Chapter Text
Daishou Suguru is aware of his reputation.
He knows that the majority of people who’ve interacted with him within the past couple of years view him as a manipulative and astringent teenager who doesn’t care for all that much outside of personal gain. He even encourages this assessment, at times.
Personally, he thinks that it’s better to have people view such negative aspects of his character outright, keeping them distinct and tangible for people to see and judge. Show them his carefully orchestrated façade, play into their expectations of him, and manage how they think about him. That way, he retains some control over people’s perception, unfavorable as it may be.
It’s not as though it’s all an act though; Suguru will admit that he definitely does have an acerbic streak a mile wide, and simply cannot keep himself from making snide remarks when the opportunities positively fall into his lap. It’s just that, contrary to popular belief, the caustic character he portrays daily doesn’t encapsulate the entirety of his personality.
Being an asshole is easy. It comes naturally, is entertaining, and keeps people from expecting too much from him. There are a number of benefits that come with being perceived in such a specific way, benefits he gleefully reaps with regularity.
There are also, unfortunately, detriments to the act. Specifically, the fact that it tends to make forming meaningful connections with people difficult. If his reputation for being generally disparaging isn’t enough to put people off, the machiavellian tactics that he readily utilizes are usually sufficient to dispel any desire to get to know him.
Usually, this is convenient. Or so he convinces himself.
While influencing most individuals to think of him in a negative light is comfortable, it’s not always advantageous to his situation, which is why Suguru occasionally changes up his act. Sometimes, it’s easier to get what he wants from people when their opinion of him is favorable; such as when he needs a teacher to be a bit more lenient than they might otherwise be, or when he wants a volleyball referee to make a questionable call in his favor.
Switching his behavior to appear amicable in certain circumstances gets him what he wants in the moment. He doesn’t generally feel remorse for his underhanded tactics – he’s of the opinion that if there exists a chance to get ahead, it should be taken, and those who don’t grasp the opportunity are simply too cowardly to be ambitious – but the tactic is not entirely free of problems. The main issue that arises from his (admittedly flawless) impersonation of a virtuous member of society is that it makes people distrust any genuine kindness he displays at other times. Having others view him through the unsavory lens he’s created for himself is one thing; people witnessing small moments of his candid affability and immediately distrusting it makes something in his gut roil uncomfortably, despite the fact that he knows he manufactures the circumstances that lead others to their misgivings.
Nowadays, he tries to shy away from sincerity, for the most part. It’s usually easy, anyways. The cutting remarks and unkind attitude are compulsive at this point, and Suguru doesn’t really even have to try to be mean anymore.
Still, recently he’s found himself sliding into gentle consideration more frequently than he has for years, and is pleasantly surprised each time that his efforts are not dismissed due to distrust of his character.
He’s still baffled about how the events of the past few weeks came to be.
When Mika had first messaged the third year, Suguru had initially planned on messing with her for a bit, then informing her he wasn’t interested in tutoring. In a less than genial manner, as he normally would.
That plan had been promptly and unexpectedly derailed.
For some reason – maybe the inconsistent response times, typos, or erratic formality of her messages – Suguru had gotten the impression that Mika was an overly anxious person. While that normally would not have put him off of his cruel dismissiveness, this particular instance gave him pause. While blandly responsive to his initial light jabs, the fact that she’d suddenly stopped responding to his playful teasing had him puzzling over her reactions. He hadn’t thought that he’d been overly malicious yet, but reasoned that it was possible that her anxiety was a lot worse than he’d initially suspected.
Convincing himself that needling others is no fun when they simply shut down, he’d relented and softened his phrasing, attempting to let her down gently.
He had not anticipated, however, that his placid rejection would not be graciously accepted, and would instead incite Mika to bargain for her original proposal of obtaining academic assistance. He’d definitely been surprised, but remained relaxed in the interaction. Convinced that his original impression of an overly anxious girl must’ve been somewhat off, he’d resumed his regular pestering.
