Afterwards, she remembered most of the rest of that evening as a single joyful blur, punctuated by distinct moments of clarity: watching her team shaking hands with Rakuzan and the way Tetsu-kun held his chin high and proud as he met Akashi's eyes, even though Dai-chan was just about holding him up. The medals gleaming bright gold against Touou's red and black during the awards ceremony. The way her cheeks ached with smiling by the time they assembled for photographs, and the bone-deep satisfaction that came when Susa looked around and said, "Wait, where's Momoi-chan, she should be in the picture too," and the only response from the rest of the team was to shuffle over a bit to make room for her. The celebration afterwards when no one was ready to end the night and they descended on a restaurant in full force instead, and reenacted every play of the game over ramen, laughing late into the night, at least until the restaurant managers delicately hinted that they would like to close for the evening. Finally, the ride home, leaning against one of Dai-chan's shoulders while Tetsu-kun drowsed against the other.

It felt strange to slip back into normal routine the next morning, with no need to assemble extra pages of analysis or to need to get to school for an early strategy session—not to have anything more pressing on her schedule than her homework, in fact. It made her feel strange and off-balance, as though she had been carrying something heavy and had put it down, or as though there were something she was forgetting. That feeling didn't even included the cotton-wool sensation that came of several days' worth of short sleep finally catching up with her. Satsuki spent a significant portion of the day smothering yawns behind her hand and trying to look alert.

Practice was an entirely different, and more emotional, story: Imayoshi-san turned the more formal version of the post-game debrief and analysis over to Wakamatsu-san. He mostly stood back with a smile that was practically paternal as Wakamatsu-san walked the club through the analysis of their game against Rakuzan. He didn't do too badly, Satsuki decided privately, though his approach to picking things apart was more blunt force than delicate scalpel. That was probably going to be the new shape of the team—Wakamatsu-san would certainly be a wholly different kind of captain.

With the tournaments at an end, it was time for them all to devote time to preparing for exams. Harasawa-kantoku detailed the reduced practice schedule and made it clear that staying late for extra practice at the expense of one's exam grades would not be tolerated (and here he gave Dai-chan a very pointed look, adding, "This does mean you, Aomine-kun"). While he did that, Satsuki collected the third-years' resignation forms and resolutely gnawed on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from getting too emotional. None of the third-years would care to see her getting all soppy over what was only the natural course of events.

"Well," Imayoshi-san said after she'd collected the little stack of forms, "I reckon that's just about that." He looked around at the members of the club, wearing a small smile that was perhaps just a bit more genuine than the one he normally adopted. Certainly he sounded much less sarcastic than usual when he said, "We had a damn good run this year, and I want to thank you for it. I've been glad to be your captain, even when certain uppity brats whom I will not mention by name were making me crazy." He grinned at Dai-chan, who pulled a face at him while the rest of the club laughed. "I figure I'm leaving you all in good hands, and I know you'll keep up the good work." He looked around at them again and nodded. "That's all I've got to say. I'll let Wakamatsu-kun take it from here." He inclined his head to them and stepped back, and that was that—Wakamatsu-san stepped up to dismiss practice for the day and the club either dispersed or gathered around the third-years to wish them well.

Imayoshi-san detached himself from that particular group and pulled Wakamatsu-san along with him. "Momoi-chan," he said. "If you don't mind my presuming a little bit on your time, I figured you and I could get Wakamatsu-kun here all set up and oriented to his new duties."

"Of course I don't mind," Satsuki said, brisk, not least because his request accorded with a certain personal agenda that had been postponed quite long enough. "Let me tell the boys and I'll be right with you."

Dai-chan took the news cheerfully enough—"We'll just practice for a bit while we wait, right Tetsu?"—and Tetsu-kun smiled at her, small and amused, before giving her a discreet thumbs-up. Satsuki smiled back at him and went to join Imayoshi-san and Wakamatsu-san in the club office.

Imayoshi-san was just turning over the various keys that went along with being captain, explaining about the job of making sure that the gym was closed up for the night after practice ended—"The main offenders there will be Aomine-kun and Kuroko-kun, and there I advise you to make good use of Momoi-chan if necessary." He tilted a smile her way. "I reckon she's the only person the two of them'll listen to."

