And All Things Left Unsaid for thallein
For: thallein
Title: And All Things Left Unsaid
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji...ish
Rating: PG
Summary: Fuji was never quite sure whether he was fascinated by tennis or by Tezuka. He finds out, eventually, that it doesn't matter.
Warnings: Slight vagueness?
Disclaimer: PoT is the property of Konomi Takeshi.
A/N: I kind of assumed a weird mix of anime and manga canon while writing this -- here, Tezuka and Fuji don't play a ranking match in third year, but one of the flashback scenes from Ep. 174-176 does happen. Other than that, I hope you'll like it, thallein! I took the 'confession' prompt and ran with it, and it was great fun to write. :)
They head away from the hospital, and the wooden handle of the umbrella grows cool to his touch in the frigid air. Tezuka, he can tell, is trying to hide his surprise at finding him there, saying something about it only being a checkup. Still, Fuji can see the way he holds his bag, the way his arm is stiff in the sleeve of his winter coat. He doesn’t comment.
There is one moment of recklessness, of anger, of...something, at how incorrigible Tezuka is, that causes him to ask the question.
"Which would you have wanted -- for us to have gone to different schools, or to be on the same team like this?"
Tezuka pauses, answers in that unreadable way of his that isn't really an answer, but rather a question that continues to hover in the air. It challenges Fuji to follow up on it, to take things into the unknown -- to be more honest than he has ever been.
He shakes his head. Smiles instead and points out something safer.
"Tezuka -- it’s snowing."
*
Tezuka comes back to Japan on a Friday in December, fourteen months after he left. His flight is supposed to have touched down only that morning, but when Fuji gets back to his house after school, it's to find Tezuka standing there with an armful of garden tools and explaining to Fuji's mother why he's back so early.
"They began winter break a week ago in Germany," Tezuka says; there is a hint of bemusement there, as if he can't fathom why anyone would be willing to take so much time from their work. Fuji is smiling even before he waves to catch their attention. It's the same hard-working Tezuka he's used to.
There's an instant, as he walks over to them, where he has the ridiculous urge to shake Tezuka's hand. Perhaps it has something to do with how everything is also toofamiliar, given how different he is, after this time -- how different he already was, before Tezuka left.
The moment passes.
Fuji's room, once they get upstairs to it, is in the same state of organized disorder that he left it in that morning. He kneels down in the middle of the mess and gestures Tezuka over to the beanbag chair in the corner; Tezuka takes it, though not before glancing at it warily, with an expression suggesting that he expects it to jump away from under him any second.
Fuji gathers up a few English papers to make a space for himself on the floor. "...You could help me with some of this if you have time, you know."
"I do have my own assignments for the holidays."
"You brought them with you?"
"No," Tezuka replies. The corners of his mouth twitch. "I didn't think it would be realistic. I don’t remember the last time I brought homework over here and ended up doing it undisturbed.”
Fuji thinks of throwing a wad of paper at him, but -- reflecting on all those times he's interrupted Tezuka's work with sudden observations stemming from something on his computer, on his bookshelf, outside the window -- he decides Tezuka has a point. "I'd have thought that nothing could distract you anymore, after how hectic your school in Germany sounded. Everything you said about the noise in the dormitories there, the people everywhere...It's even gotten you to talk a lot more."
Tezuka comes as close as Tezuka ever could come to making a face that says, It has?
"You did when you were writing, you know." He's thinking of Tezuka's emails in traditional letter format, long paragraphs that were a lot more coherent than the ones Fuji sent in return. It had kind of made sense, seeing as Tezuka had had more to talk about in the form of new people, new places, new experiences -- none of which Fuji had known anything about.
"It's different when I'm writing anything," says Tezuka ruefully. "Right now...I haven’t spoken this much Japanese for a very long time. Hearing it still sounds a little strange, to tell the truth."
"Oh?" Fuji settles into the spot he’s cleared for himself on the floor. "I'm sure people are going to give you lots of chances to practice."
