ASK FOR THE SKY

Chapter 1: "The way you look at me."

Truly, madly, deeply in love was the great Fuji Syusuke, tennis tensai of Seigaku. Truly, madly, deeply unsettled was the object of his affections.

"Eh—um—Fuji, I'm fine," mumbled Tezumi Sachie, the girl who must have been born under a whole constellation of indecently lucky stars. At this very moment, she was due to walk out a door held upon especially for her by one of Seigaku's most eligible bachelors, who had also insisted on carrying her belongings. However, the sight of him clearing her way while weighed down by four heavy bags—her backpack and tennis racket holder, and his—did not delight her. He was only being an excessively perfect gentleman, of course. Which was kind of nice. At the same time, it was a door. Stepping forth she pushed it open wider still. "Here—you go ahead. You're carrying so much."

But he refused to budge. She eventually gave in and went through the dratted contraption so as not to hold up everyone else. One schoolmate, a Third Year girl, gave her a look of such intense jealousy that Tezumi physically wilted. Fuji noticed none of this. disengaging from the door he set out for the tennis courts, humming cheerfully. Tezumi followed, tugging on the strap of her bag. "At least let me hold on to this one. You look like a pack mule. Everybody's staring."

This actually had nothing to do with the bag. Dating Fuji was like dating a celebrity. Staring was something that just kind of happened.

"But I can't let my precious girlfriend carry something so heavy," protested the excessively perfect gentleman.

"Fuji, I play tennis! I can handle a couple of books."

"Of course you can. But I want to do this for you. Please?"

Tezumi blushed, which made her scowl. She peeked at him and his sweet honest smile. Forcing herself to roll her eyes, she muttered, "Do what you like."

They parted ways at the courts. Fuji carefully placed her things on a bench. "Could we go somewhere together afterwards?" he asked, hopeful and the slightest bit unsure.

"Yeah, of course," she said, trying to sound relaxed and casual, but her voice came out high and wobbly. How mortifying. She needed to get a grip already. The last thing she needed was to come off as one of those girls who swooned and fainted over a guy. Because she wasn't. One of those girls, that is. She was just in her first relationship, coincidentally with a boy she kind of really liked. A little nervousness was normal. Right? Right?

Fuji waved and left. Bent over to get a racket out, straight black hair shielding her face from view, Tezumi finally allowed a wide grin to unfurl on her face with a flourish. She wouldn't have admitted it dangled above a snake-infested pit, but she felt like the happiest person in the world.

"You're attracted to me."

"That's ridiculous. I'd have to be crazy."

"You are. About me."

Oshitari Yuushi smirked. Any other girl would have disappeared under a landslide of her own good fortune, but not Jukumaru Hizashi. In the face of his charming attentions she was putting up a fierce and energetic resistance. It was hilarious.

"I keep telling you that I don't have the smallest, tiniest, nanoparticle of interest in you. Why are you still doing this?

"Because you're stubborn and in deep, deep denial," he drawled agreeably. "I can't possibly allow someone who admires me so to remain in such an unhealthy state of mind, can I?"

Hizashi's jade-green eyes flashed. If she had been a low-born, excitable commoner with no self-restraint, like those people who attended Seigaku, she would be shaking with indignation. But the Jukumaru heir was of finer breeding than that. In the true Hyotei fashion she stuck her nose high in the air, turned sharply on her heels, and beat a dignified retreat, brown ponytail swaying along with her clipped gait.

Chuckling, Oshitari rejoined his teammates, with whom he had been on the way to the tennis courts before bumping into the physical manifestation of denial known as Jukumaru Hizashi. He motioned for them to move along.

Ohtori Choutaro peered curiously over his shoulder. "Who was that, Oshitari-senpai?"

"A girl in love with me."

Choutaro did a double take, turning around fully to squint at the figure escaping through the school gates. "…Really?" he asked, unable to keep the doubt out of his voice.

"Yes. She just won't admit it yet."