"Not quite the only person," she said, amused.

He shrugged that off blandly. "The only person who matters. Do try not to throttle Aomine-kun if you can help it. He's a brat, of course, but the fact remains that he's a fairly useful fellow to have around on the court. I recommend giving him laps until he drops if you're feeling particularly aggravated. Mind you, I never did figure out just how many laps that might be. If you do, let me know. It's a matter of scientific curiosity, you understand."

Wakamatsu-san took on a faintly sick look, possibly because he had just realized that he was now responsible for making Dai-chan behave like a civilized human being.

Imayoshi-san carried on, cheerfully evil about it. "I reckon I don't have to tell you that Momoi-chan is one of your best resources in general. You've already seen the good work she does for us. If you have any questions, I'm sure she'll be able to get you straightened out. Don't forget about Kuroko-kun either. He's got a solid sense for the flow of the game, and he also has some influence over Aomine-kun. I'm sure you'll figure out how to make the best use of that. Now, let's talk a little bit about paperwork..."

Wakamatsu-san looked like his head was spinning by the time she and Imayoshi-san had finally finished walking him through the mechanics that went into keeping the club running smoothly. He stumbled out of the office at last, and Satsuki couldn't help giggling after the door had closed after him. "Poor Wakamatsu-san."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," Imayoshi-san said, cheerful. "He'll learn to manage. If not, I'm sure you'll whip him into shape."

She laughed and they fell into a little silence, one that was somewhere between companionable and anticipatory. Satsuki glanced down and let her hair fall around her face as a screen for the way she was peeking at Imayoshi-san, who was looking at her with his expression gone grave. Finally they were at a place where there was no reason to hold back, no reason not to speak—finally, they could go ahead and get on with it. Her heart beat faster as the quiet unspooled between them, and she was hard-pressed not to startle with he cleared his throat. "So," he said. "There's something I was going to ask you."

Satsuki shook her hair back from her face and looked up, preferring not to miss anything by playing coy. "What was it?" She was pleased that she managed to sound calm saying that, rather than breathless.

"Well, considering the fact that we did win the Winter Cup and the fact that I'm all officially retired from the team and everything..." Imayoshi-san nudged his glasses up and delivered one of his most charming smiles. "I don't figure you'd care to tell me where you get your data from. Please?"

That was not the question she'd been expecting; Satsuki quashed the moment of disappointment. She had pretty well agreed to tell him if Touou won against Rakuzan, so first things first. "You have to promise me that you'll keep this to yourself."

Imayoshi-san held up a hand. "On my honor as a gentleman, I'll never breathe a word to anyone." When she raised her eyebrows at that, he grinned. "All right, I promise."

That would have to do. Satsuki clasped her hands together, arraying herself as demurely as she knew how. "As it so happens, I am the owner and moderator of the largest Kise Ryouta fan site and message board on the internet."

She left it to him to puzzle through the meaning of that announcement and enjoyed the first moment of his complete bafflement as to what that answer had to do with the question he'd asked, coupled with a certain amount of disbelief that she'd be involved in running a fan site for Ki-chan, and the moment when it clicked for him, clear in the way he widened his eyes. "You don't say," he murmured at last. "This fan site... I suppose some of its members take an active interest in his basketball?"

"Extremely active," Satsuki said, thinking of the endless threads devoted to Ki-chan, his teammates, and all his potential opponents.

Imayoshi-san regarded her and shook his head. "I wish I were wearing a hat, because I'd like to take it off to you." He flattened his hand against his chest and bowed to her. "That is the most amazing scheme I have ever had the privilege of hearing about. I salute you and your evil genius, Momoi-chan."

Satsuki smiled at him, pleased by his delight. "It wasn't a scheme, at least at first. It started out as a way to keep things organized when Ki-chan joined the club. Then I realized that I could outsource some of my research into our opponents, and, well..." She spread her hands. "I'm only human."

"That's still absolutely amazing." Imayoshi-san chuckled. "And I gather that he has no idea?"

