WILDFLOWER [Ryunosuke Tanaka x OC]

Chapter 24 - The Beach Episode

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"Took you guys long enough."

In the early morning light, Kano sighed, standing from the front steps of her duplex before helping Reika up beside her, who noticed the boys first. Three of the boys' volleyball team just rounded the corner and now stood in front of them: Hinata, Nishinoya, and Ryu, of course. Kano dusted her yellow sundress free of nonexistent dirt, picked up the beach bag at her side, and walked toward her mom's car. "Ready?"

"Ready!" Hinata beamed back, the only one awake enough to answer.

Kano led the way down the street a little ways to where her mom's car was parked and helped the boys load up the trunk before settling into the driver's seat. A small scuffle followed outside while she started the engine and hooked up her music, but the back doors flew open eventually, so she didn't bother asking about it.

Ryu yanked open the passenger's door and plopped down into the seat beside Kano, expression hard to read save for his flushed cheeks. The other three crammed into the backseat, where Reika refused to take the middle seat, which made things more difficult; Nishinoya and Hinata bickered over who had to sit in the middle.

"If you don't make a decision soon, I will leave you two here and we'll go to the beach without you," Kano yawned. It was much too early to deal with boys and their plethora of nonsense. While they finished arguing, she slid her sunglasses on and started up some music before handing Ryu her wallet. "Can you put this on the floor by your feet? Or just hold onto it or something? I usually put it in the passenger's seat, but you're kind of in its spot, and I don't trust those backrow hooligans with it."

"S-sure thing!" he blurted, nodding a little too much.

She knew he was just nervous because he planned to tell his team that they were dating while at the beach... which was kind of a big announcement to make, and Ryu was making it harder on himself by hyping it up into something grandiose. They'd talked about it into the blue hours of the night; while the rest of the world was dreaming, Kano and Ryu were talking about how to tell their friends they were dating.

The boys finally settled down and the drive sailed by. All of it turned out to be relatively short and quiet except when a good song came on and Kano turned it up a little to sing under her breath, always careful to sing quieter than the radio. Sometimes Tanaka recognized a tune—which surprised her—and he drummed his fingers to the beat on his thigh... but otherwise, no one said a word. Reika fell asleep against the window early on in the excursion, with Hinata and Noya following closely behind. Kano hoped their silence was just because it was early, and not because she made things weird. She never could tell.

At the beach, they flew out of the car and grabbed their things, rushing toward the ocean. Ryu hung back to walk with Kano, which she thought was nice of him... except he didn't say anything the whole walk down to the others, panicking silently.

"Kano! Hey!" Motoyo called out, already in her bathing suit and slathering on sunscreen. On the next towel over, Reika already got settled and was reading a book the size of a brick.

Kano set up her towel beside Reika's and greeted all of the girls before taking off her slip-on sneakers and tearing off her sundress. She'd been worried about the beach trip since her aunt mentioned it in the first place, mostly because everyone would see her in her swimsuit more than anything. But Kano knew how to play it cool. She knew how to pretend like everything was fine. Everyone knew her as the quiet, confident one, and she couldn't let her new 'Dark Horse' persona slip.

Without taking even a moment to second guess herself, Kano threw off her yellow dress, revealing her swimsuit to the world. "Anyone been in the water yet?" Kano asked, tying her long hair up in a messy bun after she checked over her yellow, vintage-style swimsuit for stray strings and lint. Nonchalant.