masquerade!

Well, you've heard me whine about this enough, definitely.

Title: a dance entirely their own
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji
Word Count: ~9,000
Summary: Tezuka learns that he can be something other than what he was and Fuji learns that what he wants to be is what he has always been.
A/N: I would like to send a million thanks to my wonderful betas, reddwarfer and midnightblue88. Thank you. Written for paranoid_fridge for christmas_cacti.



After nationals, Fuji had had every intention of dedicating himself entirely to tennis, to relish in the challenge and sweetness of victory that only challenge could bring. After playing tennis for most of his life, he had finally found the conviction needed to win. He had been ready.

But then it ended and they were swept away into exam preparations and finalizing their high school plans. The club activities were handed over to underclassmen and if they had a spare moment for play, it was spent doing basic stretches and exercises that their muscles only just remembered.

Then it was over, in those precious few moments after the exams were finished and before they had to decide the next three years of their lives.

And Tezuka left, taking away Fuji's determination to immerse himself in the competition and the rivalry of tennis, leaving him behind with parents who wanted him to attend the high school in another city with better academics than any in their area, but no tennis team. Ironically, it had been Yuuta who had fought hardest against them, Yuuta who had already left and who had spent the better part of the last two years loudly hating his older brother for playing their childhood sport too well too easily.

He wasn't sure that Yuuta would ever forgive him, but he followed his parents' wishes, that time.

*

The school wasn’t much different from what he was used to, except that it was. The teachers were neither more interesting nor less and there were good ones and bad. The school food still looked disgusting and the vending machines didn't work half the time, but now he had no choice but to buy from them. The students were no different than the ones at Seigaku, except that he didn't know them. The biggest difference, he thought, was that no one knew him and, without tennis, they would have no occasion to ever learn about him on a larger scale.

The thought was both sobering and intoxicating.

Fuji had never had difficulty making friends when he wanted and his peers at this new, prestigious school were no more immune nor susceptible to his charms than their less auspicious counterparts had been his first day of junior high.

"Where're you from?" was the standard question and "Tokyo" the most popular answer. Fuji had to keep himself from saying "Seigaku," which would have been silly. No one here knew what Seigaku was.

By the end of the first day, he had found himself part of a study group, a concept he found quaint and more than a little silly. By the end of the fourth day, its uses became evident as teachers began to pile homework onto the students. Most of them boarded at the school, so the study group doubled as a social circle in a school where there was little time or space for actual socializing.

His days fell into a comfortable pattern of classes, studying, and socializing, though there was a disproportionate amount of the first two in relation to the last one. The occasional email was exchanged with his former teammates in Tokyo and the even rarer emails traded with Tezuka. They had been close, when they were on the team together, but they had never really spoken, as such, and distance didn't change that except to accentuate the silence and turn comfortable familiarity into comfortable strangeness.

Fuji found the relative anonymity of the school refreshing, if a bit disappointing. There were no love letters to awkwardly reject (did girls still do those, he wondered) and no one pointed him out when he walked past them. Their local celebrities were those in the drama club, which was the only substantial club in the school, and the lucky few who topped the ranking lists. Fuji generally scored a decent thirteenth to twentieth out of two hundred and thirty-seven, which was more than impressive enough to keep universities looking but not impressive enough to attract the attention of his peers, which suited him just fine.

Oddest of all, he found that he didn't miss playing tennis as much as he thought he would. He hadn't been a serious player before the very end, but he had been a player since he first negotiated the deal with his parents after seeing his father play with some friends: six year old Syuusuke promised to bring home only perfect scores as long as they would let him play tennis. Very few of his new peers had ever played and fewer still were willing to find time to play a game with him. Those that would were occasionally competent, but the games that they played were trivial and systematic. A few volleys and the ball went out of bounds. Another few and the same. More effort was dedicated to the conversation in those games than to the actual game itself and perhaps that was why it was difficult for him to immerse himself in it. Whatever the reason, as the year went on he found less and less time for tennis and more and more for studying or volunteering or photography.

By the end of the first year, he was at home in this new place.

*

In the two weeks between their first and second year at high school, Fuji went home to find that not much had changed. Eiji pounced on him when he saw Fuji approach the tennis courts at the high school and Oishi rushed up right behind him. Inui had already appeared at his side and taken note of his surprising increase in height ("Of course I grew!" Fuji exclaimed, offended, when Inui announced incredulously that he had gained a whole five centimeters over the year). Taka wasn't there, but they saw him later when they went to the sushi place, for old time's sake and to celebrate the end of their first year. No one knew where Tezuka was, but it was generally agreed that if he wasn't on a tennis court, he wanted to be.

"Play a game with me," Inui suggested when he heard that Fuji hadn't really played since he had left them.

"I'm probably no match for you anymore," Fuji deferred.

"It'll be easier to get data this way," Inui continued. "I don't mind if you aren't as good as you used to be."

Fuji smiled. "That sounds like a good enough reason to refuse."

Inui jotted down Fuji's answer. "Suit yourself."

