Beyond: A Tribute (PG-13, Part 2: The Art of Conversation)
© 2004 AlseGold
Title: Beyond: A Tribute
Author: AlseGold
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is created by Konomi Takeshi. This work is a piece of fanfiction and no part of it is attributed to Konomi-sama or any other entity holding any legal right associated with and arising out of Prince of Tennis . It was written purely out of fanservice and it is not to be used for profit or any false association with Konomi-sama or aforesaid entities.
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Part 2: The Art of Conversation
The casual bystander would have thought that Atobe Keigo had absolutely no reason whatsoever to drag Tezuka Kunimitsu by the hair, kicking and screaming if need be, back to Japan. Ore-sama himself could be immutable and unyielding as Mount Everest when necessary, but he liked to think that he was, when occasion called for it, flexible, magnanimous and many other excellent things, particularly when there was really no need to be so stubborn. The obvious difficulty was Tezuka’s misplaced sense of a few things-honour, dignity and all that.
Now, Tezuka Kunimitsu had the soul of someone living perhaps two thousand years ago-and he clearly regarded accepting Atobe’s offer as something that didn’t match with said ancient senses of honour, dignity, etc. Atobe quite appreciated loyalty, honour and the ancient samurai code or whatever it was that was part of Tezuka’s curiously inflexible approach regarding his personal affairs, but it could be a vastly outdated and silly concept when applied to specific situations-such as this one, for example. Tezuka had stuck to his stand for the last hour in near-perfect silence, which was enough to begin putting ideas into Atobe’s perfectly poised head... some of those ideas involving a fair amount of dragging and Tezuka’s hair. Atobe needed to bring Tezuka back to Japan for many reasons, the least of which was the thought that he, Atobe Keigo, would have to tell Fuji Syuusuke: “Ore-sama couldn’t get him to return.” - Couldn’t was a word that was anathema maranatha in Atobe Keigo’s vocabulary.
There was, of course, another reason altogether. Atobe never did things for pure charity; he had Plans For Tezuka Kunimitsu... and he wasn’t about to let them go to waste.
The thing was, Tezuka Kunimitsu was one of those rare beings whom Atobe Keigo condescended to respect and like, although you would need to do more than drag Atobe kicking and screaming by his hair before you could get him to admit it. They understood each other in a curious sort of fashion- each, after all, was a perfectionist in his own way, and like called to like. Atobe had no doubt whatsoever of his personal blessings in the way of fortune, beauty, brains, tennis genius, character, charm, charisma, leadership, etc. -you name it, he had it. It followed logically, therefore, that for him to be anything less than the best was a concept utterly alien and deeply insulting to someone as flawless as himself. Tezuka, on the other hand, strove to be the best he could, thanks to his formidable personal principles that made it positively sacrilegious for him to do anything other than fully explore, exercise and harness whatever potential he had in everything he chose to do, pushing himself further beyond every limit that just happened to pop up. To sum it up, the strongest point Atobe and Tezuka had in common-apart from being fond of fishing and tennis and various shades of purple-was that the word “limit” was simply not in their vocabulary. That they had somewhat different approaches did not matter much to either. They respected each other, not because they could each hit little yellow balls beyond the reach of most people, but because their mutual respect was rooted in the recognition of someone who knew what it meant to be the best. They were old friends and old rivals, and each acknowledged the other’s right to stand beside them as an equal.
But that aside-
“I will not run away.”
Atobe, wise in the ways of Tezuka, immediately recognised it as the mantra that Tezuka had been chanting ad nauseum for the last hour or so. He sniffed. “I’m sure you can do a lot by sitting here, surrounded by a bunch of incompetent fools who dare to call themselves your management.” The trick was never to answer Tezuka by way of a rhetorical question, because you never knew if he would answer. If he remained silent, you always looked stupid, and you invariably found yourself wondering whether you had actually meant him to answer. If he did answer, you still looked silly, because the force of your rhetorical question was then completely diluted.
