#kumi things | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flydotnet · 1 year ago

Text

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

That guy seemed like he was about to burst a blood vessel. He was goin' too hard too much.

I started this fic what feels like a bazillion years ago - it was supposed to come out last year I believe, but between my half-year job that sipped my Life Points away like I was some Yu-Gi-Oh character, various other sources of brainrot and Whumptober, I ended up finishing this fic a lot later than I'd have liked.

Well, I knew I'd have to postpone posting it until I was done with a previous prompt on the card for Reasons only known to myself (and Tekiro), so it's not that surprising of me I'd suppose.

The backstory of this one was inspired by a fanfic series on Pixiv where, at some point, Nitta confronts Kumi's bullies; but like I'm edgy as fuck so I took it in an angstier direction. Woops.

I'm just really glad this fic is done, it's been a long time coming. Also I need food for my stupidly niche-ass rarepair that crosses into crackship territory if you don't think about it hard enough.

-----------------------------------------------------

Sunny-Side Up

Summary: Shun has felt off for a couple days, but in his haze, doesn't quite get why. Somehow, his crush manages to read through his own unease.

Fandom: Captain Tsubasa Relationships: Nitta/Kumi (pre-rel)

Word Count: 4.2K words

AO3 version available here.

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo.

-----------------------------------------------------

In a sudden flash of awareness, Shun realizes how much of a mess he’s made.

There’s a video playing on his smartphone of someone wrapping gauze on a dummy’s arm. His smartphone is itself propped on some makeshift installation on top of the empty bathtub, threatening to fall if he hits it at just the right angle. There’s an empty bottle of disinfectant on the floor, its smell all over the bathroom, bandages all over the place, a first-aid kit wide open and spilling.

All that mess, yet his wound still looks the worst out of everything here. Oh, this is going to be a pain in the ass…

Whatever. He can handle it on his own. He doesn’t need Urabe, Misaki and especially not Sugimoto’s nosy ass to slip their noses into his bullshit. Mom and Dad trust him to be on his own so he’ll manage it on his own. Tutorials are all he needs to get by with whatever he doesn’t know yet. He’ll cook himself omurice, he’ll down a pill or two, and it’ll be fine. He’s fine, no need for anyone else, and especially not a manager who puts her nose everywhere (even if she’s lowkey cute – when she’s not being a brat who meddles in people’s business).

Fuck it. It’s stopped bleeding and it doesn’t even smell that bad anymore (it doesn’t make him want to puke, at least), so that should be enough. He’s got other stuff to take care of, like what he’s going to train tomorrow and his math homework. Dammit, he should’ve taken a shower before patching that wound! Oh well, he’ll just quickly wash himself in the sink, like Dad often does when he runs late to his flights. You shouldn’t wash a wound, right? He remembers that from when he had stitches for another injury. It makes some amount of sense.

Just staring at the mess he’s made is kind of discouraging, though. It’s been a long day (even longer than that, actually), even without taking into account the deep cut on his thigh. He still doesn’t quite to make of it, confused by his own actions. Man, he’s really not in the mood to think of that over, why is he being like that? All he needs to do is get some sleep and it’ll all be good. Eat, sleep, repeat. It’s easy.

Eh…

On second thought, cooking omurice very much sounds like a chore as well. What if he just made rice in the cooker and sunny side up eggs? That sounds like a good compromise. Same ingredients, less wok involved, he can survive that. As long as he takes a pill, he’ll be fine. No need to ask for anyone’s help, he’s self-sufficient. He’s been for a long time.

He doesn’t need anyone’s help, and especially not that of a certain nosy manager he’s going to have to deal with tomorrow first thing in the morning.

It’s not that Sugimoto is a bad person. Yes, sure, she’s still a bit obsessed with Tsubasa, despite how long it’s been since she’s apparently confessed her love to him, only to be turned down because Nakazawa has always been his main squeeze; but she’s mostly gotten over it in years, although that’s probably helped by the fact Tsubasa has gone to Brazil and taken nobody else with him, not even his own girlfriend. She’s hardworking, she’s enthusiastic and she’s always ready to get her hands dirty if it means helping Nakazawa or Nishimoto with their tasks. She’s a good person, dammit, he can’t take that away from her, and the team wouldn’t be the same without her.

Hell, Shun would even say she’s kind of cute with her pigtails and her bright eyes and her infectious energy.

