Title: Wallpaper
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: ahh….I broke up the first-year trio?
It was really intimidating to stand there with the rest of Seishun's tennis club and watch that huge crowd cheer. It's one thing to be told that Hyotei has over two hundred members and quite another to hear those two hundred voices yelling at the top of their lungs, in sync.
I felt like all of our efforts, all the training and the injuries and the amazing matches, none of that mattered to these people. They would just roll over us, and make it look easy. There was no way we could compete with that, not even with Kawamura-senpai leading the cheers. It felt like we were dangling off the edge of a cliff, holding onto the bandanas Momo-senpai had worked so hard on. We'd be blown into the sea by the force of their yells alone.
And that coach. He just sat there in the middle of it all as if it was only to be expected. As if all those voices didn't even matter. Inui-senpai said that Sakaki-sensei's policy meant that anyone who lost a match, any match, was automatically dropped from the regulars. Looking at him, sitting on the bench in his expensive suit, I could believe it.
He made me so angry, and he wasn't even doing anything.
Didn't he understand the work we put into tennis? Not just Seishun, but all of us. Tennis players. Didn't he understand that losing was part of the game? That it helped us change and grow and gave us the strength to win the next round? Even Ryoma-kun knew that. All you have to do to wave the possibility of a loss in front of him and Ryoma-kun changes his entire style.
Couldn't he see that dropping the losers didn't mean the replacements were the best?
Did he have no respect for the sweat and tears and dreams and life that his players gave their matches? How could he think so little of them when they trusted him so much?
He just sat there while his team screamed and chanted and poured their souls into tennis.
It was just so much white noise to him.
And us. With more than two hundred boys shrieking behind him, Seigaku didn't merit so much as a glance. All our work, our dreams, our hopes, our victories, they meant less than nothing to this man.
We worked so hard, and to this man…..
To him, we were just wallpaper.
-owari-
Inspired by a random generator: Sakaki Tarou, Kachiro Kato, Wallpaper.