Part I:
Fuji gestured for the team to come closer as he searched his bag for something. "My sister bought presents for all of you," he said.
It was graduation day. The celebrations were all over. Speeches had been made, diplomas presented, and now the Seigaku regulars were huddled together outside the clubroom. They sat in the same formation they usually did when they were having an important team discussion (like we all know Rikkai is freaking insane but we could still do this somehow, or I understand that Inui may kill us someday but we should still follow his training program) but none of them had their usual energy. Kikumaru, who was usually the sole cause of chaos, had his head in Oishi's lap and was staring into the distance, biting on a fingernail.
At the mention of presents he shifted his gaze to Fuji. "Are they edible?"
Fuji shook his head, still digging through his bag. It was stuffed with other presents from his classmates, photography equipment, and various other nonsense.
The team waited patiently for him to find what he was looking for. "Aha!" he said at last, pulling out a brown package. He opened it and gently spilled the contents onto the grass: nine identical silver tennis racket key chains. Each with a green ball attached.
"They're cute," Momo said, without meaning to. They really were. Everyone agreed.
"Your sister has good taste," Kikumaru said, shifting to pick one up. He cracked a grin. "They're adorable, nya."
Fuji smiled, passing them over to the rest of them. Ryoma tried to see if he could hit the ball with the racket. He could – barely.
"They're supposed to remind us of each other, wherever we are." Fuji said. "They'll connect us even when we're apart."
It was sentimental, and they didn't often do sentimental, but today was a universal excuse.
Part II – Three years later
Ryoma had put his key chain on his tennis bag. It had seemed the most rational solution. He had left for America two years later, after his own graduation.
(His own graduation had been a parody. His tennis team had cried, hugged him, and promised him that they'd call their dear captain -which was him - every day. Ryoma had fervently hoped that they wouldn't.)
(Of his seniors, only Momo and Taka had turned up. Everyone else had been busy.)
America was fun enough. He played tennis – he played really good tennis, but for the most part he drove his manager insane.
"For heaven's sake, Echizen!" his manager said, tugging at his hair, almost at wit's end. "This is the US Open. You just skipped your match because you found a kid who was being bullied and couldn't leave it to someone else?" His voice got shriller with every word.
Ryoma scowled. "I wasn't trying to help him. I was just teaching the other guys a lesson. They were annoying."
His manager made a motion like he wanted to strangle him, but decided it wouldn't do well for his finances. "All you had to do was tell someone else about it, you useless little – "
Ryoma tuned him out, for the most part. But he tried to look mournful and apologetic and nod in all the right places.
Eventually his manager ran out of steam. He leaned against the sofa and covered his eyes – a rather dramatic pose – mumbling to himself about ungrateful brats.
Ryoma took that as an opportunity to go and find a can of Ponta in the fridge. Then he grabbed his tennis bag and snuck out through the back door, shutting it softly behind him. His key chain jingled against his bag zipper as he walked, and he held it to keep it quiet until he'd escaped.
He hadn't spoken to his teammates in a long time. Except Momoshiro. And Tezuka. The former somehow always managed to sneak himself into his life, and he always managed to sneak himself into the latter's.
Both of the aforementioned two had sent him millions of texts after he missed his match. Momo's were concerned, and slightly panicked, but Tezuka's were stern and irritated. He doubted that any of the other former regulars had even known that he'd had a match that day.
Except...He scrolled through his messages and frowned at one. The sender ID was marked 'Fuji'.
'echizen! where the hell were you during your match? why you were missing? what happened?'
That. That could only have been the other Fuji. Fuji Syusuke was an avid fan of capitalization. He didn't know why Yuuta still had his number, and he had no clue why it was Yuuta, and not his brother, who'd wondered where he was.
Kikumaru slurped his smoothie noisily, hoping that everyone in the cafe would realize that his heart was broken.
No one did. They did, however, notice that he had atrocious manners and scowled in his direction.
He'd lost Fuji's key chain.
He didn't even know when he'd lost it - that was the horrible part. It could have been missing for a year. Kikumaru had never been careful with his things (that had always been the job of the people around him), but he'd loved that key chain. And everything it stood for.
...which was laughable, at this point. Most days went by without him even thinking about Seigaku.
Sure, he'd kept tabs on anyone. He knew where they all were. (Most of the time. Echizen jumped from country to country so fast that it took all of Kikumaru's social media stalking expertise to figure out what he was up to and when.) He still hung out with Oishi, and occasionally called Fuji, and dropped by Taka's sushi shop whenever he went back home...
It was Taka who'd made him realize that his key chain was missing. Yesterday.
"Taka-saaaaaaaaaan!"
