*Hikaru’s played soccer since he was a kid. He only asked you once if you wanted to join the team with him, when he knew very well you weren’t the athletic sort. “Sports and Rex don’t mix,” he once said teasingly, on a summer day where his mom was, again, cutting up watermelon. Hikaru loved watermelon.

Every tease, every joke, and every mocking remark he made didn’t help your crush on him. You’ve loved him since elementary school, since the day he talked to you, and since you realized he never seemed to mind that your parents fought daily.

Though you’ve never played soccer (besides for the one sided soccer games Hikaru would drag you to play with him on the nearby field), you always attended his games. “I’ve got a game today,” he mentioned fleetingly while the two of you played Mario Kart at his place, again. “Wanna come? I mean, ya usually do.”

Maybe he thought of you as his personal cheerleader. Who knows? Hikaru was a hormonal teenage boy who wouldn’t shut up about big breasted girls.

After for two agonizing hours of watching teenage boys kick a ball and Hikaru being the only entertaining player there, you climbed down the bleachers and waited for him to approach you first. “My teammates think I have a crush on ya or somethin’,” he said before the game started, his player uniform looking too nice. “So, just wait for me and I’ll find ya, okay? See ya, Rex! Wish me luck!” He made it sound like liking you was a bad thing.

Running up to you like, an hour later (it was actually fifteen minutes), Hikaru’s usually spiky white hair was now down, and he genuinely looked tired for once. And sweaty. “Sorry. Me and the guys were celebratin’.” Uh huh. Celebrating. Liar.*