Our Teacher is a Yakuza Princess

Chapter 12

The next day was the sports competition, and when she entered the classroom, she saw all 26 students dressed and ready, but no Yuki. Her face fell, but as she walked to the front, Kuma and the others from the basketball team stepped forward.

"Yankumi," Kuma said with a smile. "We'll do our best."

She smiled a bit at that, and just so she wouldn't look so depressed, Shin moved from his unusual position near the front to tell her, "If Yuki doesn't show, I can disguise myself and play in his place." He made a point of staring at the wall when he said this, so that his mind wouldn't give him anymore weird thoughts, but he had to look at her briefly to see if she was cheered up. As soon as he saw she was, he went back to his seat and pretended that he didn't care.

Some of her energy returned, and she shouted for them all to gather around. Shin just happened to find himself next to her in the circle by pure coincidence. They all put their hands in the middle and joined in with her "Fight-oh – Oh!"

Shin headed off with the soccer team while the others went to go cheer for the baseball game. He did his best, but at the first ruling against them, (for kicking one of their opponents in order to get the ball, and then kicking the ref for being in the way) 3-D mobbed the referee, which got them disqualified as soon as the ref could be heard over the shouting. They waited in shame in the classroom for everyone to come back, and when Yankumi came in, Shin pretended a great interest in the material of his soccer cleats.

"Are you guys done with your match already?" When no one answered, she asked him. "Sawada?"

He finally looked up. "Lost on a foul." He explained as briefly as possible.

"I was aiming for the ball, but kicked the ref instead by mistake. Sorry, sorry!" One of his teammates elaborated apologetically.

He then heard that the baseball game ended disastrously when Oishi, the batter, got hit by the ball and instead of taking a base, decided to take out the pitcher, which resulted in all of 3-C running away from all of 3-D on the field. Table tennis also ended with violent, table-flipping results.

All that was left was basketball, which they were likely to get disqualified from before they even played for lack of members. Nevertheless, they all assembled in the gym and waited for the game to start. Shin was irritated to notice that Mr. Tall Detective-san and his shorter partner had showed up as well. He tried to ignore them, and instead watched the door for any sign of Yuki as the clock ticked down from two minutes, to one minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds, and time. But just before Head Teacher was about to blow his whistle, the doors opened noisily. As everyone looked to see who it was, Shin nearly cheered when he saw Yuki slowly enter.

There was a moment, when he first saw Abe, that Shin thought Yuki was going to run. But he took a deep breath, and walked toward his team. He had a few marks to evidence his time in Yankumi's crash course for being brave, but he got in line and waited for the game to start. As the whistle blew, Shin immediately saw Abe and his bully-boy head for Yuki and step on his foot while whispering something sinister in his ear. But to his credit, Yuki ignored them, and got in position.

Shin watched the game and as he saw Yuki getting punched, kneed, shoved, tripped, and elbowed, wanted to shout "Ref, are you blind!" before remembering that Head Teacher was the referee, and either he was partly blind or was purposefully ignoring the obvious fouls out on the court. The score kept climbing in 3-C's favor, until Abe tripped Yuki and he hit the floor. Everyone noticed as he stayed down, and Shin could see Yankumi holding her breath as she silently willed Yuki to get up. He could see Yuki remembering all the memories of bullying this game was bringing back. And then, he saw Minami offer Yuki his hand.