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Rin remembers a boy sitting alone in the playground, hidden in the shade the large trees provided and curled up uncomfortably. Rin doesn't know why he was so captivated by the boy, but maybe it was due to the particular, almost white, silver shade of his hair. Rin had begged to go out, to watch his Nii-chan play, but got distracted with the kids playing football in the nearby playground.
With Nii-chan in the fenced up field, Rin has no way of reaching Nii-chan. So he meanders around the playground, his own football in hand, and he stops once in a while to kick at the ball. It's one of these stops that he sees the boy beneath the shade of the trees. Nii-chan always said not to talk to strangers, but Rin wants to talk to this strange boy, so he waddles over, football in hand.
It was cold. Cold enough to have Nii-chan bundle Rin up in more layers than usual, and Rin can see his breaths come out in opaque puffs of white before they even come a millimeter out of his nose. It's these same puffs of white that Rin sees when he bends at the waist, and offers his football to the lonely boy. “I'm Rin. Wanna play with me?”
A pair of grey look up at him, and the lump unfurls to show a tall boy, pale like the snow Rin is standing on. The eyes looking at Rin are droopy, but big and round. The boy is fluffy, and soft looking, and Rin wonders if he's a good teddy bear. He looks warm, Rin thinks. The boy is really, really slow. Nii-chan would hate him, Rin also thinks, but Rin likes him.
“I’m Seishiro.”
“Seishiro-kun!” a female voice calls out, and Rin looks to his side now, to a taller boy. The same white mop of fluff he dares call hair, the same droopy yet big eyes watering at another yawn, the same terrible posture that has Rin sighing in his mind, having tried to correct the curve of his friend's spine for almost a decade now.
The new things were the black backpack slung around one shoulder, the black gakuran uniform and the duffle bag. He sees a Vabo-chan keychain rattling around from the zipper of the duffle bag. He had his own duffle, of course, but his was filled with football necessities and a medical kit, just in case, instead of volleyball equipment and Salonpas sprays.
Rin may have cried when Seishiro started volleyball instead of football back in his first year in junior high. Nii-chan had just left for Spain when Seishiro enrolled into junior high, and he was high-strung on emotions.
But that was in the past. Rin had taken time to watch Seishiro play, and found himself mesmerised by his best friend on the court. If Seishiro didn't like football like he did, Rin didn't really care as long as the older one was having fun.
Seishiro waves at the girl who had called out to him, but he doesn't entertain much else. He turns to Rin, and then holds out a hand. Rin takes it. He reaches up with his other hand to bat away the cherry blossom petals in Seishiro's hair.
Stares follow them as they walk to school together, girls glance at them before they look away to giggle by themselves, at least that's before they notice their hands. The guys just keep staring. It's the first day, and Rin is used to the staring from people around him, especially those who knew his older brother, the glares from some of the female students just irk him.
Not that he cares.
Seishiro tugs Rin's hand from where their hands are joined together, and Rin turns to give the older boy an inquiring glance. Seishiro points at the class rosters posted just behind the doors of the school building, and Rin feels dread and it sinks like a boat amidst the Pacific Ocean in his stomach, until his stomach falls.
Rin holds tighter onto Seishiro, and vice versa when the crowds suddenly thicken around them. The student body was aquiver with excitement, and Rin is worried and excited and Seishiro is trying to find Rin's name amongst the many first years starting this year. Rin wasn't worried about which class he was in, though.
What worried Rin was the reminder that Seishiro was a year older than him. Seishiro is Rin's upperclassman, and there is no way the one person that wasn't his family that Rin cares about would be in the same class as he was.
Rin has seen Seishiro's grades. Rin had looked out his bedroom window, one side of the room significantly emptier and duller, Seishiro's presence next to him on his bed. The test papers with Seishiro's usual scrawl written all over laid out across his turquoise bed sheets. Seishiro had asked him what he was doing, looking out of the window like that, and Rin had not answered.
Rin had spotted a really fluffy dog. Its white fur reminded him of something. He couldn't place the feeling, though.
Rin, at present, waits patiently as Seishiro uses his height to his advantage, and towers over all of his new underclassmen to find his favourite underclassman’s class and classroom. At least Rin hopes he's Seishiro's favourite underclassman, it'd be horrifyingly embarrassing if he wasn't.
Seishiro leads him to his class, weaving around the students loitering around on the first day, and Rin looks at the pamphlet he had taken from a student council member passing them out out front. The canorous melody from the brass band flows through the campus, and Rin finds himself looking at the gymnasium building. The three gymnasium buildings, in fact.
Seishiro tells him, One's for the boys’ volleyball team. Another's for the girls’ volleyball team, the last one’s for the basketball team.