He smiles. It really does feel as though Tezuka was never gone.
He isn't sure whether he finds it comforting or disappointing.
*
Tezuka is busy all that weekend with his family. Relatives from near and far drop by to speak to this picture-perfect young kinsman of theirs who had, against all odds, managed to end up following a strange life on the other side of the world. Fuji can imagine perfectly how Tezuka, polite and flustered, would be doing his best to field five, ten questions at once. Trying valiantly to stave them all off.
He asks about the gathering over the phone. "It went well," says Tezuka, in that blank voice that dares him to laugh. Of course, Fuji laughs.
Later, he tries to figure out how his own family would react, if he were the one returning after a long absence. He thinks he has a good idea of what the scene would be like; it's the going away itself, though, that he can't seem to grasp.
*
Tezuka tells him that he'll likely visit the middle school during the day on Monday ("I'm sorry that not everything comes to a stop just because I'm back," he deadpans; "The nerve of them," Fuji agrees.) When Fuji stops to glance about at tennis practice that afternoon, however, it is to see him -- who else? -- standing a little ways from the courts.
Tezuka doesn't remain unnoticed for too long, either. The upperclassmen take note first, whispering, pointing, their expressions wavering between grudging fear and awe. Next is probably Kikumaru, who rises with a move between a handstand and a cartwheel, drops the balls he's been collecting, rushes in the direction of the fence and shouts what is likely the first thing that comes to his mind.
It turns out to be, "Tezuka! Inui said you told Fuji to tell Oishi to tell us that you're going to be at the middle school, just so you could surprise us -- and you did!"
For a second, Tezuka catches his eye. Fuji shrugs and smiles, swears again that he can see Tezuka's lips twitch in return. Tezuka standing with Yamato-buchou by the chain-link fence for the rest of the afternoon should've been a distraction, but, somehow, he still manages to win his best-of-three practice match in straight sets.
He's aware the whole time, of course, of Tezuka's unreadable -- almost clinical -- gaze following him about. Of how acutely it pushes him on.
They walk together from the school, and it's a little like meeting Tezuka at the hospital that one other day, almost two years ago now. He feels as though he could go anywhere, say anything if he wanted. As before, though, the moment is comfortable and soothing, but at the same time too fragile to break.
"How was everything at the middle school?" He asks instead.
"Kaidoh is doing a very good job as captain," Tezuka replies. "He even apologized for how -- ah -- enthusiastic the rest of the team was in greeting me."
Fuji laughs, trying to imagine anyone being more enthusiastic than Kikumaru earlier. They continue along, lingering on the smaller details from the day -- the differences in climate between Japan and Germany, the extent to which their classwork matches up, how everyone except Inui has gotten taller and how everyone except Inui finds this quite logical. The last piece of information causes even Tezuka to shake his head in resignation.
If he has noticed that Fuji is the only one of their year to be wearing the Regular uniform, he does not make it known.
*
They never did play that match they'd promised each other at Nationals.
Tezuka left on a morning in early October. Only his family accompanied him to the airport, but the night before they'd invited Fuji over for dinner, and afterward he and Tezuka had wandered outside. "I'm sorry," Tezuka had said, as they passed in view of the lights blazing above the street courts by the park. "We never got to play that match."
"Me, too," Fuji had replied automatically, except that he hadn’t been; the only thing he could've blamed it on was an irrational determination to leave something unfinished, so he wouldn't become one more thing for Tezuka to move away from.
Whether he had meant his game or something else entirely, he isn't sure; tennis and Tezuka -- he's never been good at keeping them apart.
*
They do talk about tennis, one week later, at the party that Taka-san's father hosts for the entirety of the former tennis club. They -- even Tezuka -- show up in their school uniforms. As usual, there's wonderful food, and, as usual, everyone fights over it, even though there's more than enough to go around. Only Echizen is conspicuously missing; though he shouldn't be thinking it, somehow that makes things seem more like old times than ever.
