FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 5/63
Title: Rewind Forward (5/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15]
Junior year of junior high school starts with new shoes, a new uniform and new tennis grips. It is exactly the same as last month, except that Niou isn’t in freshmen classes anymore, and the OBs are gone from tennis practice for good.
And Marui isn’t in his class.
Niou practically skips through the hallways when he realizes that. No one from tennis is in his class. His stomach practically flip flops with glee because now he can pester fifteen other girls and seventeen guys to his heart’s content and not have to have the nagging voice in the back of his mind wonder if the tennis team will hear about his tricks.
Gym class is shared in the gymnasium with another junior class. Niou immediately sees the familiar black cap of Sanada among his other gym classmates. He squeezes through students and pokes Sanada in the small of the back. Sanada must have grown four inches in the two weeks of break before the new school year.
Sanada stares down his nose at Niou. “Oh, you’re in this class.”
Niou nods. He reads the gym schedule for the year. “Tennis in the summer for marks, not bad.”
Sanada grunts. His voice has gotten even lower. He sounds more like a senior than a new junior.
“Practices start tomorrow morning,” Sanada says. “There are three spots open on the regulars.”
Niou can feel his mouth curve into a smile. “Brilliant,” he says.
Open tryouts are the worst part of the new tennis season. Niou might show up a half hour before practice should start, but so do at least thirty other students he’s never seen before. Some are juniors and seniors, judging from their sizes, and judging from the way they swing wide and careless, this is the first time they have held a racket before.
Niou feels quite pleased with himself when he notices groups of freshmen, all clumped together, cowering around the benches. It seems like ages since he was in their position and now he’s a senpai. He’s practiced. For the briefest of moment, he almost understands all of Marui’s posing.
But then he sees Marui’s pink hair across a court and he remembers why he could never be like him. Marui talks loudly above a group of freshmen, nodding at Jackal and calling himself a genius at tennis. The freshmen’s eyes go wide with awe.
Niou rolls his eyes. He slings his racket over his shoulder and goes off to find Sanada. He ought to know where the best courts are to start warming up. The chaos of open tryouts means that everyone wanders everywhere until the coach shows up, or the captain gives laps, but there is no sign of Nishiki-buchou or the coach yet.
“Excuse me!”
Niou cocks his head. A freshman in a white polo shirt and messy, awful black hair stares up at him with a sideways smile. “Are you Yukimura-san?” he asks.
Niou snorts. “Am I Yukimura? Yeah right, kid.”
The kid’s smile falls. “Do you know who Yukimura, Sanada and Yanagi-san are? I’m looking for them.”
Niou scratches his temple. He stares at the kid for a while, trying to figure out exactly what this freshman wants. The kid hops from foot to foot, not so much out of nerves, but more like he’s impatient for something.
Niou glances around. Sanada is as tall as the seniors now, so it’s easy to find a black cap among the taller players on the courts. And where there is one of the big three, the other two are close by.
Niou leans down. “Yanagi is that one,” he says, pointing to Yanagi, who sits on a bench marking something off on a clipboard. “Yukimura is him,” he points to Yukimura, who finishes a lap around the court.
“And Sanada is that one,” he nods to Sanada, standing on the court and speaking to Yukimura. Sanada hands Yukimura a sweat towel.
“Thanks, senpai,” the kid says. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Niou,” he says. He doesn’t ask the kid’s name, but then the kid tells him anyway.
“I’m Kirihara Akaya,” the kid says. He blinks, then laughs at himself. Dropping his racket, he reaches out a hand and grabs Niou’s, shaking it violently, like a dog with a bone.
***
Niou doesn’t actually see the wonderchibi threaten the three monsters because he is too busy on the junior courts, working on his serve with another junior whose name he forgets. He wants one of the three places on the team. The sting of losing the Newcomer’s Tournament place is still sharp in his gut and he refuses to let it happen a second time.
But he does manage to catch the kid playing a game.
A senior shouts to the group of players on the court, “You’ve got to see this! A freshman challenged Yanagi, Sanada and Yukimura! He’s playing them right now!”
Niou looks up. The ball from the other player hits the ground next to him with a soft pong in the spring earth.
“Puri,” he says. “What an idiot.”
Like the rest of the players, though, Niou is more than happy to watch this kid get his ass kicked. He must be completely clueless to have challenged all three of them, even Niou wouldn’t have asked them for a game. Well, maybe one of them one day, but not all three on the first day of open tryouts.
The crowd around the regulars’ courts is thick. Niou pushes his way though, elbowing some short freshmen to try and see.
“He’s got balls,” Marui says.
“I shouldn’t have told him,” Jackal says, sighing heavily. He rubs his temple, massaging his scalp. “I shouldn’t have ever said anything.”
“No, no, it’s kinda funny,” Marui says.
The crowd oohs and ahhs. Niou stands on his toes, peering over heads, to sides and them finally he gets a look. The kid- Kirihara Akaya from before- is dripping with sweat. His face is red and so are his eyes. He looks positively demonic, with his messy, curly hair flying everywhere around him as he furiously smashes a shot across the net. In itself, it’s an awesome shot, powerful, fast, and completely haphazard, the way it seems to spin and slice and change direction, whiz around in the air.
But Sanada returns it. Easily. With a grin, no less. “Is that all you have?” he taunts. “I thought you said you would-” Sanada swings, grunting his follow-through, “-win!”
Kirihara screams his next shot, but his smashes don’t deter Sanada and his volleys and lobs and poaches don’t either. Kirihara ends the game flat on his back with Sanada lording over him. “Don’t challenge your senpais if you can’t play them equally,” he says.
“I will be number one!” Kirihara spits.
What Niou notices, however, is something interesting. Besides the slightest hint of a smile on Sanada’s face (in itself something that catches Niou offguard and makes him give Sanada a second look to confirm it really was there), is the fact that Sanada takes off his cap and wipes his brow.
Kirihara gave Sanada a run for his money.
“I can’t believe he got a game off Sanada!” Marui says.
“Or two off Yanagi,” Jackal says.
Niou can feel his ears perk. “Oh?” he asks.
“He’s really good,” Jackal insists. “We play sometimes at the streetcourts near my house.”
“So he’s your wonderchibi?” Niou asks. Jackal scrunches his brow, then nods.