Only to be thrown off yet again when the other had confided that she was nervous about contacting him.
While aware that nobody is perfectly able to read every single person around them, and that interpreting mood through text alone adds an extra layer of difficulty to the endeavor, Suguru is unused to being so temperamentally incorrect.
Feeling unnervingly unbalanced, with something that he refused to label as guilt rolling around uncomfortably in his stomach, he’d offered an apology, which seemed to ease her trepidation. Then, despite having no initial intent to actually help her out with anything, he’d ended up agreeing to her plea.
Somehow, he’d arrived at the action that was completely opposed to his first intentions, and it had felt as if the trajectory was entirely the result of his own miscalculations. He’d been mildly baffled to realize that Mika hadn’t really done all that much to influence him (other than being anxious and unpredictable), and his acquiescence was largely due to his own imbalance in reaction to her nervous turbulence.
Attempting to regain some stability, he’d returned to being generally acerbic, and teased her again about her spelling error, despite both of their previous resulting reactions.
Once again, Mika had proven to be startlingly capricious, and had gone along with it, even going so far as to admit that his teasing wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Suguru, to put it mildly, was intrigued.
Despite the fact that he’d always abhorred being wrong about anything – that whole first chain of texts had been a stumble in the dark – he had to admit that the conundrum of a situation promised some eventfulness to his otherwise normally lackluster schedule. Being unable to fully read her had been slightly disparaging, yes. But he was incredibly interested in the fact that he couldn’t predict her reactions. Going forward, the possibilities excited him.
If he continued to speak with the girl, one of two things was likely to occur. Either she would continue to be unpredictable to him and thus provide him with a bit of novelty, or he would eventually grow to be able to interpret her actions accurately, which would mean he had overcome the puzzle that was her (seemingly) volatile nature.
Either way, he would be getting something interesting out of their correspondence.
Additionally, Suguru admits, the slight hint of the other’s ability to banter with him had made him want to talk with her more.
Yes, he’d ended up offering to aid her in her academic struggles, and he fully intended to follow through on his promise, but he was determined to get to know her on a deeper level than would be accessible in an exclusively scholarly setting. He wanted to know if his initial impression of her was correct; or any of them, for that matter. He wanted to test his ability to read her, practice the skill on her specifically to see if either of his theories held any merit.
So far, he isn’t sure which way he’s leaning. The moment Mika had thrown him for that second loop during their first conversation, she’d proven herself an anomaly, an enigma. She’d become a puzzle by which Suguru couldn’t help but be captivated.
So began the infancy of their correspondence.
Not wanting to scare her off too soon, Suguru had tried to keep his teasing to a minimum, at the start. He’d been overwhelmingly unsuccessful.
The first time Mika had reflected some of his sarcasm right back to him, the captain had known he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from unleashing his compulsive mockery into their interactions in full force. Luckily, she hadn’t seemed to be opposed to the teasing and, once again to Suguru’s astonishment, she had begun actively engaging in the banter and needling him right back. Then, within about a week, their teasing exchanges had taken on decidedly flirtatious undertones.
Seemingly, even, without the third year’s intention or notice.
Of course he quickly recognized it for what it was once he put a small amount of consideration to it, but the fact that the tone had shifted without intent was definitely indicative of the chaotic nature of their interactions. In spite of weeks’ worth of data and conversations, Suguru had still found predicting Mika’s decisions to be dubious, at best. She frequently managed to take actions completely opposed to what he would’ve normally expected.
Such as when, a mere hour ago, she’d responded to his offhand mocking throwaway of “sweetheart” with endearments of her own. Though, he admits reluctantly, the couple minutes of break differing from their normally lightning-quick response times had caused him a small amount of anxiety, the yield had definitely been worth the momentary trepidation. He’d become increasingly more satisfied with each pet name he read, and had to put conscious effort into keeping a soft grin from sneaking onto his face.
