Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Sarcasm ❯ Solo Games ( Chapter 4 )

“Hikigaya, what is this?” demanded Hiratsuka sensei, waving my biology essay at me. As a point of spite, I had written it straight, with correct references in APA style and without sarcasm. The lack had frustrated my teacher. She had been expecting my usual so not finding it seems to have kept her up late trying to see if it was buried or not, and thus frustrated her more. This was all part of my master plan to drive her batty. It was working.

“It is my biology essay. Did you have a question about it?” I asked mildly. I had practiced this expression in the mirror so I could get all the muscles just right, even around the eyes. My eyes always look insulting because they’re half closed, which most Japanese find insulting even if I was just born this way. I don’t look entirely like my own father, so this worries me a little. At least I share Mother’s ahoge with Komachi.

“Yes, yes I do. Where’s your usual sarcasm?” she demanded. I looked at her blankly, waiting for a reason.

“Usual sarcasm? But you asked me to change my ways. To treat my assignments with respect, and not waste my teacher’s time. Is this precisely what you asked me to do?” I confirmed with a carefully calculated confused expression. She stared at me in disbelief, then sighed.

“I swear you and That Girl are going to give me grey hair,” she complained, lighting up a cigarette to think, sucking on it and exhaling a cloud of carcinogens.

“Did you mean Yukinoshita?” I confirmed.

“What do you think of her?” she asked me, taking another drag and watching my expression. I carefully changed to one of idle thought, another practice session yielding results. Acting for your teachers is fun. I might become a Host if there’s a niche market for Office Oneesans who like guys who look like Yakuza. Considering how Tokyo is these days that’s probably a real thing.

“She is interesting. Very reserved in public, but has a sharp tongue in private. I think she has a lot of repressed anger and resentment towards men in general, though recently she may have found an outlet,” I casually dropped.

“Oh?” asked Hiratsuka sensei.

“She’s started dating another student, and she seems quite fascinated with this new toy she’s discovered,” I mentioned, as if bored of the topic.

“Really. Hmm. Her sister will be thrilled,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette butt in an already full ashtray.

“May I go, sensei? Club is waiting,” I reminded her. She waved me off so I left while getting was good. Women are so predictable. All sound and fury until there’s gossip to distract them. The true sarcasm of my topic was the subject itself, that of “life cycles of the praying mantis”. Biting the heads off of males in mid coitus. Now that’s an honest female.

I’d only been sitting a short time before Yukinoshita arrived with her boy toy, clutching his laptop. She’d forced him to modernize so she could fix his editing problems, and swore she would clean up his act so his writing would publish and make them some money. Why this mattered is probably the worst possible reason: that of impressing her parents enough to marry. What would follow would be a life of slavery to both her and his publisher’s deadlines, probably with a colluding editor. Sounds horrible to me. Professional writing in Japan is said to pay very little, scarcely more than beer money, and most authors had part time jobs so they could live in poverty while trying to create something that would finally give them a few luxuries and maybe time. This rarely worked out. The annual wages for creators in Japan is around the same as for Jazz musicians in America, or dish washers in Mexico.

Not too long after this, our bubbly gyaru member arrived, towing the pretty boy from class. Totsuka Saika wanted help practicing tennis. He was president of the tennis club, since the school didn’t have an official sports team. Club funding was tied to winning matches off campus, as well as active members.  

“I wanted Hikigaya to help me practice. He has really good form,” he said. I hate to admit this but he is right. Good form is efficient, and it’s easier than bad form. I’d gotten good hitting balls against a wall during solo practice using the standard PE excuse of “I’m not feeling well, but I don’t want to be a bother to the other students, so could I…”. This worked 80% of the time.

“Fine. We can work out when to do this.” Naturally after a mere two days of training we were interrupted by Miura and Hayama and their followers wanting to take over the courts we’d already reserved. I told them no. They demanded a match, which would give them what they wanted. That is no kind of compromise.

“If you lose, Miura needs to come to practice for a week,” I demanded. She looked suitably challenged and offended that she could possibly lose.

Unfortunately, we ended up with doubles against Miura and Hayato. And shortly after getting in some good serves and points, Yukino ran out of stamina. Yoshiteru was too slow on the court, missing two points, and I ushered him off. Yuigahama was both clumsy and begged off going against her friends for obvious political reasons, instead videoing the competition with her phone, again. Her videos had a minor cult following, including on a porn site where she’d blurred the faces and uniform IDs of that fateful first meeting between Yukino and Yoshi, as he liked to be called now.

We were one point away from losing, and two points from winning. It was time to cheat. I used one of my 108 skills to volley a return ball into the top of the net and it fell to the far side and bounced twice before Hayato could lunge forward to save it. Tied. My serve was a high flier, with Miura heading one direction, then the Chiba breeze changed as it does, dragging the ball across the court and she tried to chase it after it dropped just inside the line, back back… SLAM into the court chainlink fence, with Hayato taking the brunt. Her fanclub cheered, and Ebina showed up with a first aid kid to tend to Hayato and Miura’s injuries. I watched as they acted superior despite literally losing both game and the bet.

“That was a magic ball. How did you do that?” Hayato asked me quietly a few minutes later, limping and with a bandage over his bleeding elbow. Ebina had done a reasonable job of it.

“When you play baseball, how many on a side?” I asked him.

“Nine, of course.”

“Popular kids. When you play alone, you come to realize that the Chiba wind will let you pop a fly and catch it, but only when you remember that the wind blows twice. This is something only a loner like me would understand,” I told him. He looked at me and then shook his head, limping away without another word. Rumor had it he banged Miura later, but then went on the following week to nail several eager first years, so he is still a Chad.  

Miura did come to practice for the next week, and Totsuka Saika got to play against someone better than me. She also managed not to look down her nose at me so much after that. Maybe she wasn’t as stupid as I’d thought.