Satsuki considered it. "No, I don't think he does. Or at least, he doesn't realize the extent of it. The message boards are member-locked, of course." She tapped her chin, thinking. "I'm pretty sure he just thinks of it as a sort of useful service, if he thinks about it at all."

Imayoshi-san laughed. "I hope you tell him someday."

"Someday, maybe," Satsuki said. "After he finishes playing basketball, or after I move on to other things. Once it's no longer useful, anyway." She'd worried about that a bit when they'd split up to go to different high schools, but fortunately that hadn't dimmed any of his fans' fervor.

"But of course." Imayoshi-san shook his head, smiling. "I do believe they miscounted the number of Miracles that came out of Teikou."

Satsuki couldn't keep herself from blushing. "Imayoshi-san..." That did come out a little breathless, even a little bit husky, but then, it wasn't many boys who complimented her brains rather than her bust, and no one else had ever even hinted that he thought she was a Miracle in her own right.

Imayoshi-san's smile gentled just a bit. "It's just a thought that has occurred to me from time to time."

"And that's why I'm glad we came to Touou," Satsuki told him softly. "Thank you, Imayoshi-san."

"It has been my pleasure." For once he seemed to be perfectly in earnest. "Truly it has." He paused then and Satsuki held her breath, waiting, because now, surely now was the time—He cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up. "Well, I reckon that's about it. Best go find Aomine-kun and Kuroko-kun so you can get yourself home and start catching up on your studying and your sleep."

The sudden briskness of his tone jarred her so much that at first he didn't even make any sense. Satsuki stared at Imayoshi-san, utterly confused. Go find Dai-chan and Tetsu-kun? But what about—what? "I don't think there's any rush," she said, puzzled by the sudden swerve in his mood and tone.

"Ah, but we mustn't be selfish." Imayoshi-san dusted his hands off. "Wakamatsu-kun will want to lock up and head home, too, you know, and I reckon Aomine-kun will need all the studying time he can get in." He gestured at the door. "Go on ahead, I'll close up shop here."

It was unmistakably a dismissal. Satsuki stared at him for a moment longer, wondering whether this was some sort of bizarre joke on his part. Imayoshi-san gazed back, cheerfully opaque to her scrutiny, and tilted his head at the door. "I—guess I'll see you later," she faltered out, utterly confused.

"Of course." But it sounded more rote than sincere. "Have a pleasant evening, Momoi-chan."

Satsuki walked out of the office and made her way to the gym in a daze, feet moving on autopilot as she reeled in the privacy of her own mind, questioning every assumption she had made about Imayoshi-san and their interactions. Had she really misread him so completely as that? Had she over-interpreted her data somehow? Had she overlooked some critical set of variables or assigned significance to factors that they did not deserve? Had she found correlations that existed only because she had wanted them to exist? How had she managed to be so completely wrong about everything?

She collected the boys without being aware of doing it, too sunk into her own bewilderment to give either of them more than the most absent of replies. Afterwards, she never had any idea what they said to her or to each other as they traveled home—had no idea whether they even noticed there was something fundamentally wrong or not. Perhaps they did, but Satsuki couldn't have said for sure, not when her confusion was slowly shading into bitter disappointment, like a cloud of ink spreading through a pool of water. She had spent months lost in private thoughts of Imayoshi-san, caught in her fascination with the way he played his basketball and the way he manipulated his own public face, adapting sarcasm and genial, good-natured malice and subtle mind-games to cover up the keenness of his intellect and his passion for the game itself and his dedication to his team and his kouhai—had she deluded herself into believing in all those things when they were, in fact, nothing but a façade? Could she have been that foolish and that badly mistaken? Was Imayoshi-san really no more than he had seemed to be, just an extremely pragmatic and personable master of manipulation?

Despite the fact that she was still exhausted from the hard work that had gone into the tournament, Satsuki did not sleep much that night.