But the issue is that Sugimoto is enthusiastic and nosy. She’s so fucking nosy, all over the place asking people this and that, if she can help them, and that’s exactly what he doesn’t want. She’s well-intentioned and butting in people’s business isn’t exclusive to her in this team (looking at you, Ishizaki): the issue here is that not only can she not shut it once something has hit her radar, but she’ll also make sure that thing is taken care of personally – and by God, Shun can’t imagine making his teammates lose their manager’s time over some stupid cut on his thigh.

Also, how are you even supposed to explain how and why you’ve got a cut on your thigh? You just don’t get a thing like that by playing soccer, Shun’s clever enough to know that. Even the clumsiest of soccer players wouldn’t manage to get a cut this high and this clean on his leg, not even while drunk off his ass. It’s clearly no accident, he realizes, and he has no lie to come up with that’d sound credible enough to get past her, even when taking Sugimoto’s credulity into account. She’s seen too many soccer matches to know he’d have to do it on purpose and slip on a knife for this wound to happen.

Doesn’t help one bit that Shun’s a terrible liar. There’s no way he’s getting past the classic test of seeing if the person in front of you is sweating as they’re retelling a supposedly innocent story. Hell, he’s seen Misaki do it one too many times for that to fool him; and if Misaki can’t pull off a poker face good enough to fool the team, then there’s no way in hell Shun’s pulling that off. Moreover, Urabe tends to feel that sort of things like you’d feel someone’s unease: he’ll ask every annoying question possible with a loud enough voice to make a conviction weaver dead in its tracks.

He almost cracks two eggs open on the hot non-stick pan before remembering he needs to add oil so it won’t stick. He doesn’t have the energy to scrub burnt eggs off tonight (he never does, to be fair, it’s annoying even on a good day), so he loses the twenty seconds that take in exchange for more sleeping time tonight.

He kind of misses Mom, in situations like that. Every time she’s here, she cooks him her signature stir-fry, and they all eat it, with Dad and sometimes their friends. Whenever his parents are here, the house is always warmer, and it’s more comfortable, even if he’s nowadays used to the echo of his footsteps and to whistle a song when he’s cooking. Of course, he knows they’re rarely here for a good reason, and besides, it’s what makes the days they are home the best in the year. He can hope they’ll be in Japan for the high school national tournament this year, Mom told him that the other day, and it made his heart flutter.

The chime of the rice cooker sounds a little different tonight, like the echo has made it more sinister.

It’s somewhat weird, Shun finds. He’s been making rice on his own for long enough for that chime to be nothing if familiar, so he has no idea why tonight it resonates a bit differently now. He’s going to attribute it to fatigue, for now, and maybe later down the line he’ll have some sort of answer about it. At the moment, all he should worry about is improving on his soccer skills, take care of his homework and, of course, cooking his dinner. That’s the most important step of his evening as of now.

Urgh, he should’ve paid more attention, instead of zoning out for no reason like he just did, like a moron. The yellows have completely opened, rendering them as dry as the whites, there are burnt edges all over those of the pan and he doesn’t have eggs to spare. Shit end to a shit day, he supposes – so may as well gulp them down. He isn’t even that hungry anyway. He’ll just eat them, wash himself and go to bed. His uniform can wait until the morning, and so can thinking about Sugimoto butting her nose into his business, and the fact he wouldn’t even mind that much. At least, she’d look at him, and they’d be up close and personal, and…

No, no, he would mind, actually! Just like he’d mind Nakazawa or Nishimoto not minding their own businesses, but especially Sugimoto! Explaining this whole mess to her sounds exhausting. Bah, if push comes to shove, he’ll just find an excuse when he’ll be more refreshed than now. He’ll be a better liar next time, or he’ll just hide everything just enough for a basic pretence to work.

At least tomorrow will be better – and if not tomorrow, then the day after.

-----------------------------------------------------

Once again, and for what feels like a vague nth time lately, Shun wakes up in a haze. He eats a breakfast just as hazy, presumably composed of leftover rice from yesterday fried with oil and chocolate (it surprisingly doesn’t taste bad, at least not enough to make him nauseous again). He tries to button his uniform vest but ends up giving up because he’s already spent all his patience on his dress shirt. He walks to school unable to walk in a straight line or quickly – it’s either one or the other. Urgh.

It’s been colder and colder for the past three days, and no amount of hot beverage or soft-boiled egg has been able to fix it – and goddamn is Shun tired of hearing people asking him if he’s fine. Yes, he is, shut the fuck up. You’re a chore for asking something so useless.