He and Inui are the only ones sitting at their booth -- the center of commotion having long since moved across the room -- when Tezuka joins them. "Tezuka," Inui says immediately, "I've been meaning to ask -- how is your arm?"
"It hasn't been bothering me at all," answers Tezuka. "The therapists there know what they're doing."
Inui leans forward with an eager look that would've scared someone who didn't know him quite this well. "Do you think, Tezuka, you could tell me some of your general impressions of the academy in Germany? The tennis players our age, for example -- what do they do that is different?"
Tezuka blinks. "A lot of things. I have not yet met another data player, for example."
Fuji takes a long sip of water that he doesn't really need. Tezuka could always evade questions with the best of them.
"Yes, Tezuka, but perhaps begin with a comparison? How would the best players there do if matched against, say, Rikkai's Yukimura?"
Tezuka answers that one seriously, lets Inui lead him through several more, all things that Fuji's heard before from their correspondence. Fuji sits and listens, thinking idly at first that he'd been right -- Tezuka is more talkative -- and then gradually allowing the names and places and techniques to wash over him in a blur, speaking of something too real and too wonderful for him to think too much into.
He looks up to find that Inui has been summoned over to the bar by Taka-san's father ("Inui-kun, what're the ingredients to that drink mix you were telling me about earlier?"), and that Tezuka is looking at him expectantly, as if in the wake of a question. "Oh, I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said, I would still like for us to play that match sometime."
"...You still remember," he replies blankly.
"Of course I do," says Tezuka. "I've been looking forward to it. I was hoping you'd have time this time around."
He nods, makes the mistake of glancing at Tezuka's expression; he didn't have to look, really, to know the seriousness that has always been a part of Tezuka, always threatening to spill forth in all its intensity, if the moment arose.
"You have gotten better," Tezuka adds. "You never cared enough to try for a Regular spot during first year, not before."
Fuji collects his empty tray and rises from the table. "I wanted to see," he says. "How far I could get. Or start to see, at any rate."
(If he thinks back far enough, clearly enough, he knows he did begin trying at the very end of their first year in middle school -- right after Tezuka had become a Regular.)
*
Coming out of the restaurant, they head a short ways down a quiet street to Tezuka’s bus stop. The sounds of the gathering gradually dissipate in the night air behind them, as everyone else goes their respective ways as well.
"You know," he tells Tezuka. "There are so many players over there at so high a level -- don't you think it's strange of you to be still keeping up with what we're doing?"
Or wanting to play me, for that matter.
"It's different with them. I think sometimes we're too similar."
"Oh?"
Tezuka looks like he's thinking hard for a moment. "It's a very valuable opportunity," he says finally, "to be in the middle of people who play tennis so well and never grow tired of it. But I can't but help think that there could be something more, the way there was for our team last summer. You, Inui, Kawamura -- maybe you don't want to play for always, but there were things in your games that I don't see anywhere else."
Fuji frowns. He can only suppose that if you assembled ten people like Tezuka, they might all be too driven, too hard-working and too perfect to get anywhere together.
"You found yourself, last year," Tezuka says, quietly, "I don't know if I'd be able to do that, if I had to."
There's a brief silence. One lone car speeds past them, reckless and urgent on the otherwise empty street.
Fuji says, "You think that, if I tried, I could fit right in there."
"...I do."
"You think that I could play as well as -- better than -- them. Than you."
His tone might have been more accusatory than he'd intended, for Tezuka turns and looks straight at him.
"Can't you?"
It should've been the biggest chance he has taken in years, except that he's oddly resigned to it. As if the choice has always been made for him, and he never stood a chance, really.
"We do need to play that match -- let me know when."
*
Yumiko sticks her head in the door of his room and catches him staring out the window; Two rackets and a tennis bag are already laid out neatly at the foot of the bed.
"Syuusuke," she sighs, "just play tennis."
*
He plays tennis.