Rin misses what Seishiro says after this to the desultory and distracting conversations around them, so Seishiro leans into him, because he's tall and Rin is not, and he whispers, “I have morning practice. Will you be okay by yourself?”
Rin has to beat the challenge of being by himself sooner or later, he supposes. Seishiro wasn't always going to be with him. Rin looks at the field, and he asks, “When are the tryouts?”
Seishiro looks at him, and leads him to the gymnasium being used for the welcoming ceremony of the first years, and he answers with a question, “Have you sent in your form? The club leaders usually accept them on the first day — I can follow you. I don't think my team will mind for now.”
Rin holds out his club form, and Seishiro hums. The older boy looks out at the gymnasium, and he leads them away from it, instead towards the field.
You're Itoshi Sae’s younger brother, aren't you!
Rin mocks the club captain under his breath, and Seishiro smacks him on the top of his head gently. Rin hisses, despite the weak attack, and an arm is slung around his shoulders, now free of his duffle bag.
“Let's not antagonise your captain on the first day, shall we?” Seishiro says, probably supposed to be scolding, but his tone is mild and Rin finds it funny.
Rin sticks out his tongue, “Bleh.”
Seishiro sticks his tongue right back at Rin, and they dissolve into giggles as they walk towards the classroom buildings.
This giddy feeling follows Rin even after his tryout for the football team, and he finds himself walking to his classroom to grab the two bento boxes in his school bag. Both wrapped in cloth, one grey and one blue. He slowly walks down to the gymnasium where the boys’ volleyball team had taken for themselves.
The sounds of a ball contacting skin and the squeaking of sneakers on the court floor is all Rin can hear as he nears the open doors of the gymnasium. He stops at the doors.
Rin watches as Seishiro tosses the volleyball up into the air, starts running one, two, three steps before he jumps, and the ball is slamming into the court opposite of him, before the other team could react.
A whistle blows, and the scoreboard is one point higher for the red team, Seishiro's team.
The football tryouts were short. He doesn't think the team is that good, but maybe his thoughts were skewed since he compared everyone to Nii-chan. Seishiro, on the other hand, should stop showing off, Rin thinks as the volleyball player scores another service ace.
Wasn't this a practice match between the first years? Who let this giant on court.
A third year notices him, and Rin stares right back at him. A football club jacket in hand, and his school uniform exchanged for a t-shirt and shorts, his football socks still on. He definitely wasn't a first year student looking to join the volleyball club.
“Oh, Rin. You're here? You didn't return to your class?” Seishiro calls out to him, and Rin looks at him. A towel around his neck, a bottle in his hand as he squeezes the water out into his mouth. Rin snorts. He looked ridiculous.
“They were talking about getting to know each other when I walked past them. It seemed boring, so here I am.”
He steps into the gymnasium, and he passes over a wrapped bento box to Seishiro. “Mama told me to give this to you. Seiko-san isn't home this week, right?”
Seishiro raises an eyebrow at the usage of his mother's first name, and Rin grins. “Your mother, if you didn't know!”
“I know my mother's name is Seiko.” Seishiro takes the bento from him as he sighs, and Rin looks around at the volleyball team, who have all gathered around them.
“Ehh? What's this cute little underclassman doing here?”
“Miyazaki, shut up.”
Rin is about to turn back around to explore the campus, and find a place to eat his lunch in peace, when Seishiro gestures up at the second level of the auditorium. Rin squints up at the railings, and he nods.
Rin doesn't leave the gymnasium until Seishiro is lifting up his bag, and waving at him. He looks down at his phone, and the numbers five fifty-two look up at him. He picks up his empty lunch box and hurries down the steps to the first floor. He meets up with Seishiro on the steps leading out towards the open areas of the school campus. Seishiro holds out his hand, and Rin takes it.
Their arms swing as they go back into the classroom building Rin's classroom is situated in, and Seishiro takes Rin's bag while Rin bows at the remaining students loitering in his classroom. He knows none of their names.
“You should get to know your classmates better, you don't even know their names, do you?” Seishiro says as they walk out of the school gates, and Rin snorts this ugly thing, knocking his shoulder into Seishiro's.
“As if you know your classmates’ names. I'm fine with just knowing yours.” Rin replies, and they move to the side for a cyclist.
“Sappy.”
Rin sticks his tongue out.
The snow is beautiful, is the first thought Rin has as he looks up at the snow falling down onto him, the field and the footprints and wheel tracks from Nii-chan’s luggage and feet. It's beautiful, but Rin tears his eyes away from the sky, the midnight blue and bright white just reminders of what he's just lost.
