The Inter Highs were over, and there was still a good full month left before school reopened after summer break. In order to find respite from the irrepressible heat wave that tormented Kanagawa, Coach Anzai and the coaches of Ryonan and Kainan decided, after much deliberation, to ease their players of the boredom and torture that came as a result of the heat by organizing a vacation for them to a hill resort.
Coach Anzai called the Shohoku team over to the gym one evening.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he said.
“What is it, Old Man?” Sakuragi asked impatiently. He recognized the glint in Coach Anzai’s eye: it only appeared when he was really excited, and trying to keep himself under control. Plus there was that laugh. Pure torture: he used it whenever he wanted to stall in the process of disclosing a piece of exciting news in order to intensify the suspense.
“We—that is to say, Coaches Taoka, Takato, and I—have decided to treat you kids to a well-deserved vacation to a hill resort,” said Coach Anzai, his voice composed, yet percolating with joy.
There was a silence, followed by a unanimous and tumultuous roar of rapture on the part of the team. Rukawa did not take part in it, though. He mentally heaved a sigh of relief; but it was a long, long sigh.
“Who’s going there, Coach?” said Kogure, wiping a tear of joy away from his eye and readjusting his glasses on his nose.
“We, Ryonan, Kainan, and Shoyo.”
“Nyahahahahahaha! I can beat them all at once, then—Spiky, Boss Monkey, the Old Man, the Benchwarmer, and Megane Number Two!” Sakuragi said.
“Moron,” said Rukawa coolly.
“What was that, Rukawa?!” Sakuragi began, getting ready to beat the crap out of him. Then he paused, and started sniggering. “You’re just nervous because you’ve never been on a trip before. You’re just sad ’cause you’ll be missing your mommy! Nyahahahahahaha!”
“Moron,” Rukawa repeated, getting back to shooting some hoops while the rest of the team talked their butts off about things that would never concern him if they started barreling toward him at a hundred miles an hour.
“Coach, you’re a lifesaver!” said Mitsui, restraining himself just short of hugging the wind out of Coach Anzai and showering his face with sloppy kisses. “A few more days and I’d be roast duck!”
Miyagi crept tentatively up to Ayako.
“Are you going, Ayako?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.
“Of course I am, Ryota! What makes you think I’d want to stick around here all by myself while the rest of you ran away, and had the time of your lives?”
Miyagi instantaneously became a hundred times livelier. He was so happy he could have started singing “Joy to the World” if he had been stranded in the middle of the Gobi Desert with nothing but a can of dehydrated vegetables and a pair of extra boxers.
“Ayako,” said Coach Anzai, “could you please write down the names of those who are willing to go?”
“Sure thing.” Ayako took the clipboard that Coach Anzai handed her, and wrote: Akagi, Kogure, Mitsui, Miyagi, Rukawa, Sakuragi, and Ayako.
“Everyone,” Coach Anzai began and the cheering instantly stopped. “We’ll be leaving by bus tomorrow morning. I want all of you here by 6 AM with no more than one piece of luggage each.”
“Yessir,” everyone said together. The Shohoku team was in no way so crude so as to amalgamate words that were not meant to be amalgamated, and to create disgusting sounds—it was only because of the varying pitches in which they said “Yes sir” that it sounded like that: Akagi’s voice was the deep bass; Rukawa’s was the haunting echo; Sakuragi’s was the unnecessary turbulence; Mitsui’s and Kogure’s were the melodic line; and Ayako’s and Miyagi’s comprised the shrill treble.
“Ho, ho, ho! I can see how excited all of you are! Tomorrow at six, then.”
“What are we waiting for again?” said Sakuragi, tapping his foot in impatience as they stood at the bus stop.
“For the bus,” said Akagi through clenched teeth. “We’ve only been waiting fifteen minutes, and you’ve asked me that question at least as many times.”
Everyone had remembered to adhere strictly to Coach Anzai’s one-piece-of-luggage-per-person rule. Ayako had brought a large suitcase that Miyagi had promptly volunteered to relieve her of. Miyagi himself had brought an equally large suitcase. Presently both lay at his feet while Ayako and he sat on the bench, with Coach Anzai on the other end. Ayako had generously given Miyagi permission to tie her hair in a braid. He got the chance to reveal his unexpected virtuosity in that area.
“Ouch!” Ayako winced. “Don’t pull so hard.”
Miyagi recoiled blushingly, gave a sheepish laugh, mumbled an incoherent apology, and continued in his futile attempts at styling Ayako’s hair. Apparently his skills were not all that he had expected them to be. It was probably his nervousness.
Mitsui meanwhile was standing some distance off from the bus shelter, clinging onto Coach Anzai’s suitcase with a strained smile plastered on his face that served to mask the agony in his arms at holding the heavy suitcase off the ground for the past fifteen minutes. He decided just before his shoulders got dislocated to lay the suitcase on top of his own in order to keep the dirt from the sidewalk off of it.
Rukawa was the only one who had brought a duffel bag. It appeared as though he did not play video games, unlike most of his teammates, who had brought Nintendo Wiis, Play Stations, Xboxes, and other gaming consoles that Rukawa had never even heard of before. For Rukawa clean clothes, his Walkman (which he was particularly fond of, even though he was aware that it was a dated technology, and which was presently in his free hand with the earbuds plugged tightly into his ears), and his basketball were all that he needed to enjoy himself.
“Here comes the bus!” said Sakuragi as he spotted a bus come up the road.
Sure enough, the bus came to a halt at the bus shelter.
The doors opened automatically, and a man clad in all white—probably the conductor—got down, and bowed before the group.
“Welcome to the Mayfair Chain of Resorts’ Trans-Regional Transport Corporation’s Mega-Bus Program’s Blue Series,” he said in a stilted accent.
The bus was a gargantuan chartered coach. It had storage space all along the bottom, much like a plane, and was so big and long that it could comfortably seat at least fifty people, with plenty of legroom.
“This is what I call luxury, man!” said Mitsui, slumping down onto one of the velvety seats at the end of the bus, which complaisantly sagged under his weight. He felt as if he were in Heaven.
“Ho, ho, ho!” said Coach Anzai, lowering himself without difficulty into a seat—they were that wide. “Is everyone here?”
A universal shout of “Yessir!”
The engine rumbled to life with barely a sound, and the ‘colossal road-hugger’ (in Sakuragi’s words—his vocabulary had yet to reveal a lot, or so it seemed) began sailing down the empty stretch in the direction of the rising sun.
“Where are we heading now?” said Kogure.
“To the three other schools.”
“No way!” protested Sakuragi. “I refuse to let them on this bus. It’s just not fair. I’m gonna—”
He was cut short in his attempt at turning to his lexical repertoire to fish out an opprobrious word or two by a well-timed punch from Akagi.
“You moron,” said Akagi. “There’s only seven of us, and this bus can comfortably seat at least forty more people.”
“But—!”