He did play with Yuuta later that week. He had never enjoyed playing with Yuuta; there was such a fine line between playing too well and demolishing any sense of accomplishment that Yuuta had of the skill that he had gained and playing too poorly and doing the same thing. This time, though, the match was easy. Playing with Yuuta was no different than playing against the best of his opponents the past year; it was a simple game of back and forth and maybe a lob thrown in once or twice. Yuuta's skills had increased and he had a far larger arsenal of moves, but once Fuji returned those, it was just the same game.

*

It was almost a comfort to get back to school. Going back home only made everything that had once been familiar seem different. The differences were nothing but the similarities to Fuji's memories. The ways in which his old friends had not changed were stunning because they only stayed the same in the way that they always changed and Fuji felt that he had become stationary, in the past year. They continued towards the same goal that he had fought for alongside them while he moved further and further away from it. Going back to them felt like a passage through time and though he didn't regret straying away, it wasn't comfortable to see what he could have been.

His homeroom teacher began by welcoming them to their second year of high school and warning them that this year would be substantially different than the year before, a speech that sounded suspiciously similar to the speech they had gotten the year before relating high school to junior high. Fuji saw some of his classmates exchange nervous glances—the transition from junior high to high school had been rough for most. He himself sent amused glances to a boy who sat two aisles away from him and had all of Eiji's playfulness and twice Inui's brains. The boy smirked back and turned his rapt attention back to the teacher, with a pencil out and taking notes on a scrap piece of paper. Fuji could see him drawing checks next to several of the things the teacher said—things that their last homeroom teacher had also touched on, probably. Creativity was clearly not one of the traits that their school hired for.

After her monologue was finished, the teacher looked down at her attendance list. "I trust you are all sitting in your seats from last year?" she asked.

Several students nodded.

"Looking at your teacher's comments from last year," she pushed her glasses further up her face, "I think I will keep the seating arrangement as is. There will be a new student tomorrow. He will sit..." She glanced down at the list and then back up to find the empty seats, settling on one in the far back. "...next to Hirata-kun. Make sure you make him feel welcome."

"Yes, Sensei," the class chimed.

They spent the rest of homeroom passing out the schedule and making sure everyone understood it, as if they hadn't gone through this every year since first grade. In the short passing time they had before their first class began, the boy gave Fuji the list he had just written and commented that at least last year's teacher had been enthusiastic.

"What do you think the new student will be like?" the girl in front of him turned around to ask.

Fuji sat back in his seat and let his friend field the questions—unlike Fuji, he had consistently scored in the top ten which forced him into the spotlight and, thus, the unending attention of the school's female population.

"I hope he can keep up," was all he said.

"I'm sure he'll be fine. The test for transferring in is harder, right?"

"How would I know?"

"Isn't your mom part of the screening process?"

"You make it sound so goddamn formal. It's just a test, you know."

"Yeah, but—"

Their science teacher walked in before she could finish the thought. He didn't teach that hour—none of their teachers actually got any teaching done that day—but he did repeat the same speech about the difficulty of the course and the amount of work they were expected to put in. Fuji let his mind wander to the shadows forming on the ground and how he could catch the monotony of the classroom in a photo, if he were allowed to take his camera out.

*

The next day, their homeroom teacher took attendance and walked out to bring the new student from the office to the classroom, leaving strict orders to behave. One of the oddities of this school was that the students obeyed orders like that, which Fuji had found very nearly disturbing at first but now produced a great, perverse sort of pride in him. They remained quiet until the teacher returned and said, "Class, this is Tezuka Kunimitsu. Tezuka-kun will be joining us from today onwards."

Fuji didn't join in with the chimes of "welcome" and "hello, Tezuka-kun" and "your seat is over there." Tezuka caught his eyes for a moment before looking away to bow politely. Their eyes didn't meet, not when Tezuka returned the greetings ("Thank you. It's very nice to meet you, please take care of me") or when he was finding his way to his seat.

He couldn't pay attention to any of his morning classes after that. As his teachers rambled on about the properties of sound waves and then on the common themes in Japanese warfare, Fuji's thoughts were on the gaze that he could feel on himself, though Tezuka was never looking at him when he glanced back.

As soon as the lunch bell rang, a group of students gathered around Tezuka's desk, bombarding him with questions about where he was from ("Tokyo," he answered), why he transferred ("the school has a reputation for excellence"), what his old school was like ("...different"). Fuji leaned against a desk on the fringe of that group, waiting for them to finish. It didn't take long; Tezuka had not changed and he still managed, somehow, to discourage their questions, even without the added threat of laps. They left soon, uncertain how to deal with their new peer.

Tezuka met his eyes for a moment before putting his things away and ignoring him.

Fuji watched him quietly for a moment before he broke the silence. "Are you living in the dorms?" he asked, as easily as he could.

"Yes."

"Then you'll need to buy lunch." Fuji stood up and waited for Tezuka to follow suit. "It's not so bad, once you get used to it."

Tezuka stiffened, to Fuji's confusion.

"The lunch, I mean," Fuji added hurriedly.

"Ah." Tezuka stood up and followed as Fuji walked out of the room.

"I was surprised to see you again."

Tezuka didn't respond other than a slight nod. Their footsteps echoed down the hall, accentuated by teachers' voices drifting out of classrooms.

