The Trial of Second Chances
by vixoss
Disclaimer: I don't know Prince of Tennis. I don't own Digimon.
Genre: Drama
Summary: She struggled but he just kept her pinned below him until she had exhausted herself. She was breathing heavily but he only stared at her for a while until he leant down to her. "Keep on doing this, Kari. Let's see how long my self-control lasts."
She froze at the implication of his words, then glared bitterly up at him.
Rewrite and continuation of the story, "The Game of Repentance": Kari Yagami," Yukimura Seiichi said aloud, talking to his own reflection in the mirror with a ferocious, possessed smirk. "I'll make you pay in place of your brother. We will play the Game of Repentance."
Yukimura Seiichi exited the five-star hotel after an interview. Outside, reporters and fans were swarming, waiting for him. Camera lights flashed endlessly. Wearing sunglasses and a designer suit, he waved at his audience with a shy of a smirk, looking handsome and brilliant.
He was the nationally best tennis-player, dominating the tennis-world in Japan, but there was someone, someone who was weak and greedy, and who had a pitch-black heart who didn't begrudged him for it.
"Yukimura Seiichi!" A young man, masked with glasses sunglasses and surgical mask, wearing a green bomber jacket, blocked his way, pointing a gun at him.
Everyone screamed.
"Five years ago, you ignored me! You're sitting on such a high horse, you motherfucker, and think that others are beneath you, but it won't stay that way! I am going to knock you off right now!"
Then, he shot him.
Kari was hugging herself as she walked home alone in the middle of the night, unfortunately under-dressed for the weather. A skimpy leather-jacket with a thin top underneath really wasn't cutting it for this chilly night. Exams were coming up, so she had spent her entire evening studying in the library of her University until it had to close. Now as the shadows cast by the trees in the dim light and moon haunted the surrounding, the sidewalk between the campus and the nearby apartment-buildings appeared quite creepy, she wasn't so sure if it had been such a good idea to stay out so late.
Sure, she was living in one of the nearby apartment-buildings, but at night the campus was quiet and scary. She was a little frightened. Her breath hitched when she heard footsteps quickly approaching her from behind and felt the presence of someone. She startled when someone touched her shoulder from behind.
A young man, probably another student stood before her, smiling cordially.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to startle you."
He was beautiful. While his beauty would have hurt to look at in the daylight, it was painless to look at it at night because it was subdued by the night, muting the details of his face.
"No, no, I'm fine," she said with a quick smile, a faint blush finding its way on her cheeks.
"I just wanted to ask you if you knew if the trains were still running," he said smoothly, then added with a sheepish laugh. "It's the first time, I've stayed out so late in the library."
"Oh, ehm, yes, the trains are still coming, don't worry," she answered him, glad to be able to give him the piece of information he needed.
He gave her a smile that sent pleasure from the roots of her hair to her toes. "Thank you."
"You're very welcome. It was my pleasure."
Then, suddenly charming expression dropped from his face, replaced by an eerie smile that was full of evil intentions, mirroring the gaze in his dark eyes. He reached out, his hand brushing her hazel-hair behind her ear, and lingering there.
"A pretty girl like you shouldn't be out so late; it's dangerous," he remarked.
Kari sucked in a sharp breath, her skin crawling at his intimate touch.
"I-I need to go," she stammered quickly, trying to get away from him by brushing off his arm, but he had already tightened his hand on the back of her neck.
"You don't need to go anywhere," he said darkly.
"Let me go!" She shouted.
However, to her horror, his palm had already covered her mouth right after she did, and she started struggling vehemently, beating at his chest and alternately his back, but she couldn't get him off her, which caused tears of blank fear threatened to resurface in her eyes.
Then, darkness - she could no longer stay lucid.
There had been the scent of chloroform.
He's throwing a ball up and down, up and down with one hand, and it wasn't any ball, but a yellow tennis ball. She would've been fascinated by his precise movement and perfect catches if it hadn't been for the humming headache she had from the drugs he used on her. He was wearing the same kind of clothing he had worn when he had forcefully kidnapped her: a dark blue-gray blazer with matching shirt and chinos but instead of a pair of polished dress shoes, a pair of sporty trainers decked his feet, which she was able to see in the field of her vision because he was sitting cross-legged.
"So, you've woken up," he stated with a content smirk.
In spite of her headache, his physical beauty became even more prominent in the light and forced her to train her eyes on him, drinking in the details of his face: the graceful curve of his nose, which was arched instead of the sterotypical flatness of most Japanese noses, the flawless smoothness of his pale skin, and the lucid blue of his eyes.
She tried to sit up but found herself restrained by handcuffs to a bed, and realized that she was only wearing her top with straps and underwear, feeling a hot wave of embarrassment.
"I'm sorry about this but I can't have you running away," he said off-handedly.
"What the hell do you want from me?!" She shouted at him.