Another punch.
“Quit acting so self-important. I won’t stand for you throwing you weight around on this trip.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mitsui. “It’s not like you have much anyway, unlike Akagi here, of cour— Whoa!”
Akagi caught hold of Mitsui by the collar. With dangerously narrowed eyes he said in as dangerously low a tone, “I dare you to say that again.”
Mitsui laughed nervously.
The bus slowed down, and then came to a halt.
“Here we are!” came the unwholesomely exuberant voice of Hikoichi through the open door, piercing the Shohoku team’s eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.
“Darn, it’s Hikoichi,” said Sakuragi through clenched teeth.
Footsteps rose up the aluminum steps at the front of the bus, and the massive form of Uozumi appeared in the doorway.
“There’s plenty of room inside,” he shouted over his shoulder. He nodded in Akagi’s direction, and sat down a good five rows away from the Shohoku team.
“There’s Spikey!” said Sakuragi when Sendoh got on.
“Hey, Sakuragi!” Sendoh grinned gregariously.
Rukawa paused the music on his Walkman, and glanced up for the first time since they’d entered the bus to acknowledge Sendoh’s presence. The latter flashed him a friendly smile, which Rukawa ignored, before pressing the play button and shutting his eyes again.
“Good morning, Mr. Anzai!” said Coach Taoka, sitting down next to Coach Anzai.
“Ho, ho, ho! A very good morning to you, too.”
“My team was just telling me how exciting this vacation’s going to be.” Taoka cast a stern look of warning at Fukuda before resuming his conversation with Coach Anzai. “To tell you the truth, even I needed a break.”
“We all do sometimes,” said Coach Anzai agreeably.
“Let’s just hope for the best, then, eh?” Coach Taoka said, grinning.
“Let us hope for the best indeed.”
“That nothing bad happens, I mean.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” Coach Anzai laughed. “You’re always worrying, Taoka.”
“Yeah, really, Coach,” Sendoh put in eagerly. “You’re so tense all the time. We might have even won the—”
Coach Taoka cut him off before he could resurrect bad memories of the Qualifying Games.
“Stay out of this, Sendoh. It’s rude to talk without permission when two grown-ups are talking.”
Sendoh backed off, and began staring out the window.
After offering his team some, Ikegami held out a bag of potato chips to the Shohoku team.
“Want some?”
Several eager hands thrust themselves deep inside the jumbo-sized bag, and when Ikegami returned to his seat, not even crumbs were left. He turned around, and saw Sakuragi smacking his lips, while the rest of the Shohoku team eyed him as though he were an untamed wild animal.
“Could’ve left at least one miserable little piece for us.” Mitsui scowled.
“You greedy pig,” Miyagi added.
Koshino was in the process of giving Sendoh a long lecture about acceptable behavior and good manners around grown-ups, and Sendoh was pretending to listen while whistling a tune that hardly sounded like whatever it was he was trying to whistle, and reading snatching glances at what Hikoichi—who was sitting right in front of him—was scribbling down in that notebook of his.
Uozumi decided to whip out his Nintendo DS, and make yet another attempt at getting past the Elite Four in his Pokémon Diamond Version, while Ikegami sat next to him, eagerly poring through the Diamond Version guidebook, and barking tips to Uozumi whenever he came across one that sounded useful.
Fukuda was reading A Tale of Two Cities in gay abandon, shaking his head and sniffling whenever he came across a scene that affected him deeply or imagery that he couldn’t help admiring.
Uekusa was sitting next to Hikoichi, and cracking remarkably witty jokes, although many of them were centered on Hikoichi and his idiosyncratic propensities.
“Hey! That’s mean!” Hikoichi recited like a broken record, and Uekusa burst into loud heehaws.
Sakuragi was reading the dictionary—a habit he had picked up when he had learnt that Haruko admired people who used big and imposing words without having to grope around stupidly.
“How do you say this?” he asked Akagi whenever he came across a word he couldn’t pronounce, and Akagi answered without raising an eyebrow as to why Sakuragi should engage in anything that close to intellectuality, because he was far too relieved at his (Sakuragi’s) being quiet for a change.
Kogure was telling Miyagi and Mitsui a ghost story, putting in unnecessary interjections, queer intonations and quirky actions to make it sound even scarier. It seemed to have the desired effect, because whenever Kogure lowered his tone to a whisper, Mitsui and Miyagi would be all wide-eyed, and whenever Kogure suddenly raised his voice and exclaimed something, they would gasp.
Ayako was staring out the window, apparently lost in thought, and Rukawa was just about to insert a fresh CD into his walkman when the bus rumbled to a stop again.
The Kainan team entered, with the hyperactive-as-hell Kiyota jumping in ahead of his teammates.
“Let’s get this show on the road!” he said, jumping into the seat next to Koshino and Sendoh without even noticing them.
Sakuragi pretended that the Wild Monkey didn’t exist, while the latter did the same toward the former.
“Mr. Anzai!” said Coach Taoka pleasantly upon entering; “And Taoka!”
Coach Taoka winced at the noticeable lack of respect in connection with his name, but hid it behind a strained smile and a similarly rude greeting: “’Sup Takato?”
Coach Takato sat down on the other side of the aisle from the two other coaches, and immediately showed them.
“I bought this last week. It’s a pretty engaging book. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Coaches.”
Coach Taoka’s jaw dropped.
“Where did you get that?”
He made to grab the book.
“Nuh-uh,” said Coach Takato, clicking his tongue and holding it out of his reach. “It’s a secret.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” said Coach Anzai, whipping out his own book.
Coach Takato’s jaw dropped.
“The Ultimate Coach? No way! I thought that went out of print last year!”
Coach Taoka felt awfully inadequate without a rare and valuable book with him.
“So, tell me, Sendoh,” said Maki, displacing Kiyota to one of the seats in front, and sitting down next to Sendoh and Koshino, “how’s life?”
“Perfect!” said Sendoh, beaming. “I scored three straight A’s in the exams before the summer, so my dad bought me a new computer.”
Koshino couldn’t contain his shock.
“How fair is that? I got five straight A’s, and all my parents gave me was a proud look and a ‘Keep it up, son!’”
“They obviously think you don’t deserve anything more after you ‘accidentally’ let that last cell phone of yours slip out of your hand and into the toilet just so you could get the latest model.”
Koshino conceded that the possibility was not remote.
Maki laughed with some incredulity.
“Man, you Ryonan guys are such brats!”
“I heard that, Maki!” called Uozumi from seven rows in front, without taking his eyes off his DS for a moment.
Maki sweat-dropped.
“Hey, Jin!” said Kiyota, hopping down next to his best friend, who was visibly bored. “Check this out.”
He flipped open to a particular page in a brown leather-bound diary of some sort.
Jin peered tentatively at the page. He heaved a sigh of relief.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Gotcha!” said Kiyota, rolling over in cackles.
