fic for dhorz
Title: Picking Up A Hobby
Rating: G
Wordcount: 3544
Request: Fuji needs a new hobby, who is Tezuka.
Summary: semi AU, wherein Fuji is two years older than Tezuka and engages in sneaky private investigator-ly activities.
A/N: dear
dhorz, I'm not sure if this is what you envisioned entirely, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! && many thanks to
pndaftw and
ailura for beta-ing at such short notice.
i.
Fuji Syuusuke first notices the boy who lives opposite his office building in the middle of Umeda-san’s recount of her husband’s increasingly late returns from his tennis sessions at the club.
To her, her story is a newly discovered tragedy, but to Fuji it is hardly original. The plot is routine, tired; even if the sordid details do vary. There was Oshitari-san, who suddenly developed a remarkable interest in gymnastics as well as great flexibility, and turned out to be having an affair with his Pilates instructor. Momoshiro-san, who started spending most of the household budget buying massive amounts of grape Ponta that he never seemed to drink but which disappeared anyway, cans and all. Oishi-san, who pilfered the stuffed toys his wife had bought for his nieces’ and nephews’ birthday from the cupboard, with a preference for the teddy bears.
Fuji thinks, with a certain amount of scorn, that if he were them he would never let himself get caught, either in the supposed sacrament of marriage or in the act of cheating. The motto of a private investigator: Never let your guard down.
He notes absently that Umeda-san has a lovely voice, smooth and mellow like melted butter swirled in a pan. It trickles past his awareness and pools somewhere in his subconscious; he will remember what it says when he has to.
Across the street the bottom of a woman’s paper bag breaks and apples tumble out, rolling all over the pavement. The street is wide and empty and the apples gleam rosily where they stop in patches of light, and Fuji imagines that they are plump fish, darting and stilling in ponds of clear water shot through with sun.
The boy that emerges from the building is unremarkable (tall, lanky, bespactacled; untidy hair) beyond the fact that only he stops to help, producing a white handkerchief to carefully wipe off any grime the apples might have picked up and proffering them to the woman with a slight bow. Even from one floor up, Fuji’s intuition tells him that, from the line of his mouth and the set of his shoulders, he doesn’t smile much and probably has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
By this time Umeda-san’s composure has crumbled and she is crying, tears casting little splotches of shadow on the wood under the glass-top of his desk. He offers her a tissue from the lace-covered box on his right and murmurs something vaguely comforting, rising to fetch a cup of tea.
When Fuji looks out the window again, the boy is gone. Umeda-san’s tears are now little hiccuping sobs, and he gives her another tissue because the first is now just ragged edges and specks of white dotting her skirt.
There is a leaf fluttering weakly to the ground at the corner where the boy may or may not have turned.
i & i/ii.
Hobby /hɒbi/: An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
If this is the universally accepted definition of hobby, anything Fuji Syuusuke might take up is, arguably, precisely that.
This particular venture began as one, because Fuji thought he could probably do a better job than those dim private detectives waffling around in mystery novels, or those investigators who crept around and pressed themselves to brick walls in dark alleys. For one thing he hasn't any scruples about eavesdropping, and for another he is thin enough to fit into cramped spaces between drainpipes and alley walls, melting silent into shadows.
(He needs the extra money for rent, but that is secondary.)
It does make him feel rather cheated that it is so easy to be good at this, too. Two successful assignments and his name is discreetly dropped into conversation over high society teas, quickly becoming part of that knowledge which is necessary to survival in those circles.
Fuji Syuusuke is technically five years old; he is brilliant, and he is bored.
ii.
Inui announces two days after the meeting with Umeda-san that they are going to reorganise the office.
“My research shows that at least 76% of people feel less threatened and are more receptive to suggestions in non-cluttered environments,” with a pointed look in the direction of Fuji’s desk, which has beige folders stacked unevenly at either edge, seven-eighths of its surface covered in loose sheets of paper, and a steaming cup of tea in the left corner.
“You probably couldn’t even find a pen if you needed one,” and Fuji arches an eyebrow at him before delving into a particularly precarious sheaf of papers and emerging with a pen triumphantly held aloft. “If that is the pen you dropped two months ago and bent the nib of at 24.3 degrees, I meant a functional pen, or one with a non-crooked nib.”
“Straight things confuse me, Inui, or doesn’t your data already tell you that?” Fuji leans back on his chair, balancing on two legs and idly twirling the pen with his left hand. Inui no longer suspects he is being mocked: after a year and seven months working with Fuji, he knows he is.