"You hadn't told," Fuji paused briefly, "us that you were coming back."

They walked in silence again. For the first time since their first match, the silence between them was uncomfortable rather than companionable and Fuji didn't know what to make of it. He carefully avoided shooting glances to his side, towards Tezuka, but he could feel all the more powerfully Tezuka's presence beside him, quiet and, for the first time, unyielding. The noise of the lunchroom grew louder and Fuji wondered if he should say something again when Tezuka spoke.

"I can't play anymore." He let his eyes meet Fuji's. "I can't..."

Fuji couldn't look away and he couldn't find any words to say and he couldn't move.

Tezuka looked away for him. "We should buy lunch."

*

Sometime between when Fuji's invitation for Tezuka to join their study group was declined and their third history test, Fuji had abandoned the group sessions in the library for crashing in Tezuka's room. The reasons were as pragmatic as anything; he could find plenty of time to spend with his friends otherwise, but Tezuka consistently dodged all attempts that Fuji made to see him outside of class unless Fuji provided a valid excuse. As it was, Tezuka had already displaced someone—Fuji couldn't remember who it had been before—as the number one student in their year and Fuji would lose nothing by studying with him.

Their study sessions were scarcely different from studying alone; Tezuka would have his materials spread over his desk and Fuji would have piled his own books at the side of Tezuka's bed and sprawled across the bed with whichever one he thought he needed. The only real difference was that, with Tezuka in the room, distraction from the actual material felt like a sin and, with Tezuka in the room, concentration was near impossible. Since Tezuka had returned to Japan, he had focused solely on his academics, in spite of Fuji's constant attempts to get him to join whatever clubs he could think of.

"Universities like well rounded educations," Fuji had chimed between memorizing the proof of the quadratic formula and annotating a translated copy of Shakespeare.

"What are you doing, then?" Tezuka had asked.

"Photography," Fuji answered, "and digital design. Nakamoto-chan said that I was at the film club enough to call myself a member and I play te—study video game design with Yuuta on the weekends."

"You still play with your brother?"

"Of course!" Fuji beamed at him for asking. "Yuuta is so cute, especially when he's trying to pummel my Kirby to death."

"I didn't," Tezuka looked up from his work, "mean video games."

Fuji bit his lip. "Sorry. I hadn't meant to bring that up."

Tezuka gave him an annoyed look. "Has he gotten better?"

"Yeah. He's a first year now, so he doesn't get to play much during practice but Yumiko says that he always goes to the street courts to practice on his own after the team practice lets out."

"Is he still at Saint Rudolph?"

"No, he's at Seishun now."

"Now that you've left."

There was a pause as Tezuka watched Fuji picking at a loose thread in his sheets. "Yeah."

So many of their conversations were like this, a one-sided dance around the one thing that used to bind them to one another, Fuji avoiding it and Tezuka plowing right through. Tezuka had grown sharper for the lack of a medium through which to exercise his will; Fuji had always understood that tennis was to Tezuka an escape from reality. There was a perfect resolution in the way the ball would do exactly as he wanted and the way there was nothing he couldn't do if he would just try. Understanding this, Fuji tried as much as he could to navigate away from the subject so as to not dangle the comfort that Tezuka could no longer have in front of his eyes.

*

One day, Fuji greeted everyone with two camera flashes before school, the first to stun and the second to capture their reactions. Many of his friends told him irritably to put the stupid thing away and not a few of them reached to bodily remove the camera from his grasp. Tezuka just looked at him coldly when he snapped a picture of him and Fuji didn't think he needed to take the second at all, Tezuka reacted so little.

"Spoilsport," he mouthed, as the teacher had just walked in.

Their relationship was a source of amazement for most of their classmates. Tezuka had been unfailingly polite but even more unfailingly distant since his arrival. They could scarcely comprehend why Fuji, who had gained a general reputation for being outgoing and easy to talk to, would spend so much time coaxing the occasional smile from him. Fuji had explained to them a number of times that they had been part of the same team in junior high and received only loudly expressed doubts as to whether they believed Fuji was capable of lifting a racket, much less hitting anything with it. Fuji took it all rather well; it was an ongoing joke that he had been dealing with since his sister had dressed him in girl's clothes for school in the third grade.

In all seriousness, though, they had difficulty justifying to themselves why an acquaintance as casual as sharing the same team two years prior would require such attention, especially when neither of them played any longer. Fuji immediately changed the topic, but it was too late. Tezuka had gotten up and politely excused himself to go finish homework before the next class started, though Fuji had seen him place the finished worksheet in his bag the night before.

Fuji didn't know how to explain to them that Tezuka had been the driving force behind an impossible victory or that tennis had been more than just a sport to him, so he didn't say anything.

*

When he put the pictures together in an album, he found that his own pictures didn't impress him at all and that, upon further consideration, other than the socializing aspect of it, he had no more enjoyed taking the pictures themselves.

His friends laughed at their own ridiculous expressions and told him that they would all personally kill him if he tried to pull that again. Fuji smiled as incomprehensibly as he could and waited for them to back down nervously.

"Tezuka-kun looks so serious!" one of them exclaimed.