With the games finished, the courts clear. All except for Kirihara, who still lies flat on the ground, staring at the sky above. The novelty of a dumb freshman has lost its appeal to everyone but Niou.
He walks up to the kid, scuffing his shoes to make sure Kirihara hears him. Kirihara doesn’t move. He doesn’t look at Niou, he just keeps staring at the sky overhead. Niou looks up. No clouds. Nothing except an endless expanse of spring cerulean and the sound of tennis balls bouncing, birds chirping and the endless grunts and groans of a dozen consecutive tennis matches.
“Something good up there?” Niou asks.
Kirihara is silent.
Niou steps closer. He kicks Kirihara in the leg. The kid not only has balls, but he doesn’t seem to feel pain, either. His face doesn’t even twitch.
Niou moves to kick him again when Kirihara finally sits straight up, one fluid motion, almost zombie-like. “How can those three all play for the same team? How can they all be so good?”
Niou thinks for a moment. He’s never really thought about it much. “They just are,” he says. “They’ve always been good. Even crybaby Sanada.”
“Crybaby?” Kirihara’s eyes light up, flickering from a sickly bloodshot to something pinker, something almost cute.
“Do you have an eye disease, or something?” Niou asks.
Kirihara shrugs. “I will be number one,” he insists.
“When Yukimura keels over dead, sure,” Niou agrees.
Kirihara flops back against the clay court. Niou finally gives up on him. The kid is strange, there’s no doubt about that. Niou walks back towards the junior courts. He has some senpais of his own to impress.
His spot has been taken when he returns. That kid from last year, that megane dork stands on the edge of the court in line, waiting to make his own shots against the fukubuchou. That kid is just as bad as Kirihara- he keeps going and going. Niou hasn’t seen him in a long time- not that he cares- and here the megane is back at tryouts for a second year in a row.
Niou cannot resist himself. He sidles up near the boy. “If you’re crappy enough not to show up for an entire year of the club, why come back?” he asks, making sure his voice is nice and loud.
The megane starts to turn his head, but not far enough to actually look Niou in the eye.
“Fucking megane dork,” Niou hisses.
This time the boy’s cheek twitches and his hand loosens on his racket handle. His racket clatters to the ground. He picks it up, adjusts his glasses, then pushes past Niou.
“Excuse me,” he mutters.
Niou happily takes the megane’s spot in the line.
***
At morning practice, Niou hears his name being called during laps. He slows his pace, jogging along, and looks around.
Kirihara runs up to him, flapping his arms.
“Niou-senpai,” he says, as though they are now on some sort on friendly terms. Niou starts to run faster. Kirihara puffs and pants but manages to keep up, although his legs must be half the length. “Niou-senpai, you’re not a regular yet, are you?” Kirihara manages.
Niou stops dead in his tracks. “What’s it to you?” he asks.
Kirihara bumps into a junior ahead of him. Marui.
Marui glares. “Watch it!” he snaps.
Kirihara laughs an apology off.
“Niou-senpai,” he says, “I will be a regular this year. And I know you want to be one, too.”
Niou says nothing. Kirihara steps towards the chainlink fence, out of the way of another scowling junior. Niou crosses his arms over his chest.
“You want to practice together?” Kirihara asks.
Niou isn’t sure what comes over him. Maybe it is for pure amusement value, maybe because he’s looking for something new. Maybe he just doesn’t know.
He says, “All right”.
***
Kirihara is not just a big mouth.
The kid can play. Really, really well.
For four days Niou practices with Kirihara after the tennis practices after school. More than an hour or two of practice might get boring with anyone else, but not with Kirihara. He’s interesting.
He is a twit. He laughs at himself constantly. He licks his lips, he rubs his chin, he’s cute like a little kid but he’s hell on the court. Once the little bugger gets started, he goes all the way.
Under the dimming lights of early evening, they play. Kirihara cackles. “Are you ready, Niou-senpai?” he’ll call, but Niou only fell for that trick once. Before Kirihara has finished speaking, he’s lunging and throwing his weight into a twist serve.
Niou grips his racket with two hands, ready for the return shot.
He watches how Kirihara moves. The kid is a beast when he plays, he puts his heart and his body into every play he makes. His shots are powerful and wild, the ball flies through the air with no sense of direction. But at the same time, Kirihara knows his strengths. He can do a one-footed split step and his backhands are almost as powerful as Sanada’s.
Niou gets used to Kirihara’s fast pace. He’s panting by the end of the first set, always, while Kirihara barely breaks a sweat. “Getting tired, senpai?” he asks.
Niou returns Kirihara’s shot with a poach, catching the kid offguard and taking a point. By Friday, he can tie the games with Kirihara, but his eyes see grey around the edges from watching the kid so much. His brain hurts from trying to manipulate each move on his own terms, to switch everything over to his dominant hand, left instead of Kirihara’s right.
On Monday, Niou plays four games. Three against seniors and one against a fellow junior, but not, much to his dismay, Marui.
He wins three of the games. He feels like he is flying, weightless as he floats into the changing rooms at the end of the afternoon. But then so do half the players with him. The air is abuzz with commentary and laughter, self-doubt and worry. Niou starts to wonder if his last game- against a senior with a killer slice- will count against him. He gave it his all, or so he thought at the time.
Now, though…Niou wonders if his attempt at a split step would have caught the coach’s eye, or if his own modified twist serve for his left hand worked the way he wanted it to. It didn’t win him the match, but it won four games of the set, a good amount for a junior who’s only been playing tennis for a year.
The night is spent in a restless half-slumber. Niou counts the cars passing outside his window, the flashes of headlights and the slow rumble of engines. His eyes are heavy and he’s exhausted. His muscles ache. The number of laps has increased from last year and practicing with Kirihara has brought pains from places Niou didn’t think he used for tennis- the backs of his thighs, his stomach, his chest, his armpits.
The pains are dull, throbbing underneath his skin deep down to the bone. He’s so tired he can’t bring himself to jerk off, and instead lies half-hard and worried all night along.
“Get up, Masaharu!” his mother calls in the morning. She shakes him silly, until his head hurts even more. “Get up or you’ll miss your tennis practice!”
