Just Friends

It was about a month before Shiraishi confronted him about it. Chitose was getting used to the school, easily making friends in his class and adjusting to dorm life. He figured it was only a matter of time, though, before Shiraishi figured it out, and he did it sooner than expected.

Chitose was sitting in his classroom during a break, chatting with some of his friends when Shiraishi came striding in, that cute blond boy he hung out with behind him. The cute blond boy, Chitose had been displeased to note, that seemed to have absolutely no interest in him.

"I knew you looked familiar," Shiraishi said, throwing a newspaper on his desk. It was an old local newspaper covering school sports. There was a picture of Chitose and Tachibana on the open page, still in their Shishigaku uniforms. "I saw you at Nationals. One of the two wings of Kyuushuu."

"Oh, yeah," Chitose said, "completely forgot about that."

"Forgot?" Shiraishi sputtered.

"Shiraishi, he's teasing," said the blond, brushing long wispy bangs back out of his way. Chitose tried to remember the time they had met, and his mind supplied him with a name. Oshitari. Oshitari Kenya.

"Why don't you join the tennis team?" Shiraishi asked.

Chitose shrugged. "I'm just not interested."

"But there has to be a reason you came here to Shitenhoji. Our tennis club is the best in Kansai. We almost won Nationals last season."

"What can I say?" Chitose asked. "You guys have a great campus."

"Liar," Shiraishi replied.

"Look," Chitose said, "you guys on the school tennis circuit, you're way too serious about tennis."

His mind flashed back to Tachibana, how much tennis had always meant to him, that horrified expression when he realized Chitose couldn't play tennis anymore.

"I would just be fooling around on the court," Chitose said. "You wouldn't want a guy like me on your team."

Shiraishi narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Fine. But don't think I'll be dropping this."

Shiraishi made his way out of the classroom, and Chitose turned to look at Kenya, who had seemed pretty indifferent to things throughout the whole conversation. Kenya, for his part, only shrugged.

"Sorry. He's a pretty stubborn guy."

"Do you want to go get a soda?" Chitose asked.

The two walked down the hallway together, towards the vending machine.

"Man," Kenya started, his arms lithe and slender as he stretched them above his head, "I totally get what you're saying about people taking tennis too seriously. You'd think, the way every one at Nationals acts, it's a matter of life or death. Whatever happened to just having fun?"

"Yeah, right?"

"Like Shiraishi, he's obsessed with winning Nationals. He already has this hardcore training program set up for when he's captain next year. And I mean, winning's cool, but who cares in the end?"

"Yeah. . . why are you still into it, anyway?"

Kenya shrugged. "Habit, I guess. I used to play in kids' doubles tournaments with my cousin."

Coca-cola for Chitose, Pocari Sweat for Kenya, and then they were walking back to their classrooms. Kenya chatted amiably enough, but Chitose frowned when he realized his first instinct had been right. The boy had absolutely no interest in Chitose at all. Oh, well, Chitose thought, there were plenty of fish in the sea. Just not, he guessed, the one he really wanted.

When Chitose got back to his dorms that night, Shiraishi was absorbed in his textbooks, waves of anger radiating from him like a fire. Wary, Chitose kept an eye on the other boy as he climbed into bed, pulling out a manga to read.

"Don't you have any homework to do?" Shiraishi asked, voice low and dull, not even looking up from his textbooks.

Chitose blinked, wondering if Shiraishi had eyes in the back of his head. "I'll do it tomorrow morning."

Silence, Shiraishi's pencil screeching strangely on paper, and then Shiraishi's voice again. "I've been reading up on you, you know."

"Umm. . . have you?"

"I read. . . that you can obtain Muga no Kyouchi."

"Is that so."

"And yet, you still won't play tennis for us."

"Okay, yeah, I've gotta go." Chitose jumped up from his bed, leaving before Shiraishi's anger became so palpable as to vaporize him in its heat.

He came back the next morning. Shiraishi was getting ready for class, and he seemed a lot more relaxed.

"Good morning," Chitose tested, voice upbeat and cheerful.

"Good morning," Shiraishi replied, seemingly back to normal, and Chitose breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey, Chitose, do you think you can help me carry these to school?"

Shiraishi nodded at two large boxes on the floor of the dorm, and Chitose shrugged. "Yeah, sure."