Part of being Dai-chan's best friend was making sure he got himself to school of a morning, which Satsuki had perfected into an art. Her technique involved texting Dai-chan repeatedly as she got herself up in the morning and readied herself for school, at least until she got an intelligible response back from him, then swinging by his house to collect him. Generally she allowed herself a few extra minutes in her schedule in case it was necessary to motivate him into getting dressed and out the door, because Dai-chan tended to regard getting up in the mornings as a particularly unpleasant chore (unless it happened to be a game day). She no longer thought much about it, sending off her texts as a matter of course, and so was rather surprised when it only took a couple of them to get a reply back from Dai-chan. It was even more surprising to open her front door and find that Dai-chan was lounging outside, already waiting for her.

"Dai-chan," she said, diverted from the weary circle of her own thoughts by this disruption of their usual routine. "What's wrong?"

Dai-chan unfolded himself from where he was lounging on her front steps and yawned. "Nothing. Just figured I'd come meet you since I was up."

"Oh... well... thank you, I guess." Satsuki peered at him, confused, but he seemed all right. Still sleepy-eyed, of course, but that was normal for this time of day. She hitched her bag up on her shoulders and joined him.

"No problem." Dai-chan stuffed his hands in his pockets and ambled down to the sidewalk with her, falling into his usual easy saunter to match her shorter strides. He yawned again, which set her off too, and they laughed.

"Maybe we should stop for coffee," Satsuki said, rueful. "Since we have some time this morning."

"Sure, if you want to." Dai-chan bumped against her, casual and friendly. "Sounds good to me."

"It kind of does to me, too," Satsuki admitted. "Didn't sleep so well last night." Dai-chan made an interrogative noise, but she shook her head, declining to talk about it. "What has you up so early this morning?"

It wasn't usually too much trouble to get Dai-chan to talk about himself—if anything, the real trick was in getting him to shut up and pay attention to the world around him—but this time Dai-chan merely shrugged a shoulder. "Dunno. Guess I just felt like getting up."

Satsuki didn't see that there was much she could say about that, so she let it go. "I suppose you had plenty of time to sleep since you didn't have to stay up late to finish your homework."

As she had expected, Dai-chan immediately looked shifty. "Yep, sure did."

Satsuki sighed. "Dai-chan, they aren't going to let you play basketball if you don't pass your exams." She elbowed him. "And don't you go saying that I'll make sure you pass, either. You need to do this yourself."

That was the sort of speech that Imayoshi-san would have approved of—making Dai-chan take responsibility for himself. Satsuki bit down on her lip, vexed by the thought and by the fact that there wasn't any reason for him to have taken such an active interest in her and Dai-chan's affairs if he hadn't cared at least a little bit. Was there?

Dai-chan let that pass without complaining, which was a bit strange, and peered down at her instead. "You, uh. Wanna talk about it?" The question and his tone were both awkward, because Dai-chan generally preferred to leave anything to do with feelings strictly alone, but—gruff as he was, Satsuki thought he meant it.

"Talk about what?"

Dai-chan made an unhappy face. "I dunno what." He reached over and poked her cheek. "Whatever it is that was bothering you last night and just now. You wanna talk about it or what?"

Satsuki gripped the strap of her bag and stared down the street. "I don't—really know how to."

Dai-chan grunted. "Must be bad, then." He bumped his shoulder against hers again. "Is there anything I can do?" He paused, then added hopefully, "Someone I can punch, maybe?"

Satsuki couldn't help being tempted, just for a moment. Then she bit her lip. "I don't think so. It's... I think I misjudged my data somehow."

"What, really?" Dai-chan eyed her askance as they came to the corner and waited for the light. "No way. I don't believe it."

"I can't see what else it might be," Satsuki told him, frustrated. "Because I was wrong, and so I must have been reading things wrong somehow. I just don't know how."

"Huh." The light changed and they crossed the street. Dai-chan was looking thoughtful, which was sometimes a dangerous sign. "Nope," he said at length. "Can't see it, sorry. You're too careful with your analysis for that." He was perfectly sure, too, which was really very sweet of him, except for the fact that—"Only times I've ever known you to be wrong, it was because there was something you didn't know about."

Satsuki nearly stumbled, so surprised by that kind of insight coming from Dai-chan that she forgot to pay attention to what her feet were doing. Dai-chan stretched out one long arm to steady her, saying something she didn't really hear, being too preoccupied by his suggestion to listen closely. Was there something that she didn't know about? Something that might explain Imayoshi-san's reticence?

