Leaves
He watches Yuuta reborn and he knows it, feels it, tingling away in those parts of himself that he disregards because he cannot see them in statistics or numerical columns. He can muse on it - understand in hypotheticals that any chance he might have had is lost, is gone, whispered away by sly seductive trickery, but it is not the same. Not the same when it cannot be punched into a calculator; Mizuki - Yuuta ache. Somewhere. Ache in those ghostly hollows where Mizuki never goes. The heart is a strange beast. The head is simpler and possesses greater strengths. Denial is the mind's weapon and the heart's despair; a lying bedfellow and an empty whore that he clings to when nobody is looking.
Mizuki fucks dreams and closes his eyes in waves of cloudy fantasies. In those moments before he falls asleep and his mind lifts away from its nerve centre of mathematical comfort, visions come to him and he drinks them in, almost unconscious, guilt-free. He can convince himself that he doesn't realise it's happening. Just as he can convince himself that he doesn't love Yuuta at all. That he doesn't see him in glory gold, naked and wide-eyed with rough power and infantile potential. Glowing like the birth of a new star. Fingers soft as pollen; dabbling yellow-wet on Mizuki's skin. Yuuta is growing. He is progressing. His skin is stretching and accommodating him. Confidence once a seedling is taking the form of a tree and Yuuta is no longer the Fuji that people think of second. His hands are bark and his arms reach like branches to shake Akazawa's return volley out of the sky. The ball crashes apple-like to the ground and Yuuta is static, stable, whole.
Mizuki looks on like a serpent.
The ironies are not lost on him.
Temptation once, spoils gone sour.
Yuuta leaves the ball where it lies and walks away, racket over one shoulder. He is calling something out to his Captain with that relaxed smile that suits him so well these days. Once upon a time, he might have taken up the apple and looked to Mizuki, seeking reassurance, seeking safety, seeking love.
"Eat the apple, Yuuta-kun." Mizuki might have hissed. "Lift your shoulder just a little bit higher on the slam. You'll gain more power, then."
"Doesn't it taste good, hmm?" A small slithering chuckle. "Oh, don't worry about the discomfort. It'll pass. It'll pass away..."
The ball is not an apple to Yuuta anymore. Tennis is no longer an offering from his manager he is tempted to take. Not a binding tie that would give Mizuki some comfort, some redemption, some forgiveness. It is nothing but a ball and there is no serpent to give wicked instruction on how to use it. Where once a young boy stood listening to the devil, there is an abandoned rotting prize. Yuuta is his own tree, now. He has no need to look up into the branches of others for a mentor, for a guide, for a lover.
The sun is setting rusty-red over the court, and Mizuki packs up to leave.
The ball lies there all night. Mizuki hasn't the heart to retrieve it in the morning. He just observes, notebook in hand, as Yuuta steps out onto a fresh morning court like a King surveying newly conquered land. He picks up the ball and tosses it over his shoulder; clearing his kingdom of unwanted litter, crafting his own space. Mizuki stares down at a blank page and swallows the lump in his throat.
He dreams of leaves that night - falling to the ground. And hopes, despite himself, to catch one in hungry hands.