Yay! Enjoy the fic!
She sat alone in her room, tilting her head and looking slightly to the left, where the window was. She glanced at a white and purple picture frame. The frame had glitter stars all over it. She smiled as she recalled her childhood. Glitter, stars, hearts, pretty looking shapes, and anything nice, that was what she liked. Inside the picture frame that she once dearly loved, was a picture that she would be willing to sail across the Pacific Ocean just to take one look at it. In the picture, was a boy that she once admired and cared for, she still cared. But now, he was much more distant than ever.
She sighed as she thought of the moment the picture was taken. This picture was not meant to be taken. It happened as an accident. It was really Shiba the reporter who wanted to take a picture with the prince. Sakuno sat about two feet away from him, and in the split second when the picture was to be taken, she was coincidentally pushed towards the prince. Shiba went out of the picture, and it became the treasured moment of Sakuno and Ryoma-kun.
The picture was taken after the Tokyo District Tournament ended and Seigaku, once again ruled all the matches. However, this time, they did not win as easily as they did in the previous years. This time, there was a one worthy team that they fought against. Fudomine they were, their black jerseys were their trademark. Sakuno recalled the eye patch that Ryoma-kun was wearing in the picture. His eye was injured during the match against Ibu Shinji in Fudomine. The accident, as they all call it, Ryoma-kun lost grip of his racket and it flew towards the pole holding the net. The racket broke as it hit the pole. One part of it flew back to him and hit his eye.
She could clearly remember the shock she felt, the shock everyone felt when they saw the blood streaming down his cheeks. He was covering his eye carefully, his head shaking slightly as he endured the pain. She couldn't stop herself but run into the tennis court. She knew she shouldn't have been doing this, but she lost her self-control then.
Sakuno ran into the courts and told Ryoma-kun to stop the match. She wanted him to care for his injured eye first. She couldn't stand seeing the one she cared for the most bleeding on the courts, keeping the so-called sportsmanship. She never said that sportsmanship was a bad thing, and she never said that trying until the last minute was anything to be ashamed about. Maybe it was just herself. It was all right for everyone else to see a twelve year old boy bleeding like mad on a court, refusing to give up. But it was not all right for her.
Was it because she felt differently about him compared to the other people?
So the others didn't try and stop Ryoma-kun because she was the only one who felt protective over him?
Maybe she just didn't get the whole idea of sportsmanship, the idea of never giving up, regardless of anything happening to you.
That was the story behind the eye patch the prince was wearing. It was her side of the story.
She picked up the white and purple frame and took out the picture from the inside, staring at it for a longer moment, remembering more and more of the times spent with the prince.
So she had once taken a picture with a so-called prince who was now a tennis super star, admired by millions to billions of fans. His distinguishing good looks had drawn many girls to drool over him. His red coloured rackets that he had used since the very ten years ago when she first saw him play. His rather messy dark hair with shining turquoise highlights which gleamed with pride under the sun. His trademark smirk he used when he tortured his opponents, and in the end he always won. There was also his infamous phrase which he used on the inferior.
He was so distant, yet he was once in the same school as her, under the same roof almost every weekday. He had once taught her tennis every Sunday morning. He had more than once commented that her hair was long. He had waved goodbye, his own way, when he left to the land of milk and honey, the land of freedom, where he continued chasing after his dreams, in the meantime also fulfilling his father's.
She had waited for him as his dream became true. She watched him everyday as he had stride nearer to his goal. She watched him as he took over Wimbledon. She had cheered quietly, out of his sight as he smiled at the audience.
But of course she was out of sight. How could he ever notice her, she was watching his matches on television after all.
She was many thousands of miles away from the one she cared about. Ten years since she last saw him, he never came back to Japan.
Sakuno sighed as she looked away from the picture. Should she be forgetting him already? He was never going to come back, and he had lost contact with almost everyone now, with the exception of perhaps contacting Momo-senpai twice a year. There was almost no news from him except the ones you see on television or newspapers.
'Samurai Jr. conquered Wimbledon. What would be his next motive?' as the headlines of the newspaper from yesterday had said.
The Samurai, as his new name was, left no comment to this question. It was seemingly as he didn't want the reporters to follow his tracks onto his next intention.
He wasn't coming back, that was for sure. He probably found some nice foreign girl already. He lived in the foreign lands for ten years, right?
Forget him, Sakuno told herself. She had waited for so long that she was getting exhausted from watching his all his matches but not being able to see him in person.
She threw the picture into the waste basket.
"Goodbye, the prince of tennis," she said.
So it was ten years of tennis. Wimbledon had taken him ten years to take over. That wasn't bad, was it? Other players took longer that he did, if he remembered correctly.
He was now in America, attending interviews with nosy people who asked weird questions about him. His manager was so eager to advertise his popularity. And soon, the people remembered him not for tennis, but for his physical features.