“The shadows cast when your desk is in that position reduce visibility by 26 percent, with an cumulative increase of 0.07 percent past the hours of 6 p.m.,” he points out reasonably.
Fuji doesn’t reply, instead propping his chin on the heel of his palm, fingertips warm on his cheek.
The boy is there again today. This time he has a tennis bag hoisted onto his right shoulder, looking left-right-left before he crosses the road, pushing up his glasses with two fingers at the bridge. The sunlight glances off his lenses when he looks up at the sky, and Fuji is dazzled.
“Tezuka Kunimitsu, Seigaku high school’s tennis club ace.” This is partly why Inui makes such a good colleague: he answers questions before Fuji needs to ask them.
“I thought it important that we gain a better idea of our neighbourhood before we decided to relocate here.”
Fuji lets his spinning pen clatter to the table.
“I’ll just move my desk over to face the window, shall I?”
The tea is cold by the time they finish pushing the desk into position, but Fuji drinks it anyway.
iii.
After office hours he hangs the Closed! sign on the door and spends three hours looking through their newspaper archives, until his hands smell like carbon and cheap paper and he leaves grey imprints of the whorls on his fingers on Shinji-san’s case file.
He was a very patient child, he thinks hazily, somewhere in between a picture of a small and serious five-year-old Tezuka holding up a piece of paper coloured completely in neon green crayon with a grid over it (this is the tennis court after practice through my racket) and a dramatic article recounting his win against Eishirou Kite of Higa Chuu Gakuen that is replete with duelling metaphors.
Tezuka wins the majority of his matches in straight sets, but all told he has only played very few times as Singles One. He doesn’t believe in dating before graduating from university and has an ankle circumference of -- cm. His index finger is longer than his fourth: a “clear sign of masculinity”, according to the magazine reporting it. He has never lost an official match.
Fuji thinks with a small pang of regret that this invincibility makes him rather less interesting. Nobody is interested in justifying a god.
The windows of the building across the road are alternating rectangles of light and dark. Fuji wonders which is Tezuka’s, wonders if he has curtains at his windows. What sort they are: if they are flowery or striped or white, panels of light chiffon through which the sun falls in soft, parallel lines. This is something the interviews don’t say.
iv.
When he first started this hobby Yumiko asked him laughingly if he wanted her old trenchcoat to go sneaking around in. Even if it’s two seasons out of fashion, Syuusuke.
Why not?, he replied, and it hangs on the coat-rack at their office now, taking up a permanent space. The pockets are filled with dried sakura petals from when Yumiko last wore it, crumbling pale pink to the touch; the sleeves covered in lint.
It doesn’t fit him around the shoulders, but he likes the touch of authenticity it adds to their office. Today, though, he puts it on and slips unobstrusively into the crowd behind Tezuka, silent and nondescript: brown hair and brown eyes, sharp elbows and skinny wrists.
***
By the end of the day he has followed Tezuka to the tennis supply store, a street tennis court, the gym, and the Seigaku High clubhouse (where he lingers for an unusually long time talking to a short boy whose cap is barely visible over the bottom of the window frame). His only conclusion is that Tezuka is completely obsessed with tennis and his idea of a wet dream, unlike *most teenage boys', entails the best tennis players in the world surrounding him and serving tennis balls at him, at maximum speed. Simultaneously.
*which involve things of Unspeakable Immorality.
v.
Fuji feels the crash of thunder tremble through his chair, rumble low and threatening through his chest.
He wonders if it is possible to play tennis in rain like this. Japan has a lightning strike frequency of twenty-odd per square kilometre, and for people who wear glasses the raindrops will stipple their lenses, accumulating and trickling down in phases like ellipses.
“Pass Shinji-san’s file over, will you?” Inui’s voice is oddly muted, made distant by the rain, but it is enough for Fuji to remember that now is still within office hours, that this is now his regular occupation, and bend his head obediently over Takahashi-san’s hotel occupancy record.
vi.
He often tries to envision how they might meet.
