"Why are you so excited?" Joshua low-key grumbled while looking at sideways. The mark on his face had already faded considerably by the end of the first period and by this point it was barely visible. I glanced back at him between two swings of my arms and smiled.
"Why shouldn't I be? I missed the last PE class and my body is full of excess energy to burn off."
"If you say so..." He sounded decidedly unconvinced. I didn't really care though; I was too busy limbering up my joints. Then he asked, "This isn't about the girls' uniforms, right?"
Now it was my turn to look at him sideways while doing the splits.
"Pardon?" For so reason Josh was only giving a ‘How are you doing that?' look, so I repeated myself a bit louder. "I said, pardon? What was that about the girls?"
"... Nothing." He dismissed and began his own warm-up routine. Now that was just a dick move, piquing my interest like that.
I tried not to be bothered by it as I did a few one-handed push-ups, alternating between the arms after every fifth push, and I felt nice and limber in no ti. Since the weather was still nice, we were having the physical education class outside, on the sports field behind the main building. The class was co-ed and, unsurprisingly enough, it was also taught by Mrs. Applebottom. Nevertheless, we were still separated into two groups. The guys, which of course included , were preparing at one end of the field while the girls did so at the other, and Joshua's comnt involuntarily drew my attention to them.
They were... nothing special, really. I an, they were generally attractive teenage girls doing warm-up exercises, but it wasn't like it was a special sight, unless if it was one's thing, of course. I'm not judging. I took an even closer look, but it wasn't the clothes either. I was half-expecting them to wear those silly form-fitting tight shorts they inexplicably called ‘bloors' in certain corners of the internet, but they weren't. In fact, their getup was fairly sensible, with almost knee-long sports shorts and thick white t-shirts. There was nothing really titillating about them.
"A-ha!" Josh suddenly exclaid at my side.
"Hm?" I looked over to him and he was smiling triumphantly.
"What?"
"You were looking at the girls!"
"Erm... Yes, I was. So? I wanted to figure out what you were talking about."
"U-huh," My friend patted on the back with a skeptical smile in tow as he walked by, leaving none the wiser of just what the heck he was getting at.
The confusing start aside the rest of the class went swimmingly. After so further warm-up mandated by the teacher, the class continued their separated yet equal activities. We were playing basketball, which was a ton of fun. I had a natural height advantage over practically everyone, and since I was brimming with energy, I kept dashing around the field and scoring points left and right.
The only guy in the class who could keep up with was Josh. We were on opposing teams, and over ti the match slowly devolved into a duel just between the two of us. I was bigger and stronger, plus I proved to be pretty nimble on my feet, but Josh was just a little faster and had better control over the ball. Not only that, he was better at pacing himself, and while I soon lost the initial rush I felt over being able to move freely, he was able to give an even performance from beginning to end. It was a tough match, but in the end my team, and by that I an in particular, ca out victorious, though only by two points. Most importantly, it was a blast.
As for the girls, most of them were gawkers, cheering for one side or the other. Angie in particular was constantly shouting advice to Josh. Most of them were actually good ones, so they must've made up during one of the breaks when I wasn't looking. The class rep seed to prefer the underdog, always cheering for the side that didn't have the ball at the mont, though in her case ‘cheering' might have been too strong a word. Let's go with ‘reserved encouragent' instead. Now the princess, on the other hand, was loud enough to make up for two and then so. Unfortunately for though, she wasn't as much cheering for Joshua as rioting against . In a sense, I had to admire the way she managed to co up with insults that sohow didn't sound insulting. Just how did calling ‘handso lecher' even related to my basketball skills anyway? That said, she was still distracting enough that I missed a couple of shots because of her.
As for my assistant, she mostly stayed silent, kept writing her notes, and whenever I looked at her she made it a policy to limp-wristedly wave a tiny *Go Team ______!* flag. Don't ask where she got it, I had no idea either.
As for why the girls had ti to cheer, it was mostly due to the fact that they were playing tennis, and there were only two courts for that. So amused themselves by playing with the rackets and so spare balls, but whenever it wasn't their turn they generally just idled around the basketball field. On the other hand, when it was their turn they imdiately stopped cheering, even the core girls, and rushed to play.
As far as I could gather from the snippets of placeholder dialog I overheard during the ga, girls' tennis was actually getting popular in the country, which I had no idea about, but it made stop and think for a mont: What country? Not only that, I kept forgetting to check the geography of this world, so I still had no idea where the hell I actually was!
Then I had an idea: Why not ask Judy? She should be able to tell , and then so other details too, stuff that asking Josh about would have been awkward and possibly data-contaminating. In the worst-case scenario, where she had no idea either, I could still ask her to remind to look into it so that I wouldn't keep forgetting about it.
With that in mind, I stood up from the bench where I dropped myself after the match was over just as Josh was returning from a quick errand, carrying a pair of soft drinks (for which I had to pay, of course). He tossed one of the cans and it felt almost icy against my sweaty palm.
"Thanks."
"You are welco."
He raised his can and we toasted before drinking them in one go. Once emptied, I handed the can back to him.
"Could you throw this away for ? I have sothing to take care of before I forget it again."
"Sure." He took the can, but his eyes were fixed on .
"Have you seen my assistant?"