It takes him a while, but eventually he finds it -- the concentration that allows him to think about nothing but each game, each point, each arc the ball slices through the December air. He remembers this feeling from not that long ago, remembers the exhilaration of being pushed to his limits and being able to come up with an answer. He marvels at how he seems to be able to do better, go further, each time it happens.
As impossible as it sounds, Tezuka has indeed improved dramatically. But so has he, Fuji decides, and this is his chance to show it.
It takes three sets on an empty street court amid occasional snow flurries before, on match point, Tezuka sends a shot out of his reach. The instant that the ball strikes the very corner of the court, straight upon the juncture of two perpendicular white lines -- his mind captures it clearly and greedily, like a camera set to the fastest shutter speed. It's an image he knows he’ll remember for a long time to come.
The process of falling to earth, after it, is an odd one. They walk to the net, and the scene around them seems to come back to focus in bits and pieces, sharper and more certain than before. Tezuka gives him a silent, appreciative look across the net as they shake hands. He is warm and solid and so very real, like he always is once he steps onto a tennis court.
Fuji finds himself thinking, in that instant, of Tezuka's hundred different expressions that people seldom see, of the meticulousness of the words he's written these past several months; of Tezuka's powerful but simple answers to everything, delivered in a way that makes everyone stop to listen to them. He thinks of the possibility of being able to play Tezuka again, on tennis courts like this one, all over the world.
It seems absurd that he could ever have thought he wanted anything else.
Tezuka clears his throat almost hesitantly. "Good game."
"Good game," he answers. And, in the moment, it seems right -- as everything else does -- to drag Tezuka's hand to rest on the net cord along with both of his own. He leans forward over the net, head bowed, laughs inwardly at the strands of hair that fall into his eyes. Even without looking, he can feel the slight smile Tezuka wears fade to something a little more curious, an unspoken question in his eyes.
The thing with finding yourself is that, when it happens, you know with perfect certainty that it was meant to be all along.
"Tezuka," he begins. "Can I tell you something?"
*
end
*
Title: And All Things Left Unsaid
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji...ish
Rating: PG
Summary: Fuji was never quite sure whether he was fascinated by tennis or by Tezuka. He finds out, eventually, that it doesn't matter.
Warnings: Slight vagueness?
Disclaimer: PoT is the property of Konomi Takeshi.
A/N: I kind of assumed a weird mix of anime and manga canon while writing this -- here, Tezuka and Fuji don't play a ranking match in third year, but one of the flashback scenes from Ep. 174-176 does happen. Other than that, I hope you'll like it, thallein! I took the 'confession' prompt and ran with it, and it was great fun to write. :)
They head away from the hospital, and the wooden handle of the umbrella grows cool to his touch in the frigid air. Tezuka, he can tell, is trying to hide his surprise at finding him there, saying something about it only being a checkup. Still, Fuji can see the way he holds his bag, the way his arm is stiff in the sleeve of his winter coat. He doesn’t comment.
There is one moment of recklessness, of anger, of...something, at how incorrigible Tezuka is, that causes him to ask the question.
"Which would you have wanted -- for us to have gone to different schools, or to be on the same team like this?"
Tezuka pauses, answers in that unreadable way of his that isn't really an answer, but rather a question that continues to hover in the air. It challenges Fuji to follow up on it, to take things into the unknown -- to be more honest than he has ever been.
He shakes his head. Smiles instead and points out something safer.
"Tezuka -- it’s snowing."
*
Tezuka comes back to Japan on a Friday in December, fourteen months after he left. His flight is supposed to have touched down only that morning, but when Fuji gets back to his house after school, it's to find Tezuka standing there with an armful of garden tools and explaining to Fuji's mother why he's back so early.
"They began winter break a week ago in Germany," Tezuka says; there is a hint of bemusement there, as if he can't fathom why anyone would be willing to take so much time from their work. Fuji is smiling even before he waves to catch their attention. It's the same hard-working Tezuka he's used to.
