Title: Hatsukoi – Yesterday's Best Friend

Part 1: Yesterday's Best Friend

Author: AlseGold

Rating: PG

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-san 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-san or aforesaid entities.

Pairing: MomoRyo

Notes: Written for the Hatsukoi contest 2007.


It started out plain and simple.

Bicycle rides to school.

Burgers after school.

Street tennis together.

Laughter-in-arms, comrades-as-one.

Racing each other home in the rain.

Who-can-scarf-more-noodles-down contests.

Who-can-eat-more-burgers contests.

It was all Momoshiro Takeshi could ask for. They were team-mates, best friends, chums who'd go to any lengths for silly things just because they were doing it to-ge-ther. They'd even give up their dreams for each other.

Momoshiro didn't know when it had happened, but he always remembered exactly what had happened.

One day, he looked up.

Big, dark eyes of liquid, olive-green-gold, blackly-lashed.

Hair like rough, dark, silk-satin weave.

Pout like a delicate, half-unfurled, crimson rose in bloom.

Skin feather-soft and smooth, with tiny, fine hairs that gave just the right amount of rough to the touch.

Limbs so clean and straight and tempting, like the golden flesh of sun-ripened apples.

Youth in its first flush, with all its arrogance and attitude.

Lust first, or love first?

—No.

Horror first.

Yesterday's best friend was today's sudden fantasy; yesterday's carefree child was today's hormone-driven teenager.

He ran at first, as far as the eye could take him. Suddenly he had appointments after school: the dentist wanted all his teeth, his sister needed baby-sitting, his mother wanted him to cook lunch and dinner, his neighbour had broken both arms and a leg, his father needed an office boy every second of every minute of every hour of every weekend…

After all, it was wrong. It would have mattered half as much if the other had been a girl—but the other was a boy, like him. The burden was therefore the greater.

Suddenly teenage angst was real.

Hello, I'm in love.

Hello, I'm in lust.

Hello, I want my best friend in the worst ways possible.

It was like the world had turned turtle over night, and the sun rose from the north, and eclipsed at noon every day, and the currents of the ocean moved anti-clockwise, and the fish came out of the seas to walk on the sands.

How had he never noticed before?

How could he not have known?

He always went wherever the other went. And if he hadn't been invited along, he followed secretly anyway. It had always been like that, and it wasn't as if they didn't know about it—it was, he had always thought, a long-running joke between them, where he would follow to get good blackmail material and keep himself hidden in various ways, and the other would outwit him by catching him just when he thought he had found the best hiding place in all the seven oceans and six continents.

Never thought that cross, sour feeling of being left behind was jealousy.

Never thought that annoyed feeling when others barged in was being possessive.

Never thought he would care—like that—for him.

Everything had to change.

He was leaving.

Again.

But this time—

—not coming back.

He could feel it in his bones.

And if he borrowed dentists and sisters and neighbours and mother and father as excuses, he didn't think the other noticed.

Seventeen when he fell in lust, much younger when he fell in love—

—Eighteen when the other left.

Fly high and sky high.

Go chase your dreams, Echizen…

… and leave me here to mine.