Disclaimer: The original manga, Tennis no Oujisama, is the work of Konomi Takeshi. Characters and settings have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.

Note: Yumiko does a tarot reading for Fuji in this chapter, and anyone familiar with tarot will notice that she's not using a standard deck. For the curious, she's using the William Blake Tarot.

The scent of baked raspberries and pastry filled the small kitchen, just like the old days, and Yumiko heard Syuusuke click the shutter on his camera three or four times more. He'd knocked on her door this afternoon as if he could sense that she'd be in the mood to bake. Syuusuke wanted to take pictures to submit for Aida-kun's show this fall, or so he'd said. The worry on his face said he wanted to talk, but he didn't know what to say. That had settled her little debate with herself about what she felt like baking. She knew the scent of raspberry pies had always made Syuusuke happier, whether it was because they reminded him of having Yuuta home, or just of simpler days when they'd all been young. So she baked, and let him sit and chat. From time to time, he'd click the shutter on his camera, and a calm smile spread over his face.

It must have been a shock, finding out as he had that Aida-kun might be visiting. Had still been thinking of him. Syuusuke had been so confused at the end of high school. Today, a little simplicity was what he'd really needed.

"You're looking happier," Yumiko commented.

"You think so?" her brother asked.

"Definitely." Whisking the whipped cream for the cooling pies into peaks didn't take any attention at all. She could focus on talking to Syuusuke now that he'd calmed down a bit. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised. It must make you a bit nervous, having your old boyfriend come back to town."

He faltered, dropping the camera down from his eye, laughing with an awkward tone. "Nee-san. Tezuka was never really my boyfriend. We were just..."

He let the hand holding his camera fall down to his side and brushed some hair away from his eyes as he turned to look out the window. She stopped whisking the cream while she waited for him to talk again.

Syuusuke hadn't even mentioned that. How long had Tezuka been in the country?

After a moment, he smiled brightly and turned back. "We never had that kind of relationship."

She fixed her grip on the bowl of cream and went back to whisking, a bit more slowly this time, as he pulled up his camera to hide behind the viewfinder. On the one hand, it might not be fair to Aida-kun to let Syuusuke's slip of the tongue stand, but really... It wasn't as if she didn't know how things had been between him and his team captain. And her brother had just calmed down enough to start telling her what he was worried about. She had no intention of calling him on it and pushing him back into his shell.

"Oh?" Yumiko asked instead. "I see. Still, I can't imagine it'd be easy. Have you called him?"

With a sharp rap of the whisk on the side of the bowl, she cleaned off the stray whipped cream. Syuusuke didn't answer until she turned away to set the bowl of whipped cream in the refrigerator. "I saw him, actually. At the courts on Wednesday. I guess... I went to say hello. It's complicated."

"Things are never going to be simple, Syuusuke." She walked over to the kitchen table and offered him a chair. "So, what's going on with Tezuka-kun that's so complicated, then?"

Syuusuke screwed the lens cap over the lens slowly and set the camera down on the table, pushing it as far away as his fingers could reach before he answered her question. "He's back, that's all. Isn't that enough?" He turned to face her with a smile and a sad, bitter laugh. "I just can't help feeling like I'm going to get myself in the same mess as before."

Yumiko looked at her brother - sitting uncomfortably in his chair and stretching as if his skin felt too tight - and reached for a set of mugs by the hot water heater. "Then don't," she said, and set a mug in front of Syuusuke. She filled the little teapot and dropped a few teaspoons of green tea inside. Her brother played with the cup in his hands without looking up to meet her eyes. "If you think it's going to be such a mess, then don't do it. You don't have to spend time with him just because he's in the area."

"I..."

He trailed off, looking inside the empty cup for tea that wasn't there yet. Yumiko kept her eyes on him while she set the timer in the bottom of the heater.

"I said I'd meet him this weekend. We're going out for dinner." His face was tight when he looked up. "I think it might be too late to keep away."

