Chapter Text
“Kon’nichiwa.”
“Kon’nichiwa, hajimashite – watashi...”
“Watashi... no?”
This was a stupid idea. Tremendously stupid, on new levels that you had not anticipated from yourself, despite years of suffering through your own stupidity.
Your grip on the sheet of paper you hold tightens, creating indents and folds that branch out from where your fingers squeeze, distorting the letters printed on it.
“Kon’nichiwa. Hajimashite. Watashi-no-na-mae-ha...”
Reading it right off the page is fine; it’s the remembering part that’s stressing you out.
You pace the hallway of the empty house. It's a very empty house, oppressively so; the hall smells of new plaster, and so does the common area. It's echo-y, the open space so distractingly unfilled. The kitchen is un-lived in, counters unscratched, and the sofa just viewable from the island is uncreased. It smells like paint and plastic. It doesn’t smell like people.
The runner mat that leads up from the doorway is brand new, un-trampled, untouched. It feels too new under your socked feet as you wiggle your toes down, burrowing antsily; the odd fibers here and there prick you through the cotton, mildly spikey in a way that would be annoying if you weren’t already preoccupied with the impending doom that you would face any second now.
The impending doom that was set to pull up outside and come right through that front door at any moment.
“Kon’nichiwa! Hajimashite, watashi-no... watashi-no... nae? Dammit!”
The crumpling sound of you snatching the paper back up to your face in frustration bullies the bubbly tone you had been trying on right out of the still air of the hallway. As you stare down the printed letters, those damn letters that should be so very simple to memorise, and yet you could barely even get past the ‘hello, nice to meet you, my name is’ to even reach the ‘sorry, I don’t speak Japanese’, the handle of the front door moves.
Crap.
*
You had been drawn to the flyer offer by the allure of the ugly clip-art house printed on it.
Standing by the university bulletin board midway through the school year, leaned against the brick, puffing away on a cigarette in the crisp February air in a bored manner, your eyes had drifted along the beam of the wintery sun through the bare trees, to the gleam it cast on the scratched-up, warped plastic that protected the board.
Shifting your body to block the gleam, you had begun to lazily read over the amateur posters and such that were stapled there; paid surveys, research groups, local concerts – whatever, you ashed your cigarette – free housing...
Free housing?
The clip art was enticing, happy stick figures waving from the porch of a large house.
So, free housing for the year – a dream for any student, really. But surely there’s a catch.
You lock in, reading in a far more interested way, eyes skimming the fine print below the waving figures.
The catch? According to the flyer, the only trepidation was to ‘manage a volleyball team for the duration of the next two school years’. Amazing; as far as you were concerned, that was just putting away equipment, right? They'd have a coach, and you were sure that university level athletes were more than capable of dealing with themselves, so... free housing for the next few years, and all you have to really do is fill up water bottles, pack away volleyballs, and roll up nets.
Amazing!
*
Not so amazing, actually.
Stupid.
The sound of the handle jolts you, and you fear for a second that you are quite seriously going to have a heart murmur from the shock. You crumple the paper into a folded fist behind your back. You don’t know why you’d bothered to do so; the embarrassment of a script would likely be mildly less painful than the humiliating first impression you were about to inflict upon your housemates for the year.
No, not just your housemates – your teammates .
You smile in a manner that probably doesn’t hide your real emotions, the muscles in your brow pinched in a way you have no time to smooth.
The door swings, and you are greeted with a tanned face.
Tall, dark features, kind eyes that scrunch and smile with his mouth.
Intimidating.
Those dark eyes zero in on you, and so do many pairs of eyes behind him, too, expectant. You feel small stood alone in that empty hall.
Your muscles tense, and you start, going to bow, your nervous smile breaking for a second as your mouth forms an ‘o’ of remembrance, before exposing your teeth again.
“Kon’nichiwa! Hajimashite, watashino-namaeha...’
Perfect. Who needs a script?
When you straighten, you see his smile widen impossibly, creasing lines in his handsome face. You think your accent sounded pretty good, actually.
