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He hadn't actually planned on coming out, but the first time he's asked, "So, do you have a girlfriend waiting back home?" the truthful no on his tongue tastes as sour and oily as a lie.
"I'm gay," he says calmly instead, as if he's said it hundreds of times before (later he wishes he'd said it at least once before, because while his parents take it quite well they are understandably put out over hearing it first from the Sports Channel).
The reporter recovers quickly, offering a bright smile and, "Boyfriend?"
"I don’t really think that’s any of your business," he replies gravely, and hopes that might be the end of it.
The next time he's home he has lunch with Fuji, which turns out to be a mistake for more than the usual reasons, and acquires a boyfriend in spite of himself. Fuji's dreamy, lovesick expression - directed, as Kunimitsu remembers it, at the onion and nasturtium ice-cream he couldn't be prevented from ordering – apparently convinces the whole of Japan that they are Meant To Be.
It's the worst thing anyone's ever said about him.
Fuji comes over in person to swan past the paparazzi and hand deliver a copy of the paper, just in case he's missed it. He hasn't, though his own copy doesn't have a neat border of little lilac hearts around the photo. The biggest, in between Fuji's longingly out-stretched hand and his own, put-upon expression, has a dramatic crack down the middle.
"I’m so sorry, Kunimitsu," he says, eyes brimming with unsympathetic glee, "but I like girls."
"You do not," he says before he can stop himself, and Fuji laughs himself sick.
He doesn't know why he's even got paparazzi; he's only won three tournaments, even if one of them was Wimbledon.
He certainly doesn’t know why anyone would believe him lunatic enough to get involved with Fuji - let alone Ryoma, who is silent and sulky until he finds an opportunity to spit, "Well, maybe you should go see Fuji then," which makes no sense at all in response to a question about his history exam.
"You of all people," he says sternly, "can not possibly believe --" He can't even bring himself to say it, only to make a definitive hand gesture that he hopes conveys dearly though I love my friend, nothing on Earth could induce me to date him effectively.
Ryoma looks slightly abashed, but no less stubborn. "You should just tell them you do have a boyfriend. And that it isn't Fuji."
"You shouldn't have to deal with reporters when you're trying to finish high school. Besides," he shifts uncomfortably, too aware of Ryoma's unfinished, adolescent frame, stretched carelessly across his childhood bed, "you're too young." Ryoma grins. "And don't smirk at me like that."
"We haven’t even done anything." That is not entirely true, but they haven't done anything that could, as Echizen Nanjiroh so horrifyingly put it, 'get them pregnant.'
"Prepared to wait another two years, are you?" It comes out suitably dry, and there's no reason Ryoma ever has to know just thinking about it makes his mouth dry too, and his hands clammy.
"One and a half," Ryoma stretches closer, putting a hand on his thigh and looking up at him, through sensuously thick lashes, in a way that makes him want to count the hours. "And I'm not prepared to wait another two –-"
But then there’s a pounding on the door, "Hey, brat! Quit making out and send out the little captain, I want a match," and he doesn't get to know whether Ryoma's unprepared to wait two more months, weeks or minutes, only that his own patience is not at all what it used to be.