Title: Change
Word/Page Count: 535/2
Author's Notes: I tried a new style of writing for this one- more angsty and reflective. It took all my power not to add dialogue into this, but in the end it turned out nice.
Summary: Kirihara reflects on change and the small events that lead up to big changes.
Sometimes, change is good. Most of the time, it isn't.
I still don't get how you change. I know it happens, but the reasons behind it, the motives- where do they come from? Just appear out of nowhere, ready to avenge your defeat?
Maybe they do, because Tachibana An came out of nowhere, like they all do.
I've never seen someone idolize their brother like that. It was fierce, adoring dedication, as if her whole life revolved around protecting him and only him. It was sickening, only succeeding in making me remember my own dysfunctional family. She had it so great. Her brother was a tennis genius, her parents were loving and adoring, and any number of boys were falling all over her. She needed imperfection in her life eventually.
That's why I hurt her brother. Not out of maliciousness, but out of spite and jealousy.
Everyone always assumes that I hurt blindly, getting everyone and anything in my path towards destroying The Three Monsters. It's partly true. I did hurt blindly, but I did have a goal- to win.
Fudomine is school with so much hate in its history. The team was built on spite, it's star players destroy there opponents from the inside out, and they're the only unseeded school of a competition where only the best, the seeded, go on to the Nationals. But what was it with that idolization of Tachibana that they had? He was a father figure in that small family of his. Rikkaidai has a family, too, but there's a big difference between the two. The Fudomine family has a leader and followers. The Rikkaidai family has no such thing. Although Mura is amazing and loving, he is not a leader; and although Sanada is a leader, he doesn't know how to express the familial love that our whole team has for each other. Because that's truly what we are- a dysfunctional family. It doesn't matter that Niou hides his feelings behind glares and pranks; he loves us all the same. It doesn't matter that Yagyuu is quiet and calculating; concern radiates from him.
But Fudomine didn't get it. They didn't get it all. They didn't deserve that win, pure and simple.
But of course, then Tachibana An showed up.
What was with her? She was the stand-up girl of the century, loud and proud and arrogant. It took me a very long to realize that I hated her because every time I looked in the mirror, I saw her. Well, not really her, but a blurry outline, incomplete but still recognizable.
And then she pushed me down those stairs at the junior selection camp. Well, she didn't really push me; she set the scene for an accident that fell into the wrong hands. It worked out like a bad murder mystery without any type of murder. I didn't even get injured; I grazed my cheek, but that was it. It was slowly blown out of proportion, but as someone else pointed out, it wasn't the results; it was the action.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we didn't change. Well, more like if I didn't change.
Maybe it's one of the few times change is good.
