Disclaimer – 'Prince of Tennis' is not mine.
First, I'd like to say thank you to all readers and all the reviews for Chapter VII! chibura, Mada Mada Daze, DreamFreak336, Quill, sleepless, Milky Etoile, liar-just-a-liar, BluePhoenixFairy, 14thpenguin, lalalalki, apocadelic, Pretty Panda, RuByMoOn17, HoshiHikari, merissala, Kaiserin Tammy, Luna Moon Godess Thank you so much!!
Second, I'd like to apologize that it's been one year since my last update… I admit that I'm facing major writer block. :( I'm not very good at writing a change of scene. I think maybe this chapter will make many of you feel disappointed; if compare this one with other, it seem that the story is losing its glory. Oh well, I'm babbling again.
Last, "Finally, the Hyoutei arc begin!!!"
Kimi ga iru
"How did you know that Tezuka-kun is this skillful, buchou?" Momoshiro Takeshi asked the captain. Echizen Ryouma didn't answer his kouhai's question, but the look on his face told the other that he was planning something.
Since Momo didn't get the answer he decided to just drop this subject and turn to his usual style. "Finally I get to play!" He said with his powerful voice.
Kaidoh Kaoru snorted slightly.
"Don't be jealous over my special skill that made me enter the regular team." His rival teased.
"How can I not?" 'That Momoshiro wants to play a game with me? Alright, I will play along.' The boy thought. 'Let's see who is better in this mind game.'
"Momo-chan is the best player in Seigaku!"
"Mighty Momo-sama is so strong, right? Then he must be able to survive Inui-senpai's new invention."
"What kind of invention…?" Momo asked nervously.
"He makes a few new sport drinks for all of us. I guess he might want someone to try them before introduce his inventions to the world." His fingers pointed at above his nose just like the way Inui push up his eyeglasses. Momo half-faked the scare-look and quickly ran away to the court. Kaidoh watched his friend with a wicked smile.
Both sophomores didn't know that Inui Sadaharu was watching them from behind.
Ever since Tezuka joined the club, almost everything and everyone in the club changed. The biggest thing was the relationship between each member. The golden pair was not quite the same great golden pair and they didn't cooperate with each other as well as before. Kawamura Takashi was not close to the elder Fuji anymore. The tensai wanted to know why, but he simply held his question back.
Also, it was weird to see Yuuta not familiarize with Tezuka who was a semi-official regular member. Everyone knew that the sophomore was very friendly, but it was pretty obvious that he didn't want to get to know the younger boy.
All these were the pain that Ryusaki-sensei had received. She didn't want to see her club being like this. It seems that everything went wrong. It was just like her students were walking toward the end. They should run to the finish line, not the exit. Although she knew that the problem was Tezuka's existence, she had to stay behind Echizen's decision. It was Yamato Yudai's request that made her follow the current captain quietly.
"I hope you were right about this, Yamato." The old coach murmured lightly.
"Did you just say something, Ryusaki-sensei?" The data-man asked as he turned to his coach, pretended not to notice what she just said.
"Nothing." She stated. "Anyway, it looks like that I'm not the one whose mind seems to be somewhere else." And she smiled at him brightly.
"I see." The tall boy simply said.
Inui turned to continue his potion making, although it was a bit hard to do after seeing a scene between two of his kouhai. Inui knew that in order to forget about this, he must put more concentrate on what he was doing. His data was always right and dependable. To achieve victory, Seigaku must get every source of data from their opponents. The camp with Hyoutei should be one of the best opportunities to get their confidential information.
But little did he realize that pure data also had its own weakness when it comes to Echizen Ryoma. "Do you realize that this is tennis practice time?" Ryoma asked the data tennis player, who was busy with his greenish liquid.
"30 laps?" The fukubuchou quickly said, trying to look not too panicky. The data in his head kept telling him that he should not say anything more than this. But the way Echizen looked at him with narrow eyes made him want to negotiate the lap as quickly as possible.
"50 laps, okay?" Then he started running like mad. There was a chance by 81 percents that the captain would make him run 100 laps, so if he started running now, Echizen wouldn't announce the total lap.
"100 laps!"
'Damn!' He knew now that even data could be wrong sometimes.
The practice just recently over, so almost everyone in the tennis club started to pack their stuffs before going back home. There were only very few who decided not to leave yet; three of those were the freshmen trio.
"Tomorrow is the camping day with Hyoutei! Aren't you two excited?" Horio asked Katsuo and Kachirou with loud voice.
"I am, but I don't know about Kunimitsu-kun." Katsuo said. His quiet friend didn't say anything nor comment anything about going to a camp with their rival school. Also, it was very hard to predict what he was thinking.
"Inui-senpai and Fuji-senpai are over there." The last member of freshmen trio, Kachirou, quickly said to his two friends as he pointed his index finger at those two seniors who were standing on the corner. "I wonder what they are talking about right now."
"I smell something fishy. Fuji-senpai's brother is not going to like this."
"We can not hear them talking from here. How do you know that they are talking about Yuuta-senpai?"
"It's very easy." Horio said, his left arm fold across his chest while his right hand rubbed his chin. "They talk in private without letting anyone interfere."