Another rolled his eyes and commented that that was just how Tezuka-kun was. "He probably wouldn't know what fun was if it ran up and tackled him to the ground."

Fuji disagreed. Tezuka would not have had his passion for tennis if he hadn't found it enjoyable; fun was a trivial word but he did not doubt that tennis was fun to Tezuka.

*

There was a nature trail just on the outskirts of the small town in which the high school was situated. They weren't technically allowed on it, but the administration had long since given up on controlling student visits and had chosen instead to rent out a small building at the entrance and pay a teacher overtime and a half for sitting inside it and keeping the visiting students safe. It took Fuji weeks to convince Tezuka to venture out there with him and it seemed that Tezuka had enjoyed it. Once he had passed the hurdle of forcing Tezuka out the first time, he had no trouble getting Tezuka out there again and even had occasion to decline Tezuka's invitations to go.

The entrance was well marked with a wooden sign proclaiming it "The Way to Heaven" in a child's handwriting, a title that rang as affectionately silly to Fuji this time as it had the first time he saw it. It was late spring and getting warmer; the long sleeved shirts that they wore felt too warm. Thankfully, the forest was green by that time and there was plentiful shade to keep the sun's heat out and trap the cool air.

They rarely talked during these walks. Fuji didn't even really understand why Tezuka would invite him along at all, they spoke so little. Perhaps, though, Tezuka felt it his duty to show his friend that he was trying to leave his room every once in a while for a destination other than the classroom or the library. Whatever the reason, Fuji was always glad to go along. Tezuka was always more relaxed in the forest, away from the prying eyes of their classmates. From the bits of conversation that they did have, Fuji gathered that he had enjoyed the outdoors since he was a young child and had gone camping more than he had played tennis. This, Fuji suspected, was the reason he could let his guard down when they were surrounded by nature and nothing else; this was something that he had not lost when tennis had been taken from him.

There was a fork in the path about an hour and a half into it. Students rarely made it that far before losing interest, but it was a landmark that the two of them nearly always ran into before heading back. They typically turned left and followed the trail as it spiraled up the tall hill that had been termed "The Mountain" by the students but Tezuka lead him to the right this time. Fuji looked at him curiously and thought that Tezuka looked a little tenser that day.

"Tezuka?" he asked.

"I want to show you something," Tezuka said.

They walked silently, passing scenery that looked remarkably similar to what they had left behind. Fuji had never claimed to like the outdoors beyond what was necessary for city living and the plants and rocks all looked the same to him, but he could tell that Tezuka recognized every landmark. The trail sloped sharply downward and keeping his balance took most of Fuji's concentration, but it leveled out towards the end and steep dirt slopes turned to wooden stairs and the dirt path turned to a wooden walkway.

As they walked, the soft thwack, thwack of tennis balls on racket strings grew louder. Fuji watched Tezuka, apprehension growing as they came closer and closer, until the wooden pathway turned to a concrete courtyard. There was a tennis court to the side—Fuji recognized it as one of the few well maintained ones in town, though there was a membership fee to pay for its usage.

"Come on." Tezuka waited for him up ahead and Fuji realized that he had stopped.

"You need to join to—"

"I already did." Tezuka didn't look irritated, but Fuji thought that he could hear it in his voice. He hurried to catch up.

"I don't have my racket," he said hurriedly.

"We can rent them."

"I didn't bring any money."

"I have some."

They walked through the door and the air conditioning hit them. "Tezuka," Fuji started, "why are we here?"

"To play tennis." Tezuka's tone was matter-of-fact.

"You'll just hurt yourself more by—"

"I can use my right hand," Tezuka told him as he approached the rentals desk. "Two rackets, please."

Since protesting obviously did no good, Fuji gave up on it and informed Tezuka instead that it had been a while since he had last played. Tezuka just handed him a racket and they walked to one of the open courts.

Tezuka's right handed serve was good, but it was so painfully obvious that in developing the precise skill that he had with his left arm, he had neglected his right. Still, Fuji had difficulty returning it with the grace that he had been able to summon before. Their first few sets were simply rallies, a back and forth far more ferocious than any that Fuji had played recently. Tezuka seemed more alive than he had in weeks, reaching for the goal and pushing himself even in a game as simple as theirs, unused to the demands he now set upon his untrained arm. The simple joy in the game seemed so unfamiliar to Fuji now and he soon got into the rhythm of it, the easy dance that he had forgotten, just two dancers focusing all of their attentions on the little green ball.

Then Tezuka smashed the ball towards him and as if moving on its own, his body returned with one of his long forgotten counters. Tezuka returned it, breaking Fuji's counter easily, as if he had trained for this. The return sailed past Fuji and hit the chain-link fence behind him. He stared at his own hand in something near shock before Tezuka reminded him to serve.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "It's been a while."

Tezuka nodded.

They didn't finish that game. Fuji's phone rang halfway through reminding him that he had planned to go to the movies with other friends. He apologized to Tezuka and invited him to come along and for once, Tezuka accepted—though Fuji got the definite impression that Tezuka would have preferred to continue playing.

