*

Chapter 10
*

**
Echizen
**

He felt his heart beating rapidly, he felt his jaw tighten, his eyes narrowed. 

'Buchoo…he's fallen for her…or hasn't he.  I've never seen him like that before.  He's not so emotionless as people say he is….but no one knows what he's thinking.  It doesn't happen just like that.'   He turned his head and looked at Sakuno again.

His grip on his racket tightened even further.

'She was looking straight back at him! They couldn't take their eyes off each other!' Sakuno looked away and avoided both Tezuka and Echizen.  Echizen felt his jealously rise up another level, but he also felt hurt.  He knew at the back of his head somewhere, that ever since he attended Seigaku, Sakuno had feelings for him.  In their final years of Seigaku before coming here, he too had grown feelings for her.  He didn't know how or why, it just happened.  But he despised the thought of letting anyone see the mushy side of him.  So he always acted cold towards her.  He didn't intend to confess his feelings to her.  He was just going to wait until high school was over and he wouldn't have to deal with this ridiculous feeling that resided in him.  But the thought of Sakuno belonging to someone else made him ridiculously jealous.

'I never thought she'd fall for someone else, after liking me for so long.  And I definitely didn't think anyone would fall for her besides me.  She was such a klutz and so……quiet and stuttering it annoyed me at times.  I think I've just become used to it."

He walked off the courts blowing up a storm with his anger.

**
Sakuno
**

"He's there.  He's right there.  It's been the first time I've seen him since that night.  I want to talk to him, but I don't know what to talk about.  I don't want to pester him.  But I just want to be over there.  I want to feel safe again, and only his presence made me feel safe.  They're both looking this way.  Him and Ryoma-kun.  I feel…weird, like my eyes are betraying my thoughts again.'

"You know you're eyes show everything that you feel.  Those eyes express too much, it makes me feel like I'm suffocating from your emotions." Ryoma-kun had said once.

'I remember that day he said it to me.  It hurt so much.  I was suffocating him…and he couldn't stand it.  I never intended to do anything like that, I just wanted friendship, only friendship from him, and he couldn't stand the sight of me!  I was so pitiful…'

"ITAII!!!"  the little puppy bit her wrist and ran off.  All the while in her thoughts, she had been holding on to it too tightly.  She held her bleeding wrist and bowed her head.

'What's wrong with me?  I can't even keep a puppy happy!'  She raised and walked away, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. 

'The further I get away from him, the less safer I feel.  I want to be there, but there's nothing to say.  My admiration for him since junior high has grown so much.  I was stupid enough to let myself fall for another person after Ryoma-kun.  And I fell for a person who would be harder to understand than Ryoma-kun.  I had concluded once, that it would be ok.  We weren't in the same grade, and we rarely saw eachother.  Nothing could really happen, so I could keep on admiring him.  But…that night he saved me….I saw a different side to him.  He saved me because it was the right thing to do, but he has a gentle side, and the way he held me….I can't get it out of my mind.  My little school-girl crush has deepened so much it feels like it's hurting me.  But I don't want to bother him….I don't want him to become annoyed at me like Ryoma-kun did.  Someone help me please….I don't want to feel this anymore.'

TBC

Something about this chapter, I really don't like it.  I think I'm just building a bridge for my future chapters.