Niou buries his head deeper under the sheets. His muscles still hurt and he doesn’t remember sleeping much at all, just flopping around on top of his mattress and blearily watching the red flashing numbers of his digital clock.
“Get up!” his mother insists. She shakes his shoulders harder. Niou groans. She pulls the sheets back from his head. Blinking, he stares at her as his vision comes into focus for a split second before something dark yellow is shoved into his face.
“Here’s your uniform,” she says. “I just finished washing it since you didn’t clean out your tennis bag from your last practice, Masaharu. It smelled.”
Niou grunts.
He doesn’t want to drag himself to practice, but his mother pushes him out the door with two cold rice balls to eat for breakfast on the bus. The rice is sticky in his mouth and his tongue sticks, pasted to the roof of his mouth. Niou sips his juice box- coconut and mango- and shuffles off the bus when it stops by the curb at the school.
Niou takes a deep breath, then steps through the school gates.
The first thing he sees is a sea of yellow jerseys crowded around the clubhouse. Niou’s head throbs even more and his stomach twists. He does and he doesn’t want to know the results of the captain and coach’s decision as to who has made the regulars. He thought he was good, maybe really good after practicing with the wonderchibi, better than Marui at least, but now that it is actually the morning of the announcement, he’s not sure of anything.
Niou hangs around the fray of the crowds, hands in his pockets as he leans against a bench. Yanagi walks by and gives him a long look, but Niou simply shrugs and Yanagi walks off.
And then a whirlwind breaks the mass of players up, scattering them around like the first sakura petals blowing on the spring breezes. Kirihara grins from ear to ear, shaking his head and shouting, pumping his fist and jumping up in the air. “I made it! I made it!”
Niou doesn’t smile back when Kirihara sees him. But Kirihara doesn’t seem to care. He runs straight into Niou and grabs his shoulders. “Niou-senpai, aren’t you excited?” he asks, speaking straight into Niou’s face.
Niou cringes, turning aside. “Oh, terribly,” he mutters.
Kirihara’s fingers loosen their grip. His face falls into a contorted confusion, visible in the way he frowns and touches his upper lip. “But…you made the regulars too,” he says.
Niou falls off the back of the bench, and he can’t blame it entirely on puberty this time.
***
The best part about a regular is not the special meetings and the special courts, the exclusive use of ball machines or the shiny weight machines in the small gymnasium. No, what Niou thinks is the best part about being a regular is the first moment when he opens a locker in the regulars’ changing room and smells the stale sweat and old gymsocks that wafts out.
It is all his.
Niou breathes it in deeply, then gags.
Kirihara immediately tacks up cut-out pictures of videogame characters onto his locker door. There are so many pictures that it looks like a collage of Pokemon, Inuyasha, Nascar Racing and Night of the Living Dead zombies.
“You like videogames?” Niou asks.
Kirihara nods.
The following day, Niou brings his own picture, printed off his sister’s computer that morning.
“Why are you printing that off?” she asks. “It’ll cost you 100 yen.”
“Dad pays for the ink, idiot,” Niou tells her.
He smiles to himself when he pastes the picture to the middle of a dartboard image. Glue shines on the edges, but it’ll do.
Sanada’s jaw tenses when he sees Niou taping the picture to his lockerdoor. “Hey!” he shouts. “That’s not-”
“That’s kinda funny,” Yukimura says, unable to stop a snicker when he sees the picture of Sanada’s face in the middle of the dartboard.
Nishiki-buchou and the fukubuchou give Niou high-fives. “That’s a little gay,” Nishiki tells Niou, “but it’s really funny how Sanada’s all red now.” He waves off any laps that Sanada suggests.
Niou doesn’t like the fact the regulars are expected at practice earlier than everyone else, or that they have weight training after afternoon practices. He sleeps like the dead the first two weeks, unable to do much homework and gathering more detentions over lunch hour and more calls home to his mother.
“If you can’t do your schoolwork, you’ll have to stop going to tennis,” his father announces.
“School is more important,” his mother echoes.
In that moment, Niou understands Yukimura’s slavish devotion to tennis. Tennis where he can run around, focusing solely on the game, on the win, on the ball. It’s more soothing than anything, even math, even tricking people. The rush of air in his lungs, the way he can feel the ball hit the racket, as though his arm is an extension of the racket itself.
He will not let it go. Especially now that he has just made the regulars.
Niou slams his fists down on the table. “No!”
His entire family blinks. His entire family pushes their glasses up their noses.
Niou scraps his chair back, standing up so fast the plates on the table clatter. “No!” he shouts. “My homework is useless,” he snaps. “Tennis is fun. Or would you rather have me do something else! I could smoke or do drugs or run away!” Niou starts to move, but his mother stops him with a hand to his arm.
“We’re only concerned-”
“I’m not stupid,” Niou hisses. “I’m not failing so what’s some stupid homework mean?” His father frowns and starts to disagree when Niou gives up trying to reason with his family. “Stupid fucking meganes! You don’t understand anything!”
***
Being grounded on weekends puts a serious damper on the arcade.
But Niou’s parents are satisfied at long last when he grudgingly shows them completed sheets of math and English sentences on Sundays. His tennis doesn’t suffer, but his free time does.
To top it all off, Nishiki-buchou decides to hold official practice matches between the regulars. The prefecturals are in a week. The line up hasn’t been decided. Niou only has to look across the courts to think that it would make the most sense to have a Sanada-Yanagi pair as doubles two, have the captain and vice-captain as doubles one, Kirihara as singles three, himself as singles two and Yukimura as singles one.
“I’m not a doubles player,” Kirihara tells him.
“Neither am I,” Niou says. “Never even tried it.”
Nishiki walks up behind them, clapping his hand on Kirihara’s shoulder and making the kid dribble his waterbottle down the front of his jersey. “You’ll both be doubles by the end of the season. We make everyone play every position at least once. Makes us all-rounded.”
“It makes us win,” Yukimura says, his voice louder than the captain.
Nishiki smiles at Yukimura, but when he turns, Niou catches sight of him rolling his eyes too.
“Saa, Buchou,” Yukimura says, touching the strings on his racket, “I think you should have Sanada play Niou today.”
Niou blinks. Across the court, Sanada looks up from where he was spinning his racket to pick sides for a match with Yanagi.
