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Their literature teacher says that the rains in November are of the camellia, a gentle patter that brings color to tree barks and coaxes the sanzaka to bloom. Hayasaka says, "Feh," and Yui says something about correlation not causation; but Mafuyu thinks it beautiful and poetic and romantic, so the other two can shut up.
"You shut up," replies Hayasaka, tucking his schoolbag closer to his side. He's sharing an umbrella with Yui, which Mafuyu thought was very gallant of Yui. Hayasaka thought it was only right and proper--else he would have to share an umbrella with Mafuyu. Yui kept his thoughts to himself, but Mafuyu and Hayasaka both could read them on his face anyway: part elaborate calculation, like plotting out the steps of a shogi match, but also part instinct, as if unable to help himself. Now, Hayasaka says, "It's disgusting, this weather, is what it is."
"How can you say something like that?" cries Mafuyu. "Something so mean-spirited, when you're--you're sharing an umbrella with Ninja! That's the very picture of high school friendship, Hayasaka-kun! The only thing that would make it more moving is if we were going home from baseball practice!" She pauses. She considers the camellia trees lining the street and the puddles on the sidewalk. She blushes a little.
"No," says Hayasaka, desperate. He knows that blush.
"You know," says Mafuyu, undaunted, "do you feel like we are making the most of our pure-hearted youth? Should we be--"
"No," says Hayasaka, more desperate.
"--don't you want some goal to light a fire in our hearts? Don't you--"
"She's been reading a lot of baseball manga recently," Yui tells Hayasaka. "As how-to manuals for the rehabilitation of delinquents."
"What?" says Hayasaka. "For Banchou? He plays soccer already. Wait, what? I'm not--"
"Koushien!" declares Mafuyu, clenching a determined fist. "In our shining high school days, we should be--"
"Shit," says Hayasaka, with the sinking feeling that he probably is the delinquent Mafuyu is trying to rehabilitate. He casts a wild look around, for a large fight to join or an open manhole to jump down.
"Oh, look," says Yui. "Cats."
Hayasaka follows Yui's gaze across the street. "A box of them!"
Mafuyu whirls around. There is indeed a cardboard box of kittens sitting on the curb, the cardboard damp and sagging a little. This far away, the kittens are little fluffs of color, but Hayasaka has no doubt that Mafuyu can hear them mewling piteously.
"No," says Mafuyu and on the same breath, dashes across the street.
They watch her go. "Thanks," says Hayasaka.
Yui does not answer. After a bit, he observes, "She never gets hit by cars," sounding perplexed.
"What is wrong with you?" says Hayasaka.
"Don't you think it's a useful skill?" says Yui. "She never looks before crossing the street, so you'd think at some point... But she must be really good at flowing with the river."
"Nothing about Mafuyu goes with the current," says Hayasaka. It doesn't really matter, though. Hayasaka hasn't the heart to disabuse Yui of whatever ninja aphorism Yui probably believes in with all his soul. (Sometimes, he wishes a little bit that Yui was more of a samurai-otaku instead: that he invested bits of his soul into katana rather than shuriken. Hayasaka would play swords with Yui far more willingly than dressing up as a tree trunk or jumping with carp. But only sometimes. With Mafuyu, Hayasaka spends the majority of his time asking himself, why? Hayasaka dares not look at his life too closely.)
They look for a while at Mafuyu crouched down by the cardboard box across the street. Hayasaka tells Yui, "She used to play house in the middle of the street when she was little, she said."
"That..." Yui is quiet for a long moment. He settles on, "Explains so much."
When Mafuyu returns, she is without her umbrella and has apparently not forgotten their previous topic of conversation. "I know we're kind of busy with the Discipline Club, and baseball is not for the half-hearted. And I'm not saying we should two-time Takaomi-kun! But, maybe, on weekends we could--"
"Where is your umbrella?" asks Hayasaka, half another attempt at distraction, but also half genuine concern. The rain continues steadily, plastering Mafuyu's hair against her head, seeping into her shirt. It's always a surprise how slender her shoulders are: a girl's shoulders. "What about the cats?"
Mafuyu promptly droops. "My apartment doesn't allow pets, and you two are living in the dorms and--" Her voice wobbles. "I couldn't do anything for them, so I thought: at least, they should be sheltered from the rain--"
"You'll catch a cold," says Yui.