Thinking about it now, belongings gathered and awaiting the dismissal of the bell to leave for his last class, the third year discreetly takes out his phone. He makes sure to hide it from his science teacher – he doesn’t want to disrupt the well-behaved impression he projects in this class – behind the lip of his desk as he opens his messages with Mika. On a whim, he clicks on her contact and changes her name. He never saves contacts as anything other than their full name, but for some reason, this just seems to fit.
Just as the bell begins to chime, Suguru feels a presence approach from the desk behind him.
“So who’s ‘Sweetheart’?” Hiroo, his fellow volleyball player and only other teammate in the same academic class as him, inquires.
When Suguru rises to the summons of the bell, he turns to see a slightly malicious look in the middle blocker’s eye that isn’t obscured by his crooked bangs.
Pursing his lips and smirking cruelly as he walks past he says, “Why, mad that it isn’t you?”
Hiroo’s usually inexpressive face only becomes more predatory. “Oh, so it’s serious then?”
Sometimes Suguru curses how well people who’ve been around him for years know his mannerisms. Deflection is, and always will be, the shield he throws up when he’s hiding something, as his teammates have witnessed time and time again. The slip-up is enough for Hiroo to latch onto the proverbial smell of blood in the water.
“Hmm,” he starts, internally scrambling for a defense that won’t be so transparent. “It’s not really all that. Just someone I’ve been talking to recently.”
The middle blocker bumps their shoulders together as they make their way to their next class. “Right, you just got all cutesy with someone you’re ‘casually talking to’.”
Losing his cool at the affront, he scoffs and smacks his friend’s raised hands to dismantle the air quotations he’s thrown up. A little harder than necessary. “I’m not being cutesy. It’s just an inside joke.”
“You keep telling yourself that buddy.”
“Keep telling himself what?” calls Numai as he approaches, the ace coming from the opposite direction. Though his next class is likely in a separate wing of the school than the high academic achievers, the captain knows that he won’t be so lucky now as to be allowed to continue on his way unimpeded. His teammates practically have a sixth sense for opportunities to tease each other.
Suguru feels his eye twitch, seeing no easy way out of this. He gets a sudden sense of foreboding, sure the situation will be blown far out of proportion.
“That he’s not uber cutesy with his sweetheart,” Hiroo snickers.
“Oh,” the blond ace settles an arm around the bane of Suguru’s existence as he reaches the pair, halting them. The rakish smirk affixed to his handsome features spells trouble. “And who is this ‘sweetheart’, Suguru? Anyone we know?”
Knowing when to accept his fate, the captain pauses to consider. He could just lie and say that Mika goes to another school, that she’s his official girlfriend and they’ll never meet her, but he knows his teammates enough to know that wouldn’t deter them in the slightest. They’d rag on him for the most minute of details, probably even keep good enough track of every morsel of information he’d give them to catch him in a lie with any discrepancy they found. His team’s social life seems to be overwhelmingly dry, because whenever something remotely interesting happens to one of them, they become some of the worst gossips he’s ever met.
Seeing as the reality of his correspondence is far less sensational than the alternative, Suguru elects to be honest.
Partially.
“She does go to Nohebi, so I guess there’s a chance you’ve run into her,” he replies, sighing resignedly.
“He admits it! He does have a sweetheart!” Hiroo jeers.
“I did no such thing. You just asked who ‘Sweetheart’ was. On my phone.”
“You’re at the stage in your relationship where you’re changing contact names and we hadn’t heard anything about her until now? Must be serious. How long you been together?” the ace inquires.
“And why haven’t you told us anything? Does the word ‘team’ mean nothing to you?”
“We’re not together. I’m just tutoring her.”
The two, each with an arm casually slung over the other’s shoulder, fix him with near identical looks of scathing disbelief.
“I’m serious! I haven’t even met her in person.”
Now, brows twisted in confusion, Numai confirms, “You’ve never met her, but you call her sweetheart.”
“Bullshit,” Hiroo declares snidely.