There's an instant, as he walks over to them, where he has the ridiculous urge to shake Tezuka's hand. Perhaps it has something to do with how everything is also toofamiliar, given how different he is, after this time -- how different he already was, before Tezuka left.
The moment passes.
Fuji's room, once they get upstairs to it, is in the same state of organized disorder that he left it in that morning. He kneels down in the middle of the mess and gestures Tezuka over to the beanbag chair in the corner; Tezuka takes it, though not before glancing at it warily, with an expression suggesting that he expects it to jump away from under him any second.
Fuji gathers up a few English papers to make a space for himself on the floor. "...You could help me with some of this if you have time, you know."
"I do have my own assignments for the holidays."
"You brought them with you?"
"No," Tezuka replies. The corners of his mouth twitch. "I didn't think it would be realistic. I don’t remember the last time I brought homework over here and ended up doing it undisturbed.”
Fuji thinks of throwing a wad of paper at him, but -- reflecting on all those times he's interrupted Tezuka's work with sudden observations stemming from something on his computer, on his bookshelf, outside the window -- he decides Tezuka has a point. "I'd have thought that nothing could distract you anymore, after how hectic your school in Germany sounded. Everything you said about the noise in the dormitories there, the people everywhere...It's even gotten you to talk a lot more."
Tezuka comes as close as Tezuka ever could come to making a face that says, It has?
"You did when you were writing, you know." He's thinking of Tezuka's emails in traditional letter format, long paragraphs that were a lot more coherent than the ones Fuji sent in return. It had kind of made sense, seeing as Tezuka had had more to talk about in the form of new people, new places, new experiences -- none of which Fuji had known anything about.
"It's different when I'm writing anything," says Tezuka ruefully. "Right now...I haven’t spoken this much Japanese for a very long time. Hearing it still sounds a little strange, to tell the truth."
"Oh?" Fuji settles into the spot he’s cleared for himself on the floor. "I'm sure people are going to give you lots of chances to practice."
He smiles. It really does feel as though Tezuka was never gone.
He isn't sure whether he finds it comforting or disappointing.
*
Tezuka is busy all that weekend with his family. Relatives from near and far drop by to speak to this picture-perfect young kinsman of theirs who had, against all odds, managed to end up following a strange life on the other side of the world. Fuji can imagine perfectly how Tezuka, polite and flustered, would be doing his best to field five, ten questions at once. Trying valiantly to stave them all off.
He asks about the gathering over the phone. "It went well," says Tezuka, in that blank voice that dares him to laugh. Of course, Fuji laughs.
Later, he tries to figure out how his own family would react, if he were the one returning after a long absence. He thinks he has a good idea of what the scene would be like; it's the going away itself, though, that he can't seem to grasp.
*
Tezuka tells him that he'll likely visit the middle school during the day on Monday ("I'm sorry that not everything comes to a stop just because I'm back," he deadpans; "The nerve of them," Fuji agrees.) When Fuji stops to glance about at tennis practice that afternoon, however, it is to see him -- who else? -- standing a little ways from the courts.
Tezuka doesn't remain unnoticed for too long, either. The upperclassmen take note first, whispering, pointing, their expressions wavering between grudging fear and awe. Next is probably Kikumaru, who rises with a move between a handstand and a cartwheel, drops the balls he's been collecting, rushes in the direction of the fence and shouts what is likely the first thing that comes to his mind.
It turns out to be, "Tezuka! Inui said you told Fuji to tell Oishi to tell us that you're going to be at the middle school, just so you could surprise us -- and you did!"
For a second, Tezuka catches his eye. Fuji shrugs and smiles, swears again that he can see Tezuka's lips twitch in return. Tezuka standing with Yamato-buchou by the chain-link fence for the rest of the afternoon should've been a distraction, but, somehow, he still manages to win his best-of-three practice match in straight sets.
He's aware the whole time, of course, of Tezuka's unreadable -- almost clinical -- gaze following him about. Of how acutely it pushes him on.