Mafuyu's spirits are promptly restored. "Ha ha!" she laughs, striking an inexplicable pose. Hayasaka has the vague memory of similar poses being struck for host club advertisements in Shibuya. "Water cannot hurt handsome men!"
Yui and Hayasaka spend some minutes admiring the immense ridiculousness of--of Mafuyu's entire existence, really; but then, the handle of an umbrella bobs Mafuyu on the head. They all turn. It's Saeki-sensei, Mafuyu's umbrella in one hand and cardboard box of kittens hoisted on the other shoulder.
"Takaomi-kun!" says Mafuyu.
"Sleep talk when you're sleeping," says Saeki-sensei, with that Mafuyu-voice he gets every now and then: comfortable authority marked by a distinct lack of anything teacherly. If Hayasaka hadn't already named it the Mafuyu-voice, he might have called it the Pochi-go-fetch-voice or the yakuza-here-for-loan-repayment-voice. "Still," says Saeki-sensei, turning to Hayasaka and Yui with a pleasant smile. It's terrifying. "I wouldn't worry about her too much. As they say, idiots don't catch colds."
"You're terrible," says Mafuyu. Possibly she has no sense of self-preservation. Almost certainly, decides Hayasaka, when Saeki-sensei turns that same terrifying, pleasant smile to her. Mafuyu continues, "That's not how you talk to girls."
"Hmm?" smiles Saeki-sensei. "Is that relevant to this conversation? Am I speaking to any girls right--"
"Terrible!" cries Mafuyu. "Monster! Demon!"
"And here I am saving your cats," says Saeki-sensei.
"To do what?" asks Mafuyu suspiciously. "Eat them? Drown them? Skin them?"
Saeki-sensei laughs, like some badly-voiced villain out of an 80's anime, and saunters past them. They don't follow. Mafuyu plants her feet on the ground and crosses her arms and squints as Saeki-sensei continues for a little ways down the road. He stops under the awning of a bus stop. There are a few people waiting on the benches--"cashier at the grocery store on the corner, apprentice at the tofu store down the street, college students," Yui reports.
"What do you do in your free time?" wonders Hayasaka.
They watch while Saeki-sensei makes conversation with the college students. There is a lot of smiling and laughing and arm stroking. "Female college students," realizes Hayasaka.
"Hmm," says Yui.
"Hmm," says Mafuyu.
Hayasaka shivers, suddenly feeling as if very narrowly he has avoided finger jabs to the jugular or flying elbows to the nose or steel pipe to the back of the head. Since he has started regularly hanging out with Mafuyu, though, the feeling has become mostly familiar. Sometimes, he mistakes it for needing to sneeze.
Under the bus stop, the college girls peer into the cardboard box Saeki-sensei holds out. One of the girls picks up a kitten, and another takes the box. A third takes Saeki-sensei's hand, and pulling a pen out of her bag, scrawls something on the inside of his forearm.
"Her phone number!" says Hayasaka.
"That pervert!" says Mafuyu.
"3-3508--" says Yui.
"Seriously, what do you do in your free time?"
Cats and cardboard box thus disposed, Saeki-sensei backs out of the bus stop. He turns around and, with a twirl of Mafuyu's umbrella, sketches a mocking salute back at them.
"He totally took the cats to steal your umbrella," says Hayasaka.
"Looks like it," agrees Yui.
"Oi!" yells Mafuyu Who Possesses No Survival Instinct, Miracle It Is That She Has Survived So Long, Of Course She Used To Play In The Middle Of The Street. "Hey! Aren't you going to walk me home?" She strides down the sidewalk, hurrying after Saeki-sensei. "That's my umbrella!"
Hayasaka and Yui watch for a bit longer, as Saeki-sensei turns and--judging by the way Mafuyu's strides becomes more violent--says something taunting. She throws a punch, he steps out of the way, and somehow, just like that, they are both under the umbrella. Hayasaka is no judge of these things, because he's not some goddamn ninja-otaku, but Saeki-sensei's stride seems somehow smaller.
That's too gross to think about, though.
"Oi," he says, turning to Yui. "Hey. Aren't you going to walk me home?"