Limitless
Alright, so after being challenged to write an introspective Fuji character study, I decided to give this a shot. I generally try to avoid writing Fuji (unless he’s matchmaking Tezuka and Echizen or otherwise causing chaos for kicks and giggles), as he’s definitely not an easy opponent. I feel like, even in canon, Konomi-sensei never quite shows us who Fuji is, not even in his battle with Shiraishi where he supposedly got serious...possibly because he isn’t fully sure on how it looks, either. Or, possibly because, like how I see it, trying to pin Fuji down is like trying to measure both an electron’s position and velocity at the same time (in other words, impossible). There’s a reason Inui says his data on Fuji is never complete and there’s a reason Mizuki is sent running around the court like a complete novice by him when he thinks he does have an exhaustive resource. Trying to break into the tensai’s brain to see how he ticks is both terrifying and exhausting. But, well, here goes…
Title: Limitless
Rating: G
Character: Fuji Syusuke
Disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING you hear me? *sobs in sadness*
Limitless
Fuji Syusuke has many hobbies. His mother seems to have difficulty keeping up with all of them, though she certainly tries. She at least never forgets his cacti and tennis. Yumiko does far better and always seems to know when he’s planning to go stargazing by giving him the night’s weather report over dinner. Some mornings, she asks whether her brother has packed his reflex camera and Fuji always takes that to mean he’ll find a particularly tantalizing scene for his lens to capture.
As always, Yumiko is terrifyingly accurate. Fuji manages to snap a shot of Kaidoh surrounded by about four cats twining around his legs on the way to school. The second year’s face is decidedly more flushed than it usually is, even taking a hard morning run into consideration.
During the break between his second and third classes, Fuji wanders the school grounds, rather than hang out in the classroom. Some of his female fans and admirers come up to greet him and the genius chats with them comfortably, picking up on new gossip and starting some entertaining rumors regarding Momoshiro and a first year in the girl’s tennis club that would likely have the second-year red by afternoon practice, until he sees the student council secretary skulking behind the archery field. Fuji excuses himself and peers through his lens, the shutter clicking at just the perfect moment to catch the first few wisps of smoke from a lit cigarette. Fuji holds a serene smile in the second-year’s direction, camera still at hand, until he finally catches the student’s attention. His smile grows as the cigarette falls in shock and a dropped jaw and slack face go a most interesting combination of white and green. Fuji’s shutter clicks again.
Classes start back up and next period is Science-III. Fuji spends the class with his attention split between the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and that quarter’s Journal of the Professional Association for Cactus Development. There is an article co-authored by Professor Bernholdt-Schmidt that he is particularly interested in.
During lunch, Fuji develops the pictures of Kaidoh and the secretary and another of Kawamura bent studiously over the rice and tamagoyaki his father had given him -- his own tamagoyaki having not yet received his father’s approval -- to practice making tamago sushi. His recently obtained copy of Aldo Ciccolini’s latest performance plays in the background and Fuji hums along with Saint-Saens’s Second Piano Concerto, wondering for a moment if he might be able to steal a few minutes on the music room’s piano before tennis practice that afternoon to play a few pieces. It has been a while since he has attempted Debussy.
Classes resume and Fuji pays the necessary attention, if not a bit more, as Japanese class begins with a reading from the Kokinshu, but homeroom drags long at the end of the day and Fuji’s mind drifts to the latest interior design magazine he had picked up yesterday as he waits for the bell to ring and class to be dismissed. Kikumaru has duty today, but Fuji does not and he does manage to play a few movements of the Suite bergamasque before the choir club begins to gather and stare. He brings the Menuet to an early close, smiles at his audience and heads for the tennis clubroom while humming the last few measures.
After tennis, Fuji watches Momoshiro drag Kikumaru off to pay for his and Echizen’s burgers. Tezuka and Oishi are in conversation with Ryuzaki. Fuji returns the game he borrowed from Kawamura before heading to the record store to pick up Clannad’s newest CD, which the store had called to say they now had in stock.
He makes it home just in time for dinner where his mother mentions taking a few days to visit their father who is back in the country to help with cultural sensitivity training at his company’s headquarters in Shin-Osaka. Yumiko tells her brother he is on his own for lunch and the third-year smiles and nods in understanding before slipping to his room to work on reading more of the English version of The Little Prince he had recently picked up while Banba Oir plays in the background. He falls asleep with the CD on repeat.
