Disclaimer: Takeshi Konomi created Prince of Tennis. Anything you recognize – We don't own. Anything you don't – We own.

Authors' Notes: I think I should be using author... since only one of us is here... but who cares. Haha... This is Clarify in for Julie... We've finally got the first chapter up! Haha.. Julie's away on vacation... (Japan!) Oh how we all envy her... hehehe. Anyways... This has a lot of blood and sweat, so enjoy it. =P Also, feedback is always welcome and loved, flames or not... So you know what to do! =)

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He had just started to walk home alone from school one day. Yuuta was helping a teacher and Saeki was staying after school for detention. Dark clouds were starting to fill the sky, signaling people that it was going to rain. He quickened his pace, hoping to get home soon, as he had lots of homework to finish.

He frowned upon that thought. Homework would take him no time to do. The rest of the night he would be probably in his room checking it over and pretending not to finish it so that Yuuta wouldn't get upset. The next day, he would hand in the homework and the teacher would praise him for getting perfect on it. Again. After that, the girls would sigh after him while the guys in the class would glare at him for getting all the attention. Again.

 He had friends in school; they respected him, looked up to him, admired him, and he felt good to be wanted. His friends weren't the most popular guys in school, but they were decent people. It took him a long time to make those friends. He was disliked, even hated, by many people in their school. Other than them, Yuuta and Saeki were also his friends. Although Yuuta has his own separate group of friends and Saeki had been hanging out with the popular guys lately, he was close to them. At least, he would like to think that.

Suddenly, two hands roughly grabbed him by the shoulders and stopped him from leaving the school playgrounds. Pushed back against the wall, Fuji's cerulean blue eyes shot open in surprise. He looked at the two faces in front of him, menacing and intimidating. Blue eyes desperately glanced around him, looking for an escape.

"It's no use, Syusuke-kun," The tall blond mocked. "Not even your smart brain and good looks can save you now, can it?"

 NO!!! He wanted to scream out, there were people who can help him. He wanted to say that, he really did. But he couldn't, because he knew nobody was there.

 He closed his eyes.

He tried to get away, but it was no use. The other two were too blinded with rage and jealousy to even think clearly to let him escape without harm.

Punch

Fuji stumbled a few steps back after the other brunette hit him. He refused to let the others have the joy of seeing him suffer.

Kick

He fell to the ground; the pain was now rapidly spreading down his legs.

Whack

"Now, now, Syusuke-kun," The blond said roughly into his ear. "how does it feel when you have no one to stand up for you?" He continued to kick, punch, and whack Fuji. "How does it feel when you don't have any real friends?"

He struggled to open his eyes, to force them to listen to him. He gritted through his teeth, "I. Do. Have. Friends."

The brunette smirked, not an I'm-just-teasing-you smirk, but a the- more-you-suffer-the-more-I-am-enjoying-this kind of smirked. "Do you?" He sneered. "Then why are they only watching right now and not standing up for you in front of us?"

Then why are they only watching right now...

Then why are they only watching right now...

Those words sent a chill down his back, that couldn't be true. He looked up with many difficulties, hoping the words were lies, that it was nothing but a bunch of Big. Fat. Lies.

But they were no lies.

What he saw devastated him. Standing near the playground was his group of so called "friends". They weren't laughing, but they weren't helping either. When they noticed his pained stare, each of them lowered their head to the ground in shame and guilt.

He understood right then. He wasn't a friend to them, just an acquaintance. They didn't care about him, they couldn't stand up for him in front of the most threatening kids in school. Not that he blamed them. Now that he thought about it, they never spent any time together; it was they, and he, never together.

He stood up, ignoring the pain in his body, and picked up his bag from the ground. He was bruised purple and blue all over, but the ever- untouchable Fuji Syusuke didn't care. Wiping the blood on the corner of his mouth to his sleeve, blue eyes opened again. This time, it wasn't because of surprise or fear. His eyes lost all trace of emotions. It was just...empty.

He understood the ways of bullies. They played on your weak spot and your vulnerability. He had been foolish enough to let them get to him in the first place. Well, too bad, because the show was over and he was not about to let them bully him.

"It doesn't matter anymore."

The simple sentence hung in the air, and silence soon followed it. People found it hard to believe that he just brushed the whole thing off as if it didn't mean a thing.

 But they didn't know how much it hurt him. They didn't know how much it bled inside him when the people who he thought were his friends abandoned him. To them, he was probably someone who they could copy homework off, someone who they just hung out with, someone who was just there. How could it not hurt, when he tried so hard to make friends because of his natural talents, when he became so used to hanging out with them, when he trusted them?

With that, Fuji Syusuke walked away. He walked away from his problems and hurt. He walked away with a blank mind, not knowing that he was meant to live for so much more.

 Not knowing what he was truly meant to be.

 Not knowing happiness.