"You can't just assume like that." Kachirou objected.
"Something is telling me that it involve room-sharing at Hyoutei."
The other two boys blinked their eyes.
How can they forget about this!
Because Seigaku and Hyoutei's coach prepared an arrangement for tennis camp (without asking anyone's opinion), the entire club had to go to private property of Hyoutei this weekend.
But girls were not allowed to enter this camp.
Sakuno sighed lightly. "How can I get Kunimitsu to notice me? …Oh! What am I saying?!?" What was happened to her lately? Why she always murmur things when she was alone? Right now she felt like she had become like her friend, Tomo-chan. Perhaps this wasn't the time to think about that. She sighed again. "I hope no one heard what I said."
"Where should I put these, Ryusaki?" Tezuka, with two baskets in both his hands, asked quietly. It wasn't his nature to shout at anything or anyone.
Sakuno felt her cheeks became hot, not really sure if it was by the weather or because Tezuka was standing so close to her. 'Wait! Did he hear what I just said?' She didn't even hear the sound of the door opened.
"..You can put them over there." She pointed at the empty corner near the door without looking.
"Won't they be in the way when others enter the room?"
"I will move them later..." She answered lightly when she noticed that she had made mistake. The boy was right.
"Alright,"
'He probably hasn't heard what I said earlier. I'm still lucky I guess.'
"You should go back to the court." The young girl suggested. She really needed to be alone now. Having someone that she wasn't sure of how she felt about standing beside her was really awkward.
"Ryusaki,"
"Yes?"
"See you next week."
"See you and good luck with your camp."
Tezuka nodded and pulled the front of white hat down. It covered half of his face, even if Sakuno tried to take a look closer she couldn't even see his glasses under it. And then the boy walked out of the club room silently.
No one see the faint blushed under the white cover. The girl was wrong when she thought that he didn't hear what she said.
The morning of the camping day was less than exciting than anyone think. The coach already informed her students for hundred of times that Hyoutei Gakuen would arrange a bus to pick them up to their personal camping place.
"They will come to Seishun in about an hour." The teacher said.
"May I say something right now, Ryusaki-sensei?" Inui asked.
The old coach nodded a little to give the sign of permission and the boy nodded back.
The data-man picked up his green note book and started to explain everything he knew about the other school to his teammate. "Here is the list of Hyoutei Gakuen's 7 regular members and 1 reserve player." Inui gave the list to his friends.
Shishido Ryou
Kabaji Munehiro
Oshitari Yuushi
Akutagawa Jiroh
Hiyoshi Wakashi
Mukahi Gakuto
Taki Haginosuke
Reserve player: Ohtori Choutaroh
"Okay. Who is the captain?" Oishi asked his co-fukubuchou.
"Unfortunately, I haven't got that information yet. As far as I know, their coach, Tarou Sakaki-sensei, always change the regular member all the time."
Echizen smirked.
Tezuka found himself unconsciously looked up at the Seigaku's best player. He later looked on the other way. Something in his mind kept bugging him about the name that he heard on the other day.
"You're forgetting someone." The captain of Seigaku tennis club said..
"I'm forgetting who, Echizen?"
"Atobe Keigo,"
The boy with glasses turned back to stared at the buchou. It was that name… Hearing this name out of the captain's mouth made him somehow feel uncomfortable.
"Alright," the data-man wrote down the name on his note, "who is he?"
"Just someone I happened to know."
"Are you able to provide anything you know about him? Like his personality or his skill?"
"Just note in your book that he is not easy to deal with."
"Do you have anything more than that?" The other boy just shrugged. "I will get more information of Hyoutei Regular, especially this guy, when we met them."
"That must be our bus!" Eiji said with excitement in his voice when their personal bus of Hyoutei. He grabbed Tezuka's arm, pull him to their bus and forced him to sit beside him. They were the first two who entered the bus.
"Megane-kun," an acrobatic player quietly said, "I saw the way you looked at Ochibi-chan." The younger boy immediately looked up at his senpai. "Next time, I will not pretend that I don't see." One eye winked at him playfully. Tezuka's hand still locked in his since they got up into the bus.
The boy with glasses used his other free hand to put the Fila hat off his head. He hasn't had a chance to return the hat to its owner yet. 'I should return his hat to him by now.'
The one, whom he thought about, was the last person who got into the bus. Kikumaru looked pleased that the Original Ochibi-chan walked passes their seat without looking at his Megane-kun.
'Maybe later,' He shook his head to push away the thought about the other boy.
When everyone took their seats, one figures with red head jumped in to their bus. "Hey Jiroh!!" He shouted. "Are you in here?" Some of Seigaku member looked at the boy, while some look around to see where was 'Jiroh' that he was talking about.
The short built boy walked to check every row from the front to the back to find 'Jiroh'. When he reached the last row, he found a sleeping form snored lightly on the seat. "JIROH!! Wake up!!" The red head shook the blond boy.
"…Gaku….to?" The victim murmured in his sleep.
Oh well, the weekend with Hyoutei began…
End of Chapter VIII
Note – I'm sorry that only Gakuto and Jiroh are in this Chapter. I promise that all Hyoutei regular member (including Taki) will be in the next one!!
Please review.