Tezuka, predictably, was unmoved by Atobe’s sneer- stubborn and mulish, Atobe thought, with considerable annoyance and maybe just that little bit of admiration. It was a very Tezuka thing to do, and under other circumstances, Atobe might have allowed himself a faint smile of amusement. As it was, however-
“Atobe, I appreciate your offer.” There was a ring of finality in Tezuka’s voice. I do, truly, appreciate it, and understand. But I will not accept it.
Atobe privately reflected, with a mixture of rising irritation and resignation borne of long-standing friendship, that Tezuka had a good deal in common with a literature text-you always had to read and interpret between the lines, and you either got it right or you didn’t. There were no two ways about it. Atobe, in his personal judgment, was reasonably well-schooled in this sort of hit-and-run interpretation after nearly a decade of interaction with Seigaku and several fly-fishing trips with Tezuka. He decided that Tezuka was really repeating his I will not run away mantra. It was also Tezuka’s very polite way of dismissing him. A lesser mortal might have chosen to cut his losses, make like a tree and leave, but not Atobe Keigo. No, he was made of sterner stuff and steelier mettle, the man who would in future stand atop one of Japan’s most highly regarded international brokerage houses, dealing with hundreds of billions of American dollars worth of securities and futures-and who wanted Tezuka Kunimitsu as a linchpin in a budding scheme of his own.
That in mind, Atobe gave Tezuka his most charming smile.
“Tezuka, sack your management.”
If he was surprised by the sudden turn in the conversation, Tezuka did not show it. A keen glance was all he spared Atobe. It was more likely than not that he knew Atobe of old-the latter never lightly changed the subject of conversation, unless it was another way of getting what he wanted. Sure enough, Atobe, never one to miss an opportunity, held Tezuka’s gaze, and proceeded to give his unvarnished opinion with a flourish of his champagne flute for emphasis.
“Incompetent, naïve, overly cautious, inexperienced- and they don’t have the infrastructure or influence to compete with the Global Management Group.”
This was a reference to the giant sports management agency GMG, which had what was effectively a monopoly over the management of the top sportspeople in practically every lucrative sport in the world, from golf to tennis to athletics. Any company which intended to sign a famous sports star as a spokesperson for its products had to go through GMG. The days of Echizen Nanjiroh, the outsider from Japan who had thrived wild, free and agent-less on the courts across the world, were over. To his credit, Tezuka Kunimitsu had remained one of the rare few outside their reach; like the other rising Japanese tennis players of his generation, he had chosen to remain with the Japanese agency that had been recommended by their local National Tennis Association.
“The National Tennis Association promotes, encourages and organises tennis events. It is by no means their fault that the agency they recommend is not an expert in the management of international sports stars no matter how hard they try,” Atobe informed Tezuka. “Your biggest mistake will be to stay with them in the wake of this, which is going to lose you more than just a couple of torn-up Yonex contracts.” Atobe flicked his fingers in a clear gesture of derision. “Your press conference was held with no one but the others at your side and your legal counsel is just as inexperienced as your management. Let me remind you, Tezuka-our press are mostly polite and remarkably nationalistic. The Western reporters, on the other hand, are like wolves baying for blood, and they’re not treating you with kid gloves. In fact, if I may say so, they’re lobbing missiles at you from every direction.” Atobe’s mouth was puckered into a sour grimace. “Have you seen the phalanx of photographers outside? My security team took four hours to find a way in here without them noticing. Your landlady was very nice about it, by the way.”
“I noticed,” Tezuka said dryly. She did let you into my room, after all.
Atobe gave a casual, elegant shrug of his shoulders. “Well, it can’t be helped that my personal charm so overwhelmed her.”
Tezuka’s lips twitched.
“But to return to the point, Tezuka, your management does not quite appreciate the intricacies that are required in handling a proper publicity campaign in the Western world. Have you even read the American reports on your press conference? You tell me, Tezuka-am I right?”
Tezuka maintained silence. Get to the point.
Atobe, looking at that too-calm, too-silent face, felt a sudden anger spark through him, and he had to fight hard to stop himself from hurling his champagne flute, contents and all, into that face of carved marble. His lips curled, the closest he had come to showing disdain for Tezuka over their long acquaintance. “I don’t think you truly understand how bad this situation is. Or do I really have to tell you that you may never be able to return to the pro circuits? Genius is one-third of success on the circuits, Tezuka, and hard work is another third, but it is management that makes up the rest of it.” Atobe’s face was grim. “Tezuka, we’re not in Tokyo anymore. Grow up!”
