Everything gone in dust
He brushed a finger across the dusty trophy-shelf and dirt became visible, and something clenched around his heart.
Akaya had tried his best, but it hadn't been enough. The team that had been left behind was a less motivated one than the team that had left. The power had crumbled, and along with it, the pride of Ouja Rikkai. It had never managed to recover its former glory.
Photos of a victorious team stood in front of the trophy's, and he picked up one of the framed pictures. The dust and spiderweb was brushed away, and that clenching around his heart appeared once more as he stared at the picture with longing.
The happy faces. The smiling faces of a team that had just won nationals the second year in a row. The team that the following year was defeated in the finals.
He carefully put down the photo again, and picked up a book that lay there. He flipped it open, and a sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he looked at the photos.
Memories, feeling so far away, but yet so close, that it felt as if he should be able to bring them into his arms and embrace them.
And he remembered everything clearly.
Niou, who switched Sanada's clothes with a ribbon-decorated sailor-fuku and the stern boys reaction once he realized what was going on.
Sanada hunting after Akaya, when the youngest on the team drew whiskers and heartmarks on Sanada's face.
Sanada when he found Niou and Yukimura making out in the showers.
Marui when he realized that the last piece of gum was gone and he was on a no-sweets diet, then realized that Jackal had taken it; courtesy of Niou and Akaya.
Yagyuu losing his patience with Niou and starting to hit the trickster with wolf balls, most of the time succeeding on hitting everyone on the team.
Jackal's face when Marui found a permanent marker and drawn 'genius masterpieces' on Jackal's head, upon which Jackal refused to go to school for several days.
Yanagi when he found Akaya, Marui and Niou reading his notebooks as if it were children's picture-books; and drawing accompanying crude drawings for every page, because somehow, Niou had managed to turn the data into a porn-story with Sanada as the lead-character.
The album was closed and transferred to the safety of a case, and a sigh escaped lips. Such an irony. It was weird, how it had gotten like this.
He was the only one left after their team was scattered, and he had always thought that he would be the first one to go.
As he stepped out of the since long abandoned clubhouse of the formerly so mighty Rikkaidai tennis club, he looked up at the cloudy sky and wished he wasn't so alone.
He missed his team, and he missed his purpose. He didn't know what to do without them.
He hated to be lonely, this emptiness that enveloped him in a tight, painful embrace.
He wasn't Kami no Ko anymore, and he didn't believe he even was Yukimura Seiichi anymore.
Because it was his team that had made him who he was, and without them, he was nothing more than a lonely human.