Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis belongs to someone else, not me!
------------------
Echizen spent most of English class writing. Although he was writing in English, it generally had nothing to do with the very simple lessons his classmates were learning. Instead, it had everything to do with tennis, and more specifically, the clubhouse.
The clubhouse (of dreams, as he'd named it in his notebook margins) was the home of Echizen's first great awakening. It was a simple cinderblock building, full of the smells of sweaty workout clothes coupled with the pure scent of soap. But it was also home to more naked teammates than Echizen had ever dreamed he'd care to see.
And, as unbelievable as it seemed, Echizen realized within the first few torturous minutes after his first Seigaku tennis practice that he was a big fan of his naked, damp teammates. Huge fan. So much of a fan that if he didn't blow off steam by writing down all of the thoughts that threatened to drown him, he'd never be able to survive a shower unembarrassed.
I love the indentation between Inui-senpai's pelvic bone and his abdomen, Echizen wrote in the margins of his class notes, in English so that Horio wouldn't be able to decipher his words, The line is carefully delineated, and cut deep. At the top end of that indentation is the very gentle dip of his waist, a line that then flares upward to define his chest. At the bottom end is...something I shouldn't write about in class.
"Echizen, why are you all red?" Horio's voice broke his reverie.
"Hey Horio, what's your favorite grip tape?" And with that skillful bit of misdirection, Echizen was free once more to let his mind wander.
Fuji-senpai's thigh muscles have a strongly delineated demarcation in their sides, and taper upward from his knee in a lean, long line. From the back, his thighs end in deep indentations on either side of his tush, which is almost nonexistent when he's dressed, but sharply muscled when he's not. His best features, however, are his arms. When he flexes to shampoo his hair, an unexpected bulky muscle in his upper arm pops out. At that moment, I dream of what his muscles would look like with teeth marks all over them.
"Echizen! Answer number 20!"
"It's pronounced 'Aw-spish-us,' and it means something like 'lucky,'" Echizen rattled off dutifully, and then looked down at his notebook again. Much like the way I am lucky whenever I get to shower next to Buchou, he wrote. In those few moments when Buchou turns his head up to the water spray, and droplets cascade off his hair, down his neck, and run in rivulets down the smooth skin of his back, he looks more completely relaxed than he does at any other time of the day. In the shower, his eyes close as he tilts his head upward. But even naked, Buchou is still Buchou -- right up until he takes off his glasses. And then, at that moment, he is truly naked. Even the planes of his face seem completely different without those frames. The sharp, tilted corners of his cheekbones look...
"Echizen, you're red again. Anyway, it's time for practice!"
...kissable.
Echizen closed his notebook.
-------------------
Tezuka noticed the forgotten notebook lying open under Echizen's cubicle. He stooped to pick it up, scanning the pages to see which of his teammates owned it, when his eye was caught by the scrawled English in the margin.
A moment stretched to five minutes, and then, with a quick and decisive movement, Tezuka shut the book. He placed it carefully in Echizen's cubicle, and turned to leave.
And then he turned back, retrieved Echizen's notebook, took a pen out of his bookbag, and made a small amendment.
-------------------
"Echizen, you're all red again! Maybe you shouldn't sit in the sun," Horio blathered next to him.
But his words didn't even penetrate Echizen's reverie.
Instead, he stared intently and with great disbelief (and not a little growing...wonder) at the two small words printed in neat Japanese right beneath a long English paragraph about kissing Buchou's cheekbones.
It said:
Echizen mo.