“But I was-”
Yukimura clicks his tongue, ignoring Sanada. “Buchou?” he asks again, more forcefully as he taps his sneaker and waits for an answer.
“Uh, sure,” Nishiki-buchou nods. “Sanada vs Niou on court A, I guess. Yukimura vs Yanagi on court B, myself vs Kirihara on C. Kawasaki and Yamada in the gymnasium courts with the machines.”
“Yes, buchou!” Niou yells, along with the rest of the team. But his insides shrink when he sees the hulking form of Sanada waiting for him on court one. For a moment, he almost wishes he was back picking up balls and working on mindless reps of swings with the non-regulars scattered across the other campus courts.
Sanada holds his racket against the ground. “Smooth or rough?”
Niou says, “Rough.”
“Good, smooth is always my side,” Sanada says.
The racket whirls, the blue paint of the frame mixing with the white of the strings before it falls down. Niou moves to look, but he doesn’t need to when he sees the little smirk on Sanada’s face.
Smooth.
“I’ll serve,” Sanada says.
Niou stands in the middle of the baseline. He’s never played Sanada before, but he’s seen Sanada play enough other people to know that Sanada’s shots are usually long, hard shots towards the back of the court. Unlike Yanagi or Kirihara, he rarely makes drop shots to throw his opponent off. No, Sanada is fairly predictable.
The problem is, Sanada is in a completely different class of players.
A dry hard lump in Niou’s throat only swells bigger. He swallows it, but nothing eases his nerves as he waits for Sanada to start.
Sanada’s first serve is so fast that Niou doesn’t have time to react. His eyes barely register the shot until he feels the whoosh of air beside himself from where the ball had traveled.
“Puri,” he whispers. Niou wants to kick himself for not seeing the shot. Sanada was all poses and ball tosses and then…it was as if time messed up the tennis game.
Sanada smirks.
Niou tightens his hand around the racket handle. He stands up as straight as he can. “Is that all you’ve got, Gen-chan?” he taunts.
Sanada takes the first game, all of the balls no-touch aces.
Niou tries to refrain himself from stomping around the court and punching Sanada in the arm. Now he understands how damn frustrated Kirihara got. Even when Niou can see the ball, it’s too fast for him to touch, to fast for his body to start to react properly and remember that he has to return it and not stare in awe.
But on his own serve, Niou turns the tides. A little. Sanada’s eyes go wide under the brim of his cap when Niou throws himself into a twist serve. He’s ganglier than Kirihara and not as heavy, so he doesn’t have the natural power, but he does have the element of surprise.
15-0, Niou leads.
He clenches his fist. Yes!
Niou makes it to match-point, riding the rush of momentum that comes in his favour. Sanada falters and stumbles over his big feet once, before he picks himself up fast enough to dive for the last ball.
It arcs over the net, a flash of neon yellow, then drops over, skimming the cording.
Net ball.
Niou didn’t stand a chance.
Game Sanada, 2-0.
Predictably, Sanada takes the entire match, 6-0. No matter how many times Niou calls him Gen-chan, no matter how many attempts Niou makes of a twist serve, no matter how many times he tries to read Sanada’s moves.
He just cannot win.
Sanada’s shots are so fast they might as well be invisible. If Niou can’t see the shot, he can’t judge where the ball will go and he’s useless, running around the court flapping his arms and panting like the fatty Marui after four games.
Over the net, Sanada holds out his hand. Niou narrows his eyes. It takes him a minute to pick himself up off the ground and shuffle over. His legs are like jelly, his muscles screaming from the workout. Sanada’s hand is hot and meaty and he shakes with a firm, tight grip. The grip of someone confident in their skills and their wins.
Niou feels a bit like an idiot.
Why am I on the regulars? he thinks. “Good game,” he mutters.
Sanada grunts.
In the locker room after practice, through the din of doors opening and slamming closed, of wet feet padding across tiled floors, of singing in the showers and rustling clothes coming off and on, Yukimura sidles up to Niou. Niou sits on the bench, tying his sneaker up.
“Did you enjoy playing Sanada?” Yukimura asks. His eyes shift to the sides, far enough over to look at the dartboard in Niou’s locker.
Niou says nothing. He shrugs.
On the bus home, Niou wonders if he should take his dartboard down. He doesn’t know what to make of Yukimura most of the time. Was Yukimura threatening him? But why? Should Niou try to slip something nasty into Yukimura’s locker?
The only thing that comes to mind would be cutting the strings of Yukimura’s racket, but that would be just nasty. His own racket means something to him, so he wouldn’t do that. Pranks are pranks but not vandalism.
Still.
Niou taps his finger on the railing of the bus.
What is Yukimura afraid of?
The first thing Niou’s mother says when he walks through the door and throws his tennisbag down on the couch is: “What homework do you have tonight, Masaharu?”
As if the day couldn’t get any worse than it already is.
***
The first round of the prefecturals Niou doesn’t play a single game.
The second round, in the afternoon, he is slotted into doubles two. With Nishiki.
“Shit,” he mutters. Then, louder, he says, “Nishiki-buchou, I don’t know how to play doubles.”
“It’s easy. Any idiot can do it. What better way to learn than in a real match?” Nishiki says.
Nearby, Yukimura looms, his eye twitching. He whispers something frantically to Sanada. Probably worried that they might lose a single game, or something. Niou tries to take everything in stride, but seeing as his first ever real game is a sort he’s never played, his breakfast and lunch start to churn uncomfortably in his guts.
Thankfully, Nishiki takes the lead immediately. Around, the cheers are deafening and everything smells of too many sweaty teenage boys and fresh rubber tennisballs. “You play net,” Nishiki instructs, “and I’ll play baseline. If you’re not sure, get out of the way and let me take the balls.”
Niou nods.
In theory, as far as Niou is concerned doubles is a game for those who aren’t quite so good at singles and need backup. In practice, though, it’s kinda fun, once he realizes how to move to get Nishiki to go for a ball, how to watch two other players instead of one.
It’s almost as though there is twice the interest. Twice the people he can trick with his own drop shot, his own backhands, his own slices and poaches. Niou stumbles a bit at first, he almost hits Nishiki in the head once or twice when he lunges to the side and doesn’t need to, but…
At the end, when Niou stands and shakes hands with the other team as a winner, it feels good.
