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mayhapWriting scholar bowl matches? So much easier than writing tennis. For me, anyway. ;)
Boys Who Wear Glasses by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mayhap
Part 2 of 4 [Part 1, Part 3, Part 4]
Prince of Tennis. Tezuka Kunimitsu/Inui Sadaharu. PG. 1,909 words.
Tezuka takes over the Seigaku quiz bowl team. Inui joins him.
Tezuka and Inui didn't have a chance to practice again before their first quiz bowl competition, although Inui kept calling Tezuka to try new questions on him.
"Your accuracy is ninety-six percent, Tezuka," he said after Tezuka correctly identified the capital of Madagascar (Antanánarivo). "The Seigaku quiz bowl club will be strong."
"We will play our best," Tezuka allowed. Then he hung up.
Inui often called him while he was running, Tezuka noted. He was impressed by Inui's conditioning. His lung capacity was superb.
.
When they arrived at Sato Daini for their matches on Thursday evening, Tezuka and Inui stood out more than Tezuka would have liked. They were the only team who had only two players, rather than at least the requisite four. They were the only team whose coach had declined to show up, citing a previous engagement, which Tezuka suspected was at a hostess club. They were the only team who were unsure of where to go and what to do. Tezuka was glad he had allowed an extra half hour for registration.
"This week and next week we'll be playing in a round robin," Inui reported, flicking through the information packet.
"Who are we playing first?"
"Fudaisei."
"What do you know about them?"
"There are six of them on the team and their coach has very long hair. Also, their tennis club is terrible."
Tezuka blinked.
"Before I was able to gather any further data, I was asked to leave the building," Inui explained. "It's much easier to collect data on tennis players. If you are unable to penetrate the school grounds, a pair of binoculars will suffice. For quiz bowl, perhaps some carefully-planted microphones would be useful."
Tezuka wondered if maybe, as Inui's captain, he should discourage this behavior. He decided that it probably wouldn't matter what he said either way.
"Let's go find the classroom where our first match is being held," he said instead.
The other team was there already, their four starting players seated together at one table, clutching buzzers in poised hands. Tezuka moved purposefully towards the empty table.
"What are you doing here?" demanded the high school kid draped over the podium at the front of the room. "This is the quiz bowl competition."
"We're the team from Seishun Gaikuen," Tezuka said evenly. The opposing team was whispering and giggling and pointing at them. Tezuka couldn't imagine what they found so entertaining and deplored their lack of sportsmanship. Inui took the chair at Tezuka's right and handed him three sheets of scratch paper from his notebook and a pen, just in case.
"Names, please?"
"Tezuka Kunimitsu, captain. My teammate, Inui Sadaharu."
No one reacted to their names. Tezuka wondered if maybe none of them even followed tennis. He had known that such people existed, of course, but he rarely actually met them. He was obscurely disappointed.
"All right," the moderator said, "everyone knows the rules, so let's just begin."
Inui started to protest that they were not, in fact, fully informed of the rules, but Tezuka whispered to him that they would be all right.
"Question number one is in Japanese history."
Inui made a sort of triumphant sound. Tezuka elbowed him to be quiet.
"In 1923, it -- "
A buzzer sounded from the opposing team. This was clearly a mistake of some kind, Tezuka thought. Nerves, probably.
"Fudaisei, Sato-kun."
"The Great Kanto Earthquake," said the boy with messy red hair who had buzzed in.
"That is correct!" the moderator pronounced.
"That's impossible!" Inui said.
"Shh," Tezuka said, automatically. He was staring at the Fudasei team, who were looking back, all brimming with smugness and glee. He was rattled.
"That's impossible." Inui bent his head to Tezuka's ear. "Perhaps they are cheating. They were in the room before we were."
"Question number two is in mathematics," the moderator went on.
Inui missed the beginning of the math problem because he was scribbling infuriated notes to Tezuka and Tezuka was writing scolding notes back and Fudasei got that one too. At the half, the score was 70-0 Fudasei.