"Keep your voice down, Kari," he told her, his voice laced with affection when he mentioned her name and it chilled her. "You're bursting my eardrums."
"How...do you know my name?" She asked in shock.
"I know more about you than just your name."
"Who... are you?"
"You don't know me? How disappointing. Don't you keep up with the news, Kari?"
She stared at his tennis-ball and then back at him, realizing that he looked somewhat familiar. It couldn't be..."It can't be. You're Yukimura Seiichi, the insanely talented tennis-prodigy who was forced to retire because of an assault."
"So, you do keep up with the news, even if only badly."
"What do you want from me? Let me go!" She demanded, half-angry, half-terrified.
He caught the ball he had tossed and clutched it, drawing her attention to his unexpectedly large, fine-boned hand with long fingers. Darkness gave his eyes a sinister quality as he leaned over her and lowered to his head to her, "Do you know how boring life can be without tennis?"
In spite of his seemingly innocent words, her heart froze.
Then, the intensity that clung to him was dissolved by his chuckle, "Of course, a simple-minded girl like you wouldn't."
He leaned back and crossed his arms, asking her good-naturedly, "Hungry? Need to be pee? You better tell me now if you need anything, because I'm going to bed now."
"Don't mess with me! Untie me and let me go!"
"Then, I guess you don't need anything. Good night."
He stood up from the chair, causing it to clatter quietly, however, before he left, he inquired tauntingly, "By the way, do you need a blanket? Or are you warm enough?"
"Screw you!" She spat.
"I take it as a 'yes', then. Good night."
Then, he finally left her, closing the door behind him.
"Good morning, Kari. Did you sleep well?"
He greeted her in the next morning.
"Screw you," she replied grimly.
His gaze drifted to her wrists, which were chaffed and red from last night's vehement pulling and jerking at the handcuffs. A look of amusement crossed his features as he bend towards her and examined the sore red marks on her wrists with a long, elegant finger across.
"You hurt your wrists. This isn't good, you need to take better care of them."
"Whose fault do you think this is?"
"Barking like a dog, aren't we?" He taunted. "Though that's not true actually. You were quiet like a mouse last night. I thought you would be screaming your pretty little head off."
"It would've been pointless."
He was amused. "How so?"
"We are in the middle of nowhere, aren't we? You didn't gag me after all."
"Hm, quite the smart girl, aren't you?"
Then, he sat down at her legs and put the tray of food and water he had brought with him down on the nearby nightstand. With one hand, he gripped her slender ankles with one hand and unlocked the cuffs that bound her legs to the end of the bed.
"Sit up. It's time for breakfast," he said, adding with a warning, "And, don't even think about kicking me. I've no problems with letting you starve for a couple of hours."
When he removed his hand from her slender ankles, she carefully drew her legs back and sat up, not wanting to forfeit that opportunity for a childish impulse to kick him. The handcuffs might have secured her arms to the bedhead but it was still possible to sit up sideways and awkwardly.
He smiled approvingly and shifted to the bedhead. "You're more obedient than I thought."
Grabbing the glass of water with a straw, he held it in front of her and said, "You must be thirsty. Drink."
She glowered him unhappily.
"It's not drugged. Nothing I brought you is," he reassured her and took a sip from the water and a bite from the food before holding out the glass to her again.
Overcome by thirst and not having drunk the entire night, she closed her lips around the straw and drank, almost the entire glass. When he put the glass down and held the plate of what looked like a cheese omelette to her, she frowned, "You're going to feed me?"
"You think you can eat by yourself?"
Kari tugged at the handcuffs to reach for the plate but didn't get anywhere and sighed, letting him feed her. She tentatively ate his food and was surprised at how good it tasted. The taste of cheese complemented the perfectly fried egg instead of over-powering it, which was something not many people could do. He was really one hell of a cook.
She ate the entire omlette in complete silence, the thing she needed to tell him, burning like fire on her tongue.
When she was finally done eating, she said, "I need to pee."
"I see," he stated good-naturedly, then unlocked the handcuff that was slung around the chain of the handcuff, but not the one that kept her hands bound.
"I thought you would've forced diapers on me," she mumbled.
He smirked. "Don worry, I don't have that kind of fetish."
She flinched when he guided her with a hand on her lower back to the direction of the bathroom, which was integrated in the bedroom, even if he didn't touch her. Her bare feet froze when they touched the cool, wooden floor.
"The toilet is this way," he instructed.
Kari, who hadn't gone to the toilet for the entire night, really needed to go, so she forgone the notion of escaping in this moment and trudged into the bathroom instead.
However, as she stood in front of the door, Yukimura stopped her, "One more thing, Yagami-san."
His blue eyes, which seemed to hold fifty shades, turned feral as he retrieved something from his pocket - a stun gun. "Please refrain from doing something stupid."
