Prince of Tennis fic: Three Lives Tezuka Kunimitsu Never Lived
Title: Three Lives Tezuka Kunimitsu Never Lived
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,346
Disclaimer: Not mine - never was, never will be.
Pairings: None, but some implied Tezu/Fuji
***
1. Fame
Tezuka Kunimitsu was a successful professional tennis player, and a dissatisfied young man. Tennis was still Tezuka’s passion: he played the game with enthusiasm, enjoying the physical and mental challenge each match offered. It was the other aspects of professional tennis that Tezuka despised: the press conferences, the photo shoots, the endless meetings with corporate sponsors - all the tedious, time-consuming activities that were an inescapable part of his career.
Tezuka considered himself a private, reserved person, and couldn’t understand the loud, adoring fans - total strangers who behaved with such familiarity - that followed him everywhere. With each win, for every title gained, Tezuka’s fanbase grew, along with his unhappiness. He started to withdraw from smaller tournaments, only choosing to play in the major competitions, worrying his coaches. He didn’t renew each corporate sponsorship as the contracts expired, horrifying his business manager.
Tezuka’s retreat turned the tennis world against him: he was considered sullen and selfish. His opponents were cheered on by fickle spectators and the press, always ready to worship the brash, younger players that joined the tour each year.
In the face of such censure, Tezuka’s tennis only improved. He finally won a Grand Slam, the pinnacle of achievement in the sport, and didn’t lose a match for another six months afterwards. Only then, satisfied with his accomplishments, did Tezuka decide to leave professional tennis.
He retired quietly - not even holding a press conference - respected for his achievements, but not much loved.
2. Duty
Tezuka Kunimitsu was a serious young man who took his responsibilities to heart. As captain of the Seigaku tennis team he played despite his injury: not for personal glory, but in pursuit of a national title to be shared with his friends. After Seigaku won Nationals, he put aside his dreams of a professional tennis career to stay in Tokyo with his parents and grandfather at their request.
He scored top marks at university in Engineering as his father suggested, though he would have preferred to major in sports medicine. He married the painfully shy woman with long black hair and pretty hazel eyes that his mother favored, instead of risking censure by pursuing a scandalous relationship with the smiling brown-haired, blue-eyed friend he’d been in love with for years. Tezuka did his duty, and did so without complaint.
Tezuka lived an honorable life. He worked diligently for the government, devoting long hours to developing bridges and roads that were built in a timely, cost-effective manner. He provided for his family, the wife he treated with the greatest respect and the two children they raised together.
He lived for his grandfather, parents, wife and children, but never for himself. If he was tormented by thoughts of what could have been, watching friends and rivals from long ago take the tennis world by storm, he never let it show. And when Fuji Syuusuke - quietly confident, smiling as always - publicly revealed his homosexuality after winning a second U.S. Open championship, Tezuka didn’t say a word.
Instead, Tezuka continued on with his respectable, ordinary life, and dutifully ignored that cold, awful emptiness eating away at his soul.
3. Fracture
Tezuka Kunimitsu wasn’t a professional tennis player. In fact, he was forced to abandon the game (no, not a game, he thinks, it was so much more than that) as a teenager. The initial injury he suffered when a sempai struck his left elbow (no one remembers that boy’s name) wasn’t too serious, but Tezuka overcompensated for that impairment and that led to a serious damage to his shoulder exploited first by one rival (Atobe) then another (Sanada).
Injury. That’s a simple way to describe the searing pain he endures now when lifting anything over twenty pounds. But since Tezuka doesn’t do that more than a half-dozen times a year (he’s careful), it’s really not a problem. It’s the small, daily irritants that fracture his soul: it’s the stiffness in his left shoulder (massage, heat therapy, medication, all for nothing) he wakes up to very single day and it’s the emptiness in his soul (school, work, counseling, all for nothing) he wakes up to every single day.
His friends try to help him, to no avail. Oishi is kind, sympathetic, offering all sorts of sensible advice that Tezuka ignores and Oishi is too polite (weak) to force the issue. Eiji is like a butterfly - he flutters around you, full of optimism and life - but he soon wanders away, attention on the latest bright, shiny object to atch his eye. Momoshiro is too busy making sense of his own life to interfere with Tezuka’s. Kawamura and Kaidoh are quiet, introverted personalities as well, and wouldn’t dream of intruding upon their captain’s (no more tennis, but always buchou to them) personal life. Echizen would - in his usual blunt, outspoken way, mada mada da ne - but he is too immersed in the world of professional tennis to be a pillar of support. Tezuka thinks this is for the best - he wants to be left alone.
