The Prince of Tennis
Coffee Break
Summary: When the Seigaku Tennis Club's new demands require everyone to work a job, first year Ryoma faces a new challenge – retrieving coffee. ONESHOT :).
x – x – x
"What'd you call us all in for, senpai?" Kaidou growled. He wasn't used to burning practice time in such a domestic setting – the Seishun Gakuen's conference room. It wasn't a room any regular had ever ventured into.
The sullen captain sighed dismally. "I'm afraid that as part of the new proposal the heads of Seigaku decided on, the top members of each school club must take up jobs for one week."
"Like collecting balls with the first years?" Eiji yawned, obviously indifferent. "Crazy. Ochibi would definitely fit in."
"No," Inui continued for Tezuka, adjusting his glasses to obtain the perfect evil glint. "Paying jobs…in the real world; for working experience."
At that, five teenagers gasped collectively. "A – as in…with people?" Takashi asked nervously, playing with the hem of his shirt.
"No shit," came a voice from the corner of the large room. Seven heads turned to a short boy with forest-green hair and a white cap that did it no justice. "But there's one thing I don't understand. Why the tennis club?" The boy named Echizen Ryoma tipped his hat, revealing an intense smirk and an equally intense pair of hazel eyes.
"The heads forgot that his order included all clubs; even sports clubs," Inui explained, checking his data for verification. "Sorry guys. It's too late to change now."
"Sounds like fun." Fuji smiled serenely, forcing nervous laughs from his fellow regulars.
"Alright, so here are your assignments…"
x – x – x
'Tanaka Enterprises,' the slip of paper read. 'Find Keigo Atobe.'
"Atobe?" Ryoma muttered to himself. "Sounds vaguely familiar." It was 9:30, half an hour before his 10:00 shift would start.
The day before, in the conference room, the Seigaku regulars had drawn their future jobs from Ryoma's hat – literally –, Ryoma ending up with the only office job in the small lottery. Kaidou and Inui had received jobs in the park, while Tezuka, Fuji, Oishi, and Eiji ended up in various restaurants. Takashi, the only one out of the eight who already had a job, was spared.
"Why can't Momoshiro be subjected to this as well?" Kaidou had been muttering bitterly afterwards. "He was a regular for long enough."
Ryoma stopped in front of a glassy-walled building. The height of the structure didn't faze him in the least bit. Instead –
"At least I'll have better air conditioning than the others."
Pausing briefly in front of the spinning doors, the boy walked in rapidly, his hands crushed inside the pockets of his dark jeans. For some strange reason, the fancy office building would not allow anyone in shorts or caps into the complex.
Ryoma looked around the marble interior, ignoring the prying stares of the young, female receptionists. They were focused on his hair. Fingering a few strands of the green stuff, he stepped towards them, a confident smirk marking his face.
"Don't steal all the ladies away, Echizen," a voice echoed from the other side of the lobby, stopping him in midstep. The sound set off a switch at the back of Ryoma's brain.
"Oh," he stated casually, "you're the one from Hyoutei."
"Yes. And you, Echizen…you are my new assistant." Hyoutei's popular captain smirked a smirk worthy of Echizen Ryoma, flipping his hair ostentatiously. "Ore-sama no bigi ni yoi na. The Prince will obey me today."
x – x – x
"That was quite the workout," Kaidou bit out sarcastically, propping his head on his arms and settling onto the garbage-free grass in the park. "Stupid people. Having a job isn't that hard. Just a few pieces of trash to pick up…"
"Well according to my research, all of the jobs that were available to us were quite low-paying, of course," Inui explained to an uncaring Kaidou. "The probability of anyone thinking a job like this is hard is less than 1."
"Still, isn't it a bit excessive that we cleaned the entire park in the first ten minutes of our three-hour shift?"
Inui adjusted his glasses. "You want a compliment, don't you?"
Kaidou grunted, attempting to appear nonchalant.
