Expectations
by: Kiku Nakamura

Before Riko goes to sleep late into the night, she hates the thoughts that flood into her mind.

As the strong girl that she shows herself off, as she knows that the society's standards are too high for her ever to reach that point of being at the top.

Everyone talks about everything like it isn't right to be imperfect. She's scared of all the insecurities that she has ever gained since she started growing up. She's scared of all the expectations people have ever placed on her shoulders.

It isn't her fault that she wants to coach the basketball team and not just being a manager to follow up on her team. She knows that being a coach is not the first thing that people see when they see her walk into the gym.

It scares her when some of her female friends suggest joining the track and field club with them and participating in events. She's a girl and girls join clubs, not have a position on the team to help others. She doesn't like being someone that's being trained because when she goes out with her boys, that's all that she is doing, training mentally along with them.

She doesn't use her vacations to paint her nails or walk around in the mall to buy new cute things. She plans them with Hyuuga-kun and then tells the team where they are going to train.

She knows that when people see her, from her obsession with bears, that she isn't normal. And all those books out there are telling people to stand out and not to be normal and different but they aren't always right. They already made it so far with others judging them. But she also knew that some people aren't strong enough not to hold their eccentricity all inside of themselves. They were scared of being judged. They didn't throw away their reputations saying "Screw this! I want to live the way that I want."

When people think of a girl on the team they imagine a very pretty girl. She gets shaken up when they say that she let her hopes down. She isn't as scared as she is panicked by these comments. When she sees Hyuuga-kun stand up for her on the court, she gets even more petrified.

She doesn't think that he should. Since Seirin had made their debut to the world and none other than one of them have a girlfriend, she is scared of how she feels towards Hyuuga Junpei. She likes him, but she doesn't watch the famous clutch shooter looking down upon for -if ever possible- dating his coach. For dating a girl that doesn't look like one.

Then whenever she sees Momoi Satsuki, manager for Touou Academy High School's basketball club, Riko is reminded of how much she isn't like a girl. She's a flat board. And Momoi mentions it every single time that she goes to see "Tetsu-kun". Momoi's hair is long, like most of the popular girls at Seirin -and definitely not like her own: the longest that it had reached was shoulder-length- and Riko had not a clue as to what size she is. It's terrifying being compared to someone so powerful. As stubborn as Riko was, she still sees how her boys looked at the light-haired girl. It wasn't pretty seeing it because if just having someone near others made her insecure, she is not sure if they will ever listen to her the same way again. Thoughts that will be turned against her by the way the pink-haired girl's hips moved as she sashayed away from the team.

She is a plain girl with an attitude to help people hate her. She doesn't have a social life, because that's what people said when they thought she wasn't listening. She hears them all the same. During her breaks in class, she only went to get a juice or back to her Nintendo DS game on creating a strong team by training them the best that she could. She didn't play any of those girly games based on shojou and otome things that is expected of her and other girls.

She is belittled and underestimated for being only and but a girl. The void in which she stays in swallows her in whole at times. She didn't even try her best at being a girl. She still gets tangles in her hair and never buys anything to fix it or hairspray to hold it up. She doesn't get it cut professionally at those savvy new hair salons; she goes to Hyuuga's dad's barber shop. She only remembers to buy more bobby pins since the ones she bought always ends up being lost.

She sometimes skips washing her hair for a day after the designated day trying to devise plans for the big games at the Winter Cup and anything against the King Schools and Generation of Miracles. She doesn't put on concealer to hide the dark circles she gets under her eyes from pulling all-nighters, while her dad knocks on the door of her bedroom.

She sometimes forget to grab her wallet or lip balm. Her lips were almost always dry in the winter and her hands cold like the snow that fell from the sky in a warm classroom.

Her room isn't a totally messy place, but it could be compared to a somewhat neat boy's room. Her sweatpants and gym uniforms lay rumpled on the back of her chair. Her homework is scattered on her precious desk before she cleans it up the morning that she left for school or sometimes forgets about it.

She isn't going to lie about snorting or drooling because it will not be fair to not be honest. Sometimes in the rare occasion that Izuki pulls a seriously funny pun, instead of just plain out laughing she pfft's, starts snorting and then eases into laughing. It's also natural for her when times that she has a stuffy nose and lips parted that she wakes up in the morning to find a wet pillow case, and drool stains on the corner of her mouth.

Then she thinks about everything that she has ever done to be different without trying. She cut her hair short to avoid to much time being spent on herself. She owns a lot of t-shirts and her uniform because she needs to be able to move well as the boys do to. She doesn't mind having a plain face because she pities the things that happen to girls with such beautiful faces. She could find someone who likes her for her. Being a coach is all that she can do to help the basketball team and bring in her dad once in a while to help them out. They are devoted to fight for the title of Japan's number one. She spends her vacations on training her team because they make her day when they do their best. She doesn't mind if she doesn't confess to #4 on her team if it means that he will not concentrate on his game and athletic career during high school. She reassures herself that she isn't going to let people make sure that she was trampled on. She tells herself that she accepts herself even if no one else does. Even if not everyone likes her, she still had her team and her limited number of family members that respect her. Aida Riko was never going to forget her dad or her team for being there for her.

Author's Note:

This goes out to all of you girls out there. It's hard to feel happy some days and smiles may be fake, but we try out best, ne?

I'm planning on publishing a Valentine's Day Junriko fic next Friday, so wait for it. Count on a White Day one-shot following up.

I really want to know how you guys feel about this little one-shot because I've always written in a more shojou style. Tell me what you thought about it.

Word Count- 1,317

Date Updated: February 6, 2014

Signed,
Ivy