The Truth Would Be too Much

by Katty

In the oddly quiet Seigaku High School Tennis club room the sibilant slide of nylon was deafening as Oishi pulled off his club issue sweatpants and folded them haphazardly. He his tugged on his uniform pants and buttoned the waistband, which settled easily into place then slid just a bit to low. Oishi tugged them upwards.

The bottom hem of his black school uniform pants still hung on the floor, but his mother had insisted they buy the larger size, because she had insisted that Oishi would grow into them, and she was so insistent that Oishi was loathe to insist that he probably wouldn't be growing much more. He pulled off his practice shirt and formed it into a loose cloth ball that fell apart as he shoved it roughly into his dark blue shoulder bag.

Oishi looked around, settled his vision in the direction of the door, and sighed, tugging absently at one of his black forelocks. He wondered in a sort of half formed way why he was still alone. He'd already finished sweeping the locker room, but Eiji still hadn't returned from this first- year garbage duties.

He turned from the door and pulled on his school uniform shirt and threw all of his considerable concentration into buttoning it; his fingers flew down the front of his shirt. He bent to grab his tennis shoes from the floor and was immediately distracted by the chipped paint on the edge of Eiji's locker. He paused to pick at it with one blunt, somewhat chewed fingernail for a moment before straightening up and opening his locker. He removed his black uniform shoes then tossed in his tennis shoes, which slapped the locker with a dull metallic thud that Oishi could feel in his chest.

He pulled on his black school shoes, still preoccupied by the chipped paint. Oishi crouched down and picked at it with a fingernail once again, wondering if anyone else had ever just sat here and done the same. Idly wondered what that hypothetical person could have been thinking on the cool locker room floor. His thoughts become fixated on this hypothetical person and the rest of the club room melted away, the colors oozing together and pooling on the floor as he continued to pick reflectively at the blue paint.

"Hey, Oishi!"

The former vice-captain's head snapped up from its bent position and into the sharp edge of his conveniently opened top locker. Oishi put an ineffective hand to his throbbing skull. Tears swelled at the corners of his clenched eyes as he sucked in a breath through gritted teeth.

The redhead gasped audibly, "Oh, damn..." Eiji's eyes were wide and he couldn't manage to collect his thoughts well enough to assemble them into a sentence.

"I...I didn't..." his right hand moved forward and back in a sort of halting two-step,"...are you..." Outstretched fingers finally found their determination and moved decidedly towards the site of injury. In a fit of preservation Oishi knocked his doubles partner's hand away with an instinctive wave of his free arm.

Eiji's arm fell loosely at his side as Oishi managed to peel open one watery eye and look up with a tight smile. "No, it's fine, Eiji." He vaguely noticed that Eiji's cheeks were unnaturally pale and his eyes were unnaturally wide. The overall expression made something inside Oishi throb painfully before he squashed his own observation.

"It's fine Eiji," he heard himself repeat through a muffled sort of ringing in his ears. "Just get changed so we can go."

The tips of his flipped hair seemed to droop as Eiji dropped his head in an uncharacteristic little "okay."

Oishi turned way as Eiji pulled his shirt up over his head. It had never bothered him before, Eiji unclothed, had never really registered. A crease formed between Oishi's brow and he tried to recall what that lack of awareness had felt like as he racked his mind for a reason to run from the room. He settled for walking to the far corner.

He studied his face for a moment in the mirror by the sink. The corners of his eyes turned down instead of up. Oishi gingerly pulled his hand from the back of his head and grimaced at the smear of bright red in the center of his palm. He turned the rusty faucet and thrust his hand beneath the spray, vaguely hoping that his hair would clot the cut enough until he could take a shower. At least it wasn't bleeding much. He looked up at the mirror and his eyes stuck to the motion reflected on its surface. Eiji's white button-up billowed open as he bent to lace his black shoes. Oishi fixed his focus firmly back on his own face as he reached to turn off the water and grab a paper towel. His had just focused his attention on his nibbled cuticles while he dried between his fingers when a dismayed cry from behind caused him to start.

He turned back to see Eiji staring down at his lopsided white collar with an expression of amused betrayal painting his animated face. Bright blue eyes looked up, expectantly. Oishi had explained to him far to many times to count—his patient tone increasingly strained each time—that if a shirt is buttoned from the top with the collar already lined up, the whole messy lopsided business can be avoided. It was an old joke by that point.

Oishi smiled faintly, and with a decidedly staged look at his doubles partner, shook his head. The fidgeting redhead, for his part, swallowed his smile, unbuttoned then redid his shirt with extraordinarily rapid fingers and ghosting touches.

