A tribute to my favorite Prince of Tennis character: Ryuuzaki Sakuno.
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Beneath the Surface
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On the surface, she looked to be only a clumsy, shy girl with hair that was far, far too long and non-existent tennis skills.
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Sakuno would be in utter denial if she said that she had always been the way she was now.
But she would tell you gently, but firmly, that there is story behind that, as there always is.
She admits that back those many months ago, she had been simply been one of the many fangirls of one Echizen Ryoma.
But that had been in the beginning. When she had seen him get hurt during that match, saw his blood dripping down his face, she had felt her heart stop beating.
Then she'd ran inside the tennis court before she realized what she was doing and had been determined enough to drag him away from there even if he refused.
And it was when that it struck her – her crush had wormed his way deeper into her heart than she thought it would.
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"Ryoma-kun, you're bleeding!" -Sakuno
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Unlike most of his fangirls, the first time she took notice of him was not because of his good looks.
She had noticed him because he had been brave – or a better term would be cocky – enough to tell those scary, loud people that had been on the train to shut up when no one else had, even though he'd been younger and smaller than them, only the same age as her.
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"Yo, can't you keep it down?" - Ryoma
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She will not deny that she chose to get into the tennis club because she idolized Ryoma. But she hadn't entered simply because she wanted to play the same sport as him.
She entered because his tennis skills impressed her to the point that she wanted to know how it'd feel to play that well.
So as the months passed by and she practiced as best she could, she began to fall in love with the sport itself, and entering the tennis club was no longer simply as way to get closer to Ryoma but one of the ways she lived her life. Though she guessed she shouldn't be so surprised, since she did have the blood of a tennis coach in her veins.
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"Tomo-chan, I need to go to the club now," – Sakuno opting to go for practice instead of spying on Ryoma and his so-called girlfriend
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She might seem like she was only just a mere fangirl, but she knew Ryoma better than most of them did and was one of the few fangirls who actually knew what tennis was about and even played it.
So when that older girl appeared claiming she was in love with him, she kept quiet not because she felt defeated by the girl's far superior looks and personality, but because she wanted to assess the situation.
She could tell that Ryoma was only pretending not to realize that the girl was actually a spy from another school. This was confirmed further when he did a slight change to one of his moves, a move only those who'd seen it before and knew it well could tell the difference.
She was one of those people.
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"Um...it's your form. Your form for the backhand volley is a bit different than before," - Sakuno
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When they had gone that time to get her racket re-strung, she had no illusions that it was a date. He hadn't asked her out, and neither had she, it was her grandmother who set the whole thing up, and that was only because she couldn't make it and she also happened to be not only his couch, but his father's, so he was obliged to.
So when he offered to walk her home, as his mother taught him that gentlemen were supposed to do, she declined because she didn't want to further take his time than was necessary, and she'd been satisfied that she'd got to spend any time alone with him at all.
And instead of going straight home, she decided to practice a bit more at the tennis court they'd been at, because she wanted to savor the difference her tennis racket would make now that it'd been restrung and he had corrected her form.
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"You bend your knees too much, and don't flip your wrists like that," - Ryoma
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When she had asked him if he could put on his regulars jacket, she didn't ask so she could claim to be the first one to see him put it on and see how he cool he would look wearing it.
She wanted to see him wear it because she was so proud to know that the boy she liked was skilled enough to match people older than them and be able to play on the same level as them.
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"Yeah, it's great Ryoma-kun. Why don't you show me how it looks?" - Sakuno
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She wasn't so sensitive about his comments about her that she would follow what he says just to please him, because she also had dignity and she loved her long hair, no matter what he thought of it.
That was why her hair was still so long and in those ponytails and not cut shorter as he implied would've been better for her.
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"You're too late. Planning was bad. Your hair is too long," – Ryoma
"The length of my hair is...," – Sakuno (says indignantly)
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She didn't like him so much to the point that when he took it for granted for Horio to pretend to be him that she didn't speak up and tell him straight-forwardly that he should thank Horio for doing what he did.
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"That's not right Ryoma-kun! You're the one who was late. Just help Horio-kun!" - Sakuno
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Although she liked giving him her home-made obentos and such, she wasn't such a simpering female that when she heard him call her obento 'mada mada ne', that she'd gone off in tears.
Instead she had huffed off with her 'inferior' obento and for the first time ever, cursed him mildly, showing a bit of that steel she had inside her, leaving a clueless Ryoma in her wake.
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"Ryoma-kun no baka!" – Sakuno on Ryoma who'd been paying attention to a Hyoutei match
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Ever since that incident, she had been understandably more meticulous in her cooking. So when she'd follow him to ask how her omusubi taste liked and he avoided giving her a straight answer since he wasn't the type to give compliments, she persisted because she wanted to be acknowledge in this sense by him, although what he said was actually a compliment in itself, because if something tasted bad, he'd say straight out that it was.
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"Isn't it way harder to make omusubi taste bad?" – Ryoma
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When she'd been practicing alone, hitting her tennis ball on a wall, trying to strike the same spot over and over, just as she'd seen him do before, she'd been so focused that she had never noticed he was coming up behind her until she turned to pick her tennis ball up after her first miss and saw him reach for it first.
And she had panicked at first, because although it was probably obvious that she was a fangirl of his, that didn't mean that she particularly wanted him to see that she'd dole his face on her tennis ball.
But then he asked if he could have it, and she'd been pleasantly surprised. And when she asked why he wanted it and he had answered that he had felt nostalgic, her heart couldn't help but skip a beat.
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"Because I felt…nostalgic," – Ryoma
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When she had heard that he'd lost his memory, the first thing she thought was that he wouldn't know her. Then she realized that he would've forgotten about tennis, the very passion of his life, and before she knew it, she'd gone a desperate search for him, hoping to make him remember.
Not to remember her, but to help him recall his passion for tennis, because tennis was life, the very core of his being, and she couldn't stand to think that he would no longer be the Ryoma she knew and admired.
And then she'd found him and saw that he had regained his memory, she had been glad instead of miffed, because he not only remembered tennis.
He had also remembered her.
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"Huh? What are you talking about Ryuuzaki?" - Ryoma
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The day he left, at first, she couldn't think of what to give him, something that he'd like.
Then, as she passed by that sport shop, she remembered him asking for her tennis ball and an idea sparked in her mind.
So she ended up giving him a tennis ball, but not with words etched with her feelings, because she wasn't the type to outwardly say them.
Instead, she wrote words on the ball that said what she would like to say to him every day if she had been going where he was.
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"It's about the whole world and you being number 1," - Sakuno
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These days, she was still a quiet girl who had those trademark long braids of hers.
But nowadays people also took notice of her tennis skills, that she could now get the game so close with players far more experienced than she was and even be able to defeat some of them.
She ended up a regular, something she didn't imagine she'd be when she first started playing tennis. She was in eighth grade, one of the few second-year regulars and content with her life, even if he wasn't there anymore.
But that was alright. Because every time before a match, she would pick up her racket and remind him. And silently, she would thank him for inspiring her to take up the sport.
And it was in this way that she never forgot about him and hoped he would remember her every time he looked at the tennis balls she gave him.
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But beneath that thin layer, lay a surprisingly hard, hidden core made of unbendable steel. And that forged the Ryuuzaki Sakuno she was now.
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The end
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My first PoT fic, so be gentle - I can't come up with a better title at the moment, so please don't mind it. Thanks for taking your time to read Beneath the Surface -