Out of Bounds

No one hit harder than Kippei; when Kippei really wanted to hit the ball it usually went through the racket, knocked the racket from your hands, or you had to move, rather quickly; go with it and just wait for that split second when you were in just the right place, and then at least [...]

Kippei had been counting days… seven, five, three, and finally one. Now he was counting hours, because it was today and the end of the week, and Shinji was coming home. In less than an hour, now, so really he was down to counting minutes. Minutes were good. He liked minutes, they were short, but [...]

Kippei had told Shinji he was jealous, and while he had been teasing, it was still at least partly true. He was jealous–or perhaps envious was a better word, for he envied both Shinji’s chance to do nothing but tennis for an entire week, and also the random faceless players who were actually playing against [...]

For once, Kippei had run out of distractions. Or perhaps it was simply that the distractions weren’t working as well anymore. He wasn’t reading–the book he held had long since fallen shut, and now he sat watching the fire, waiting for Akira to come home. Waiting, also, for Shinji to come home, but that was [...]

Shinji pulled on another jumper, sighed because he was still freezing, and snuck out of the room, heading down to the recreation room to the phone. He breathed heavily in front of his face and watched the dragon’s breath curl around in the dark. It was pretty, but the fact it was there was enough [...]

The airport. Somehow that just sounded terrifying to Shinji and he had the odd urge to get back in Tachibana Senior’s car and tell them to go home again, except he was going to tennis and he had already packed his bag and the school had already paid and there wasn’t really any turning back. [...]

“Shit…” Akutsu tightened his jacket, lips pursed around the dying cigarette as he walked slowly back to his apartment in the cold rain. His head down and the normally spiked hair was falling into gray spikes on his face and down the back of his neck. He hated the fucking rate. He hated the bitch [...]

He wouldn’t have called it a nightmare, if he were asked. Nightmares were dreams; illusions. Things that weren’t really happening, had never and often could never happen at all. They weren’t real. Kippei didn’t think you could call it a nightmare, when it was real. Or had been. It was a memory, and while there [...]

Shinji sat on the back step in the sun, a cup of IS-06 in one hand and the small brochure in the other. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go. On one hand it was tennis, on the other it was so far away from Kippei and Akira that he was terrified of even [...]

Kippei decided that really, it was rather masochistic of him to use this as a quiet place to think. He was on the roof, laying on his back with his hands tucked behind his head, looking up at the stars. It was a little chilly, but not too much. He was wearing a jacket and [...]