Bab 109: The Empty Locker
Akane walked into the womens' volleyball locker room, looking around at her new surroundings. It was a small room, as it needed to accommodate only eighteen girls in total. There was a center wall bearing two banks of nine blue steel lockers each on each side, with long pine benches running along each side of the room between the lockers and the outer walls for changing shoes and such. Six shower stalls with wooden dividers painted in a dark pewter dominated the back wall. The cartoonish blue sorcerer that was the logo for their college and its mascot, the Mystics, was painted in a large purple circle on the floor at the entrance to the room. The place smelled of equal parts sweat, and the industrial cleaner that hadn't quite succeeded at getting rid of the sweat.
As she took in her surroundings, Fumiko and another of her teammates she'd not yet met walked in, both already dressed in their purple practice shorts and blue practice tee shirts bearing their last names and jersey numbers in large white vinyl lettering. "Oh, hey, Akane!" Fumiko smiled. "Well, I guess it's officially official! Welcome to the team! This is Haruki Oshima, our serving specialist." Fumiko gestured to the redhead with the pixie cut to her immediate left, wearing number six.
Akane gave a wave and a smile. "Thanks so much! I guess I'll get settled in?" She lifted her gym bag for emphasis, looking around the room.
Fumiko nodded. "Sure thing! Your uniform and stuff is on the bench over there." Fumiko pointed to a small pile of folded clothing on the pine bench on the far side, opposite an empty locker that was standing ajar, and Akane made her way to it, setting her bag down on the bench.
There she found three sets of shirts and shorts: a purple set for home games and a blue set for away, and then a blue tee shirt with a pair of cotton purple shorts for practices. All bore the name TENDO and the number three. The captain's star would come soon enough, once Fumiko graduated, Akane committed to herself.
She opened her blue duffel bag, beginning to fill her locker with deodorant, an extra change of clothes, and her shower gear, as well as a black wrist brace for the arm that Ryoga had nearly broken a few months ago. She'd escaped serious injury then, but it still hurt from time to time, and Akane felt it better to protect it and spare herself further damage that could hurt her team down the line.
Reiko, another of her teammates, stepped over the bench and sat down a half-meter away, starting to change her shoes. "Hey, new girl! What's shakin'?"
Akane blushed, turning from her locker. "Oh, hello. My name's Akane Tendo." The girl looked familiar. "New outside hitter. Good to meet you!"
Reiko nodded, beginning to pull her purple-tinged hair back into a ponytail. "Yeah, same to you, Akane. Reiko Araki. Lookin' forward to playing with you. We've heard good things from Fumiko, and a good chunk of the team's gonna be graduating this year, so we needed to get some younger blood on the roster." She wore the number one. Always a good warning sign of a diva attitude, Akane thought with a smirk.
"I hope I don't let you down!" Akane pulled off her yellow tee shirt, bending down in her bra and skirt and grabbing her blue practice shirt and slipping it over her head. As she did, she overheard Reiko start a new conversation with the girl to her left.
"Damn! Saki, girl, you look like hell."
Another of Akane's new teammates, who she could only assume was the aforementioned Saki, laughed off to Reiko's other side. "Hey, don't look at me. Satoshi kept me out all night at his party." She shrugged dismissively with a little smirk and slightly bloodshot eyes, taking another sip from the paper coffee cup in her hand.
Reiko shook her head, laughing. "Yeah, but you can't be showing up to practice all hung over and stuff! Coach is gonna be pissed!"
Saki waved her teammate off, popping her locker open. "Look, you do what you do with Sadao, and me and Satoshi'll do our thing. I promise, a little bit of a headache isn't gonna keep me from kicking your ass in scrimmage today." She peeled her gray tanktop off and threw it in the bottom of her locker, reaching for the blue practice shirt reading SHIRAISHI above the number thirteen that hung within.
Akane blushed quietly to herself. She was also pretty tired from her activities last night, but she imagined it was nothing compared to what poor Ranko was probably enduring. Akane had been so nervous to try anything physical with her, and she hoped that Ranko really had understood that she just needed time to get used to the idea, and wasn't just saying so to deflect from some deeper concern.
Akane shivered a little just thinking of how completely, gloriously, ethereally the girl she loved had fallen under her control, and she regretted having not made her move months ago. The indomitable warrior, with a heart of steel and a spine to match, had become putty in her hands in a matter of seconds. Akane marveled at the amount of trust Ranko must have placed in her, given how utterly and instantly she'd allowed Akane to incapacitate her. If she'd had Shampoo's phone number last night, Akane just might have called her and asked for the exact location of the Full-Body Cat's Tongue pressure point. She had to admit, from the outside looking in, it looked pretty damned appealing.
So lost was she in her provocative daydream that she didn't realize she was being spoken to until she heard her name.
"Hey, Akane, you gonna finish getting dressed or what?" Reiko tapped her foot on the floor, smirking.
"Yeah, sorry!" Blushing both at having held up the team, and about the nature of the thoughts Reiko had interrupted, Akane slipped her purple practice shorts up her legs under the white pleated skirt she was wearing, before pulling the skirt itself off and folding it.
Fumiko walked by, giggling with Saki about whatever she and her boyfriend had gotten up to. Reiko laughed, turning to Akane as they passed. "So, what about you? I know you're new to the school. Are you seeing anybody yet, Akane?"
Akane laid her folded skirt on the top shelf in her locker. She opened her mouth to answer, to tell them all about the incomparable woman she had moved in with. The beautiful local singer and songwriter with thousands of fans lining up around the block to see her every night. The exquisite creature she'd just made love to for the first time not eighteen hours ago. As she did, she swung the door of the locker closed. The steel door rattled in place with a loud bang. The little gray engraved nameplate on the door still identified the locker as belonging to its previous occupant, one Nanami Ikehara, number fourteen.
Nanami. The upperclasswoman that she'd watched get kicked off the team for the crime of being in love with a girl. That was where she recognized Reiko and Saki from.
Akane swallowed hard, hooking the shaft of her combination padlock into the twin metallic loops on the door and clicking it shut with a sigh.
"Not yet, no."
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Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone