bright young minds
read on ao3 (1,221 words)
Hanzawa is looking at you like he’s forgotten to work his limbs along with his eyes. This does not bode well. Nonetheless, you soldier on. “Have you thought about joining the ping pong club?”
wrote this in a frenzy today to celebrate @dirtbra1n's bday. happy birthday! please go wish them well before you read this. but then do read it, and enjoy. it's hanzawa and prev prez as first and second year roommates. under the cut or on ao3 as usual.
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Hanzawa is looking at you like he’s forgotten to work his limbs along with his eyes. This does not bode well.
Nonetheless, you soldier on. “Have you thought about joining the ping pong club?”
“Ping pong…?”
He’s a clever kid, this Hanzawa. He doesn’t resist interrogation, but he does resist elaboration, so you know that he has three siblings and good grades and dyed hair and a birthday that’s only one day after yours, but you don’t know how he feels about any of that. He’s still a kid that’s a whole school year your junior, though, so after he dutifully repeats your question his eyes dart to the side in confusion, nerves radiating plainly through him.
“You know, with the paddles,” you say, and at Hanzawa’s blank stare, add, “Like this,” and mime a swing. A beat of silence, and then—
He cracks a smile. “I—I know, yes.”
Ha, still got it, you crow, but only in the steel trap of your mind. You’re smart like that.
“I’m going to join the disciplinary committee,” Hanzawa offers, which lesser upperclassmen would see as refusal. You, on the other hand, know that he’s lowered his guard, and only a fool wouldn’t take advantage.
“No reason you can’t do both,” you say. This is true. “It’s pretty easygoing, too.” This is a lie. The current captain of your club is ridiculously intense about ping pong, and the team goes all out during competitions. But you think that easygoing might mean something different for Hanzawa, who makes faces at his green peppers but still methodically eats every one, and who has started the school year with a perpetual sort of readiness, like he’s just waiting for classes to kick into high gear. This is a brand of impatience you’re well-acquainted with; that scary kid in your year, Ichinose, studies like his life depends on it.
While Hanzawa is restless but measured, Ichinose will study at his desk for hours and forget to eat. It is so effed up that he’s the dorm head, and you would file a complaint were it not for the fact that he actually seems to be doing pretty well at the whole thing. Even though he’s so strict with himself, he’s never uppity towards his fellow peers, and as a dorm head he’s been nice, if a little distant. You can respect that, and respect him, and still wish he’d look you in the eyes more than he does. Last year, after you’d conned him into playing ping pong for the sports festival, he’d gotten red and angry and tired and real, so that’s your favorite look of his, now.
You and Ichinose, you suspect, are made of the same stuff. You’re both meant to have a singular, driving focus in life. His just happens to be on the incredibly valuable academic front, while you’re currently devoting yourself to a sport you don’t really plan on playing after high school. Your vision, unlike his, is as forward-thinking as it is narrow. This is what makes you a ping pong genius—the ability to think about nothing else but the game, even while you’re thinking ten moves ahead. The captain, upon hearing your speculation, had said that ping pong wasn’t chess, and basic reflexes and technique matter a lot more, but your win-loss record against him is basically tied, so there.
“We’re still in the trial period for clubs, and it’s easy to leave if you decide it’s not for you,” you add. This is unfortunately true. You have a lot of ideas for how to up retention, but they’re probably the kind that would earn the captain’s unyielding ire. What a bizarrely serious and no-fun guy… there’s just no way to win him over.
Hanzawa, at the very least, is giving you polite consideration. You can work with that, even if you figure he only needs this kind of sweet talk to trick himself into thinking it’d be fine to try things out. When you’d mentioned the possibility of doing both ping pong and… whatever the disciplinary committee does, his expression had eased, not tightened. And it’s nice, to see that happen. You think that a kid with this much brimming nervous energy deserves to loosen up. You want to see this kid play ping pong. You want to play ping pong. The rest of everything, you’ll probably only think about in the winter of your third year, because to you it just won’t matter that it’ll be over until the very day that it’s over.
Hanzawa, still fidgety, asks, “Um… so you play?”
You blink. Okay, maybe the bug-eyed nervousness is less the sweet innocence of a first year, and more your inability to say anything about yourself. “I know,” you boast, “the basketball team would love to poach me, but I’m too loyal. This is the future captain you’re looking at, here!”
Hanzawa perks up. “That’s cool,” he says, and crap, he seems to actually mean it.
To cover your butt, you add, “It’s a secret,” which is a cover like tissue paper is a blanket.
Still, now the kid is properly contemplative. He’s chewing on his lip and everything. Finally he asks, “Is it fun?”
“When you’re good, yeah,” you say. “It’s nice to move around, and when you get in the zone during a match, it’s like…” You make a vague gesture to your face. “Your whole field of focus sharpens. You can’t think about anything else.”
“… Maybe I’ll try it out, then,” Hanzawa says. He’s got a funny look in his eye. You like that kind of look. You’ve always liked it. It’s the way people look when they want something, but they haven’t quite realized it, and the way they look when they’ve gotten it, but haven’t noticed.
This might be why Mister Stick-in-the-Mud dislikes you. The handling a kid’s dreams like it’s a fun game, and all that. But you love games; it’s why you play ping pong. So you guess he’s just going to have to fall for your charms, or something, because you’ve just promised this kid that you’re going to be captain, and as member of your captain’s ping pong club, you are everything he looks for in a player—competitive, driven, and hates to lose.
Come to think of it… Hanzawa has adjusted to the dorms remarkably well. Maybe it’s because of his siblings, but he’s already managed to get on friendly terms with most of the residents, so he’s definitely good with handling people. He’d probably make for a great successor… you still aren’t thinking about what you’ll do after ping pong, but the idea of leaving some kind of legacy behind feels… nice, in a way you hadn’t thought of, before. Maybe it’s the funny feeling you like. But if you knew exactly what the feeling was, it wouldn’t be so funny.
“We’re going to be great roommates,” you tell Hanzawa, and Hanzawa’s face goes funny again, but a different kind, the kind where he’s only just realized that you could actually be a bad, bad roommate. A second later, though, that expression clears into perfect calm, and he nods, smiling as if to placate you.
You’re not so sure that you’ll prove him wrong, but you are sure he’ll play some great ping pong.