They rushed back to the dorms to wash off the sweat of hiking and tennis before going to the theatre. Fuji's friends were amazed to see him walk up beside Tezuka and they didn't hide it at all, exclaiming over the fact that Tezuka-kun actually did do things like going out to see movies. Tezuka nodded politely. To Fuji he seemed disconcerted by the casual attention but his friends mistook it as offense, though, and backed down.

"You should work on that," Fuji murmured to him as they bought tickets.

"What?"

"Scaring people off like that," Fuji told him seriously. "You'll never make friends that way."

In the theatre, Fuji arranged it so he was sitting between Tezuka and everyone else, out of courtesy to both parties. Tezuka had shown no intention of socializing with Fuji's friends before and, for their part, they had been too nervous to talk to him. Fuji thought it was a situation that he would have to resolve, sooner or later, but for the moment the mood was far too relaxed to motivate him to do so. Tezuka's laid-back attitude at the moment made him truly believe that, to Tezuka, tennis was the perfect remedy for just about anything.

However easy the mood, the movie was mediocre and, in the spirit of their school, the party went to the library afterwards to study. That particular day, though, the movie had rendered them incapable of paying attention and so studying was soon discarded as a form of entertainment and the time was spent ridiculing the ludicrous amounts of blood which had poured from the villain's arm at the end. It took a while, but Fuji did get Tezuka talking animatedly (or as animatedly as he could reasonably be) and so felt very proud of himself; his friends lost much of their unnecessary anxiety around Tezuka, or so he hoped.

The group broke up at around eleven, roughly half an hour after curfew, and went their various ways. Most of them headed back to the dorms, but there were four dorms and Fuji and Tezuka had found themselves in the smallest of those, so they headed that way alone. They were talking about their future plans—Tezuka thought that it would be a good career choice to be a doctor and Fuji thought he would just do whatever caught his fancy at the time—when it happened.

Fuji could honestly say that he was much surprised, but he was certainly not expecting it. He had paused underneath one of the streetlights to straighten his sweater, which had gotten blown around by the wind. Tezuka had stopped with him and somehow, his hand had found its way to Fuji's hood, to help him force it back where it belonged. Fuji had frozen and lifted his eyes from his sweater to Tezuka and they had leaned towards one another and their lips had met.

The kiss itself was chaste and sweet, but after they parted there was a kind of shock in the air between them. Neither of them tried to say anything for the longest time and finally, Tezuka broke the silence by saying, "We should go back."

"Yeah," Fuji said, "probably."

The walk back was tense, in a good way. Fuji didn't know exactly what to think of what had just happened and Tezuka apparently felt the same way, so they kept the silence until they parted ways for the night. Once inside the safety of his dorm room, Fuji collapsed on the bed and buried his face in the pillow, smiling stupidly and wondering how exactly it all had happened.

*

They didn't say much on the subject of that night to one another. The next day, Tezuka had admitted to Fuji that he wasn't entirely sure that he did have any romantic inclination towards him and Fuji had smiled and admitted to feeling likewise. After that, they changed very little. Fuji still went to all of his various activities and still dropped by Tezuka's room to study every night or so; they still spoke very little during those sessions. Occasionally, though, Fuji would move over to the side of the bed closer to Tezuka's desk and rest his hand on Tezuka's or Tezuka would push Fuji's things aside to make room for himself and lean against Fuji on the bed—little changes, but it felt at times like everything had shifted and morphed and become something entirely new.

It was on one of the days when Tezuka had left his own books on his desk to read over Fuji's shoulder as he studied. The proximity had rather defeated the purpose of the visit and they were just talking quietly about nothing in particular when Tezuka mentioned that it had been a while since they had played last.

"Should we go, then?" Fuji asked lightly.

Tezuka squeezed his hand a little and got up. "I'll meet you at the door."

Once they had both grabbed their rackets and changed into more appropriate clothing, they walked to one of the shabbier street courts that had the advantage of sheer proximity. Their game had improved over the past weeks, Tezuka fine-tuning his technique in his right arm and Fuji regaining the skill that a year of neglect had rusted. Still, it was only a short while before Fuji had won, 6-4, and they were panting on a bench set conveniently by the courts. There was some distance between them; it was too warm to sit too close together and too public besides. Tezuka had thought to bring bottles of water, which was good because Fuji had forgotten, and they waited to catch their breaths before speaking.

Tezuka spoke first, before Fuji was quite ready to respond, and asked, "Why did you quit?"

"Why didn't you?"

Tezuka stared at him. "What?"

"Why didn't you quit?" Fuji fingered his bottle. "I pegged you as the type to try and save the world, when I first met you, did you know that? I thought you would try to become some sort of superhero—" he made a sort of flying motion with his hand "—not a tennis player."

Tezuka fought to hide his smile. "That's ridiculous."

"Well, I did." He took another gulp of water. "Why didn't you?"

"I'd never wanted to save the world."

"Me neither."

"You never answered my question," Tezuka reminded him.

Fuji smiled. "You didn't answer mine. Let's go inside. It's hot out here."

It wasn't the last time that Tezuka brought it up, but it was as straight an answer as he ever got out of Fuji, who danced around questions and twisted them around until they were barely recognizable, but who never chose to answer them. He didn't avoid them out of any desire to annoy, though it was an interesting side effect, but he hardly knew the answer himself.

