Inquiring Minds

[youweresaying]

"What are you working on?" Genichirou asked, with perfectly innocent curiosity. No hint of suspicion or disingenuousness blighted his tone.

If Yanagi was capable of it, he might have felt guilty.

"Calligraphy."

Instead, he lied.

"By practicing Yukimura's name?"

Yanagi made a note in the margin of the page, Genichirou can read upside down. More data. Wasn't sure how this variable would affect anything, but there would be time enough for that when he was done with Seiichi.

"Important data needs to be gathered, and I have to be prepared before questioning Seiichi," he answered, which was all true.

Now Genichirou looked a little suspicious, even defensive of Seiichi, and while it was ridiculous to be so fond of the deep lines in his forehead and the tension at the hinge of his jaw, well. He'd also been told it was ridiculous to play tennis by the numbers, and he'd proven that entirely wrong.

"What data do you not have on him by this point?" Genichirou asked, the plainness of his honesty only making Yanagi feel better about his endeavors, and not worse, which probably wasn't the Emperor's goal in the slightest.

"Data he's never had an opportunity to display," Yanagi said, "and I have therefore never been able to analyze."

"On an ordinary school day?"

"Better that it's ordinary; less variables to account for."

"You must be making something out of nothing," Genichirou pronounced, unscrewing the cap to his water bottle and lifting it, and Yanagi, in that moment, felt a brief moment of kinship with Niou and a less brief regret that he'd not asked Fujimiya to meet with him about activity coordination 13.43 minutes earlier than he had. She would have enjoyed this as much as Yanagi planned to.

He waited for the bottle to reach an angle that indicated Genichirou was in the process of drinking, but not so much that he'd be in danger of much more than embarrassment when Yanagi asked him, "You think it's nothing that Seiichi was holding hands with Von Aegir in art class today?"

Sanada swallowed. "I can't believe Kudou-sensei would allow that kind of brazen disregard for the comfort of others," he said calmly.

He took another drink, coughed, and promptly spat it out, while Yanagi hoped against hope that Fujimiya ran instead of walking off the courts, and didn't need to speak to Nami today.

"WHAT did you say?"

Comments

[senseskill]

Yukimura spends the rest of his morning (mostly) ignoring the stares and whispers. Neither are necessarily new, but they're a bit more intense than usual today. Perhaps that's to be expected - perhaps even his own fault, for letting himself get wrapped up in his own bad memories, and making Flayn feel like he needed to be comforted. This wasn't wholly abnormal for him, but Flayn seemed quite unsettled after the whispering started. Yukimura wonders if she's doing okay with all the extra attention. She might not be used to this kind of it.

He carries just enough pique from it all that he can't quite help smiling uncomfortably at one of the nearby participants and asking, "What's all the fuss today? Do I have something on my face?" She has the decency to look mortified, and it's horrible that he feels a measure of satisfaction from it.

It's a relief when lunch arrives, and he can retreat to the men's tennis club room to enjoy a meal with his best friends.

"Sorry I'm late," he says as he enters the room, closing the door behind him. He wasn't really, but it was the polite greeting as the last one arriving. His attention shifts quickly to Sanada, however, and the apparent difficulty he was having with his water.

"Are you okay...?"