The Strange Life Of Mikoto Ishida (Yutaro Kindaichi)

Truth

When I heard the door to the locker room open, I instinctively turned towards it. Standing there staring at my half-naked body was Kindaichi. His eyes looked over my figure and they went wide, recognizing that the friend he'd thought was a gay guy was actually a girl.

Kindaichi took a step back and reached for the door. I rushed forward, pulling him back into the room and quickly shutting the door. Slapping my hand over his mouth a gave him as serious of a look as I could muster.

"Stay quiet," I hissed, not moving my hand until after he nodded.

He looked away, a tiny hint of pink painted across his face. "S-so... you're a girl?" The question was more or less for his own confirmation of the fact rather than an actual question.

"If you swear that you won't say a word about this, I'll tell you everything,"

"I promise," he said nervously. Had it been anyone besides Kindaichi, I doubt I could have trusted them. Luckily though, Kindaichi was a good friend, so I was sure that he'd keep that promise. "But... Miko... could you put your shirt on? I... I can see your breasts."

For the first time in a long time, I found myself blushing and feeling a bit shy. Until he'd mentioned it, I'd been too distracted to notice that I was shirtless. Not that there was really much to look at anyway; I, unfortunately, was quite small chested. In fact, unless I was wearing a tight-fitting shirt or a push-up bra, you really couldn't tell if I even had breasts.

As a girl that had been a very depressing fact. But now that I was pretending to be a guy, a flat chest was a blessing... sort of. Whether or not I wore a shirt really wasn't that big of a deal, but simply knowing that I wasn't wearing one was a bit embarrassing, so I slipped my t-shirt on quickly.

"I guess you want to know..." I said quietly. Kindaichi only nodded, still not looking directly at me. Guess I can't blame him... I mean, how would you feel if you found out one of your best friends was secretly a girl and you never even had a clue? "Where do I even begin?"

Taking a deep breath I began to explain my situation. "Well, I'm a girl who used to go to Fukurodani High School in Tokyo. Sometime after the beginning of the year, this guy started hanging around everywhere I went." I shuddered at the memory. "At first I didn't think much of it, but after it happened every day for an entire month, it was pretty obvious that he was stalking me." There wasn't a lot of time, so I left out anything that wasn't that important. "I tried moving and transferring schools several times, but he still found me every time... Then I came here to Aoba Johsai and started disguising myself as a boy..." I trailed off, saying nothing more. He knew what happened since I started here, he was there.

"So you're saying you moved all the way here from Tokyo and started pretending to be a guy because some guy was harassing you?"

"You make it sound stupid when you say it like that," I pointed out, my irritation painfully obvious. It's not like I told him everything... we didn't have time for that right now. Besides, if I did tell him everything, it might scare him off if that creep ever did find me here. "I didn't really have a choice; the guy was getting too pushy and it was too risky to stick around."

After that, the conversation ended. If we took any longer, we'd be really late for practice and that would look suspicious. Once Kindaichi was changed, we rushed over to the gym.

Oikawa and Iwaizumi met us by the door... and they looked pissed... Well, Iwaizumi almost always looked angry, but that wasn't important. "Why are you two late?" Oikawa demanded, arms crossed against his chest.

Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to miss this morning's practice... "Um..." Kindaichi looked to me, hoping I had an excuse. He couldn't just come out and tell them that he'd discovered that I was a girl and that we got distracted while I explained it. "I asked Miko to... um..."

"Study!" I said maybe a bit too quickly. "Kindaichi said he needs some help with... um... what subject was it again?" I faked a grin and prayed that there was a subject that he was bad enough at that he'd need help with it.

"I... um... English!" he laughed, probably looking a little too much like he was just saying the first thing that came to his head. But the two third years did seem pretty scary right now, so our current attitudes weren't entirely out of place.

I nodded quickly. "Right! We were making plans to meet up after practice tomorrow and on Monday since we don't have practice on Mondays and then we kinda got distracted..." Laughing nervously, I scratched the back of my head.

This was where Iwaizumi decided he'd get involved. "That couldn't wait until after practice?" he scolded.

Kindaichi and I both tensed. We didn't even think of that. "Why so fidgety, Kindaichi?" Oikawa picked up on this way too quickly... I had to do something or my cover would be blown twice in one day.

"Why so nosy, Oikawa?" I challenged, stepping slightly between him and Kindaichi. "We're just a little late, so what does it matter why?" Keeping my voice firm and the captain's attention on me, I tried to keep up my usual attitude. "I'm always late anyway, so why should today even matter? Kindaichi got held back by one of the teachers, so we showed up at the same time and we got talking about the studying thing and lost track of time."

Oikawa glanced between the other first-year and me. It was clear by now that I was either telling the truth or simply just going to stick to my excuse. Kindaichi was stubborn enough that if he didn't want to tell you something, he would never do it. There was no way he was getting us to slip up now.

"Get to practice," he sighed in defeat. Kindaichi headed over to join the others, but as I tried to go, the setter grabbed my shoulder. "I didn't say I was done with you, yet." I didn't like that smirk on his face.

Glancing over at the rest of the team, I got no help from them. All I saw were sympathetic faces. That was when Kindaichi's words from earlier today came to mind... Oikawa was irritated about me missing morning practice and had threatened to make me do 100 successful serve receives.

I didn't think he was actually serious, but that face of his said otherwise. Oikawa's serves during practice didn't seem all that bad, so what could go wrong? I'd have this done and over with in no time.