His chest hurts, and the football he had been kicking earlier rolls further away from him. Rin can't look at it.
He lifts himself up, and trudges home, leaving the ball there. He looks at his phone, and the device rings once, twice, before it clicks and Seishiro's voice filters through his phone's speakers.
“Rin? You never call me this late.”
Rin’s voice gets stuck in his throat as he falls onto a bench in the park just opposite of his house, and Seishiro listens from where he's probably lying in bed, in his lonely apartment, where his parents don't dictate. They can be lonely together, Rin thinks, since the only other person in his court has just left, leaving just them two.
The older boy listens as Rin confesses that he doesn't want to play football anymore. He listens quietly as Rin sobs softly into his palms, no one else around to get a glimpse into Rin's private thoughts other than himself and his best friend of a decade. They're the only witnesses, and Seishiro hums.
“Then don't. Your brother doesn't want you to play with him in mind, right? Then find something else that doesn't bring him to mind.”
And Rin remembers another sport he had played as a child, that he had liked before football, before Sae, before the key moment of his life, where he had run onto the field and kicked a ball into the netting of a goal, and his brother had sparkled as he told a tiny Rin that he was amazing.
The memories of cheers and a target far away from where he stood, a string pulled taut in his hands, an arrow flying through the air and sticking right in the middle of a circle. He imagines a target twenty-eight metres away from where he stood.
Rin stands up from the bench, and he hangs up on Seishiro with a quiet and wet bye-bye, and his mother's message comes in telling him that Sae wouldn't be coming home and instead would be staying in a hotel. Rin sniffs, and coughs at the sudden large intake of the freezing air. He swallows to get rid of the dryness in his throat.
Rin replies with an okay, mama and walks home. He tells his parents what had happened, and the tears come flowing back when his mother pulls him into a tight and warm hug, and his father runs his hand through his hair like he's four years old instead of fourteen, a toddler instead of a teenager about to be in his last year of junior high.
His parents look at each other as he looks at the picture of six year old him, holding a child's bow and grinning at the camera.
He quits the football team the next day, meets the teacher-in-charge and captain's sad smiles with his own, and bows lower than ninety degrees as he apologises. The teacher pats him on the back, and Rin walks out of the staff room, holding another club form in his hands as he walks out.
It's a bit late for him… but archery never really did bring Sae to mind whenever the thought of the sport crossed his mind, just the twang of arrows releasing from the bowstring and the thwomp of the arrowhead striking and digging into the wood of the targets. The feeling that different people's tsuru-ne give him, like ripples in a lake.
He sits in his seat, and digs out a pen from his pencil case. He writes down Kyūdo, and when he gets home, he looks at the old photos of him in the Kyudo gear, and he smiles, running his hands along the frames. These were the only photos of him without Sae.
He thinks he may be getting more of them soon.
He walks into the dining room, only to find his mother holding a bamboo bow in hand, the bow significantly taller than she is, and the dining table covered in Kyudo equipment.
“Go ahead, Rin.” she says, holding the bow out towards him.
Rin takes the bow in his hands, examines the weight and length compatibility to his height, tests the pull strength, and smiles. He looks at the rather high quality equipment, places his bow down gently and examines the arrows — bamboo shafts and beautiful eagle feather fletchings. Rin is surprised to find that the direction of the curve in the fletchings is still what he preferred when he still did Kyudo regularly instead of football.
He looks at his mother, and she smiles knowingly.
Rin rushes through the crowd at the Tokyo city gymnasium, apologising when his cylindrical vinyl quiver and bow hits unsuspecting passersby. He pants as he stops at the front desk, pointing at a pamphlet for the prefectural volleyball tournament. He hopes he isn't late. He shifts the bag of clothes in his hands.
He looks at the tournament bracket placed out front, and his eyes follow along Hakuho High School as the team goes further and further into the middle of the board. The semi-finals. Seishiro is in the semi-finals! Rin had watched the previous match on his phone on the way from Kamakura to Tokyo by the Shinkansen, in hopes of getting to watch the second match in person, but he hadn't known which round it was.
Rin scans around for Hakuho High’s cheer squad when he bursts through the door to the grandstands, and hurries to take his seat; He places his bag on one of the empty front row seats, and then realises he hadn't taken off his gloves. How embarrassing. He had gone the entire ride here without noticing that?
He hurriedly opens the buckle of his bag, and takes out the glove bag he had shoved into the nook and crannies of the items inside the bag.
He stores his gloves properly, and places the small silk drawstring bag into its rightful place next to his equipment. He rearranges the items inside, the bowstring holder with the glove powder container hung on a strap around the bowstring holder is shifted around the small medical kit, deodorant spray and the other small container of grip powder. Once everything is tidy, to his standards, he closes his bag properly.