"A love game," Inui muttered. He sounded low and broken.
"I wonder why Seigaku sent jocks to play on their quiz bowl team," Tezuka heard one of the Fudasei team say.
"Maybe they misread the flyers."
"Probably they can't even read."
"Take a deep breath," Tezuka advised Inui, who was fuming. He was feeling somewhat less than calm himself.
In the second half each question could earn your team a bonus question worth additional points, so it was possible for a team to rally and come from behind to win. Tezuka focused all his attention on each one as it was read.
"Question number eleven is in mythology. The third of these is now located in the imperial palace. The second is in the Grand Shrine of Ise in -- "
Tezuka realized what the answer was but he fumbled awkwardly for his buzzer and the red-haired Fudasei captain got it first.
"The Three Sacred Treasures or the Imperial Regalia of Japan," he said. His team got an easy bonus question, naming the gods of the sun, moon and storm, and brought the score to 100-0.
"Question number twelve is in mathematics. The graph of y equals the quantity x plus two times the quantity x - 3 intersects the x axis at points A and B. Find the length of AB."
Inui scribbled on his paper for a few seconds and then managed to knock his buzzer off the table. Its clatter echoed in the quiet room and the Fudasei team laughed. Their coach had the decency to cover her mouth, but she was laughing too. One of them rang in and took the question while Inui was awkwardly stooping under the table to retrieve his buzzer.
"IGNORE THEM" Tezuka wrote in large characters on his paper as the Fudasei team answered their bonus questions. He realized that his right hand was on Inui's knee and that he was actually gripping it rather tightly, but he left it there and Inui seemed to relax a little.
They played a little more calmly and took several questions. Inui was faster on the math questions than their opponents when he stayed focused and didn't sabotage himself, Tezuka noted with approval. The final score was a slightly less embarrassing 270-90.
Tezuka shook hands firmly and politely with each member of the Fudasei team, including their coach, who looked surprised. He signed the official scoresheet.
"Our next game is in another classroom," Inui reported, flourishing the information packet, and he and Tezuka left that one without another word to anyone.
"Do you know which way we're supposed to go?" Tezuka asked. In response, Inui pulled him around a corner into a hallway, but it appeared to be deserted.
"I'm sorry, Tezuka," he said, staring down. "This was all my fault. I should have realized how dramatically the effects of actual game play would affect my data and compensated accordingly. It was careless of me."
Tezuka stared for a moment. "No, it was my fault. I'm the captain," he said. "I should have ensured that we were familiar with all the rules and knew what strategies to employ. Besides, you scored more points than I did," he added.
"Our next game is in four and a half minute," Inui said. "If the opposing team is even half as strong as Fudasei, there is a zero percent chance that we will win."
"There are three more matches next week," Tezuka reminded him. "There is still a possibility that we can make it to the district finals if we work hard between now and then."
Inui brightened. "I will prepare training menus for both of us," he said, whipping out his notebook and writing furiously.
"And I will fix our buzzer system so that we can practice with it."
"I can help you with that." At Tezuka's raised eyebrow, he added: "I'll be more careful with it this time."
.
Ryuzaki caught Tezuka the next morning before school. "How were your quiz bowl matches?" she asked him.
"Inui and I have a good partnership in quiz bowl," he answered, leaving out the actual details of their matches, which they had in fact lost both of. Ryuzaki just smiled at him in that odd way that she sometimes did and told him that she would see him at practice.
.
At tennis practice that afternoon, Fuji insinuated himself next to Tezuka as he stood outside the chain-link fence, watching Echizen play Momoshiro. "How are things with you and Inui?" he asked softly.
"We lost our first matches, but we know what we need to work on before next week," Tezuka responded.
"Oh, but that's not what I asked," Fuji said, still smiling, before he drifted away.
.
That night Inui came home with Tezuka and accepted a cup of tea and said various polite things to his parents and grandparents (although Tezuka cut him off whenever he started quoting various statistics about Tezuka to them). Then they went back to Tezuka's room, where the buzzer system was still in pieces all over the otherwise neat floor.