“That’s not– I mean, yes, but like I told Hiroo, it’s just an inside joke.”
“The way you were smiling lovingly at your phone is no joke,” the middle blocker smugly counters.
Scoffing in indignation, Suguru steps around them and continues on to his class.
Despite the fact that his teammates are completely off-base about the nature of his relationship with Mika, the captain has also found himself wondering about their lack of in-person interaction.
Initially, he’d been perfectly content with speaking with the other exclusively through text, sure that her puzzling nature could be understood with minimal communication. Now, weeks later, her behavior is certainly more familiar to him, but she still manages to surprise him with a somewhat startling frequency. He has mused, more than once, whether interacting with her directly would change anything about his impression of her. Free from the filter and anonymity of a screen, would she be more, or less difficult to read?
He’s considered approaching her at school.
With only a first name, Suguru wouldn’t have been able to discern her identity. Afterall, Mika is not an uncommon name, and she’s far from the only girl at Nohebi to have it. Scouring the yearbooks would narrow down the candidates, but would fail to single out the correct individual with certainty.
Luckily, however, he also knows her grade and class number. When he filtered those few factors into his search a week into their conversations (definitely unrelated to the fact that this is when they started flirting), he had found that only one girl fit the conditions.
Yamaka Mika, year three, class four.
Interestingly enough, when he’d seen her yearbook photo, she’d surprised him again, inadvertently. He’d been expecting some shyness to shine through the picture, as she’d told him previously that she didn’t like getting her picture taken. Instead, she’d been pictured poised, staring intently into the camera, her lips pursed slightly to flatter. It had been so outside of his idea of her that Suguru had momentarily considered that she might be lying to him. Perhaps even compulsively, with abandon.
The startling disparity had thrown him more than any other revelation had previously or since.
So much so, in fact, that he’s never mentioned it to her.
He ponders the discrepancy as he settles into his seat, ready to brave his last class before volleyball practice.
_____
Suguru wonders at the veracity of the idea of speaking something into existence. He’s not so quick to believe that the situation he finds himself in now is pure coincidence, not when it happens a mere hour after the first time he admits (out loud) that he’s never met the person he talks to everyday.
Somehow, something cosmic has to be entertaining itself with the strings it’s just pulled, because as he’s heading from classroom to clubroom, he encounters Mika.
Today, he’d stayed in class for just a few minutes past the bell to finish an extra credit assignment. He hadn’t wanted to leave it just barely unfinished, only to have to work on it at home. So, when Hiroo and his fellow classmates had cleared out, the captain had hunkered down to hastily finish the project. Luckily, it had been just a few minor details that required finalizing, and if he hurried changing he wouldn’t be late to practice.
At least, he wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t calmly rushed out of the classroom to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of Mika conversing with two other girls.
Her face, angled to speak with the girl in front of her, is mostly visible to the volleyball player. She looks exactly like her yearbook photo; not a hair is out of place. Suguru can’t help but find something discordant about it.
Dazed and trying to mask his trepidation, he steps forward and lightly calls, “Mika-chan?”
Shifting more fully to face his approach, her mouth parts in slight surprise. When her eyes meet his, her expression does not shift to one of recognition, as he would’ve assumed. Instead, she tilts her head in polite curiosity and, not unkindly, asks, “Can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah,” he begins, trying to regain his composure. He shouldn’t be as disoriented by the fact that she doesn’t recognize him as he is. It’s not unrealistic, afterall, to think that she might never have seen what he looks like; he only knows her appearance because he went looking for it. He hurriedly considers how he should move forward with this interaction.
In his peripheral vision, he sees one of the girls pull a strand of hair behind her ear, and realizes that Mika might not have told anyone about their correspondence.
“I was wondering if I could speak with you?” the captain asks, thankful that his voice doesn’t display his hesitancy. It doesn’t quite ring with the confidence he usually exudes, but it’s far stronger than it was a couple of seconds ago.