Although Shun has to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that their doubts aren’t unfounded.

The wound on his leg hasn’t healed very well yet: if someone was to see it, or even the bandages that keep turning red without his approbation, they’d question it, and he’d have no choice but to explain how in the hell he got a cut that high yet that low at the same time. It’d then provoke some sort of domino effect, he’d guess, where Sugimoto would get involved because she’s a manager or something (sounds like an excuse), and that he can’t let it happen.

Come to think of it, if he could just get Nishimoto or Nakazawa not to tell anyone else about it, he’d be fine, would he? But the managers are close friends, they tell each other everything, and Shun can’t even risk Sugimoto hearing about it. If she was to learn of it, then…

Speaking of the devil, she just had to be there as soon as he was done changing. And here he was, hoping he’d be alone for a moment or two, enough time to get his crap together and look his Sunday best when he’s feeling anything but… (No, Shun, you’re just good. You’re doing just fine. Don’t whine, if you can walk, you’ve got nothing to cry about – you’re no quitter).

“Oh, good morning senpai!” She says with her usual smile. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here this early!”

Yep, she’s adorable all right, bouncy and luminous and everything of the sort.

“Good morning to you too, Sugimoto.”

Too bad she’s the one person he didn’t want to see, especially when he’s not made sure his stupid cut isn’t going to reopen yet.

“You’re going to practice shoots, right? I can help you get the balls back!”

“Yeah, Imma do that; but, like, you don’t have to help with it. Just make sure the clubroom is good for everyone else to use if they come.”

If they come, yeah, because morning practice isn’t the gold standard it used to be for some. Shun may also be hoping fewer people than usual get to see him because he didn’t exactly look… fresh when he was brushing his teeth (at least, that’s what he got through his haze). He can’t imagine it’s gotten better either.

“I’ve already taken care of preparations for the day, senpai.”

Uh…

“Oh, that’s good then.”

He helplessly watch her face twinge just a little.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Nitta? You look really pale today…”

And here’s why he really didn’t want to come across her all day: Sugimoto has a hawk’s eyes when it comes to things like that. According to his teammates, she used to be oblivious – blinded by her love for their captain, you know how it is, Nankatsu’s very identity was overwhelmingly Tsubasa’s to a sickening degree – but ever since he left for Brazil, she’s become the sharpest gaze on staff. Some say she may as well have been reading into their future. It’s, of course, impossible, but hey, for once, Shun’s willing to let it slide. It gives her an additional layer of depth he can’t deny but be allured by.

Oh, right. He’s supposed to lie to her now.

“Yeah, I’m all good.”

He feels something cold on his leg. He doesn’t really know what it is, but what he knows is that he needs to get away and onto the field as soon as possible before she realizes something’s up. But how does he do that without seeming suspicious?

“You really don’t look like it… Are you sure you’re not sick? You know you can take a day off, right? I promise you, people won’t blame you!”

“Nah, I’m fine, no need to fuss.”

He waits for her response, but all he gets in exchange is her widened eyes and a cold sweat pearling down his back.

“Nitta,” she says in a choked voice that’s so unlike her.

“Yeah?”

“You’re bleeding…”

In a snap of the gaze, Shun looks down at his leg and realizes, in unspoken horror, that the damn wound has already betrayed him: there’s a trail of red coursing down his thigh and shin, tainting his white socks, mocking him with its vicious rusty hues. Yeah, that one’s going to be difficult to explain, let alone hide anymore. Dammit, had he still been wearing his uniform, the black pants would’ve hidden that.

Guess lying by omission his way out of this situation isn’t on the table anymore… Unless?

“It’s, uhm… It’s a cut on my thigh,” he admits, trying to keep as many details out of there as possible. How does one accidentally cut his thigh?

“Stay here, I’m getting the first-aid kit!”

Sugimoto runs out of the main room to get to their small-ass infirmary, which leaves him time to flee out of there. Unfortunately, now that he knows he’s bleeding, he’s realising the damn thing stings, and it’s preventing him from actually attempting an escape – and she’s back already. Goddammit.

“Sit down anywhere, please.”

The worried tone of her voice makes him do the polar opposite of what he should: obeying her like a good little puppy and sitting on the nearest chair possible.

“It’s really no big deal,” he tries to argue anyway. “Just gimme the bandages, I’ll patch it up myself.” She stares at him with somewhat empty eyes. “What? I can wrap a wound, y’know.”

