15 Chapter two, 2016, buddying emotions: 2 (2/2)
'She's crushing hard! Damn, sis looks like someone clubbed her from behind!'
He stared out the window. It had to be the guy who had just caught his attention. 'I've seen him before.' Ryu took another look at his sister. Her face displayed the slight blush he expected to find there, and a quizzical recollection. 'She's seen him before as well?'
”Cute, or even husband material, eh?” he teased her.
Noriko turned so red he could have sworn her hair would blush as well. Ryu was about to embarrass her some more when suddenly…
First Takeida-san went sour all of a sudden, and then...
”Man! Did you see that?”
Two defenders had collided and were falling to the ground. Oblivious of the impossible action the tall one slid under them, twisted mid-air and came out rolling on the other side. He was already racing after the ball.
”Yeah. Cool, but he's still a crap player. Midfielder should go for the ball, and he should run for the goal instead.”
”Who gives a… Damn, karate or jujitsu? Both?”
”Eh?”
”The bastard's at least a black belt in both an offensive and a defensive style. That's impossible!”
”Eh?”
”His age. I'd know who he was. Tokyo's big, but not that big!”
Beside him Noriko had paled, and Ryu felt the colour drain from his own face.
'Yes, we both know him. Sis, I'm so sorry!'
”He saved me, and I never thanked him,” she whispered. ”I never thanked him, and then he vanished.” Limply she dropped her lunch to the floor. Her bottled tea bounced under a desk, but the wrapped bread just thudded to the floor and hugged it like a bag of sand.
Ryu bent down. For once it was time to play it with a semblance of tact. ”You can now,” he said. She had turned down two guys the last year because of a dream, and now he had seen her fall in love with that dream again. This time before she even recognized him. 'That makes it a double first.'
”I hate it! He scares me,” she said. ”I got all warm and cosy, and it was a new guy, and I could forget, and I could make a new dream and, no! Not fair!” Noriko stared at him. ”It just had to be the same one. I hate it!”
Ryu embraced his sister. This wasn't a time to be cool, and she didn't need the rest of them to see how small she was. For once she was just a midget and nowhere close to larger than life.
Behind him he could feel Ageruman-san watching him. And Noriko. And Takeida-san. The three of them were being studied like a new and novel specimen at the zoo. Ageruman-san could be cold that way, like she was comparing them to a secret of hers.
Below them cheers rose to the windows.
”Finally! With that speed and stamina even that guy had to score eventually. Damn, he really is hopeless!”
And he had scored. With a kick. Force instead of skill. A kick hard enough to shatter, for example a knee. Ryu knew he should have remembered the guy, but the cheering teenager below them looked nothing like the raging avenger who had saved Noriko more than half a year earlier. The one she had fallen in love with while he was busy being expelled from school.