~**~
Kogure blinked down at the younger boy that had prostrated himself in front of him. Koshi-kun had always been a rather strange guy, but it seemed as though he had gotten even worse with time. “Hiroaki-kun…Get up. Please. You’re making me really uncomfortable here…” Kogure had been baffled enough when Koshino had appeared from out of the blue at his doorstep. Now, as he tried to coax the younger boy out of his position on the floor of the Kogure living room, he wondered if he should maybe call the guy’s parents up so that they could come and pick him up. It was pretty obvious to Kogure that all was not well within the workings of his junior’s mind.
“ Kimi-sempai! I am so sorry…so sorry. This is all my fault.”
The bespectacled boy watched in bewilderment as Koshino began to beat his fist against his chest in a show of extreme penance. “ What’s all your fault, Hiro-kun?”
“ That Sendoh ever set eyes on you.”
“ What are you talking about? And what has Sendoh got to do anything? Please, Hiro-kun. Get yourself out of that ridiculous position so that the two of us can talk. I don’t want my mother to come walking in here and seeing you like that.”
Koshino obediently followed his senior towards the couch, settling himself at the spot that the older boy indicated.
“Now, Hiro-kun. Tell me what the matter is. I’ll try and help you out in any way that I can.”
“ I feel like a bloody pimp.”
“ Oh, come on.” Kogure laughed merrily. “ It can’t possibly be that bad!”
“ Tell me, Kimi-sempai. How would you feel about going out with Sendoh?” Koshino muttered. He knew that he shouldn’t be so worried about what his senior’s reaction to the proposal would be. Kogure was not a violent person, so he was in no immediate physical threat. So then, why the hell was every nerve in his body telling him that there was no way in hell that he would ever let Sendoh Akira go out with Kogure Kiminobu?
Kogure’s eyes widened slightly at this very unexpected question. Now where the hell did that come from? He wondered. It seemed as though Koshino badly needed some sort of an answer though, so he gave him one. The question seemed pretty pointless to him but Koshino seemed to think it was very important. “ Your friend was really nice and all, Koshino-kun. But…To tell you the truth…he’s not really the type that I would consider going out with. Let’s just say that his reputation is known, even in Shohoku.”
“ That’s what I thought…” Koshino perked up instantly upon hearing this. At least he had tried! Sendoh should be happy with that. Love couldn’t be forced and if Kogure didn’t think that Sendoh was his type, there was really nothing more that Koshino could do to press the matter, was there? Feeling as though a considerable load had been taken off his shoulders, Koshino stood up, about to take his leave when Kogure jerked him back down onto the couch before he could do so.
“ Wait a second, Koshino. I answered your question. Now it’s your turn to answer mine. What the hell were you asking me something like that for?”
“ Would you believe me if I told you that it was merely out of curiosity?”
Kogure shook his head. “ No. Not really. I’ve never known you to be much of a gossip…”
“ All right then. Let’s just say that I’m indebted to someone. Sendoh Akira himself, to be precise. I owe him big time and he’s called in his favor, which just happens to sort of involve you. Now isn’t that funny?” Koshino let out the poorest excuse for a laugh that Kogure had ever encountered in his life.
“ No. It doesn’t seem funny to me at all.” He retorted, killing off the younger boy’s false mirth. “ Tell me, Koshino-kun. How did I, someone who Sendoh only met this afternoon, somehow get involved in all of this? And how the hell did you manage to get in debt to him anyways? You don’t owe him money or anything, do you?”
“ No. It’s nothing like that…Well…You see…” Koshino’s cheeks flushed. Even thinking about that horrendous date with the Kainan freshman succeeded in making him sick to his stomach. “ I had this really, really, unbelievably horrendous date a while back…”
“ How bad was it?”
“ Very bad. Let’s just say that there was a little incident involving some dead seafood and that I’ll never be able to show my face around that restaurant again. Or Kainan, for that matter.”
“ Maa, Koshino-kun. We all have our less than pleasant dates. Now, tell me how Sendoh figures in all of this.”
