I Bend So I Don't Break

Three

This girl happened to be a six foot one girl with a pink dip dye, bright pink eyes, dressed head to toe in the same colour, and absolutely no fear of eye contact.

Sae had emailed her and asked her to come in before her shift so she could show her around the gym. She had no idea why. She'd never done it before. She was usually more than perfectly pleased showing the new coach to their assigned space and letting them sink or swim without as much as turning the lights on for them. But then again, they'd never had a new new coach before. Most of the coaches got their job qualifications from being ecstatic students and usually knew the lay of the land. Sae figured the least she could do was to offer her the courtesy and show her around a little.

Yeah, that was it.

Sae's first encounter with her was through the locked glass door of the gym on the way to unlock it for her. At the sight of Sae, she started grinning and tapping her long acrylic nails on the glass. Sae didn't know if it was in greeting or in challenge and to be honest, she didn't really care. She just went right over, looked the girl right in the eye, as if to say I'm not afraid of you, and unlocked the door.

"You know," Shidou Ryusei said as Sae was locking the door behind them both. "You are a lot younger than I expected."

It wasn't necessarily a threatening greeting. It wasn't really much of one at all.

"Excuse me?" Sae said anyways.

"You own this place, huh?" Ryusei said, looking up into the tall ceilings of the silks room.

"Do you think I'm Ego?" Sae said.

This girl had to just be fucking with her. Right?

She must have been. Because she looked at her, grin ever present, and said, "Aren't you?"

"Itoshi Sae," Sae said, wielding her own name like a weapon in a steady hand. "Acting manager. I'm the one who emailed you the schedule."

"Huh."

"I'm the one who emailed you asking you to come in," Sae said, wondering what the fuck kind of game this was. "You thought you'd be meeting Ego?"

"She's not here?"

"She never is."

"Huh," Shidou Ryusei said, nodding at the information. It didn't seem to surprise or trouble her any. She shrugged it off quickly. "So you're the one who's in charge around here?"

"Yes," Sae said.

"Well, alright, Itoshi Sae," Shidou Ryusei said, making a painfully long effort out of every syllable of Sae's name. She held out her hand. "Nice to put a face to the name."

Was she fucking with her? Sae honestly couldn't tell. She was, admittedly, and perhaps a little narcissistically, surprised that she hadn't looked her up. That she hadn't spent just as much time scrolling through Sae's perfectly curated and aesthetically pleasing social media profile as Sae had with her chaotic and with no rhyme nor reason social media profile. And it's not really because she expected Ryusei specifically to look her up. Like a trade or anything. Athletes just tended to look each other up. Especially in a professional context. To size them up.

But, whatever. Sae sunk her hand into Ryusei's for her to shake anyways.

"Especially when it looks like that," Ryusei added.

If she was going for brownie points, it wasn't a bad way of going about it.

With the reactions that the other girls had, Sae expected a fucking monster. But this girl was just that. Some girl. Maybe it was the height. Or the eyeliner. Or the forwardness. Sae fought the urge to roll her eyes again. The other girls could be such babies.