*

Summer break came after a flurry of end of term exams and the school emptied out for two months of blessed vacation. They took the same train back to Tokyo and spent the passage listening to Fuji's mp3 player, which had just been filled with French music, for no perceivable reason other than for its oddity. As their houses were in opposite directions from the station and sharing the cab fare would thus be more expensive than just taking individual cabs, they parted ways once they got to the station with the spoken agreement to meet again later that week to go to visit their old friends' new club.

Fuji entered his house to find Yuuta, who had been let out two weeks before him, ready with his rackets out. He wondered aloud what type of welcome this was and gave Yuuta half of his luggage to carry up the stairs and, once there, dug his own rackets out. Yuuta rolled his eyes and told him that it was the type of welcome he deserved.

On the way to the court, they filled the silence in with anecdotes about their peers. As half of Yuuta's stories included a certain girl in his class, Fuji was almost sure enough by the time they reached the courts that he had an entirely new subject to tease his little brother on. He held back for the moment, though. There would be two months ahead for that and there was no need to use this little tidbit just yet.

Yuuta had gotten better since their last game, but Fuji had undone most of his loss of skill. The game was nothing spectacular, but Fuji found that, once again, he had to toe the fine line between too much and too little and that he had, unfortunately, lost sight of just where the line was.

Yuuta went home in a temper and spent the rest of the day avoiding Fuji.

*

The team looked exactly as they had left it, united together despite their absence and that of Echizen. Eiji saw Fuji first and ran to see him, stopping in his tracks once he saw Tezuka. Then he looked around, panicked, and—seeing no alternative or means for escape—approached them slowly.

"Hello, Eiji," Fuji said, amused.

"Hey, Fuji," Eiji's eyes darted from Fuji to Tezuka, then immediately back to Fuji. "Hey, Tezuka."

"Eiji," Tezuka said with a nod of acknowledgement.

"Tezuka!" Oishi rushed forward. "Is your arm all right?"

"It's fine."

"It's been a hundred and seventy one days since he hurt it," Inui chimed in. "It shouldn't be a point of concern anymore, so long as he doesn't—"

"We should go eat together," Oishi interrupted hurriedly, glancing at Tezuka as he spoke.

"Yes, food!" Eiji exclaimed. "We can go visit Taka-san again!"

Their underclassmen noticed them soon and after a bit of confusion about how to act around Tezuka now that he didn't play you-know-what, they did eventually go to eat dinner. Fuji found the extent to which they avoided the very word amusing, especially as they all toted their tennis equipment off of the tennis courts and changed out of their tennis uniforms while they waited. Tezuka spent the time watching the rest of the club practicing and Fuji joined him. The sheer magnitude of the team and the courts brought back old memories. He saw Tezuka's fist clench around the wire of the fence and he wondered if Tezuka, too, was remembering what they used to be part of or if he was thinking of what he would never be part of again.

*

The team practiced through the summer and Fuji found that Tezuka ended up at the Seishun courts often than not, when left to himself. The team had a policy of ignoring outsiders until they went away, which had never actually worked and wasn't expected to, but made things easier for its members who still had no idea what to do with their former captain who could never play with them again.

For his part, Tezuka stood at the sidelines and watched. If Fuji found him there, Tezuka would let him come close and then comment on the way Momoshiro's lobs were too high or how Kaidoh's slams wasted too much energy or on how Eiji still needed to work on his stamina. Fuji would listen attentively, but he did wonder if perhaps Tezuka needed to get away from tennis rather than immersing himself in it. He mentioned it to Tezuka once and felt silly afterward; Tezuka had always immersed himself in it, simply because it was his nature to fully commit to whatever he did and it had happened to be tennis which caught his interest first. Tezuka answered seriously that this was still his team and Fuji let it go in favor of watching the games himself. The skill with which they played made him itch to pick up his racket and join them, but he didn't.

After practice officially ended, the former regulars would gather around them and ask Tezuka what he thought; his points were valid, Fuji knew and they knew as well. Somehow, he had become more than he could ever be as a captain; now he was more than a leader, he was a sort of symbol for them, of what they could do and why they must succeed. Fuji found it touching for Tezuka's sake, but counterproductive.

Often, after everyone else had left, Tezuka would ask him for a match and Fuji would happily oblige. Tezuka's tennis on those days would be fiercely passionate. Though his technique with his right arm was still weak, he had already surpassed most of the players that Fuji had seen at Seishun—he suspected Tezuka of playing on his own, often. Whatever it was, though, Tezuka became as great a challenge as he ever was for Fuji, though Fuji felt acutely that it was his own fault for letting himself lose as often as he did, but he did not practice any more regardless.

After their games, or in lieu of them, it was not uncommon for them to walk idly through a nearby park or just sit with each other and talk or not talk, whatever seemed fitting at the time. As Fuji had suspected previously, tennis did soothe Tezuka's worries and he was more talkative than normal. This made it all the more clear just how much Tezuka had missed playing the sport and, though Fuji tried many times, he never did quite figure out just what he was supposed to say.