Maybe doubles isn’t so bad after all.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15]
Junior year of junior high school starts with new shoes, a new uniform and new tennis grips. It is exactly the same as last month, except that Niou isn’t in freshmen classes anymore, and the OBs are gone from tennis practice for good.
And Marui isn’t in his class.
Niou practically skips through the hallways when he realizes that. No one from tennis is in his class. His stomach practically flip flops with glee because now he can pester fifteen other girls and seventeen guys to his heart’s content and not have to have the nagging voice in the back of his mind wonder if the tennis team will hear about his tricks.
Gym class is shared in the gymnasium with another junior class. Niou immediately sees the familiar black cap of Sanada among his other gym classmates. He squeezes through students and pokes Sanada in the small of the back. Sanada must have grown four inches in the two weeks of break before the new school year.
Sanada stares down his nose at Niou. “Oh, you’re in this class.”
Niou nods. He reads the gym schedule for the year. “Tennis in the summer for marks, not bad.”
Sanada grunts. His voice has gotten even lower. He sounds more like a senior than a new junior.
“Practices start tomorrow morning,” Sanada says. “There are three spots open on the regulars.”
Niou can feel his mouth curve into a smile. “Brilliant,” he says.
Open tryouts are the worst part of the new tennis season. Niou might show up a half hour before practice should start, but so do at least thirty other students he’s never seen before. Some are juniors and seniors, judging from their sizes, and judging from the way they swing wide and careless, this is the first time they have held a racket before.
Niou feels quite pleased with himself when he notices groups of freshmen, all clumped together, cowering around the benches. It seems like ages since he was in their position and now he’s a senpai. He’s practiced. For the briefest of moment, he almost understands all of Marui’s posing.
But then he sees Marui’s pink hair across a court and he remembers why he could never be like him. Marui talks loudly above a group of freshmen, nodding at Jackal and calling himself a genius at tennis. The freshmen’s eyes go wide with awe.
Niou rolls his eyes. He slings his racket over his shoulder and goes off to find Sanada. He ought to know where the best courts are to start warming up. The chaos of open tryouts means that everyone wanders everywhere until the coach shows up, or the captain gives laps, but there is no sign of Nishiki-buchou or the coach yet.
“Excuse me!”
Niou cocks his head. A freshman in a white polo shirt and messy, awful black hair stares up at him with a sideways smile. “Are you Yukimura-san?” he asks.
Niou snorts. “Am I Yukimura? Yeah right, kid.”
The kid’s smile falls. “Do you know who Yukimura, Sanada and Yanagi-san are? I’m looking for them.”
Niou scratches his temple. He stares at the kid for a while, trying to figure out exactly what this freshman wants. The kid hops from foot to foot, not so much out of nerves, but more like he’s impatient for something.
Niou glances around. Sanada is as tall as the seniors now, so it’s easy to find a black cap among the taller players on the courts. And where there is one of the big three, the other two are close by.
Niou leans down. “Yanagi is that one,” he says, pointing to Yanagi, who sits on a bench marking something off on a clipboard. “Yukimura is him,” he points to Yukimura, who finishes a lap around the court.
“And Sanada is that one,” he nods to Sanada, standing on the court and speaking to Yukimura. Sanada hands Yukimura a sweat towel.
“Thanks, senpai,” the kid says. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Niou,” he says. He doesn’t ask the kid’s name, but then the kid tells him anyway.
“I’m Kirihara Akaya,” the kid says. He blinks, then laughs at himself. Dropping his racket, he reaches out a hand and grabs Niou’s, shaking it violently, like a dog with a bone.
***
Niou doesn’t actually see the wonderchibi threaten the three monsters because he is too busy on the junior courts, working on his serve with another junior whose name he forgets. He wants one of the three places on the team. The sting of losing the Newcomer’s Tournament place is still sharp in his gut and he refuses to let it happen a second time.
But he does manage to catch the kid playing a game.
A senior shouts to the group of players on the court, “You’ve got to see this! A freshman challenged Yanagi, Sanada and Yukimura! He’s playing them right now!”
Niou looks up. The ball from the other player hits the ground next to him with a soft pong in the spring earth.
“Puri,” he says. “What an idiot.”
Like the rest of the players, though, Niou is more than happy to watch this kid get his ass kicked. He must be completely clueless to have challenged all three of them, even Niou wouldn’t have asked them for a game. Well, maybe one of them one day, but not all three on the first day of open tryouts.
The crowd around the regulars’ courts is thick. Niou pushes his way though, elbowing some short freshmen to try and see.
“He’s got balls,” Marui says.
“I shouldn’t have told him,” Jackal says, sighing heavily. He rubs his temple, massaging his scalp. “I shouldn’t have ever said anything.”
“No, no, it’s kinda funny,” Marui says.
The crowd oohs and ahhs. Niou stands on his toes, peering over heads, to sides and them finally he gets a look. The kid- Kirihara Akaya from before- is dripping with sweat. His face is red and so are his eyes. He looks positively demonic, with his messy, curly hair flying everywhere around him as he furiously smashes a shot across the net. In itself, it’s an awesome shot, powerful, fast, and completely haphazard, the way it seems to spin and slice and change direction, whiz around in the air.
But Sanada returns it. Easily. With a grin, no less. “Is that all you have?” he taunts. “I thought you said you would-” Sanada swings, grunting his follow-through, “-win!”
Kirihara screams his next shot, but his smashes don’t deter Sanada and his volleys and lobs and poaches don’t either. Kirihara ends the game flat on his back with Sanada lording over him. “Don’t challenge your senpais if you can’t play them equally,” he says.
“I will be number one!” Kirihara spits.
What Niou notices, however, is something interesting. Besides the slightest hint of a smile on Sanada’s face (in itself something that catches Niou offguard and makes him give Sanada a second look to confirm it really was there), is the fact that Sanada takes off his cap and wipes his brow.
Kirihara gave Sanada a run for his money.
“I can’t believe he got a game off Sanada!” Marui says.
“Or two off Yanagi,” Jackal says.
Niou can feel his ears perk. “Oh?” he asks.
“He’s really good,” Jackal insists. “We play sometimes at the streetcourts near my house.”
“So he’s your wonderchibi?” Niou asks. Jackal scrunches his brow, then nods.