Head still tilted in consideration, Mika pauses for a moment to scrutinize him before nodding to her two companions.
“Just a sec guys,” she says, before stepping away from them leisurely and gesturing for him to follow. She walks about ten meters before stopping and turning to face him. As long as they don’t whisper, her (now silent and observing) friends will be able to hear their conversation.
Alighting to a halt a respectful stride away from her, Suguru breathes and gathers himself. Fortunately, he seems to have regained his regular roguish intonation in the brief reprieve.
“So, didn’t know I’d be meeting you today,” he announces, leaning over slightly to compensate for the height difference and look her in the eyes. “I’m Daishou Suguru, by the way.”
He watches as, rather than parting once again in surprise, as he’s expecting, her mouth twists into a grin of puzzled amusement. She crosses her arms and shifts to her weight to her back foot as she replies, “Nice to meet you, I suppose. I guess I didn’t know I’d be meeting you today, either.”
Befuddled at the lack of acknowledgement his name garnered, Suguru unconsciously copies her movements, his crossed arms taking on a decidedly more defensive nature in opposition to her cavalier stance.
“Guess it’s our lucky day,” he comments idly, attempting to reorient himself mentally.
“Guess so,” she acquiesces, brow rising in confusion. “Was there something I could help you with Daishou-san?”
While a big part of his fascination with Mika-chan is that he can’t get a proper read on her most of the time, Suguru is in disbelief at the sheer amount of disorientation he’s experiencing currently. The fact that she didn’t initially recognize him is easily excused; there is no absolute reason she would know what he looks like.
Failing to react in any way to his name, however, is utterly baffling to him. Mika-chan regularly refers to him by name (usually in a jesting way) when they text; he knows she knows both his first and his last name. There’s no one else at this school named Daishou Suguru. He’s checked. She has no reason to doubt his identity based on name alone. There’s no one else he could be.
There is a possibility, however, that she isn’t who he thinks she is. Somehow, he could’ve missed something. Maybe he’s seeing Mika-chan in a girl that happens to share all the same features . Maybe Mika-chan has a twin she’s never mentioned, despite talking about her younger brother at length whenever the topic of family arises .
Maybe it’s as simple as the school using the wrong picture for one of their students. That, at least, would explain the odd disparity between the personality displayed through text and the one shining through the photograph. The one currently staring at him.
Consciously schooling his face to mask his unease and show only mild confusion, Suguru tilts his head and confirms, “I’m sorry, I think I may have gotten the wrong person; you’re not the Mika getting tutoring for a psychology class, are you?”
The person in front of him glances back at her friends then admits, “No, sorry. My name is Mika, but I’m not getting tutored.”
Suguru feels something in his chest deflate, somewhere between a sigh of relief and a pang of loss. The relief, he feels, is warranted; by confirming he’d misidentified her, he’s practically released from this humiliating farce of a social interaction. The loss, however, feels excessive. He shouldn’t care so much about meeting Mika-chan. Especially since this isn’t even his Mika-chan.
The conflicting sentiments only serve to exacerbate his disorientation.
“Ah, I’m sorry for the confusion then,” he says as he takes a small step toward the gym, attempting to get this interaction over with as quickly as possible. “Thank you for speaking with me,” he tacks on, praying that it doesn’t sound as awkward as he feels right now.
“No problem,” she replies, then smirks teasingly. “Guess I’ll see you around, Daishou Suguru .”
He feels himself smirk instinctively in response, then quickly nods and turns away, finally heading to the Nohebi boy’s volleyball club room. He walks in a bit of a daze, mind reeling at the interaction, when he turns the first corner out of the science wing and abruptly realizes that the conversation has definitely made him late. Thankful that he’s out of sight of the three girls, he breaks into a jog and hastens down the (mostly) deserted hallways.
Sure enough, when he reaches the door of the clubroom, his teammates have already begun filing out to head into the gym. The last of the current procession holds the door open for him as he exits, allowing the third year to duck inside.