Jin sighed, and decided to go over and sit next to Fukuda instead.
“Hey, Fuku, whatcha reading?”
Fukuda took his eyes off his book, wiped a tear from his eye, and sniffled.
“A Tale of Two Cities. Awesome stuff.”
“I finished that last month,” said Jin proudly.
“Have you read Pride and Prejudice?”
“Nah. Too mushy for my liking.”
“Oh,” said Fukuda vaguely. “I thought it was the most touching thing I’ve ever read. After this, of course.”
“I see,” said Jin. Then he leant back in his seat with a dreamy look on his face. “I’ve read Romeo and Juliet. It’s so romantic. I cried.”
Fukuda frowned.
“And you thought Pride and Prejudice was mushy?!”
“Romeo and Juliet wasn’t that bad, really,” said Jin. “But I wouldn’t compare it to Hamlet. Hamlet was a work of pure genius.”
“I liked Hamlet and Julius Caesar the best out of Shakespeare’s stuff,” said Fukuda.
And so they continued conversing about the enormous amounts of literature they’d read in their recent lives.
“What’s this word?” Sakuragi turned to Akagi, who was threatening to blow up like a constipated volcano.
“‘Rendezvous’,” said Akagi. Can’t believe I’ve been answering his questions A through R already…
They stopped one last time to pick up the Shoyo team. They entered the bus rather timorously, but spread out and diffused among the other teams in no time.
“Have you read War and Peace by Tolstoy?” said Fujima, joining Fukuda and Jin.
Hanagata whipped out his DS along with his Pokémon Pearl Version.
“Wanna trade with me?” he said to Uozumi.
“Not now!” Uozumi replied gruffly, trying hard to defeat Elite Four number 3. His tongue was caught between his teeth in concentration, his eyes were wide with concentration, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
Takano and Nagano sat down next to Rukawa, and grinned slyly at each other. Rukawa was asleep, which meant they could take their revenge against him for the humiliation he had caused them during the Qualifying Games by getting past both of them and making it seem effortless. Takano’s hand reached slowly toward Rukawa’s Walkman. He gently placed his finger on the volume button, and Nagano counted down from three with his fingers. When he reached zero, Takano turned the volume up all the way.
Rukawa’s whole being was jolted awake like a bird that had unmindfully decided to perch on an exposed electric wire. He reflexively jerked the earphones out of his ears, and glared at Takano and Nagano, although his initial shock hadn’t died down and his eyes were still as wide as saucers.
The two Shoyo forwards laughed loudly.
“We’re nearing the foothills now,” the conductor called from the front of the bus.
Everyone gazed out of the nearest window, and saw a wall of enormous, imposing hills in front of them. They seemed to be completely covered in green, but the green looked slightly blue in the distance.
“Eerie,” Kogure whispered, and Mitsui and Miyagi shuddered.
“What on earth is that?” asked Kiyota, starin at the top of the hill in unsuppressed awe.
“It’s the peak,” said Jin.
“Oh.”
It was a matter of minutes before the bus began its winding journey up the mountain road, and the road became steeper and steeper. There were hairpin bends in the road at regular intervals, where the bus did a whole 180, threatening to throw the players of their seats and to the other side of the bus.
“Technically,” Kogure said, pausing because he had just experienced one of the hairpin bends, “big—in this case, huge—vehicles should not be allowed on mountain roads like this.”
“Yeah,” said Maki. “I’m actually surprised something this big can turn so sharply.”
“That’s just how good our bus drivers are,” the conductor said from the front of the bus.
Jin thought otherwise, but said nothing—no, not because he was exceptionally good-mannered or anything of that sort, but rather because he was green, and felt too sick to open his mouth at that moment.
“What’s the matter, Jin? You look green. Sick?” said Kiyota solicitously.
Jin shook his head, gulped down several mouthfuls of air, and then spoke: “No, not sick. I’m green with envy. I’m jealous of you, because you’re not carsick like me.”
Kiyota laughed.
“You’re carsick?” he said loudly.
Several pairs of eyes were on Jin that instant.
“You know, I think I’ve forgotten something in my bag,” said Fukuda quietly, getting up and walking to the rear end of the bus, careful to keep his book safely away from Jin.
Poor Jin was left sitting alone at the front of the bus.
If Jin complained of nausea at the foothills, he was practically dying to throw up when the bus reached the top, if such a thing were possible, that is. His face was of the deepest shade of green imaginable, and if it became any greener, it might have turned black, for all one knew.
“So, tell me, Sendoh,” said Maki, “what’s new on your end?”
“Great. Koshino’s agreed to do my homework every day for a month, which means I have enough free time to try and play that really hard song in Guitar Heroes on my Wii,” said Sendoh brightly.
“Hey!” Koshino frowned. “We agreed it was only for one evening! And it was all because you beat the living daylights out of me in basketball.”
“Aw, you’re being too morbid about yourself. You didn’t play that badly!” said Sendoh.
“Modest,” corrected Maki.
“Yeah, that. And yeah, I’ve brought my Wii along with me, so I’ll be able to play my head off all day and all night!” said Sendoh cheerfully.
“Uh, Sendoh,” said Maki. “You are doubtless aware of the fact that there aren’t any televisions where we’re going, right?”
“Huh?”
That wasn’t from just Sendoh: that was from practically everyone on the bus who had brought their gaming console with them.
“No way!” said Mitsui in outrage. “I didn’t bring my three-sixty here just to leave it sitting in my bag the whole time!”
“Yeah!” agreed Sendoh. “If it’s not illegal for a hotel to not have a TV, it ought to be.”
“What was that?” said Coach Taoka. “Sendoh, I’m surprised at your ignorance! Don’t you know that when hotels are so high up it’s dangerous to have too many electronics? Plus it’s waste of money, because few people come here just to watch TV, and the nearest repair store is in the city, which is all the way at the bottom of the hill.”
“B-but,” Sendoh argued feebly, “television has never done anyone any harm!”
“That’s what you think,” said Coach Takato darkly.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said Coach Anzai. “The place we’re going to has a most wonderful places to go sightseeing. You’re never going to miss your TV.”
Sendoh wanted to say that he wouldn’t care if World War III were going on outside as long as he had a plasma TV and a Nentendo Wii with him, but it transpired from the fact that Coach Taoka was staring at him with ‘that gleam’ in his eyes that he was expected to shut up or risk being thrown off the bus six thousand feet above sea level.
“We’re almost there,” said the conductor.
It became dark all of a sudden.
“We’re entering a forest!” said Kogure excitedly. “A deep, dark coniferous forest! Man, would you look at how tall these trees are?”
“They’re fir trees,” observed Ayako. “They look really old. And their trunks are really thick. This is one old forest.”
“Ayako,” said Miyagi, goggling at her stupidly, “you’re a genius!”
Ayako would look awfully smug from then all the way to the end of the bus ride.
The bus rumbled to a stop in a large glade.