Perhaps it was the fact that they had never spoken to each other like that, or else it was the almost contemptuous intimation that Tezuka was some Dorothy of Kansas, lost in Oz. Whatever it was, for the first time during the visit, the world no. 6 showed a glint of emotion. His eyes were cold behind those glasses, although his voice remained unchanged. “You speak as if I am guilty.” I thought you knew me.
“Would I even be here if I believed that?” retorted Atobe, a touch of heat in his tone. “The Tezuka I knew in Tokyo would have chosen seppuku before he even touched performance boosters.” Atobe’s expression mingled what might have been read as contempt, mixed with something else that the watching Tezuka could not quite define. Perhaps it was bitterness. “I speak as though you are guilty? You think I would do that?” Atobe’s voice rose, just enough to indicate his displeasure with Tezuka. “May I remind you that you have been found guilty-the running slogan in the anti-doping circles is to shoot first and ask questions later. The AMTP will not have forgotten the last scandal and the criticism of the press so easily. This is a chance they won’t miss to put on a show that they’re serious about wiping out doping. What does it matter if you’re innocent?!”
Tezuka’s eyes flashed and he, too, raised his voice a little, just to match Atobe’s escalating volumes. “You understand that is exactly the reason why I cannot go. I will not give others the excuse to pounce upon this as a sign of my guilt when-”
“I understand that you can do nothing by sitting here! What can you achieve staying here where nobody can help you?! You know you cannot do this alone! Tezuka Kunimitsu, you have chances and opportunities to achieve dreams that I will never havefortherestofmylife, chances that I would give up everything for if I could!! To stay here-why not say you are giving up?!”
Three years.
Atobe had been promised three years on the professional circuits by his family upon his high school graduation from Hyotei. Although he, like the other present Japanese professional tennis players, had played sporadically in a few tournaments on the world junior tennis circuits during his high school years, he had needed to play for a full calendar year on the junior and satellite circuits in order to gain enough entry points to get into the professional world of men’s tennis. It had taken the legendary Steffi Graf only three years to rise over one hundred world rankings to world number 6, and on that basis alone, the Atobe family had reluctantly gave their permission. If Atobe Keigo had any tennis genius worth speaking of, three years would certainly be adequate for him to break into the world’s top rankings. And perhaps, after that, they could talk more about it. That at least had been Atobe’s hope.
So it was that in the beginning, there had been Atobe Keigo, Yukimura Seiichi, Sanada Genichirou and Tezuka Kunimitsu, four of Japan’s greatest tennis hopes-if not her very greatest since Echizen Nanjiroh-and these were the four who became part of the hailed “Princes of Tennis”, a remarkably lame label some newspaper hack had coined (rumour had it that the hack was some sports ingénue from the West, but there was good authority that it was actually one Inoue Mamoru of a Japanese sports magazine who had been responsible for “Tennis no Oujisama”). The label stuck and they became fêted as the harbingers of a New Age of Tennis on the men’s circuit. But hardly a year into his debut on the men’s tennis circuit, Atobe Keigo’s dream ended abruptly and he returned to Japan to take up responsibilities due to the scion of the family who was one of the largest shareholders of Japan’s best-known brokerage firms. It was a job he could delegate to no one else, for he was his father’s only child, and his father was dead. His father’s share of the company was being held in trust for him by his mother, until Atobe turned twenty-one; likewise, she remained as his proxy at shareholder and board meetings until he came of age. So when he was almost twenty and poised on the brink of tennis greatness, Atobe Keigo became a first-year freshman at the University of Tokyo in Japan, exchanging the green and red tennis courts he loved for the dog-eat-dog playing courts of the financial world.
If Tezuka noticed the bitterness that had rung through Atobe’s voice, he did not show it.
Atobe calmed down a little, although his voice stayed unusually sharp: “My offer is more than a flight out. I can arrange for a public departure, in which you will announce a recall back to confer in Japan with a new legal team and your new management. It will be nothing out of the ordinary; even the average idiot can tell that you will do no good by staying here, or even rushing to the ATMP headquarters.”
