The Desperate Tales of Oikawa and The Bus

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"And so Iwaizumi wasn't able to stop Ushiwaka's spike and we lost." Oikawa pouted, a heavy sigh escaping his lips as he moved a piece on the chess board.

He'd spent the whole game telling the girl a summary of his last Interhigh experience, detailing every play from the Shiratorizawa game.

The girl nodded in agreement from time to time, occasionally interrupting him to indicate the "checkmate". Truthfully, she already knew he'd lost. She'd seen Shiratorizawa had won the game on the local news and had deducted Oikawa was going to be in a pretty terrible mood.

However, to her surprise, he wasn't as sad as she'd expected him to be. He pouted from time to time, but otherwise accepted the defeat as an unescapable consequence.

"I mean, I wasn't expecting to win, but still. Now I only have the Spring tournament to go to Nationals." He explained, finding comfort in the girl's occasional hums.

For once, he wasn't trying to get information out of her or come up with new ways to flirt with her. He was simply letting out what was heavy on his heart, and it felt quite good.

"The preliminaries for the spring tournament are in October, so I'm sure I'll figure out a way to beat Ushiwaka before then."

Oikawa had mentioned a lot of names during his commentary, and to be honest, the girl had forgotten most of them. She'd only memorised Iwaizumi, whose name constantly came up since he was the setter's best friend, and Ushiwaka, a spiker from Shiratorizawa that she could sense Oikawa despised with all her being.

There were also two boys from another school called Karasuno: the setter, which if she was not mistaken was named Tobio-chan or something, and if she remembered correctly once more had gone to Oikawa's middle school, and another one she couldn't remember the name of... all she knew was Oikawa referred to him as Chibi-chan and that he had orange hair, but that obiously didn't help her much.

"You've been awfully quiet." The setter finally let out as he dropped his king to the board, noticing the girl was about to win.

"I feel in the need to point out that I'm not usually that talkative." The girl pointed out dryly as the setter shrugged, putting the pieces back to the initial position to play another game.

"Yeah, but usually you answer some of my questions. Now you're just all silent." He shrugged, waiting for the girl to make the move.

The girl paused. She could tell that although the setter wasn't necessarily sad, he was nonetheless more disappointed than he was letting show.

Her mind wandered to Fudo's suggestion to teach him some chess plays. Would it really be that bad? I mean, it wouldn't hurt to teach him a trick or two... and maybe then he'd manage to beat that Ushiwaka guy.

Though she'd never met the boy, she could already tell she'd probably never stand him.

"So... how's this Ushiwaka guy anyway?" She finally asked, causing Oikawa's blood to boil in jealousy.

Out of all the people she wanted to talk about, she just had to pick Ushiwaka, didn't she?

"Terrible. I hate him." He snorted, thinking a couple of seconds before deciding to move his knight.

"I've noticed, thank you very much. I meant, how is he person-wise." She asked, noticing the setter's intentions and quickly countering his attack.

The setter paused, trying to find the right words.

"You, he's surprisingly similar to you." He declared after awhile causing the girl's eyebrows to furrow.

"You persistently get turned down by him?"

The boy stared at her proud face. Though she wasn't smirking and it technically looked as emotionless as always, he could sense the "that's right I'm going to destroy you" energy radiating from it.

"No, I'd rather kill myself before asking him out. Unlike you." He attempted a small flirt, which was met by a roll of eyes. "What I meant is he hides all of his emotions, just like you. You never know what he's thinking."

The girl exhaled sharply. So that's what he thought of her then. She moved her queen nonetheless declaring "Checkmate" as the boy hung his head and tried to find his mistakes.

"You moved your knight too soon, revealing your intentions from the start." The girl explained as the boy nodded thoughtfully.

"Of course, what an idiot." He hummed.

There was another silence as he put all pieces back in their initial position and waited for her to move her first pawn.

The girl stared some more at the brunette setter. His chocolate brown eyes were staring back at her, gleaming with impatience as they waited for her to make the first move.

"I'm going to teach you some new things." She finally declared. After all, she only lived once, and teaching him couldn't hurt her that bad.

"Eh?" The boy's face was painted with confusion and his eyes widened in shock. What now? Come again?

"It's not that you're not getting better, you are, but you need someone to guide you." She explained nonchalantly, carefully putting her books in her bag as the bus approached her stop.

"And you... want to teach me?" Oikawa asked again, startled.

"I play with you anyways, I might as well teach you a thing or too." She shrugged, her green eyes meeting his brown. "Besides, if you get any good at it you might actually be able to use at your advantage next time you face that Ushiwaka guy."

Oikawa stared at her some more, incredulous. Though his usual playboy self would have been ecstatic to be making this much progress, he wasn't feeling any of the usual pride.

No, what he was feeling was different. His heart was beating faster than its usual pace as he realised that to say that she must have somewhat cared for him.

The thought of her caring, even a teeny tiny bit made his heart blow up in ways it'd never done before. His cheeks flushed a bright shade of red, his mouth still forming a little 'o' as he stared at the girl.

"You don't have to blush, I just said I'd teach you some chess, it's not like I accepted a proposal or something." The girl raised her eyebrows at the startled setter, quickly sitting up and making her way down the bus.

Even though she was long gone, it took the boy quite some time to recover from the emotions and for his cheeks to return to their normal color.

That night, Oikawa Tooru's heart beat differently than usual, and the brunette was not yet sure why.