Perhaps at the bookstore down the road: they will reach for the same book and their fingers will brush. They will discover their shared interests in Nietzsche and spend their days together in a dim apartment that smells of hotel linen and twilight, in a philosophical haze of Pavlov and Rawls and Descartes. It could be a bakery encounter, when Fuji buys a pie and drops his pencil on the way out, whereupon Tezuka will coincidentally enter and graciously, gracefully pick it up. He will invite Tezuka back for a slice of apple pie in gratitude, arranged on the whitest plate he owns with a sprig of whatever it is chefs put on food as decoration (the logistical concerns of this plan are secondary), and they will make friends over the steam wafting warm and white in swirls between them. There are lots of pretty places around: parks with benches made of wrought-iron curlicues, cafes with stainglass windows, fountains; Fuji envisions a meeting in each and every one of them.
The scene he imagines is always slightly out of focus, shaky and smudged with shadow, as if whoever took the picture was running towards the sun, shutter speed on slow.
*
Reality is a lot more prosaic. They need a photographer to cover Tezuka’s match against one Yukimura Seiichi, of Rikkai Dai Fukozu, so Fuji calls the number in the advertisement and gives his name, turns up at the interview on a sunny Saturday afternoon in a crisp shirt with a dossier of his photos tucked under his arm.
It turns out they’ve seen copies of his work before, so he sits opposite a large man with stubby fingers and eyebrows like two thick squiggles drawn with a fuzzy marker in a childish hand (glued-on pelts of hairy black caterpillars) and answers yes, no, no I don’t use photo editing software unless absolutely necessary, yes sir I can take leave from class and work and be there before nine. All very standard answers; Fuji allows his attention to wander.
The man’s office is full of pictures, sports stars that are two-dimensional cutouts of themselves, specimens pinned to the walls under sheets of fingerprint-free glass, faces opaque white where the light reflects off the shiny magazine paper. He fills in the blank voids of their faces with Tezuka’s, those paper dolls Yumiko played with when she was seven, but Tezuka’s expression stays firmly the same no matter how much Fuji tries to imagine it any different (even when he places it on a swimsuit-clad body: the eyes are still sharp as splintered shale, chin pointedly disapproving)
Fuji likes trying to change things that won't; it is less a hobby than a particular talent of his.
vii.
He takes a bus down to Seigaku High after work one day. The school hasn’t changed much since he was there, except that maybe the crack in the wall beside the gate is a little wider, and there are more shoeprints on the whitewashed wall than he remembers.
It’s 5.40 in the evening and the hallways are empty and still, awash with evening sun the colour of tea. Fuji takes the long way round to the tennis courts, straining his ears to catch the residual echoes of a ball against the concrete.
He pushes the door to the clubhouse open and stops. Blinks, because Tezuka Kunimitsu has just turned to look at him from where he is standing in front of the window with his hands in his pockets.
"I," Fuji says to break the silence. It takes him some time to realise that he doesn't actually know what to say, because this is not how he envisioned their meeting; their meeting was to be remarkable in some way, whether by virtue of setting or situation or the psychic connection that would manifest itself as almost-tangible sparks in the air between them. To his chagrin there is nothing but dust motes, drifting, catching the light. He smiles a little wider, stands a little straighter. "I'm Fuji Syuusuke. I was a student in the tennis club here a few years ago."
To his surprise Tezuka is looking at him appraisingly. "Fuji Syuusuke, first singles." It's not a question. "Ryuuzaki-sensei talks about you often, how they won the Nationals the only year you were in the club."
Fuji shakes his head slightly. "I only played tennis for fun, my brother is a lot more serious about it than me." From anyone else this would be false modesty, but from Fuji it is a simple statement of fact.
"I heard you were rather better than a somebody who just played for fun," Tezuka replies drily. Somehow in reality he looks less solid than Fuji has thought him to be, standing in a pool of twilight sun against an apricot sky, a backlit subject of a picture. Fuji has always had a keen appreciation of beauty.
He focuses on the wall between the window and the lockers, with its photographic documentation of every time they have won Nationals. The last photo is testimony to one of his discarded hobbies: he isn't in it because he took it. That explains the gap between Yamato-buchou and Inui; Fuji thinks wistfully that he really should've been in the picture because then at least Tezuka would have to see him on a regular basis whether he wanted to or not.
"Fuji-san. Would you do me the honour of playing against me?" Tezuka is formal enough that Fuji feels as if they are facing each other at a tea ceremony, signing a huge business deal. This is why Tezuka will forever be unchanging to the people that follow him: he was born serious and he will stay serious, like unweathered bedrock. The silence stretches between them, two people on either side of a strike-slip fault.