She tried to stem the sudden rush of hope—it was much, much too soon for that, even with the sudden dizzying prospect that there might be a chance still—but Dai-chan grunted anyway, satisfied. "That's better."

Satsuki laughed, because she was feeling better. "Thanks, Dai-chan."

He grinned at her, clearly pleased with himself. "No problem."

Satsuki set her shoulders, feeling lighter and more sure of herself—clearly the first thing she was going to have to do was revisit her data and look for the gaps and omissions in it in order to figure out how to correct those as necessary. It was always good to have a plan, so she walked the rest of the way to the coffee shop with Dai-chan in a far better frame of mind.

It was when she'd paid for her silly, fancy coffee and Dai-chan had acquired not only a coffee for himself but also a couple of pastries that she glanced at him, curious. "You're really not going to ask me what all this is about?"

Dai-chan had a mouthful of food, one big enough that it made his cheeks bulge out like a hamster's—in some ways Kagamin had been a terrible influence on him—and it took him a bit to be able to answer that. He finally swallowed the mouthful down and shrugged. "Naw," he said. "Figure you'll let me know when you're ready to."

Satsuki smiled at him, a little helpless in the face of that unquestioning trust, and reached up to ruffle his hair. "Thanks, Dai-chan."

He grinned at her and ducked away from her fingers. "Yeah, yeah. Don't mention it."

Tetsu-kun generally joined them at lunchtime. Dai-chan hadn't brought a lunch with him, so he was off foraging for his own meal when Tetsu-kun came in and sat down with her. He looked at her, scrutinizing her as he unpacked his lunch. He didn't say anything right away, which was his way. Satsuki allowed him his silence and thumbed through old forum posts, rebuilding her profile of Imayoshi-san from scratch in hopes that this would allow her to find anything that she'd overlooked before.

"You seem to be in a better mood today," Tetsu-kun said at last. "Did it go all that badly last night?"

Satsuki looked up from her phone. "It didn't go at all."

Tetsu-kun paused with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. "Sorry?"

It was rather comforting that he looked as puzzled as she'd been. Satsuki shrugged at him. "Dai-chan says that I must have missed something."

Tetsu-kun blinked and took a bite from his sandwich; he frowned as he chewed and swallowed. "But it was fairly obvious," he said at last. "I don't know what you could have missed."

"Neither do I." Satsuki brandished her phone. "I intend to figure that out." She paused, considering Tetsu-kun. "You really do think it was obvious?" Tetsu-kun was as much of an observer as she was, in his own way. His judgment tended to be sound, maybe more so than anyone else she knew.

Tetsu-kun did her the favor of thinking it over carefully as he ate rather than immediately jumping to reassure her. "I think so," he murmured. "He always speaks of you and to you so warmly."

Satsuki made a face. "And yet we had the perfect opportunity last night and he didn't say anything." At least, nothing definitive in the sense that she had been waiting for... though surely he wouldn't have compared her to the rest of the Miracles after his part in Touou's basketball club had ended, would he? She couldn't imagine what gain there could be in such a compliment if it hadn't been genuine.

"Strange," Tetsu-kun said as Dai-chan came ambling in with his arms full of food and plopped himself down on Tetsu-kun's other side.

"What's strange?" he asked.

Tetsu-kun glanced at Satsuki and then flicked his finger at one of the packages of anpan Dai-chan had brought with him. "Your idea of what constitutes a healthy meal."

"Healthy?" Dai-chan snorted. "Please. This is my idea of a delicious meal." He tore into the first plastic-wrapped anpan and took a large bite, and his laugh at Tetsu-kun's dubious expression sprayed crumbs everywhere. Tetsu-kun wrinkled his nose and began to complain about the mess.

Satsuki watched them, smiling, and wondered how much longer that particular development was going to take. Then she turned her attention back to her phone and those forum posts.

Anything worth doing was worth doing carefully and thoroughly. Between the turn to studying for exams and working with Wakamatsu-san and Harasawa-kantoku to begin sorting out the new shape of the team and figure out how to shuffle players around to best fill the new gaps in the starting line-up, plus beginning to assemble lists of middle-schoolers who might be solid recruitment opportunities, it took Satsuki three days to sort through all the information any of the members of her forums had ever uncovered regarding Imayoshi-san and then decide which things were truth and which merely rumor.

