
He doesn’t return the next day and Amara feels bad because of it.
She fools herself into thinking it’s because of her.
It’s an awfully vain thing to think, she knows.
She is nothing more than an insignificant, too-curious-for-her-own-good girl to him. Or that’s what she thinks he thinks. He has a dry, indifferent air to him; like he couldn’t care less about . . . well. Anything.
He’s like a leaf in a rushing river, guided by the unstoppable currents rather than his own mind.
She could also be overthinking it. That’s definitely a possibility.
Still, she runs over their interaction that entire day, trying to think about whether or not she’s missed something vital, something that tells her she overstepped her boundaries.
She doesn’t want to walk on eggshells around him — she’d hate it if someone did that around her — and she certainly doesn’t want to baby him, either — she’d hate that, too — but this probably requires a little more tact.
Tact . . . what am I even thinking?
He’s just a stranger, she tells herself. An admittedly hot stranger but still a stranger. And it’s not like making friendly conversation with strangers is the norm here.
Culture in Japan is utterly collectivistic and it carries in the most interesting of ways.
She’s not exactly bursting at the seams with words around strangers, but it’s habitual, to fill a void with chatter. That is a Western thing and Chiyo and Hiro have told her many times before.
So, she stops thinking about it and tries telling the kids to stop being so loud.
He comes the next day, though.
He comes after she has arrived, at four-fifteen, still dressed in a t-shirt and sweats, chestnut brown hair loose, thick chunks laying over his forehead. It’s another cool day, and she’s back in her hoodie and jeans, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the cool breeze that sweeps through the park.
He sits on the bench, nodding at her politely. She flashes a small smile and resumes playing Hiro back in 8-ball. She fiddles with the cue, adjusting it meticulously.
Satisfied with the trajectory, she carefully slides the cue back. She lifts her finger —
He clears his throat. “I had some things to do yesterday. Sorry.”
The billiard misses the hole.
“No need to apologize,” she says, feeling strangely off-kilter. She puts her phone down. “How’s your day been?”
He glances at her, almost like he can’t believe she’s asking that question — making smalltalk — but he answers. “Fine.”
“Same here. Nothing much to do. I mean, practice, but —” she waves a dismissive hand “— been practicing since the end of summer last year. Not much I can do now that’ll change much, right?”
He shrugs and they lapse into silence for a few seconds.
“Was it easy to get onto the team?”
She blinks at the question and its abruptness. She’s surprised at his invitation to keep talking. But she’s not averse to it.
“It wasn’t easy,” she admits. “But it wasn’t as difficult as trying to get onto the volleyball team might’ve been. Small team. Easy to get myself into Coach’s line of vision. My preferred position is center midfielder but our mids are secure in their positions and in the same year as me, so when one of our forwards started slacking, Coach booted me up.”
“Players are interchangeable,” he states, but she gets the feeling he wants her to explain. It’s that monotonous voice of his, talking so plainly, and the way that they interact, talking without looking at one another, so she’s missing verbal cues, forcing herself to pay attention to his paralanguage and use her intuition.
“Something like that.” She stops herself from over-explaining. “Not the same for baseball?”
“Some positions are more difficult than others,” he says mildly.
“I guess a fielder can’t fill in for a pitcher, then, huh?”
She feels his eyes on the side of her face. “No,” he agrees. “No, they can’t. Same situation with catcher. Not just anyone can fill their shoes.”
“Lots of strategy there, right? Things to know, difficult decisions to make.” She crosses her arms.
“It’s not the easiest position,” he says. “And for you?”
“Forward? Eh, it’s alright. A lot of it is synergy. Working like one organism on the field. The other forward on the team —” she hesitates for a split-second, thinking that they don’t even know each other’s name, but he looks at her the same time as she looks at him and she thinks he wants to know more (again with the wishful thinking) so she continues “— Aiko. We’re like partners. On the field, that is. Off the field,” she cracks a small smile, “she’s not very fond of me. But predisposed events made it so and she knows not to carry that fire into games.”
“Predisposed events,” he repeats.
“She’s my host sister. It was a coincidence that my host mother had her daughter in the same school that I was supposed to go to but that sealed the deal for my counselor and my parents. I don’t think they ever could’ve thought that she wouldn’t like me, though,” she says, chuckling to herself.
Hamamoto Aiko — third year, forward, and her host sister. Petty, but never genuinely cruel. By now, she does what she does to keep an image. Amara is fine with that.
“That doesn’t bother you.”
Amara laughs. “She doesn’t genuinely hate my guts. She likes to be difficult and I happen to hold patience when it comes to that — but only because it annoys her. Besides, like I said, we play nice on the field and in front of her mom, so it doesn’t matter to me.”
He nods and seems satisfied with the information that he’s been given. They settle into a silence that blankets them again and it stretches on for another thirty minutes. In that time frame, she has to settle a dispute over a point — since they don’t have actual goal nets, it’s always hard to gauge where the goalkeeper is required to stay — and make sure that one of the kids is mentally sound after he takes a hard fall.
A question niggles at her in that time and she wonders what her parameters are.
She doesn’t know much about him.
All she knows of him is that he used to play baseball and he was a catcher.
He knows more about her and she sullenly chalks that up to her ability to overshare — that stupid Western trait.
His attractiveness also makes her a little more loose-tongued than usual.
But she doesn’t want to back down from knowing about him, so she poses her question when the sun begins to set and their time is drawing to an end.
“What about you and baseball?”
“What about it?”
His retort is not friendly. It’s barbed words, an undercurrent of warning, silently saying Watch it. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. We aren’t friends.
But it’s the first hint of a fire that she sees. She had a feeling it was there — there’s something about him that makes her tense, like if he actually cared, he could unravel her on the spot without so much as lifting a finger — or maybe remnants of one, and she can’t deny her curiosity about what might’ve extinguished it.
She turns to him. “Do you think you’d go back to it?”
She catches the quick movement of a pink tongue darting out to wet his lips but forces her eyes back to his. A part of her shrinks into itself upon realizing he’s already looking at her and likely caught that she’d glanced at his mouth, if only for a split-second. But he doesn’t say anything about it and instead mulls over her words in his head, a tiny wrinkle forming between his brows.
“It’s doubtful,” he says guardedly. “But that’s how things are sometimes.”
His words are sharp and she knows, keenly this time, that she has overstepped.
Resisting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she looks forward and consents defeat.
The rest of their time together is quiet.