“No,” Fuji says at last, “No. I don’t play tennis any more.” It's childish, but he doesn't want to be indebted to their shared brilliance at tennis; he knows, already, that if anything does start he will always be Tezuka's second love, secondary to his tennis. Such is the danger of letting a hobby matter too much, so that everything fades into grayscale behind the gold luster of a championship trophy.
Tezuka looks at him, expression inscrutable, breakwater-impacable, doesn't say anything. Before Fuji can try to make amends (it will not be a concession), though, someone at the door says, "Buchou?" It's the boy with the cap he saw through the window: probably just a freshman, but despite that the air is suddenly different, sharper. Fuji hates him with an immediate, unreasonable instinct that says, rival. Tezuka picks up his bag and bows gravely to Fuji, then walks out.
Things don't change much, thinks Fuji. The last time he was here Yuuta walked out on him and everything is still the same, the rank smell of socks and unravelling rolls of grip tape trailing out of lockers, the unidentifiable growth in the crack between the lockers and the wall, the corner of the wooden bench below the window warped by damp.
viii.
Fuji calls Ryuuzaki-sensei and offers to play the freshman (Echizen Ryoma, says Inui, Seigaku's first year prodigy) as preparation for Nationals.
"Yes, sensei, I was just visiting the school during tennis practice and I saw Echizen-san playing... Yes, I think it would be interesting... If you don't mind, sensei? Tomorrow, then, at 5.45 after practice? Thank you." She is only too grateful for the challenge he is offering: it turns out that Echizen has prodigiously beaten every member of the team but Tezuka.
It takes him some time to find his tennis racket in the hall cupboard; the grip is sticky and slightly rank with dried sweat from games long concluded, inevitably in his favour. Tomorrow's will have to be no different.
viv.
He likes Echizen even less after actually meeting him; the boy is dismissive of this outsider, this interruption in his practice time with Tezuka. They rally for a while to warmup and Fuji misses a few on purpose because he doesn't feel like running for them. Echizen smirks at that and Fuji's returning smile is exactly a half-secret wide; when he hits back Echizen's opening Twist Serve (the advantages of having semi-eidetic memory and Inui) the vibration comes thrumming up his arm, through his chest in a surge of satisfaction.
Across the net Echizen looks disbelieving, as if having his Twist Serve returned is a prospect he's never imagined. He does come up with a few new surprises, but nothing Fuji cannot decipher in time, and after a while Fuji is playing with his eyes shut and by instinct.
It doesn't surprise him that by the time the score hits 4-2, Tezuka is watching through the fence. He pulls out his counters: one, two, three, Echizen surprises him into using number four, but he disguises it as an accident.
By the time he wins 6-4 the sky is overcast with curls of grey cloud and the smell of rain is in the air. The wind whips through the fence, lifting scrap paper from the ground and tossing Fuji's fringe into his eyes, making Tezuka's regular jersey flare out behind him like a cloak. It blows in Tezuka's direction and Fuji lets his feet follow, so that he drifts over to Tezuka and they are face to face through the fence.
"You don't seem very tired."
Fuji can't think of anything to reply to this that wouldn't sound arrogant, so he tilts his head back and looks up at the sky. It begins to drizzle, rain-dark splotches on the dull green and red of the court, beading the metal grid of fence; he figures that this is probably as romantic as things can get, standing out in the rain with a fence in between.
"I thought you didn't play tennis any more, Fuji-san." Tezuka is polite, but his words are pointed and Fuji is surprised to feel almost ashamed.
"Ryuuzaki-sensei thought it would be good practice for Echizen-san to play with someone outside the team," he demurs. "I was only too glad to help." The lie slips out easily enough, and Tezuka doesn't look entirely convinced but he nods, and Fuji takes the chance to say casually, "I'd play with you sometime if you wanted," and look as earnest as he can.
One side of Tezuka's mouth crooks upwards imperceptibly (Fuji's intuition tells him, in retrospect, that it is triumph) and he replies, "It would be an honour, Fuji-san." They retreat into the shelter of the clubhouse and decide on a time and place; Fuji watches Tezuka walk towards the busstop through the clubroom window with his umbrella held stiffly like a rifle, dissolving into an outline in the gauze of falling rain.
x.
5 o’clock on a Friday evening.
Inui looks up at 5.01 and sees Fuji standing at the door; doesn’t remember him ever being so concerned about leaving straight after work.
“You’re out fast today, Fuji.”
Fuji pauses, left hand on the doorknob and jingling car keys with his right (is that a tennis bag on his shoulder?), turns to flash Inui a brilliant smile.