At the end of all that, to her deep frustration, she had not uncovered anything that she hadn't known before. Imayoshi-san didn't have any other romantic entanglements with girls or with other boys and seemed to be precisely the intelligent, somewhat underhanded captain that she'd come to know and respect. She hadn't been wrong, as far as she could tell, and if she had missed some factor, she did not know what it might have been.

That—made her just a little bit angry.

The afternoon after she'd come to the end of her new analysis, she caught Dai-chan before he could head to basketball practice. "I may be a little bit late today," she informed him. "Make my excuses for me, please?"

Dai-chan blinked at her. "Sure," he said, beginning to grin. "Satsuki, are you skipping practice?"

"I have something to take care of," Satsuki informed him. She lifted her chin. "It's important."

Dai-chan whistled. "It must be." He chuckled. "I'll let 'em know, I guess."

"Thank you." Satsuki watched him head off in the direction of the gym, set her jaw, and headed in the other direction—towards the library, where she was reliably informed that Imayoshi-san had taken to studying in the afternoons after school had let out for the day.

There were relatively few people in the library that afternoon, probably because it was the end of the week. Most of them were third-years wearing the haunted, desperate look that everyone worried about university entrance exams adopted. They paid Satsuki no mind as she prowled through the room. Imayoshi-san was not at any of the long worktables in the central area of the library; he had retreated to one of the small tables that were tucked away in the corners of the library, back in the privacy of the stacks. Susa was sitting with him and was actually the first one to glance up and see her.

If she weren't mistaken, it was a look of relief that crossed his face when he caught sight of her. He closed his book and notebook and reached for his bag to put them away. He stood, at which point Imayoshi-san noticed his activities. "Where are you going?"

"Somewhere else," Susa said, bland, and clapped him on the shoulder as he tipped a nod in Satsuki's direction.

Imayoshi-san looked up; the only thing that betrayed his surprise at seeing her was the faint widening of his eyes. "Momoi-chan," he said as Susa made his escape. "This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you—something for the club?"

"I'm not here about the club." Satsuki came around the table and seated herself in the space that Susa had just so helpfully cleared. It gave her the height advantage on him and forced him to tip his head back to look at her. "I have some things to say to you."

She'd known him long enough to be able to read the wariness in his smile. "Do you, now?"

"I do." Satsuki took a deep breath. "Apparently, if you want anything done around here, you have to do it yourself, so I want to know—do you like me or not?"

Imayoshi-san's expression went so blank that it could have been used for a mask. "Well, of course I like you, Momoi-chan, you're a very likable person—"

Satsuki jabbed his shoulder, stiff-fingered and hard enough to make him wince. "I want you to be honest with me," she said, angry, which made it difficult to keep her voice down in deference to the fact that this was the library. "I'm not asking whether you think I'm a pleasant person to be around, I'm asking you whether you think I'm a girlfriend kind of person. Am I?"

Imayoshi-san took his glasses off and began to polish the lenses industriously. "I reckon you will be one of these days for some young man or another, but I don't figure that's me."

Satsuki stared down at him, that flat refusal lodging somewhere behind her sternum and aching there, but—"Look me in the eye and tell me that." He was too fixated on his stupid glasses and wasn't looking at her, not directly, and that was always a sign that he didn't want to talk about some subject.

"Momoi-chan, I really don't think—"

She jabbed his shoulder again, right in the joint where he would feel it. "I like you," she said, enunciating each angry syllable clearly. "I want to be your girlfriend and I have wanted that for months. I have been flirting with you for ages and you have been flirting right back, so if you can honestly say that you don't like me in the romantic sense, then I want you to have the balls to look me in the face and say so."

Imayoshi-san's knuckles went white on the frames of his glasses; he took a deep breath. "I'm not sure this is—"

Satsuki cut across whatever temporizing thing he was trying to say. "Yes or no, Imayoshi-san. Do you like me or not?"