“Well, what do we have here?” Numai comments as he finishes tying his shoes. “You know, as captain, you’re supposed to be a role model to your teammates.”
“Yeah captain, you assured me that project would only take a couple minutes and you ‘definitely wouldn’t be late, Hiroo’.”
“I wouldn’t have been!”
“Oh? What caught you up then?” Hiroo asks with a deceivingly passive look on his face. He eyes the captain up and down, taking in his harried state with a quirked eyebrow. “Did the great Daishou Suguru overestimate his academic capabilities?”
Numai snickers as he brushes past him and out the door, and Suguru is reminded that he is, in fact, late. He curses under his breath and bustles over to his locker and begins divesting himself of his school uniform.
“What was that captain?” Hiroo pokes.
“Fuck off.”
“Well, well, better be careful Suguru. First you’re distracted by your girlfriend, then you’re struggling in your classes, then you’re late, then you start swearing at your teammates. All in one day! It’s almost like you don’t want to be captain anymore.”
“I don’t ha–” Suguru begins to defend himself, only to hesitate.
On one hand, he knows the other third year is only teasing and nothing will really come of his pestering. Sure, they’re the team that’s known for being mean and at times malicious, but that’s all reserved for volleyball. Within the team itself, their behavior mellows to snide remarks and harmless punking. Hiroo is just being his (though admittedly extremely annoying) harmless self. Normally, he wouldn’t hesitate to play along and portray the desperately affronted teenager to contribute to the mischievous atmosphere.
On the other hand, he is indeed distracted, though not by a completely hypothetical “girlfriend”. It’s just his enigmatic tutee. He talks to Mika-chan frequently enough nowadays that it’s not unreasonable to say that he thinks about her a lot, but not enough to be distracted. Just the normal amount that a person allocates to carrying on a perpetual conversation with someone they’ve never met.
That’s to say, he’s completely normal about her. Normally.
What happened just a few minutes ago, however, was far from normal and it’s completely throwing him off. His teammate was entirely jesting, but Suguru has to admit to himself that he did hit a mark. Sort of. Because while he was off-base about the girlfriend comment, he was thinking about the correct individual. Or he would have been, if the captain had accosted the correct Mika.
He considers confiding in his teammate about the dilemma momentarily before he’s reminded that he’s been silent for a beat too long by a gleeful snort.
“Did I hit a sore spot there, captain?” Hiroo inquires, his voice lilting with false innocence.
Suguru regrets the momentary lapse of judgment that allowed him to believe his fellow third year could be serious about anything. Resigned with the knowledge that the other won’t let this go until he’s thrown a proverbial bone, the captain decides that admission to one of the accusations should allay any potential suspicions.
Suguru huffs and throws his head back dramatically. Having finished changing, he aggressively closes his locker door as he turns to face his adversary. “Fuck off,” he repeats, tone infused with more derision than he’s truthfully feeling at the moment. He hastens to grab the key off its hook next to the door and swing it open. “Underestimating how long it would take to finish some calculations does not mean that I’m struggling academically.”
Hiroo grabs the door handle to pull it shut quickly, then steps aside for Suguru to lock it. “And yet you are late.”
He glares at his teammate and slips the keyring onto his finger. As they begin jogging toward the gym, Suguru sees that despite all the time spent lingering in the clubroom, the other still has one shoelace untied.
Unable to resist the golden opportunity, the captain steps on the errant lace and shoves him, causing Hiroo to stumble to the ground. Taking off at a dead sprint, Suguru calls over his shoulder, “And you waited for me! Who’s late now!”
“Asshole!”
He cackles as he runs, but he can tell that it lacks its usual mocking maliciousness. Though he seems to have successfully diverted Hiroo’s attention, his own is still verymuch occupied by his recent failed interaction.
Specifically, the person with whom said failed interaction took place.
Because while he may have gotten confirmation that it was just a simple case of mistaken identity, he can’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.
