The Ultimate Stride | Prince of Stride Fanfiction |

9 | Rainy Day

| {Kyouko's P.O.V.} |

".24 seconds..." I murmured to myself as I stared at the bolded numbers on the screen of my laptop, disappointment prickling at my chest.

    It was the weekend, so I had been loafing around my apartment in my pajamas spending some much needed quality time on the internet.

I was catching up with some of my friends back in America via my large variety of social medias, but for some reason I always found myself making my way back to Saisei's Stride website to look at our race times from the festival.

It had been four days since our race against Saisei Academy, and I was still semi-upset about the results. Everyone had ran a very good race, but Takeru screwed it up big time in the last leg.

    And by big time, I mean big time.

My eyes wandered over to our individual splits, and I pouted at the numbers, not as satisfied as I would've been if we had actually won.

Just as I said it would, my time was significantly faster than Heath's. I would've been smug about my accomplishments, but I didn't feel like teasing Heath after such a pathetic loss.

    A .24 second loss!

My frustrations began to bubble over, and I ended up preaching some of them out loud.

"I totally destroyed that Kaede guy! All that pent up anger was totally put to waste," I sighed as I dipped my head into my lavender-scented sheets, failing to appreciate it's calm, soothing scent.

"Kyouko, are you looking at those stupid results again?" the voice of Riku asked me from somewhere else in the apartment, suspicion woven into his usually chipper voice.

Shit, I forgot that he was here.

That morning, Riku had suddenly decided to show up at my apartment to hang out, and I couldn't muster up the courage to say no to his face because it was raining buckets outside.

    Therefore, he was currently residing in my home for the time being.

"Yes, I am. I can't get over how stupid it is that we lost," I groaned as I traced the random flowery pattern on my comforter with my index finger, turning my face to the side so Riku could hear my voice.

"Yeah, I understand that much, but we couldn't help the fact that Fujiwara messed up," he responded over the sound of him opening and closing cupboard doors. I was confident that he was raiding my kitchen for food.

It's still stupid.

After I handed off to Takeru, he perfectly maintained the gap I had made for him, but he totally lost it when he accidentally took a wrong turn down a two-way alleyway.

Yes, he took a wrong turn.

He was running so damn fast, he failed to notice the course markings that read 'Do not turn here', so Suwa had just enough time to pass Takeru while he was still trying to find his way back onto the course.

Takeru caught up at the end, but it just wasn't enough to win.

    We definitely would've won if Takeru hadn't had made such a rookie mistake, and Sasei was fully aware of that. They didn't seem very content with their victory, but they claimed they had a blast running with us and that they were eager to face us in a more serious competition.