“We’re here,” said the conductor, getting off the bus.
“Finally!” said Sakuragi, making to dash to the door and jump off the bus, but tripping and falling smack on his face instead, because he hadn’t accounted for the fact that the long journey had caused his legs to fall asleep.
“Moron,” said Rukawa, getting off with no visible difficulty, although he nearly lost his footing on the last step, and would have fallen if Sendoh hadn’t caught hold of his arm just in time.
“Easy there,” he said, smiling, as usual.
Rukawa said nothing, but jerked his arm out of Sendoh’s grasp, and walked away from him like a dainty poodle.
The Mayfair Forest Resort was a huge—huge, meaning huge—British summer house of some sort, made entirely of wood. The wooden window shades cast eerie shadows on the windows, and the gables with the ornately pointed tips all added to the aura of spookiness emanating from the building. The fact that it was smack in the middle of nowhere did nothing to diminish it.
Kogure was almost shivering with excitement as he pointed out to Miyagi and Mitsui that the house he had been talking about in his story looked almost exactly like the hotel. The latter two didn’t seem in the least bit interested, and would have fared extremely well in life without knowing that the hotel they were staying up at for an indefinite period of time inspired horror stories more often than not.
“Come on, boys, we’ve got to validate our reservation,” said Coach Taoka, standing in front of the revolving main entrance. “Oof!”
And then he was no longer standing.
Coach Taoka was on the ground, rubbing his nose, which was causing him an incalculable amount of pain at that moment, and cursing the son of a bitch who turned the revolving door so violently: “Who in the name of…”
He trailed off, because in front of him stood a being dressed in all black, with dark shadows under his eyes and a sallow, waxy complexion. The being was over seven feet tall, or so it seemed.
“Sorry,” drawled the man—giant—picking up Coach Taoka’s shoulders and setting him down on his feet.
“Dude, he’s exactly like Lurch from the Addams’ Family!” said Kogure, unable to contain his excitement.
“I hear ya,” said Hanagata, no longer feeling uncomfortably tall.
“Who the heck are you?” said Coach Taoka, craning his neck to speak to the man.
“I am the bellhop.”
“Well, holy fish in a bucket, I’ll be! So you’re the bellhop, eh? I’d love to see you hop sometime, but with all our baggage.”
The bellhop grunted something incoherent, and began collecting everyone’s bags and suitcases from the cargo compartment of the bus.
“Well, let’s get going. What’re you waiting for?” said Coach Taoka impatiently from in front of the revolving door.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot take all this luggage through the revolving door at once.”
“Then make several trips. I just want everything inside.”
“You’re so bossy, Taoka,” said Coach Takato.
Coach Taoka snorted.
“It’s the only way to get things donw. Do you think Uozumi would have been half as good as he is now if I kept showering him with praise and pretending not to notice his faults? Do you think Sendoh… uh, let’s talk about somebody else, shall we? I don’t want to hurt Sendoh’s feelings and affect his performance. Fukuda. Lord help you, if you were in his place. That boy has the tenacity of superglue, I tell you. He bore all the criticism I hurled at him with perfect equanimity, and cracked only once.”
Fukuda remembered the asperity with which he had used his coach as the first real target for his Kung Fu skills, and even back then, he had both surprised at and happy with his progress.
While Coach Taoka was delivering his long and eloquent justification for being bossy, the bellhop had already taken all the luggage inside, and presently came outside to inform Coach Taoka about it, albeit somewhat timidly, afraid that Coach Toaka might go off any second and start admonishing him again.
“Your luggage is in the lobby, sir,” he said with a bow.
“And it’s about time, too,” said Coach Taoka.
The lobby was a large and spacious hall, and was surprisingly well lit—something one wouldn’t typically expect of a building that looked like this particular one from the outside.
“Reservation for twenty-seven, I presume?” said the man at the desk, staring with curiosity at the large crowd that had assembled inside the hotel.
“Right,” said Coach Taoka.
“Let’s see,” said the receptionist, straightening his glasses on his nose, and rummaging through a great book that appeared to be the directory.
“No computers here either.” Sendoh whispered to Maki, who shrugged and said, “Apparently not.”
Sendoh was officially in a bad mood from that moment on. His shoulders were slumped in despondency, and he smiled sadly.
“Ah, yes,” said the receptionist after what seemed to be ages, “we have reserved for you the Imperial Suite, which contains eight spacious rooms inside, each with four twin-sized beds and its own attached bathroom. The suite actually takes up most of the first floor. Here is the key.”
He handed Coach Taoka a large bronze key with the letter ‘I’ inscribed on it.
“Why the emperor’s suite, though?” Coach Taoka asked confusedly.
“Ah, well, it was originally built for one of the erstwhile emperors’ entourage of servants. The emperor himself got a different suite that no longer exists. But they never showed up, and neither did any of the emperor’s descendants,” explained the receptionist. “Now it’s just a really big suite. And the price is very reasonable, too, since we seldom get parties of this size. Anyway, if you could kindly sign over here… and here… and here… and here… and here…”
After the formalities were over, the bellhop placed the luggage on a luggage cart, and led them down the winding corridors, past a great marble staircase.
“We’re here,” said the bellhop, putting the luggage down on the floor in front of an oaken door with the words “Room 1313. Imperial Suite,” inscribed in gold letters in the wood.
“Thirteen-thirteen?!” said Mitsui. “That’s unlucky thirteen twice over!”
Kogure was silently thanking the heavens for his good fortune.
Room 1313 was a large rectangular common room with four doors one side and three on the other. At the end directly across from the main door was a large window overlooking sprawling misty lawns, with mountains visible in the distance against an unsummery gray sky. There was no one out on the lawn. The silhouettes of the solemn overgrown topiary appeared ghostly in the mist, and seemed to sway pendulously in the wind.
“Enjoy your stay with us,” said the bellhop, bowing low before Coach Taoka, and graciously accepting the meager tip he received before leaving.
“Pick any room you like,” said Coach Anzai. “Four per room. Ho, ho, ho!”
Maki, Rukawa, Sendoh, and Fujima ended up in one room, which they dubbed the Aces’ Room right upon entering.
Sakuragi, Mitsui, Kiyota, and Hikoichi found themselves in the same room, much to their dismay.
Akagi, Hanagata, Uozumi, and Takasago shared a room, where they unanimously complained that the ceiling was too low.
Fukuda, Jin, and Miyagi took a room. Miyagi prayed with all his heart for Ayako to be his third roommate, but it turned out to be, much to his chagrin, to be Koshino.
Ikegami, Takano, Nagano, and Muto took the fifth room.
Hasegawa, Uekusa, and Kogure took the sixth.
The three Coaches took the last room, and Ayako decided to sleep out in the main room, on the large couch that she took a particular liking to from the moment she set her eyes on it.
“Freshen up, boys and girl, and then we’ll all go down to lunch,” said Coach Takato. “I heard the dining hall was once an execution chamber.”