He pressed a button of the stun-gun with his thumb and electricity crackled in the air between the two sensors. "I would hate having to use this on you," he told her, even if the sadistic tone in his voice betrayed that he wouldn't mind using the stun gun on her at all.
Kari immediately went ashen in the face, starting to shake out of her wits, the temperature suddenly seemed to have dropped several degrees. She could only nod frantically at him before fleeing into the toilet and trying to lock the door behind her, but couldn't because the key to the door was missing.
She was mentally hyperventilating. That guy was insane, dangerous even!
On her way to the toilet, she almost tripped from her panic and adrenaline overload, but she managed to sit down in the end, pull down her panties and pee, silently praying to god.
'I need to get out of here.'
When she was done, she remained on the toilet for longer than necessary, not wanting to move at all but she knew that loitering here would be pointless. The door couldn't be locked. He would get impatient and drag her out. Feeling numb from fear, she dragged herself to the wash-basin and washed her hands thoroughly with soap to prolong the time she could stay in the bathroom.
Taking a deep breath, she forced her frayed, paper-thin nerves to calm down.
Looking up into the mirror hanging over the wash-basin, she saw her own reflection that was fraught yet determined. 'I have to convince him to let me go,' she thought while tightly gripping the cold porcelain wash-basin.
When she returned to the bedroom, he was already waiting for her with a smile and crossed arms, standing not too far away from the door.
She needed to talk some sense into him. "Please...let me go."
He smirked patronizingly. "And why should I?"
"Because what you're doing is a crime! You'll be jailed for this."
"Don't worry about it. I won't."
He grabbed her by the chain of my handcuffs and dragged her back to the bed but she struggled against him, attempting to yank her hands out of his grip.
"My boyfriend will be searching for me!"
He laughed rudely. "You don't have a boyfriend."
She froze – how did he know?
It was unfortunately the truth. She hadn't had a boyfriend since three years ago.
She had wanted a boyfriend since the fallout with her last one but she had never managed to connect with another boy afterward, even though she had a few admirers on the campus who had asked her out. Her long-leashed, big eyes, and the delicate cut of her jaw were her best features, making her popular with the opposite gender but having the right looks wasn't enough, which she found out painfully. The boys who liked her were often shallow, naïve and lacked ambition and fire.
It had been disappointing. She had wanted a man, a real man like her big brother, who could protect her from the deepest, darkest truths of this world.
"But you had one three years ago," he added as an information.
She froze again.
How did he know?
"How do you know?" She asked fearfully, her voice weak and trembling like she felt on the inside.
He stopped pulling her. Yanking her towards him by her handcuffs, he smirked into her pretty face, speaking in a soft, low voice to her as if he intended to seduce her, "I know everything about you, Kari Yagami. You could say I'm someone who is interested in you but make no mistake I'm not a fanboy, I'm not your fan. I don't like you."
She swallowed dryly. His words dried something up inside her; was it her courage? Suddenly she felt very cold on the inside. It was suddenly hard to breathe. If he didn't like her, would it make it easier for him to hurt her? Definitely. She had to get out of here, quick. Convince him that he had no chance.
"I don't care if you like me or not. My parents -"
"Don't seem to really care for you considering the fact that you don't have their number saved on your phone," he finished dryly, hitting a sore spot.
"The professors-"
"Don't really care if one of their students drop out of their classed without notice, because it's a common thing."
"My friends-"
She had many of them, her cellphone almost bursting with the numbers of the friends she had made at school and university.
He smiled menacingly at her, lowering his head to accommodate to hers and stare into her eyes in a soul-penetrating way, "If they do call you, then you'll be writing them a sms and tell them that you're unavailable. Understand?"
Her voice was struck in her throat; she couldn't refuse him. She was too terrified to do so. Satisfied, with her response, he tugged her towards the bed, which brought her inner fire back to life.
"No! I'm not going with you!" She raised her voice, which now sounded high-pitched, tugging pitifully at the chain.
He only smiled with contempt, then shoved her towards the direction of the bedroom. She allowed him to lead her back to the bedroom but when he was about to loop the second pair of handcuff around the chain of her handcuffs, she reacted instantly, trying to elbow him in the nose. He, however, blocked her stunt with his hands and shoved her to the bed coldly.
"You can't keep me here," she told.
"Let's see how I can," he replied coolly.
She tried to lash out at him again with her elbows but he simply blocked her attack with his hands and shoved her back but this time he moved on the top of her and straddled her, trapping her below him by her torso.
"Do that again," he challenged her and stupid or provoked as she was, she really hit at him again.
He grabbed her arms and slammed them down on the bed, piercing her with his eyes.
She struggled but he just kept her pinned below him until she had exhausted herself. She was breathing heavily but he only stared at her for a while until he leant down to her. "Keep on doing this, Kari. Let's see how long my self-control lasts."
She froze at the implication of his words, then glared bitterly up at him.
He only smiled smugly back at her.
Game over for her - he had won, at least in this round.