CHAPTER 1 BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! Kusano’s alarm clock yelled at him for the third time this morning. Once again, it did not succeed in waking up its master. “Shut up” Kusano mumbled and pressed the pillow over his head. He could not believe it was morning already. He let out a loud scream as he sat up in the bed. Through all the yawning and stretching of his arms Kusano glanced at the clock “UAH SO LATE!” With the breakfast in his hand Kusano entered the class room. “Late again Kusano?” the teacher snapped and stared at Kusano as he was a walking pooh. The whole class started to laugh, but the teacher did a hand move to make them shut up. “Yes I am, Sir” Kusano grinned and sat down behind his desk. “As I said before--” the teacher glanced at Kusano “Kusano interrupted me, there will be a volleyball tournament at the school, including all of the students this week.” Some of the students sighed, but most of them cheered up a bit, knowing it meant less school and less homework. For Kusano’s part, it meant that he had to watch all the smart and pretty boys playing volleyball, as he had to watch them. He had joined the volleyball tournament the year before, but he had screwed up so bad he did not wanted to try again. A gang of boys had beaten him up because of it. Yamashita Tomohisa was the one who had told the boys to beat him up. Kusano could not believe so many people adored Yamashita. Kusano could not see anything to like about him at all. Minus that he had good grades, had a natural talent in volleyball and was very handsome. Before lunch Kusano met up with his best pal, Kato Shigeaki. He did not get why Shige, as his friends called him, spent time with him when he could be of with the popular guys. He sure was pretty and smart enough. Shige always answered the question with “I had an embarrassing incident with Koyama, I don’t really think I can look him in the eyes anymore”. Kusano had never got a straight answer to what the “incident” was, so he did not really bother, as long as Shige was with him, he was happy. Shige waved with a hand in front of Kusano’s eyes “Are we going to eat lunch or not?” Kusano got back to earth and nodded “Yeah, let’s eat” he said as he saw some of Yamashita’s friends walking towards them. One of the reasons Kusano loved to be with Shige so much, was that he kept the bad guys away by being a rich spoiled pretty boy. To Kusano’s disappointment he could see Yamashita from the table he and Shige had decided to eat. Yamashita had gotten himself a new hairstyle over the summer, which had made him even more handsome. Kusano scraped his fork to the plate. Why did Yamashita have to be all perfect? He scraped the fork harder to the plate. Yamashita was sitting there, swarmed with pretty girls and popular guys, smiling and laughing of people who walked by. To Kusano’s surprise Yamashita cast a gaze at him. But it was not one of those usually cold and oppressive gazes, this one was different. Later that day the school board had hanged up the list of the volleyball teams. There were five teams. Some of Kusano’s classmates had signed up to join the tournament, he was happy to see that none of his classmates had ended up on Yamashita’s team. If one of them had, he would have been doomed to watch Yamashita play. Kusano took a last look at the five teams and stopped on the fourth one. “NOT FAIR!” he shouted and ripped down the list. “SHIGE!” Kusano shouted as he saw his friend. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING ON THIS LIST?” Shige glanced at the list and mumbled “Yamashita Tomohisa… right” Shige took a deep breath “Well… I wanted to play volleyball and… accidentally got on the same team as Yamashita.” Kusano turned the paper into a ball and threw it at Shige, sending him a ‘and what are you going to do about it’ look. “Nothing.” Shige replied and walked into the class room for his lesson.