As lunch break comes around Kousuke finds himself deciding to eat away from the classroom for once. Valdis had been causing a ruckus and he felt as though it was in his best interest to get out of the room. So with a spring in his step Kousuke trotted up the stairs to the roof. As he arrives he takes a deep breath and then walks over to the side of the roof.

“Nothing beats the air from on high.” He states in a sure tone. Kousuke had always loved high places since he was a child. He used to climb up onto his roof to get higher and it was one of the few things he and his dad never saw eye to eye on. He loved heights while his dad preferred to scrounge around in holes looking for artifacts.

Deciding there was nothing else to be done Kousuke takes out a large lunch box and removes the lid revealing a lunch that could have been cooked at a high class restaurant. He had packed tempura as one of the main dishes today, but he had made sure to include a variety of tasty side dishes, and as he examines his work he gives a satisfied nod.

Lunchtime could not have come soon enough for Yuki. Using her senshi powers, it turns out, took a lot of energy and she had fought a lot yesterday. Staying awake in class had become an incredibly difficult ordeal. On a more exciting note however, the results from the sports tryout came in and Yuki now wore a green armband along with a matching ribbon on her uniform. When bell rang for lunch, she told Sophia where she would be if the other wanted to join her. Yuki had gone to grab her scarf and gloves before and heading to the roof with her lunch. It was kind of cold out after all and because of that the roof, a once popular destination in favorable weather, was now a more quiet and peaceful place Yuki could enjoy her meal.

When she opened the door, Yuki could be seen already eating with a roll of melon bread hanging out her mouth along with a few more in her arms, each individually wrapped in plastic. She then scanned the roof looking for a spot and was surprised to see a person she recognized here.

”Mmarchferr!” She tried to say but had seemingly forgotten about the bread in her mouth. Taking a bite and swallowing, she tried again.

”I’m surprised to see you up here. Mind if I join you.” She sat down anyway. Smiling she pointed to her armband. ”Though I suppose I should call you sempai now huh?” she spoke, clearly proud of her accomplishment.

Kousuke looks over as the door opens up and he pops the first of his tempura into his mouth. Chewing absent mindedly as she begins talking to him. After a few seconds he swallows and gives her a bright smile. “Congrats on being accepted to the sports program, though to be honest I didn’t really ever doubt that you would be accepted.” He admits, after all he’d seen her kick those fireballs, especially that trick shot from the roof.

“Anyways come on over and sit down.” He insists patting the spot on the other side of his several tier lunchbox. As she comes over he notices the bread she’s carrying and takes the top layer off his lunch box and holds out the second layer to her. “Come on, you can’t only eat bread, poor nutritional balance is bad especially if you’re going to be really active.” He tells her as he munches on some more tempura.

“Well now that you’re in the sports program I bet you’ll be the ace in no time at all.” He beams in between bites. Though after a few moments he starts messaging his shoulder. “Man I can’t believe I’m still sore from yesterday.” He murmurs. However he soon brightens up again.

“Oh I should probably tell you, the spare key to the equipment locker is under a false rock by the door.” He explains. “The sports students often come and do night practice so we tell most of the motivated freshmen about it.

Sophia enters on the rooftop, humming a song. She finds it a little embarrassing to be humming a song by The Sirens when she was friends with the lead singer, but the songs were way too catchy. She was a little late to lunch for no real reason. She had walked around the school a little for some reassurance that it was in one piece. The other day seemed so unreal to her that she felt the need to check everything little thing, just to make sure it was still there.

“Hello, Yuki-chan. I keep getting so excited about starting the new arts program, I can hardly sit still…” she trails off. She hadn’t seen the boy on the roof before. She wonders if Yuki had a boyfriend. He definitely wasn’t bad looking at the very least. She remembered that he introduced himself as Kousuke. However, it occurs to her she may be interrupting a special moment or something.

“Kousuke, right?” she asks to the boy happily. "How are you doing?" She looks to Yuki for a second to see if she is interrupting something and should leave.

Yuki took another bite of her bread. Of course she didn’t doubt she would get into the sports program either, she just liked to boast about it anyway. She had already sent texts and pictures to her brother who told her she should pick a different path.

As she quickly finished off her first roll, Yuki’s eyes widened when she seemed to finally notice Kousuke’s ridiculous lunch.