"Yes, you're so great, Kaidou," he muttered, voice dripping with an Inui-sarcasm that his blunt teammate was able to completely overlook. "According to my flawless data…"
x – x – x
"You will be working a typical eight-hour shift today, Echizen. My instructions, after all, were to get you into the flow of a regular adult's workday. Your first job is to get me some coffee from the shop across from the park, Echizen-chan. It's my coffee break. Afterwards, the Prince can help me with some of my fan mail, then clean the public washroom, then…."
Ryoma's instinct had been to Samurai-Drive the guy's face in. But the boy was smarter than that. He had left with a simple "Mada mada dane, Atobe-tono." He would get his revenge.
As he neared the quaint little coffee shop, he noticed the park. "I wonder how Kaidou-senpai and Inui-senpai are doing with their jobs," he mused out loud.
"I'm sure they're doing peachy," came the answer. Surprised, Ryoma spun around, coming face to face with none other than Eiji.
"Eiji-senpai?" Ryoma stared at him blankly. They were in the middle of the empty weekday road. "Aren't you supposed to be at your job?"
"I could say the same for you, Ochibi," the red-haired boy replied with a sheepish grin. "It got boring. Who would go into a coffee shop during work hours, anyways? The boss took a break, so I decided I deserved one too." He paused, looking up at the cloudless sky. "After all, I did do all the work."
Ryoma looked up as well, painfully realizing that he was missing out on eight hours of tennis time – for a whole week! That was when the idea came to him.
"Since the no one was at the coffee shop, Echizen Ryoma the dutiful assistant was forced to wait uselessly for the coffee shop to reopen," Ryoma dictated, "which did not happen until the seventh hour of his eight-hour shift." He shook his head dramatically. "What an irresponsible employee the coffee shop has –"
"Now now, Ochibi-chan," Eiji cut in, face becoming completely serious. "Don't think I don't take this work thing seriously. I'm going to go inside to get your coffee, because that's my job and your job. I cannot help you do such a deceptive thing, Ryoma." With that, he headed back to the coffee shop, leaving Ryoma waiting on the sidewalk.
"I hate you too, Eiji-senpai," Ryoma muttered bitterly. Then, he smirked. "I'll find a way to get out of this."
Eiji returned five minutes later to find Ryoma waiting patiently where he had left him. He smiled and handed the boy a steamy cup of coffee.
"Good job, Ochibi. Hey, maybe this job thing will actually help us develop some personal and workplace skills and…"
Ryoma didn't wait for his teammate to finish. Grasping the Styrofoam cup roughly, he headed back to the building with haste.
He vaguely heard Eiji's voice calling out: "Ochibi! You're not even listening!"
"Mada mada dane, Eiji-senpai," Ryoma murmured with a small smirk that did not touch his eyes.
A small disturbance from the park nearby caught his attention as he was walking. Naturally curious, Ryoma sprinted to the grassy area, not even noticing the small drops of coffee that splashed onto his wrist as he ran.
"Hey, Echizen!" a familiar voice called from the direction of the tennis courts. Ryoma immediately shifted his gaze, recognizing the distinctive hair of Oishi, the vice-captain of the Seigaku Tennis Club. Standing next to him was a calm Fuji, and in front of them, bickering inanely, were Inui and Kaidou.
"Senpai?"
"Over here, Echizen," Fuji called, his perpetual smile never dimming.
Ryoma walked curiously to the four boys. "What's going on?"
"We decided to ditch work," Oishi stated with a yawn. "It got too boring. Me and Fuji here have quit. And Inui and Kaidou are obviously already done with their job here at the park."
"So what are they doing?" Ryoma gestured to Inui and Kaidou.
Kaidou, finally noticing the short boy's presence, immediately turned to him. "His data isn't always right!"
Inui turned as well. "The data never lies!"
"Oh yeah?! Prove it!"
"I will!" Inui adjusted his glasses, taking a deep breath. "I'll prove that my data is always right." He gave Ryoma a devious look. "There is a 100 chance that Ryoma will not last the week without quitting," he proudly announced.
"And if you're wrong?" Kaidou growled.