The cat eyed male with his distinctive qualities walked out of the front door of his hotel. He headed to the convenient store at the opposite pavement. He wanted to get ponta, that's all. Who knew that once he snatched the 'conqueror' title from some previous ruler, it would make him an instant super star?
There were reporters all over the place, and hungry fans tried to get a picture or two out of him. Others tried to force a hand shake from him. It was good that he had decent training in the past ten years. His coach not only trained his tennis, but also taught him essential skills of dodging thirsty people who wanted a lot from him. He started darting quickly through the crowds, occasionally hearing well thought out questions from the reporters.
"What do you decide to do after you became number one in the world?"
"Do you decide to start a relationship with your loved one?"
"Do you have a loved one?"
"Are you going to return to Japan?"
The reporters seemed to have researched very thoroughly on him, and have recognised the fact that he hadn't returned to Japan since he left after he won Tezuka buchou. And they also intended to be very interested in his personal life, if he had one. How was he supposed to own a personal life if he were showered with people who tried to bug him wherever he went? That was something that he would like to find out.
He ran across the street into the convenient store. Guards from the hotel had known that he was the number one in the tennis world, and decided to serve him with five-star service. They rushed over to the other side of the street, before the insane crowds got over. They guarded the entrance of the store before chaos happened. The shopkeeper, who had some common sense went and shut the door of the store, blocking the noise from the Samurai Junior's ears. Finally, there was some peace in the world.
Ryoma looked at the selection of many drinks, and chose his very favourite grape ponta. He took it from the shelf and went to the cashier. The woman at the cashier seemed very excited to see someone so famous standing before her. She took out a notebook and asked for an autograph. Ryoma signed it quickly and paid for his drink. He started wondering about the reporter's questions.
Where would he go next? He had taken the title of number one in the world, now what? He pondered onto the other questions, his loved one? He had never thought about that over these ten years. Never had a girl crossed his mind.
He made his way across the street into the hotel again. He dodged from the psychotic flood of humans who tried to get into his elevator as he pressed the closed button; a hand almost got stuck between the doors. It was luckily pulled back out before it broke off.
Ryoma opened his can of ponta and started sipping it. He pondered back to the questions from the reporters. What were his next intentions? Maybe he should go back to Japan, after all. He had contacted Momo several times, but not a lot. Maybe he should go back and visit him.
The prince went back into his hotel room and shut the door. He locked it, and then sat on his bed. He took hold of his tennis racket and looked for a tennis ball.
Rummaging through his suitcase that he had carried around for ten years, he found one tennis ball. He had always wondered why his tennis balls kept going missing after practise. He looked at the ball that he had just taken from his suitcase. He had never seen this ball, perhaps because he had never looked so deeply into his suitcase. Who knew what would be at the very bottom there?
It was a very old ball; the green colour was almost unrecognisable. He stared at the ball for a moment, noticing some eccentric black marks on them; those marks vaguely looked like something about number one. Then words popped into his head.
Hair too long, his mind had told himself. Ryoma was wondering where he had heard that phrase before; it seemed far too familiar to be forgotten.
After being reminded for long hair, images started popping into his mind. Auburn hair, pigtails, brown eyes, and porcelain skin, a person's face just formed in his head without him thinking. The image labelled itself. An arrow appeared pointing to the head of the girl, Ryusaki, it wrote. The word Ryusaki reminded him of his tennis coach back in Japan. But he was sure the coach was never this young, at least not that he knew of.
Ryusaki echoed in his mind. He needed a first name to recognise this person. As competitive as ever, he racked his brain. He was not going to lose to his memory. He tried to look for some piece of information in his brain that told him who this girl was. Why did she appear in his head when he saw the black marks on an almost deformed tennis ball?
Ryusaki, he thought. He forced the image of her back into his head again; he looked into his mind for the second time. Now, second time lucky, he recalled of something.
Tennis ball…
A sudden memory jumped back into Ryoma's limited memory storage. Ryusaki was the one who gave him this ball…So this explains the oldness of it.
Samurai Junior stood up, holding his tennis racket and the only ball that he had. He went down to the tennis courts in the hotel and started playing against the wall. A smirk was plastered onto his face as the memories of the girl went back into place. He couldn't remember much, but whoever she was; she definitely gave him a good impression.
Ryoma took back and swallowed the 'Never had a girl crossed his mind' sentence.
He was definitely going back to Japan, enough said.
I'm definitely going to continue this. Apparently, I like this idea, though not the most original...
I know people don't usually have arrows appearing on the top of their head in one's mind...but I think it creates...the sense in there. It's how Ryoma remembers Sakuno. If there isn't an arrow, he will never have gotten who the girl was...poor guy.
I'm going to go somewhere into reuniting them...