“It’s a manager’s job to take care of the players of her club,” she says as she kneels down to his legs. “Pull back your shorts just a little, please.”

It’s uncomfortable at best to actually strike some sort of balance between showing enough skin for her not to scold him, yet not enough for her to see whatever the hell he’s wearing underneath his shorts (come to think of it, what did he even put on this morning?). Why is he concerned about it now when he couldn’t be bothered when Nakazawa was seeing him almost entirely naked? No real idea, but for now, it’s very much an issue to immediately take care of.

Oh, wow, that bandage looks really fucking red. It was white when he put it on this morning, sure, but now, it’s a nasty amount of red. The thing won’t stop expanding too, like ink on paper.

“Oh my God,” Sugimoto barely manages to articulate, hands in front of her mouth and eyes open wide. “I need to check this, hang on, please.”

“You really don’t have to—”

He has to muffle a scream when she starts unwrapping the bandage, everything having stuck to his skin through a layer of sweat first, then with matted blood all around the cut.

“How long have you been injured for?”

The word hits him like a freight train.

“Uh… A couple days, I guess?”

This wasn’t supposed to make her worry even more.

“This should’ve healed in two or three days,” she says, trembling. “Your wound’s infected.”

Ah, that makes sense. Vaguely so, but it does.

“Crap.”

Sugimoto backs away a little, stares some more at his leg, and her face doesn’t get much better.

“Why did you let it get that bad, Nitta? You should’ve sensed something was wrong much earlier than that!”

Her voice is loud enough to rattle against all of his brain at once.

“H-hey, no need to yell at me! That shit happens sometimes!”

“What do you mean, ‘this happens sometimes’?! That’s an infected wound! Have you not cleaned it at all?!”

“Of course I didn’t! You’re not supposed to wet a wound!”

Sugimoto stares at him with all the disbelief in the world.

“You’re supposed to disinfect a wound! What are you saying?!”

“Last time I checked, when I had stitches, my doc told me not to!”

“It’s because you had stitches, senpai! But that’s just not the same, your wound’s already clean when you get stitches! Did you…” She trails on. “Did you not know this?”

Shun freezes when he realizes what he’s been doing for the past couple days has been stupid.

“Uh… No. I didn’t think about it, I guess?”

That doesn’t quell any of her disbelief in front of what the hell he’s telling her about.

“Why didn’t you ask for help, then?” She asks in an almost emotionless voice.

He’s once again sent for a loop there, just because he’s not sure himself. Shun’s never been too keen on getting help, because dependence has never run in his blood: he hates having to rely on other people for things beyond his control, let alone not being able to decide how much of a hand they should give him. What if he can’t pay them back, huh? Then what? He hates debts. He hates losing his sense of freedom and independence and that’s just how it is. No amount of feelings he can have for anyone will change that.

Sports are unrelated to that. Soccer is a collective sport, so of course, he knows he has to cooperate and rely on other people. Relying on other people for passes is fine. Asking someone else about how to dress a wound is fucking embarrassing.

“I don’t like that,” he spits at her without an afterthought, as if it was the whole story.

“You… don’t like asking for help,” Sugimoto drags through her teeth.

“Yeah.”

His head’s a little hazy, in no little amount due to the constant blood loss, as light as it’s been. It can’t be too good, he supposes.

“I suppose I understand that,” Sugimoto tells him as she starts cleaning the damn thing.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.” He can’t quite see her much through the dizziness that’s slowly been creeping up and her odd positioning, hair falling in front of her face like a cascade. “Besides, you don’t look very capable of handling it yourself. You should’ve asked for help earlier.”

The urge to scream at her to shut the fuck up dries up before even his impulsive ass can do it. Instead, he deflates, a slow realization dawning on him: there’s no way he’s getting out of here without a very ugly truths or two coming out of his mouth, whether he wants it or not.

“I guess,” he snaps back, even if it sounds weak (as if he was so much tired than he’s supposed to be, as if he actually didn’t want to bite back when he should be spitting venom back at her).

“It’ll get very ugly, one day, if you don’t take good care of yourself.”

“What would you know about that?”

Her eyes squint. Shit, that wasn’t his wisest move – but what has been, lately? Clever people don’t get their wounds infected by sheer stupidity.

“I was there, at some point.”

