Title: Behind the Mask
Category: Anime/Manga » Prince of Tennis
Author: dramagirl725
Language: English, Rating: Rated: M
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Romance
Published: 03-27-14, Updated: 03-27-14
Chapters: 1, Words: 2,966

Chapter 1: The Move

Behind the Mask New

Chapter 1: A New Start

Author' Note: This is my second attempt at this story. It has been six years since I first came up with this concept, and there are still days that I think about it. That made me realize I should really give this story another shot.

This is an OC/Fuji pairing. The first time around I made you (the reader) the OC, but it seemed to be too distracting/confusing for people. Now my OC has her own name: Jennifer Writer. I love this character to death and I hope you will too.

This story exists inside the world of Prince of Tennis. The only difference is they are in high school instead of middle school. Jennifer is 17, which will be the same age as Fuji and the other seniors in this story. Some of them will be 18 depending on their birthday month. I know in Prince of Tennis the characters are younger, but due to the violence and sexual content of the story I wanted to make them closer to being legal adults. Jennifer also has a little brother and sister who are both 14. They are freshman in high school just like Ryoma.

This is rated M for a reason. Please take notice of the following warnings: This story contains mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Disclaimer: While I may own my original character Jennifer Writer, I do not own Prince of Tennis, or any of the characters involved with the show.

Chapter 1: A New Start

October 10th 2014

Jennifer Writer used to believe that when a person became overwhelmed with exhaustion, sleep would be an easy thing to accomplish. At 3:30 in the morning with her eyes open wider than an owl's, Jennifer realized she was wrong.

These days Jennifer used 3:30 in the morning as a time to reflect on all sorts of things. While part of her wished she could fall into a peaceful dreamless sleep, there was another part of her that forced her mind to stay awake. After all, if Jenifer were to fall asleep there was no guarantee that her slumber would be peaceful. Sleeping was dangerous. Jennifer knew that. When she was awake, she could at least attempt to control her thoughts.

At the moment she was doing her best not to think about how every night the cellar would grow colder now that it was October. She was also blocking out the fact that she was skipping enough meals to be suspected of anorexia. Instead Jennifer thought about why she preferred to refer to her room as the cellar, when the rest of her family called it a basement. In her mind cellar was a much more accurate term for a very simple reason. Cellar had the word cell in it. Every night when she was dismissed from the rest of the house, and the miserable existence known as her life, she was locked in this cold underground room. In the morning she would be released to repeat her routine all over again. Jennifer often felt like a prisoner in her own life, so the word cellar was the best way to describe these four walls. Despite the harsh sounding label, Jennifer was quite fond of the cellar. After all, it is one of the few things she could call hers. This made it special no matter how dark, dusty, or cold it may be. Even the nights she was sent in here by force rather than choice, it was still hers.

Before Jennifer finally drifted to sleep, guilt successfully invaded her thoughts. The reason you don't own anything is because you don't deserve it. How could you ever deserve to have nice things when your own brother and sister don't even have a mother because of you? Your father doesn't love you because you have done nothing to earn it. 'STOP IT!' Jennifer cried out to the empty room. The voice in her head vanished, so she rolled over to finally get some much-needed rest.

On the other side of the world it was 4:30 in the afternoon and Fuji Shusuke was doing what he did best; putting on a pure smile. Internally Shusuke was miserable. The paperwork had finally gone through for Yuuta to be transferred to St. Rudolph Gakuen. Starting Monday his little brother would be gone and it was entirely his fault. He had really been looking forward to his brother joining the tennis team with him this year, but that was never going to happen now.

'Excuse me ladies, but I see that Tezuka is heading home and I really need to talk to him about the upcoming practices.' It was a lie of course, but with Fuji's kind smile and sweet tone no one ever questioned him. He just couldn't deal with screaming fan girls flirting with him at the moment. Normally he was very tolerant of such behavior, but today the prodigy's popularity just reminded him of losing Yuuta.

'Hey Tezuka, mind if I walk home with you?' Fuji asked as he ran to catch up with the captain.

Tezuka slowed down while Fuji caught up to him. The two continued to walk in silence. Usually it was Fuji who would start up trivial conversation, but today he was in no mood to do such a thing. Fuji wished Tezuka wouldn't think anything of his unusual silence, but he knew this was a foolish thought. Tezuka was almost as observant as he was. As if on cue the captain spoke up.

'St. Rudolph's could really use a good south paw on their team.'

'Is that your way of saying you're switching schools too?'