They each carried a box down through the dormitories and onto the school grounds, Chitose following Shiraishi. He soon became aware of what the other boy was planning, though, and wasn't at all surprised when they stopped on the tennis courts.

"Well, here we are," Shiraishi said, beaming at Chitose.

Chitose raised an eyebrow. "Really? Did you really think I'd cave and want to play as soon as I saw a tennis court?"

For his part, Shiraishi at least managed to look sheepish about it. "When you put it that way. . ."

"Shiraishi . You're late for practice."

"Eh?" Shiraishi turned his head towards the voice. "Sorry, coach, I was just carrying the new jackets over."

Chitose turned too, something familiar tugging on his senses. And then he saw him. Floppy floral hat, shaggy blonde hair, and surprised blue eyes. It was, Chitose thought, an emotion that was most likely mirrored in his own expression.

"Coach," Shiraishi said to Watanabe. "This is Chitose Senri. He's a new transfer student that I'm hoping to recruit to the tennis club."

"Okay." Watanabe was quickly schooling his expression into a more expected countenance. "Well, why don't you take over practice? I can explain to Chitose how the club works."

"Sure, coach." Shiraishi started jogging to the courts, sending two thumbs up to Chitose.

Chitose sent a very false, very tense smile back before he followed Watanabe into school and into, presumably, Watanabe's classroom. As soon as the door was shut Watanabe turned on him.

"You told me that you were nineteen."

Chitose shrugged as he plopped himself down into a chair. "You wouldn't have slept with me if you had known how old I really was."

"Of course I wouldn't have!" Watanabe was sliding down the wall, head cradled in his hands, looking very unlike his twenty-six years of age. Chitose couldn't tell if he was angry or nervous but at any rate it was a sharp contrast to the confident, collected man Chitose had hit on in the park. "How old are you really? No, don't answer, I don't want to know."

"I'm a second year," Chitose answered, figuring that would be enough.

"This is so fucked up. I can't believe you lied. I can't believe I slept with a student."

"Look," Chitose said, "no one's going to find out about it. And it's not going to happen again. . . maybe."

Watanabe stood up, glaring at Chitose. He walked to his desk and slouched down in his chair there, calm again. "It's definitely not happening again. And no one finds out about this."

Chitose didn't say anything, focused on the first sentence in Watanabe's declaration. If they had already done it once, he pondered, what was the harm of doing it again?

"Chitose," Watanabe said, after he realized that Chitose's mind had wandered off. "What are you thinking right now?"

"I'm thinking about what it would be like to fuck you against your desk," Chitose answered, truthfully.

To his credit, there wasn't a hint of a blush on Watanabe's face. He only smiled and leaned forward. "Get out of my classroom."

Shiraishi caught up to Chitose later during lunch, expression hopeful, and Chitose wondered how naive the other boy could be.

"So what are you thinking?" Shiraishi asked, taking a seat next to him.

"I'm thinking I'm still not interested in playing tennis," Chitose replied. "And for the sake of our future as roommates, I'm thinking you should drop it."

Kenya was there now, dropping into a seat next to Shiraishi. "You really should just stop, Shiraishi. It's getting a little sad."

Shiraishi frowned at Chitose. "You are such a waste of a tennis player."

"Don't want to hear it," Chitose replied.

Miraculously, Shiraishi did give up on trying to get Chitose to come join the tennis club, for which Chitose was eternally grateful. He figured the whole matter was done and over with, until he left his dorm room early one morning about a week later.

He was still half asleep, and for a moment he didn't recognize her. But there was something familiar in the way she was standing, leaning casually against the staircase barrister. That light brown bob, swept by the wind across her face. . . Chitose's eyes widened and he jogged up to her, narrowly missing a few students on the way.

"An! What are you doing here?"

An smiled sadly at him and waved. "Hey, Chitose. Do you have time to talk?"

Chitose looked over at the school building, but then thought, fuck it. "Sure. I'll treat you to breakfast."

They talked about little things as they walked to town, nothing too important. How An was liking Tokyo. How the Fudomine girls' tennis club was doing. How Miyuki was getting along with her classmates. It wasn't until they were settled in some sweet shop, An having decided she wanted cake for breakfast, before she started talking about why she was there.