It is Inui and Fuji that won’t leave him be: Tezuka doesn’t know whether to hate them for their determination (most days) or thank them for their concern (he’s been tempted to on more than one occasion), so he does what he does best: he stays silent
Inui still calls him twice a month, trying to convince him to leave his forensics position with the Tokyo Police Department (you need to deal with living people more often, he says - there’s a ninety-three percent chance that you will die alone, surrounded by newspapers and far too many cats). Tezuka tries not to laugh each time - hearing this from Inui, of all people - instead mumbling a hurried farewell and hanging up the phone. Tezuka doesn’t like cats: he does resolve, however, to throw out that large pile of old newspapers stacked in his apartment this week.
Fuji is even more persistent, and good at it. He visits the crime lab once a week: admitting a photojournalist into a crime lab is like releasing a fox into a hen house, but security keeps letting him in every time. Tezuka speculates about what sort of blackmail Fuji’s got on them.
Then Tezuka considers why he lets Fuji stay. It’s probably because Fuji doesn’t mother him or argue with him. Fuji simply walks in, says something ridiculous like does this new camera make my ass look big? and offers to buy Tezuka lunch. Not that Tezuka accepts: he brings a packed lunch every day, and he wouldn’t trust Fuji’s choice in restaurants in any case. But he lets Fuji talk to him - about their jobs, Fuji’s siblings, politics, the weather - about anything, really, except tennis and the fact that Fuji’s still in love with him.
Tezuka loves Fuji as well (as much as he is able to, which isn’t much, he just... can’t), but he will never admit this. Tezuka has nothing to offer - all he has is depression and regret and so much rage, and he won’t ever give that to Fuji. So he gives him nothing at all.
Tezuka lives his barren life - reading newspapers, working at crime scenes and at the police laboratory, avoiding cats - until the night he runs into someone whose name he doesn’t remember, but whose face and body (eyes blazing, lips curled into a sneer, tennis racquet raised as a weapon) he’s never forgotten.
The next morning Tezuka calmly reads the newspaper, but only after removing every last trace of DNA and bloodstains then incinerating the clothing he’d worn. He feels so much better: not even the sharp pain radiating from his left arm can dampen his mood.
Tezuka wonders if he’ll be called to this crime scene to search for evidence. He wonders if Inui’s calculations have changed. He wonders if he should surprise Fuji, and let him buy lunch today. Then he wonders if he should pay Atobe and Sanada a visit: it’s been far too long, and they have so much to ‘discuss.’
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,346
Disclaimer: Not mine - never was, never will be.
Pairings: None, but some implied Tezu/Fuji
***
1. Fame
Tezuka Kunimitsu was a successful professional tennis player, and a dissatisfied young man. Tennis was still Tezuka’s passion: he played the game with enthusiasm, enjoying the physical and mental challenge each match offered. It was the other aspects of professional tennis that Tezuka despised: the press conferences, the photo shoots, the endless meetings with corporate sponsors - all the tedious, time-consuming activities that were an inescapable part of his career.
Tezuka considered himself a private, reserved person, and couldn’t understand the loud, adoring fans - total strangers who behaved with such familiarity - that followed him everywhere. With each win, for every title gained, Tezuka’s fanbase grew, along with his unhappiness. He started to withdraw from smaller tournaments, only choosing to play in the major competitions, worrying his coaches. He didn’t renew each corporate sponsorship as the contracts expired, horrifying his business manager.
Tezuka’s retreat turned the tennis world against him: he was considered sullen and selfish. His opponents were cheered on by fickle spectators and the press, always ready to worship the brash, younger players that joined the tour each year.
In the face of such censure, Tezuka’s tennis only improved. He finally won a Grand Slam, the pinnacle of achievement in the sport, and didn’t lose a match for another six months afterwards. Only then, satisfied with his accomplishments, did Tezuka decide to leave professional tennis.
He retired quietly - not even holding a press conference - respected for his achievements, but not much loved.
2. Duty
Tezuka Kunimitsu was a serious young man who took his responsibilities to heart. As captain of the Seigaku tennis team he played despite his injury: not for personal glory, but in pursuit of a national title to be shared with his friends. After Seigaku won Nationals, he put aside his dreams of a professional tennis career to stay in Tokyo with his parents and grandfather at their request.
He scored top marks at university in Engineering as his father suggested, though he would have preferred to major in sports medicine. He married the painfully shy woman with long black hair and pretty hazel eyes that his mother favored, instead of risking censure by pursuing a scandalous relationship with the smiling brown-haired, blue-eyed friend he’d been in love with for years. Tezuka did his duty, and did so without complaint.
Tezuka lived an honorable life. He worked diligently for the government, devoting long hours to developing bridges and roads that were built in a timely, cost-effective manner. He provided for his family, the wife he treated with the greatest respect and the two children they raised together.