Suddenly Kogure was hungry.
“I am soooo hungry!” he said enthusiastically.
Everybody else lost their appetite.
Coach Anzai called the Shohoku team over to the gym one evening.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he said.
“What is it, Old Man?” Sakuragi asked impatiently. He recognized the glint in Coach Anzai’s eye: it only appeared when he was really excited, and trying to keep himself under control. Plus there was that laugh. Pure torture: he used it whenever he wanted to stall in the process of disclosing a piece of exciting news in order to intensify the suspense.
“We—that is to say, Coaches Taoka, Takato, and I—have decided to treat you kids to a well-deserved vacation to a hill resort,” said Coach Anzai, his voice composed, yet percolating with joy.
There was a silence, followed by a unanimous and tumultuous roar of rapture on the part of the team. Rukawa did not take part in it, though. He mentally heaved a sigh of relief; but it was a long, long sigh.
“Who’s going there, Coach?” said Kogure, wiping a tear of joy away from his eye and readjusting his glasses on his nose.
“We, Ryonan, Kainan, and Shoyo.”
“Nyahahahahahaha! I can beat them all at once, then—Spiky, Boss Monkey, the Old Man, the Benchwarmer, and Megane Number Two!” Sakuragi said.
“Moron,” said Rukawa coolly.
“What was that, Rukawa?!” Sakuragi began, getting ready to beat the crap out of him. Then he paused, and started sniggering. “You’re just nervous because you’ve never been on a trip before. You’re just sad ’cause you’ll be missing your mommy! Nyahahahahahaha!”
“Moron,” Rukawa repeated, getting back to shooting some hoops while the rest of the team talked their butts off about things that would never concern him if they started barreling toward him at a hundred miles an hour.
“Coach, you’re a lifesaver!” said Mitsui, restraining himself just short of hugging the wind out of Coach Anzai and showering his face with sloppy kisses. “A few more days and I’d be roast duck!”
Miyagi crept tentatively up to Ayako.
“Are you going, Ayako?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.
“Of course I am, Ryota! What makes you think I’d want to stick around here all by myself while the rest of you ran away, and had the time of your lives?”
Miyagi instantaneously became a hundred times livelier. He was so happy he could have started singing “Joy to the World” if he had been stranded in the middle of the Gobi Desert with nothing but a can of dehydrated vegetables and a pair of extra boxers.
“Ayako,” said Coach Anzai, “could you please write down the names of those who are willing to go?”
“Sure thing.” Ayako took the clipboard that Coach Anzai handed her, and wrote: Akagi, Kogure, Mitsui, Miyagi, Rukawa, Sakuragi, and Ayako.
“Everyone,” Coach Anzai began and the cheering instantly stopped. “We’ll be leaving by bus tomorrow morning. I want all of you here by 6 AM with no more than one piece of luggage each.”
“Yessir,” everyone said together. The Shohoku team was in no way so crude so as to amalgamate words that were not meant to be amalgamated, and to create disgusting sounds—it was only because of the varying pitches in which they said “Yes sir” that it sounded like that: Akagi’s voice was the deep bass; Rukawa’s was the haunting echo; Sakuragi’s was the unnecessary turbulence; Mitsui’s and Kogure’s were the melodic line; and Ayako’s and Miyagi’s comprised the shrill treble.
“Ho, ho, ho! I can see how excited all of you are! Tomorrow at six, then.”
*
“What are we waiting for again?” said Sakuragi, tapping his foot in impatience as they stood at the bus stop.
“For the bus,” said Akagi through clenched teeth. “We’ve only been waiting fifteen minutes, and you’ve asked me that question at least as many times.”
Everyone had remembered to adhere strictly to Coach Anzai’s one-piece-of-luggage-per-person rule. Ayako had brought a large suitcase that Miyagi had promptly volunteered to relieve her of. Miyagi himself had brought an equally large suitcase. Presently both lay at his feet while Ayako and he sat on the bench, with Coach Anzai on the other end. Ayako had generously given Miyagi permission to tie her hair in a braid. He got the chance to reveal his unexpected virtuosity in that area.
“Ouch!” Ayako winced. “Don’t pull so hard.”
Miyagi recoiled blushingly, gave a sheepish laugh, mumbled an incoherent apology, and continued in his futile attempts at styling Ayako’s hair. Apparently his skills were not all that he had expected them to be. It was probably his nervousness.
Mitsui meanwhile was standing some distance off from the bus shelter, clinging onto Coach Anzai’s suitcase with a strained smile plastered on his face that served to mask the agony in his arms at holding the heavy suitcase off the ground for the past fifteen minutes. He decided just before his shoulders got dislocated to lay the suitcase on top of his own in order to keep the dirt from the sidewalk off of it.
Rukawa was the only one who had brought a duffel bag. It appeared as though he did not play video games, unlike most of his teammates, who had brought Nintendo Wiis, Play Stations, Xboxes, and other gaming consoles that Rukawa had never even heard of before. For Rukawa clean clothes, his Walkman (which he was particularly fond of, even though he was aware that it was a dated technology, and which was presently in his free hand with the earbuds plugged tightly into his ears), and his basketball were all that he needed to enjoy himself.
“Here comes the bus!” said Sakuragi as he spotted a bus come up the road.
Sure enough, the bus came to a halt at the bus shelter.
The doors opened automatically, and a man clad in all white—probably the conductor—got down, and bowed before the group.
“Welcome to the Mayfair Chain of Resorts’ Trans-Regional Transport Corporation’s Mega-Bus Program’s Blue Series,” he said in a stilted accent.
The bus was a gargantuan chartered coach. It had storage space all along the bottom, much like a plane, and was so big and long that it could comfortably seat at least fifty people, with plenty of legroom.
“This is what I call luxury, man!” said Mitsui, slumping down onto one of the velvety seats at the end of the bus, which complaisantly sagged under his weight. He felt as if he were in Heaven.
“Ho, ho, ho!” said Coach Anzai, lowering himself without difficulty into a seat—they were that wide. “Is everyone here?”
A universal shout of “Yessir!”
The engine rumbled to life with barely a sound, and the ‘colossal road-hugger’ (in Sakuragi’s words—his vocabulary had yet to reveal a lot, or so it seemed) began sailing down the empty stretch in the direction of the rising sun.
“Where are we heading now?” said Kogure.
“To the three other schools.”
“No way!” protested Sakuragi. “I refuse to let them on this bus. It’s just not fair. I’m gonna—”
He was cut short in his attempt at turning to his lexical repertoire to fish out an opprobrious word or two by a well-timed punch from Akagi.
“You moron,” said Akagi. “There’s only seven of us, and this bus can comfortably seat at least forty more people.”
“But—!”
Another punch.
“Quit acting so self-important. I won’t stand for you throwing you weight around on this trip.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mitsui. “It’s not like you have much anyway, unlike Akagi here, of cour— Whoa!”
