While Niou was walking back with the tagalongs after him, he saw Fuji Yuta come up from the sea.
Yuta had gone off, when no one noticed, to swim. He had not felt really that comfortable with the group of people back there.
He had always known that Mizuki was a bit over the top sometimes but he did not expect it to get worse when he was together with someone who was also like that. Yanagi and Mizuki together just gave him the shudders.
He did not have anything to say to the other third years as well. Yukimura reminded him a little bit of his own brother and he knew very well that with this type of people, the best course, for him at least, would be to stay away.
He saw Tachibana, Ibu and Kamio often now that they were in the same school.
Tachibana was talking to the Rikkai people and he did not want to listen to Ibu's mutterings or Kamio's excited 'An-chan's so cute'.
He also thought that Kirihara to be a pretty dangerous guy to be around. He seemed to be too unpredictable and Yuta preferred steady people which none of them seemed to be.
Well, Yagyuu seemed to be steady and Jackal was as well.
However, Yagyuu was really into his novel from what he could see and Jackal had his hands full with his own team-mates.
He did not want to hang out with the girls because it seemed sissy, though if Sengoku had heard that, he would be subjected to a lecture on the benefits of female company to be sure.
Niou was also another dangerous person to be around. Perhaps it was from having Fuji Syusuke for a brother but his instincts were usually pretty good when it came to telling him who's safe to be around and who's not. As in whether he would be made fun with or not by that person.
He hated being made fun of but being made fun with was even worse and that was from experience talking.
He did not even think of talking to Sanada. Sanada just plain intimidated him and so he had taken off when no one noticed to swim in the sea.
Perhaps it was just as well that he had because it had been rather noisy and rowdy back where everyone was.
He was feeling happily tired from his exercise when he looked up and saw Niou with two strangers tagging after a polite young man, Yuta went up to greet Niou.
He called out, "Niou-san!" Niou called back, "Yo!"
He stopped and waited for Yuta to catch up with them. Yuta reached them and looked behind Niou, "They are…?"
Niou said, "Oh, them… they've decided to follow me because they have nothing better to do."
Yuta looked taken aback by this strange answer. He said, "Ah, I see." He thought that he had better introduce himself, being a polite person, "Ah, my name's Fuji Yuta, yoroshiku."
Auel ignored him but Mayu stopped eating her ice-cream to smile brightly at Yuta, "Hai! Mayu Asuka desu! Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, Yuta-niichan!"
Yuta was again taken aback by her friendly attitude. She sure did not waste anytime with pleasantries.
Mayu was very happy when Yuta did not stop her from calling him 'Yuta-niichan'. She decided that he was a nice fellow and she would tell Sting all about it when she got back.
Auel, on the other hand, thought that this fellow was rather straight-laced and was probably one of those who go by the rules. He did not bother to say anything but much to his annoyance, Mayu spoke up, "Ano ne, Yuta-niichan, this is Auel and he's rude and shy. Just ignore him."
Yuta did not know how to respond to that but really he did not have to because Auel was answering Mayu's challenge already. He exclaimed, "Mayu, if you go on talking like that, I'll tell Sting that you have telling tales about me!"
Mayu stuck her tongue at him, "Silly Auel, Mayu was just telling the truth! Yuta-niichan said hi but you ignored him! Isn't that rude? Murrue-san said that you should greet people when they greet you!"
Auel had nothing to say to that and so he consoled himself by sticking his tongue back.
Niou rolled his eyes and said, "Stop it, you two, or I'm going to send you back to your Sting or Neo or whoever it was you mentioned."
The two of them seemed to listen to Niou for they really did stop bickering and went on eating their ice-cream.
Niou had started walking again and Yuta followed by him with the two tagalongs after them. He wanted to ask where Niou had found them but not wanting to be nosy, he refrained.
They soon arrived to where everyone was still chuckling and making fun of poor Bunta.
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Niou and Yuta were somewhat surprised to see a much larger crowd than there was when they had left.
T
he two of them made their way to the centre of everyone's attention. When they saw Bunta, they stopped in surprise.
Yuta immediately clapped his hands over his mouth and Niou smirked, "Bunta? What have they done to you?"
By this time, Bunta almost had tears in his eyes and he looked beseechingly at Niou.
Niou raised an eyebrow and he went to kneel next to Bunta's head. The two tagalongs had followed him and when they saw Bunta, they did not laugh because they did not know the boy.
Mayu did exclaim to Auel, "Ne, Auel, that looks like fun! Maybe we should try it later!" Auel said, "If you're the one to lie down, then I'll do it." Mayu thought about it, "Okay!"
Niou heard them and tuned them out. At least they were not arguing and he turned his attention back to Bunta.