“Just picking up a hobby.”
Rating: G
Wordcount: 3544
Request: Fuji needs a new hobby, who is Tezuka.
Summary: semi AU, wherein Fuji is two years older than Tezuka and engages in sneaky private investigator-ly activities.
A/N: dear
dhorz, I'm not sure if this is what you envisioned entirely, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! && many thanks to
pndaftw and
ailura for beta-ing at such short notice.
i.
Fuji Syuusuke first notices the boy who lives opposite his office building in the middle of Umeda-san’s recount of her husband’s increasingly late returns from his tennis sessions at the club.
To her, her story is a newly discovered tragedy, but to Fuji it is hardly original. The plot is routine, tired; even if the sordid details do vary. There was Oshitari-san, who suddenly developed a remarkable interest in gymnastics as well as great flexibility, and turned out to be having an affair with his Pilates instructor. Momoshiro-san, who started spending most of the household budget buying massive amounts of grape Ponta that he never seemed to drink but which disappeared anyway, cans and all. Oishi-san, who pilfered the stuffed toys his wife had bought for his nieces’ and nephews’ birthday from the cupboard, with a preference for the teddy bears.
Fuji thinks, with a certain amount of scorn, that if he were them he would never let himself get caught, either in the supposed sacrament of marriage or in the act of cheating. The motto of a private investigator: Never let your guard down.
He notes absently that Umeda-san has a lovely voice, smooth and mellow like melted butter swirled in a pan. It trickles past his awareness and pools somewhere in his subconscious; he will remember what it says when he has to.
Across the street the bottom of a woman’s paper bag breaks and apples tumble out, rolling all over the pavement. The street is wide and empty and the apples gleam rosily where they stop in patches of light, and Fuji imagines that they are plump fish, darting and stilling in ponds of clear water shot through with sun.
The boy that emerges from the building is unremarkable (tall, lanky, bespactacled; untidy hair) beyond the fact that only he stops to help, producing a white handkerchief to carefully wipe off any grime the apples might have picked up and proffering them to the woman with a slight bow. Even from one floor up, Fuji’s intuition tells him that, from the line of his mouth and the set of his shoulders, he doesn’t smile much and probably has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
By this time Umeda-san’s composure has crumbled and she is crying, tears casting little splotches of shadow on the wood under the glass-top of his desk. He offers her a tissue from the lace-covered box on his right and murmurs something vaguely comforting, rising to fetch a cup of tea.
When Fuji looks out the window again, the boy is gone. Umeda-san’s tears are now little hiccuping sobs, and he gives her another tissue because the first is now just ragged edges and specks of white dotting her skirt.
There is a leaf fluttering weakly to the ground at the corner where the boy may or may not have turned.
i & i/ii.
Hobby /hɒbi/: An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
If this is the universally accepted definition of hobby, anything Fuji Syuusuke might take up is, arguably, precisely that.
This particular venture began as one, because Fuji thought he could probably do a better job than those dim private detectives waffling around in mystery novels, or those investigators who crept around and pressed themselves to brick walls in dark alleys. For one thing he hasn't any scruples about eavesdropping, and for another he is thin enough to fit into cramped spaces between drainpipes and alley walls, melting silent into shadows.
(He needs the extra money for rent, but that is secondary.)
It does make him feel rather cheated that it is so easy to be good at this, too. Two successful assignments and his name is discreetly dropped into conversation over high society teas, quickly becoming part of that knowledge which is necessary to survival in those circles.
Fuji Syuusuke is technically five years old; he is brilliant, and he is bored.
ii.
Inui announces two days after the meeting with Umeda-san that they are going to reorganise the office.
“My research shows that at least 76% of people feel less threatened and are more receptive to suggestions in non-cluttered environments,” with a pointed look in the direction of Fuji’s desk, which has beige folders stacked unevenly at either edge, seven-eighths of its surface covered in loose sheets of paper, and a steaming cup of tea in the left corner.
“You probably couldn’t even find a pen if you needed one,” and Fuji arches an eyebrow at him before delving into a particularly precarious sheaf of papers and emerging with a pen triumphantly held aloft. “If that is the pen you dropped two months ago and bent the nib of at 24.3 degrees, I meant a functional pen, or one with a non-crooked nib.”
“Straight things confuse me, Inui, or doesn’t your data already tell you that?” Fuji leans back on his chair, balancing on two legs and idly twirling the pen with his left hand. Inui no longer suspects he is being mocked: after a year and seven months working with Fuji, he knows he is.
