Tormalyne
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. Not me. This is a source of endless frustration in my life.
Twelve nights before he went to Germany, Tezuka left the doctor's and rode the bus home, where his parents fussed over him and his secret. When they were done, he ate dinner and went over to the tennis courts. He hit balls until he had no more coins in his pockets to feed into the machine. In the fluorescent light of the indoor courts, Tezuka hit shots that bounced off the metal pipe the balls had come from, and stopped himself from executing his no-bounce drop shot twenty-three times.
Six nights before he went to Germany, Tezuka was doing math homework in his room when the phone rang. Oishi was on the other end, his breath short from his evening run. They stayed up talking about the upcoming Kantou tournament. Oishi talked about the morale of the team, and Tezuka listened, his pencil sitting on the desk over the sheet of finished problems.
Three nights before he went to Germany, Tezuka lay in his bed and thought of the next day's tennis practice. There would be speed drills to run, exercises precisely calculated by Inui to train his body and to improve his concentration. That night, Tezuka dreamt of running one-hundred laps to escape drinking the Super Remix Vegetable Juice, and coming across the finish line: the baseline of the courts at the national tournament. He spent the night with the future of his tennis club, and images of the boy that he wanted at the head of it.
Then there was the Kantou tournament. Seigaku won. One week later, Tezuka decided to go to Germany.
Tezuka's last night in Japan was supposed to be spent only with his family, without anything to remind him about why he was leaving the next day except for the racket-shaped bag that was waiting for him by the door. His family didn't try to avoid the issue, but his mother talked about the sights he would see in another country instead of how he would look once he was back in his regular jersey, on Seigaku's tennis courts. His father asked how he felt about going away for so long instead of how he felt about leaving his team in the middle of a tournament. Tezuka had expected this.
What he hadn't expected was his mother's knock on his door after dinner while he was checking over the clothes he had packed. Even more surprising was that she was there to show in a visitor.
What actually shocked him was that his guest was Echizen Ryoma, standing by the door in a T-shirt and jeans as though it was the most normal thing in the world.
Echizen was smirking, Tezuka had time to note, before the boy had crossed the room and leaned in toward him. Echizen was on tiptoe, his mouth was right by Tezuka's ear, and one hand was fisted in Tezuka's shirt to keep his balance.
"Come back soon, Captain. Or I'll have taken your place."
Echizen's breath was warm on the side of his face and left a sense of damp even after he had walked from the room and let himself out of the house. He left Tezuka standing stone-still between his bed and the door.
He returned to his packing, but Tezuka thought that this was a more compelling reason to return to Seigaku quickly than even his promise to Oishi.
He should have expected something like this, Tezuka realized. He knew enough about Echizen to understand that the boy never stuck to the plan, and didn't pay attention to what was supposed to happen, unless it was to win.