Niou said, "I can let you out but you are going to owe me for this, Bunta."
Bunta answered, half-annoyed and half-thankful, "Whatever, just get me out and let me kill Akaya. He was the one who had done it, I'm sure."
Niou said, "I would guess that he had help. He couldn't be that quick and clever. For one, he wouldn't have thought of the shells."
Bunta remembered, "Oh yeah, Ibu put them there. That little "
Niou nodded, "Probably Kamio as well, if Ibu had a hand in this."
Around them, the others had finally stopped their madness.
Yukimura was greeting the Hyotei regulars with Miyu with him. After laughing at Bunta, she had started to tell Yukimura what had happened.
Tachibana also heard and he had gone over to thank the Hyotei people for watching out for his sister.
Atobe accepted their thanks as if he had done the deed which made Oshitari very amused. Gakuto, Ohtori and Shishido were used to Atobe's ways and they did not mind.
Ohtori was trying to wake Jiroh up in fact because he had asleep since they had arrived at the beach in Atobe's private coach.
Shishido was telling him not to bother.
Sakuno and Sanada had come over and when Sakuno saw Niou digging Bunta out, she blushed and went over to help immediately.
She had been side-tracked by Sanada and was now feeling rather guilty for forgetting about Bunta.
Sanada looked around because he had a good idea who had done it. He found Akaya, Ibu and Kamio trying to creep away because they saw Niou starting to dig Bunta out.
When he did, he caught them and dragged them over to Tachibana and Yukimura. He said, "I'm going to take these for some laps out in the sea. It's obvious they had too much energy to spare."
He had Kamio and Akaya by their ears and Ibu was following quietly. He did not want to be subject to ear-pulling at his age.
Yukimura looked at Akaya with a bit of sympathy in his eyes and then he smiled, "Akaya, I hope you enjoy your extra training. It's either that or being handed over to Bunta yo!"
Akaya did not want either because he was sure that Bunta would think of the nastiest punishment for him. He preferred Sanada because he was more predictable. If Bunta enlisted Niou's help to think of a punishment, he might end up doing something like doing laps at school in his boxers.
Sanada turned to Tachibana, "If you don't mind, Akaya would like some company this time. It appears they have become good friends this day."
Tachibana looked at his two team-mates and said, "I'm afraid it's only fair. If you are still here when Marui gets out, I don't know what he would do."
With their blessings, Sanada led them down to the sea. He did not really mean to punish them because they did not really do anything wrong.
However he knew that if he did not take them away before Bunta had some time to cool off his temper, they would cause another chaotic scene and he wanted to avoid it.
They were from a prestigious school after all and to cause trouble at the beach would be a great embarrassment to Rikkai and the team.
Imagine them being banned from tournaments because Bunta lost it and started to attack the second-years who probably deserved it. It would be over his dead body before he would let something like that happen.
He left Bunta for Niou to deal with. From the look on Niou's face, he did not seem to think that it was particularly funny so he might just convince Bunta that it was not as bad as that.
Off to one side, Yagyuu had been oblivious to all that had happened. He had solved the murder of the sealed room and was hurriedly reading on to find if his theory was correct.
Mizuki and Yanagi were looking at the photos Yanagi had taken and they were discussing various ways of using them.
Sengoku had resumed talking to the girls he had met. They were now telling him about tarot cards and other fortune telling stuff. Sengoku was having the time of his life.
An had noticed Sakuno and Niou digging Bunta out. She saw Sakuno looking a bit uncomfortable and decided to help her out.
She said, "Onii-chan, I'll go and help Sakuno to dig Marui-san out!"
Tachibana nodded. He was still talking to Atobe and Yukimura about tennis stuff.
Gakuto had gotten bored and went over to make fun of Bunta again.
Ohtori had given up on Jiroh and was now helping with the digging. He was also trying to stop Gakuto from making nasty and snide comments.
Oshitari thought that he had nothing better to do, so he went over to help and pulled Shishido along with him.
Yuta had also come over to help. While he thought that it was somewhat amusing, he did not go crazy with laughter at the sight. It was probably due to his brother that he became a rather serious person.
Meanwhile, Niou was saying, "You were lucky they didn't do worse, Bunta."
Bunta glared at him, "Isn't this bad enough?" Niou said, "This is baby stuff."
Jackal asked, while he was gathering up the shells that were on Bunta's 'body', "Baby stuff? You are starting to scare me, Niou."
Niou grinned, "He! Honestly, this is nothing. Listen, if it had been me, I would not have done this."
Oshitari was curious now, he had heard of the Trickster's reputation, "Oh? What would you have done, Niou, the Trickster?"
