HEART DEMON

Chapter One: His Demon

Kirihara walked to the wall with the piece of chalk in his hand. He pressed himself against the wall, and above the white line indicating where the net should have been, he carefully traced the shape of his body.

"Is he a--a monster?"

"Be careful! He'll hurt you!"

"He's a demon!"

"Shut the hell up!" Kirihara growled, giving his head a hard shake and tried to concentrate on his tracing.

"…a--a monster?"

"…He'll hurt you!"

"…demon!"

"Shut UP!" he yelled at the wall.

All that did was hurt his ears when the sound rebounded back to him.

The voices didn't stop.

The voices never stopped.

They were with him all the time, especially when he was doing something tennis related. Which was pretty often. And when his own head wasn't goading him, other people were.

Where else could the voices have come from?

They called him a monster, a demon. All of them.

Kirihara didn't used to really mind. In fact, he used to really enjoy his violent ways. Sometimes, in a match, crushing his opponent became more important to him than actually winning.

He used to love to do that, hurt his opponents, make them feel pain, and yet have them continue playing…so that he could hurt them some more.

He used to love seeing them tremble before him, loved to see even the strongest of them cower in helplessness and fear.

And his teammates had never stopped him. He knew, very distantly, that he made them uneasy, that they didn't really approve of his methods.

But hey, he always won. Normally, his opponents were too scared by the third or fourth game that the rest became a piece of cake.

And so he had continued, until…

"Tennis should not be used to breed hatred."

Until he had lost in that match.

Then he knew he couldn't go on like this.

"Tennis should not be used to breed hatred."

Personally, Kirihara didn't give a damn as to what Fuji thought.

"Have you seen your limit, Akaya?"

But yes, he had seen it. He had seen his weakness, and most of all, he had felt the fear. No, the terror. The complete and utter horror of knowing that the person on the other side of the net was out to get him, out to destroy him, out to crush him, tear him apart until the very sight of a tennis ball sent him running in the opposite direction, crying.

Later, of course, he figured out that Fuji had had none of those intentions, and that he'd just been imagining things.

And really, he didn't care if Fuji had a problem with him.

It was just that, now, Kirihara himself had a problem with the way he did things.

"Right." Done tracing, he pocketed the chalk and took out a tennis ball. Returning to the baseline, he struck.

"Damn." There was a small scuff mark on the wall, within the lines of the chalk, right where the person's head would have been. Kirihara cuffed himself. No, no, this wouldn't do.

Taking out another ball, he tried to focus. Out of the chalk lines. Out of the chalk lines. Keeping both eyes on the 'chalk person', he tossed the ball up.

"Damn!" The ball had landed outside of the chalk lines, all right. In fact, it had landed out of the court itself, and bounced off to a place he couldn't see.

Really, he needed more practice on this 'hitting away from the body' thing.

"Excuse me, is anyone there? There's this tennis ball--"

Kirihara turned to see a girl, about his age, holding up a ball and looking around. She was from Rikkai Dai too, he could vaguely remember. She was a volunteer at the Junior Invitational Enrichment Camp, where he was currently training.

"Yes, it's mine. Thank you--"

The girl saw him. She gasped.

Well, he couldn't really blame her. Seeing as she wasn't going to come over to him any time soon, Kirihara walked briskly towards the girl, raising his hand to take the ball. "Thanks," he said again.

When he was three paces away, the girl started shaking at the knees.

When he was two paces away, her eyes had grown wide, her mouth moving soundlessly.

When he was one pace away--well, strictly speaking, he never really got as close at one pace away from her, because she'd already dropped the ball and kicked up her heel by the time he had gotten to the spot she used to stand.

Kirihara watched the ball fall to the ground, bounce and roll away.

It was strange, seeing someone absolutely terrified of him and not feel the least bit gleeful about it.

Was he really that bad?

He slowly took out another ball, trying to forget all of it.

Tennis practice…concentrate…

"Monster!"

"Demon!"

"Evil…"

"AHH!"