Niou enters junior high and encounters a wonderful new game.
Niou Masaharu liked seeing people disconcerted. The expression itself amused him, and the knowledge that he had been the one to put it on somebody’s face gave him a nice, warm glow of accomplishment.
Niou and Yagyuu become a doubles pair, and the game continues.
Masaharu opened his mouth to ask a pointed question about why it was Yukimura making all these decisions and announcing them, and not the captain standing, silent and uncomfortable, behind the Trinity. He closed it again, with a smooth look, at Sanada’s burning glare.
Stress in school gives Niou the break in the game he’s been looking for.
Yagyuu was eyeing him like a tiger trying to decide whether some sharp-clawed creature would be more trouble than lunch was worth. Masaharu gave him a brilliant, wolverine’s smile, and he snorted.
Niou and Yagyuu settle into their partnership.
“You do realize,” Masaharu murmured, “that you can be polite while still smashing them into jelly.”
Niou coaxes Yagyuu into more intimacy; or perhaps it’s the other way around.
He reached out and, delicately, removed Yagyuu’s glasses. A signal, a symbol, a talisman, but more than anything else an intense desire to see Yagyuu Hiroshi’s eyes.
Niou has an idea for a trick.
Yagyuu moved forward, fingers trailing ever so lightly over Masaharu’s wrist in passing. Masaharu suppressed his reaction, sternly, but couldn’t hold back a grin. Who would have thought that Yagyuu would be an incorrigible tease?
Disaster strikes for the whole team.
After such a golden autumn, no one expected what happened in the heart of winter.
The team starts to recover, and Niou and Yagyuu find another kind of comfort.
It stretched him to the edge of pain, but never quite over. It was, perfectly, everything he desired of his partner, every reason he pressed Yagyuu to let himself go, the extremity of sensation that could have been destruction but, to him, was not.
For Regionals, the team pulls out all the stops.
Masaharu didn’t know about the others, but he’d had to catch Yukimura from falling more than once, while spotting for his “light” practices, and had to carry him back inside twice. He’d watched the frustration his captain could keep out of his voice but couldn’t keep out of his eyes, and shuddered to think what it must be like.
The team brings the results to their captain.
“Is it over, do you think?” Yagyuu asked, at last, barely whispering in the silence. He didn’t protest when Masaharu twined a hand into his hair, drawing his head down to Masaharu’s shoulder.
Kirihara decides to tease Sanada, and the results are about what one might expect.
“Do you remember what I said about teasing, Akaya?” he asked, softly.
Pressed against the length of Sanada-san’s body, so tightly he could feel as well as hear the deep, smooth voice, Akaya couldn’t hold back a triumphant grin.
“That it works?” he suggested, breathless.
A small snafu leads to some practice time between Rikkai and Seigaku, just before the end of Nationals.
Momo cast his erstwhile opponent a thoughtful glance. “You know, Marui-san,” he said, slowly, “all of you are acting really different, today.”
Marui cocked an eyebrow at him. “Of course we are,” he responded, easily, “Yukimura’s back.”
The long awaited last match of Nationals.
Seiichi’s smile changed, undiluted pleasure added to the satisfaction. It was the last round of Nationals, and they were ready.
Belial gets a tennis team.
"Absolutely no interfering in the games in any way, shape or form, or the whole deal’s off," Sanada declared, firmly.
Belial leaned hir chin in hir hand. "Doesn’t that conflict with the clause about injury-proofing, though?"
The seal of the contract.
Seiichi remembered when Belial had set the seal of their contract.
Some embarrassment over the seal.
Genichirou, Renji noted, seemed unwilling to look anybody in the face—no, that wasn’t strictly accurate. There were specific people he wasn’t looking in the face, and all of them had just signed the same contract.
The new year begins and Kirihara suffers a bit of culture clash.
“What are you doing here?” Akaya exclaimed, wide eyed.
Suzuoki blew a stream of smoke at him. “The coaches drew straws to see who would stay with each division this year. I got the short one.”
Kirihara’s relationship to Sanada and his temper.
The first time wasn’t really a surprise. Even one summer of observation was enough to tell anyone that Sanada-senpai had no sense of humor.
Some friendly bickering within the Rikkai team.
They were all getting off the bus, stretching and exchanging dinner plans, when Masaharu heard Yanagi ask Kirihara, softly, “So which are you going to be, Akaya? A tiger cub, or the boy who swallowed a dragon pearl?”
Yukimura’s reaction to his team’s behavior during his absence.
“Too many of those games were sloppy, and too many were aimed at cheap victories that were unworthy of you. We are Rikkai. We are the best.” His eyes narrowed. “We don’t need to win by default. Ever.”
Twenty thoughts of Niou Masaharu.
To deceive is to control the perception of others.
A scene that might come just after issue 339. Kirihara angsts a bit until his team makes him see reason.
Yukimura-buchou didn’t look away from the game. “Did you hear what they were calling you?”