Running After You

Chapter 17: Outside The Job

Youta had settled into his role as sports manager and now was properly recognized by many of his peers and teachers as such. Which was both great, but also tiring as most of the time was spent tutoring a bunch of students who happened to be doing poorly in school.

At some point, he had to imagine what was the point of calling himself a sports manager when he could've just been a teacher's aid? But then again, at least it also gave him a more proper excuse to see Mitora and interact with her during her track practices. That made all the hard work worth it.

Another nice thing about the club was that there were also periods of downtime when he wasn't focused on anyone. After all, the club's job was based on the needs of others. So if no one needed him, then there was no job to do. Of course if no one ever needed his help at all, then that would lead to a club shut down so it was good people did come to the boy for help.

"Youta, can I ask you something?" During lunch, he was approached by Fuwaka.

"Of course." He replied. "What is it? Did you need anything for the swim team?"

"I don't and that's kind of the problem." Her answer confused him. How would not having a problem be a problem in of itself? "We haven't really talked to each other since Takame's game."

"I've been pretty busy lately with the club and stuff." He responded. Youta also didn't think it had been that long since last time anyway. After all, that game was only a week ago. "Also it's not like I've needed to come back to where the swim team practices."

"Does this mean we're not friends then?" She asked. "We only met each other because of your club. Was that the only reason you even bothered to go see me?" Fuwaka stared at him intently as he broke a sweat from the sudden question. Youta never once viewed her as a friend. She was closer to a client, but at the same time was closer to him than what a normal client would be viewed as. There was a sense portion their relationship occupied where one couldn't easily define it.

"I didn't mean to make you feel bad." Regardless of how much he actually cared about her. Youta was the last person to want to make a girl cry. "There's nothing stopping you from coming to me if you want. I'm not going to be annoyed."

"It's my fault too." She shook her head in disappointment. "I've never been good with this 'keeping in touch' thing. So I just figured I'd wait for you to do something, but since you haven't I got a little worried."

"I can't say I'm much better about it either." He murmured to himself, thinking about her inability to be the one to take initiative in a friendship. All this time he had felt he lost a connection with Mitora. Now there was no way he'd just doom a new one with Fuwaka after making so many changes in his life. "The weekend's about to start, so how about we just hang out then? I don't have any plans for Saturday." Not that he ever did.

"Sweet, I'll swing by your place then."

It seemed he had a plan for the weekend with Fuwaka. Youta couldn't say he was used to hanging out with anyone outside of school. Normally when one spent more time at home studying, this was the end result. The only person he used to spend time with out of school was Mitora, but it had been a while. So this would be a relatively new experience for him as a high schooler.

The morning of the planned day he got up as if nothing was different. Youta picked out some clothes for him to look presentable in public, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he was forgetting something important.

What was it, he wondered? There were no missing items, nor was there anything club related for him to deal with over the weekend. Yet his body had that feeling that something was wrong and he needed to realize it before it was too late.

He looked outside his window, where the only meaningful view was of the window into Mitora's room. For a moment, he stared at it, then turned his head to look elsewhere as the realization slowly seeped in. His eyes widen when the thought finally hit him.

"Uh oh..." He said to himself. "I forgot about Mitora." Last time she went to visit his house, she had wanted to hang out. While there was nothing wrong with this, he was unable to accept as he was busy with helping out Fuwaka. In fact, he even told her to leave so he wouldn't be distracted.

Today was another free day for her, so it was likely she'd be coming over for another attempt. After already having rejected her before, he didn't want to do it again. The only problem now was he already had that agreement with Fuwaka. "What do I do?"

He paced back and forth thinking of how to get out of this situation. Of course it was overthinking as there had been no guarantee of Mitora showing up. However he had to be prepared for the worst case scenario. "I can't think of anything!" Unfortunately this was indeed the worst case scenario with him failing to come up with anything.

His thinking was interrupted when the doorbell rung. It had to have been either one of those girls as he walked out of his room and announced to his parents he'd be the one answering the door.

Hypothetical situations ran through his mind. If this were Fuwaka, he could leave before Mitora showed up, but that would make him feel bad for the entire day thinking of how disappointed she was that he wasn't around. At the same time, if it was Mitora instead, what would he say? The other girl would be showing up soon, so it was too late to cancel. Then he'd have to deal with telling her no again, which would just break his heart.

Finally after all that thinking, he finally opened the front door to see both girls standing before him. "Oh, hi..." He meekly greeted the pair. Youta paused to try and find the words so he wouldn't upset anyone, but it seemed that Fuwaka already saved him before he saw either of them.

"I can't believe you forgot to invite me." Said Mitora before he was able to utter another word.

"Huh?" He was confused. There was no point in his previous conversation with Fuwaka that they had planned on bringing anyone else.

"Yeah I thought you'd tell her seeing as you live next door to the girl." Said Fuwaka. "I ran into her on my way here and thought you already told her." In reality they did indeed run into each other. Mitora appeared uttered shocked to see that she had been showing up in the morning to see him. The girl knew it wouldn't be great if she told the truth, so she decided to change their plans up a little.

"I guess it's pretty easy to forget." Fortunately Mitora was easy to fool. "I was pretty tuckered out from practice, so it's not like we could've talked after school yesterday."

"Yeah..." He ran with the story. Anything to save him was more than enough for the boy as he stepped outside.

"Great, so where are we going?" Fuwaka asked, which gave him pause.

"I thought you were going to pick somewhere." She was the one who came to him wondering why they didn't spend time together outside of sports. It would've made more sense from her position.

"I thought you were." He replied to her as the pair stared at each other, then looked over to Mitora.

"Well I didn't even know we were all going somewhere together." She shrugged in response. "Oh well, I did have somewhere I wanted to go with Youta today." They were lucky she was originally going to see him regardless of his prior plans. "I wanted to go to the Hanmon cafe that we used to go to together all the time."

"That cafe?" He replied, nowhere near as enthusiastic as her. The Hanmon cafe was a themed cafe for the popular children's video game series of the same name. The key word being children, as they would frequent this spot as kids together when he still played the video games.

They hadn't been there since junior high since he assumed they both grew out of it and they also hadn't hung out in general for a long while. Admittedly Youta did still play the games privately, but assumed she had moved on as an athlete. "Aren't we a bit old for that?" He responded, taking a quick glance towards Fuwaka as he grew concerned of how she would judge them.

"But they have a special event going on right now. And what's wrong with it? You always begged me to come with you whenever they had something big." She replied, not understanding his issue at all.

"I'm down." Fuwaka agreed to the idea. "I've never played those games, but it sounds fun."

"Okay..." He sighed, knowing that he got outvoted in this case. "Let's go then."