Once or twice, he went over to Tezuka's house to visit. Tezuka's father greeted him warmly and told him that he was glad that Kunimitsu had a friend at his new school. His grandfather eyed him over and Fuji thought that he probably didn't seem very impressive to the old man. His mother, though, watched him closely and Tezuka told him later with no little embarrassment that his mother had given him a lecture on safe sex shortly after one of Fuji's visits.

As summer drew to a close, the former team grew as close as they ever were. Then more than ever, Fuji regretted leaving.

*

Their return to school was almost a disappointment; their classmates dull compared to the colorful characters of their old teammates. Nothing at all had changed and it was remarkable how different everything seemed to Fuji. The only change was in Tezuka, who had been with him for the greater part of the summer. Now, he could almost certainly count on Tezuka's being in the tennis courts once he had finished his homework, and very little would persuade him to leave them before their closing time.

"We have a test tomorrow," he tried once.

"Not now," Tezuka had replied, like he almost always did now. "Play a game with me."

As the days went by, it became clearer to Fuji that the chief of Tezuka's summer had not been merely spent watching the games at Seishun's team courts but also in playing, probably far beyond what he was supposed to. He hadn't noticed before, when they only played occasionally and normally after dark fell, but now it was clear to him that Tezuka's grip with his right hand no longer seemed awkward and he moved with as much natural grace as he had before, if not with the same skill.

As even more time passed, he began to worry more and more about the amount of time that Tezuka spent playing tennis. He doubted that Tezuka had spent every waking minute playing the sport even when he could play. The change, he thought, had to be because of the visits to the tennis courts over the summer. The effort and the goals of the team had excited even him to love of the game again—how much worse it must have been for Tezuka. Thinking thusly, Fuji let Tezuka do as he wished and would play with him when he asked.

The more they played, though, the more desperation he saw in Tezuka's actions. Fuji had never thought Tezuka weak, but he realized now that strength was only enough to keep him going and that without a set course, there was nowhere that he could go. Instead, he clung to what he knew, which happened to be tennis.

"I won't help you do this to yourself," Fuji said, after he realized this.

"What am I doing to myself," Tezuka had asked him, "and how is it your business?"

"You're never going to be able to play like you used to," Fuji told him. "Stop wishing that you could."

"I'm not here to wish," Tezuka said quietly.



"Then what are you doing?"

"I don't need to excel to enjoy this."

Fuji shook his head. "You do need to excel," he said, "because this is you. You can't live with yourself if you don't."

"I just," Tezuka's fist tightened around his racket, "I just want to play."

"You just want to win," Fuji corrected him. "Because you want to overcome anything that challenges you."

"I can do that."

"You can't," Fuji said softly. "Sometimes, you need to run away."

"Then leave," Tezuka said, just as softly. "Run away."

Fuji didn't leave, partly out of loyalty, but mostly to be obstinate. Tezuka didn't find anyone else to play with and so they sat next to each other until the lights were about to turn off and then they walked back to their rooms in silence.

*

Tezuka didn't ignore him the next day, but he did his best to discourage Fuji's attention by starting a conversation with the boy sitting next to him. Fuji took the hint and decided that, whatever Tezuka felt, pettiness would bring him the most satisfaction and so he did spend the day ignoring Tezuka's existence.

He went to bed feeling dissatisfied and more than a little grumpy.

*

Still, Fuji kept it up the day after that.

*

And the next day.

*

They didn't continue their argument the following day, either. Fuji did go to Tezuka's room, though. He knocked on the door and went in as Tezuka opened it and spread his things and himself over the bed.

"How did you do number three?" he asked without preamble.

Tezuka said, without missing a beat, "It's an application of Newton's third law."

"Thanks." Fuji jotted it down and pulled his calculator out to plug the numbers in.

Their work occupied their minds for most of the afternoon. Fuji finished first, probably because he didn't care enough to go through every problem mentally before doing it on paper and then checking it again once he had finished the packet. He put his things away quietly and pulled Tezuka's roommate's chair next to Tezuka's and sat on it.

"I'm just..." he said softly, "I'm just tired of watching you hurt yourself."

"I'm not doing any damage," Tezuka replied.

"Not physically." Fuji tentatively put his head on Tezuka's shoulder and his arm around Tezuka's waist.

Fuji left shortly afterward, to go and write out an email to Eiji and then to wander outdoors and take pictures. Somehow, he ended up at one of the outdoor courts that hadn't yet closed. He sat down on the floor in the middle of the court and clutched the net behind him, feeling how strange it was and how familiar, then went home later with his memory card empty.

*

Fuji had just changed out of his uniform when someone knocked on his door. He opened it.

"Tezuka?"

"May I come in?" Tezuka asked.

Fuji stepped aside to let him in.

Tezuka sat on his bed and leaned against the wall. Fuji closed the door and sat down next to him. Tezuka leaned onto him, just a little.

"I don't know what to do now," he admitted softly. "It's always been tennis."

"There'll be something else," Fuji promised. "You can always find something else to be the best in."

"That isn't it. It's not about being the best; it's about never reaching the point where you can't get better."

Fuji squeezed his hand. "What if you do reach that point?"

"Then you move past it."

"Yeah, you would."

"You would too," Tezuka told him. "You don't move unless you think you're stuck."