"It's never too late to decide what you want to do, Syuusuke. If you don't want to see him again, then don't. One date isn't a lifetime commitment." Her brother's shoulders tensed up at the word 'date', like he'd wanted to object that it wasn't a date but had decided not to bother. They both knew better. "And if you do want to see him again..."

Yumiko reached out, brushing her brother's cheek right where there'd be a tiny dimple if he'd smile properly. "You know, I say it like it's simple, and it's not that easy. If you knew whether you wanted him around or not, you wouldn't be having this problem. Is that right?"

He put on a smile, though she could see it took effort. "Something like that."

"If you want my advice, I'd say go slowly. Don't rush yourself into anything you're not sure about."

"I think I can do that," he answered.

The timer on the tea beeped quietly, and Yumiko poured half the tea into her brother's cup and half into her own. "And I want you to know, you can come talk to me anytime."

"I know," Syuusuke said with an easier smile. "Thank you."

He was looking better, but still worried to be sure. Syuusuke turned the teacup around, studying the patterns in the tiny leaves that poured through the filter. He often did when he was troubled. His silence sounded like it was full of questions he didn't quite know how to ask. There was no helping that, really. From everything he'd said, it sounded like one of those 'never rains but it pours' sorts of weeks. Tezuka-kun and Aida-kun? He was holding up much better than she would have imagined just a year or two ago.

"Do you want me to give you a reading?" she offered. "I have my cards right here."

Her brother laughed, acting shocked by the offer. Surprised at the very least. "That might be terrifying," he said. "I'm not sure I'd want to know if there were going to be trouble." And from the way he bit his lip as he turned back to his tea, she'd say trouble was exactly what he expected to see.

"The future isn't carved in stone, Syuusuke." Yumiko smiled at him softly. "Maybe if you know there's trouble coming, you can change it. But if you don't want to see a reading, you don't have to."

He raised his cup to his mouth and blew on the hot tea. The focus of his eyes seemed to be somewhere far away from her little kitchen while he took a short sip, then considered the silt in the teacup for a long minute.

"Sure," he said at last. "I could probably use the help."

"All right, then."

Yumiko reached into her purse to pull out her cards. The case opened in her hands with an easy click and she set the pile in front of Syuusuke. He pushed his tea to the side and picked up the deck like they'd done so many times when they were younger, but his lips were drawn and his hands looked like he was pushing himself to keep them from shaking. He didn't usually let her do a reading when he was nervous about how something might turn out, but then he didn't usually stray far from situations he could control. Tezuka-kun had never been like that.

Shuffling the cards slowly, Syuusuke breathed in deep and exhaled with a quiver. "It's always a little frightening when you do this, Nee-san. But it can't hurt, right?" he said, putting a smile on his face.

He set the deck down solidly on the table and pushed all the stray cards back in flush with the sides, then cut the deck in half. The top half, he placed down to his right, then put the lower half on top and pulled off the first card in one fluid motion. "So here's me," he said, and placed the card down in the center of the table.

"The Man of Painting, hmm?" Yumiko studied the drawing on the card of the man standing on top of a rough ocean, staring down at something he held in his hands. "It suits you. There are a lot of things you're worried about, and you're giving it your full attention. You're looking for an answer, and you're keeping calm, even though this situation could get out of hand easily. That's a good start."

As her brother bit his lip, staring at the card with a painful expression, she pulled the next card from the deck and laid it on top. The Three of Music, 'Exuberance', turned upside-down so that the figure with yellow wings seemed to be diving toward the ground. "Right now, there's something new beginning, but something is keeping you from pushing forward. You might not believe there's any way to come out of it well, and the people around who care about you are pushing you back from that path. You have to make a motion, but there's nowhere you know you want to go." Yumiko didn't want to let worry show on her face, not when Syuusuke was looking at the card so intently without saying a word. With a deep breath, she pulled the next card off the deck, laying it crosswise across the Three of Music. Syuusuke's eyes went wide then. She could see his arms tense up and his fist clenching under his chin.