They walk together from the school, and it's a little like meeting Tezuka at the hospital that one other day, almost two years ago now. He feels as though he could go anywhere, say anything if he wanted. As before, though, the moment is comfortable and soothing, but at the same time too fragile to break.
"How was everything at the middle school?" He asks instead.
"Kaidoh is doing a very good job as captain," Tezuka replies. "He even apologized for how -- ah -- enthusiastic the rest of the team was in greeting me."
Fuji laughs, trying to imagine anyone being more enthusiastic than Kikumaru earlier. They continue along, lingering on the smaller details from the day -- the differences in climate between Japan and Germany, the extent to which their classwork matches up, how everyone except Inui has gotten taller and how everyone except Inui finds this quite logical. The last piece of information causes even Tezuka to shake his head in resignation.
If he has noticed that Fuji is the only one of their year to be wearing the Regular uniform, he does not make it known.
*
They never did play that match they'd promised each other at Nationals.
Tezuka left on a morning in early October. Only his family accompanied him to the airport, but the night before they'd invited Fuji over for dinner, and afterward he and Tezuka had wandered outside. "I'm sorry," Tezuka had said, as they passed in view of the lights blazing above the street courts by the park. "We never got to play that match."
"Me, too," Fuji had replied automatically, except that he hadn’t been; the only thing he could've blamed it on was an irrational determination to leave something unfinished, so he wouldn't become one more thing for Tezuka to move away from.
Whether he had meant his game or something else entirely, he isn't sure; tennis and Tezuka -- he's never been good at keeping them apart.
*
They do talk about tennis, one week later, at the party that Taka-san's father hosts for the entirety of the former tennis club. They -- even Tezuka -- show up in their school uniforms. As usual, there's wonderful food, and, as usual, everyone fights over it, even though there's more than enough to go around. Only Echizen is conspicuously missing; though he shouldn't be thinking it, somehow that makes things seem more like old times than ever.
He and Inui are the only ones sitting at their booth -- the center of commotion having long since moved across the room -- when Tezuka joins them. "Tezuka," Inui says immediately, "I've been meaning to ask -- how is your arm?"
"It hasn't been bothering me at all," answers Tezuka. "The therapists there know what they're doing."
Inui leans forward with an eager look that would've scared someone who didn't know him quite this well. "Do you think, Tezuka, you could tell me some of your general impressions of the academy in Germany? The tennis players our age, for example -- what do they do that is different?"
Tezuka blinks. "A lot of things. I have not yet met another data player, for example."
Fuji takes a long sip of water that he doesn't really need. Tezuka could always evade questions with the best of them.
"Yes, Tezuka, but perhaps begin with a comparison? How would the best players there do if matched against, say, Rikkai's Yukimura?"
Tezuka answers that one seriously, lets Inui lead him through several more, all things that Fuji's heard before from their correspondence. Fuji sits and listens, thinking idly at first that he'd been right -- Tezuka is more talkative -- and then gradually allowing the names and places and techniques to wash over him in a blur, speaking of something too real and too wonderful for him to think too much into.
He looks up to find that Inui has been summoned over to the bar by Taka-san's father ("Inui-kun, what're the ingredients to that drink mix you were telling me about earlier?"), and that Tezuka is looking at him expectantly, as if in the wake of a question. "Oh, I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said, I would still like for us to play that match sometime."
"...You still remember," he replies blankly.
"Of course I do," says Tezuka. "I've been looking forward to it. I was hoping you'd have time this time around."
He nods, makes the mistake of glancing at Tezuka's expression; he didn't have to look, really, to know the seriousness that has always been a part of Tezuka, always threatening to spill forth in all its intensity, if the moment arose.
"You have gotten better," Tezuka adds. "You never cared enough to try for a Regular spot during first year, not before."
Fuji collects his empty tray and rises from the table. "I wanted to see," he says. "How far I could get. Or start to see, at any rate."