With the games finished, the courts clear. All except for Kirihara, who still lies flat on the ground, staring at the sky above. The novelty of a dumb freshman has lost its appeal to everyone but Niou.
He walks up to the kid, scuffing his shoes to make sure Kirihara hears him. Kirihara doesn’t move. He doesn’t look at Niou, he just keeps staring at the sky overhead. Niou looks up. No clouds. Nothing except an endless expanse of spring cerulean and the sound of tennis balls bouncing, birds chirping and the endless grunts and groans of a dozen consecutive tennis matches.
“Something good up there?” Niou asks.
Kirihara is silent.
Niou steps closer. He kicks Kirihara in the leg. The kid not only has balls, but he doesn’t seem to feel pain, either. His face doesn’t even twitch.
Niou moves to kick him again when Kirihara finally sits straight up, one fluid motion, almost zombie-like. “How can those three all play for the same team? How can they all be so good?”
Niou thinks for a moment. He’s never really thought about it much. “They just are,” he says. “They’ve always been good. Even crybaby Sanada.”
“Crybaby?” Kirihara’s eyes light up, flickering from a sickly bloodshot to something pinker, something almost cute.
“Do you have an eye disease, or something?” Niou asks.
Kirihara shrugs. “I will be number one,” he insists.
“When Yukimura keels over dead, sure,” Niou agrees.
Kirihara flops back against the clay court. Niou finally gives up on him. The kid is strange, there’s no doubt about that. Niou walks back towards the junior courts. He has some senpais of his own to impress.
His spot has been taken when he returns. That kid from last year, that megane dork stands on the edge of the court in line, waiting to make his own shots against the fukubuchou. That kid is just as bad as Kirihara- he keeps going and going. Niou hasn’t seen him in a long time- not that he cares- and here the megane is back at tryouts for a second year in a row.
Niou cannot resist himself. He sidles up near the boy. “If you’re crappy enough not to show up for an entire year of the club, why come back?” he asks, making sure his voice is nice and loud.
The megane starts to turn his head, but not far enough to actually look Niou in the eye.
“Fucking megane dork,” Niou hisses.
This time the boy’s cheek twitches and his hand loosens on his racket handle. His racket clatters to the ground. He picks it up, adjusts his glasses, then pushes past Niou.
“Excuse me,” he mutters.
Niou happily takes the megane’s spot in the line.
***
At morning practice, Niou hears his name being called during laps. He slows his pace, jogging along, and looks around.
Kirihara runs up to him, flapping his arms.
“Niou-senpai,” he says, as though they are now on some sort on friendly terms. Niou starts to run faster. Kirihara puffs and pants but manages to keep up, although his legs must be half the length. “Niou-senpai, you’re not a regular yet, are you?” Kirihara manages.
Niou stops dead in his tracks. “What’s it to you?” he asks.
Kirihara bumps into a junior ahead of him. Marui.
Marui glares. “Watch it!” he snaps.
Kirihara laughs an apology off.
“Niou-senpai,” he says, “I will be a regular this year. And I know you want to be one, too.”
Niou says nothing. Kirihara steps towards the chainlink fence, out of the way of another scowling junior. Niou crosses his arms over his chest.
“You want to practice together?” Kirihara asks.
Niou isn’t sure what comes over him. Maybe it is for pure amusement value, maybe because he’s looking for something new. Maybe he just doesn’t know.
He says, “All right”.
***
Kirihara is not just a big mouth.
The kid can play. Really, really well.
For four days Niou practices with Kirihara after the tennis practices after school. More than an hour or two of practice might get boring with anyone else, but not with Kirihara. He’s interesting.
He is a twit. He laughs at himself constantly. He licks his lips, he rubs his chin, he’s cute like a little kid but he’s hell on the court. Once the little bugger gets started, he goes all the way.
Under the dimming lights of early evening, they play. Kirihara cackles. “Are you ready, Niou-senpai?” he’ll call, but Niou only fell for that trick once. Before Kirihara has finished speaking, he’s lunging and throwing his weight into a twist serve.
Niou grips his racket with two hands, ready for the return shot.
He watches how Kirihara moves. The kid is a beast when he plays, he puts his heart and his body into every play he makes. His shots are powerful and wild, the ball flies through the air with no sense of direction. But at the same time, Kirihara knows his strengths. He can do a one-footed split step and his backhands are almost as powerful as Sanada’s.
Niou gets used to Kirihara’s fast pace. He’s panting by the end of the first set, always, while Kirihara barely breaks a sweat. “Getting tired, senpai?” he asks.
Niou returns Kirihara’s shot with a poach, catching the kid offguard and taking a point. By Friday, he can tie the games with Kirihara, but his eyes see grey around the edges from watching the kid so much. His brain hurts from trying to manipulate each move on his own terms, to switch everything over to his dominant hand, left instead of Kirihara’s right.
On Monday, Niou plays four games. Three against seniors and one against a fellow junior, but not, much to his dismay, Marui.
He wins three of the games. He feels like he is flying, weightless as he floats into the changing rooms at the end of the afternoon. But then so do half the players with him. The air is abuzz with commentary and laughter, self-doubt and worry. Niou starts to wonder if his last game- against a senior with a killer slice- will count against him. He gave it his all, or so he thought at the time.
Now, though…Niou wonders if his attempt at a split step would have caught the coach’s eye, or if his own modified twist serve for his left hand worked the way he wanted it to. It didn’t win him the match, but it won four games of the set, a good amount for a junior who’s only been playing tennis for a year.
The night is spent in a restless half-slumber. Niou counts the cars passing outside his window, the flashes of headlights and the slow rumble of engines. His eyes are heavy and he’s exhausted. His muscles ache. The number of laps has increased from last year and practicing with Kirihara has brought pains from places Niou didn’t think he used for tennis- the backs of his thighs, his stomach, his chest, his armpits.
The pains are dull, throbbing underneath his skin deep down to the bone. He’s so tired he can’t bring himself to jerk off, and instead lies half-hard and worried all night along.
“Get up, Masaharu!” his mother calls in the morning. She shakes him silly, until his head hurts even more. “Get up or you’ll miss your tennis practice!”
Niou buries his head deeper under the sheets. His muscles still hurt and he doesn’t remember sleeping much at all, just flopping around on top of his mattress and blearily watching the red flashing numbers of his digital clock.