The Angel of Painting, she saw when she looked down, with a girl all in white who stared off into the distance while sitting on golden clouds. "Part of what stands in your way is your own practicality, drawing you off in a new direction, maybe towards ground that you think is more solid. If you want to move towards the new opportunity that's opening up, you may have to take a leap into a risk, where you don't know how you're going to land."

He didn't say a thing, watching still and silent while she turned the next card. The inverted Ten of Music fell at the bottom of the cross. 'Sublimity', which tied the cause of all this to hidden feelings and love withheld. She remembered her brother's melancholy when Tezuka-kun had left well enough without needing her brother's reminders a few moments before. With the way he'd been reacting so far, there was a chance this wouldn't ease his mind or let him think so much as make him more upset.

"Syuusuke," she whispered. Her brother turned his eyes up to her, looking nervous. Her cool-headed little brother, who could smile through anything. Yumiko took his hand and squeezed. "If you want to stop, I'll stop. Getting so worked up isn't going to help."

"No, go on. I'm all right."

"Okay."

She took another look at the card - with its ten trumpeters standing, turned upside-down. "The chains holding you back and the walls closing you in are built on feelings that weren't expressed and love that wasn't shared. Hiding what's truly in your heart. Now there's a barrier keeping you from showing your current feelings to others and keeping others from sharing their true feelings with you."

Flipping over the next card, moving on before her brother could linger too long on that, she studied the glowing figure flying in the Ace of Painting on the left side of the spread. "The recent push to start a new stage came with a shock. Sex is a factor on both sides, a strong one that drew you to a possibility you didn't expect but couldn't resist."

The Ace of Science fell at the top of the cross, a shadowy figure reading under a starry sky. She didn't look up to see her brother's face again; the way he'd reflexively squeezed her hand was enough. "New ideas and new solutions come from observing coolly all the aspects of the situation. Your best outcome right now starts with figuring out what your position is. You may find a truth you'd never considered and a solution that doesn't present itself immediately if you take your time to observe." Yumiko played with a bit of Syuusuke's hair, teasing, "Don't get distracted," and making him laugh despite himself. That was better.

She turned over the final card for the cross - 'Fancies', the Seven of Music - reversed to show the seated man in white being visited by a golden spirit from below rather than above. "Those calm observations will be necessary to pull you through emotional confusion peeking over your horizon. There's a challenge coming soon, forcing you to decide what's real and what's a fantasy, subjecting you to feelings that seem to contradict each other. Most importantly, you will have to decide between the present and the future. Your long term goals should be a factor you consider before acting when you find yourself in situations where you need to make a choice."

"Long term?" Syuusuke asked with a nervous laugh. "I don't know that I have a long term goal to consider."

"Well, maybe that'll change," Yumiko said, not wanting to put too much of her own assumptions into what she was telling Syuusuke. If he didn't pick for himself, he'd never be satisfied with the choice.

At the bottom of the staff, to the right of the cross, she placed the Four of Music - 'Musing' this time, inverted again. The figure she knew was resting in a trees branches seemed to be lying by its roots, reaching to another figure who stood by a river running across the sky.

"You may not feel like making a change for yourself, but changes will be happening whether you take responsibility for them or not. The watch you keep on your environment may not be sharp enough, and opening yourself up to what's happening and what happened before can make you better able to cope." The next card up showed a man standing on his hands, pushing up from a rockface - Reversal. But here, the card was inverted, and the man appeared to be pushing the rock up and away while braced against the air itself. "People who support you may not be able to change their perspective if you take a course in this situation that they don't expect. They'll help you look for answers, but in the end the one at the center of the solution is you. Even though there will be people who cannot accept a change easily, even though bearing up may seem impossible, you'll find support where you didn't think it could exist."

