I actually woke up this morning and said "Okay! Today is chapter 15."..Dear God.
This one is From Ryoma's side. Time to find out Ochibi's secret!
Chapter 15
Ryoma dropped his bag on the floor by the door, not even bothering to tell anyone he was home. Instead he just went upstairs to his room.
He went straight to his dresser, where a photo album lay.
Sitting on his bed, leaning against the wall, he opened it.
The first picture was of thr group of them, from when he was a first year.
It hadn't been that long ago- had it?
..So it had. He looked at himself in the picture.
He was in the center, Momo leaning down had his arms draped over his shoulders.
He turned the page.
Next was the Golden Pair. He smirked. Oishi and Eiji held each other in a tight embrace in this one. Momo told him a week after the picture was developed, that that was the day after they had confessed to each other.
On the other side was a randomly snapped photo of Kaidoh and Inui.The pair were standing there. Inui seemed to be telling him something, possibly a new training menu? Momo had pointed out the faint blush on Kaidoh's cheeks.
He turned the page again.
This one was supposed to be just a picture of Tezuka. But that had failed. Fuji was standing behind him at a distance. But now far enough for Momo to miss him watching the buchou.
It seemed like the entire tennis team had bee dating each other that year…No. they had been. Well, everyone but Taka, Momo and himself.
The picture to the right was of it was Momo. Just Momo.
It was weird. How all of a sudden, his Senpai had..come back into his life. He hadn't talked to Eiji-Senpai, Oishi-Senpai, Fuji-Senpai and them since they had left Jr. High. And Kaidoh-Senpai and Momo-Senpai as well.
But leave it to that group to come back into his life with a bang.
When he was least expecting it.
That was just like them.
He sighed. It sort of felt like he had let his guard down by letting them get to him like this. He should have expected it. Especially after Momo-senpai had shown up at his match.
He looked back at the picture. Something caught his eye. Bringing the album up closer to his face, he gasped and slammed it shut. There, in the back ground of the picture, was Ryoma smiling at Momo's back. Happy that Momo had missed that one himself, he shut the album not wanting to find anything else in there right now.
He moved across the room and set it on a shelf.
That was when he noticed a picture frame.
He smiled sadly at it.
Picking it up, he blew some dust off of it.
Kei. That was the boys name in the picture.
He had light brown hair, and dark chocolate brown eyes, and the cutest smile.
Kei was Ryoma's boyfriend.
Or girlfriend, as his Senpai thought.
Over last summer vacation, Kei died.
He had an illness. The found out about it to late. Ryoma never really got to figure out what is was, exactly.
He had met Kei at a tennis camp in the US when he was younger. It turned out that Kei's father and his own old man had been team mates when they were at Seishun.
Ryoma had been more than shocked to find out that he had moved to Japan.
Their families were having dinner together and the Echizen home. One minute the boys were playing a video game..the next they were doing something completely different.
Kei had been Ryoma's first kiss.
Ryoma's first everything. And now he was gone.
He just…wasn't ready to talk about it to anyone.
Especially because no one had known what the two of them had done behind closed doors.
No one had known that their relationship went beyond friendship.
"Or maybe there's someone else who likes you." Ryoma repeated the words that Fuji had spoken not even an hour ago.
Wondering just what his Senpai had meant, Ryoma set the picture frame back down and fell onto his bed… his thoughts slowly turning into dreams as he fell asleep.