"I found schematics of this particular buzzer system on the internet," Inui said, pulling out his laptop and a small leather toolkit from his racket bag. "I think that if we rewire it, it will be as good as new."
Tezuka looked at the schematics and instructed while Inui soldiered and screwed, but after a while he determined that Inui had figured out what he was doing. He found his copy of Le Petit Prince and the French dictionary, but the book stayed closed, his fingers in chapître dix. He watched Inui instead.
.
Tezuka and Inui practiced twice that week in the empty classroom of their absentee coach. The first time, they took turns asking each other questions and buzzing in using their newly-refurbished buzzers to answer them, until it became much more natural, like swinging a tennis racket. The second time, Tezuka asked Oishi if he would read the questions for them for a little while, if he wasn't busy, and Oishi said of course.
"I actually can't stay too much later, because my uncle is coming to dinner tonight," Oishi apologized after they had practiced for an hour. "But don't worry, because I arranged a substitute."
"Hoy! It's me, Kikumaru-sama!" Eiji tumbled into the classroom. "I've come to improve your quiz bowl team with my acrobatic play!"
"Eiji," Oishi said. Eiji huffed.
"I mean, I've come to read your boring questions out loud to you without distracting you or changing the subject or anything," he corrected himself sadly. Tezuka tightened his lips and thanked Oishi for his help.
.
"There is an eighty-nine percent chance that we will win both of our matches next week," Inui pronounced at the end of their practice. "However, whether that is enough to advance to the finals depends on the performance of the other teams. Based on my data, I estimate that the chances of this are only thirty-two percent." He rifled through his notebook. "One of our weak areas is sports."
Tezuka stared at him.
"Sports other than tennis," Inui clarified.
"Oh," Tezuka said. "I can study those."
"You already have foreign politicians and Nobel prizewinners and world rivers and American popular culture," Inui said. "I'll take the sports."
"We can study it together," Tezuka said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Boys Who Wear Glasses by
mayhapPart 2 of 4 [Part 1, Part 3, Part 4]
Prince of Tennis. Tezuka Kunimitsu/Inui Sadaharu. PG. 1,909 words.
Tezuka takes over the Seigaku quiz bowl team. Inui joins him.
Tezuka and Inui didn't have a chance to practice again before their first quiz bowl competition, although Inui kept calling Tezuka to try new questions on him.
"Your accuracy is ninety-six percent, Tezuka," he said after Tezuka correctly identified the capital of Madagascar (Antanánarivo). "The Seigaku quiz bowl club will be strong."
"We will play our best," Tezuka allowed. Then he hung up.
Inui often called him while he was running, Tezuka noted. He was impressed by Inui's conditioning. His lung capacity was superb.
.
When they arrived at Sato Daini for their matches on Thursday evening, Tezuka and Inui stood out more than Tezuka would have liked. They were the only team who had only two players, rather than at least the requisite four. They were the only team whose coach had declined to show up, citing a previous engagement, which Tezuka suspected was at a hostess club. They were the only team who were unsure of where to go and what to do. Tezuka was glad he had allowed an extra half hour for registration.
"This week and next week we'll be playing in a round robin," Inui reported, flicking through the information packet.
"Who are we playing first?"
"Fudaisei."
"What do you know about them?"
"There are six of them on the team and their coach has very long hair. Also, their tennis club is terrible."
Tezuka blinked.
"Before I was able to gather any further data, I was asked to leave the building," Inui explained. "It's much easier to collect data on tennis players. If you are unable to penetrate the school grounds, a pair of binoculars will suffice. For quiz bowl, perhaps some carefully-planted microphones would be useful."
Tezuka wondered if maybe, as Inui's captain, he should discourage this behavior. He decided that it probably wouldn't matter what he said either way.
"Let's go find the classroom where our first match is being held," he said instead.
