It was only a day ago when I met this random girl at a Japanese restaurant.
So tell me, author, why am I here playing cupid all of a sudden?
I'll give a brief recap of what happened the day prior. So after Yui saw the ideal boy of her dreams, she proceeded to beg me to bring them together. Now that came to quite a shock for me, because just hours before that, she was struggling to string together sentences with me. I'm not sure exactly how she will face when forced to speak to her crush, alone.
Anyhow, things happened and now I'm here, sitting foolishly on a bench beside the soccer pitch I sometimes practiced at. "When is he coming?" for someone so shy I was surprised she hadn't passed out at the thought of speaking to this boy yet. "In ten minutes." Now, I didn't come up with this plan, she did and although I saw many flaws with it, I couldn't be bother correcting them because at this point, she was so far out of it that there was literally nothing I could do. All hope rested on the slim possibility that pure stupidity of this idea would somehow lead to a miracle happening.
The two of us were brushed by a harsh morning wind. I had originally planned to do this in the afternoon but turns out the boy had plans, so now we're here, freezing on a bench as we waited for a catastrophe to occur. "Sachi, I'm cold." No, Yui, you actually don't get to complain, you were the one who dragged us out here and now you're complaining about the cold. Just moments prior when I first sat on the bench, I thought my legs were about to get frostbite, the bench was made of metal, instantly conducting all of the heat out of my thighs through my shorts.
I slowly pulled took off my runners and socks. The brief moment where my feet made contact with the wet grass, I thought I'd give up on life. I rested my feet on top of the rough sports bag that I had placed under the bench and pulled out my shin pads, soccer boots and socks. After strapping on the shin pads, I pulled my socks on, only to have them friction to the wet part of my feet, why... The whole ordeal took about five minutes before I had finally put on all of my soccer gear. Yui had put on a spare pair of boots that I had brought.
Now, the plan. Firstly, late last night, I sent her ideal boy a text message, 'Hey you want to practice soccer tomorrow?' I only did this for her out of pity and in retrospect, I regretted this decision. 'Sure' He replied, over text.
The proceeding conversation lasted a few more message where and I specified the details. Until this point, I'm pretty sure his name was Shin, although that might've been a nickname. The only other time we had ever spoken to each other was another event like this one where several people decided to do some soccer practice together. I was not surprised that Yui had fallen in love with him considering he was the exact type that she desired. He was popular, sociable and especially athletic, exactly what you'd find in a nice romance novel. Although, he did have some quirks that I had yet to tell Yui which I noticed after interacting with him for a little while.
He was incredibly petty, to the point where I sometimes thought he was a child, he especially seemed to take everything extremely seriously. We having a little practice match a few weeks ago and we were all just having fun, but he never budged on the rules, even picking up the ball and stopping the game if we didn't follow them to the letter. I found him quite annoying but honestly at this point I doubted that it'd even be a deal-breaker for her.
I looked over at Yui who was quivering from the cold. I didn't like the cold but it was never too bad as I had gotten pretty used to harsh cold, wet morning trainings like this. This girl however, looked like she had never played a sport in her life. I pulled out a fluffy white towel from my bag and wrapped it around her body. She looked over with a soft, "thanks". I could see our warm breaths being carried away by the wind, like little clouds of mist. The good thing about this weather was that no one else was also using the pitch, meaning we had it all to ourselves.
After a little while, Shin had finally arrived. He greeted us with a bright, "Hey there!" and I waved back at him. Yui was still standing by my side, watching him bashfully. He had a brought a bright, official match ball with him, it had various patterns and looked in peak condition. The two of us dawdled over and he kicked the ball onto the oval.
"So who's this with you?" He asked me. Yui was still being too shy to introduce herself, so I decided to introduce her instead. The violent wind made communication rather difficult as I was practically yelling just so he could hear me. "This is Yui, she wanted to play soccer with us so I let her tag along."
"That's nice, Yui, I'm Shin." He greeted her with a pretty vibrant smile which caused her to blush. This was going to be a difficult mission if all she did was hide behind me and observe him from a distance. Oh well, I was in the mood for some soccer so I'd deal with this issue later. The three of us passed the ball around, it was pretty obvious that Yui was not proficient at this. Both Shin and I could tell that her movements were stiff and her technique was completely off. Suddenly, Shin took it for himself to teach Yui how to play. He talked to her above the movements and showed her how to kick it with the inside of her foot.
I noticed that she was actually listening properly to what he was saying, instead of being embarrassed or covering her face bashfully. It was actually really nice to watch the two of them interact together like this.
However, this didn't last very long. Shin's real personality began shining through and he was getting obviously frustrated at her lack of progress. Then again, you couldn't really blame him, he was trying to teach a complete newbie how to play in this forceful wind. It was already difficult to kick the ball around as it was, with the wind pushing it in all directions. After a while, the wind became a heavy rain, the entire pitch and the three of us were now all drenched, with water soaking into our clothes and dripping onto the ground like we were fountains. "I think we should call it a day!" I could barely hear him even though he was practically shouting at the top of his lungs. "I agree." I wasn't sure if he heard me but I was walking back towards my bag, which had practically become a container of water at that point.
The three of us started running for cover, the closest of which was the entrance of the club room. Shin slammed the handle of the door and noticed that it was obviously locked at this time. We only had a little overhang which we could use as cover and the rain could still hit us. "How are you going to get home?" I asked Shin. Yui and I had both taken the bus here so there wasn't really a good method for us to go home as the bus stop was a few minutes by foot and the next bus wasn't coming for thirty minutes. "I walked here." He said. I had hoped that he'd been dropped off by his parents or something so they could pick us all up. Turns out we were pretty much stranded here. "What should we do?" I asked him.
"If we ran, we could probably get to my house in about five minutes." He said. It seemed like the best solution for now considering there wasn't much else we could do. He pointed towards the direction of his house and the two of us followed him, holding out bags over our heads.
I noticed that Yui was having difficulty keeping her balance. The ground was quite wet and especially for someone who was pretty unathletic, unlike Shin and I, the running pace was pretty quick. The two of us eventually slowed out pace down in order to allow her to keep up with us. I felt as if I was being pushed by the wind from how strong it was.
The sprint took ten minutes longer than predicted because we had to slow our pace for Yui. Eventually we reached the front doorstep of Shin's house and breathed a sigh of relief. He opened the door and let the two of us inside.
We dripped water all over the entire entrance of his home.