(If he thinks back far enough, clearly enough, he knows he did begin trying at the very end of their first year in middle school -- right after Tezuka had become a Regular.)
*
Coming out of the restaurant, they head a short ways down a quiet street to Tezuka’s bus stop. The sounds of the gathering gradually dissipate in the night air behind them, as everyone else goes their respective ways as well.
"You know," he tells Tezuka. "There are so many players over there at so high a level -- don't you think it's strange of you to be still keeping up with what we're doing?"
Or wanting to play me, for that matter.
"It's different with them. I think sometimes we're too similar."
"Oh?"
Tezuka looks like he's thinking hard for a moment. "It's a very valuable opportunity," he says finally, "to be in the middle of people who play tennis so well and never grow tired of it. But I can't but help think that there could be something more, the way there was for our team last summer. You, Inui, Kawamura -- maybe you don't want to play for always, but there were things in your games that I don't see anywhere else."
Fuji frowns. He can only suppose that if you assembled ten people like Tezuka, they might all be too driven, too hard-working and too perfect to get anywhere together.
"You found yourself, last year," Tezuka says, quietly, "I don't know if I'd be able to do that, if I had to."
There's a brief silence. One lone car speeds past them, reckless and urgent on the otherwise empty street.
Fuji says, "You think that, if I tried, I could fit right in there."
"...I do."
"You think that I could play as well as -- better than -- them. Than you."
His tone might have been more accusatory than he'd intended, for Tezuka turns and looks straight at him.
"Can't you?"
It should've been the biggest chance he has taken in years, except that he's oddly resigned to it. As if the choice has always been made for him, and he never stood a chance, really.
"We do need to play that match -- let me know when."
*
Yumiko sticks her head in the door of his room and catches him staring out the window; Two rackets and a tennis bag are already laid out neatly at the foot of the bed.
"Syuusuke," she sighs, "just play tennis."
*
He plays tennis.
It takes him a while, but eventually he finds it -- the concentration that allows him to think about nothing but each game, each point, each arc the ball slices through the December air. He remembers this feeling from not that long ago, remembers the exhilaration of being pushed to his limits and being able to come up with an answer. He marvels at how he seems to be able to do better, go further, each time it happens.
As impossible as it sounds, Tezuka has indeed improved dramatically. But so has he, Fuji decides, and this is his chance to show it.
It takes three sets on an empty street court amid occasional snow flurries before, on match point, Tezuka sends a shot out of his reach. The instant that the ball strikes the very corner of the court, straight upon the juncture of two perpendicular white lines -- his mind captures it clearly and greedily, like a camera set to the fastest shutter speed. It's an image he knows he’ll remember for a long time to come.
The process of falling to earth, after it, is an odd one. They walk to the net, and the scene around them seems to come back to focus in bits and pieces, sharper and more certain than before. Tezuka gives him a silent, appreciative look across the net as they shake hands. He is warm and solid and so very real, like he always is once he steps onto a tennis court.
Fuji finds himself thinking, in that instant, of Tezuka's hundred different expressions that people seldom see, of the meticulousness of the words he's written these past several months; of Tezuka's powerful but simple answers to everything, delivered in a way that makes everyone stop to listen to them. He thinks of the possibility of being able to play Tezuka again, on tennis courts like this one, all over the world.
It seems absurd that he could ever have thought he wanted anything else.
Tezuka clears his throat almost hesitantly. "Good game."
"Good game," he answers. And, in the moment, it seems right -- as everything else does -- to drag Tezuka's hand to rest on the net cord along with both of his own. He leans forward over the net, head bowed, laughs inwardly at the strands of hair that fall into his eyes. Even without looking, he can feel the slight smile Tezuka wears fade to something a little more curious, an unspoken question in his eyes.
The thing with finding yourself is that, when it happens, you know with perfect certainty that it was meant to be all along.
"Tezuka," he begins. "Can I tell you something?"
*
end
*