The next day, Adachi once again invited me to play ping-pong; she seemed a bit more eager than she had the day before. Curious, I agreed.
After our ungodly struggle yesterday, table setup went a lot faster this time around.
“Is it cool if I serve?”
“Sure.” Today the ball was orange, not pink.
“Hyah!” Adachi shouted as she hit the ball. This was no ordinary serve—she struck the ball’s lower half with her paddle at a specific angle, creating a weird curveball effect.
The ball hit the table and bounced back in her direction, but I didn’t care about its trajectory. I was so baffled by her melodramatic swing that I missed my chance to hit it back.
“Rrgh,” I murmured in frustration. Then I caught a rare, eye-catching glimpse of childish glee on Adachi’s face.
“I looked up techniques on the internet last night. But I didn’t have a paddle at home to practice with, so I had to use a rice scoop,” she explained, twirling her paddle in a show of smug self-satisfaction.
Personally, I was surprised to learn that she cared that much about ping-pong, but I kept this to myself. “That’s not fair! You can’t serve a curveball to a beginner!”
“Get good, scrub! Hyah!” Striking a weird pose, she served another ball. This time, she must’ve hit it too low, because it bounced backward and hit the wall behind her. She dashed off to retrieve it, then came back scratching her forehead.
“Truth is, I can only get it to work every one in ten tries,” she explained as she showed me how to hit the curveball.
“You’ve got to be the only person I know who gets worse with practice.” At this rate, I think I could beat her with my eyes closed.
On Adachi’s third try, the ball flew off yet again, hitting another table and then the floor. It was her screw-up, but because it fell on my side, I was forced to go retrieve it.
Just then, I heard a voice from the ground floor of the gym.
My heart leapt into my throat as I froze in place. The ball bounced off to a corner. I could hear girls’ voices coming from downstairs. Meanwhile, Adachi had the same reaction I did. She tiptoed around the ping-pong table, and together, we peeked over the edge of the loft to get a view of the ground floor.
From the looks of it, some girls in our grade were setting up volleyball courts for gym class. I only knew they were in our grade because I spotted my friends, Hino and Nagafuji, carrying the poles and net. If they walked onto the stage and looked up at the second floor, they would see us… My heart wasn’t caught in my throat anymore, but my skin felt as though it was buzzing with static electricity.
Back when we’d just sat around and talked, it was easy to hide from gym intruders. Because of that, I hadn’t bothered to memorize the full class schedule. With our hands over our mouths, Adachi and I squatted next to each other, wondering in terror whether someone would notice the tiny tap, tap, tap of the runaway ping-pong ball.
“Oh my god, I’m totally freaking out,” Adachi whispered with a grin on her face.
Adachi, you bad girl. I elbowed her playfully. “What do we do if someone comes up here?” I asked.
With her hands still over her mouth, she laughed and looked upward.
“We could open the window and jump out.”
“What? This is the second floor! We’ll break our legs!” I protested. I’d never bothered to check what was directly below that window, so the idea scared me. But that was my fault for taking a joke suggestion so seriously.
Adachi nodded pensively to herself. “I see. So, you’re calcium-deficient.”
“Oh, screw you!”
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Since her comment clearly got to me, though, maybe that was an admission of guilt on my part.
We pressed our backs to the one wall separating us from the buzz of conversation below. Apparently, the teacher hadn’t showed up yet, so the students were content to stand around. Hino and Nagafuji didn’t know where I went when I skipped class, so they probably had no idea I was in the very same building as them… The thought tickled me.
As Adachi and I crouched in hiding, it started to feel as though we were doing something bad. I mean, we totally were, obviously. But there was something fun about sharing that secret with Adachi. Was I just drunk on the thrill of breaking the rules, or was there something about her specifically? Deep down, I knew the answer, but I decided not to think about it. Meanwhile, the orange ping-pong ball rolled all the way into the corner and fell still.
“Maybe we should start drinking milk at lunch sometimes. You know, so we won’t break our legs if we need to make an emergency escape,” Adachi suggested, and I couldn’t quite tell whether she was joking or not.
Then lunch rolled around, and once again, her “I’ll go next time” wasn’t true.