Fuji Syusuke has many hobbies. Some say it is because he is a genius. His brain is on a completely different level from most people’s and he would get bored without the constant challenge. Others say he has so many hobbies because he takes none of them seriously. He cannot dedicate himself to just one thing. Because it’s too easy. Because he doesn’t care. Fuji listens to the theories and smiles.
Fuji Syusuke’s smiles are inscrutable and he made them that way for a reason. For the same reason he has so many hobbies, if he were to be honest. Syusuke does not like to be that honest; not with himself or with others. It is easier to pretend. Lies are sweeter than the truth.
But Syusuke does not like to think about that, so he buries himself in finally reading the interior design magazine. Distractions are important, he tells himself. Distractions facilitate the lies.
Inui claims keeping data on Fuji is just about as fruitless an endeavor as doing so for Tezuka and Echizen, though for a very different reason. Tezuka and, especially, Echizen both have a tendency to grow and evolve as they play, he claims. No matter how complete his data may be at the time, all it takes is one or two difficult matches before none of his calculations add up any longer. This is more obvious in Echizen’s growth than in Tezuka’s, he claims, but it is there all the same. The data does not lie. Fuji’s data, Inui claims, has nothing to do with evolution, but is simply due to the genius’s limitless talent -- something the third year already has and will always have.
Syusuke wishes data lied.
Sometimes, when there is nothing else to occupy his mind, Syusuke feels like he’s standing on the ledge of a giant pit and, no matter how hard he squints or leans over, he cannot see the bottom. Rather than limitless, Syusuke thinks, maybe he is bottomless: a dark, gaping hole with no end. Nothing but space through which to fall and fall and fall. He sits on the ledge, feet kicking in the nothing and fading away into the heavy darkness and it calls to him, reaches out for him. With nothing to refute its call, the young man forays deeper, rappelling down the pit’s face, still too wary to just dive in. The black swallows him whole and Syusuke hangs alone, in darkness, hoping his one tether does not break and send him plummeting into the unknown and the endless. Limitless, his mind whispers, and the third year shivers. It is a terrifying word. The light at the top of the hole begins to shrink and, momentarily, he considers allowing it to close, trapping him inside.
“Fuji!”
The third year blinks before looking in Kikumaru’s direction, catching the retreating finger that had poked him in the side when the redhead’s whispers had failed to catch his seatmate’s attention.
“Fujiko, nya! What’s wrong?”
Syusuke blinks again, shaking off the looming sensation of the pit, and slips back into his inscrutable smile. “Eiji, what do you mean?” he asks while mentally climbing back out of the darkness and into the light. He looks around to see English has come to a close and the teacher has already left. Sawaguchi, who has duty today, is erasing the board while the rest of the class is either pulling out their lunches or heading towards the school store or cafeteria. Fuji Syusuke remembers today is Wednesday, which means the store has a special on melonpan.
Distractions.
“Just now, you had a really scary face, you know,” Kikumaru probes with concern, “Are you okay?”
That morning, despite his sister saying otherwise, Yumiko had met him at the breakfast table with two already made lunchboxes. “Ah, I was trying to decide if I was going to share,” Fuji claims as he pulls the box she had handed to him out of his bag and sets it on his desk. “Mother’s in Shin-Osaka visiting father who’s there for training this week. Nee-san made my bento today.” Kikumaru’s eyes light up and Fuji chuckles as he breaches the surface and surrounds himself in light once again.
Distractions and lies.
“Eh? Yumiko-neesan?” the acrobat shouts in surprise, his jaw dropping at the attractive sandwiches revealed as Fuji raises the box’s lid, “I want some! I want some!” There’s a bit of potato salad kept separate from the sandwiches by a barrier of lettuce and a foil-wrapped ramekin that Fuji can already guess as to what it contains. “Wow, she’s so pretty and she cooks!” Kikumaru continues to exclaim as he pulls out one of the sandwich quarters and studies it, “Fuji, you won’t mind calling me your brother, right? Yumiko-san doesn’t have a problem with younger guys, right?”
Fuji listens and laughs at his friend’s exuberant questions. He shakes his head, because, as far as he knows, his sister does not have anything against younger guys, but they both know that it is a joke and ten years is too much for anyone to overcome at their age. His friends have always had crushes on Yumiko and it is fun to watch them try to catch her attention.
Kikumaru takes a bite of the cutlet sandwich before the silence of expectation turns into howlings of agony.