'Yuuta will thrive there.'

For the first time all day Fuji's smile slipped. 'If it weren't for me he could have thrived here.'

'If it weren't for you he would have no motivation to improve. You light a fire in people, I should know.'

'Because that turned out so well for you.' Fuji retorted.

Tezuka stopped walking and turned to face Fuji. His face was firm. It was a very similar look to the poker face he usually carried, but Fuji could see the slight differences. Tezuka was upset.

'Fuji Shusuke! Do not for one second consider yourself to be in anyway responsible for my arm. You weren't the one to strike me, and you certainly weren't the one who agreed to play that match injured.'

In three years this was the first time Tezuka mentioned the incident. Normally Tezuka refused to talk about such personal matters, so Fuji took advantage of the rare opportunity. Opening his piercing blue eyes, Fuji faced Tezuka head on and asked a question he had been worried about for quite some time.

'Will you be able to play at Nationals?'

'Nothing will stop Seigaku this year.'

'That is not what I asked you.'

Tezuka turned back to face the road, and continued walking home. The conversation was clearly over, so Fuji didn't bother prodding for more details. After all, Tezuka's silence told him all he needed to know.

'Get your ass up here before I have to drag you up the stairs.' Mitch Writer called from up above. Based on his tone, something was already causing the easily angered man stress. Not wanting to add to his mood, Jennifer quickly stretched and headed upstairs for another day.

'Good morning Dad.' Jennifer spoke in a way that could have been interrupted as statement or a question. It was a bad habit she had developed over the years when she spoke to her father.

Mitch felt the appropriate response to this was a swift slap across the face. Jennifer winced, but she didn't make a sound. Making noise would only add to her father's anger, and in any case the slap wasn't that hard. Her father was guilty of many things, but he certainly wasn't stupid. He would never risk leaving a handprint on Jennifer's face for the public eye to see.

'How many times do I have to tell you not to speak unless you're spoken to?' Before Jennifer had time to debate whether or not she should respond her father continued.

'Never mind, I don't have time for your bullshit this morning. Just get your morning chores done before the bus comes, and don't even think about trying to snag breakfast.'

Jennifer nodded and headed over to the kitchen sink to wash the pan her family used to make eggs in. From the corner of her eye she noticed Ryan and Alexia finishing their breakfast with their heads down. They did this routine anytime their father spoke to their elder sister, and truth be told Jennifer preferred it this way. There was no reason for them to feel frightened of their father. Jennifer made sure to always take the heat whenever something went wrong. She loved her brother and sister more than anything else in this world, and protecting them was the only thing that prevented her from following in her mother's footsteps on her worst days.

With barely two seconds to spear, Jennifer ran onto the bus fully out of breath. "Good morning John" she gasped to the bus driver. As usual he just glared at her. 'Sure,' Jennifer muttered under her breath 'everyone else in this town hates me, why should you be left out.'

Jennifer knew that wasn't a completely true statement. At least she had Ryan and Lexy. She smiled thinking about the nickname everybody called her sister. She hates the name Alexia. Jenifer walked passed Lexy's seat on the bus without a second glance, but this was all part of an act. Ever since Jennifer found out Lexy was losing friends because of her, she pretended not to talk to Lexy during school hours. She offered to do the same with Ryan, but he insisted that Jennifer should still sit next to him on the bus.

'Morning Rye.' Jennifer internally gloated at the nickname, because she knew no one else could get away with calling her brother that. "You know I can sit somewhere else if…"

"Will you just shut up and sit down already Jenny. No matter how badly you want to sit somewhere else you are stuck with me sis." He pretended to be annoyed, but Jennifer could see the smile he was fighting off.

Once she sat down however, Ryan's face really did turn upset. "How is your wrist?" He softly asked looking straightforward to avoid all eye contact. Jennifer mimicked his body position as she also looked straight ahead. It was normal for the two to avoid eye contact whenever subjects like this came up. Of course Ryan was referring to last night when their father decided to teach Jennifer the importance of not burning people's dinner. He felt the best way was to hold her wrist down on their cast iron stove. Some of the skin is missing and it still burns Jennifer like crazy, but Ryan can't see it. It is hidden away like the rest of her scars.

'Better.'

Ryan shot her a disbelieving look.

'Really, burn wounds are kind of simple, once you remove the heat you remove the pain.'

The rest of the ride was mostly silent with a few comments made about stupid stuff neither of them really cared about.