"We're on a field trip right now in Osaka," she said, "so I snuck off and bought a train ticket over. They're probably not even awake yet."

"I miss you, too, kid, but you could have just called."

"Chitose, aniki stopped playing tennis." It was a sudden statement, and it hit Chitose like a ball out of left field.

That guy. He always was too serious for his own good, Chitose thought. Of the two of them, Tachibana lived and breathed tennis. Chitose had just been along for the ride.

"But he loves it so much," An was saying, voice cracking, and Chitose wanted to tell her it wasn't the end of the world. It was just a game. "It makes me so sad to think that he can't play tennis anymore."

"Yeah. . ." Chitose didn't really know what to say to that. "Did he tell you why he stopped?"

An didn't say anything, and Chitose figured that he knew. Guilt tugged at him even though he told himself it shouldn't. . . that guy had made his own decisions. Chitose had never asked him to quit tennis for his sake. What was he thinking?

"If Chitose starts to play again," An said, "maybe aniki will too."

And there it was.

"Yeah. I guess so."

He had had the surgery already, a few weeks ago. His eye wasn't completely healed, but then it never would be. It was healed enough, his doctor had assured him, for him to play a great game of tennis. He'd just have to learn to work around the blind spots that were left in his vision. But. . . he hadn't wanted to play again. Hadn't seen the point. But now. . .

"Yeah," he said, "I guess it's time for me to start playing again, huh?"

An's eyes lit up so much it was almost as if they were glowing. Chitose figured if they were manga characters she'd be sparkling right about now.

"Really?" she asked. "But what about your eye?"

Chitose scrunched his face up in disbelief. "First you guilt me into playing tennis again, and then you ask about my health? Come on, An, I thought you cared about me!"

"Of course I do!" An said, smiling that megawatt smile of hers. "I wouldn't have asked in the first place if I didn't think you were okay. I asked your mom about it first."

"Of course."

They chatted over their pastries, just like old times, minus one. And then An was running off to catch the next train back, and Chitose was left to settle the bill.

There was a soft chuckling from the counter, and Chitose turned to see a familiar floral hat. Had he been there this whole time?

"It looks like you'll be joining the team after all," came Watanabe's voice.

"Are you stalking me, sensei?" Chitose asked, a grin spreading across his face. "That makes me so happy."

"Idiot," Watanabe said. "This is where I always come for my morning coffee. Also, shouldn't you be in class right now?"

Chitose shrugged. "It's not bad to take some time off every now and then. What about you?"

"I don't have a class until second period."

"Are you going to discipline me for skipping?" Chitose asked, a sly cadence to his voice.

Watanabe scoffed, finally turning to face him. "Hardly. What you do has nothing to do with me."

Watanabe got up to leave, casting one more amused glance Chitose's way. "So who's this girl's brother? The one who has you running back to tennis so quickly. An ex-boyfriend, perhaps?"

"No," Chitose replied, shaking his head. "Just a friend. That's always been the problem, you know."

Chitose smiled, bitter as Watanabe's coffee, and Watanabe nodded knowingly. He let his gaze drift off into the distance as he replied in a sing song voice. "Ah, to be young again. Although, in this respect, I don't really envy you."

Watanabe was smirking as he walked out of the sweet shop, and Chitose could only watch after him.

Later on that afternoon Chitose was reading a manga on his bed when Shiraishi all but bounded into the room.

"I knew you would join sooner or later!"

Chitose frowned. He hadn't even handed in an official application, and already Watanabe was spreading along the news.

"Oshitari, shut the door already," Shiraishi said.

Chitose looked up, but Kenya only shrugged at him.

"Shiraishi decided he wanted to celebrate," Kenya said, and Chitose looked over to see Shiraishi holding a small glass pipe in one hand and a plastic bag full of weed in the other.

The next day, Chitose woke up at about one pm, arms curled around a slender, toned body. He slowly opened his eyes to see that he had buried his nose in bleached blond hair.

"Kenya?" he asked, suddenly frantic. "What the fuck! Are you telling me we had sex and I don't even remember it?"

Such. A. Travesty.

But Kenya, now half awake, was snorting and pushing him away. "In your dreams. We didn't have sex, I just slept over because it was too late for me to go home. And stop trying to cuddle with me."