"I'll drink my own veggie energy drink AND blue vinegar!"
"What kind of punishment is that?" Fuji whispered to Oishi, who had already turned green from unwanted memories of the concoction. "That veggie drink is actually quite nice…"
"Mada mada dane, Inui-senpai," Ryoma interrupted with a wide grin. "There's no way I'll quit."
"Oh yeah? Then why aren't you at your job right now, Echizen?" Inui observed with a smirk.
"I'm getting coffee for the tono," Ryoma replied casually, holding up a now-cold Styrofoam cup.
Inui's stare transferred back and forth from the coffee to the boy. "It's cold," he stated obviously. Then, with an evil look: "Want me to make you some of my coffee?"
Ryoma raised his eyebrow. "Not now, Inui-senpai. But maybe later…you'll have to give me the recipe." Oh yes, he would definitely get back at Keigo Atobe for humiliating him.
"Hey Echizen, since your coffee's already cold, why not have an informal tennis practice right here?"
x – x – x
"Where is that first year?" Atobe snarled, scaring a few fangirls who were waiting by the glass door of his office. "I can't deal with this crap without my coffee break!" The Hyoutei captain had been stuck inside his office all day, cranky and weary. He paced and paced, occasionally taking an angry glance at his analog clock. It read 5:50.
Echizen Ryoma had been fetching his coffee for the past seven hours and fifty minutes.
At exactly five to eight, a solid knock sounded at Atobe's door. He looked up, realizing that all his fangirls had left. The boy at the door was none other than his assistant – waving at him with a mug in his free hand. A cheeky grin was plastered on his face.
"Here, Atobe-tono," Ryoma slurred, sweat dripping off of his dirtied face. His jeans were streaked with dust, and his hair was soaked through. "Your coffee," he said with a smirk. "The shop took so long in making it that they gave me a free mug! I had to run all the way here to make it before my shift ended, of course!" Ryoma's smile kept getting bigger, until Atobe was sure that his face would split in two.
Ryoma had been playing tennis.
"How was your coffee break, tono?" he continued with a smirk, slyly peering over at the piles of unfinished documents on Atobe's desk.
x – x – x
"My data was correct, of course," Inui boasted. "Naturally!"
"Actually, Inui-senpai," Ryoma said. "I didn't quit. I got fired."
Inui's face dropped. He shrank away from a content Kaidou, advancing on him with two very suspicious bottles.
"Now why would he fire me?" Ryoma continued, asking the captain with a signature smirk. "I did exactly as I was told – I brought him coffee."
Tezuka stared blankly at the boy for a while, silence weighing them down. Then, he smiled a rare smile. "Did you use Inui's coffee, Echizen?"
Ryoma stared at a small red bottle with a green English label resting on the palm of his hand. "Well…"
x – x – x
"Atobe-sama! Are you alright?!"
"GERRT MER WARRTUH NAHW, BAKA!" ("Get me water now, baka.")
"…in addition to Inui's over-caffeinated coffee recipe, I also added some of my personal ingredients, senpai."
Mada mada dane, tono.
x – x – x
Notes:
Senpai/Sempai – Older classmate, teammate, co-worker, etc.
Gakuen – Academy. Seishun Academy is shortened into Seigaku.
Ochibi – Really, this means kiddo. But uh. Eiji's nickname for Ryoma.
"Ore-sama no bigi ni yoi na." – "Be awed at the sight of my prowess!" A quote of Atobe's.
Tono – Lord.
and, of course:
"Mada mada dane." – "You still have a long ways to go." or "You still have a lot more to work on." (The second is the direct translation from the manga, not a literal one.)
A/N: I don't have a very good grasp of these characters, as this is my first try at writing for them :(. Hopefully it didn't turn out too bad. I'm scared to revise it.
Review, review, review! Good? Bad? Ugly? I'll never know if you don't review! Besides, I spent a whole hour of my homework time writing this thing :(.
I want to see if I'm compatible – if I can write any more stories for this fandom, or if I should just give it up and go back to my shoujo.