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Imperfection
(Red Like Sin)
Fuji observed.
Fuji noticed and observed and absorbed. It was all he did – all he had ever done, and all he would ever do, if he could help it.
He didn't take something and then butcher it, mimic it and then use it in his own style, as Hyoutei's Kabaji did, but rather preferred to watch and then counter whatever it was he watched.
If it was love, he decided he didn't believe in it – the whole "opposites" attract feature had long lost its appeal after he'd finished his Science class in the eighth grade when they'd covered positive and negative charges.
If it was heterosexuality, he decided he was homosexual. If it was homosexual, he decided he was bisexual, and he hadn't changed since (he'd never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but it was the thought behind the matter that counted, he was convinced).
The point was that he always found a way to counter things.
But then he'd been told that nothing ever stayed the same.
Fuji had taken up photography, just to show that things could stay the same over an indefinite number of years. After all, that one hummingbird he'd captured hadn't moved out of place from the lilac it had been pollinating in the last four years, and it wouldn't for the next four.
There were other things he observed, too – animals, seasons, construction and so on and so forth. People were his favourite, though. Mannerisms and behaviour he wasn't quite so keen on – unless there was someone particularly challenging – but rather physical aspects and certain characteristics that made a person "flawed" in his eyes.
For example, the way Momo's wrist always flicked down after he had completed a Dunk Smash and just before he uttered the accompanying "Donn". It drove him to the brink of insanity and past. He always found himself clenching his fists just before the ball hit the other side of the court when Momo served, his eyes shuttering closed all the way to block out the artistically posed downward angle of his wrist.
Or the way Inui had a habit of swallowing audibly before he spoke made him want to slam his head into a wall a couple times. They annoyed him – all of them, down to the T.
It had been suggested that the only reason he looked for these flaws was because he didn't have the guts to face his own, flawed personality. But that wasn't true. Fuji was fearless.
Fuji was perfect.
The only perfect person, he had decided after taking log of the thirty something thousandth person he'd categorized as "flawed". He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he was the only perfect person in the world, and that was how it was going to be forever.
But then their little Prince had come – Fuji's favourite and most hated person to watch. The first year was so flawed that it was painful to look at; how he shuffled around the court, watching his seniors play and cataloguing their moves, attacks and defences, how he carefully and exactly calculated the distance between posts and where to land the ball so that it was impossible for his opponent to catch the ball – on and off the court, Fuji had noted, because Ryoma was just as good a player in real life as he was in tennis.
Fuji had then attacked his physical aspects, trying to find anything and everything that would satisfy the burning desire to find major character flaws. The tawny silver scar he had obtained from his match against Ibu Shinji dangling precariously from his inner eyebrow to just touch the lashes of his upper eyelashes, and the defined muscles that rolled across his chest – all of them were flawed, so hideous and disgusting that Fuji had been forced to tear his eyes away in repulsion.
The way Echizen's name rolled off his tongue as he called after the younger boy was so sinfully detestable that Fuji found himself loathing it, mocking it, slanting an appealingly nauseating light against it, perhaps trying to bar it from reality and reality from truth.
But the truth was that Fuji held a fascinated sort of attraction for the boy. The way his hardly noticeable Adam's Apple would bob as he gulped down a can of grape Ponta (something Fuji positively detested), the way he would absentmindedly thwap his red, red (red like sin) racquet against his calf as his mind drifted and the way his fingers would flex after a particularly long game.
But most of all, Fuji hated Echizen's eyes. The brown, not-quite-gold colour it tended to be when he was feeling particularly arrogant, or when the sun hit them just right so that they appeared to be sparkling, and the feral, slightly undomesticated look they took on when things started heating up in a match and his serious side was drawn out.
That was another thing Fuji didn't like about Echizen. The fact that he could get so serious, albeit after quite a bit of prodding and teasing, made him green with envy. They were more alike than he had first thought, though, but never so different.
"–It's like we're in a different world," he'd heard Coach Ryuzaki's granddaughter say once, and he hated the description for being so... so undeniably right, because it was like Echizen was in another world – a completely different world, and no matter how hard Fuji tried, he'd never be able to breach its farthest walls.
Fuji hated Echizen; hated everything about the first year, and loved it at the same time.
He wanted to play against that seasoned warrior that had faced Tezuka and Sanada and Atobe, Hiyoshi, Yuuta and Shinji.
He wanted to face the boy, and then smirk arrogantly when he won, and say "Mada mada dane", as Echizen was prone to do. Fuji thought that maybe only Echizen had the right to say that, but he would start saying it, too. Practicing on the walk home and just before he fell asleep, after he'd slipped under the quilted covers and in the morning when he looked at himself in the mirror.
He'd start saying it so that when he finally beat Echizen and showed him that he wasn't perfect, couldn't be perfect (Fuji wouldn't allow him to be perfect), he could say it.
"Mada mada dane, Echizen-kun." He would mock, and then he would be the only perfect person, just like it should be. He wouldn't admit it, though.
Because he was imperfect, too, and Echizen knew it.
"Mada mada dane, Fuji-senpai."
And Fuji thought that maybe, just maybe, being imperfect wasn't quite so bad.
(No idea where this came from. I find it slightly unnerving that Echizen continues to be the protagonist even through another protagonist of a story. – Incomprehensible)