'Discontent', the Eight of Music, was the card she laid down second from the top. "You may be troubled by doubts you didn't expect," she said as she examined the image of men clustered under an ominous sky. "Questions about what you want and whether or not you're in control may come into play. But if you notice that you feel like you might not be seeing the whole picture, stop and take a good look at the world around you. Take note of what you might not see on the surface, and you'll find your way." Breathing deeply to calm herself, since Syuusuke's hand was tense on hers - tenser than he realized, perhaps, and she hoped her own calm would make him feel more at ease - she laid the final card on top of the staff.

The staircase showing on Eternity was upside-down, the figures with their heads pointing down as they climbed up a staircase that descended. "Mistakes repeat, and things fall apart. If you decide you can't change anything, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Regret for the past and a keen eye for time that has gone by, if you go on letting them rule your actions, will bring you down in the end."

"No regrets for me, then?" He smiled and laughed, at the end seeming to be pushed beyond his fears into levity. "Are you saying I should go forward, unfaltering?"

It was good to hear him say that without sounding bitter. She hadn't been able to see as many of Syuusuke's matches as she would have liked, but there had been more than enough to recognize the words Tezuka-kun had always used to encourage the team. There had been a time not too long ago when she wouldn't have thought he could hear those words and smile.

"I'm not saying anything," Yumiko teased back. "But the cards are saying it's your life. And you have to move forward or get left behind."

Syuusuke stood up without a word, stretching his arms above his head. He walked over to the window and pulled the curtain away as he relaxed. Breathing deep and letting the air out slowly, he whispered, "I wonder," with a heartbreakingly painful expression on his face. It wasn't as bad as it could be, of course. She'd seen more than one such expression from him over the years, and this time the lines were softer. She thought she might even be able to see the hint of a smile somewhere in the corner of his mouth.

~/~

"Have a good time at your dinner," Kunikazu said to his grandson. Kunimitsu was fidgeting with his cuffs and collar again, tugging it this way and that to make it sit straight while looking in the bathroom mirror.

He paused and dropped his hands beside the sink. He looked nervous, Ayana had said. She wasn't at all upset, either, that he'd met his young man and was heading out for the night to see him. Oh, she might act like she was a bit ill at ease, but he could tell it wasn't the boy or the way her son felt that bothered her. No woman or man could be upset about that and still smile the way she'd been doing when she watched him step out of his room too jittery to work the clasp on his watch. He'd rather say she'd looked at him with a mother's eyes, who couldn't help feeling joy that her son had found someone he cared for.

"Fuji Syuusuke, was it?" he asked.

Kunimitsu ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath, nodding yes without a word. Nervous indeed.

Maybe he was a doting old man, but he couldn't picture Kunimitsu having a hard time with courting. Not in general, as fine a young gentleman as his grandson was, nor with the way he thought he recalled this Fuji Syuusuke looking back at the boy all those years ago.

"You should bring him home someday."

His grandson turned silent eyes down to the bathroom sink. "Yes, sir," he answered.

He wasn't going to do it. Not yet. It was in his voice.

"I, for one, would like to meet him, and I'm sure your mother would, too. We didn't speak with too many of your friends back when you were in school."

The boy looked up, his expression troubled by untold secrets. He was probably asking himself if he'd been found out already, or if he'd be in trouble when the time came for his young man to meet the family. Let him sweat, Kunikazu thought. Be good for the boy. The sooner he decides to tell us himself, the better.

"Then, someday," Kunimitsu said after a pause. "Thank you."

He stepped aside to let Kunimitsu out of the bathroom. The boy headed for the kitchen to say goodnight to his mother, offering a proper hug before he walked out the door.

"Take care, Kunimitsu. I'll see you when you come home."

"If..." he said , trailing off, then starting again. "Fuji thought we might spend some time talking. Catching up. If it gets late, I may stay in town. I can get a place in a capsule hotel. I wouldn't want to disturb you."