The Third Year regulars were briefly united in an internal groan. Their resident tensai had, for no other reason than to amuse himself, decided to take up the tiresome and completely pointless task of extorting a confession out of this essentially random girl in his class. They mostly understood that the challenge entertained him. Mostly.

"Not that I'm anyone to tell your twisted mind what's supposed to be fun, but she just looks like a lot of trouble to me," said Shishido Ryou.

"And, like, what the hell, Yuushi? She's not even hot or anything," added Muhaki Gakuto.

Oshitari graced them with a superior smile. True, Hizashi was uncompliant. So unladylike, though it was hardly surprising, knowing her family. Knowing her mother. And, true, she was not exceptional in either appearance or wealth or any of the traits considered desirable in women. He could expect to gain nothing from extracting her confession of undying love except personal satisfaction, despite that the extraction would probably take nothing short of surgery.

But Oshitari Yuushi had been dealt such staggeringly wonderful cards in life—if they were any better, he would be Atobe—that personal satisfaction was one of the few things not at his fingertips. Bored with stagnant success, he relished fresh adversities to conquer, and Hizashi, who refused to acknowledge her obvious infatuation with him, bleating feeble protests of indifference, tickled his playful side.

She'd yield like the rest of them eventually, of course. But she put up a sufficiently vigorous fight that getting her to admit her feelings could be considered a triumph of sorts. If it wasn't such a creepy thing to do, he'd be rubbing his hands together in anticipation. He was going to enjoy this a lot.

Tezumi had never ranked among Seigaku's Most Popular. Too shy to enjoy much attention and too impatient to dole out social niceties, she had long since given up on being any kind of public figure. All the same, she was not very happy to find that her modest popularity had flopped over and died.

A tennis ball slammed onto her side of the court with the violence clearly intended by its dispatcher. Tezumi didn't even try to return it—not that she could have—hoping that the taste of petty victory would placate her opponent, one dangerously displeased vice-captain Shimoda Magisaki.

"Game and match, Shimoda, six games to love."

They shook hands at the match, during which Saku squeezed. Tezumi returned to the bench with her things on it, flexing pinched fingers. Takahashi Hitomi was there, waiting. She handed Tezumi an water bottle.

"Isn't it nice that everyone's being so mature?" Tezumi grumbled, accepting it.

"They're in shock," said Hitomi generously. "Give them some time to adjust."

Tezumi was not inclined to do so. The whole situation was ridiculous. Not only had she become the archenemy of every girl whose hopes and dreams she had cruelly shattered by agreeing to date Fuji, but she had also incited the ire of everyone who had ever wanted to date any of the male regulars. (Saki didn't even like Fuji, setting her sights above him on Tezuka.) "It's not my fault they're not going out with the people they want."

"I never said it was. But, you know, no one on that team has been romantically involved before. A lot of girls probably preferred to think that the boys weren't interested in dating."

"The rest of them probably aren't."

"Then you just snagged the one exception. You're special."

"And isn't that turning out so well for me?"

The end of practice came extremely welcome. Tezumi swiftly stowed away her racket and got the hell out of there, taking refuge outside in the deserted area outside the school library, which was about to close. Fuji found her sitting on a low brick wall, swinging her legs idly. He practically ran to her. "Tezumi! Why did you come all the way over here?"

Telling him would most likely make things worse, since he would then try to do something about it, and that was sure to backfire. Horribly. "I like it here. Ready to go?"

"I've been ready since this morning. Where should we go first?"

"First? I need to be home for dinner, you know."

She wished he wouldn't look quite so dismayed. It was disproportional to the cause. And it made her blush.

"Are you sure? I was looking forward to eating out with you as our first official date… But if it's too much trouble, I can wait." He sighed.

"Fine! Fine, I'll call my mom," Tezumi said hurriedly, whipping out her cellular phone. "Just, stop—doing that."

He tilted his head in puzzlement. "Doing what?"

"Being so—mmrrph." She ignored him in favor of dialing. Half a minute later, she put the phone away again. "Okay. Got the green light."

Fuji smiled. Tezumi's hackles rose instinctively. It was a sweet smile, definitely, but it was far, far, lightyears away from being honest.