_____
Suguru wishes he could say that he didn’t spend the entire practice preoccupied and distracted – when he was asked (repeatedly) during said practice about his lack of focus, he staunchly denied it each time – but he’s far too self-aware to be able to lie to himself like that. Additionally, he knows that, in this one particular case, he wasn’t particularly able to lie to his teammates either. At least not very successfully, for the ones that know him on a more personal level.
While his teammates took issue with his preoccupation, the teachers in charge of the teenagers barely noticed a thing. Luckily for him, the Nohebi coaches tend not to be very hands-on, and so generally allow the team to operate independently however they see fit. He was relieved that he’d been able to simply direct his underlings to run through simple drills that they were familiar with and required very little instruction. He’d gone through the motions of each of the drills, though he knows that he certainly didn’t perform to his usual level of proficiency.
The needling about his absentee mental state had only increased once the practice was over and the team had returned to their designated clubroom.
The first and second years, for their part, kept the teasing exclusive to the fact that their captain wasn’t performing the way he normally would, thankfully. They repeated much the same sentiment of similar jokes that lacked originality and thus didn’t particularly offend Suguru.
His fellow third years, however, joined in on the joking only nominally, letting him know (with more pointed comments about the origins of his distraction and repeated not-so subtle glances) that the subject would be addressed in depth once they were in relative privacy.
Suguru watches in stilted amusement as he watches his two closest third years attempt to be subtle in their stalling, waiting for the youngest of the team to leave. Though generally up for a little rambunctious lecturing, the other third years both had prior plans, and so left the responsibility of interrogation to their ace and main middle blocker. Hiroo and Numai are slowly unfolding and refolding their dirty clothes, paying close attention to make each of the seams symmetrical, then dismantling them to do it again. Repeatedly. Their antics would have Suguru cackling boisterously, if only their useless meticulousness didn’t spell his doom.
Sure enough, as soon as the last of the younger students leave the clubroom, dismissing the need for their performative tidiness, the ace and middle blocker hastily shove their (now unfolded and messy) jerseys into their respective bags. They quickly turn and make their way to sit on the bench facing their captain’s tense but reclined form.
Clasping his hands in front of himself and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, Numai says, “So, wanna tell us what that was about chief?”
“And don’t try to pretend you don’t know what we’re talking about,” Hiroo snidely adds.
Suguru huffs and crosses his arms. “What if I just don’t want to talk about it?”
“Pretty sure you’d be gone already,” the blond ace answers, his brow lifted skeptically.
Annoyed at the accuracy of his assessment, Suguru glares at Numai. Too frustrated at the fact that he hadn’t had an eye-opening epiphany during practice to put up an apathetic front, he admits, “I was just thinking about something that’s been troubling me recently. It’s not a big deal, but something happened today that threw me off about it.”
“Is that why you were late?” Hiroo asks. “So what happened then?”
The captain uncrosses one arm to pick at a loose thread on his jacket. Before today, he hadn’t even once considered discussing anything about Mika with anyone, let alone his teammates. Now, in the space of just a couple hours, he’s been incredibly close to doing so multiple times. He knows it’s not a particularly good idea, because his teammates are nothing if not nosey gossips, but after hours of considering his dilemma on his own, he’s not sure he’ll be able to come up with something without outside input.
Because it’s not as if his situation is as simple as someone he knows pretending to not know who he is– or is it?
He'd been operating with the idea that he'd been completely mistaken about her identity, but what if that wasn't the case?
That idea percolating in his head, he sits up and squints at the two across from him, scrutinizing them with reluctance. While talking about something that’s bothering him out loud usually aids him in working it out, he still really doesn’t want to admit to anything that’s happened. That being said, he really doesn’t have any better ideas at the moment.
“Say, hypothetically, that the person you talk to daily and definitely knows who you are seemed to genuinely not know you when you approached them in public,” he starts. “What do you think that would mean? Hypothetically.”
Baffled, Hiroo replies, “Well obviously they’re faking– wait, person you talk to daily? Dude! Your girlfriend pretended she doesn’t know who you are? What the fuck did you do ?”