“ Well. By the time that Kiyota got around to playing out a little dance routine with the lobsters that he’d ordered, I just snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. Kimi-sempai, all of the people in there were looking at us! They were just staring at us!” Koshino shuddered. Unlike Sendoh, he had never really liked too much attention. That’s why he preferred to stay in the background of his more outgoing and cheery friend. “ So I made some lame excuse and I went to call Sendoh up. I begged him to come and get me out of that hellhole. There was no way that I could last much longer without giving in to the urge to jump up and throttling that stupid Kiyota. But Sendoh was in the middle of a date with Fujima Kenji then. He’s had a crush on that guy for the longest time and this date really meant a lot to him but I needed to get out of there! I begged, and I pleaded and I swore to him that I would be eternally indebted to him if he just did me this one, single favor. And then he came and bailed me out. Something about my pet cat being stuck up a tree. Sendoh’s not the fastest thinker in the world, obviously…”
“ All right. So you owe him. What exactly do you owe him?”
It took a few seconds of stalling before Koshino finally managed to spit it all out. “ Kiminobu-sempai…He…he wants you…”
Kogure blanched at this. “ Wha…what?”
“ He wants me to set him up with you.” Koshino repeated. “ But really, you don’t have to agree to it or anything just because of me. If you don’t want to do that, then please don’t force yourself on my account. I won’t mind and I’ll just do something else for Sendoh then.”
“ He wants a date with me?”
“ Yeah. That’s it, basically. But as I said, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I can understand you completely. I realize that Sendoh couldn’t have made that much of a good impression on you when you first met him. He’s not the smartest guy around and he’s a bit of a goofball.”
Kogure took off his glasses and began to wipe the lenses off on his shirt. If Koshino really needed some help from him then he should give it to him readily. It wasn’t as though it would be that unpleasant. Sendoh, though he wasn’t the usual type that Kogure would go for, seemed like a nice enough guy in their brief encounter. So he was a bit goofy and had a reputation for being a playboy. But if Kogure knew anything about life, it was that chances should be taken. Besides, he hadn’t been out on many dates lately and going out for a while with this Sendoh Akira and having a bit of fun could be nice. Taking a deep breath, he popped his glasses back on, a smile on his lips. “He didn’t have to ask you to arrange it for him, you know. He could have just asked me himself and I would have said yes.”
For a while Koshino thought that he had maybe heard his senior wrong. “ What? Yes?”
“ Yeah. We can go out after the practice match then.”
“ Oh…that’s…good.” Koshino knew that he should have been a lot happier about the whole thing than he really was, so what the hell was the matter with him and why was he feeling so much disappointment upon hearing his senior’s agreement?
~**~
“ I don’t see why you have to come along with us…” Sendoh grumbled as he riffled through a stack of photo albums on Koshino’s study table. He stopped at one particular photo of Koshino with his teammates from back in Junior High. There was Kogure standing right beside the gigantic Akagi smiling up at him sweetly. “ Kawaii!” He breathed, not noticing the dark look on his best friend’s face.
“ Will you stop going through my stuff, dammit?”
“ Calm down, Hiro-kun! I was just looking over your old photos. Has anyone ever told you how sweet you looked before?” Sendoh propped the large album up onto his lap so that his companion could see what it was that he was looking at and pointed at one particular picture that had caught his eye. It was one of a very young Koshino, presumably around twelve years old, flashing a gap toothed grin towards the camera as he hugged a squirming black Labrador puppy to himself. Sendoh looked from the picture, to Koshino and back to the picture once more. “ What the hell happened to your teeth? And I can’t believe that stupid dog of yours was actually a cute puppy once…” Sendoh liked animals. He liked pretty much anything and anyone when it all came down to it. But he had never been particularly fond of the hellhound that Koshino had for a pet. The thing hated him with a vengeance. All it took was the sound of the spiky haired player’s voice to whip it up into frenzy. He could remember a few instances, when he had had a particularly bad misunderstanding with Koshino, which had ended with the horrid dog being released and set after him.
“ Nori-sempai accidentally threw a ball into my face, all right? And Cuddles is a sweetie.”
“ What person, in their right mind, would name such a savage, soulless killing machine “Cuddles”?”
Koshino raised an eyebrow at this. “ You questioning Kimi-sempai’s taste now, are you?”
Sendoh held back a sigh. He should have known. What was it with the guy and the cute names thing? A bear named Fufu, a killer hound named Cuddles…“I pity the future children that I will have with Kogure-kun.”
Koshino snorted. “ Don’t think that far ahead, Sendoh. And what the hell are you talking about? Were you absent for the whole unit of sex education that we had last semester? It’s physically impossible for you to have children with Kiminobu-sempai unless there are some sort of medical miracles in the near future that will allow a man to reproduce with another man…”
“ I’ve always had a great belief in science.”
“ Oh yes. Shown perfectly by that incredible grade of D minus that you got last semester.”
posted by Laree McKenzie on 11:44 PM