Commission

In which Miyuki Kazuya tries to get the better of Takashima Rei

Miyuki Kazuya was the only Seidou student who was allowed to talk to Takashima Rei the way he did without getting slapped with detention. Takashima knew she ought to have put her foot down from the start, but the boy was a special case in so many ways that she had given up rebuking him for his cheek early on in their association. By now, some three-plus years after their first encounter, Takashima no longer said anything about it, provided that he kept the worst of the impertinence to times when no one else was paying attention to their conversation.

But in spite of her being accustomed to Miyuki's failure to address her with all the proper terms of deference from a student to a sensei, it still caught her by surprise when the kid notched up the level of mischief several weeks into his second year at Seidou. Of course, it had everything to do with the first-year southpaw pitcher she had been so determined to recruit.

"Reiii-chaaan," Miyuki's teasing voice curled around her unexpectedly as she was walking alone past the equipment storage sheds one spring afternoon. "Don't you owe me a commission?"

She stopped in her tracks and turned to see the teenager lounging against the shaded side of the largest shed, tossing a baseball up and down in his right hand, his wicked brown eyes gleaming behind his wraparound glasses with every sentiment inappropriate for a 16-year-old.

"Why are you here when the rest of the team is training?" she asked in the neutral tone she had learnt to adopt with him for those occasions when she knew that attempting to sound stern would be of no use whatsoever.

"Well? How much is he worth?" Miyuki pressed on. "And what's my cut?"

"Miyuki-kun, you'll have to be more explicit about what you mean," she stated blandly as she adjusted her spectacles to fix a harder look on him. But naturally, she already knew what he was getting at – she knew him a little too well, it seemed.

"You totally pimped me out to reel in that noisy southpaw brat from Nagano prefecture, didn't you?" he chuckled. "I'm pretty sure he chose this place in the end because he'd had that delicious taste of me as his first proper partner. And he's coming good bit by bit – not a losing proposition at all – so what's my cut for being whored out by you to help Seidou hook him?"

His words were deliberately calculated to shock, and on some level, Takashima was slightly taken aback by the blunt imagery. But on so many other levels, she barely blinked because… well, because it was Miyuki Kazuya, and if there was anything the boy worked almost as hard at as he did with baseball, it was mastering the art of convincing everyone he knew that he was the ultimate prick.

"Miyuki-kun," she said lightly, a barely-there smile touching her gloss-slicked lips. "I seem to remember that you were the one who volunteered to service the boy the moment Azuma-kun tried to do him over. In fact, I didn't even know you were there when I was showing him around our establishment – until you chirped up and asked to have a go with him."

"Oh, come on, Rei-chan. You knew perfectly well that was my favourite hangout spot at the time – especially if there was a chance I'd get to be entertained by Azuma-san ripping a new one into everyone around him. And you had to know I wouldn't be able to resist rolling the brat's balls around in my hand once you sold him to me as a very interesting prospect," Miyuki responded, his grin growing.

"Although you've structured your argument to sound plausible on the surface, it's off the mark. However, even if there were any truth to it, I'd say that you've already taken your cut many times over."

"Eh?" Miyuki asked as a shade of curiosity crept into his grin. "Care to elaborate on that assertion, Rei-chan?"

"Let's see now…" Takashima smiled sweetly, adjusting her glasses again by a fraction of an inch before folding her arms and looking keenly at Miyuki. "You couldn't keep your hands off him the moment you set eyes on him – you were all over him, and I've never seen you voluntarily get quite so physical with anyone before or since. The boy's cuddly, isn't he? Merely copping all those feels with him squirming under your arm should have cost you a nice wad of yen, but there's more."

"Oh, is there?" Miyuki queried, keeping his grin very much in place.

"Indeed there is. You've been repeatedly using him to indulge your masochistic streak since day one. You've provoked Sawamura-kun over and over again since the new term began, knowing full well that he would grab you by the throat and shake you up a bit – and you love that, don't you? Did you think I didn't know?"

Miyuki's grin was still intact, but it was losing a smidgen of its gleam.

Takashima went on: "In fact, Miyuki-kun, you're starved of it, aren't you? Thanks to the prickly reputation you've taken such pains to polish, no one except for the excessively physically violent Kuramochi-kun ever tries to get rough with you – and even he only dares to aim a kick at you once in a long while when you're being unbearably cocky. But Sawamura-kun is inexperienced and volatile, and you know you can rely on him to give it to you just the way you like it, without him realising that you enjoy it and that he should perhaps be charging by the minute for it. I'd say, therefore, that you've taken more than your commission already, and that it was nice doing business with you."

