Dark Places | S. Tendou

TONGUE RIP LIKE RAZOR

[Not me releasing chapters early for my one and only reader ily]

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"I can't believe you fell down the stairs." Ayume was still in disbelief, trying to wrap her head around how Maeko obtained her head injury.

"What stairs were they? My directions didn't take you anywhere near stairs." Ayume, the sleuth she was, had tons of questions.

Maeko expected to receive an angry text message from Ayume after she didn't show up to watch her practice, but she had been occupied in the nurse's office a little longer than she'd hoped to be. There was no way she could lie about it, especially not after the nurse opted to stick a thick piece of cloth to it for the next twenty-four hours, but she also couldn't tell Ayume about Tendou.

Or, rather, she didn't want to.

The embarrassment was still fresh in Maeko's mind, and the idea of reliving it didn't sit well in her stomach. Besides, it wasn't like she was ever going to have any reason to talk to him again, so there was no point in telling Ayume.

Maeko scrambled to think of a believable staircase. "Uh, it was the ones by—"

"Hey, Maeko, I've been looking for you all morning!" It couldn't be.

Maeko turned around very slowly and, just as she feared, it was none other than Tendou who had called her name, followed closely by three of his teammates: Maeko recognized Ushijima and Goshiki, but the third boy with shaggy grey hair was unknown to her.

Maeko could feel Ayume burning holes into the side of her head.

"H-how do you know my name?" Maeko made a point of never telling him that.

"Oh, that." Tendou waved his hand dismissively. "I stopped by your classroom from the other day and peeked at your class-list."

He admitted it so casually. Did he not realize that was an invasion of Maeko's privacy? Her mouth hung open in surprise, feeling uncomfortable and out of her element.

"Don't give me that look!" Tendou protested. "How else was I supposed to check up on you? Speaking of—" He leaned forward, his face hovering dangerously close to Maeko's as he squinted at the bandage concealing her head injury.

She flinched, eyes shyly flickering between hers and his shoes.

Tendou waved his teammates closer. "What a shame. There's no way I can prove to you guys how big it was now. You'll just have to take my word for it."

Even beneath the bandage, the bump that the volleyball left behind was bulging slightly.

Goshiki snickered.

The grey-haired boy shrugged his shoulders. "Looks painful."

Ayume suddenly stepped forward and used her hands to shove Tendou aside. "Hey, there's a thing called personal space."

Tendou raised both of his arms in surrender, but his facial expression was hardly apologetic. Maeko had a feeling the shove wouldn't have moved him if he didn't feel like letting it in the spur of the moment.

Ayume fixed Ushijima with an unimpressed stare. "Control your beasts." And then back to Tendou, even colder than before. "Is it not obvious that you're making her uncomfortable?"

Tendou actually seemed to consider it. He analyzed Maeko's body language carefully, making soft hm noises under his breath. It definitely wasn't making her feel any less uncomfortable.

Ushijima firmly rested a hand on Tendou's shoulder, steering him away. "I'm sorry. He doesn't mean to disrespect either of you."

The words must've been a silent command because Tendou eagerly nodded his head in agreement. "Of course, of course. We'll be seeing you around."

The four boys wandered off, leaving Ayume and Maeko standing alone.

Ayume scoffed, shaking her head at Ushijima's turned back. "God, he needs a personality." But Maeko wasn't getting off the hook that easily. "Aren't you going to tell me what that was about? When did you start talking to Tendou?"

Maeko played with the end of her blonde ponytail. "I'm not talking to... him." Maeko gestured lamely in Tendou's direction rather than use his name. "We just..."

Ayume gasped sharply. "Don't tell me he pushed you down the stairs!"

"What? No!" Maeko frantically searched for the right words to explain before Ayume jumped to more conclusions, but she was too slow.

Ayume turned her head up and to the side, squinting at Maeko down the length of her nose. "Surely you aren't..."

Maeko wasn't following. The confusion was evident on her face.

"You know..." Ayume glanced sheepishly to either side, making sure nobody was listening. "I assumed Tendou was a little freaky but coming from you that's just plain shocking."

"Oh my god, Ayume. Stop being ridiculous. Of course not." A deep pink blush spread across Maeko's cheeks. "He spiked a volleyball into my face when I came to watch you practice and then carried me over his shoulders to the nurse's office. There, are you happy?"

Ayume was deathly quiet, but then she burst out laughing.

"That wasn't so hard to tell me, now was it?" She softly smacked Maeko's arm. "I prefer that to either of my guesses. Seriously, Tendou is so weird, so if that's all it was then try to stay away from him from now on."

Maeko could believe it after the other day, but she still wondered if Ayume was being a little too harsh. "What do you mean?"

"The girls on my team were telling me a lot of creepy stories about him. Get this, he sometimes sings songs about breaking people's hearts in the middle of matches." Ayume shuddered. "Who does that?"

Maeko shivered. Hearing a story like that made the feeling of his hands around her legs, slinging her over his shoulder, crawl to the forefront of her memory. "Yeah, that's pretty weird."