He looked up, face strange and bare without his glasses, and he was starting to look as irritated as she felt. "Yes, but—"

Satsuki didn't wait for him to finish that. "Finally." His shoulder was solid under her palm when she gripped it; he had just enough time to look startled before she leaned down and kissed him.

It wasn't a great kiss; the angle was strange and Imayoshi-san was too surprised to get into the spirit of it when Satsuki pressed her lips against his, but she didn't suppose it mattered too much. With any luck there would be other kisses later to make up for it. Satsuki kissed him until he made a sound against her mouth, and then she pulled back, pleased to see that she'd definitely caught him by surprise with that. Before he could try to regain control of the conversation, she plowed forward. "The tournament is over, and you've retired from the club. You do not have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or any sort of long-standing romantic attachment to anything besides basketball itself, and we have that in common. I will concede that studying for exams will certainly take up a lot of your time for the next few weeks, but I'll be busy with that, too. Besides, exams don't last forever. You're planning on attending school in Tokyo, so there's no long-distance factor to consider. There aren't any other problems that I can see, but I suppose I'll open the floor for objections now."

Imayoshi-san had listened to the list of possible obstacles and impediments with a strange expression, something a bit wry and sardonic. "And the fact that I am looking at Tokyo universities doesn't bother you at all?"

Satsuki waited for him to elaborate on that, but he seemed to feel that the question was self-explanatory. "No. Should it?"

Imayoshi-san put his glasses back on and sighed. "I'm two years older than you, Momoi-chan."

"Yes, and...?" When he continued to look at her, clearly being patient, Satsuki frowned at him. "Is that it? You're two years older than I am? That's your objection?"

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. "I'm older than you, I was your team captain and your senpai, and I have a duty not to pressure you into doing anything that you might later regret—will you stop that?"

Satsuki jabbed him a fourth time for good measure; he caught her hand and held it away from his shoulder. "Do I look like I'm being pressured into something I might regret?" she demanded. "Do I look like I would let myself be pressured into anything I don't damn well want to do? Stop being so stupid. I know you're smarter than this, which is why I was attracted to you in the first place!" She scowled at him. "Although if you keep on being an idiot about deciding what's best for me without asking me what I think, I may change my mind."

Imayoshi-san looked up at her, blinking a bit as though he hadn't expected that kind of anger. His smile tilted just a bit, turning rueful. "It does sort of seem like all the pressure at the moment is coming from you." He paused, hesitating a bit. "Are you really sure that you wouldn't rather have someone else? From your own class, perhaps?"

"Quite sure," Satsuki said firmly. "None of them are you."

His smile went softer and warmer. "Now that's the kind of thing that would give a man an exaggerated sort of ego." He changed his grip on her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers and sliding his thumb against the inside of her wrist. Satsuki shivered at the lightness of that touch. "I do have to say... none of the girls in my class are you."

"You don't say," Satsuki said, but it lacked some of the acid edge that she'd meant for it to.

"I do say." Imayoshi-san stroked his thumb up over her palm and rubbed little circles there. "If I apologize for being presumptuous, will you consider giving me the chance to make it up to you?"

"I might do that," she said, her breath coming a bit quicker. "It depends on the apology."

"I see." He was laughing now, silent behind the lenses of his glasses. "In that case... please forgive me for being a presumptuous idiot, Momoi-chan. It was only that I couldn't dare imagine being so lucky as to have my deep regard for you reciprocated when our stations in life are so different."

Satsuki stared down at him, absorbing that. "I have no idea what possesses me to find sarcasm sexy," she sighed. "Also, it amazes me that you can have that many scruples for someone with a reputation for being a cold-hearted bastard."

Imayoshi-san grinned at her. "What can I say? I am vast and contain multitudes." He stroked her palm and looked up at her, beseeching. "Am I forgiven yet?"

"Provisionally." Satsuki couldn't quite help herself—she smiled at him. "Don't do that again."

"Perish the thought." He drew her hand closer and brushed his lips across her knuckles. His breath was warm against her skin and made her shiver again. "Now, about the part where I make it up to you..."

As she had hoped, their second kiss was much better than the first.

end

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