Auel looked up from his ice-cream when he heard the nickname, "The Trickster? Why does he call you that, Niou?"
Mayu chimed in, "Yeah, Mayu wants to know too!"
Before Niou could answer, Sakuno had looked up at Auel's voice which she thought to be familiar and when she saw him, she exclaimed, "Auel-kun! What are you doing here?"
Auel looked at Sakuno and was equally surprised, "Sakuno? How come you're here?"
All of them stopped the digging and looked at the two.
Bunta was starting to wriggle around as the weight of the sand on him lessened. Apparently, the trio had piled on more sand than he had thought.
Sakuno answered him, "Ah, I'm here with my friends. Are you here with your kaasan?"
Auel beamed at the mention of his kaasan, "Yep! But she went swimming with stupid Neo and I'm stuck with Mayu here. Remember? Shinn's sister!"
Sakuno did not remember but she looked at Mayu and said with a gentle smile, "Ah, konnichiwa, Mayu-chan!"
Mayu also beamed at this sweet-looking one-chan. She was a friendly girl by nature though rather childish from being spoiled by her parents and brother, Shinn.
She said brightly, "Konnichiwa! What's your name? How come you know Auel?"
Sakuno blinked as she realized that she had not introduced herself but before she could speak, Auel had already beat her to it, "Mayu no baka, didn't I call her Sakuno? Her name's Sakuno, Sa-ku-no!"
Mayu pouted and Niou, sensing another of those repetitive arguments coming on, interrupted quickly, "Ah, so you know Sakuno, Auel, well, that's nice. You'll have to tell me about sometime. First, we should get Bunta out, ne?"
He seriously did not want another childish argument on his hands.
Auel blinked, "Oh, okay. Wah!" He had just noticed that his ice-cream was dripping and he hurriedly resumed eating it.
Niou thought that it had been wise of him to get both of them the extra-large ice-cream. At least, it was keeping them relatively quiet.
Oshitari, who was very interested in what they had been talking about, asked Niou again, "Niou, you were saying that worse could have happened to Marui here?"
Niou looked up and answered, "Yeah, there are actually lots of things that could happen to a person who had fallen asleep at the beach with no one watching over him or her. I wouldn't have to cover him with sand. I could've just cut his swimming trunks loose."
The others stopped their work for a second and looked at him to see if he was being serious. He was and Bunta gulped.
He did not really want to listen to this but Niou went on, "I could've also used the beach umbrella to shade just his head and leave his body out in the sun. That way, he would have a tan for the body and his head would still be white. It might take longer to work but they are easy to do and don't take much time. Oh, also, you know most people come in normal shoes and change their footwear in the changing rooms, right?"
Shishido said cautiously, "Yeah, what of it?"
Niou said, "Well, if I could get hold of the shoes, I would use honey or something equally sticky and pour it inside the shoe. Then I would get some ants and sand and dump the whole lot into the shoe as well.
When the person put the shoes back on, he would feel the sand first. He would dump the sand out and then he would notice the sticky and prickly feeling and maybe the ants would still be in there. Sometimes they get out, you see.
Still, it is quite nasty to find that mixture of sand and something sticky in your shoes after a long day at the beach."
Bunta gulped again. He was starting to feel that maybe his situation wasn't so bad after all.
Niou went on, "There's another that I could do and I did it before lunch. I collected shells and went around ruining people's tans."
Oshitari was intrigued, "What exactly did you do?"
Niou answered him, "If I found a person asleep and there were more people sleeping and sunbathing at the same time than I thought, I would put shells on his body and if he was lucky, he would wake up before his tan was ruined. If he was not, then his tan would be filled with white shell shaped holes."
Sakuno and An looked at Niou with fascination. While Sakuno felt sorry for those people with their tans ruined, this was the first time she had actually heard Niou talk about doing tricks on people.
She had heard stories before but it was different when you heard it from the actual person who did those tricks. She thought he was very clever to have thought of all those tricks.
She had forgotten about her earlier embarrassment in the talk about tricks now and was once more comfortable to be in Niou's presence.
An thought that she and Miyu had been lucky that he had not been at the café when they were talking about him behind his back. This was one person she did not want to antagonize.
Oshitari was storing all he had heard from Niou and was thinking that if only he had been at Hyotei…
Then he backtracked and thought maybe it was better that he was not at Hyotei because if he played tricks on Atobe, it would be war. Atobe did not allow people to laugh at him.
Ohtori was caught between admiration and the thought that it was not very nice to play tricks on people like that.
He was such a sunny type of person that he did not have any room in him for nasty tricks that seemed to be rather backhanded. Still he had to admit Niou was a very bright person.