"Oh," Chitose replied, all of a sudden disappointed. He got out of bed, noticing a little too late that they were both fully clothed.

At any rate, even after Chitose joined the tennis team, he didn't participate in much tennis. It was the end of the school year now, so the players weren't really practicing as much as they were studying for exams. Chitose contemplated using the reading period to go back to Kyuushuu to visit his family, but figured he'd be seeing them during the winter break anyway.

"I can't believe you're not going to the training camp," Shiraishi said, seated across from him in their small corner of the library. Shiraishi's textbooks and notes were littered around him in a mess that Shiraishi assured Chitose was organized. Koishikawa Kenjirou, the boy Shiraishi had introduced as his vice-captain, was sitting next to him with a similar pile of books. Chitose, for his part, had just gotten volume four of Habu no Zunou, and was happily reading it while slouched down in one of those chairs.

"Kenya's not going either," Chitose replied, flipping a page in his book.

"I know." Shiraishi was gritting his teeth now. "I hadn't realized when I was trying to get you to join that I'd just be recruiting another slacker into the club."

"Really?" Chitose asked, incredulous. "Dude, we live together. I thought you knew."

Koishikawa was regarding Chitose with a wary expression. "How good are you, Chitose?"

Chitose shrugged. "Pretty good."

"Don't mind Koishikawa," Shiraishi replied, "he's definitely not one of the better players in the regular line-up we have now, so he's worried about how many tournaments he'll actually get to play in."

"Gee, Shiraishi," Koishikawa replied drily, "thank you so much for that vote of confidence."

"Is Kenya a regular?" Chitose asked.

Shiraishi nodded. "Yeah. And then there's Hitouji and Konjiki, our best doubles combination."

"They're. . . special," Koishikawa said. "You'll enjoy meeting then."

Chitose raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

"And then there's Ishida. And. . . Zaizen, Ito, and Hamada," Shiraishi continued. "You'll probably be kicking one of them off their spot, though."

"I hope it's Zaizen," Koishikawa said, "that spiky-haired brat annoys the crap out of me."

"You and every one but Kenya," Shiraishi replied, shrugging. "But he's good."

"Shouldn't you be studying?" Koishikawa asked Chitose, pointing to the book on shogi tactics that the other boy was currently immersed in.

"I'm sure I'll be fine," Chitose replied.

Halfway into finals found Chitose standing in the empty hallway outside his dorm, phone in his hand. He had put off on making this call, but . . . now or never, Chitose thought, taking in a deep breath.

He slid down to sit in the hallway, hitting his speed dial. It seemed to take forever to ring, and when it finally did Chitose held his breath. Once. Twice.

"Chitose."

Chitose let out the breath he had been holding. "So you're finally picking up my phone calls now, huh?"

Silence, for a little bit, then. . . "I'm sorry."

Chitose sighed. "Well, it doesn't matter anymore, I guess, if you're answering them now. How's Tokyo treating you?"

". . . It's fine. It's different, from Kyuushuu, but I like it."

"And how's Fudomine? Are you a regular already?"

More silence, but this time it was for a long stretch of time, and Chitose wondered what Tachibana was thinking, what he was going to say. But he decided, instead, to break the silence himself.

"You guys better be doing good, because I just joined Shitenhoji's tennis club, and I want to be able to kick your ass at Nationals."

" . . . But what about your eye?"

"It's completely healed," Chitose lied. He could almost see Tachibana relax at the news, see his lips curve into a small smile.

"Good," Tachibana replied. "So, how's Osaka?"

They talked for about half an hour, and Chitose was relieved to find them back in the same place they had been, before the injury. It was a good place to be, Chitose decided, better than when Tachibana was ignoring his phone calls and they weren't talking. Still, as he hung up the phone, it was so easy to feel the physical space that now separated them.

Finals were over soon, and Chitose found himself going with Shiraishi and Kenya to look at the school rankings before all of them headed home.

"I hate you," Shiraishi told him.

Kenya was no less scandalized. "How can an idiot like you score so much higher than us?"

"My bad," Chitose replied. "Next semester I won't try as hard."

"But you didn't try at all!"

Chitose laughed, diffusing the situation, and then Shiraishi was holding out his fist.

"To our third year."

Kenya and Chitose smiled, their hands going to meet Shiraishi's.

"To Nationals," Kenya added.