FINN, AS HE introduced himself, was a boy of clumsy structure. Short (about 5'7), bent over, black and spiky hair, pretty pale skin. Charming, definitely. He spoke only some of his words in Japanese, having to change into English every once in a while. Luckily, The two best English speakers in the school were going to play along.
He brought two of his friends along. One of them, younger, was a nervous and anxious boy named- or at least called 'Timid' (yes, after the adjective. Finn said it was German.) He fidgeted a lot, flinched whenever Rio or Mina tried to approach him. Mina had empathy with him, tried to be as gentle as possible.
The other one.. well, was yet another boy a little older than them. He was kind of taller than Finn, had mysterious eyes. Dirty blonde hair, a mischievous smile. He kept looking at mina, which made her wonder wether she had sand stuck in her hair. His name was Collin, Lin for short, he seemed nice enough.
"Well, let's waste no more time, then." Isogai announced as he listened to Finn talking, introducing themselves.
"Perfect," Mina replied as she finally took her eyes off the blonde guy opposing her. "H-How, uh, sorry, how are the teams?" She tried smiling, making Rio raise an eyebrow at her.
She was out of concept.
"We're nine people, as far as I know. So we're just gonna make kataoka join Finn and the others and do 5v4 if that's okay with everyone?" Isogai, living his role as the class president fully, lead the group as usual. During his speech, kataoka shrugged, walked over to the three boys and hit timid on his shoulder, making the poor boy gasp.
"Sure! Fine by me, you guys will get destroyed." Finn smiled charismatically "right, Collin?"
"Mhm, Uh-huh." Collin answered his friend, keeping his eyes glued on mina, who was still trying to hide the upper part of her body.
She looked fun to play around with, naive.
She had the characteristics of a bunny.
The game started easy to follow, friendly.- but Rio and Maehara started being really Competitive soon. I think it was somewhere between the fourth and fifth scoring ball of Collin that mina could see her friends' eyes glow in revenge.
She smiled sheepishly, tried to make the two blondes calm down, but it went especially south after yet another one of collin's balls hit the sand on their side, making a dull sound.
"I'm going to kill you, American bastard!" Maehara shouted with anger in his voice, making Isogai hug him from behind to prevent his rage. Rio wasn't better, scaring Sugino next to her into gently stroking her shoulder.
Maybe they took it too seriously.
When mina looked at Collin, he only laughed at maehara. When he noticed her looking, he winked in her direction once. She got a weird feeling about this. An uneasy one.
"Alright, mina, maehara, guys, let's step it up. We can't let Americans beat us again, that'd be like Manhattan all over again." Rio shook sugino's hand off without much empathy, making mina shoot the boy an apologetic smile before nodding.
____
It balanced out, yet Mina was struggling like never before. She tried to engage as much as possible, but she obviously still had the urge to cover herself. So the result was, basically, her awkwardly trying to hit the ball up whenever it hit her in a way that her arms would swing in front of her. It wasn't easy.
She somehow felt as like Collin, who was throwing most balls, was going especially hard on her. Fast, swift balls that had her moving quickly.
It was like he knew that she was struggling, and he was enjoying it. But everyone was getting sweaty, so she couldn't just leave the game.
With every new throw, Mina began turning more competitive- being pushed to jump around like a madman's woman. It was overwhelming: the loud noises, everyone's heavy breathing, the sweat on her forehead, the need to keep her arms infront of her at all times. Intense, was the word.
Kataoka (who had a worried expression on her face, as one of the only ones) half heartedly hit another ball, threw it to timid, who stumbled it over to Finn, who tossed it to the last boy in this constellation.
Collin jumped high into the ground, reaching over the net at this point. He swung his arm back, looked Mina directly in the eyes as he hit the ball as hard as he could.
Mina didn't know how to act as the hard ball came flying towards her face. She knew she had to do something, there was no hero to save her.
The girl jumped up as well- even if not remotely as high as the dirty blonde. She reached her hands towards the ball, throwing it away into the other field. It felt like slow motion. Especially when a painful sting went through her forearm. She got hit. Pretty bad, actually.
On top of that, the uncomfortable feeling going through her body when she realised she had to remove her Arms in order to prevent the ball to hit her face made her want to punch Collin, the ball, or herself. Perhaps all three.
There was also a tiny little problem that the girl only seemed to realise when she was mid air after the throw: she had no idea how she would land.
Mina pressed her eyes together tightly, waiting for the impact of the sand ground to hit her.
There was no hit.
There was no hit indeed, and instead, the brunette could feel two shockingly cold hands grabbing, steadying her waist as she fell on someone who didn't feel like hard sand in fact.
The oddly familiar smell of earthy and rich cherry.
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984 WORDS
TUESDAY, 30TH OF JANUARY
@MIRAI