Jennifer had mixed emotions about school. On the one hand she was highly intelligent and it was the best escape from her farther. On the other hand everybody, both student and teacher alike, hated her.

'These last test grades were nothing short of atrocious. I told you the importance of studying. Out of the entire class I only had 1 A, 3 B's, 4 C's, and the rest was a D or worse. Considering there are 24 of you, you can only imagine the class average. The tests are in you bins, once you grab them you can go. Jennifer, please stick around for a minute.'

After the class cleared out Jennifer approached her teacher. 'You wanted something Ma'am?'

'You scored a 96 on this test." Jennifer smiled largely despite the fact her teacher said this like it was a bad thing. "Clearly you are the brightest person in this class, so you should have an A, but with your work ethic you will always be a failure. It is obvious you didn't study, yet here you are with a 96, the only A.'

'Can I go now?' Jennifer asked biting her lip into a fake smile. She was putting all her energy into not pointing out that if she really was the only A than maybe the problem was with the teacher.

'Fine, I just hate how it is always the uncaring disrespectful ones that knowledge comes easiest to.'

Funny I was thinking the same thing about you Miss Rindski. With a polite nod Jennifer left out of the side entrance to avoid most people. She couldn't afford to get into another fight. It's not like she ever went looking for trouble, but the other students loved making her a target. They all heard rumors about the type of man her father was, and many were convinced that she was following in his footsteps. Which in their defense wasn't completely untrue. Jennifer used to do a decent job defending herself, until last May when she was told she would be expelled if she got into one more fight. From that day on she did everything in her power, to avoid her peers altogether. This plan worked well for Jennifer last year, but this year it was proving to be much more difficult. Somehow her classmates found out she wasn't allowed to retaliate. The only people she ever told were Ryan and Lexy, so Jennifer knew it must have been one of her horrible teachers that let her secret slip. Personally, her money was on Miss Rindski.

When Jennifer arrived at home she was pleasantly surprised to see that her father was not there. She figured he was doing 'business', at least his definition of the word. But by the time it was nine and he was still not home she knew something had to be wrong. At this point she wasn't sure if she preferred him to be late because of business or because he was getting drunk. Before she had time to weigh the pros and cons of each option, Mitch Writer ran through the door in a sober panic.

Business it is then.

'Everybody get in here now!' He called, but it was really unnecessary seeing as everyone was already in the family room. " We are leaving America tomorrow and moving to Japan."

'TOMORROW?' Lexy, and Ryan shouted at the same time, but Jennifer remained silent. This wasn't the first time they had to pick up and abandon their lives. It was however, the first time they were leaving America. Jennifer knew her father chose the country for two reasons. One: it was on the opposite side of the world so he could get as far away from here as possible. Two: Some of Mitch's best business partners were Japanese. Jenifer already knew the language from all those years spent helping her father. Ryan and Lexy on the other hand, had no background in Japanese.

'Yes tomorrow, I already set everything up, and this new house is huge, you will absolutely love it there, so start packing.'

Lexy and Ryan were not quite as filled in as Jennifer, but could catch on quick enough as to why they were leaving and knew it was best not to ask questions.

Perhaps this is why everyone was so shocked to hear Jennifer ask one herself.

'We're moving into a huge house! Is that really something we should be doing?' It was extremely rare for Jennifer to ever question her father, so when she did she had a damn good reason. Jennifer knew her family's current financial situation, and it wasn't good. Her father had been borrowing a lot more money than he was making lately. Now that they were moving to the same country as his boss, Jennifer was very concerned what the consequences would be if he didn't pay up soon, and she guessed that a huge house wasn't a step in the right direction.

Mitch walked towards his daughter in an angry trance. As he did this the reality of what Jennifer just did began to sink in.

'Dad … I … I'm … Look, I'm really sorry… I didn't mean … I just meant that.' There was no turning back now. Her words could not be unspoken. With her father now just a few steps away she did what little damage control she could. In a remarkably soft and calm voice she spoke past her father to her shaking siblings. 'Ryan. Lexy. Go upstairs and start packing. I will help you as soon as I can.'

'But?' Ryan interjected.

'Just go.' Jennifer saw Lexy back out of the room, but Ryan was still frozen, so she gave him a very sharp look and added 'Please.'

As the twins left the room they saw their father begin to remove his belt. Half way up the stairs they heard the sound of leather colliding against flesh. This was followed by a muffled cry. The sounds faded, but still could be heard when they reached their rooms, so Lexy did the only thing she could think of. She blasted the radio.