He turns back around in time to see Seishiro walking to the back of his team's court, ready to serve.
He steps closer to the railings and leans on them while he flicks through the pamphlet he had taken earlier from the desk, stopping at the Hakuho. Rin snorts at the photos, and looks back out at the court.
Seishiro has noticed him, Rin realises as the older boy holds out his hand towards him, a finger pointed and Rin laughs quietly. A volleyball serve dedicated to him? Corny.
He waves back, already knowing Seishiro is getting the point, so he doesn't call out any encouragement, unlike the cheer group behind him. He grips the railings, causing the pamphlet to now crumple in his hand, and he leans pretty far outwards to get a better glimpse of the court.
The second set… Rin turns to the student seated behind him, and asks, “Who won the first set?”
“Oh… Us.” The boy answers shakily, and Rin nods his thanks. He shifts his vinyl quiver and bow around as it hits the railings, his arrows rattle inside, and he watches the ball fly from where Seishiro's hands hit it, and it smacks in the corner of the opposing team’s court. The line judges point the flag down, and Hakuho cheers.
He feels his eye twitch — his bow and quiver are annoying. Incredibly annoying.
Rin places his bow and quiver down beside him, balancing them on the railings. He observes with a wince as Seishiro's next serve is received with a well placed bump from the opposing team. They get the point back and break the flow before Seishiro could take any more points from them.
Not that it helps, when Hakuho earns back the point, hitting match point again. The rally continues well into the thirties on the scoreboard.
Rin cheers alongside the school's students and cheer team, and screams particularly loudly whenever Seishiro scores a point. The whispers about him are ignored, though he does catch a loud, “Hey, isn't that Otonokino Junior High’s Itoshi Rin?”
He whips around to look at who recognised him, only to find Seishiro's fanclub and the entirety of Hakuho High seated in the audience instead. Not a single person is even looking or gesturing to him.
He huffs, and turns back to the match. The scoreboard goes up, up and up for Hakuho, and soon enough, the rallying ends with a point by Seishiro, a deadly cross-court hit by the white haired boy.
Rin screams himself hoarse, and reminds himself to buy something from the vending machines outside the courts in the hallways, and types something to his captain — a small, Finals next. Will train harder after.
He watches the teams shake hands and bow to the audiences, and claps alongside the rest of the spectators when his phone buzzes twice in succession.
He looks at his phone when the spectators file out of the seats, and he waits for Hakuho High to all file out before he follows right after.
He smiles at the reply, a double text from his beloved team captain. You're lucky you're good. Remember our spring meet is really soon. This is our last Kyudo event before we graduate.
Of course, Rin types back and he walks through the hallways to find Seishiro's team, We'll win, as always.
“Rin.” Seishiro's voice calls out for him, and Rin shoves his phone into the empty water bottle pocket on the side of his bag to wave at Seishiro. Seishiro chuckles when Rin rushes to him, and he takes the bow and quiver from Rin.
“Did you come here right after your own practice? You're graduating soon, are you sure you can afford this? Your last tournament is pretty soon, no?” Seishiro asks, and he looks ridiculous holding a large bow wrapped in a decorative bow cover, tied at the top with a turquoise rope, and a large volleyball duffle bag slung around the shoulder opposite of the bow and quiver.
Rin tells him as much, and gets a hand messing up his hair as a consequence, but he does answer, “Yoruzaki let me off as long as I still train while in Tokyo. I’ll be watching the finals too, so make sure to win, okay?”
He winces at the scratchy tone of his voice, and coughs into his palms once, thrice to try and get rid of the dry feeling in his throat.
“Of course, who do you take me for? Yoruzaki is your captain, right?” Seishiro hums, but he turns when his name is yelled before Rin can answer, and Rin tilts to the side to look past Seishiro's ridiculously tall and broad body to find Hakuho’s volleyball team walking their way. Seishiro beckons him closer, and he asks, “You don't have a water bottle with you? You brought clothes, but not your water bottle?”
Rin shakes his head sheepishly, he had forgotten it in the dojo in his rush. Rin blinks as the tall players all gather around them, shadows fall onto him, and Rin steps closer to Seishiro while his teammates all look at him from head to toe, taking in the the short-sleeved kyudo-gi, the black hakama and Rin's general displeased countenance.
They turn to stare at the conspicuously large bow and quiver that Seishiro is holding, back at Rin's attire, then at Seishiro's volleyball jacket left unzipped to show his jersey and the sweats he had worn over his volleyball shorts to fight away the chill that came from a break after sweating so much.