"Judy?" His eyes suddenly narrowed in suspicion. "Last ti I saw her she was sitting on the grass by the tennis court. Why?"
"Because what I need to take care of involves her."
"Ooooooh..." Josh smiled knowingly and I rolled my eyes.
"Get your brain out of the gutter, please."
"Hey there pot, this is kettle. He says you are black."
"Ha. Ha. I would love to listen to your stellar wit, but I have to run."
I walked past him and he kept waving after with the sa smile. Seriously, why was he convinced that I was so sort of pervert?
"Hm... Maybe I used to be...?" I contemplated as I was about to reach the tennis court. It took about half a second to find Judy in the crowd, which surprised even . It was probably because of how much I've interacted with her in such a short ti, but to , she stuck out of the uniformity of the other placeholders almost as much as any one of Joshua's girls.
I found her leaning on the ball-catching fence around the court in the company of a few other girls. I walked up to her without hesitation and sohow my presence seed to scatter the other students. I didn't mind it though; the fewer people around, the lower the chance they might overhear sothing.
She didn't notice right away. In fact, she was so wrapped up in watching the match that I had to poke her shoulder a bit for her to look my way.
"Hi. Whatcha watching?"
She wordlessly pointed to the field with a ‘duh' in her eyes, and I had to whistle in amazent. It was Angie and the princess playing, and they gave one heck of a performance. Now, I am the first to admit that I knew as much about tennis as I did about quantum chanics, but even I could see they were pretty damn impressive. There were tis I could barely see more than a yellow blur of the ball.
Just as I looked over the princess returned a high ball with a sharp smack that landed just a hair's breadth outside Angie's reach. My assistant imdiately raised her little triangular flag in the familiar unenthusiastic wave. So she was doing that for everyone, huh? In a way that was both a relief and a little disappointing.
"Where did you get that?" I asked, pointing at her hand.
"From the storage room," She answered matter-of-factly while pointing at the small white building at the other end of the field with her flag. "They have a lot of them, though most of them already had sports teams written on them. It's either ‘Team Eduard' or ‘Team Jackson'."
"Huh. Those are weird nas for a team."
"Maybe they are for individuals? Probably a team's star player."
"That's really rude to the rest of the team."
"Agreed."
We both concurred and then fell silent, watching the match between Angie and Elly unfold. The princess was in the lead, and she looked like she was in her elent on the field, but Angie wasn't half bad either. In fact, she looked really fired up and was dishing out fastballs as hard as she got them.
I was just thinking about whether they might have been actual professionals when I noticed the princess stumbling. It was only for a mont, but after that I paid closer attention to her and noticed that she indeed was still favoring one of her legs. I ford my hands around my mouth in a funnel as she was about to serve and called ut to her.
"Take it easy, princess! You are going to hurt your ankle again!"
She twitched and looked around frantically. She finally found and waved her racket in my direction in a show of almost comical outrage.
"I don't need your warnings! I hate you!"
"The two things are in no ways related! Just be careful, okay?"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
I lowered my hands and shrugged. "She sure is an irritable girl," I muttered, and Judy silently nodded at my side. In the anti the princess served and it prompted another heated duel on the court. "They are pretty good."
"Angeline is on the tennis team. Eleanor was apparently playing in tournants on the mainland," Judy explained to , though she didn't actually take her eyes off the match.
"Really? That explains a lot..." As I was saying that, her last word finally sunk in and I rembered why I ca over in the first place. I clicked my tongue over the near-miss and turned to her to hit the iron while it was hot. "Hey, Judy? Can I ask you a quick question?"
She turned away from the match to face , but all of a sudden her legs buckled and she fell backward, away from the fence.
"Whoa!" I imdiately reached out and caught her by the waist before she could completely topple over. Her legs were still slack, so I lowered her and had her sit down. I also realized that she was warm. She wasn't burning up or anything, but she definitely had a high temperature, and as I took a closer look I quickly realized that she was pale even beyond her usual complexion.
"I'm all right..." she told between pained breaths, and sohow her words managed to remain impassive even in this situation.
"Like hell you are!" I completely ignored her protests and put my hand on her forehead. "Just as I thought, you do have a fever. Why didn't you say anything?"
"I'm not sick, just drowsy."
"No, you are both."
It was around this ti that Angie ca to the fence and began tiptoeing around like she could see more that way.
"What happened?" Her voice sounded more curious than worried, but then she noticed the girl lying in front of and her face tensed up.
I looked up at her and gestured towards my assistant. "According to her, it's just lack of sleep. I'll take her to the infirmary, just to be safe." Saying so, I turned back to Judy. "Can you walk?"
She feebly nodded and tried to rise to her feet, but she was so wobbly it was painful to watch. I lent her a shoulder, though she had so difficulty holding on due to the height difference. Just then I noticed that there was a disturbance in the loose ring of placeholders idling around us, and a mont later a familiar face elbowed his way to our side.
"Is there a problem?" Joshua asked as he finally arrived by our side. "I saw her collapse, did sothing happen?"
"Hopefully nothing serious. I'm taking her to the nurse. Where's the teacher?" Josh looked around and gave an unknowing shrug. "Fine, it's not like they would be a lot of help. Please tell her what happened once she actually shows up."
I didn't even wait for him to nod before I began all but dragging Judy along.
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