“The shadows cast when your desk is in that position reduce visibility by 26 percent, with an cumulative increase of 0.07 percent past the hours of 6 p.m.,” he points out reasonably.
Fuji doesn’t reply, instead propping his chin on the heel of his palm, fingertips warm on his cheek.
The boy is there again today. This time he has a tennis bag hoisted onto his right shoulder, looking left-right-left before he crosses the road, pushing up his glasses with two fingers at the bridge. The sunlight glances off his lenses when he looks up at the sky, and Fuji is dazzled.
“Tezuka Kunimitsu, Seigaku high school’s tennis club ace.” This is partly why Inui makes such a good colleague: he answers questions before Fuji needs to ask them.
“I thought it important that we gain a better idea of our neighbourhood before we decided to relocate here.”
Fuji lets his spinning pen clatter to the table.
“I’ll just move my desk over to face the window, shall I?”
The tea is cold by the time they finish pushing the desk into position, but Fuji drinks it anyway.
iii.
After office hours he hangs the Closed! sign on the door and spends three hours looking through their newspaper archives, until his hands smell like carbon and cheap paper and he leaves grey imprints of the whorls on his fingers on Shinji-san’s case file.
He was a very patient child, he thinks hazily, somewhere in between a picture of a small and serious five-year-old Tezuka holding up a piece of paper coloured completely in neon green crayon with a grid over it (this is the tennis court after practice through my racket) and a dramatic article recounting his win against Eishirou Kite of Higa Chuu Gakuen that is replete with duelling metaphors.
Tezuka wins the majority of his matches in straight sets, but all told he has only played very few times as Singles One. He doesn’t believe in dating before graduating from university and has an ankle circumference of -- cm. His index finger is longer than his fourth: a “clear sign of masculinity”, according to the magazine reporting it. He has never lost an official match.
Fuji thinks with a small pang of regret that this invincibility makes him rather less interesting. Nobody is interested in justifying a god.
The windows of the building across the road are alternating rectangles of light and dark. Fuji wonders which is Tezuka’s, wonders if he has curtains at his windows. What sort they are: if they are flowery or striped or white, panels of light chiffon through which the sun falls in soft, parallel lines. This is something the interviews don’t say.
iv.
When he first started this hobby Yumiko asked him laughingly if he wanted her old trenchcoat to go sneaking around in. Even if it’s two seasons out of fashion, Syuusuke.
Why not?, he replied, and it hangs on the coat-rack at their office now, taking up a permanent space. The pockets are filled with dried sakura petals from when Yumiko last wore it, crumbling pale pink to the touch; the sleeves covered in lint.
It doesn’t fit him around the shoulders, but he likes the touch of authenticity it adds to their office. Today, though, he puts it on and slips unobstrusively into the crowd behind Tezuka, silent and nondescript: brown hair and brown eyes, sharp elbows and skinny wrists.
***
By the end of the day he has followed Tezuka to the tennis supply store, a street tennis court, the gym, and the Seigaku High clubhouse (where he lingers for an unusually long time talking to a short boy whose cap is barely visible over the bottom of the window frame). His only conclusion is that Tezuka is completely obsessed with tennis and his idea of a wet dream, unlike *most teenage boys', entails the best tennis players in the world surrounding him and serving tennis balls at him, at maximum speed. Simultaneously.
*which involve things of Unspeakable Immorality.
v.
Fuji feels the crash of thunder tremble through his chair, rumble low and threatening through his chest.
He wonders if it is possible to play tennis in rain like this. Japan has a lightning strike frequency of twenty-odd per square kilometre, and for people who wear glasses the raindrops will stipple their lenses, accumulating and trickling down in phases like ellipses.
“Pass Shinji-san’s file over, will you?” Inui’s voice is oddly muted, made distant by the rain, but it is enough for Fuji to remember that now is still within office hours, that this is now his regular occupation, and bend his head obediently over Takahashi-san’s hotel occupancy record.
vi.
He often tries to envision how they might meet.
