Nmu...I've tried my hardest, and now here's the attempted second chapter!! Plz review remember!! (SMILES) I need tips on how to make my stories better!! THANK YOU!!!

Few translations you may wanna know if you don't:

Matte --- Wait

Ja, hajimemashita ka? --- Well then, shall we start?

Ja, mata ashita ne --- informal way of saying: Well then, until tomorrow

Chotto matte ne --- Wait a minute

Chapter 2

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick...

The sound of the clock slowly ticking nearly sent Aya berserk. It was her second day of school, and aside from leaving her friends, her father, and starting a new life, Aya was forced to join the girls' tennis club today, according to the enthusiastic Miyu.

Aya looked up and stared at the back of Fuji's head. His back was slightly bent over as he was focusing on the English quiz they were taking. Good news for Aya---English was one of her strong suits.

She found herself gnawing at her pencil again---she does this whenever she's nervous---and with a horrified, small "gasp," she realized that she had made a teeth mark on Fuji's lead pencil. It was only five minutes ago that...

-FLASHBACK-

"Ne, Fuji...mind if I borrow a pencil? Mines ran out of lead." Aya begged desperately before the English quiz.

"You mean 'mine'?" he smiled.

Aya was numbed by his reply. "Nm? Huh? Uh..." she stared blankly at Fuji's nose, unable to stare at him in his eyes, although they were closed. She switched to a flushed and angry face and asked rather accusingly, "What do you mean by that?"

"Iya, forget it," Fuji laughed in a Fuji-styled way, "korede." He handed her an extra lead pencil off his desk.

Aya took it, her expression unchanged. "Don't make fun of me because I'm Chinese, okay? I can't speak Japanese correctly."

Fuji's eyes flew open.

"Aya!" the teacher caught her talking and put a finger to his lips. "We are starting a test now. Shh."

-END FLASHBACK-

"This guy, Fuji Syuusuke...he got me in trouble on my second day!! I usually get along with my teachers...I'm an A student!!" Aya cringed at the flashback. "Or at least, I was..."

Aya shook her head and clenched her fists under her desk. "I'm STILL going to be an A student, now that I know all fifty of my hiragana!!" she smiled as she remembered the other night. "I studied until two in the morning!! My endurance has paid off!!"

Miyu poked her head from behind. "What has paid off, Aya?"

Aya nearly toppled over her desk. "M-Miyu! Did I say that out loud?"

"Uh...yeah, you kind of whispered it aloud!" she whispered back.

"Shiho! Minase! Stop talking!"

The lunch bell rang, and Aya and Miyu waited until the teacher and all the students filed out of the classroom. Aya especially kept an eye on the smiling Fuji, who was listening to Eiji babble on about some new flavor of shrimp chips that he brought for lunch.

After they were gone, Miyu burst into a fit of excitement. "Kyaaa, this will be SO fun!! You can help me get some info on Tezuka-sama today!!"

"Are you sure about this? I really, really don't want to go..." Aya trailed off.

"EH?? Why not?"

"Because! Well...I'm not so good with sports..."

"I told you, you don't have to be good to get in the team!"

"But..."

"Pleeeeaaase?" she jumped up and down.

"I've always been second to last in long distance running! I don't want to look like an idiot in front of all those people..."

Miyu stopped hopping. "That's what you were worried about?"

Aya nodded. "I've always had not-so-impressive histories with sports...and besides, I fell out of a desk trying to chea---trying to stretch my neck..."

"That was kind of funny." Miyu laughed at the memory. More than one person remembered that moment yesterday.

"See?? That's why I'm not good at anything."

Miyu ignored Aya's whining. "Well, you got to speak with Fuji, and that's something. Barely any of the girls in our class got to exchange an 'ohayo' with him."

"...Hey, Miyu...?"

"Yeah?"

"Does Fuji...is he...together with anybody?"

Miyu enthralled herself with a pause. Suddenly, without warning, she jumped up and down again and pointed to Aya. "YOU LIKE FUJI-KUN!!! YOU JUST ADMITTED IT!!!"

"Keep it down!!" Aya grabbed Miyu by her wrists and tried to stop her jumping.

"I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT HI---"

Aya smacked a hand on top of her mouth, afraid that her excited shouting would echo down the hall and reach everybody's ears. "Shut UP!! Everybody can hear you, you know!!!"

"So, well, since you DO like him, you'll agree to join the club, right??" she said while prying Aya's hand off.

"What?" Aya looked at her. "Why is it that if I go to the tennis club, he'll---it's not like he's in the guys' club or anything!"

Miyu stopped jumping again.

"Uh...well...about that...AHEM...Fuji-kun, he...he's actually..." she tried finding the right words to say while Aya slowly processed the information.

Realizing Miyu's "confession," she mouthed slowly: "...Drop. Dead."

"I cannot believe I'm doing this. I cannot believe I'm doing this. I CANNOT BELIEVE I'M DOING THIS!!!"

The nerve-wrecked classmate/now-a-tennis player thought that same line over and over again.

"I. Can't. Believe. I'm. Doing. This."