Akagi caught hold of Mitsui by the collar. With dangerously narrowed eyes he said in as dangerously low a tone, “I dare you to say that again.”
Mitsui laughed nervously.
The bus slowed down, and then came to a halt.
“Here we are!” came the unwholesomely exuberant voice of Hikoichi through the open door, piercing the Shohoku team’s eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.
“Darn, it’s Hikoichi,” said Sakuragi through clenched teeth.
Footsteps rose up the aluminum steps at the front of the bus, and the massive form of Uozumi appeared in the doorway.
“There’s plenty of room inside,” he shouted over his shoulder. He nodded in Akagi’s direction, and sat down a good five rows away from the Shohoku team.
“There’s Spikey!” said Sakuragi when Sendoh got on.
“Hey, Sakuragi!” Sendoh grinned gregariously.
Rukawa paused the music on his Walkman, and glanced up for the first time since they’d entered the bus to acknowledge Sendoh’s presence. The latter flashed him a friendly smile, which Rukawa ignored, before pressing the play button and shutting his eyes again.
“Good morning, Mr. Anzai!” said Coach Taoka, sitting down next to Coach Anzai.
“Ho, ho, ho! A very good morning to you, too.”
“My team was just telling me how exciting this vacation’s going to be.” Taoka cast a stern look of warning at Fukuda before resuming his conversation with Coach Anzai. “To tell you the truth, even I needed a break.”
“We all do sometimes,” said Coach Anzai agreeably.
“Let’s just hope for the best, then, eh?” Coach Taoka said, grinning.
“Let us hope for the best indeed.”
“That nothing bad happens, I mean.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” Coach Anzai laughed. “You’re always worrying, Taoka.”
“Yeah, really, Coach,” Sendoh put in eagerly. “You’re so tense all the time. We might have even won the—”
Coach Taoka cut him off before he could resurrect bad memories of the Qualifying Games.
“Stay out of this, Sendoh. It’s rude to talk without permission when two grown-ups are talking.”
Sendoh backed off, and began staring out the window.
After offering his team some, Ikegami held out a bag of potato chips to the Shohoku team.
“Want some?”
Several eager hands thrust themselves deep inside the jumbo-sized bag, and when Ikegami returned to his seat, not even crumbs were left. He turned around, and saw Sakuragi smacking his lips, while the rest of the Shohoku team eyed him as though he were an untamed wild animal.
“Could’ve left at least one miserable little piece for us.” Mitsui scowled.
“You greedy pig,” Miyagi added.
Koshino was in the process of giving Sendoh a long lecture about acceptable behavior and good manners around grown-ups, and Sendoh was pretending to listen while whistling a tune that hardly sounded like whatever it was he was trying to whistle, and reading snatching glances at what Hikoichi—who was sitting right in front of him—was scribbling down in that notebook of his.
Uozumi decided to whip out his Nintendo DS, and make yet another attempt at getting past the Elite Four in his Pokémon Diamond Version, while Ikegami sat next to him, eagerly poring through the Diamond Version guidebook, and barking tips to Uozumi whenever he came across one that sounded useful.
Fukuda was reading A Tale of Two Cities in gay abandon, shaking his head and sniffling whenever he came across a scene that affected him deeply or imagery that he couldn’t help admiring.
Uekusa was sitting next to Hikoichi, and cracking remarkably witty jokes, although many of them were centered on Hikoichi and his idiosyncratic propensities.
“Hey! That’s mean!” Hikoichi recited like a broken record, and Uekusa burst into loud heehaws.
Sakuragi was reading the dictionary—a habit he had picked up when he had learnt that Haruko admired people who used big and imposing words without having to grope around stupidly.
“How do you say this?” he asked Akagi whenever he came across a word he couldn’t pronounce, and Akagi answered without raising an eyebrow as to why Sakuragi should engage in anything that close to intellectuality, because he was far too relieved at his (Sakuragi’s) being quiet for a change.
Kogure was telling Miyagi and Mitsui a ghost story, putting in unnecessary interjections, queer intonations and quirky actions to make it sound even scarier. It seemed to have the desired effect, because whenever Kogure lowered his tone to a whisper, Mitsui and Miyagi would be all wide-eyed, and whenever Kogure suddenly raised his voice and exclaimed something, they would gasp.
Ayako was staring out the window, apparently lost in thought, and Rukawa was just about to insert a fresh CD into his walkman when the bus rumbled to a stop again.
The Kainan team entered, with the hyperactive-as-hell Kiyota jumping in ahead of his teammates.
“Let’s get this show on the road!” he said, jumping into the seat next to Koshino and Sendoh without even noticing them.
Sakuragi pretended that the Wild Monkey didn’t exist, while the latter did the same toward the former.
“Mr. Anzai!” said Coach Taoka pleasantly upon entering; “And Taoka!”
Coach Taoka winced at the noticeable lack of respect in connection with his name, but hid it behind a strained smile and a similarly rude greeting: “’Sup Takato?”
Coach Takato sat down on the other side of the aisle from the two other coaches, and immediately showed them.
“I bought this last week. It’s a pretty engaging book. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Coaches.”
Coach Taoka’s jaw dropped.
“Where did you get that?”
He made to grab the book.
“Nuh-uh,” said Coach Takato, clicking his tongue and holding it out of his reach. “It’s a secret.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” said Coach Anzai, whipping out his own book.
Coach Takato’s jaw dropped.
“The Ultimate Coach? No way! I thought that went out of print last year!”
Coach Taoka felt awfully inadequate without a rare and valuable book with him.
“So, tell me, Sendoh,” said Maki, displacing Kiyota to one of the seats in front, and sitting down next to Sendoh and Koshino, “how’s life?”
“Perfect!” said Sendoh, beaming. “I scored three straight A’s in the exams before the summer, so my dad bought me a new computer.”
Koshino couldn’t contain his shock.
“How fair is that? I got five straight A’s, and all my parents gave me was a proud look and a ‘Keep it up, son!’”
“They obviously think you don’t deserve anything more after you ‘accidentally’ let that last cell phone of yours slip out of your hand and into the toilet just so you could get the latest model.”
Koshino conceded that the possibility was not remote.
Maki laughed with some incredulity.
“Man, you Ryonan guys are such brats!”
“I heard that, Maki!” called Uozumi from seven rows in front, without taking his eyes off his DS for a moment.
Maki sweat-dropped.
“Hey, Jin!” said Kiyota, hopping down next to his best friend, who was visibly bored. “Check this out.”
He flipped open to a particular page in a brown leather-bound diary of some sort.
Jin peered tentatively at the page. He heaved a sigh of relief.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Gotcha!” said Kiyota, rolling over in cackles.
Jin sighed, and decided to go over and sit next to Fukuda instead.
“Hey, Fuku, whatcha reading?”
Fukuda took his eyes off his book, wiped a tear from his eye, and sniffled.
