What A Girl Wants

Three

The try out girls were told that they'd be contacted if they made it and wished a blank faced and emotionless goodbye. Once they had all filed out and it was down to the only five sure-fire members, there was nothing left to do but go through everyone's notes and decide who was going to make it and who wouldn't.

"Are we going to talk about why the fuck this thing is here?" Rin asked, no later than the gym door closing behind the last girl.

Nothing to do but making decisions and getting that earful, apparently.

Rin motioned towards Ryusei, and Sae was indeed watching her. But it wasn't with the same distain. The girls had moved from their plastic folding chairs to the spring mat for their deliberations, and Ryusei walked right over to it and collapsed. Sae held her breath as she fell, that stupid looking clumsy action, wondering briefly if she'd made a mistake, but then she saw it was all for show. She caught herself and lowered herself onto her stomach with perfect gymnast grace.

Once she had found this certainty once again, she looked away and at Rin. "That's my new third."

"You've fucking lost it," Rin scoffed right back.

Sae shrugged. "Maybe."

"You have," Rin said, really trying to drive the point across. "What happened to everyone has to try out?"

"She's a gymnast," Sae said, rolling her eyes. "That alone counts as a tryout."

"Oh please," Rin scoffed, rolling her own matching eyes right back. "We all know a gymnast does not a cheerleader make."

Shuto looked down at the mat and didn't dare speak a word. It's not like she didn't know she was the one being poked at, but she didn't care to draw any unnecessary attention to it.

"We can fight about this later," Sae snapped, in the harshest, most sister voice she could muster. She wasn't necessarily scared of Rin nor one to shy away from fighting, but they could do this at home, hurling insults and hairbrushes at each other through their shared bathroom. She didn't care to be undermined here. "We have a job to do."

Rin crossed her arms and scoffed again, but she shut the fuck up and Sae took it as a win. Soon, the five of them were sitting on the mat in a small group, clipboards of notes at the ready, fully prepared to discuss. Ryusei was the only one without a clipboard, but she didn't seem the slightest bit bothered about that. She genuinely just seemed happy, or amused at the very least, to be there.

"And you'd better shut the fuck up," Rin told her directly. "This discussion is for people who actually know what they're talking about."

"Fine by me," Ryusei said, twirling the ends of her hair. She was still laying on her stomach and started kicking her feet in the air. "I'm only here because your captain asked me to be."

Rin scowled and scrunched her nose in disgust, but Sae couldn't help but smile a little. So obedient. Truly the perfect third. The one she'd been dreaming about. The one she deserved.

"Well, I guess I should introduce myself, assuming our captain keeps me on as well," Oliver started, looking over at Sae for confirmation.

She nodded once. "You're still mine."

"Aiku Oliver," she said, reaching across the mat. "Main base."

"Shidou Ryusei," she said back, blatantly refusing to shake her hand, and offering no further explanation.

"Okay," Oliver said, pulling her hand back.

"We'll need another base," Sae said out loud, somewhat to Ryusei and Oliver, mostly to herself. There had been a lot of strong girls, but she realized she hadn't really seen any one stand out, so she decided then she was talking to Oliver. "Who do you want? You can have first pick."

"What the fuck?" Rin interjected. "I want first pick. I'm the one saddled with glass ankles over here!"

Again, Shuto knew better than to speak. She just looked down at her clipboard, looking over the list and the notes she'd made, refusing to cry.

"Next year, when you're the captain, pick whoever you want," Sae snapped. Rin rolled her eyes and shut up. That was quite the effective carrot her sister kept dangling in front of her. "Until then, shut up."

Oliver consulted her clipboard. "I like number fourteen for us. She's the right height, built like a brick house, and she took good direction."

Rin relaxed then. That clearly wasn't either of her picks.

"Okay," Sae said. "Mark it down."

Rin did pick next, two bases that were clearly already friends and were kind of quiet, but capable. She'd even gone as far as to label them tolerable. Quite the compliment, coming from an Itoshi, especially the younger one. So they were marked down as yesses. After that, it was just a matter of going through the rest of the girls one by one, ranking their skill levels, aesthetics, and attitudes so they could decide who they wanted.

Though there were five of them, it was mostly just Sae, Rin, and Oliver who spoke. Ryusei made it perfectly clear that she didn't have any opinions, and Shuto, being on the shaky ground she always was, knew better than to voice any opinions that she did have. Rin and Oliver had loud, and often conflicting, opinions. Rin based everything on skill. Oliver took aesthetics and demeanour into heavy consideration, so much so that she could write someone off even if they could throw skilled tumbling if she found them annoying. Sae felt like she had a fair balance, so she made final call without voicing any personal judgements. More often than not, Rin or Oliver had already voiced enough of her thoughts.

It took them a little short of two hours to come up with the team list. After that, Sae dismissed them, stating that she herself would take the list they comprised to coach Anri. It was a formality, really, because Anri really did little other that booking them designated practice slots, ordering the uniforms, and making the preparations for competitions, but it was required nonetheless.

Rin made her impatience known as she coldly told Sae to find her own way home and left. Sae rolled her eyes and flipped her off, even though the gym door had already slammed shut behind her.

"You need a ride?" Oliver asked.

Sae shook her head. "Rin won't leave. I have the keys."

It was a lie, but Oliver's car was nothing short of hell on earth. Not only did she insist on blasting this god awful music out of the stereo she'd paid an insane amount of money to have installed, but Shuto always got the passenger seat, which was still full of napkins and half empty lipsticks and spilled soda stains, and the backseat was a million times worse. Sae would rather walk the ten blocks.

"Want me to come with you?" Ryusei then asked. The first words she'd spoken in over two hours, unless you counted humming at Rin to aggravate her. "I don't know where the coach's office is, and I should probably see it."

"Sure," Sae said. "Why not?"

It was monotone and quick, but still. Oliver and Shuto exchanged a glance that quietly discussed everything they knew better than to voice out loud.