"Hey, Aya! Do you prefer white or pink?" Miyu ignored her chanting and held up two tennis outfits. "If I were you, I'd go with the pink one."

"When does practice start?"

Miyu's shoulder shifted and her face read: I can't believe you're still worried about that. She looked five years older when she was serious.

"Aya. Don't worry about it, okay? Today, all you have to do is return a simple underhand serve. Anybody can do it, even you. Now get dressed."

Aya walked out on the winter afternoon, dressed in her tennis uniform, which was composed with a fluttery skirt. "These obsessive-compulsive girls...it's negative 50 degrees outside and they can still walk around with a skirt??? I really shouldn't have come..."

"Aya, this way, this way!!" Miyu led her into a huge tennis court, parallel to the boys' courts. Nobody but this guy with glasses, who kept muttering about nutrition facts, and an old lady in pink sweats were seen on the court.

Every girl observed the boys' courts while they filed into a straight line. "Aww...they're not here yet, but they'll be here soon." Miyu reassured Aya.

But she didn't feel too reassured. "Please don't come here soon. Please don't come here soon, PLEASE don't come here soon...!!"

She can imagine it already: all the regulars, including Fuji, will be staring at the girls, one by one, perfectly returning a serve while Aya messed up. Fuji and the others will be so impressed with everybody but her.

"Ah! Ah! HERE THEY COME!!"

Seven tall figures and one midgety figure marched out onto the court. The midgety one looked really familiar to Aya. "I think I've seen him before, in TV or something in America when I was on vacation last summer..."

But her memory failed her when she suddenly saw Fuji Syuusuke walk beside him.

"FUJI-SAMA---!! LOOK THIS WAY!!"

Aya's right ear nearly busted open.

"KYAAAA!! Tezuka-sama suteki!!" Miyu and a bunch of other girls shouted to Aya's left.

From the midst of the havoc, she heard one quiet mutter of "Ryoma-kun..."

She turned to see a girl who appeared to be in the seventh grade with pigtails. "Ganbatte, Ryoma-kun..." she muttered confidently to herself while leaning against the fence.

"Hmmm. Ryoma...Ryoma...why does that sound familiar? That's it---I've definitely seen him on TV!!"

Suddenly, her gaze shifted from the pig-tailed girl to the smiling tensai, standing parallel from her, still smiling, facing her direction. Although Aya wasn't sure if he was looking at someone else, she fidgeted under his gaze. They were meters away, but she still felt uncomfortable...

"Aya?"

"Eh?" she found herself facing Miyu.

"Aya. You're next!!"

It was true---she was the last one (besides the pigtailed girl) in line. It was finally her turn. Her legs quivered.

Miyu ran up to her and gave her a little push. "Get up there! You can do it!!"

"No, I can't!!" she had been so scared about this moment! She clumsily stepped onto one side of the court, facing the captain of the girls' tennis team. Miyu gave her a racket and patted her shoulder. "Just remember! Your love is watching you!!" she said before running to the sidelines.

"That helps a lot, Miyu!!"

"Here. All you have to do is hit the ball back to this side of the court, and I'll keep returning them to you, and you keep returning them to me. Get the idea?" the captain's lone voice in the wilderness said.

Aya stood there, knees buckled, hair messy. She ran a quivering finger through her hair, trying to straighten the knots without success. Everyone stared at her---all the girls, even the pigtailed girl, and the guys, for they were wondering why the girls suddenly got unusually quiet. Fuji opened his eyes with interest when he saw that Aya had joined the team.

"HUH?? Fuji, did you know that Aya joined the tennis club??" Eiji said to Fuji on the other court.

"Iie, I had no idea."

"You two know her?" Momo cut in. "She looks like she's about to die out there, that girl..."

"Her name's Aya. She just started here in our class, nya! HEY---" Eiji suddenly got excited at a discovery "---Aya. Nya. THEY RHYME!!!"

"Eiji-sempai!!" Momo nudged the guy who was supposedly older than he was. "So, this girl just got here and she plays tennis?"

"Nanjiro hoi hoi!" Eiji nodded.

"...She's Chinese."

"What?" Everyone looked at Fuji. His eyes were open. Leave it to Fuji to jump in with the facts when everyone's wondering about something. (A/N: This is very true!)

"She told me in class today," he explained.

"Waaahhh...she's probably the first Chinese person to be in our class!" Eiji wondered. "I had no idea when I first met her!"

"Saa, tanoshii ne." Fuji mused. His face was back to the smiling mode.

Eiji looked at Fuji. "I knew you were going to say that, Fuji!"

Back on the other side of the campus, Aya did not feel amused at all. She gripped onto her racket harder, but she did not change her posture.

"Ja, hajimemashita ka?"

The captain threw the ball into the air and served underhand with a light pong.

The ball came straight at Aya.

"There you go, Aya, your chance!!" Miyu shouted. Confidence was one of her powerful strengths. "That's a easy return!!"