“A Tale of Two Cities. Awesome stuff.”
“I finished that last month,” said Jin proudly.
“Have you read Pride and Prejudice?”
“Nah. Too mushy for my liking.”
“Oh,” said Fukuda vaguely. “I thought it was the most touching thing I’ve ever read. After this, of course.”
“I see,” said Jin. Then he leant back in his seat with a dreamy look on his face. “I’ve read Romeo and Juliet. It’s so romantic. I cried.”
Fukuda frowned.
“And you thought Pride and Prejudice was mushy?!”
“Romeo and Juliet wasn’t that bad, really,” said Jin. “But I wouldn’t compare it to Hamlet. Hamlet was a work of pure genius.”
“I liked Hamlet and Julius Caesar the best out of Shakespeare’s stuff,” said Fukuda.
And so they continued conversing about the enormous amounts of literature they’d read in their recent lives.
“What’s this word?” Sakuragi turned to Akagi, who was threatening to blow up like a constipated volcano.
“‘Rendezvous’,” said Akagi. Can’t believe I’ve been answering his questions A through R already…
They stopped one last time to pick up the Shoyo team. They entered the bus rather timorously, but spread out and diffused among the other teams in no time.
“Have you read War and Peace by Tolstoy?” said Fujima, joining Fukuda and Jin.
Hanagata whipped out his DS along with his Pokémon Pearl Version.
“Wanna trade with me?” he said to Uozumi.
“Not now!” Uozumi replied gruffly, trying hard to defeat Elite Four number 3. His tongue was caught between his teeth in concentration, his eyes were wide with concentration, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
Takano and Nagano sat down next to Rukawa, and grinned slyly at each other. Rukawa was asleep, which meant they could take their revenge against him for the humiliation he had caused them during the Qualifying Games by getting past both of them and making it seem effortless. Takano’s hand reached slowly toward Rukawa’s Walkman. He gently placed his finger on the volume button, and Nagano counted down from three with his fingers. When he reached zero, Takano turned the volume up all the way.
Rukawa’s whole being was jolted awake like a bird that had unmindfully decided to perch on an exposed electric wire. He reflexively jerked the earphones out of his ears, and glared at Takano and Nagano, although his initial shock hadn’t died down and his eyes were still as wide as saucers.
The two Shoyo forwards laughed loudly.
“We’re nearing the foothills now,” the conductor called from the front of the bus.
Everyone gazed out of the nearest window, and saw a wall of enormous, imposing hills in front of them. They seemed to be completely covered in green, but the green looked slightly blue in the distance.
“Eerie,” Kogure whispered, and Mitsui and Miyagi shuddered.
“What on earth is that?” asked Kiyota, starin at the top of the hill in unsuppressed awe.
“It’s the peak,” said Jin.
“Oh.”
It was a matter of minutes before the bus began its winding journey up the mountain road, and the road became steeper and steeper. There were hairpin bends in the road at regular intervals, where the bus did a whole 180, threatening to throw the players of their seats and to the other side of the bus.
“Technically,” Kogure said, pausing because he had just experienced one of the hairpin bends, “big—in this case, huge—vehicles should not be allowed on mountain roads like this.”
“Yeah,” said Maki. “I’m actually surprised something this big can turn so sharply.”
“That’s just how good our bus drivers are,” the conductor said from the front of the bus.
Jin thought otherwise, but said nothing—no, not because he was exceptionally good-mannered or anything of that sort, but rather because he was green, and felt too sick to open his mouth at that moment.
“What’s the matter, Jin? You look green. Sick?” said Kiyota solicitously.
Jin shook his head, gulped down several mouthfuls of air, and then spoke: “No, not sick. I’m green with envy. I’m jealous of you, because you’re not carsick like me.”
Kiyota laughed.
“You’re carsick?” he said loudly.
Several pairs of eyes were on Jin that instant.
“You know, I think I’ve forgotten something in my bag,” said Fukuda quietly, getting up and walking to the rear end of the bus, careful to keep his book safely away from Jin.
Poor Jin was left sitting alone at the front of the bus.
If Jin complained of nausea at the foothills, he was practically dying to throw up when the bus reached the top, if such a thing were possible, that is. His face was of the deepest shade of green imaginable, and if it became any greener, it might have turned black, for all one knew.
“So, tell me, Sendoh,” said Maki, “what’s new on your end?”
“Great. Koshino’s agreed to do my homework every day for a month, which means I have enough free time to try and play that really hard song in Guitar Heroes on my Wii,” said Sendoh brightly.
“Hey!” Koshino frowned. “We agreed it was only for one evening! And it was all because you beat the living daylights out of me in basketball.”
“Aw, you’re being too morbid about yourself. You didn’t play that badly!” said Sendoh.
“Modest,” corrected Maki.
“Yeah, that. And yeah, I’ve brought my Wii along with me, so I’ll be able to play my head off all day and all night!” said Sendoh cheerfully.
“Uh, Sendoh,” said Maki. “You are doubtless aware of the fact that there aren’t any televisions where we’re going, right?”
“Huh?”
That wasn’t from just Sendoh: that was from practically everyone on the bus who had brought their gaming console with them.
“No way!” said Mitsui in outrage. “I didn’t bring my three-sixty here just to leave it sitting in my bag the whole time!”
“Yeah!” agreed Sendoh. “If it’s not illegal for a hotel to not have a TV, it ought to be.”
“What was that?” said Coach Taoka. “Sendoh, I’m surprised at your ignorance! Don’t you know that when hotels are so high up it’s dangerous to have too many electronics? Plus it’s waste of money, because few people come here just to watch TV, and the nearest repair store is in the city, which is all the way at the bottom of the hill.”
“B-but,” Sendoh argued feebly, “television has never done anyone any harm!”
“That’s what you think,” said Coach Takato darkly.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said Coach Anzai. “The place we’re going to has a most wonderful places to go sightseeing. You’re never going to miss your TV.”
Sendoh wanted to say that he wouldn’t care if World War III were going on outside as long as he had a plasma TV and a Nentendo Wii with him, but it transpired from the fact that Coach Taoka was staring at him with ‘that gleam’ in his eyes that he was expected to shut up or risk being thrown off the bus six thousand feet above sea level.
“We’re almost there,” said the conductor.
It became dark all of a sudden.
“We’re entering a forest!” said Kogure excitedly. “A deep, dark coniferous forest! Man, would you look at how tall these trees are?”
“They’re fir trees,” observed Ayako. “They look really old. And their trunks are really thick. This is one old forest.”
“Ayako,” said Miyagi, goggling at her stupidly, “you’re a genius!”
Ayako would look awfully smug from then all the way to the end of the bus ride.
The bus rumbled to a stop in a large glade.
“We’re here,” said the conductor, getting off the bus.
“Finally!” said Sakuragi, making to dash to the door and jump off the bus, but tripping and falling smack on his face instead, because he hadn’t accounted for the fact that the long journey had caused his legs to fall asleep.
