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wishingforatypewriter · 6 years

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Love and Other Spectator Sports

Summary: Some Central Arc Ryoali and Akisako because my faves have been missing from the manga for too long

Nakiri Alice stood perplexed in her bedroom on the luxury train she and the other rebels were using to race around Hokkaido. It had been over twenty minutes since her mid-morning shower, and she still had no breakfast in front of her.

She had texted Ryo the night before with her request—crepes stuffed with fresh fruit and sweet cream—and he had responded with his usual “k.” So, finding the current delay suspect, she dressed and made her way over to the breakfast nook, where she expected to see Sakaki-san and the others watching her assistant put overtime into his workout.

“Morning, Alice-chi,” Yuki called out, waving.

“Morning, ladies.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No thanks,” Alice said, walking over to the rail overlooking the exercise room. “Did Ryo-kun just leave?”

“He was never down there,” Ryoko explained as she flipped through a fashion magazine.

“We figured that you had sent him on some errand.”

Alice pondered this idea for a moment. It sounded right, but as she thought back to the night before, she knew that she hadn’t. “I’ll catch up with you all later.”

She walked back down the stairs wearing a pensive frown. For as long as she had known him, Ryo’s morning workout had been sacrocent. He would never miss it—and forget about her breakfast—for no reason.

Once she was in front of his door, Alice knocked twice, and didn’t wait three milliseconds for a response before opening it.

Her aide was inside, still sleeping. Ever since they were kids, even the smallest intrusions into Ryo’s space would wake him up—and leave him seriously annoyed. But this time, Alice was able to get away with poking his cheek some—a cheek, she noticed, that felt a lot warmer than it should have been—before his garnet eyes shot open.

“About time,” she said.

“Ojou―” Ryo’s voice caught on the word, and he started coughing into the crook of his elbow. Alice winced a little at how bad he sounded.

She went over to his dresser and pulled a black sweatshirt from one of the drawers.

“What’s this?” he asked after she dropped the garment on his legs.

“Put it on,” she said. “I don’t know what you were thinking sleeping with your chest exposed when you’re coughing like that.”

“It was hot.”

“That’s because you have a fever,” she said, placing her hand back on his cheek to make sure. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling sick?” Alice hadn’t intended to pout when she asked this, but her cheeks began to puff up all the same.

“I’m not sick,” he said before launching into another brutal coughing fit.

“Clearly,” Alice said, as she rubbed small circles onto his chest through the sweater. “I’m excusing you from your duties for the rest of the week. Take your time to recover, and let me know if you need anything.”

Ryo sighed, his eyes drawing closed momentarily. “Ojou, you really don’t have to do anything. I’ll get you your breakfast—”

“Absolutely not!” She waved him off immediately. “Naturally, I’ll take care of you. Just tell me what you want—more blankets, soup, tea.”

“Ojou—”

Alice rolled her eyes. “You’re always like this. Stop being so stubborn, and let me help you, already.”

Finally, he sighed. “Just do what you want, then.”

That was probably the best and worst thing he could’ve said.

“Alright. I’ll bring you some tea. Rest up til then, Ryo-kun,” she said with a brilliant smile before sashaying back out of his room.

It was a universally known fact that Nakiri Alice did not do anything halfway, so if Ryo wanted tea, she was going to bring him the very best tea available—even if it didn’t exactly belong to Alice.

She was in the main kitchen cart, rifling through Hisako’s ornate boxes of medicinal herbs and tea blends, when the pink haired girl in question entered. She had apparently been in the middle of a phone call when she made the discovery.

“Hold on for a minute, please, Erina-sama,” Hisako said before lowering the phone and approaching her. “Alice, what in the world are you doing with my things?”

“You know, Hishoko, when you decide to put stuff in the kitchen, things get mixed around, and it all sort of becomes communal property.”

“My initials are carved into the box!” she huffed, her left eye beginning to twitch. “Tell me this isn’t another one of your crazy schemes to get me together with Hayama.”

At this, Alice giggled a little bit. She was always doing good works for the wellbeing of her friends. “Not everything is about your love life, Hishoko, although I do think your pending hookup is inevitable.”

“You’re really not helping your case right now.”

“So serious.” She shook her head at the other girl. “Also, I’m only touching your precious tea leaves because Ryo-kun has come down with something.”

“You should have just asked, then,” Hisako said, her voice laced with an omnipresent sort of annoyance.

“Your room was far, and I don’t have my phone on me,” Alice explained with a shrug. “Anyway, what would make him feel better?”

“Well that depends on what’s wrong with him. What are the symptoms?”

“He has a cough, and a fever,” she said.

Wordlessly, Hisako went through her jars and boxes—in a far gentler and more methodical manner than Alice had done—blending together a few different herbs and placing the mixture inside a small infuser. “Give this to Kurokiba-kun,” she said, “And please refrain from touching my personal items in the future.”

Alice shook her head as she watched the pink haired girl go, quickly resuming her conversation with Erina. “You wouldn’t have been so mad if it were Hayama-kun using your stuff.”

Later that evening, as Hisako sat in one of the lounge carts, reading the latest volume of her favorite academic journal, she wore a satisfied smirk. With Alice fussing over Kurokiba all day, she had gotten more peace and quiet than she ever had since the rebels left for Hokkaido.

“Are you enjoying this too, Arato?” Hayama Akira asked as he took a seat across from her with a black coffee in one hand and a crisp newspaper in the other.

“Thoroughly,” Hisako replied before wrinkling her nose. “How can you drink coffee at this hour?”

Hayama shrugged, then took a sip. “It doesn’t keep you up unless you want it to.”

“Of all the unscientific nonsense,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Not that we have anywhere to be tomorrow anyway.”

“I think the train is stopping in Asahikawa,” he told her. “It might be nice to get away from these people for awhile.”

Hisako’s eyes widened fractionally at this. She wasn’t sure when the “us” had formed between them, when they had stopped viewing each other as annoyances or adversaries and banned together as the only sane, sober-minded individuals on this train full of expelled Totsuki rebels.

She was poised to respond in an ambivalent sounding manner when Alice popped her head in the room.

“Hey, Hishoko, do you mind if I use your diffuser and some essential oils?”

“No problem,” she replied. “I’ll get it for you.”

“Oh, no need. I’m already using it. I just didn’t want you to see it gone and get mad again.”

“Alice, what the hell—”

“Anyway, goodnight you two lovebirds.” And with that, Nakiri Alice was gone.

Akira shook his head, chuckling a bit. “How have you not strangled her yet?”

“I practice mindfulness,” she said with a sigh. Then after a pause, “We are definitely getting out of here tomorrow.”

“It’s strange seeing her like that, though,” Hayama said.

“What do you mean?”

“She usually only lifts a finger in the name of self-indulgence,” he noted. “You think there’s blackmail potential?”

“I doubt it,” Hisako replied, though she would love having something to leverage in order to make the Nakiri heiress stop teasing them. “She has no shame, and everyone already knows she loves him.”

She wondered offhandedly what that was like, to care for someone so much that your nature rewrites itself when they need you. But for now she was fine with just spectating.

#shokugeki no soma #ryoali #akisako #ryo x alice #hisako x akira #whennnnn will they be back

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