Perhaps at the bookstore down the road: they will reach for the same book and their fingers will brush. They will discover their shared interests in Nietzsche and spend their days together in a dim apartment that smells of hotel linen and twilight, in a philosophical haze of Pavlov and Rawls and Descartes. It could be a bakery encounter, when Fuji buys a pie and drops his pencil on the way out, whereupon Tezuka will coincidentally enter and graciously, gracefully pick it up. He will invite Tezuka back for a slice of apple pie in gratitude, arranged on the whitest plate he owns with a sprig of whatever it is chefs put on food as decoration (the logistical concerns of this plan are secondary), and they will make friends over the steam wafting warm and white in swirls between them. There are lots of pretty places around: parks with benches made of wrought-iron curlicues, cafes with stainglass windows, fountains; Fuji envisions a meeting in each and every one of them.
The scene he imagines is always slightly out of focus, shaky and smudged with shadow, as if whoever took the picture was running towards the sun, shutter speed on slow.
*
Reality is a lot more prosaic. They need a photographer to cover Tezuka’s match against one Yukimura Seiichi, of Rikkai Dai Fukozu, so Fuji calls the number in the advertisement and gives his name, turns up at the interview on a sunny Saturday afternoon in a crisp shirt with a dossier of his photos tucked under his arm.
It turns out they’ve seen copies of his work before, so he sits opposite a large man with stubby fingers and eyebrows like two thick squiggles drawn with a fuzzy marker in a childish hand (glued-on pelts of hairy black caterpillars) and answers yes, no, no I don’t use photo editing software unless absolutely necessary, yes sir I can take leave from class and work and be there before nine. All very standard answers; Fuji allows his attention to wander.
The man’s office is full of pictures, sports stars that are two-dimensional cutouts of themselves, specimens pinned to the walls under sheets of fingerprint-free glass, faces opaque white where the light reflects off the shiny magazine paper. He fills in the blank voids of their faces with Tezuka’s, those paper dolls Yumiko played with when she was seven, but Tezuka’s expression stays firmly the same no matter how much Fuji tries to imagine it any different (even when he places it on a swimsuit-clad body: the eyes are still sharp as splintered shale, chin pointedly disapproving)
Fuji likes trying to change things that won't; it is less a hobby than a particular talent of his.
vii.
He takes a bus down to Seigaku High after work one day. The school hasn’t changed much since he was there, except that maybe the crack in the wall beside the gate is a little wider, and there are more shoeprints on the whitewashed wall than he remembers.
It’s 5.40 in the evening and the hallways are empty and still, awash with evening sun the colour of tea. Fuji takes the long way round to the tennis courts, straining his ears to catch the residual echoes of a ball against the concrete.
He pushes the door to the clubhouse open and stops. Blinks, because Tezuka Kunimitsu has just turned to look at him from where he is standing in front of the window with his hands in his pockets.
"I," Fuji says to break the silence. It takes him some time to realise that he doesn't actually know what to say, because this is not how he envisioned their meeting; their meeting was to be remarkable in some way, whether by virtue of setting or situation or the psychic connection that would manifest itself as almost-tangible sparks in the air between them. To his chagrin there is nothing but dust motes, drifting, catching the light. He smiles a little wider, stands a little straighter. "I'm Fuji Syuusuke. I was a student in the tennis club here a few years ago."
To his surprise Tezuka is looking at him appraisingly. "Fuji Syuusuke, first singles." It's not a question. "Ryuuzaki-sensei talks about you often, how they won the Nationals the only year you were in the club."
Fuji shakes his head slightly. "I only played tennis for fun, my brother is a lot more serious about it than me." From anyone else this would be false modesty, but from Fuji it is a simple statement of fact.
"I heard you were rather better than a somebody who just played for fun," Tezuka replies drily. Somehow in reality he looks less solid than Fuji has thought him to be, standing in a pool of twilight sun against an apricot sky, a backlit subject of a picture. Fuji has always had a keen appreciation of beauty.
He focuses on the wall between the window and the lockers, with its photographic documentation of every time they have won Nationals. The last photo is testimony to one of his discarded hobbies: he isn't in it because he took it. That explains the gap between Yamato-buchou and Inui; Fuji thinks wistfully that he really should've been in the picture because then at least Tezuka would have to see him on a regular basis whether he wanted to or not.
"Fuji-san. Would you do me the honour of playing against me?" Tezuka is formal enough that Fuji feels as if they are facing each other at a tea ceremony, signing a huge business deal. This is why Tezuka will forever be unchanging to the people that follow him: he was born serious and he will stay serious, like unweathered bedrock. The silence stretches between them, two people on either side of a strike-slip fault.
“No,” Fuji says at last, “No. I don’t play tennis any more.” It's childish, but he doesn't want to be indebted to their shared brilliance at tennis; he knows, already, that if anything does start he will always be Tezuka's second love, secondary to his tennis. Such is the danger of letting a hobby matter too much, so that everything fades into grayscale behind the gold luster of a championship trophy.
