Title: Arrogance
Author: runningondreams
Disclaimer: Tennis no oujisama belongs to Konomi-san and Shonen Jump. I own no characters, names, images, plot-lines, places, or production rights.
Warnings: none
Summary: Atobe Keigo knows that he's the best.
The therapist uses words like 'denial,' 'compensation,' 'loneliness,' and 'insecurity.' She writes them down in depressingly cramped black letters that jump insolently off the horrendously cheap white paper. The terms band together, overlapping and interlocking to paint a classic picture of a lost little boy waiting in an empty house for his parents to come home. Waiting for the approving nods and gushing praise that never come. It's a painting that she likes to take out and click her tongue over, musing that all that money should have been good for something.
He sees the type every morning, has admired the detailed brushstrokes and powerful abilities of oil and turpentine for hours.
Behind the locked doors of the staffroom the teachers use phrases like 'low self-esteem,' 'cry for attention,' 'identity crisis,' and 'lack of social skills.' It's a snapshot that they hang onto like a life-line, passing it on each year, pulling it out to show every new arrival almost fearfully. They've seen the painting, but since most of their students could fit that frame they prefer the photograph, insisting that an image taken directly from life must be more real than a pre-determined pattern.
He insists that no mere refracted light could ever capture perfection, even for an instant.
Students, friend and rival alike, mumble about 'masks,' 'delusions,' 'insanity,' and 'self-actualization,' but only behind locked and soundproofed doors after the room's been swept for listening devices. They reject both painting and photograph as irrelevant, insisting that it's just the way things are: annoying and idiotic, but invariable.
Atobe Keigo smiles. He knows he's the best, and can't be bothered with the misconceptions of lesser people.
fin