He seems mildly relieved, like he’s surprised but not unpleased to see you already here. You deduce that he's probably the captain, from how he had intended to lead everyone in before he had found you blocking the path. You daren’t let your eyes flit to the many faces watching you from behind him, sort of frozen there.
The sharp corners of the scrunched paper in your hand bite into the flesh of your palm, taunting.
“ああ！ はじめまして。 私の名前は大地です。 あなたが私たちの新しいマネージャーだと思いますか？”
Oh.
Your expression visibly tightens, your brows pinching as you blink dumbly at him, continuing to smile like an idiot. You could not for the life of you remember what ‘sorry, I don’t understand Japanese’ was in Japanese.
Ironic.
His face puzzles, though his smile doesn’t disappear. He’s looking at you expectantly, and you watch in helpless embarrassment as the realisation dawns on him that you really didn’t understand what he had just said. He falters, seemingly at a bit of a loss.
Oh god, he doesn’t know any English, does he?
He opens his mouth to perhaps attempt something, before a bored voice from the very back of the group interrupts.
“You really shouldn't start conversations in languages you don’t understand.”
The group of athletes part almost comically as the owner of the voice pushes through them.
He's tall. Ridiculously so.
Lithe, lanky. Pale blonde hair cropped short on his head, and glasses perched on his slim face. He’s also handsome, though there's something far different about this beanpole from the first man.
Sharp. He's sharp looking.
Unlike the warmth that came from the (assumed) captain, his very demeanour felt cold. Cold like the chill that rolls out of a deep freezer in visible waves, hitting your throat on a hot day as you greedily gulp in lungfuls of the crisp air while digging headfirst past frozen pizzas to find old ice pops from the summer before, not pulling your head out when you’ve found them, and keeping your face down for just a second longer, wilfully enjoying the bite of the frost on your heated cheeks.
It's quite encompassing, but also oddly familiar. Not totally unpleasant. Relieving, perhaps? You could almost shiver.
He looks down at you without even bothering to tilt his head toward you, clearly unimpressed. Despite his clear presentation of disinterest, he also seems expectant, something flashing behind his glasses in his golden eyes. His voice had been perfectly fluent. American. Not a hint of Japanese in his words at all. You stare right back past the lenses and beyond the glare they’re catching from the windows.
He's caught off guard by you meeting his gaze, like he’s been zapped by a mild static shock. He blinks, pale lashes fluttering. You deduce that he wants an apology or something. Some kind of submission. You don’t intend to bow to that.
Your own mouth opens to retort with something witty, but you’re interrupted by a new voice from the group.
“Sorry about him – it's nice to meet you!”
You'd almost forgotten anyone else was there. You tear your eyes from the beanpole and source who had spoken.
Yet another handsome man, all soft features and moles. His voice is quite accented, lilting in a distinctly Japanese way, though his english seems good so far, which is relieving. His pretty eyes crease with his smile in a friendly manner, and he kicks off his shoes, pushing in, nodding his head in a polite greeting to you, and shooting a mildly scolding look at the blonde, and kicking at his ankles with a socked toe.
His hair is a lighter, almost grey shade, lifting and curving gently around his face as the still air in the hallway breezes through it. He seems intent on getting his bags inside, and his movement sparks the others to force off untied shoes and barrel in too, nodding enthusiastically in your direction as they go, fists curled around backpacks straps and duffle bags.
The beanpole goes with the movement of the others, his delicate eyebrows un-pinching in a manner that suggests that they are more comfortable in that bored position, as if expressing anything at all is a chore for him. His mouth opens as he moves past you, and you catch his lips just barely hinting at the edges with the ghost of a smirk before his face is hidden from view.
“Nice script. Too bad it was useless.”
You flush, realising just too late that your arm had untwisted from behind your back to hover at your side, the paper peeking out from between your fingers.
Clutching the crumpled sheet to your chest with both hands, you spin to look at the back of his head incredulously. This is his greeting? He doesn’t even look back as he moves toward the stairs. The frosty air goes with him, but the chill that had settled into you does not. Your eyes train on where his figure had last been before he had turned the corner, his long legs effortlessly skipping two steps at a time.
Your lungs feel cold.