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Higa middle school’s tennis courts are almost eerily calm without Eishirou-senpai’s sharp tongue keeping everyone on their toes and Yuujiro-senpai’s outdoor voice to liven the place up.
Kouichi’s regulars are decent tennis players with not altogether unimpressive styles, and he thinks the bunch of them stand a pretty decent chance at making it far enough into the Kyushu regional tournament to keep the school board happy and the club adequately funded.
His vice-captain, Yamashiro, is long-limbed and delicate looking, with carefully styled hair feathering around his face in an almost feminine way, elegantly masking a sarcastic personality and years upon years of dedicated martial arts training. His shukuchi-ho needs work and most of the club’s members don’t like him much, but Kouichi privately thinks he’s the closest any of them get to having a real personality.
There’s no locker room tussles to break up for him, no loud exclamations of ridiculous ideas or regulars who screw around more than they practice, just a small group of subdued tennis players who frown and groan but rarely complain even at the more tedious of Saotome-sensei’s training regimens, and after the chaos of last year Kouichi can’t think of it as anything but lonely.
He has them running them through doubles-formations for afternoon practice, to which Saotome-sensei hasn’t bothered to show up, and is jotting down notes in the club journal when the chain-link fence behind him jangles.
He looks over his shoulder just in time to see Rin-senpai scale the fence with little effort, landing on Kouichi’s side of it with only a slight stumble.
Wordlessly, Kouichi reaches out and brushes some dust from the sleeve of Rin-senpai’s almost pristine-white senior high uniform.
Instead of greeting him, or even really so much as looking at him, Rin-senpai eyeballs the regulars at practice and lets out a drawn-out, thoughtful humming noise.
“They’re pretty good at that,” he says after a long moment, tilting his head to face Kouichi slightly.
Rin-senpai hasn’t changed much, insofar anyone could change much in the span of two months. His hair is tied up in a messy ponytail that makes his face look strangely naked, but he’s still got the exact same feline unpredictability about him that makes it hard to look away from him sometimes.
“They are,” Kouichi agrees. “Doubles is our strong point this year.”
It’s a stark contrast to last year, where doubles two’d been a constantly shifting series of half-baked doubles pairs that worked only just well enough to win them games.
“You putting ‘Shiro and the little redhead in doubles 1 next week?”
“I'm putting Yamashiro-kun with Taira-kun,” Kouichi corrects. “The one with the hair-band. Yamashiro-kun wouldn't play his best paired with a second year, I think. He’d take it as an insult. Goma-kun will be in doubles two with Izena-kun, the tallest one.”
“Huh, isn’t… Goma, you said? Isn’t he moving better than the rest? Is it ok to put him in two?”
“Goma-kun’s the best doubles player in the team,” Kouichi confesses, deliberately leaving himself out of the tally, “but he needs more experience, and Yamashiro-kun gets annoying if he thinks others are better than him.”
Rin-senpai snorts. “Eishirou’ll get pissy if he knows you’re letting your vice-captain bully you around, you know.”
“Kite-senpai was the one who recommended using Yamashiro-kun’s ego against him,” Kouichi disagrees. “He doesn’t argue with me if he thinks I’m giving him special treatment, and the only way he’ll push himself harder is if he notices he’s falling behind on his own.”
It helps that Taira isn’t as bothered by Yamashiro’s haughtiness as the rest of the team, but he’s not sure how to explain that to Rin-senpai, who can be a bit of a diva himself.
“Hah, look at you sounding all cool, Aragaki-buchou!” Rin-senpai’s sharp laugh echoes, earning them several confused looks from around the court, where people are apparently only just now noticing their unexpected visitor.
Kouichi catches the hand that darts out to ruffle his hair and jabs his own fist at Rin-senpai’s sternum, skipping out of reach before he can be caught in a headlock or something equally embarrassing. He's not going to let himself get babied in front of the club he's supposed to be running.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at your own practice, senpai,” he drawls, running his fingers through his hair just in case it’s sticking up into any unseemly angles.
“Nah, Eishirou’s picked a fight with buchou again so they suspended afternoon practice. I think being around Atobe and Yukimura for the U-17 cup inspired him, and now he’s just planning to bully his way into being named captain right from year one.”
Rin-senpai says it with a blasé shrug, but Kouichi is pretty sure he’ll be up in arms to help the insurgence the moment the situation calls for it. Eishirou-senpai has that effect on people. It’ll be nice, he thinks, to be able to go back to calling him Kite-buchou without having to feel weird about it.
“If it’s Kite-senpai, I’m sure he’ll do fine,” he says, glowering half-heartedly at Yamashiro and the shit-eating grin he's sending their way. “It’s not like any of the senpai on your team even made it to U-17, right?”
“Well, Eishirou’s obviously the team’s ace either way,” Rin-senpai says with a shrug, “but Shimura-buchou’s a popular guy, and he actually knows how to hold a racket. If Eishirou’s attitude makes him leave we’ve got a problem. We don’t have a full complement without you, after all. Also, no real doubles pair.”
That much Kouichi knew already, because he sees Tomoya at the dojo a minimum of three times a week and his friend’s been very, very vocal about his annoyance at being pitted into doubles setups that don’t work. Apparently, Kouichi remembers fondly, Shimura-san had tried pairing Tomoya off with Chinen-senpai for being the most experienced doubles-players. He’s kind of sad nobody recorded that particular practice.
“Yeah,” he says, looking over at his own good-but-not-great team and its promising doubles formations and swallowing around the tightness in his throat.
“So Kouichi’s playing in singles, huh,” Rin-senpai says wistfully. “Look at you, growing up all without us.”
“You’re only two months older than me, Hirakoba-san,” Kouichi reminds him, leaving out that he’s no good in doubles without Tomoya anyway.
“And here you are, stuck in middle school,” Rin-senpai crows, like it’s a funny joke instead of a year-long sentence to being left out. “And don’t call me Hirakoba-san, you little weirdo, you’re making me sound old.”
Kouichi folds his arms and leans back against the fence and glares at the few regulars now unabashedly slacking off. “Yamashiro, if you’re not going to do anything useful, go help the freshmen with swing practice,” he calls out, just loud enough to be heard. If he were Eishirou-senpai he’d have been loud about it and people would be scrambling to obey. Kouichi’s not the yelling sort though, and his vice captain responds with a disrespectful roll of the eyes and a groan before trudging off to the cluster of first years, who’d actually been whispering among each other in favor of practising.
“Hey, hey,” Rin-senpai admonishes, slinging his arm around Kouichi’s shoulders. “Don’t get grumpy now. You just focus on getting Higa-chuu to the nationals, and we’ll have a killer team waiting for you when you graduate.”
It feels like a much nicer sentiment than Eishirou-senpai’s stern reminders to keep up his training, even though the only real difference is in the words expressing it.
Nine months and two weeks, Kouichi tells himself, till graduation.
Rin-senpai pulls him flush to his side and buries his face into his hair with the kind of presumptuous familiarity Kouichi misses enough that it aches, and he pretends not to notice the strange looks sent their way. He closes his eyes and tries to make out the words he can feel Rin-senpai mouth against his scalp.
“Everyone misses you, Kou.”