(no subject)
Campbell’s has expanded its market. Ryoma’s mother has expanded her shelves. There are now more cans of soup in the Echizen household than there are in the entire neighbourhood. Nanjiroh has bought an electric can-opener and is making full use of it - a bowl of soup accompanies him as he goes about his daily activities, namely, reading informative and entertaining material like… the newspaper. Karupin has soup for dinner. Ryoma’s mother has decided that her growing boy needs his nutrition - he has one can a day, every day for breakfast.
This actually makes Ryoma miss Inui’s menus.
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School is per normal - English is still incredibly dull, the only highlight of his day was when Horio finally managed to spell “necessary”, and the teacher was so surprised and delighted he nearly broke down, and left the class to their own devices for the rest of the period, earning Horio a small flock of fangirls who fawned over him in pure adoration.
Practice was harder than usual - statistics showed that global warming was increasing temperatures around the world, climates were changing slowly but surely, and Ryoma was as short as ever - this meant (according to Inui, anyway) that the Regulars had to train harder if they wanted to maintain or surpass their current achievements. The changing climates also meant more varieties of Inui juice, which kept Inui occupied, and kept Fuji entertained.
Tezuka seemed unaffected by change, by time, by season. He would be standing outside the courts, watching his team and a million years later they would unearth Fossilised Tezuka, standing just the way he was in 2006A.D.
So Ryoma decides to do something about it. Practice was getting boring anyway.
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It is Ryoma who challenges Tezuka to a match, and he agrees, so they play. It is a short one, they’re all having their own training and no one is watching yet everyone’s eyes are on them, on the ball.
It is Tezuka who wins, and he shakes hands with Ryoma, cordially, and leaves, same as ever.
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Ryoma’s mother bought a crate of alphabet soup, so Ryoma has it every day. The letters are oddly shaped and vaguely squished - the first time his mother makes it it is overcooked, and the letters fall apart as he scoops them up, sad little fragments of Ps and Qs and Bs, swimming in his bowl, yellow pasta and tomato-based soup. The onion bits taste funny, and Ryoma would much rather have something normal, or at least Japanese, but his mother is stubborn like that, and refuses.
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He doesn’t like buchou like this, all stiff. There must be something inside, and when he plays Ryoma sees that something - the cold, stern, stoic visage has let something slip, something akin to raw human emotion: determination, passion, a fire that burns but that he covers up, his love for tennis only shown through the dedication he puts into practice, they way he defeats everyone so easily, so smoothly.
But, Ryoma has decided, his buchou is only dull because the people around him are dull - they are no more of a challenge. They have become too easy to beat - there is no more art, no more need to improve.
Ryoma has therefore also decided that it is up to him to challenge his buchou. To train hard enough to be a challenge for him.
He now brings his breakfast to school in a little thermos flask, little plastic spoon attached to the inside of the cover, alphabet pasta sinking to the bottom as he plays, to be devoured minutes before the first bell.
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His mother has perfected the art of cooking alphabet soup. The letters now come out mostly whole, and Ryoma can almost spell his name - Ys seem to be in short supply. He wants to try and stick an I under a V, but instead finds Ts and Zs and Ks.
It is these six letters that he arranges neatly on a plate and eats last, one by one.
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“Buchou.” Tezuka looks at him, and understands, and they play. It is after practice one day, and no one is watching except for Ryoma’s thermos flask: there are three letters stuck to the bottom that he can’t reach - an R, an L and a T - and Ryoma wonders if it’s a good omen or not.
An hour or so later he beats Tezuka, though not by much, and from then on Tezuka looks at him differently - not very obviously, but Ryoma has spent too much time staring at his buchou not to notice - and Ryoma is pleased. He finds a pair of chopsticks at home, scrapes off the three letters and eats them. They are a little cold, and the taste of tomato is gone, but Ryoma finds he likes it that way.
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Horio was being smart, and tried to wash pure sodium from the table with a beaker-full of water - it exploded, to put it mildly, generating plenty of screams and even a detention class. Horio finds that his fangirls have disappeared, and Ryoma also finds this amusing.
Eiji remarks that Ryoma looks taller, and Oishi agrees, and Inui whips out his measuring tape and makes a recoding in his book, and decides to prescribe Ryoma a glass of Inui juice every day - it is to help accelerate the calculated oncoming growth spurt - but Ryoma declines, and says he has soup, and leaves them all perplexed.
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Tezuka is not on the courts after practice, and neither is he in the locker room - Ryoma finds him waiting at the bus stop just outside the gate, and greets him as he walks past.
“Echizen.” It is a deep, rich voice - Ryoma sometimes wishes he spoke more often - and Ryoma stops and half-turns.
“Play a game with me,” and although it is late, and his mother is expecting him, Ryoma agrees, and they play.
The match takes two hours this time, the tiebreak drags on forever, but Tezuka wins, and they shake across the net, sweaty and panting.
They towel off, and Ryoma watches Tezuka gulp down his water with an intensity that hurts him - the way his Adam’s apple moves as he swallows hypnotises Ryoma, and he finds that when Tezuka looks his way he doesn’t know whether it is entirely appropriate to have his hand so close to buchou’s leg, or that they should be sitting on the same bench at all.
They leave for home, but it is only after Tezuka turns the corner that Ryoma lets out a sob, and the wall bruises his fist.
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He has his breakfast at home the next day, and meets Momo-senpai at the gate as usual.
His cousin uses the thermos flask now: she puts coffee in it, and brings a mug to lectures.
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Doodling on his worksheet, Ryoma thinks about nothing, and everything - Tezuka pops up several times, and Ryoma still can’t decide if he is frustrated or not - and there are little tennis balls decorating his notes on the French Revolution.
And then at practice he sees Tezuka training with the others, his usual spot outside the courts taken up by some girls who seem to have nothing better to do with their time than wait for Tezuka to pick up a racket, then come and watch.
It is then that Ryoma decides that he rather missed training alone before school.
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There is a brand new thermos flask set on the table with a note attached addressed to Nanako, and Ryoma is gone before the sun rises, alphabet soup sloshing around in his flask.
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It is he who waits for Tezuka at the gates this time, and Tezuka agrees to a match. They play under the glaring floodlights, the thud of the tennis ball on concrete swallowed by the night.
Ryoma wins this time, and this time he does more than just stare at Tezuka drinking water - he has never kissed anyone but his mother before, and he finds that kissing is an activity worth investing a significant amount of time in. Tezuka seemed to be enjoying it, to a certain extent, but he pulled away rather quickly, and packed his things in a silence that was somehow more complete than his usual talkative state.
This time when Tezuka turns the corner Ryoma quickly unscrews the top of his thermos flask and peers inside: T, L and R are visible in the light of the streetlamp, and Ryoma stretches his fingers as far as they can go, swiping the spoon blindly at the letters, until finally they reach, and he scoops them up and eats them, the chewy cold letters making him .yearn for more.
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They play now, every week at least, and every time Ryoma defeats him, Tezuka improves, and comes back stronger. It is a never-ending cycle, but it never gets dull - they hold actual conversations now. Ryoma has established that Tezuka’s favourite author is Ed McBain and not Sun Zi as he previously suspected, and that Tezuka prefers traditional Japanese meals, something that Ryoma can relate to, and is as he previously suspected. And in turn he tells Tezuka about Karupin, and invites him over, but he declines - Ryoma knows it is only a matter of time.
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It is still alphabet soup, but his mother has found a new version. It is Japanese - the letters are made of the same flour as ramen, and the soup fish miso.
Ryoma brings an extra portion of it today, and is determined to make buchou try it.