Rin is glad that Seishiro is wearing his sweatpants right now — those shorts with the compression tights underneath, the slip of skin between them and Seishiro's knee pads? Rin wanted to die when he had noticed this during every previous match he had watched.
He definitely understood what Seishiro's relatively small fan club were on now, he supposes.
Seishiro slings an arm around his shoulders again, and Rin wrinkles his nose at the smell of sweat coming from the entirety of the team around him, and he unbuckles his bag to sift around for his deodorant spray. He shoves it in Seishiro's face, and the older boy sighs before taking it and actually doing something to take care of the stench. The arm returns around his shoulders, and the can is held back out to him.
Rin takes the spray back, and shoves it into his bag haphazardly, leaving the thing unbuckled and open while Seishiro entertains his team’s questions about Rin.
Rin fishes out his wallet, and he ducks under the arm, freeing himself so he can get something from the vending machine he just spotted. The bottle of lemon tea drops down into the pick-up box, and he squats down to grab it. Seishiro is suddenly at his side.
Seishiro's hand is held out to him, and Rin takes it, letting himself be pulled up. He cracks open the bottle cap, and drinks half of the bottle in one go, sighing in relief at the remedy of his throat. At least for now, they would have to stop at a convenience store later for some lozenges.
He presses the lemon tea bottle into Seishiro's waiting hand, and their joined hands swing back and forth as they find their way out of the large community gymnasium with the Hakuho volleyball team behind them, conversing amongst themselves.
Seishiro finishes the bottle, he tosses the empty container into the trash bins waiting at the main doors, and he nods to the other competitors as they all leave for home. The Hakuho High bus waits outside, and Rin waves to Seishiro as he follows along the familiar path to Seishiro's Tokyo apartment, his bow and quiver back in his hand.
Seishiro had coughed suspiciously as he handed the equipment back, and Rin knows it's because he was embarrassed at carrying Rin's things for him when he couldn't hold onto them for even that long.
He waits at the bus stop for the next bus, and looks at the recent football news for Spain. He scoffs when the only thing that comes up is Sae Itoshi, and he turns off his phone to board the bus. He scans his card on the fare box of the bus, and files to the back of the bus.
He unlocks the door of Seishiro's apartment with a press of his thumb onto the scanner on the digital lock, and he listens for the automatic click of the lock as he shuts the door behind him. He looks around the dark hallway, and goes into Seishiro's room to scavenge for clothes to wear after he showers. He has to do that while he has access to Seishiro's closet without supervision, the fact that he has brought his own change of clothes be damned.
He plugs his phone in with the multiple charging wires next to Seishiro's bed, and a message from the boy comes in; they keep asking who you are. i have no clue how they don't know that you're the guy who got otonokino a spot in the nationals for kyudo.
Rin hums, and types back a Haha. I'm not very recognisable when I'm not Itoshi Sae’s younger brother, you know this.
He opens Seishiro's closet, and deadpans at the mess he finds inside. He picks up a drawstring pullover from the pile and marches into the bathroom. He squints at the bottles strewn around the tiled floor, and comes out smelling like apples and coconut.
He folds all of the clothes properly when he gets out of the showers, and dumps his practice clothes into the bag he had brought his change of clothes in. He walks back into the bedroom, takes a good look at the closet, and settles down to organise the mess methodically.
Once finished, Rin starts dinner in the kitchen while he opens up every window in the apartment as the rice cooks. He looks into the fridge for anything, and finds absolutely nothing. He grabs his wallet and puts on his shoes to buy something from the grocery store just around the corner.
The door clicks open when he opens the rice cooker and waves away the steam rising into his face. Rin looks out the windows with narrowed eyes to find that the sky is darkening and he frowns. He scoops the rice into bowls, and digs around the drawers and cabinets for the cutlery that Seishiro never uses.
Rin has seen the takeout boxes in the trash, despite the effort to try and hide them underneath other rubbish like bags of potato chips and empty jelly packets.
“I'm home,” Seishiro calls out, his bag making a loud thud as he throws it onto the floor. Rin raises an eyebrow at the lack of respect Seishiro has for his own belongings, but in the end, he does nothing except walk around and place the bowls and cutleries on the table.
“Welcome home.” Rin replies, and he's struck with this odd image of a housewife waiting for her husband to return home from work, and he grimaces.
“Are you wearing my clothes? You drown in them, though.”
Seishiro pulls at the pullover Rin had stolen from his closet, and he's right — Rin is drowning in it, though it's entirely Seishiro's fault. The older boy is already incredibly tall, and yet he still prefers his clothes to be oversized on him, making it even bigger on Rin.
“It's warm.” is all Rin says before he pushes Seishiro into the hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom.