The sentence is icy water down his back, uncomfortable and leaving a mark no matter what. He has no idea what she’s referring to, and his slow-moving nerves aren’t making the task any easier, and the more he tries thinking about it and the worst it gets – but like the shiver-inducing trail of an ice cube, he can’t ignore it, not entirely at least. Dammit.

You know, maybe Shun doesn’t know her as much as he’d like to say with certainty and all sorts of bravado, and that’s the saddest shit ever. He’s pretty much down bad for her, the way she handles everything as well as she can, the bounce of her pigtails, the spark in her eyes and all of the spunk he could ask for; and yet look at him, unable to tell if she’s actually gotten over Tsubasa and absolutely unknowing of her hardships. Too self-centred, as he’s always been.

“How did you end up with such a cut…?” Sugimoto whispers to herself, breaking the palpable silence. “It’s so deep, yet it’s in such a weird place…”

He didn’t want to hear that question, he really didn’t – especially from her.

“I dunno,” he tries lying. “Maybe I just slipped on something.”

The sting of disinfectant jolts through him, much more than it should’ve probably.

“Do you really think I’m this stupid, senpai?!” Sugimoto claps back with a snap, but her anger quickly fades away. “This is quite a deep gash, that doesn’t make sense for something to have happened to you on the field, or when slipping. It’s almost like you got cut there…” Her voice softens again, right as her fingers stop on top of his skin. “What actually happened? Is it something you can’t tell me…?”

“It’s, uh…”

Shun finds himself as a crossroad, now. Sugimoto’s asking for answers, but she also gives him a way out if he’s too much of a coward to come clean with all of this crap. It’s no grand burden, after all, and fatigue is a terrible thing that creeps into his bones and gnaws at everything there is to find, until it gets bored, and then you slip into the haze – oh, right, he was talking. Was supposed to, at least.

“It’s fine if you can’t, Nitta,” Sugimoto picks the train back up again.

Despite her words attempting to be reassuring, sounds clearly displeased; the hold on the bandage roll she’s wrapping around his thigh tight. It hurts a lot more than it should, right about now.

“I, uhm…” He gulps, suddenly sweaty, the lies dying in his throat.

Everything feels heavy on his chest, because he’s tired and sick and injured and in front of his crush, she’s hurting not to know what happened to him. How they got to this point, in a clubroom, in a sort of headlock where he really wants someone to know yet doesn’t want to open, and her who seems so sad he won’t let her in.

Maybe it’s fine to tell her.

Maybe it’s fine if she’s asking to know.

Maybe it’s fine if it’s the girl he loves.

“It’s a scissor cut,” he finally lets loose.

Sheer horror curses her face, her hands dropping the bandage roll.

“Someone did that to you with scissors…?” Her voice is as saddening to hear as her expression looks. “That’s awful…!”

She directly jumped to a culprit having done that, huh. Well, he did decide to be truthful with her… so there’s no way back. There’s no taking back. Plus, she kind of deserves to know.

“It was some girls in your class. They had that pair of scissors to cut shit in your locker, dunno what.” He chuckles, because it really was ridiculous, by the end of the day. “I confronted them and it actually did happen on accident. They weren’t reaching for my leg, y’know?”

Sugimoto puts away everything she used back into the first-aid kit.

“Why would you…”

He gets up, despite her worries and despite the pain in his leg that hasn’t gotten better at all. If anything, he’s just more aware of it now.

“I couldn’t let them hurt you anymore. Why didn’t you tell us?”

She doesn’t reply, at first. They’re so close, physically, he can almost hear her own heartbeats, or so it feels – or maybe it’s just blood reaching his head. He’s apparently running a fever and shit.

“Can I… tell you later?” She replies with all of the timidity in the world. “Please?”

“No problem.”

His focus slips for just a second and, as a result, he almost falls backwards a second later. She catches him in his fall, and that’s the one moment where his entire body has chosen to just stare in awe.

“I think we… should get you to the infirmary!” She nervously chuckles and he can’t help but smile.

“Sounds…” his stubborn bone snaps in half, “good to me, actually.”

He stands back up, limping on the side of his infected leg.

“Let me accompany you, then. You sound like you’ve been on your own for quite some time.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She leads the way, he follows holding her hand. It’s not just for balance.

#bad things happen bingo #captain tsubasa #hiding an injury #nitta shun #sugimoto kumi #shunkumi #bthb #back on my shunkumi bullshit and yu can't stop me

1 note · View note