Chapter 1

Tap, tap, tap,…pause…tap, tap…

Black and yellow headphones on her dark hair and a satisfied, almost serene expression on her face, a girl hummed quietly, tapping her fingers absentmindedly to the beat. Nothing about the girl seemed to be outstanding, but somehow, she seemed different from the body of students around her.

She spotted enthusiastic upperclassmen promoting their clubs, almost overbearingly, to the slightly more youthful faces of the new first years. The girl actually spotted one person who was passing out fliers without saying a word.

"A shy upperclassman? How cute…" she thought, amused.

Just ahead of her, a group of baseball players stood awkwardly to the side. The person who seemed to be the captain gulped before his eyes hardened. As the captain, he had the weight of his whole team on his shoulders. They had barely the amount of members to play in official games. Recruiting incoming freshmen was a must, no, it was imperative! His shyness could not obstruct his team any longer.

The poor guy clenched his eyes and fists and yelled, "BASEBALL CLUB IS IN NEED OF PLAY-"

The captain's courageous burst, in fact, only served to scare the timid-looking freshman girls that he had failed to notice.

One girl, already nervous about starting her high school years, did not notice the can in front of her and stepped on it. As the girl's body started to fall forward, she could not help but squeeze her eyes shut and wait for those terrible few seconds pass with terror. She would fall forward on her face, make herself an utter embarrassment in front of everyone, become an outcast, not go back to high school, fail in finding a job, fail in lif-

A slender arm swiftly, but securely, grabbed the poor girl's waist and helped her stand.

"Oops, careful there. It would be a shame to hurt your pretty face, huh?" teary eyes met a suave grin.

Time seemed to slow once again as her savior's eyes shifted to a crescent shape. Her long, lush eyelashes barely hid her gentle, straightforward gaze.

The girl's legs wobbled again, now for a totally different reason. Her waist where the girl had held her seemed strangely warm, almost as warm as hers and the captain's face. More than two heartbeats were quickened from the scene as the incredibly cool girl left with a small wave.

The girl had unknowingly saved two people from having an embarrattack, also known as a heart attack from embarrassment.

"I- I want to be held," the captain swooned, shocking his teammates.

XXX

In the meantime, Koganei had brought a new student to the basketball club table. The fact that he was the one being brought did not fail to be noticed by Riko and Hyuuga. But really, the student's height and aura, even without his informal speech and sharp eyebrows, was pretty intimidating. Not that the coach and captain were afraid of him, but they chose to stay silent for the moment. They still wanted new members after all.

Really scary people pocketed these "things" somewhere in their brains and retaliated in a more private environment.

"Is this the basketball club?" the new student's gruff voice suited his appearance perfectly.

"…Yeah," Riko replied a beat later, surprised by his intense aura.

"I want to join the basketball club."

"What? Oh, welcome! I'm sure you know, but our school only opened last year. Our seniors are only second years, so I'm sure someone of your build would probably quickly…"

"I don't care. I'm going to leave after writing my name." The new student, whose name was now revealed, rudely interrupted Riko. The future Riko and Hyuuga would be slightly harder on his stretches, but the future Kagami would not even realize what he had done to receive such treatment because well, he was an idiot.

"Huh? You don't have a reason for joining?" Riko still asked.

"I don't have one. Basketball's the same, no matter where you go in Japan," Kagami said as he rose from his seat, crinkling the paper cup he had been given and throwing it over his shoulders into the bin—without looking. Really, the dramatic music on the background and his red hair and aura guaranteed that the paper cup would make its destination.

Well, that would have been the case if a hand had not shot out of nowhere to grab the paper cup right before its goal. Six pairs of eyes turned to gaze at the hand's owner, who then, proceeded to lightly "dunk" the cup into bin with one hand. It landed in a surprisingly loud thunk. The girl's movements seemed so ridiculously smooth and graceful that this whole process seemed to be in slow motion.

Six pairs of eyes were focused on her with mouths agape. All of them had varying amounts of comical expressions on their faces, Mitobe's being the least and Koganei the most.

Kagami was also surprised and pissed as the seconds passed by, but the proud tiger in him did not want to let the others to notice that he had snuck a glance back to make sure he made the goal. Besides her display had just had totally removed his from the club members' minds, so he just forced himself to keep walking away from the scene—not without multiple ticks on his forehead.

Who the hell was that girl? Kagami stomped away, still bewildered but too proud to take another glance.

It turned out to be that he was not the one with the most dramatic appearance music.

"I'm Rina, in case you wanted to know," the girl, whose name was now revealed, smiled. Her voice was cheerful and light, but also smooth. It reminded the others of a princely anime character but well… a girl.

Walking up to the table, she glanced down to see a lone form.

"Seems like Tetsuya has already been here," she remarked softly before looking at the all of those present around the table, one by one. "Sorry about that, I've been told that I'm unnecessarily showy," to which all of them agreed internally, "but I hope we can become good friends." Adding her basketball application form to the pile in from of Riko, Rina gave the others a small nod and smile before leaving in long, confident strides.

"Name: Rina. Reason for applying: I made a promise… It seems like this year's applicants are very…special," said Hyuuga the understatement of the year, "Wait, when did she even write on the form?!"

"You know… she was kind of cool though," remarked Koganei in a subdued manner while Mitobe nodded silently beside him.

"But wait… did someone named Tetsuya come by?" said Riko.

XXX

The sakura blossoms carried by the light spring breeze landed slowly and softly at her feet. She felt oddly ticklish and she wanted to burst out giggling. But when that perfect round sakura petal left her, carried by another breeze, Rina felt her heart clenching

Slowly,

Too gently to be painful but too soothing to be suffocating.

She was so close to him.

As some of you may know, all of my stories are in hiatus. I impulsively start to write and lose motivation somewhere along the way. I don't know what'll happen to this one but let me know how you feel about it and we'll see what happens!

Thanks for reading, really.

With love,

Aquaphir