Rin has finished his food and washed his dishes by the time Seishiro walks out of the bath. Rin scoffs, and asks, “Did you fall asleep in the shower again?”
Rin remembers the last time that happened, though he would really rather not. That was traumatising and heart attack inducing, seriously. Seishiro hums, but he doesn't answer, and Rin takes that as an answer all by itself. “Eat your goddamn food.”
“Chewing is a hassle… Rin feed me.” Seishiro whines while he sits down, and pouts up at Rin, who looks at him from the corner of his eyes. Rin sighs as he reaches forward to pick up the cutleries in front of Seishiro.
“I'd fear for your future wife, imagine if she had to feed you even at the age of forty,” Rin chides, scooping up the rice to feed the older boy.
“Not if you're with me. Just stay with me forever, ‘kay?”
Rin scoffs, “Cringe.”
Neither of them mention the redness on his face.
“I'm in the football club.”
Rin blinks, and then looks up at the screen of his computer, where Seishiro’s oddly serious expression is displayed over the mathematics homework he was stressing over.
“You're supposed to be helping me with my homework, Mr Top Two Student.” Rin says, then he's shushed by Seishiro while the boy suddenly picks up his laptop, and moves from his bed to his desk — pushing away all the litter on the table onto the floor. Rin grimaces.
“Pick those up, you fuck.”
“Later. You're not going to say anything about what I just confessed?”
Rin looks back at his homework, raises an eyebrow, and huffs out a sharp shout of laughter. “I'm not a king or anything, can't dictate whatever the fuck you want to do.”
“You wouldn't be a king, most of them were ugly. You'd be a prince, ‘cause you're pretty,” Seishiro rebukes, but then he continues while Rin feels his face heat up from the compliment, “besides, I'm playing for you.”
Rin freezes, his pen pressing onto the lined paper he was doing his calculations on, and he hurries to lift his pen when he notices the ink start to feather. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
Rin blows at the dot of ink to dry it, since it was right in the path of where his palms would slide across while writing, and he didn't want ink on his skin.
“This guy came up to me the other day, and I guess I impressed him with how I had caught my phone with my foot? He suddenly shouted that we should play football together and… I just thought of you. And Sae. Maybe if I win the world cup with him… I can get Sae to apologise to you.”
Rin remembers Seishiro's rather genius skill with controlling the ball back when they were younger and half their current sizes. He understands why this random guy would be impressed, and he shrugs. “That's really cringe. Make sure to win.”
“Of course, you wouldn't take anything less, would you?”
Rin hums and reaches forward to scratch out the volleyball matches he had written on his calendar. He didn't need those anymore, and searches up the highschool football tournament days and times to scribble over the old dates instead.
“Question five’s answer should be 36, how did you get 895?” Seishiro asks, his usually monotone voice lighter with an edge of confusion.
Rin feels his eye twitch, and he reels in his annoyance when he replies, “Shut the fuck up, someone wasn't helping me like he said he would.”
Seishiro apologises, but he turns to his side to look at whatever was on his phone, and he goes, “Reo wants to train…?”
He looks out the window, and Rin can hear the rain that's been ongoing since they started this call four worksheets ago. Seishiro looks equally as bemused as Rin feels, but then the door to Seishiro's apartment in Tokyo is knocked on, and the boy looks out the window properly.
“Oh. Reo’s here in a limousine again…”
Limousine? Rin feels poor and he's considered well off due to his parents and his older brother’s careers. He doesn't think about the money Sae sends him, he doesn't!
“Gotta go… Send me pictures of the questions you have problems with. I’ll get back to you once I get this training over with.”
Rin rolls his eyes, and ends the call without replying. He gathers up his finished papers and glares at his computer when he looks back at its screen, and a message from Seishiro has come in.
sorry
are you mad?
:x
Rin jabs his fingers onto three keys on his keyboard, and clicks send.
No.
Rin ignores every other message sent over the next ten minutes.
Rin is reading an old article about this new football club in a popular high school, and he recognises Seishiro on the cover image, being bombarded by his new teammates and this one particular purple haired boy was climbing his best friend like a tree.
It's been days, and Rin has not heard from Seishiro since the boy said something about some sports camp taking away his phone.
“Are you getting distracted before our next round?”
Rin clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth and he turns off his phone, shoving it into his bag. His team all laugh at him as he picks up his chopsticks to dig into the prepared lunches from the venue, and he glares at all of them.
Yoruzaki leans onto him, and Rin grumbles when his fellow first year student reaches over to steal one of his karaage. His ex-captain had followed him to highschool, and now Rin is stuck with the sole person who knew about his unreasonable obsession with knowing everything he could about two people so far from where he is.
