Title: Dream within a Dream

Author: DnKS – giRLs

Rating: PG

Pairing: TezuFuji (implied), TezuRyo (one-sided)

Disclaimers: erm… the last time we checked, those boys were still not ours…

Warning: really, how many of our fics have you read? Surely you've known what our fics look like. Please bear with it since we all are devoted in OOC-ness and sugary-sap-soap-opera-with-extra-angst-mode.

Sakura trees are in bloom. It was so heart warming to see the pink petals dancing slowly in the flow of the wind. It was like I was inside a dream. Yes, a happy dream indeed.

But my dream was lacking something important in it. My dream didn't involve you. Why hadn't you come? I was waiting for you, yet you were nowhere I could see. My eyes had grown tired of searching for you. Did I ask too much? I only wanted to catch a glimpse of you. I just wanted to spring to grasp your hand, to woo your smile, to seek your eyes. But where were you? My dream could not be completed without your presence.

I knew I should not have hoped for this. It was too much. Who was I to want you? I was just someone under your command, was I, captain? Was I worthy enough to hope that someday you would look on me and acknowledged me, Tezuka Kunimitsu, my captain?

Sure, you would say that indeed you had been looking at me. I was flattered by your concern, I really did. But I wanted more. I wanted you to look at me in a different way from the way you always looked at us. I wanted to be someone special in your heart, and not just a usual team mates like you used to see me as one.

I tried to learn faster. I tried to be better, so that time I could brave myself to look at you in your eyes. I tried to aim higher so I could give you my brightest smile without any feeling of shame. So there would be a day when I could stand in the same level with you. That time I would finally be able to reach you, and my dream would become reality.

But no matter what I had done, I still lived within a dream. A dream of us, or should I say a dream about you and me? Because there had never been any 'us', right?

The only thing I could do was waiting. I waited for you on the school gate like I always did, because I knew you would show up sooner or later. Everyone had their right to live their dreams, and so I tried my best to at least make my dream looked more realistic by waiting for you there. I lived up my imagination that you would come for me and then we would come home together.

My dream was beautiful, but still it was just a dream, for moment like that never existed in the first place.

I saw you, then. You walked right to me, your bag on your shoulder and you had those pile of papers on your hand. I knew that you were being busied by the intra-school tournaments lately, so you always are the last person to leave the school. I knew so much about you, yet what did you know about me, captain? It was ironic, yet why did I still love the irony?

You came nearer, and nearer, I could see the glittering light on your eyes. Those glasses could not block it. You had it inside you, captain, and the never-ending light.

You walked faster, and faster, and I could feel the wind that came as you passed me by.

I only smiled, but you didn't even realise that I was there. You had never had me in your mind, then, captain. And I did my best not to spring to grasp your hand, to woo your smile and to seek your eyes. But I might stand far off, and gaze, and watched you pass unconscious by.

You might see me as a fool, eh, captain? But I had no other choice. If you were to blame someone, blame yourself then, for making me live in my dream.

I thought you would walk away until your figure became the blur silhouette on the far horizon, but you stopped. And I could not stop myself from hoping. Would I finally be able to come out from my dream?

Tezuka Kunimitsu, would you release me from my dream?

You tilted your face to meet my eyes. You looked at me with a look of concern on your face. Was I finally able to carve that concern upon your face?

"Echizen?" you said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm waiting," I said.

You thought for a moment.

"Waiting for who?" you said.

My mind screamed, "You!"

But my lips whispered, "Somebody."

I was not a coward, but I could not destroy my dream. Then again, it was the same as a coward would say.

You seemed confused and then you spoke, "But I thought I am the last person who left the school."

"Oh…" I said, didn't sure what to say else than that. "I think he has already come home, then…"

You might be confused by the way I said those words, but I was not a good actor like you, captain, who could maintain your stoic face every time. I was a fool, I was a dreamer. If you didn't let me have my dream to become reality, at least let me dream forever.

"Fine, then… I think I should come home now. Do you want to go with me?" you said, offering your hand to me, but I shook my head.

"No, thanks," I said. "I don't want to ruin your date with Fuji-sempai, captain…"

You looked startled. You could not possibly realize that I know you had been together with Fuji-sempai. I too didn't know myself how come I knew about that. I was neither a natural observer nor a person who liked to get involved in someone else's problem. But you were my dream, and it was only natural if I knew everything about you, right?

You came back to your usual self almost in an instant.

"I should have known that someone like you would soon realize it," you said. "But don't make it a very big deal."

"I know, "I said.

Then you bade farewell and I watched you walked away. Somehow, I felt a bit of happiness in me. That day I was able to speak with you, would there be one day when I would able to tell you everything that I had always kept within me all along? Or would I forever be stuck in my dream?

Would there be one day when finally I wake up from my dream?

Or would everything that I felt and kept be just a dream within a dream?

- the end –

(A/N : look around nervously OK, poison is fine….)