Fuji laughed. "What makes you think that?"

"You didn't," Tezuka said, "until you thought you couldn't anymore."

Tezuka turned so that his back was to Fuji's shoulder and leaned back, resting his head on Fuji's shoulder. Fuji let his head fall on Tezuka's.

"Whatever you decide to do," he offered, "I can do it, too. We can compete or something, hmm?"

Tezuka shook his head. "You would hate it."

"I like competing." Fuji didn't deny it, though.

"Why are you here?" Tezuka asked.

"It made sense."

"You hate it."

"No," Fuji closed his eyes. "I just don't..."

"You hate it."

"I might," Fuji conceded. "But it would have been like this sooner or later."

*

Tezuka let Fuji drag him out on photo journaling escapades and pointless walks through the town after that. There was a general understanding between them that they would avoid the tennis courts and that, if they didn't, they would stop for a game either at that very moment or else later. Like much of what they did, it became a competition almost, to see if Tezuka could distract Fuji for long enough to run across a courtyard with white lines on the ground and a net stretched across its width.

More and more often, Fuji found himself losing purposely. He felt no danger in it, so long as Tezuka couldn't concentrate fully and only on tennis. There was a sort of peace in the way everything fit together in the game and so long as it wasn't a normal thing, he could see no danger in it. Tezuka noticed, he was sure, but it didn't matter. There was very little that Tezuka could do about it, short of making him join a team once they reached university, and he didn't think he would object too much to that, except that it would be strange without Tezuka there.

*

The scout came on a Monday. His arrival was much talked about in school, where no one could see any reason for a tennis scout to be in their little town. Half in jest, Fuji shot an accusing glance at Tezuka but Tezuka returned it with such an inscrutable nod that Fuji began to doubt his innocence in the matter.

The scout approached him that afternoon, asking that Fuji let him see a match. Fuji declined as politely as he could and asked, "Why me?"

The scout said something about receiving a call from a friend about a young man who had potential to truly shine and he had thought to see for himself and he was willing to sign a deal with Fuji, if he could just see Fuji play a match. Fuji declined again and, citing his studies as an excuse, retreated immediately.

He went immediately to Tezuka's room and began immediately, "The scout came to talk to me."

Tezuka turned to face him. "I know."

"He had heard from someone that he should."

"I know."

"I can't go," Fuji said.

"Why not?"

"It isn't reasonable."

"Since when," Tezuka asked slowly, "have you been reasonable?"

"I don’t want to leave."

"You can always come back."

"Tezuka—"

"Fuji." Tezuka motioned to the door. "Go."

*

The scout watched him play a match against someone at one of the tennis clubs that he and Tezuka frequented and gave him a card with his name and number on it, promising to call him soon. Fuji took the card and rushed back to his room, where he collapsed on his bed. His roommate gave him an annoyed look but otherwise ignored him.

Tezuka came by later to tell him that he would be stupid to stay. Yuuta called and said essentially the same thing, with harsher words.

So Fuji left.

*

His father had disapproved, but his mother sent him off with her blessings.

*

There was only a year and a half left of high school for him so his trainer thought it would be better if he just took easier classes and focused on rebuilding the muscles that he had lost in the past two years—his former classes more than made up for the credits that he would lose in doing so. Fuji let him do what he wanted with the schedule and called Tezuka while he worked out the fine print.

Tezuka picked up and told him that it was three in the morning. Fuji smiled and said good morning, it was a beautiful day outside, and didn't Tezuka think that it was lonely without someone to study with?

"Not at all," Tezuka told him before hanging up. Fuji smiled and told his trainer that his muse had just wished him good luck.

The trainer had worked with Tezuka two years ago. He rolled his eyes and told Fuji that they would begin with stretches. Right now.

Tezuka's school—Fuji's now, but he would always think of it as Tezuka's school—was like nothing Fuji had ever experienced. He was one of two Japanese boys there and the other could barely speak the language. Fuji knew no German and no one else knew any Japanese so they got on with whatever mangled English they could. Their German accents and his Japanese one made understanding each other doubly difficult. His trainer rearranged his schedule so he could have a German tutor.

The first day, he walked through his classes in a daze. There was a constant stream of chatter around him and he didn't catch a single word he understood. His teachers pulled him aside and told him what he had missed so far in the courses in English that was, for the most part, inferior to their students'.

He couldn't imagine how Tezuka would have liked the school. Even without the most basic knowledge of German, he could tell that the academics were lacking and the students entirely irreverent towards their teachers. That, he could easily imagine Tezuka hating. Still, almost every other student played tennis and Fuji couldn't think of anything that Tezuka would love more than such a wide pool of players to test his strength against.

Then the school day was over and he found his way to the courts. They were still mostly empty, though students had begun trickling in. Fuji walked into the locker room and dumped his bag into a locker that was labeled with his name. He changed and walked back out, his favorite racket in hand, and stepped onto the courts. They looked nothing like Seigaku's, but if he closed his eyes, Fuji could almost imagine that it was his first day at his junior high and about to see, for the first time, the boy who would teach him what he wanted.

There was no Tezuka this time, but there didn't need to be. This time, Fuji had found his own strength.

He was ready.