Tezuka looks at him, expression inscrutable, breakwater-impacable, doesn't say anything. Before Fuji can try to make amends (it will not be a concession), though, someone at the door says, "Buchou?" It's the boy with the cap he saw through the window: probably just a freshman, but despite that the air is suddenly different, sharper. Fuji hates him with an immediate, unreasonable instinct that says, rival. Tezuka picks up his bag and bows gravely to Fuji, then walks out.
Things don't change much, thinks Fuji. The last time he was here Yuuta walked out on him and everything is still the same, the rank smell of socks and unravelling rolls of grip tape trailing out of lockers, the unidentifiable growth in the crack between the lockers and the wall, the corner of the wooden bench below the window warped by damp.
viii.
Fuji calls Ryuuzaki-sensei and offers to play the freshman (Echizen Ryoma, says Inui, Seigaku's first year prodigy) as preparation for Nationals.
"Yes, sensei, I was just visiting the school during tennis practice and I saw Echizen-san playing... Yes, I think it would be interesting... If you don't mind, sensei? Tomorrow, then, at 5.45 after practice? Thank you." She is only too grateful for the challenge he is offering: it turns out that Echizen has prodigiously beaten every member of the team but Tezuka.
It takes him some time to find his tennis racket in the hall cupboard; the grip is sticky and slightly rank with dried sweat from games long concluded, inevitably in his favour. Tomorrow's will have to be no different.
viv.
He likes Echizen even less after actually meeting him; the boy is dismissive of this outsider, this interruption in his practice time with Tezuka. They rally for a while to warmup and Fuji misses a few on purpose because he doesn't feel like running for them. Echizen smirks at that and Fuji's returning smile is exactly a half-secret wide; when he hits back Echizen's opening Twist Serve (the advantages of having semi-eidetic memory and Inui) the vibration comes thrumming up his arm, through his chest in a surge of satisfaction.
Across the net Echizen looks disbelieving, as if having his Twist Serve returned is a prospect he's never imagined. He does come up with a few new surprises, but nothing Fuji cannot decipher in time, and after a while Fuji is playing with his eyes shut and by instinct.
It doesn't surprise him that by the time the score hits 4-2, Tezuka is watching through the fence. He pulls out his counters: one, two, three, Echizen surprises him into using number four, but he disguises it as an accident.
By the time he wins 6-4 the sky is overcast with curls of grey cloud and the smell of rain is in the air. The wind whips through the fence, lifting scrap paper from the ground and tossing Fuji's fringe into his eyes, making Tezuka's regular jersey flare out behind him like a cloak. It blows in Tezuka's direction and Fuji lets his feet follow, so that he drifts over to Tezuka and they are face to face through the fence.
"You don't seem very tired."
Fuji can't think of anything to reply to this that wouldn't sound arrogant, so he tilts his head back and looks up at the sky. It begins to drizzle, rain-dark splotches on the dull green and red of the court, beading the metal grid of fence; he figures that this is probably as romantic as things can get, standing out in the rain with a fence in between.
"I thought you didn't play tennis any more, Fuji-san." Tezuka is polite, but his words are pointed and Fuji is surprised to feel almost ashamed.
"Ryuuzaki-sensei thought it would be good practice for Echizen-san to play with someone outside the team," he demurs. "I was only too glad to help." The lie slips out easily enough, and Tezuka doesn't look entirely convinced but he nods, and Fuji takes the chance to say casually, "I'd play with you sometime if you wanted," and look as earnest as he can.
One side of Tezuka's mouth crooks upwards imperceptibly (Fuji's intuition tells him, in retrospect, that it is triumph) and he replies, "It would be an honour, Fuji-san." They retreat into the shelter of the clubhouse and decide on a time and place; Fuji watches Tezuka walk towards the busstop through the clubroom window with his umbrella held stiffly like a rifle, dissolving into an outline in the gauze of falling rain.
x.
5 o’clock on a Friday evening.
Inui looks up at 5.01 and sees Fuji standing at the door; doesn’t remember him ever being so concerned about leaving straight after work.
“You’re out fast today, Fuji.”
Fuji pauses, left hand on the doorknob and jingling car keys with his right (is that a tennis bag on his shoulder?), turns to flash Inui a brilliant smile.
“Just picking up a hobby.”