Miyuki stared at the assistant coach for a single silent moment, then burst into wholehearted laughter in his inimitable way, wrapping an arm around his midriff as if to hold his insides together. "Ha ha ha! I should have known I wouldn't be able to bully Rei-chan into stumping up some payment!"

She said nothing, only watched as he swiftly recovered from his amusement and shifted his eyewear back into place to make his next strategic move. It was one he hadn't made use of in a long time, but he had resorted to it once or twice when something she said to him hit too close to home and he couldn't immediately see an outcome to their argument that would favour him.

That move was to slide his pretty brown eyes down to her chest, and ogle her assets a little. It was something he had done as a mere child of 13, upon their very first meeting, and Takashima had known instantly that the boy, talented or not, was going to be a handful. To be fair to him, he had had the sense of decorum not to blatantly ogle her figure ever since becoming a student at Seidou, but once in a while, when he couldn't get the better of her, he'd resort to the tactic simply because he had seen her disapproving, red-faced reaction to his behaviour more than three years ago, and wanted to get a rise out of her.

"Rei-chan is as ample as ever… in her reasoning," the teenager chuckled, finally dragging his eyes off her breasts to look her in the face again.

She'd become so good at handling teenagers that she no longer coloured when Miyuki did that, however pretty he might be. Indeed, she found it amusing that he would still try that move when he surely had to know by now that it was nothing short of conceding defeat to her.

"I'm glad you've noticed," she said matter-of-factly. "I have to be at the top of my game to herd a bunch of cats like the Seidou baseball team, especially when the cheeky Cheshire among them has set his sights on the wide-eyed new kitten."

"Nonsense," he laughed. "Kantoku has officially partnered me with Monster Kitten and I like it that way."

"Monster Kitten-kun is extremely attractive in his own way, but he doesn't quite stir the heart the way the puppy-eyed koneko does, does he?"

"Now you're mixing your species up – make up your mind, Rei-chan."

"I can mix them up all I please as it's a regular zoo here. Seriously though, Miyuki-kun, tread with care. You're still neutral enough to be excited by every interesting pitcher who pairs up with you, and that's how it should be, but the child gets to you in ways others don't, and you're lucky you've only shown that to me so far."

"Eh?"

"When he insulted Chris-kun out of ignorance, the way you flew at him… of course I know that part of it had to do with how much you admire Chris, but the other part of it was because it was Sawamura saying those words, aren't I right? Others have said worse things about people you deeply respect, and you've never lost control to the extent you did there. He does things to you, doesn't he, the bright-eyed kitty?"

"Huh," Miyuki scoffed. "Only you with your freaky capacity to see things where no one else can see them would say something like that."

"My freaky capacity to see things where no one else can see them is exactly what makes me such a brilliant recruiter, wouldn't you say? You were my first attempt at poaching talent for this school, after all."

Miyuki's naughtiest grin returned as he drawled: "Some eye you have for talent. You tried to reel me in even though I was so underage. Paedophile."

"Pity for you then that you're much too old to interest this paedophile any more," she remarked before turning away from him to resume her brisk walk past the storage sheds to the coach's office. "But remember – watch your teenage hormones around Kawaii Koneko-kun."

"Teenage hormones?" he called after her, raising his voice a little to make sure she could hear every syllable over the firm thudding beat of her high heels against the dry dirt path. "I don't have anything so mundane."

"The last thing I want is a massive catfight over Holler Kitty," she remarked, ignoring his last comment, without so much as turning her head. "You're not the only one who can't keep his hands off him, you know? Your precious Chris-senpai and only-friend-forever Kuramochi-kun are getting to be just as bad as you – and the child is still too sweetly stupid to charge them a fee either."

She was no longer looking at him, but she took some pleasure in hearing the huff of breath he let out in response to her comment – it was meant to sound like his usual scoffing noises, but Takashima Rei, who knew him so well, could just hear in that huff the taint of annoyance and dawning realisation escaping to mist the spring air in front of Miyuki Kazuya's face.

Note: It's not my plan to give this story a strictly sequential or traditionally chronological plot. It will just be a chain of somewhat-intertwined chapters that look at things through the eyes of the adults at Seidou.