“I said hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically my ass. You wouldn’t waste an entire practice over a hypothetical,” Numai states. “What did you do that got your girlfriend that mad?”
“I didn’t do anything! In this hypothetical situation, everything was normal the last time I talked to my– she’s not my girlfriend!” Suguru stutters.
“I thought we were talking hypotheticals here, no?” the middle blocker jeers cruelly.
“We are .”
“So what’s wrong with a hypothetical girlfriend being the subject we use for the scenario?”
Suguru grinds his teeth in a grimace because he knows there’s no way to convince either of them that they’re not on the right track. Which they aren’t. “Fine,” he allows bitterly. “In a scenario where your hypothetical girlfriend suddenly and seemingly without cause acted like she didn’t know who you were when you approached her at school today, what would you assume the reason would be?”
The blond ace raises his hand like he's in class but interjects without prompting from his captain, “I thought you said you’ve never met her in person?”
“I hadn’t.”
“Then couldn’t she just have not recognized you?”
“Initially, yes. But not after I introduced myself by full name.”
“Nerd,” Hiroo scoffs.
Suguru flips him the bird.
“And you’re sure you got the right person,” Numai inquires, still pursuing his initial train of thought.
The captain hesitates before stating, “I was sure. I mean, I checked, and her picture in the yearbook is the one above the name of the only person Mi– my hypothetical girlfriend, could be. So unless she has a twin I don’t know about, or the school, I don’t know, switched up the photos or something, then I don’t see how I could’ve gotten the wrong person.”
“Huh,” Hiroo hums. “I mean, I’m pretty sure the school would’ve noticed if they messed up the yearbook and sent out a new one pretty quickly. Is she in our year?”
Suguru nods.
“Yeah man, we don’t have any twins in our year. So that’s out too.”
“When you say ‘in public’”, Numai begins, “Do you mean there were other people around?”
He thinks back to how Mika had glanced at her friends and moved them off to be just within earshot of the girls. He tells his inquiring teammates as much.
“Nah, I still think you did something to piss her off. Despite the fact that it's weird as shit that the only picture you have of her is from the yearbook, she had to have recognized you, right? Full name and everything?”
“I mean, maybe she just didn’t want her friends to know about you,” Numai shrugs unrepentantly. “I know I wouldn’t if I were your hypothetical girlfriend.”
Suguru ignores the jab as the point that was made a moment prior tickles his memory about odd discrepancies he’s been ignoring since he talked to Mika. The captain tunes out the playful jabbering of his teammates as the revelation hits him.
Mika had been mostly kind but coy throughout the interaction. She’d seemed amused by Suguru’s actions. Teased him a little.
She’d moved away from her friends to speak with him, and glanced at them trepidatiously when he mentioned tutoring.
His teammates have affirmed his deductions regarding her identity.
Her wry grin as she’d intoned, “Guess I’ll see you around, Daishou Suguru .”
It seems he was right about his hypothesis that she would never stop surprising him.
“Motherfucker,” he mumbles under his breath, and goes to grab his things. “Why would she pretend–”
“Dude, where you going?” Numai asks, pulled from a squabble with Hiroo by the captain’s sudden movements.
“Figured it out.”
Suguru thumbs on his phone as he rushes out the door, ignoring Hiroo’s call of, “But we’re not done interrogating you yet!”
Too strung up to slow his pointed stomping towards his home, he opens his messages to Mika and begins typing before he’s even left the building.
His fingers mash the electronic keyboard as he tries to articulate himself through the shame of having fallen so completely for her ruse. He has to rewrite his message several times to avoid sending a typo, but does so meticulously in spite of his turbulent emotions because he will not allow himself to make the same mistake that he constantly and gleefully holds over the infuriating and baffling girl.
Me, 6:49pm:
mika-chan
would you like to tell me why you pretended not to know who i was when i approached you after school today?