The ball seemed to move in slow motion for Aya. She didn't move a muscle and just stared at her hands. She could feel her body vibrate with every beat of her heart.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

She has never returned a tennis ball in her life, even if it was a really easy one. She gripped onto her racket harder. She inhaled sharply, raised her arms, put her history with sports behind her, took her aim---and turned her head around.

Fuji was standing there, still smiling, his arms folded, one finger on his chin---

"HE'S ANALYZING ME?!?!"

BANG!!

"A-Aya!!"

"Oh my gosh!"

"What happened??"

"Meh?"

Aya muttered. She got up to see that she was surrounded by a circle of girls.

"Did I hit it?" she tried, staggering.

"Well, yeah, and I---" Miyu rubbed her eyes, "---and I could've sworn I saw it catch on fire or something---"

Aya's eyes widened.

"I don't think we'll be getting that ball back, where ever it is!! It's probably at the other side of Earth or something!!"

"WHAT?" Aya said flatly. "Sure it is."

"No, really, it---YOUR RACKET'S ON FIRE!!"

"KYAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!" all the girls backed off.

The racket was---smoking? "EH? How did that happen??"

After the smoke died off, Miyu ran up to Aya. "You looked real scary when you were hitting it, too! Like---like---like you were angry about something..."

"...I was...?"

Back at the boys' court, the tall boy named Inui scratched a few things onto his trusty notebook. "Amazing...for a girl...that is a LOT of willpower..."

"Wha-Wha-Wha!! I thought---!! But she---!! NYA?!?!"

Oishi was watching her also. He was speechless.

"Hyaaa...so she's that good, eh?" Momo said.

"SHE WAS ON FIRE, BABY!!" Crazy Kawamura commented rather loudly. None of the regulars have seen a personality shift that was so strong from anybody, except for Taka.

"But---but she fell out of a desk stretching her neck!!" Eiji couldn't help but remember.

"Maji??"

Fuji's reaction was altered for only a nanosecond---that is, when she caught him "studying" her and the racket supposedly "caught on fire."

"Okay, everyone---back to practice!!" Tezuka yelled. He himself has recovered from the shock of seeing something so supernatural.

"What did you think of that, Fuji? Ne, Fuji..." Eiji tugged at Fuji's sleeve.

But he didn't budge. His eyes were open still, and he although he was smiling, his expression seemed different in a way. He started to walk away from the other regulars.

"Where are you going, Fuji??" Eiji called after him.

Fuji just said, "Chotto matte ne."

"Taku...what's up with him?" Eiji cocked his head to one side.

"Okay, everyone, good practice today!" the captain clasped her hands and all the girls filed out of the court. Practice was over, but Miyu and Aya remained there, standing, still trying to figure out what happened.

"That was...that was incredible," was all Miyu could manage.

"Yeah...I...guess..." was Aya's trademark answer.

"Well, I guess I'll go...I have to catch the bus soon. You should leave soon, too...it's almost closing time."

"Okay. Ja matta ne."

"Bye!"

Aya was the only one left in the court. She stared at her hand and flexed her fingers. "Just what happened? I raised my arms, and the next thing you know, I..."

"Daijoubukai?"

It was the same line again, but Aya was still surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to check on you." He still smiled.

There was a doubtful pause.

"...You saw me see you, right?" Aya said.

He smiled as if that was his answer.

"I didn't know you played tennis," he told her.

"I don't."

"Why'd you join the team?"

"...Why should I tell you?"

"You've never played tennis." He said matter-of-factly.

Aya felt herself heat up with more anger. "First you correct me in my grammar, and now this?? What's with you??"

"Here." He walked closer towards her.

"What?"

He enveloped her hand in his touch.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING???" Aya twitched violently and blushed like crazy, but she didn't move.

"This is how you hold the racket."

"!!!" she felt stupid when she saw that he was changing her hand's position to grip the racket.

"Does that feel better?"

"...I guess so..."

Aya didn't look up, she just stared at the contact of their hands. Something inside her felt so...so...

"Ja...mata ashita ne."

He let go and started to walk away.

"Ma-MATTE!!!"

Fuji turned around to see that Aya was holding out a lead pencil, her fingers and arm stiff. "...
You...forgot...uhm..."

"Arigatou..." he took it from her and smiled. Of course, he was smiling the whole time, but the atmosphere of his expression changed.

"Bye!!" Aya suddenly took off, grabbing her schoolbag, rushing off into the streets with her tennis uniform still on.

After she was out of sight from Fuji, she rounded a corner and stopped, gasping.

If only she stayed a little longer, Fuji would have been able to see that Aya was smiling. She stared at her hands and blushed. "Fuji Syuusuke...you're such a dork..." she giggled, her eyes still closed with happiness.

"Ne, ne, Fuji!! Where did you run off to?? Tezuka made us run 20 laps because we were watching the girls practice!!" Eiji jumped and ran to Fuji as soon as he saw Fuji walking back towards them.

"That wasn't fair, Fuji-sempai!!" Momo joined in.

"What's that, Fuji?" Eiji suddenly noticed that Fuji was looking at something in his hands. "A pencil?"

All Fuji said to reply was, "...She has crooked back teeth..."