“Get up!” his mother insists. She shakes his shoulders harder. Niou groans. She pulls the sheets back from his head. Blinking, he stares at her as his vision comes into focus for a split second before something dark yellow is shoved into his face.
“Here’s your uniform,” she says. “I just finished washing it since you didn’t clean out your tennis bag from your last practice, Masaharu. It smelled.”
Niou grunts.
He doesn’t want to drag himself to practice, but his mother pushes him out the door with two cold rice balls to eat for breakfast on the bus. The rice is sticky in his mouth and his tongue sticks, pasted to the roof of his mouth. Niou sips his juice box- coconut and mango- and shuffles off the bus when it stops by the curb at the school.
Niou takes a deep breath, then steps through the school gates.
The first thing he sees is a sea of yellow jerseys crowded around the clubhouse. Niou’s head throbs even more and his stomach twists. He does and he doesn’t want to know the results of the captain and coach’s decision as to who has made the regulars. He thought he was good, maybe really good after practicing with the wonderchibi, better than Marui at least, but now that it is actually the morning of the announcement, he’s not sure of anything.
Niou hangs around the fray of the crowds, hands in his pockets as he leans against a bench. Yanagi walks by and gives him a long look, but Niou simply shrugs and Yanagi walks off.
And then a whirlwind breaks the mass of players up, scattering them around like the first sakura petals blowing on the spring breezes. Kirihara grins from ear to ear, shaking his head and shouting, pumping his fist and jumping up in the air. “I made it! I made it!”
Niou doesn’t smile back when Kirihara sees him. But Kirihara doesn’t seem to care. He runs straight into Niou and grabs his shoulders. “Niou-senpai, aren’t you excited?” he asks, speaking straight into Niou’s face.
Niou cringes, turning aside. “Oh, terribly,” he mutters.
Kirihara’s fingers loosen their grip. His face falls into a contorted confusion, visible in the way he frowns and touches his upper lip. “But…you made the regulars too,” he says.
Niou falls off the back of the bench, and he can’t blame it entirely on puberty this time.
***
The best part about a regular is not the special meetings and the special courts, the exclusive use of ball machines or the shiny weight machines in the small gymnasium. No, what Niou thinks is the best part about being a regular is the first moment when he opens a locker in the regulars’ changing room and smells the stale sweat and old gymsocks that wafts out.
It is all his.
Niou breathes it in deeply, then gags.
Kirihara immediately tacks up cut-out pictures of videogame characters onto his locker door. There are so many pictures that it looks like a collage of Pokemon, Inuyasha, Nascar Racing and Night of the Living Dead zombies.
“You like videogames?” Niou asks.
Kirihara nods.
The following day, Niou brings his own picture, printed off his sister’s computer that morning.
“Why are you printing that off?” she asks. “It’ll cost you 100 yen.”
“Dad pays for the ink, idiot,” Niou tells her.
He smiles to himself when he pastes the picture to the middle of a dartboard image. Glue shines on the edges, but it’ll do.
Sanada’s jaw tenses when he sees Niou taping the picture to his lockerdoor. “Hey!” he shouts. “That’s not-”
“That’s kinda funny,” Yukimura says, unable to stop a snicker when he sees the picture of Sanada’s face in the middle of the dartboard.
Nishiki-buchou and the fukubuchou give Niou high-fives. “That’s a little gay,” Nishiki tells Niou, “but it’s really funny how Sanada’s all red now.” He waves off any laps that Sanada suggests.
Niou doesn’t like the fact the regulars are expected at practice earlier than everyone else, or that they have weight training after afternoon practices. He sleeps like the dead the first two weeks, unable to do much homework and gathering more detentions over lunch hour and more calls home to his mother.
“If you can’t do your schoolwork, you’ll have to stop going to tennis,” his father announces.
“School is more important,” his mother echoes.
In that moment, Niou understands Yukimura’s slavish devotion to tennis. Tennis where he can run around, focusing solely on the game, on the win, on the ball. It’s more soothing than anything, even math, even tricking people. The rush of air in his lungs, the way he can feel the ball hit the racket, as though his arm is an extension of the racket itself.
He will not let it go. Especially now that he has just made the regulars.
Niou slams his fists down on the table. “No!”
His entire family blinks. His entire family pushes their glasses up their noses.
Niou scraps his chair back, standing up so fast the plates on the table clatter. “No!” he shouts. “My homework is useless,” he snaps. “Tennis is fun. Or would you rather have me do something else! I could smoke or do drugs or run away!” Niou starts to move, but his mother stops him with a hand to his arm.
“We’re only concerned-”
“I’m not stupid,” Niou hisses. “I’m not failing so what’s some stupid homework mean?” His father frowns and starts to disagree when Niou gives up trying to reason with his family. “Stupid fucking meganes! You don’t understand anything!”
***
Being grounded on weekends puts a serious damper on the arcade.
But Niou’s parents are satisfied at long last when he grudgingly shows them completed sheets of math and English sentences on Sundays. His tennis doesn’t suffer, but his free time does.
To top it all off, Nishiki-buchou decides to hold official practice matches between the regulars. The prefecturals are in a week. The line up hasn’t been decided. Niou only has to look across the courts to think that it would make the most sense to have a Sanada-Yanagi pair as doubles two, have the captain and vice-captain as doubles one, Kirihara as singles three, himself as singles two and Yukimura as singles one.
“I’m not a doubles player,” Kirihara tells him.
“Neither am I,” Niou says. “Never even tried it.”
Nishiki walks up behind them, clapping his hand on Kirihara’s shoulder and making the kid dribble his waterbottle down the front of his jersey. “You’ll both be doubles by the end of the season. We make everyone play every position at least once. Makes us all-rounded.”
“It makes us win,” Yukimura says, his voice louder than the captain.
Nishiki smiles at Yukimura, but when he turns, Niou catches sight of him rolling his eyes too.
“Saa, Buchou,” Yukimura says, touching the strings on his racket, “I think you should have Sanada play Niou today.”
Niou blinks. Across the court, Sanada looks up from where he was spinning his racket to pick sides for a match with Yanagi.
“But I was-”
Yukimura clicks his tongue, ignoring Sanada. “Buchou?” he asks again, more forcefully as he taps his sneaker and waits for an answer.