“Isn't your friend playing football now? How is he? Is he good? I remember he brought his middle school and high school volleyball team to Nationals — you watched, didn't you?”
“Yoruzaki, shut up and let me eat. Do you want me to miss my shots? Is that it?” Rin snaps, and pushes the other boy off of him.
“You never miss, though!”
Rin is glad for the absolute trust, but also, no. He has missed so many shots at home, shooting at a target placed in the large patch of grass next to their house, Sae’s face printed on a piece of paper and taped onto the hole ridden target, the paper equally torn apart from Rin's many anger fueled tantrums.
He replaces the paper every two days.
Rin huffs, and stuffs his mouth full to avoid answering any questions his team has. He looks out at the large panes of glass that show the outside of the sports complex, and he hums.
Rin hopes Seishiro is doing okay.
Their coach calls for them to start walking to the shooting range, and Rin kicks his empty canned latte into the trash bin whilst he gathered up his things, and his team marvel at his skills — Rin definitely doesn't preen in pride, but he does look to his side at Yoruzaki, who looks at him a little sadly.
Right. This guy knew about his previous sport too. Rin scoffs and pushes Yoruzaki forward. He has somewhere else to be right after their last match, after all. He sees his parents in the stands as he shoots, and he runs to them after changing in the sports complex bathrooms, getting in their car so he could get to his destination.
“Will you be okay? Sae didn't give us tickets, do you want me to buy my own?”
Rin shakes his head at his mother, and he looks at the ticket that had come in the mail, reminiscent of a similar scenario a few months back. This time, however, it was the Blue Lock Eleven versus the Under-20 team match, with Itoshi Sae playing for the latter instead of Sae's stupid club playing in Japan.
Rin only cares for one particular player on the first team, having searched up the team roster for Blue Lock. The ticket was for a front row seat, and he feels annoyed all over again when he thinks about it. Like as if his older brother was sending a message of Watch me win, like I always do, just like the previous time.
Annoying, shitty and lukewarm older brother. He hopes the older teen gets tackled on the field.
He steps out of the car with his mother's statement of going around Tokyo to do some shopping, since she was already here. Rin waves his mother away before joining the crowds outside the stadium. How annoying.
He cuts through everyone to get to his seat after his ticket is taken and he glares out into the field as the announcers talk about the Blue Lock program through the speakers, he's right next to the U-20 team. All of them are staring at him.
Rin hates this. Stupid older brother.
Suddenly the fans around him start pushing and screaming, and Rin covers his ears with his palms as he turns to where the fans were pointing at — and he sees the teams walk out onto the field. Rin squints, and sees Seishiro as he walks out behind some guy with the tallest hair he's ever seen.
Rin can picture himself on the field, next to Seishiro, but that image was ruined the moment Sae decided it was a good idea to be annoying, so he's content with shouting out Seishiro's name and cheering for the Blue Lock Eleven, much to the confused glares he gets from the Japan fans around him.
When Seishiro scores, Rin thinks he's the only one cheering, which was embarrassing since the entire stadium was silent with the shock that came from the Blue Lock players actually being able to score, but Seishiro turns to look at him and smiles, and that's all that matters in his books.
Rin laughs at the fist pump that Seishiro had done in place of a proper celebration being pointed his way, and waves both of his arms. He looks at the timer. The first half of the game isn't over yet, and the referees blow the whistles.
Blue Lock wins.
Rin is silent with shock for a moment as a black haired boy bursts through the field and scores the winning goal, having stolen the ball from Sae.
Blue Lock won. 4-3, in Blue Lock Eleven’s favour, with Seishiro having scored the first goal that led to the subsequent other three goals.
Rin nearly topples over the fencing placed in front of him as he screams and cheers for the players in the football programme, but as he's hopping around to try and get a foot under himself, a pair of hands grab him and pull him into a sweaty hug.
Rin almost whacks the person, but he recognises the voice saying his name, and he immediately hugs back when it registers as Nagi Seishiro in his mind. Suddenly he's getting lifted off his feet and spun around by this lunatic who had shoved through the U-20 sub players on the bench and everyone was watching this play out.
Oh God everyone is watching.
Rin does whack Seishiro this time, and yells at him to go to his team. Stupid lukewarm idiot, he thinks, but he snaps so many pictures of Seishiro as the older boy walks off that he thinks he may be running out of storage.
It's one of these many photos that Rin is looking at as he hops onto a train to Tokyo. It's the week of the two week break for the Blue Lock members, and somehow — Rin is suspecting Seishiro had talked about him a little too much to his teammates — the boy who scored the winning goal for the match the other day had messaged him on Instagram to wake Seishiro up for their outing.