”Holy crap…do you have a personal chef or something to cook for you…” Yuki wasted no time eating the section he offered her. ”Delicious!” But at his comment about her poor nutritional balance, Yuki scrunched her face.

”What do you mean? Bread gives you carbs, and I also have a protein shake for muscle,” to demonstrate, Yuki opened her drink and took a gulp. It seemed this girl thought the food pyramid only consisted of two things. ”However I will eat your food as well,” she took another unreserved bit of his own lunch.

”I know right,” Yuki responded when Kousuke mentioned he was sore but then realized why that was weird for him. ”Wait…were you working out yesterday? You should’ve taken the day off from working out. Even athletes need to give their bodies some time to recover every now and then.” She smiled when he told her where the spare key was.

”Awesome, thanks for the tip.”

At this point, Sophia made it up to the roof. Yuki waved over to the girl, beckoning her to come join them. She seemed somewhat hesitant though, and glanced over at Kousuke before looking at Yuki. It took Yuki a moment before she realized what the situation looked like and quickly patted the spot next to her.

”Please join us….Kousuke is a friend I er…met playing basketball. Or rather he’s the basketball player.” Yuki realized she was on the verge of rambling so she promptly shut her mouth.

”Congrats again on getting into the arts program. You’ll do great I’m sure.” She changed the subject. Yuki opened another one of her melon bread, stuffing it into her mouth so she wouldn’t have to talk. Sharing lunch together was something couples did wasn’t it? This somewhat realization made her suddenly self-concious.

Upon seeing Sophia come onto the roof he waves her over to sit down with them. “Hey, hey no need to be so hesitant. Come and join us.” He greets, then when she says his name he looks a bit surprised. “Oh, you know who I am? Well then I suppose that speeds things along, yes, I am Kousuke Archer, a sophomore in the sports program.”

Kousuke seems surprised when Sophia indicates that he’s Yuki’s boyfriend and he turns to her. “Well I’m a male friend of yours so I suppose technically…are we…?” He asks in a bit of a teasing tone then he tilts his head slightly pretending to ponder the concept. Kousuke had several female friends, he was decently popular due to his kind and optimistic demeanor despite being a sports prodigy.

“Well no worries.” Though he laughs aloud when Yuki asks him if he had a personal chef. “Hahahah, no no I’m pretty strictly middle class. I made this.” He admits rubbing his nose a bit with a look of pride, well he had put a lot of time into it after all. “I do most of the edible cooking in my house, and after a while I started to enjoy it. If my sports career ever fails maybe I’ll do this.” He says with a laugh, it wasn’t likely to come to that, but you never know.

Though when Yuki talks about her two food groups his face tenses. “Ummm, Ac-Taka, that’s not how the food groups work. If you keep going with that you’re eventually going to breakdown.” He scolds doing his best to take up a senpai look. “Listen if you’ve got issues actually getting a good balance just come find me during lunch and I’ll give you some of mine. I usually get asked by a couple of people on any given day.”

Though when she asked him about yesterday sweat starts to bead on his brow. “Y-yeah I’ll keep that in mind. Wouldn’t want to wear myself down jumping around central…” He replies with a nervous laugh.

Sophia joins them gladly. However, she gives Yuki a teasing look when he asks if he was her boyfriend. Were they not sure? She would definitely interrogate the answer out of Yuki when the affected party would leave.

“We didn’t really get a good introduction during class, but you sort of announced your name when Keitha walked in today. Sophia, sophomore in the arts program. But you probably already figured that out by now.” She starts taking out her food. She plays with an apple for a bit, passing it back and forth in hands before eating it as she listens to Kousuke and Yuki continue their discussion.

As they talk about Kousuke’s lunch, Sophia takes a look at what Kousuke made. Definitely better
than she could do. She could cook, but not it wasn’t anywhere close to the restaurant quality that was Kousuke’s lunch. Her meat curry and rice was sort of boring looking in comparison. “Wow, you are quite good at it. The presentation is fairly nice. If it tastes as good as it looks, you certainly could make a decent living,” she says.

She didn’t really know much about sports nutrition to add to the conversation really. However, she finds the two of them scolding each sort of amusing. She somewhat hides a snicker before continuing eating. “So how soon before our school has some competitive matches?” she asks, breaking up their back and forth reprimands.

As Kousuke teasingly asked if he was her boyfriend, Yuki felt the color rising to her cheeks.

