Kazuhito: A Short Story

The shrill sound of his alarm clock broke through the pleasant dream Kazuhito was having. He tried to hold on to it by keeping his eyes closed as he grabbed around the bedside table. When he found the clock and turned it off, the images already started slipping his mind and all he was left with was the faint memory of a warm embrace and light brown hair beneath his fingertips.
Groaning, he opened his eyes and turned his head to see the red numbers of his alarm clock – 6:03. Something about that time was off and it took him another minute to realise that he could've slept in for another hour and a half, since he and his friends had decided to quit the club.
No more morning practice.
It was a strange feeling. He'd played volleyball almost every

The fact that the couch in the Ennoshitas' living room was just big enough to hold three fifteen-year-old boys was both a blessing and a curse. Somehow Kazuhito had ended up sitting in the middle and he was intensely aware of the way he was touching shoulders with Kinoshita while they were watching some obscure sci-fi film Ennoshita had found in his father's film collection. It was far from the first time that Kazuhito was this close to Kinoshita, they'd helped each other with their stretches during practice often enough, but the context was so different that it threw Kazuhito's brain for a loop.
Your thighs are touching your thighs are touching your thighs are touching. It didn't matter that Kazuhito was also touching thighs with Ennoshita. And then Kinoshita shifted his position, leaning his shoulder against Kazuhito's arm. He's leaning on you he's leaning on you he's leaning on you.
Kazuhito was really thankful that both his friends were really engrossed in what was happening on the TV screen, so that they never noticed how much he was

arita-sensei is talking too much @_@

Kazuhito smiled. Arita-sensei was his home room teacher, thus he knew about her tendency to ramble on and on without a sign of ever intending to shut up. He sat down on the steps leading down from the school's entrance. It was kinda chilly, reminding him that autumn was rapidly approaching. Soon it would be time for the Spring High preliminaries.
Maybe what was missing from his afternoons was volleyball. Not the sport itself, but the feeling of being on a team, of belonging, of fighting for a common goal... Another sigh escaped Kazuhito's mouth. Maybe it had been a mistake to quit, but it was too late to go back now.

The cultural festival didn't bring any relief for Kazuhito's plagued mind. He helped out with setting up his form's pancake café and he was in charge of making tea, because nobody would let him near the pancakes (which was probably for the best), but these activities didn't exactly help take his mind of the guilt. The fact that sometimes the club members would show up to get themselves pancakes also didn't help. Every time he spotted one of them he'd make sure to avoid eye contact and he'd busy himself with neatly lining up the paper cups. He suddenly envied Ennoshita's position as a committee member, because he spent most of his time in the back, managing their supply of