"I knew you'd make it all right," he said happily.

Tezumi thought she should be more annoyed about having fallen prey to his little manipulations, but brushed the thought off carelessly. It was not the first time, and she could count on it not being the last. "I get to choose which restaurant."

Fuji chuckled. "Of course, of course. Anything you want."

"Seriously, why?"

"Because you're obstinate."

"About being truthful, yes I am. Why can't you just accept what I say?"

"Because I can tell you're lying. How long do you think we've known each other, Hizashi?"

For much too long, in her opinion. She aimed and swung. The tennis ball rebounded off the wall with a small ping. She swung again, glad to already be hitting something. It saved her reception of Oshitari from becoming too uncivilized.

They were at a small park near Hyotei where she liked to relax after classes for a while before going home. It was a bit run-down, but there was a sturdy wooden bench that had cleaned up nicely after some dusting, a single tennis court with a sagging net, a cement wall, and bushes all around that provided some blessed privacy. Before now.

"How did you find me, anyway?" she asked, angry that her space had been invaded—by an insufferable twat like him, no less!

"Your father told me. I phoned your house."

"My father?" she repeated incredulously. "Told you?"

"He seemed very eager for us to maintain good relations," Oshitari reported, amused.

"Then I can go back and tell him that you're failing miserably on your end," Hizashi said tightly.

"How so? I take the time to talk with you—"

"Which I hate," she pointed out.

"—and you're hopelessly in love with me, so I'd say I've succeeded admirably."

Hizashi missed her shot. The tennis ball zoomed past her and rolled to a stop near Oshitari's feet. No matter how many times and how many versions of "you're attracted to me" she heard, she couldn't become jaded enough to let that particular proclamation slide. "What exactly makes you think I feel anything but increasing irritation for you?" she demanded.

"The way you look at me," Oshitari said, quietly, almost solemnly, as though… But then he smirked. "Your eyes smolder with longing and affection every time you—"

Hizashi sneered. "I doubt that. Why would I fall for a guy who's too much of a jerk to pick up and pass back a ball that's five inches away from him?"

Oshitari cocked a brow. He scooped up the ball and tossed it to her. "There. Are you going to declare your undying devotion to me now?

Hizashi turned her gaze heavenward.

On the way home, Hizashi looked back on the conversation and decided that "increasing irritation" could not contain the scope of her animosity toward that twat. What upset her most about the whole situation was not that he was rudely disrupting her heretofore peaceful life with these conceited allegations about her feelings for him, but that he was right.

As per usual when the issue came up, she raged at herself with the violence of an erupting volcano. He was an arrogant, self-absorbed, shamelessly inconsiderate twat whom she should be cheerful to see stricken off the face of the earth forevermore. It was true that he was a talented, capable person, not to mention—she wanted to slit her own throat for even thinking this—quite good-looking. But his abhorrent qualities far, far outweighed his acceptable ones, and all in all he was the singularly most intolerable human being she'd ever had the grave misfortune of meeting, so she had no business whatsoever having this stupid, juvenile, repulsive crush on him.

Hizashi came to herself on the bus, gripping a handlebar tightly and breathing deeply. That moment when he'd said, "The way you look at me," she'd thought… But he'd known that, obviously. That was why he'd said it.

How dare he? She had no idea why he was doing it, but how dare he? As if she wasn't very clear that he was never going to reciprocate her feelings. As if she hadn't accepted it as a fact of life and coped, keeping herself in check so as not to bother him. As if she wasn't ashamed enough of being like this about a boy she could only claim to have known even moderately well half a decade ago. How dare he want to make her humiliate herself further by saying the words?

She was disgusted with them both; him, for his callous cruelty, and herself, for putting up with him.

If he thought she could be toyed with so easily, he was in for a disappointment, she swore grimly. He might think himself an almighty genius capable of anything under the sun, but he wasn't going to have his way with her, dammit. She was the Jukumaru heir, her mother's daughter, and she didn't give ground.

So let the games begin.