“Eiji, what happened?”
Kikumaru turns to the door at the intruding question, tears in his eyes and cheeks puffed out in agony before jumping into his partner’s arms. “Oishiiiiii!” he whines in agony, “It hurts! It’s even worse than wasabi!” The motherhen’s attention becomes fully absorbed in trying to get Kikumaru to open his mouth long enough to pour in some of the tea he’d brought in an attempt to cool the acrobat’s mouth.
Fuji chuckles and mentally pulls his feet out of the pit, crawling away just far enough so he does not have to worry about falling back in.
Distractions.
“Tezuka,” Fuji greets with a calm smile as the club captain walks up to join him, placing his wrapped bento on the empty desk in front of Fuji, his brow furrowed in concern and displeasure as he watches Kikumaru and Oishi interact.
Multiple distractions.
“Fuji,” Tezuka speaks, his single word asking a heavy question despite its placeholder as a greeting. Fuji only laughs before taking his own bite of the cutlet sandwich and enjoying the pleasant zing that races along his tongue at the first bite. Spicy sandwiches and a special dessert -- some of his favorite foods -- despite Yumiko saying she would not make him lunch? How terrifying. She must have known today would be a hard day for him. One of those days where there were not enough distractions.
“Nee-san doesn’t usually like putting in the effort to mix chili oil in the mayonnaise. I’m sorry, Eiji. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have offered,” Fuji apologizes as the redhead and his doubles partner come to join him and Tezuka, a worn-out Kikumaru flopping back into his seat next to Fuji and dropping his head onto his desk, while Oishi takes the desk next to Tezuka. Pulling out the foil-wrapped ramekin, Fuji holds it out as an offering, “Would you like my apple tart, instead?”
“Eh? But isn’t that your favorite?” Kikumaru’s eyes are wide and Fuji can swear he sees his classmate’s earlier concern slipping back into his eyes.
“It’s my apology,” Fuji promises and shakes the ramekin a bit in a tempting manner. The acrobat’s covetous eyes follow each motion the tart makes, but he bites his lip and does not say yes. Kikumaru was a good friend, indeed, for not wanting to make Fuji miss out on his favorite dish and it was at that moment that the genius decided he really did want Kikumaru to have some. Not just as a way to appease the redhead and chase away the concern and questions -- especially with Oishi and Tezuka there -- but simply because he knew Kikumaru would enjoy it, too.
“We can share it, instead?” Fuji offers and he knows he said the right words when Kikumaru’s eyes widen and light up like floodlights for a night game.
Suddenly, it is as if the spicy sandwich had never occurred as the redhead leans over his desk to throw his arms over Oishi’s shoulders and prattle on about how it was not only a Fuji apple tart -- and anyone who had tried one knew that the Fuji family took apple pastries seriously -- but that it was one made and packed by the beautiful and mature Yumiko-san and now he would get to eat it. “If you ask nice, Oishi, I can let you try some, too, you know!” The four tennis players all know that, for however rude it may sound, those words are Kikumaru’s way of offering to split his share with his tennis partner. “I guess a bite would be nice,” Oishi accepts the offer. Kikumaru seems even more excited to share the treat even if it means there will be less for him to eat.
Fuji sits in silence as the doubles players continue to interact and he chuckles to himself. A tingling on one side of his head has the third year turning to meet Tezuka’s gaze. The concern from earlier is still there, but now it is directed in his direction and Fuji’s eyes widen sharp and blue in surprise. His laughter stops, his smile drops and, for a moment, Syusuke is staring back into the pit. Tezuka opens his mouth to say something, to ask something, to draw attention to what Syusuke most wants to avoid, and the youngest third-year of the group forces his smile back into place before holding out the half-eaten slice of sandwich he had been working on.
“Would you like a bite, Tezuka?” Fuji asks and mentally covers the pit with a tarp of blue and white and red. The captain eyes the sandwich warily before finally untying the handkerchief wrapped around his own lunch.
“I’ll pass.”
Fuji’s smile grows and he takes another bite.
Multiple distractions and lies. They tether Syusuke to the light and the easy, giving him limits and holding him back from the bottomless pit and the limitless talent and a truth even he does not know about himself. They put him on par with his few true friends, the ones who do not say that he is on a different level and watch him with any more awe than they would each other. They give him a place to belong. For that, Syusuke thinks, distractions and lies are beautiful, indeed.