Kunikazu raised an eyebrow, hidden from both their views by the doorframe. Planning to stay the night in town, was he? Well, the young man in question had always seemed to fancy his grandson as well. Maybe they'd get a confession out of him soon. If he knew his grandson, he wouldn't try to hide a relationship that meant enough to him to seek it out as soon as he came home.

Ayana squeezed his hand, probably thinking the same thing. "Don't worry about that. Just be safe, and say hello to Fuji-kun for me."

"Of course," Kunimitsu replied with a nod.

The front door opened just then, which meant Kuniharu was home from work. A moment later, he walked into the kitchen and saw his son putting on his coat. "Kunimitsu. What's the occasion?" he asked, taking a look at the boy's more careful than usual attire. "You don't have a date, do you?"

He looked up slowly, taking a moment to think that stretched into a long silence.

"Dear, remember Kunimitsu said he was going into town to have dinner with an old friend?" Ayana asked him.

"Oh, of course!" Kuniharu replied. "How could I have forgotten? Well, I don't want to keep you, but I'm glad I got back before you left. The Friday after next, I need you to keep free."

"I should be able to do that." Kunimitsu seemed to have recovered his facility to speak, even though to an old policeman's eyes it was clear his cheeks were still just the slightest bit flushed. "What plans do you have?"

He listened closely as his son and his grandson spoke, and he saw Ayana doing the same. Not much happened in this house without either of them knowing it.

"It's my group leader at work. He's... ah, well..." Kuniharu looked down, scratching his nose. The thing he always did when he was hiding something. The oldest Tezuka knew his own son well enough, even if Kunimitsu looked confused by the gesture and the halting speech. "He's asked me to bring you to a dinner he's arranging. You know, with our family and some colleagues."

The boy pulled his coat the rest of the way on, a puzzled air on his stony face. After thinking for a moment to himself, he asked at last, "I appreciate his invitation, but does he know that I play tennis?"

Job offer, Kunimitsu had assumed then. About as good as any guess he had himself.

"Oh, he's aware of that. He always asks me if you still play. I told him you were in the amateur regionals right now. He wished you luck, by the way."

"... He knows I plan to play professionally?"

It was Kuniharu's turn to look startled by the question, as if he didn't see why it would be relevant. "Well... yes, I suppose. We didn't really discuss your career in particular. But it's just dinner, son. Really. He heard you were back home again after so long, and he said I should bring you. Everyone," he said, turning to smile at his wife and his father.

Tezuka Kunikazu narrowed his eyes at his son, trying to figure out what Kuniharu was trying not to say. Perhaps he was reading too much into it? The division chief at his son's office was fairly uncompromising. If he asked Kuniharu to bring his family, perhaps it was just a request where he couldn't say no. Kunimitsu had never been the most obedient of children, though he'd always been good. He couldn't blame Kuniharu for wondering if he'd be able to drag him along to a company dinner.

Good thing he'd asked the boy early, before he developed new plans with Fuji Syuusuke.

"So you'll come?" he asked Kunimitsu nervously.

His grandson nodded. "I'll be there. It shouldn't be a problem."

"Great," Kuniharu announced. "I'll let them know on Monday that they can expect you." He clapped Kunimitsu on the elbow, saying, "Have a good time with your friend. I'll probably see you tomorrow."

"Yes, Father."

Just as Kunimitsu finished getting himself put together to leave, Kuniharu ducked out of the kitchen to take off his coat and hat and hang them up, having neglected to remove them in his hurry on arriving.

"Goodnight, Mother. Grandfather," Kunimitsu said quietly, nodding to them both and turning nervously for the door. He sat to put on his shoes, rubbing his nose just like his father did. The boy noticed Kunikazu looking out of the corner of his eye, and he could see every inch of the battle going on inside Kunimitsu's head. Watching him fight himself these past few days, deciding what he could say and what he couldn't, had made the signs easy to see.

Kunikazu gave the boy a short nod, saying, "Don't worry so much. You'll do fine," and left him to ponder that for the evening.