Notes: Series spoilers by implication. Didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Um. Un-beta'd.


"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine."
Caskie Skinnet

His father asked him, once, why he came back

Ryoma had stared at him for a long moment and then turned away, scowling, a terse 'mada mada' on his lips.

Perhaps if he really wanted to think about it, it was what Kevin had said the day after Ryoma's final match of the US Open and the day before he decided to back to Japan, Seigaku and good tennis.

Perhaps it was the way Kevin had said it: off-handedly during the midst of a conversation neither of them could really remember later – it had been one-sided and unimportant, like many of the things that passed between them.

Perhaps it was the way he caught the Fanta Kevin tossed to him: open-palmed so it hit his hand like a cold, moist tennis ball and so that he'd have to wait to open it.

Perhaps it was the way Kevin said – with a grin on his lips and hope in his eyes – "friends are for now but rivals are forever".

Whatever the cause, Ryoma had blinked and contemplated it for a moment and no longer. Kevin's message, his invitation, didn't matter. The words brought him home to a mewling Karupin and his snoring father with Japan on his mind and a demand on his tongue.

Kevin was understandably upset when he called Ryoma while the first year was just barely feeling jet-lagged and most definitely excited about his first match the next day. Then he should have been exhausted and bothered by the sudden drama unleashed on Seigaku, but Ryoma was awake and craving for the scratchy feel of the courts under his feet. Yet he feigned exhaustion to avoid a long-distance confrontation with Kevin and hung up. That was okay, though, he wasn't going back. Not for a while anyways. For now, he was going to practice and not be late the next day.

Ryoma liked to think buchou had been waiting for him when he arrived at the clay courts at Haruno University. Common sense and the scattered balls told him otherwise, and he didn't really care. He simply wouldn't ask about tomorrow and buchou simply wouldn't ask about his sleeping patterns. It all worked out and they played and Ryoma knew why he had returned.

When Kevin called the next day he really was too tired and dropped the phone instead of hanging up. Ryoma slept, and dreamt not of taking a pillar but of sharing it and tennis no-one in the world could ever match.

That year's nationals were a once in a lifetime chance for him, and he was taking it – amnesia and stress and age differences be damned.