The other team was there already, their four starting players seated together at one table, clutching buzzers in poised hands. Tezuka moved purposefully towards the empty table.
"What are you doing here?" demanded the high school kid draped over the podium at the front of the room. "This is the quiz bowl competition."
"We're the team from Seishun Gaikuen," Tezuka said evenly. The opposing team was whispering and giggling and pointing at them. Tezuka couldn't imagine what they found so entertaining and deplored their lack of sportsmanship. Inui took the chair at Tezuka's right and handed him three sheets of scratch paper from his notebook and a pen, just in case.
"Names, please?"
"Tezuka Kunimitsu, captain. My teammate, Inui Sadaharu."
No one reacted to their names. Tezuka wondered if maybe none of them even followed tennis. He had known that such people existed, of course, but he rarely actually met them. He was obscurely disappointed.
"All right," the moderator said, "everyone knows the rules, so let's just begin."
Inui started to protest that they were not, in fact, fully informed of the rules, but Tezuka whispered to him that they would be all right.
"Question number one is in Japanese history."
Inui made a sort of triumphant sound. Tezuka elbowed him to be quiet.
"In 1923, it -- "
A buzzer sounded from the opposing team. This was clearly a mistake of some kind, Tezuka thought. Nerves, probably.
"Fudaisei, Sato-kun."
"The Great Kanto Earthquake," said the boy with messy red hair who had buzzed in.
"That is correct!" the moderator pronounced.
"That's impossible!" Inui said.
"Shh," Tezuka said, automatically. He was staring at the Fudasei team, who were looking back, all brimming with smugness and glee. He was rattled.
"That's impossible." Inui bent his head to Tezuka's ear. "Perhaps they are cheating. They were in the room before we were."
"Question number two is in mathematics," the moderator went on.
Inui missed the beginning of the math problem because he was scribbling infuriated notes to Tezuka and Tezuka was writing scolding notes back and Fudasei got that one too. At the half, the score was 70-0 Fudasei.
"A love game," Inui muttered. He sounded low and broken.
"I wonder why Seigaku sent jocks to play on their quiz bowl team," Tezuka heard one of the Fudasei team say.
"Maybe they misread the flyers."
"Probably they can't even read."
"Take a deep breath," Tezuka advised Inui, who was fuming. He was feeling somewhat less than calm himself.
In the second half each question could earn your team a bonus question worth additional points, so it was possible for a team to rally and come from behind to win. Tezuka focused all his attention on each one as it was read.
"Question number eleven is in mythology. The third of these is now located in the imperial palace. The second is in the Grand Shrine of Ise in -- "
Tezuka realized what the answer was but he fumbled awkwardly for his buzzer and the red-haired Fudasei captain got it first.
"The Three Sacred Treasures or the Imperial Regalia of Japan," he said. His team got an easy bonus question, naming the gods of the sun, moon and storm, and brought the score to 100-0.
"Question number twelve is in mathematics. The graph of y equals the quantity x plus two times the quantity x - 3 intersects the x axis at points A and B. Find the length of AB."
Inui scribbled on his paper for a few seconds and then managed to knock his buzzer off the table. Its clatter echoed in the quiet room and the Fudasei team laughed. Their coach had the decency to cover her mouth, but she was laughing too. One of them rang in and took the question while Inui was awkwardly stooping under the table to retrieve his buzzer.
"IGNORE THEM" Tezuka wrote in large characters on his paper as the Fudasei team answered their bonus questions. He realized that his right hand was on Inui's knee and that he was actually gripping it rather tightly, but he left it there and Inui seemed to relax a little.
They played a little more calmly and took several questions. Inui was faster on the math questions than their opponents when he stayed focused and didn't sabotage himself, Tezuka noted with approval. The final score was a slightly less embarrassing 270-90.
Tezuka shook hands firmly and politely with each member of the Fudasei team, including their coach, who looked surprised. He signed the official scoresheet.
"Our next game is in another classroom," Inui reported, flourishing the information packet, and he and Tezuka left that one without another word to anyone.