Taka grinned in surprise as Kikumaru burst into the store, screaming his name and pouncing on him in the name of giving him a hug. It felt like being hit by a truck, but Taka was used to it. He hugged him back gently.
"I haven't seen you in ages, nya!"
"I know, I know! How have you been?"
"Horrible, horrible! College is a death trap!"
His father gave him a break from the store, so they went up to Taka's room and settled down on his bed. It was easy to talk to Kikumaru, even if they hadn't spoken in a long time. Simply because he did all the talking.
Around the time that Kikumaru was showing him pictures of Echizen's matches that he'd got off the internet on his phone ("He missed his last one! No one knows where he was, but I think he overslept or something...sounds like something Ochibi would do...") his father peeked into the room.
"Kikumaru-kun, you're welcome to stay the night," he said, smiling at him.
Kikumaru looked at the clock and blanched. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know it was so late!"
Taka tried to tell him that he really was welcome to stay, but Kikumaru wouldn't hear of it. "My mom will want me back, nya."
Taka lead him down the stairs, taking his keys off the hook near the stairwell. A tiny, silver tennis racket hung off of it. Fuji had given it to him three years ago, when they'd graduated. He almost never saw him again.
Kikumaru looked at what he was holding, and his eyes bulged.
Oishi was studying when Kikumaru called him. He sounded frantic.
"Oishiiii!" he cried. "I don't – I can't find – I don't know where I put Fuji's key chain!"
Oishi was...confused. He knew what a key chain was, and he knew what Fuji was, but he had no clue what his friend was talking about. "What?"
"You know, the one he gave us when we were graduating! I lost it!"
...to be honest, Oishi had forgotten about it. It took him a while to remember what Fuji had given them that day.
"Oh." Where had he put his own? "That's..." Did he even bring it to university? "It can't have gone anywhere, Eiji." No, he couldn't remember bringing it with him. It was probably somewhere in his room back home...
"I don't think I've seen it in months, nya. I'm pretty sure I lost it."
"Eiji, your room is a mess. There's an awful lot of things that you haven't seen in months."
His former best friend was quiet for a moment. "I know...but Oishi, this was important. I should have had it with me all the time."
Oishi sighed, torn between nostalgia and reality. It was important once, yes. And he really, really wished that it was important now.
But the fact remained that everyone had, to put things simply, moved on.
"Echizen Ryoma, you get back here this instant!" his manager screamed, looking very much insane.
Ryoma scowled. Foiled again.
Momo liked small things. Sometimes he wondered if that was why he'd befriended Echizen. Then he'd realize that that sounded really messed up, so he'd abandon that train of thought and go and eat something.
Plus, Echizen wasn't a little kid anymore. He still wasn't tall, but well. He'd grown. A bit.
It had taken every ounce of Momo's concentration to make sure they didn't drift away from each other.
Why was he thinking about this again?
He was looking at an article in the newspaper, about the Samurai junior going missing during an important match. There was a blurry picture of him scowling in the general direction of the camera (Echizen had never been photogenic) with a tennis bag slung over his shoulder, and there was a tiny key chain that he remembered hanging off of it.
He remembered the promises that came with it, and wondered what it meant that he had no idea where his was.
When Fuji came out of the shower, towelling his hair, Yuuta was waiting for him in his room.
"Aniki," he said. "Do you know what happened to Echizen?"
It took him a second to understand the question, as it always did when one of his former friends was mentioned. He frowned, pausing. "Did something happen to him?"
"He missed his match yesterday," Yuuta frowned. "I thought you'd have watched it."
Oh, right. The US Open. Fuji hadn't been interested. He didn't love tennis like Yuuta did anymore.
He sighed. It sounded just like Echizen to do something like that. He'd probably waltzed out of the country at the last minute without telling anyone to play a match with someone at the other end of the globe. "Why don't you ask him yourself, Yuuta?"
Yuuta's frown deepened. "Shouldn't you be more concerned about this?"
To be honest, he didn't think so.
Part III – Six years later
Everyone had heard the news. Echizen had been famous, after all. He'd seemed about to take over the tennis world.
That was what made the news infinitely more interesting. Echizen Ryoma, age twenty one, about to take over the world – but caught up in a tragic accident.
Inui couldn't say that the news pulled at his heart strings. It was tragic, yes. From what he'd heard, he could still walk, but it was an effort, and he had a defined limp.
But that was it. It was a sad story. He sympathized, as a fellow human being. But he hadn't spoken to Echizen in years, and hadn't picked up a racket in longer...
...and actually, it had been three day since he'd left the chemistry lab...
But he was on to something. He knew it. There was just something wrong with his calculations...
He wandered over to his drawer (each lab student was assigned one) and dug out a key from his pocket. He caught his nail on the tiny tennis racket key chain he'd attached to it and cursed, reminding himself for the thousandth time to replace it with something softer.