“Moron,” said Rukawa, getting off with no visible difficulty, although he nearly lost his footing on the last step, and would have fallen if Sendoh hadn’t caught hold of his arm just in time.
“Easy there,” he said, smiling, as usual.
Rukawa said nothing, but jerked his arm out of Sendoh’s grasp, and walked away from him like a dainty poodle.
The Mayfair Forest Resort was a huge—huge, meaning huge—British summer house of some sort, made entirely of wood. The wooden window shades cast eerie shadows on the windows, and the gables with the ornately pointed tips all added to the aura of spookiness emanating from the building. The fact that it was smack in the middle of nowhere did nothing to diminish it.
Kogure was almost shivering with excitement as he pointed out to Miyagi and Mitsui that the house he had been talking about in his story looked almost exactly like the hotel. The latter two didn’t seem in the least bit interested, and would have fared extremely well in life without knowing that the hotel they were staying up at for an indefinite period of time inspired horror stories more often than not.
“Come on, boys, we’ve got to validate our reservation,” said Coach Taoka, standing in front of the revolving main entrance. “Oof!”
And then he was no longer standing.
Coach Taoka was on the ground, rubbing his nose, which was causing him an incalculable amount of pain at that moment, and cursing the son of a bitch who turned the revolving door so violently: “Who in the name of…”
He trailed off, because in front of him stood a being dressed in all black, with dark shadows under his eyes and a sallow, waxy complexion. The being was over seven feet tall, or so it seemed.
“Sorry,” drawled the man—giant—picking up Coach Taoka’s shoulders and setting him down on his feet.
“Dude, he’s exactly like Lurch from the Addams’ Family!” said Kogure, unable to contain his excitement.
“I hear ya,” said Hanagata, no longer feeling uncomfortably tall.
“Who the heck are you?” said Coach Taoka, craning his neck to speak to the man.
“I am the bellhop.”
“Well, holy fish in a bucket, I’ll be! So you’re the bellhop, eh? I’d love to see you hop sometime, but with all our baggage.”
The bellhop grunted something incoherent, and began collecting everyone’s bags and suitcases from the cargo compartment of the bus.
“Well, let’s get going. What’re you waiting for?” said Coach Taoka impatiently from in front of the revolving door.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot take all this luggage through the revolving door at once.”
“Then make several trips. I just want everything inside.”
“You’re so bossy, Taoka,” said Coach Takato.
Coach Taoka snorted.
“It’s the only way to get things donw. Do you think Uozumi would have been half as good as he is now if I kept showering him with praise and pretending not to notice his faults? Do you think Sendoh… uh, let’s talk about somebody else, shall we? I don’t want to hurt Sendoh’s feelings and affect his performance. Fukuda. Lord help you, if you were in his place. That boy has the tenacity of superglue, I tell you. He bore all the criticism I hurled at him with perfect equanimity, and cracked only once.”
Fukuda remembered the asperity with which he had used his coach as the first real target for his Kung Fu skills, and even back then, he had both surprised at and happy with his progress.
While Coach Taoka was delivering his long and eloquent justification for being bossy, the bellhop had already taken all the luggage inside, and presently came outside to inform Coach Taoka about it, albeit somewhat timidly, afraid that Coach Toaka might go off any second and start admonishing him again.
“Your luggage is in the lobby, sir,” he said with a bow.
“And it’s about time, too,” said Coach Taoka.
The lobby was a large and spacious hall, and was surprisingly well lit—something one wouldn’t typically expect of a building that looked like this particular one from the outside.
“Reservation for twenty-seven, I presume?” said the man at the desk, staring with curiosity at the large crowd that had assembled inside the hotel.
“Right,” said Coach Taoka.
“Let’s see,” said the receptionist, straightening his glasses on his nose, and rummaging through a great book that appeared to be the directory.
“No computers here either.” Sendoh whispered to Maki, who shrugged and said, “Apparently not.”
Sendoh was officially in a bad mood from that moment on. His shoulders were slumped in despondency, and he smiled sadly.
“Ah, yes,” said the receptionist after what seemed to be ages, “we have reserved for you the Imperial Suite, which contains eight spacious rooms inside, each with four twin-sized beds and its own attached bathroom. The suite actually takes up most of the first floor. Here is the key.”
He handed Coach Taoka a large bronze key with the letter ‘I’ inscribed on it.
“Why the emperor’s suite, though?” Coach Taoka asked confusedly.
“Ah, well, it was originally built for one of the erstwhile emperors’ entourage of servants. The emperor himself got a different suite that no longer exists. But they never showed up, and neither did any of the emperor’s descendants,” explained the receptionist. “Now it’s just a really big suite. And the price is very reasonable, too, since we seldom get parties of this size. Anyway, if you could kindly sign over here… and here… and here… and here… and here…”
After the formalities were over, the bellhop placed the luggage on a luggage cart, and led them down the winding corridors, past a great marble staircase.
“We’re here,” said the bellhop, putting the luggage down on the floor in front of an oaken door with the words “Room 1313. Imperial Suite,” inscribed in gold letters in the wood.
“Thirteen-thirteen?!” said Mitsui. “That’s unlucky thirteen twice over!”
Kogure was silently thanking the heavens for his good fortune.
Room 1313 was a large rectangular common room with four doors one side and three on the other. At the end directly across from the main door was a large window overlooking sprawling misty lawns, with mountains visible in the distance against an unsummery gray sky. There was no one out on the lawn. The silhouettes of the solemn overgrown topiary appeared ghostly in the mist, and seemed to sway pendulously in the wind.
“Enjoy your stay with us,” said the bellhop, bowing low before Coach Taoka, and graciously accepting the meager tip he received before leaving.
“Pick any room you like,” said Coach Anzai. “Four per room. Ho, ho, ho!”
Maki, Rukawa, Sendoh, and Fujima ended up in one room, which they dubbed the Aces’ Room right upon entering.
Sakuragi, Mitsui, Kiyota, and Hikoichi found themselves in the same room, much to their dismay.
Akagi, Hanagata, Uozumi, and Takasago shared a room, where they unanimously complained that the ceiling was too low.
Fukuda, Jin, and Miyagi took a room. Miyagi prayed with all his heart for Ayako to be his third roommate, but it turned out to be, much to his chagrin, to be Koshino.
Ikegami, Takano, Nagano, and Muto took the fifth room.
Hasegawa, Uekusa, and Kogure took the sixth.
The three Coaches took the last room, and Ayako decided to sleep out in the main room, on the large couch that she took a particular liking to from the moment she set her eyes on it.
“Freshen up, boys and girl, and then we’ll all go down to lunch,” said Coach Takato. “I heard the dining hall was once an execution chamber.”
Suddenly Kogure was hungry.
“I am soooo hungry!” he said enthusiastically.
Everybody else lost their appetite.
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