Rin scoffs, and had ignored the messages at first, but then realised this was an excuse to go see Seishiro properly for the first time since that whole situation with the hug on live television.
There were so many articles covering it, and the amount of people teasing him in the school hallways and during club practice was annoying. Rin was so close to snapping, so close, in fact, that even his coach had told him to take a few days off to cool down.
So here he was, having called sick into school after talking it out with his mother and father over the phone while they were off on another business trip, and on the way to become someone's alarm clock.
He presses his finger into the scanner on the automatic door lock, and closes the door behind him as he steps in, listening to the lock click back into place before he walks further into the apartment. Everything was covered in dust, he makes a note to himself that he should be cleaning up more for Seishiro while he was off in that football boot camp, and he kicks Seishiro's bedroom door open.
“Wake the fuck up, you troublesome fuck.”
He kicks at the lump on the bed, and a loud whine assaults Rin's ears when he forcefully pulls the blanket off of the lump when the lump stays immobile. Seishiro glares at him, and Rin walks out while folding the blanket up into a neat rectangle, ignoring the older boy's sulking.
“I bought food for your breakfast, even though it's already lunch. Get your outside clothes ready.”
Rin places the folded up blanket onto the couch, and slides into the kitchen, familiar with the cabinets, cupboards and drawers. He had organised this place himself, after all. He finds the forks and knives.
Seishiro walks out, as unruly as before, and presses his forehead onto Rin's shoulder as Rin's taking out the still-warm pastries he had bought from a certain cafe just down the road from Seishiro's apartment.
Rin cuts up one of them, and feeds the pieces to a yawning Seishiro before ushering the boy away to freshen up, explicitly stating go shower and please, for the love of all that is holy, do it properly.
Rin cleans up the apartment while he waits, and when he hears the shower turn off, he gathers up his things and pulls out a packet of jelly from the refrigerator.
The first thing Seishiro says to him is not a Good Afternoon or a Haven't seen you in a while, but rather the white haired idiot says, “The internet is convinced we're dating. Are we dating?”
Rin looks at him, sighs like he's stupid, and shrugs. “If you want to.”
“Oh. Okay. Hi boyfriend.”
Rin sighs again, this time much more fond, and replies, “Hi boyfriend. Are you ready?”
Seishiro types something on his phone, and then pockets it. He picks up the packet of jelly Rin had left on the dining table for him and reaches out a hand to take Rin's bag from him. They walk out of the apartment hand in hand, reminiscent of what usually happened before Blue Lock, and they start walking to Shibuya, only for Seishiro to get distracted by an arcade, drag Rin into playing a few rounds with him, and leading to the both of them getting jumped by his Blue Lock teammates.
After the whole ordeal that was this outing he had been forced to join, Rin can safely say that he hated majority of the Blue Lock players, much to Seishiro's entertainment, since the boy has been pestering him about the same players he hated ever since he went back into the prison falsely covered up as a football training programme facility. Comments about Isagi Yoichi and Bachira Meguru and some fuckass named Aiku Oliver, the ex-captain of the U-20 team who had looked Rin up and down, raised an eyebrow, and went: “Aren't you Sae's little brother? I don't know why Sendou was so scared of you.”
Rin prints out a picture of Aiku Oliver the next day, tapes it over Sae’s picture, and shoots eleven arrows into Aiku’s face. He takes a picture of the scene, sends it to Seishiro, who responds with an alien stamp as he always does when busy, and turns off his phone before he ultimately looks at another article about himself and gets pissed off again.
Fuck this, Fuck that, and most of all, Fuck You, you shitty older brother.
Rin is packing up his class materials when Yoruzaki rushes into his classroom with a loud bang of the door slamming into the wall beside it. Rin glares up at his friend (?) before a phone is shoved into his face.
“Have you checked Twitter!? Everyone's going crazy over this!”
Rin glances around while he pushes Yoruzaki away from him, and indeed, everyone is looking at him weirdly with their phones in their hands, and Rin takes his own phone out, only to be bombarded by apologies from Seishiro.
Huh. What the hell did this idiot do now?
He goes into Twitter, and immediately, the first post he sees is an interview with Seishiro. It's a snippet of a clip from the actual video, and the interviewer, obviously having seen the articles about that scene from the Blue Lock Eleven versus Under-20 Team, asks Seishiro if he and Rin were dating.
Seishiro in the video blinks once, twice, and tilts his head like he's confused. His answer makes Rin’s head fall onto the surface of his desk with a loud thud.
“Huh? Is it not obvious? We're boyfriends.”
The hashtags were all coming in. Rin groans.