”No way!” she answered quickly. She took another bite of her bread as the two introduced themselves. When Kousuke explained that he cooked all this food, even Yuki had an impressed look on her face. She focused all her efforts 24/7 on soccer, so Kousuke being proficient in something other than his sport surprised her.

However poor her ability to cook was though, Yuki certainly loved food and part of her was almost tempted to take him up on his offer. However, since Sophie arrived Yuki suddenly felt strangely self-conscious.

”That’s alright, my dad owns a convenience store so I’m all set with free food,” she answered stubbornly. Of course it wasn’t really free, as her dad kept trying to remind Yuki every morning when she raided the store.

When he answered her about working out too much, Yuki felt like there was something off about his comment. However before she could ask, Sophia asked them when competitive matches would start.

”Well soccer is typically a spring sport…not that we really have those anymore. It’ll be lots of training and scrimmages for me for a bit. Basketball is a winter sport and should start sooner though,” she looked over to Kousuke for verification.

In respeonse to Sophia’s comment about whether or not his food tasted as good as it looked Kousuke grabbed several side dishes and placed them on Sophia’s lunch. “Try for yourself.” He says in between munches.

Then after watching her eat some he licks his fingers of some sauce and asks “So what kinda art do you do? Are you a painter or something?” Then when Yuki emphatically denies their relationship he laughs aloud. “She speaks the truth, I’m just an overly familiar senpai.” He admits with a grin, though it turns a bit thoughtful when Yuki mentions her family’s convenience store.

“Oh? Is it the one nearby?” He asks, after all Kousuke was a high school student he frequented convenience stores just like anyone else.

As the discussion rounded to the school sports schedule he nods, “Well we’ve got a few more scrimmages to give the freshmen a chance to show their stuff and then we’ll have some games. Though to be honest I doubt any of the early teams we face’ll be all that impressive.” He admits with an air of sureness. Though after saying this he leans back and looks up at the sky. “I hope at least one of the opponents get’s my blood pumping.”

After saying this he sits forward a bit and looks carefully at Yuki. “Well if we really wanted to be sure to win…how about putting on a boys jersey and playing as well Yuki? I told you your as good as any of the regulars, it’ll be fun~”

“Thanks,” she says before eating the tempura. Kousuke was quite the chef. “However, I hope you make enough for yourself to eat,” she jokes.

“I wish I could paint… I went in for acting, mostly, but I have a huge soft spot for musical theatre. So that includes singing and dancing as well. The dancing bit is mostly jazz, tap, ballet, and lyrical. I will admit that ballet isn’t the most exciting or fun, but there is a bunch of technical parts in it that are good to know,” she answers in between bites of food.

“Ah. So sort of far away,” she says when Yuki mentions that matches wouldn’t start until spring. As Kousuke talks about competitions, Sophia can’t say that she really understands. She understands the anxiety and excitement that go with having a performance. However, worthy opponents weren’t really part of that. “I have only been to maybe a few basketball games before. We should go cheer you on when your games start,” she says. Sports weren’t really too much of her interest, but she felt the need to go to games if she knew some of the players. She tended to find familiar faces while on stage reassuring after all.

“Yuki, you play basketball too?” she asks as Kousuke brings up her skill in the sport. If both of them were in it, she would definitely need to make time to see a match.

At Kousuke’s question about the convenience store, Yuki nodded.

”It’s not far from school,” she answered, meaning it was likely the one he was thinking of. ”Occasionally my old man needs me to fill in, though I try to avoid working there when I can. I’d much rather be eating the food there then selling it.” Yuki grinned. The only work she liked was practicing her footwork.

She continued to listen as Kousuke described the early teams as not being much of a competition.

”This school is strong,” she chimed in, ”it’s pretty much the only reason I chose to come here." She also knew Kousuke’s skills first hand….finding someone who could compete on his level would be difficult. Though when he suggested Yuki play in the boy’s game, she made a face.

”I told myself I wouldn’t do that anymore…” Which implied Yuki had in fact disguised herself as a boy to play. However she stopped doing that after middle school….it wasn’t very cute after all.

”Well I use to play a bunch of different sports growing up…and I did play a lot of basketball in middle school. However soccer is what I want to go pro in so I decided to focus only on one sport.” Yuki answered Sophie when asked if she played basketball.