“Uh, sure,” Nishiki-buchou nods. “Sanada vs Niou on court A, I guess. Yukimura vs Yanagi on court B, myself vs Kirihara on C. Kawasaki and Yamada in the gymnasium courts with the machines.”
“Yes, buchou!” Niou yells, along with the rest of the team. But his insides shrink when he sees the hulking form of Sanada waiting for him on court one. For a moment, he almost wishes he was back picking up balls and working on mindless reps of swings with the non-regulars scattered across the other campus courts.
Sanada holds his racket against the ground. “Smooth or rough?”
Niou says, “Rough.”
“Good, smooth is always my side,” Sanada says.
The racket whirls, the blue paint of the frame mixing with the white of the strings before it falls down. Niou moves to look, but he doesn’t need to when he sees the little smirk on Sanada’s face.
Smooth.
“I’ll serve,” Sanada says.
Niou stands in the middle of the baseline. He’s never played Sanada before, but he’s seen Sanada play enough other people to know that Sanada’s shots are usually long, hard shots towards the back of the court. Unlike Yanagi or Kirihara, he rarely makes drop shots to throw his opponent off. No, Sanada is fairly predictable.
The problem is, Sanada is in a completely different class of players.
A dry hard lump in Niou’s throat only swells bigger. He swallows it, but nothing eases his nerves as he waits for Sanada to start.
Sanada’s first serve is so fast that Niou doesn’t have time to react. His eyes barely register the shot until he feels the whoosh of air beside himself from where the ball had traveled.
“Puri,” he whispers. Niou wants to kick himself for not seeing the shot. Sanada was all poses and ball tosses and then…it was as if time messed up the tennis game.
Sanada smirks.
Niou tightens his hand around the racket handle. He stands up as straight as he can. “Is that all you’ve got, Gen-chan?” he taunts.
Sanada takes the first game, all of the balls no-touch aces.
Niou tries to refrain himself from stomping around the court and punching Sanada in the arm. Now he understands how damn frustrated Kirihara got. Even when Niou can see the ball, it’s too fast for him to touch, to fast for his body to start to react properly and remember that he has to return it and not stare in awe.
But on his own serve, Niou turns the tides. A little. Sanada’s eyes go wide under the brim of his cap when Niou throws himself into a twist serve. He’s ganglier than Kirihara and not as heavy, so he doesn’t have the natural power, but he does have the element of surprise.
15-0, Niou leads.
He clenches his fist. Yes!
Niou makes it to match-point, riding the rush of momentum that comes in his favour. Sanada falters and stumbles over his big feet once, before he picks himself up fast enough to dive for the last ball.
It arcs over the net, a flash of neon yellow, then drops over, skimming the cording.
Net ball.
Niou didn’t stand a chance.
Game Sanada, 2-0.
Predictably, Sanada takes the entire match, 6-0. No matter how many times Niou calls him Gen-chan, no matter how many attempts Niou makes of a twist serve, no matter how many times he tries to read Sanada’s moves.
He just cannot win.
Sanada’s shots are so fast they might as well be invisible. If Niou can’t see the shot, he can’t judge where the ball will go and he’s useless, running around the court flapping his arms and panting like the fatty Marui after four games.
Over the net, Sanada holds out his hand. Niou narrows his eyes. It takes him a minute to pick himself up off the ground and shuffle over. His legs are like jelly, his muscles screaming from the workout. Sanada’s hand is hot and meaty and he shakes with a firm, tight grip. The grip of someone confident in their skills and their wins.
Niou feels a bit like an idiot.
Why am I on the regulars? he thinks. “Good game,” he mutters.
Sanada grunts.
In the locker room after practice, through the din of doors opening and slamming closed, of wet feet padding across tiled floors, of singing in the showers and rustling clothes coming off and on, Yukimura sidles up to Niou. Niou sits on the bench, tying his sneaker up.
“Did you enjoy playing Sanada?” Yukimura asks. His eyes shift to the sides, far enough over to look at the dartboard in Niou’s locker.
Niou says nothing. He shrugs.
On the bus home, Niou wonders if he should take his dartboard down. He doesn’t know what to make of Yukimura most of the time. Was Yukimura threatening him? But why? Should Niou try to slip something nasty into Yukimura’s locker?
The only thing that comes to mind would be cutting the strings of Yukimura’s racket, but that would be just nasty. His own racket means something to him, so he wouldn’t do that. Pranks are pranks but not vandalism.
Still.
Niou taps his finger on the railing of the bus.
What is Yukimura afraid of?
The first thing Niou’s mother says when he walks through the door and throws his tennisbag down on the couch is: “What homework do you have tonight, Masaharu?”
As if the day couldn’t get any worse than it already is.
***
The first round of the prefecturals Niou doesn’t play a single game.
The second round, in the afternoon, he is slotted into doubles two. With Nishiki.
“Shit,” he mutters. Then, louder, he says, “Nishiki-buchou, I don’t know how to play doubles.”
“It’s easy. Any idiot can do it. What better way to learn than in a real match?” Nishiki says.
Nearby, Yukimura looms, his eye twitching. He whispers something frantically to Sanada. Probably worried that they might lose a single game, or something. Niou tries to take everything in stride, but seeing as his first ever real game is a sort he’s never played, his breakfast and lunch start to churn uncomfortably in his guts.
Thankfully, Nishiki takes the lead immediately. Around, the cheers are deafening and everything smells of too many sweaty teenage boys and fresh rubber tennisballs. “You play net,” Nishiki instructs, “and I’ll play baseline. If you’re not sure, get out of the way and let me take the balls.”
Niou nods.
In theory, as far as Niou is concerned doubles is a game for those who aren’t quite so good at singles and need backup. In practice, though, it’s kinda fun, once he realizes how to move to get Nishiki to go for a ball, how to watch two other players instead of one.
It’s almost as though there is twice the interest. Twice the people he can trick with his own drop shot, his own backhands, his own slices and poaches. Niou stumbles a bit at first, he almost hits Nishiki in the head once or twice when he lunges to the side and doesn’t need to, but…
At the end, when Niou stands and shakes hands with the other team as a winner, it feels good.
Maybe doubles isn’t so bad after all.