"Do you know which way we're supposed to go?" Tezuka asked. In response, Inui pulled him around a corner into a hallway, but it appeared to be deserted.
"I'm sorry, Tezuka," he said, staring down. "This was all my fault. I should have realized how dramatically the effects of actual game play would affect my data and compensated accordingly. It was careless of me."
Tezuka stared for a moment. "No, it was my fault. I'm the captain," he said. "I should have ensured that we were familiar with all the rules and knew what strategies to employ. Besides, you scored more points than I did," he added.
"Our next game is in four and a half minute," Inui said. "If the opposing team is even half as strong as Fudasei, there is a zero percent chance that we will win."
"There are three more matches next week," Tezuka reminded him. "There is still a possibility that we can make it to the district finals if we work hard between now and then."
Inui brightened. "I will prepare training menus for both of us," he said, whipping out his notebook and writing furiously.
"And I will fix our buzzer system so that we can practice with it."
"I can help you with that." At Tezuka's raised eyebrow, he added: "I'll be more careful with it this time."
.
Ryuzaki caught Tezuka the next morning before school. "How were your quiz bowl matches?" she asked him.
"Inui and I have a good partnership in quiz bowl," he answered, leaving out the actual details of their matches, which they had in fact lost both of. Ryuzaki just smiled at him in that odd way that she sometimes did and told him that she would see him at practice.
.
At tennis practice that afternoon, Fuji insinuated himself next to Tezuka as he stood outside the chain-link fence, watching Echizen play Momoshiro. "How are things with you and Inui?" he asked softly.
"We lost our first matches, but we know what we need to work on before next week," Tezuka responded.
"Oh, but that's not what I asked," Fuji said, still smiling, before he drifted away.
.
That night Inui came home with Tezuka and accepted a cup of tea and said various polite things to his parents and grandparents (although Tezuka cut him off whenever he started quoting various statistics about Tezuka to them). Then they went back to Tezuka's room, where the buzzer system was still in pieces all over the otherwise neat floor.
"I found schematics of this particular buzzer system on the internet," Inui said, pulling out his laptop and a small leather toolkit from his racket bag. "I think that if we rewire it, it will be as good as new."
Tezuka looked at the schematics and instructed while Inui soldiered and screwed, but after a while he determined that Inui had figured out what he was doing. He found his copy of Le Petit Prince and the French dictionary, but the book stayed closed, his fingers in chapître dix. He watched Inui instead.
.
Tezuka and Inui practiced twice that week in the empty classroom of their absentee coach. The first time, they took turns asking each other questions and buzzing in using their newly-refurbished buzzers to answer them, until it became much more natural, like swinging a tennis racket. The second time, Tezuka asked Oishi if he would read the questions for them for a little while, if he wasn't busy, and Oishi said of course.
"I actually can't stay too much later, because my uncle is coming to dinner tonight," Oishi apologized after they had practiced for an hour. "But don't worry, because I arranged a substitute."
"Hoy! It's me, Kikumaru-sama!" Eiji tumbled into the classroom. "I've come to improve your quiz bowl team with my acrobatic play!"
"Eiji," Oishi said. Eiji huffed.
"I mean, I've come to read your boring questions out loud to you without distracting you or changing the subject or anything," he corrected himself sadly. Tezuka tightened his lips and thanked Oishi for his help.
.
"There is an eighty-nine percent chance that we will win both of our matches next week," Inui pronounced at the end of their practice. "However, whether that is enough to advance to the finals depends on the performance of the other teams. Based on my data, I estimate that the chances of this are only thirty-two percent." He rifled through his notebook. "One of our weak areas is sports."
Tezuka stared at him.
"Sports other than tennis," Inui clarified.
"Oh," Tezuka said. "I can study those."
"You already have foreign politicians and Nobel prizewinners and world rivers and American popular culture," Inui said. "I'll take the sports."
"We can study it together," Tezuka said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