Something in Atobe’s voice made Tezuka glance up. “New management?”
“I will be setting my own management group.” Atobe’s eyes met Tezuka’s without smiling. “And I want you to be the first client.”
“What about the brokerage firm?”
“That’s for the future,” Atobe answered. “Eventually I will retain a financial interest and part ownership in this management agency, and there will be a board of which I will be chairman. This...” He paused briefly. “This is something I want to do.”
Tezuka’s eyes softened a little in comprehension. Atobe missed tennis dreadfully... and perhaps in Tezuka and all the others, he saw a way of helping them achieve the dreams and ambition he had had to give up. In short, Atobe had found a new way to be part of tennis again.
This is something I want to do... and you know me, Tezuka. You know we need this. Atobe leaned back in his chair. “Tezuka.”
“...”
“We had big dreams once, didn’t we?” Atobe tilted his head thoughtfully, and rotated his wrist a little, so that the clear golden liquid in his glass swirled gently. Through it, he could see Tezuka... albeit a somewhat twisted view of Tezuka, shaded in gold and wobbly all over, like the reflection found in curved mirrors at a fun fair. “We knew that we could do anything, because we could, andthe world was our playground. There was nothing that could stand in our way, because we had time on our hands. We were young, and we had the will to try where others before us had failed, and the ability to succeed-we had so much before us, waiting for us to take it into our hands.” Atobe fell silent, staring into his glass and absently swirling the liquid round and round.
Tezuka cleared his throat. “Some of us have those dreams still.”
“Yes. And some of us...” Atobe stopped speaking and glanced up. “Tezuka, have you heard about Yukimura?”
“Aa.”
Atobe set down his glass. “He had a recent attack, didn’t he? I spoke to Yanagi before I left Japan. He does not suspect anything, but I have a feeling, Tezuka-it may not be long now, before Yukimura has to retire.”
Tezuka was calm. “I think he understands that it is something that can never fully heal.” I believe he has prepared for that eventuality.
Atobe’s laughter was a brief, sharp burst of bitterness. “But like you, he will go on-until the disease cripples him in the middle of a match.”
Tezuka’s left shoulder jerked slightly. “Sometimes, our dreams are bigger than we are.” But they never stopped us from trying, Atobe.
“No.” Atobe put down his glass. “Wrong, Tezuka. Our dreams-are what we are.” This is why we never stopped trying, Tezuka. “We shared a common dream, Tezuka. You, me, Echizen, Yukimura, Sanada, Kirihara, Kaidoh, Ibu... We came here, Tezuka-”
“-to change the world, shape our future and be the future,” finished Tezuka levelly. And where, may I ask, is all this going?
You may ask, but I shall not answer yet. Patience. “Personal glory,” Atobe mused, “was always a part of it... just never the be-all and the end-all...”
“...” Stating the obvious, aren’t we? Get to the point.
“Tachibana Kippei has agreed that he will be part of this. And in a few days, after his match with Sanada, I will speak to Yukimura.” Atobe’s smile was decidedly feral. “I have already extracted Oshitari Yuushi’s promise to come on board... And Fuji Syuusuke should be joining us.” Ii data, Atobe thought, much amused as Tezuka’s eyes flashed surprise. He was quite sure he could pull Fuji Syuusuke in once he called in the very large favour Fuji was about to owe him. “So, what do you say? You’ve never had to fight a dirty fight before, Tezuka. Well, this is only the beginning. I can promise you that you won’t be disappointed. After all, who better to handle this than people who will know what we want and how to get it? Who else can we trust, hmm?” Atobe pressed the tips of his fingers lightly together, already visualising the Save Tezuka campaign, brilliantly orchestrated, financed and credited to the Atobe Management Group (AMG). “Who else, Tezuka, except our own people? Who else will believe us-or help us?”
“Atobe.”
“What?!” snapped Atobe pettishly. I’m throwing you a lifeline-take it, damn it! I swear, if I hear you say anything that means “I won’t run away” one more time, I’m throwing this glass of wine in your face-
“You’re hired.”
I - won’t - run - away.