He lived for his grandfather, parents, wife and children, but never for himself. If he was tormented by thoughts of what could have been, watching friends and rivals from long ago take the tennis world by storm, he never let it show. And when Fuji Syuusuke - quietly confident, smiling as always - publicly revealed his homosexuality after winning a second U.S. Open championship, Tezuka didn’t say a word.
Instead, Tezuka continued on with his respectable, ordinary life, and dutifully ignored that cold, awful emptiness eating away at his soul.
3. Fracture
Tezuka Kunimitsu wasn’t a professional tennis player. In fact, he was forced to abandon the game (no, not a game, he thinks, it was so much more than that) as a teenager. The initial injury he suffered when a sempai struck his left elbow (no one remembers that boy’s name) wasn’t too serious, but Tezuka overcompensated for that impairment and that led to a serious damage to his shoulder exploited first by one rival (Atobe) then another (Sanada).
Injury. That’s a simple way to describe the searing pain he endures now when lifting anything over twenty pounds. But since Tezuka doesn’t do that more than a half-dozen times a year (he’s careful), it’s really not a problem. It’s the small, daily irritants that fracture his soul: it’s the stiffness in his left shoulder (massage, heat therapy, medication, all for nothing) he wakes up to very single day and it’s the emptiness in his soul (school, work, counseling, all for nothing) he wakes up to every single day.
His friends try to help him, to no avail. Oishi is kind, sympathetic, offering all sorts of sensible advice that Tezuka ignores and Oishi is too polite (weak) to force the issue. Eiji is like a butterfly - he flutters around you, full of optimism and life - but he soon wanders away, attention on the latest bright, shiny object to atch his eye. Momoshiro is too busy making sense of his own life to interfere with Tezuka’s. Kawamura and Kaidoh are quiet, introverted personalities as well, and wouldn’t dream of intruding upon their captain’s (no more tennis, but always buchou to them) personal life. Echizen would - in his usual blunt, outspoken way, mada mada da ne - but he is too immersed in the world of professional tennis to be a pillar of support. Tezuka thinks this is for the best - he wants to be left alone.
It is Inui and Fuji that won’t leave him be: Tezuka doesn’t know whether to hate them for their determination (most days) or thank them for their concern (he’s been tempted to on more than one occasion), so he does what he does best: he stays silent
Inui still calls him twice a month, trying to convince him to leave his forensics position with the Tokyo Police Department (you need to deal with living people more often, he says - there’s a ninety-three percent chance that you will die alone, surrounded by newspapers and far too many cats). Tezuka tries not to laugh each time - hearing this from Inui, of all people - instead mumbling a hurried farewell and hanging up the phone. Tezuka doesn’t like cats: he does resolve, however, to throw out that large pile of old newspapers stacked in his apartment this week.
Fuji is even more persistent, and good at it. He visits the crime lab once a week: admitting a photojournalist into a crime lab is like releasing a fox into a hen house, but security keeps letting him in every time. Tezuka speculates about what sort of blackmail Fuji’s got on them.
Then Tezuka considers why he lets Fuji stay. It’s probably because Fuji doesn’t mother him or argue with him. Fuji simply walks in, says something ridiculous like does this new camera make my ass look big? and offers to buy Tezuka lunch. Not that Tezuka accepts: he brings a packed lunch every day, and he wouldn’t trust Fuji’s choice in restaurants in any case. But he lets Fuji talk to him - about their jobs, Fuji’s siblings, politics, the weather - about anything, really, except tennis and the fact that Fuji’s still in love with him.
Tezuka loves Fuji as well (as much as he is able to, which isn’t much, he just... can’t), but he will never admit this. Tezuka has nothing to offer - all he has is depression and regret and so much rage, and he won’t ever give that to Fuji. So he gives him nothing at all.
Tezuka lives his barren life - reading newspapers, working at crime scenes and at the police laboratory, avoiding cats - until the night he runs into someone whose name he doesn’t remember, but whose face and body (eyes blazing, lips curled into a sneer, tennis racquet raised as a weapon) he’s never forgotten.
The next morning Tezuka calmly reads the newspaper, but only after removing every last trace of DNA and bloodstains then incinerating the clothing he’d worn. He feels so much better: not even the sharp pain radiating from his left arm can dampen his mood.
Tezuka wonders if he’ll be called to this crime scene to search for evidence. He wonders if Inui’s calculations have changed. He wonders if he should surprise Fuji, and let him buy lunch today. Then he wonders if he should pay Atobe and Sanada a visit: it’s been far too long, and they have so much to ‘discuss.’