When Kaidoh had found out about Echizen, he thought about sending him a message. Instead, he called Inui.
Inui didn't pick up. He hadn't expected him to. He played absently with the tennis racket attached to his phone, and wondered, not for the first time, why he still had it and if he was the only one who did.
Ryoma had turned off his phone. He'd actually been tempted to text everyone in his contact list (and everyone in his manager's, and everyone in Kevin's) that yes he'd been in an accident, yes he was alive thank you, and no he did not feel like his world had ended.
That was the weirdest part. He didn't feel like his world had ended. He'd been trying to get out of half of his tournaments anyway – now he'd just got out of all of them.
What had happened was entirely his fault. He'd been sneaking out at midnight to escape his manager and his next tournament (Tezuka had called just then, probably to tell him not to. Ryoma hadn't picked the phone up) and had ended up hiring a drunken cab driver. In his defense, he didn't know that he was drunk. He only realized when he started driving way off the road and ended him up in his current situation.
It was huge news. People he hadn't spoken to in years suddenly wanted to talk to him. His fans were in chaos. The team he'd captained in high school was devastated. Out of his seniors, Tezuka was furious with him, Momo was horrified, Kikumaru had cried. Taka had sent him bottles of homemade sauce. Atobe had sent him an email, and Kintarou (who he was supposed to play against next week) hadn't left his hospital room in two days. He made sure to eat most of Ryoma's food.
He hadn't heard from the other regulars. He hadn't even thought about them until Momo mentioned it.
He was walking around the streets aimlessly, around a week later. He wasn't supposed to, but at this point it was pretty clear that he didn't do what he was supposed to.
"You're Echizen Ryoma, right?" an excited woman asked, appearing out of nowhere. She was older and taller, and she had a camera bag hung over her shoulder. Her blonde hair was neatly pinned out of her face.
Ryoma nodded. Pointlessly. It wasn't really a question.
"Could I take your picture?" That wasn't a question either. She'd already taken out her camera and started clicking away.
Ryoma remembered to scowl just in time.
She frowned, moving the camera away from her face. "Do you have to do that?"
"Yes." He looked down at her camera bag, which she'd just pushed back on her shoulder, and frowned deeper. He recognized that key chain. Granted, there were probably a million in the world like it, but Ryoma would like to pretend that this wasn't a coincidence.
Maybe this was one of his teammates' girlfriend. Or sister. Nah, he'd probably remember if one of them had a sister that looked American.
Probably.
Maybe one of them was cross-dressing.
He'd maybe see through that too. He liked to think that he remembered their faces.
"Echizen?" a different voice called.
Great. Everyone recognized him today.
He heard quick footsteps and turned to see another man hurrying towards them. He had dark blue eyes and brown hair, and looked almost as surprised as he did.
There was no smile on his face.
Fuji stood before him, still looking incredulous, taking the camera bag from his companion and slinging it over his own shoulder. It appeared to be his.
"You still have the key chain," Ryoma drawled.
Fuji seemed confused until Ryoma pointed.
"Ah, that." He smiled half-heartedly. "I imagine you lost it the moment I gave it to you."
Ryoma took it out of his pocket and held it up. He'd spent his life associating with idiots.
Fuji's eyes widened in disbelief.
Tezuka's phone pinged.
'Hey, buchou.'
Tezuka didn't know why Echizen still called him that. He hadn't been his captain in...about six years. From his former team, Echizen was the only one he was still in touch with, because Echizen simply wouldn't leave him alone.
But that sounded negative. Tezuka meant it in the best possible of ways. He didn't want Echizen to leave him alone.
He texted him back. 'What is it?'
'...'
...he actually sent him a long line of dots. Like Tezuka was supposed to fill in the blanks.
'Echizen. What?'
'I had dinner with Fuji-senpai today.'
'Fuji's in the US?' Last he'd heard, he'd been in London.
'Apparently. Hey, buchou, do you have the key chain he gave you after graduation?'
Tezuka thought about it. People often gave him small things to remember them by. Too many people, actually. He never actually kept track of them. 'I might. Probably not. Do you?'
He didn't get a reply for a long time.
About five minutes later, he received a 'No.'
I think that Ryoma and Kaidoh are the type of people who make so few attachments that they never forget the ones they make, but probably wouldn't make much of an effort to stay in touch with that many people. Taka is just too nice to ever forget anyone. Tezuka leads such an important life - always looked up to, etc. etc. etc. - that Seigaku was probably just one of the many many many important things that happened to him. And the others just seem the type to get...carried away, eventually.
Now all I want to write is The Adventures of Echizen Ryoma and his manager.
Please review?