Shishido was thinking pretty much the same thing as Oshitari was, that it was lucky for them that Niou was not in Hyotei because of Atobe. From what he could see, Niou did not seem to have any compunction about playing tricks on his superiors.
Gakuto was whispering to Jackal who was beside him, "Say, Kuwahara, is he always like this at school?"
Jackal nodded, "Sometimes, he's even worse. Those tricks he mentioned? They are some of the better ones. He's done worse in the years I've known him."
Gakuto shuddered when he tried to imagine what would be worse. He thought that having a ruined tan in the middle of summer was bad because it was either being laughed at wherever you go or take to wearing clothes that covered most of the body.
Yuta thought that his instincts had been right. Niou was a dangerous person to be around all the time and he was glad that he did not have to worry about him.
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Soon, they had Bunta out of the sand and he stretched and stretched, feeling much more comfortable with the breeze on his body.
It had been rather stuffy in the sand and he had been heated with anger as well.
He was now very glad that it had not been Niou who had been around when he was asleep and was actually feeling rather charitable towards the second year trio now.
Besides, they were under Sanada's thumb now and he would not want to be there when they were supposed to have fun.
Off to one side, Auel was chatting to Sakuno and Mayu was hovering around them, curious that Auel had a friend among this lot of nice people.
Auel and Mayu had heard Niou's tricks and were much impressed with what they had heard. They both wondered if they would have a chance to play any of those tricks later. It would be fun to play tricks on people.
An was talking to Oshitari about some movie that had been out during the summer.
She was surprised to find that Oshitari actually enjoyed watching movies with romance in it. She had thought that boys would shy away from those, or at least, the ones she knew did.
After some thought, she thought that she should not be so surprised. After all, her own brother enjoyed cooking, though his interest had nothing whatsoever to do with skill.
Even she stayed away when he cooked. The food he cooked was not nasty but they always tasted somewhat… strange, as if there was something not quite right.
Gakuto was doing handstands on the sand. It was actually harder than he had thought because sand shifted and it was soft and uneven. He enjoyed moving around like that though.
Ohtori was marveling to Shishido about what Niou had said earlier. He had decided that such brilliance should be admired and he was now sharing his views with Shishido.
Shishido did not mind listening to Ohtori but he did think whether Choutarou was being serious or not.
Yagyuu had finally finished his novel and was much touched by the ending. Much of it had to do with the fact that he had been right about how the victim had been killed in the sealed room.
He was now looking around in surprise, having not noticed the arrival of most of the other people. He pulled Niou down to sit next to him and asked him how come there were so many people around.
Niou had rolled his eyes but had proceeded to tell his friend what he had missed.
Tachibana had left Yukimura and Atobe arguing politely about some policy on being head of a large tennis club and was now chatting to Miyu.
Miyu had learnt that Tachibana enjoyed cooking and she had been telling him about some of the food Sakuno had been making for her and Yukimura.
Tachibana had been interested and Miyu said that he should talk to Sakuno later so they could exchange opinions and recipes.
She did not know that Tachibana's cooking was rather strange though edible and was saying that if there was another chance for them to get together like this, she would be delighted to try his cooking.
Tachibana was so happy to hear that he almost had tears of gratitude in his eyes. As I said, he almost had tears but he did not in the end because it would be too undignified.
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Jiroh had finally woken up and when he opened his eyes, he had thought sleepily that his bedroom did not look this or was he still dreaming?
Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw his idol since junior school, Marui Bunta. He leapt off the sand and rushed over to marvel at seeing his idol up closely.
Bunta was much startled by Jiroh's sudden appearance.
Jiroh exclaimed, "Marui-san! Marui-san desho? Oh, my goodness, how come you're here, Marui-san? How come you have decided to come into my dream?"
Bunta was lost now. In his dream? What was he talking about?
Oshitari heard Jiroh and went over. He used both hands to pinch Jiroh's cheeks and pulled until Jiroh cried pain.
Oshitari said, "You're not dreaming, Jiroh. Got it now?" Jiroh nodded with tears in his eyes and hands rubbing his cheeks.
Bunta attempted to get away to see Sakuno but Jiroh recovered and was now hopping around Bunta with excited cries.
He was saying things like, "When can I play a match against you, Marui-san?" and "Don't always play doubles, Marui-san! I never get to play against you!"
Bunta was getting dizzy from Jiroh's jumping around but he could do nothing about it.
Jackal was chuckling at the sight because usually it was Bunta being the excited one and now he was getting a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.
It was during Jiroh's hopping around that Sanada came back with the three, very tired second-years in tow.
When Atobe saw them come back, he had one of his brilliant ideas.
He thought that it was a rare day that he had come to grace a public beach with his presence and it should be marked with something that represents that beach!
He had decided to…