Out Of Sight

Familiar Strangers

Welcome back to the yearly Out of Sight update! Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I still need to get my life, and my writing schedule, in order. Damn. Anyway, in case anyone's still here for this - thank you for sticking with me for so long!

Hope y'all enjoy!

~'0'~

Tenma, decidedly, does not think about Impulsive Phone Call #2.

What that means, of course, is that he's at risk of overthinking it pretty much every second of every day that he doesn't have something else to focus on, and what that means is that he spends the next few days feverishly tangling himself up with as many distractions as he can. Like deciding that he really wants Okinawan stir fry for dinner, and spending most of Tuesday afternoon hunting down the best quality ingredients to prepare the dish. And then somehow having to find space in the fridge for the four tupperwares of leftover food, because he may or may not have gone a little overboard in his cooking spree.

Yeah, it's not his finest moment.

Still! He manages to avoid the same awful, empty rabbit hole he'd found himself in after Impulsive Phone Call #1, so that has to count for something, right? Right!

In case anyone's wondering, Tenma's determined to stick to the positive attitude.

Don't ask him how well that's going.

It gets him through Tuesday, and most of Wednesday, at least. He'll take it as a win. He's got no library shifts to distract him, but soccer practice is starting to get more intense - Yuuichi kept his promise of helping Iwasaki and Yamaki with their hissatsu shots, and it's impacted the rest of the team enough that the focus has shifted towards hissatsu techniques. That, at least, turns out to be a better method to occupy Tenma's thoughts than the stir fry.

Wednesday afternoon, once practice has come to an end, Tenma waves goodbye to Shinji as he and the other two first years - Anami and Enoshima - head towards the first team's field for their extra Keshin and Soul training. The rest of the team begins to dissipate as well, moving in the direction of the soccer building to get changed and go home, but Tenma and Maeyama have stayed behind. Within a few minutes, they've got the field to themselves.

They've had a few of these informal practice sessions at this point, and thankfully none had had as much excitement as the first one, when Kirino and Kurama showed up. By this point, they've got a comfortable rhythm build up, and they wordlessly reconvene at the bench after cleaning up the obstacle course Yuuichi had set up for the team today.

As a start, they simply take a break - they've just finished a two hour soccer practice, and taking a moment to catch their breath and get hydrated is a nice change of pace. They settle down on the grass in front of the bench, both with a towel around their neck and water bottle in hand. Even Maeyama is relatively quiet at times like this, foregoing his usual rambling in favor of sipping his water.

Not that that lasts very long.

''Hey, Kaze-san?''

For a moment, Tenma is taken aback by the tone - if there's one word he'd use to describe Maeyama, it's animated. The brunet has never heard him sound this soft-spoken before.

A glance at his friend's face doesn't reveal much - the ashen blond looks a little pensive, but he also seems relaxed enough, seated cross legged on the grass and leaning back on one hand. Worries averted, and now mostly curious, Tenma lowers his water bottle. ''Yeah?''

Another sign that something's different about this, is that Maeyama doesn't immediately continue. His eyes are fixated on a point somewhere in the distance, and he seems to consider his next words for a minute before he asks, quite abruptly, ''Do you like it here at Raimon?''