Calluses

Marui Bunta eyed the reddish-brown stain on the edge of the carpet, silently wondering if it was blood. He stood in the entrance of Niou Massasharu, his best friend's, house. Niou had just wandered inside to grab his racket (how he had forgotten it to begin with, Marui didn't know), but it gave him so time to think. Something which he hadn't had very lately.

As the re-match against Seigaku approached, training had gotten harder. Their buchou was back, but back with a vengeance - Seigaku would pay for causing Rikkai to lose, even once. But, as training had gotten steadily harder, as well as longer, Marui had gotten closer to everyone on his team - particularly Niou.

Marui leaned against the frame of the doorway, his normally bright eyes beginning to glaze over with a mixture of nostalgia and thought.

It was funny, really, because they lived on the same block. Marui had always walked with Niou to Rikkai once they knew each other from the Rikkai tennis team. Marui had to start getting to school later because of Niou, and Niou had to start getting to school earlier because of Marui, but they made it work. Somehow, along the various walks to and from school, while training to become the best tennis players, and through the loss and regain of their buchou, they had become best friends.

People who didn't understand it thought it was strange that a breezy, hyper, life-loving person like Marui would be best friends with the dark, mischievous, bitter person that Niou often seemed to be. But Marui didn't question it; he knew Niou much better than anyone - probably even Niou - knew.

Niou wasn't really dark or mischievous or bitter. Niou was probably as happy and cheerful and fun-loving as Marui was, but he expressed it in a different way. Niou liked to pull pranks on people, not to hear the people cry or yell, but to see the laughs he knew they would cause, to both the spectators and the person getting pranked (although the prankee, as Marui had dubbed them, probably didn't laugh about for a while).

Niou simply came off as dark and bitter because he had a pessimistic view on life. But Marui wasn't even sure if that was set in stone, because, as Niou had once said to him: "An optimist thinks the world we're in is the best world possible. A pessimist fears it's true."(1) Marui knew, no matter whom Niou had quoted, that for the Trickster to memorize it meant that there was deep meaning to him.

What Marui thought was funny, though, wasn't the misconception of Niou's personality, but instead the misconception of Niou himself. Although Niou would always deny it, Marui knew Niou spent hours under self-reflection and analysis - as proved by the diary he kept. Marui had gone through it only once, but it wasn't a diary filled with the events throughout the day, but instead filled with inner thoughts and quotes. It would have surprised anyone but Marui, because Marui was one of the extreme few who were let into Niou's inner world and train of thought.

"Yo, Bunta, are we going or are we going to stand here and stare at the door all day?" Marui jerked of of his train of thought and stared at Niou for a second, seeing him for who he really was - and not who he sometimes pretended and sometimes was thought for being.

"Yeah. Let's go." With a grin, Marui started walking down the stairs, followed by his best friend.

000

1) I'm not sure who said it…but someone who was not me did.

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LoveableDuck