Oishi snuck over to grab his bag and pulled it onto his shoulder quickly. It thumped against his hip, still a bit bruised from a nasty spill he'd taken during practice earlier in the week. He let out the breath he hadn't meant to hold, the torrent of air echoing off the cement walls, and turned to face his partner.

"We should get going, huh?" Oishi asked, while Eiji grabbed his practice things and threw them into his bag with wild abandon. A white sock landed near Oishi's feet.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying." His practice shoes made an odd drum cadence as he carelessly tossed then into his locker, but his gleaming jewel red racket was settled lovingly into its case. Oishi tossed the sock at Eiji, who caught it with practiced ease.

"San-kyu," he smiled broadly at his partner and Oishi could hardly contain his return grin. [1]

"Yoru welucom." [2]

Eiji threw the sock on top of his textbooks and pulled his own bag onto his shoulder and made a break for the door, not the least troubled by little things like zippers. Oishi watched in wide eyed horror as Eiji stepped purposefully out the door and a spare pair of black and white athletic briefs threatened to tumble over the edge of his bag and onto the cement.

As Eiji was turning back around to see what was taking his doubles partner, Oishi's brain caught up and he made a lunge for it.

"Wait, Eiji."

"Eh?" Eiji's brows furrowed in confusion as Oishi grabbed and spun him around.

Oishi sighed and he pushed the underwear back in the bag and grabbed the zipper. "You're going to lose your clothes if you go around with your bag wide open." The zipper made a click as it finished sealing the bags contents inside. Oishi sighed again, "You never think before you do something."

The tone came out harsh, much harsher than intended, and the amused expression on Oishi's face, the one that would have made it all right was behind Eiji, who could only look at the ground.

"...maybe you're right..."

Oishi was already walking out the door. He looked over the shoulder strap of his bag, "Mmn? What was that, Eiji?"

Eiji's head snapped up, grin affixed solidly to his face. "Nothing, nothing at all." Eiji hopped out of the doorway and jogged down the path to the front gate before turning and walking backwards as he talked at his following doubles partner. "I'm soo hungry!" he yelled as he kicked a little rock back along the path towards Oishi. He turned back around and started walking forward with his hands behind his head, legs kicking much higher then necessary. "Hey Oishi, let's stop and get some burgers."

Oishi's steady pace faltered for a moment before he continued to follow the energetic boy, studying his shoes as he walked. "I can't today, Eiji. I told my mom I'd be home for supper."

From somewhere far ahead of him, Oishi heard a faint "oh."

The silence that fell between them was steady, impenetrable, and it ticked away like hours. Somehow, between those consciously silent breaths and eerily quiet steps they reached the front gate of Seigaku High School.

Eiji fell back against the cement wall with an exasperated musical sigh and looked right at his doubles partner. "Is it really important?"

Oishi blinked, "Well, not particularly."

Eiji jumped forward and clapped his hands together, smile infecting his face. "Ah! Then you can just call you mom and tell her that you won't make it tonight." The bouncy tennis player started digging in one of his bag's unzipped side pockets, "You can just use my phone and..." he trailed off as he diverted all attention to navigating his bag's contents.

Oishi let out his breath through his nose and looked at the intense concentration on his partners face as his arm rooted around in his bag pocket. "Eiji, I..."

"I know it's in here somewhere..."

"Eiji..."

"I saw it just this morning when I...ah, here..."

"Eiji!" The redhead immediately stopped handing the phone to Oishi mid- motion, eyes wide at the other's uncharacteristically strong tone.

Oishi sighed and paused for a moment to gather his thoughts and remove the urge to shout from his voice, then continued in a very soft and patient tone. "I can't just skip out on my parents without any having a decent excuse."

The words hung in the space between the Golden Pair for a long, painful moment, until Eiji broke the tense quite with a sort of vague "oh, right" as he turned away and slid his phone back into his bag.

A sort of soft strangled noise escaped Oishi's throat as he reached for his retreating partner, his arm completely ineffective at filling the space between them. "Eiji...you know you could come over and eat with us..."

The boy paused for a moment, head lifted ever so slightly at the suggestion, but it fell back down and his shoulders slumped as he buried his hands in his pockets. "No, I think I just want to go home now."

Oishi pressed on, voice growing tight, "You know you're perfectly welcome to..."

The flipped ends of Eiji's hair bounced a little as he shook his head, still not looking back, "It's fine, Oishi, really."

Oishi's hand fell back a little, then dropped to his side. "Ah, well...see you tomorrow then."

The famous Golden Pair ambled through the front gate of Seigaku High School, then turned and walked down the sidewalk in opposite directions.

Japanese Notes:

1) "Thank you" (English)

2) "You're welcome" (English)
(I try to avoid fangirl Japanese, but in this instance I couldn't figure
out another way to portray the heavily accented English words.)

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