Tezuka Kunimitsu

1. Tezuka held his family above all else.

Perhaps it was the traditionalist values he was raised with, but in the world he'd grown up in family took precedence over all else. The morals that had been hammered into him said that family was the most sacred of all gatherings, coming before friends or tennis or anything else Tezuka ever took interest in during his lifetime. He never objected to this teaching, because the old adage – friends come and go but family is forever – seemed to be incredibly true. (It was until he'd witnessed the harsh crack in the relationship between the Fuji brother's in his second year of middle school that he'd ever begun to doubt it.)

2. He associated more closely with his grandparents than his parents.

Which made sense, considering his grandparents had pretty much raised him. Not that his parents weren't good parents – they were – and at 34 and 31 they were both well-adjusted enough to have a child. But the two of them had always been a bit flitty, his father always more adventurous and daring than his grandfather had cared for and his mother always following along with a light in her eye and a song in her heart. They were wonderful people, of course, and provided a sound support system should Tezuka ever have needed it, but there had been times – especially in his youngest days – where they'd both been busy with the trivial pursuits of their lives and his grandparents had sat down and taught him the ways of the world. His grandmother had died when he was three, and she was barely a twinkle in his eye when he had gotten older, but his grandfather's death when he was just beginning his second year of high school had taken a little piece of himself with it.

3. He'd gotten right and properly wasted when he was fourteen in Germany.

It wasn't like he had planned it, but he was known for not being the most social creature around the facilities, so in an effort to fix this a number of guys had been determined to take him out one night. While he didn't have an ID, he looked well and properly seventeen or so by that age (a feat that never managed to amaze people) and the waitress (who was trying quite hard to flirt with him) hadn't bothered to ask so much as his age. Before Tezuka could refuse, glasses had been placed on their table and, consequently, shoved down his throat. The result had been a stumbling, babbling mess; a large reservoir of bad pick up lines that his brain had stored from Momoshiro's constant screaming; and quite a lot of bodily fluids launching themselves in the bushes paired with a headache that dulled even the pain in his shoulder the morning after. While it wasn't one of his prouder moments (he never did tell his parents, and the only one who ever caught wind of it was Fuji after the other teen searched his cell phone and found the lone picture he had forgotten to delete) it was a moment nonetheless.

4. He knew he'd consider Oishi his "best friend" within the first five minutes of their meeting.

The other boy was reliable, and he didn't brag unnecessarily. He was a hard worker, but he was nice enough to approach Tezuka first; he didn't seem to find trouble with the silences that lapsed over them, and instead seemed content to sit in them when in Tezuka's presence instead of filling them with awkward, meaningless chatter. He didn't use words unnecessarily, he could get straight to the point and, as Tezuka later found out, he had the uncanny ability to read exactly what you were thinking – a fact Tezuka very much appreciated, because his ability to accurately word things was often off. But in the first five minutes, the thing that had sealed their friendship was one, timidly spoken line: "I'm Oishi Syuchiroh and I'm joining the tennis team too."

5. He had an internal sarcastic monologue that ran longer than any tome he'd ever read.

Perhaps it had developed as a coping skill, but whatever the reason it seemed to flair up quite often, a constant chatter in the back of his mind that made comments about anything and everything. There were times where it went quieter, of course, but it was always there, as much of a part of Tezuka as tennis and family. On more than one occasion, the "stoic" teen had needed to suppress his outer emotions so the hilarity of what was brewing internally didn't spill. And on days where his math teacher made a particularly stupid mistake on a fairly simple problem, or Momoshiro and Kaidoh went at each other before practice had even begun – those were the days where the sarcasm reached a special level of Snark that would probably have wounded even Fuji Syusuke.

6. His logical streak went against his family's religion.

While not a "specific" religion, the Tezuka family, like most Japanese, celebrated a syncretistic mix between Shino and Buddhism. The difference between his family and other Japanese families was how traditional they were, and just how often they made their way to a number of shrines. In the end, though, this didn't matter; despite his traditional upbringing, despite all of the tales of the kamigami, despite the weekend trips to the Shrines, all of the logical and rational things he'd observed in the world (and quite possibly influences from a friendship with Inui) left him conflicted between his spiritual upbringing and his empirical side. In the end, while he never entirely rejected the religious ideals, he never entirely accepted them either.

7. Despite the inconvenience glasses posed, he couldn't wear contacts.

He'd had glasses since he was a young child, longer than he could remember really, and he'd never one complained until he'd taken up tennis. While being able to see was all well and goodl, being able to see without having to worry whether the source of your vision was going to fly off of your face would have been much nicer. His family hadn't objected once he'd posed the idea, either, but the optometrist had: one look at his eyes and the man had said he was far too at risk for corneal neovascularization (something Tezuka had never even heard of before) to be prescribed contacts. It'd been more than annoying at the time, but as he aged Tezuka learned to adjust his playing to fit his glasses (which had resulted in a number of spectacular though accidental tennis discoveries on his end) and they became just as much a part of him as the sport itself.

8. He stopped keeping in touch with his teammates, but they never stopped keeping in touch with him.

He would occasionally text them, and Oishi got a phone call or two, but for the most part Tezuka lost contact with all of his teammates and other people he considered friends when he went off to train. Not a single one of them ever lost contact with him, though. Even in his later years he got Christmas cards (because that was the fashion, apparently) from Eiji, a new red head seeming to join every photo as the family grew. Oishi sent him e-mails updating him on everyone's progress, even after they'd all left for University; Fuji sent photo collages of all sorts of things, related to him and not, just for the sake of it. Inui would spam up his inbox once or twice a month with documents full of data he had been collecting and other interesting facts he thought would be useful. Kawamura sent pictures as well, including those of his also-expanding family though the hair color was much less intense than all of the little Kikumarus running around. Kaidoh send a few messages here and there as well, updating his former-captain on his progress and where he and the rest of them were headed "now," even when "now" meant heading to the real world: He was the most sane of them all. Momoshiro only kept in touch because Echizen wouldn't; but eventually even Echizen came around, and the single text message from the boy – Turn around – had been all the better when it turned out they were finally able to play against each other again.

9. Making the decision to train pro was the hardest one of his life.

Knowing he wanted to wasn't the problem, of course. It'd been his dream since he'd first picked up the sport to train at a professional level, and being allowed to work on the thing he loved all day, every day – well, it was as heavenly as an offer got. But he wasn't stupid or filled with the naïve foolishness that accompanied so many and their dreams of the same aspiration: he knew very well the stresses this type of training had on one's body, and he knew very well what it might do to his body. Tezuka was incredibly self-aware (though some had speculated he wasn't; why else would he have gone so far as to push his shoulder to an almost unfixable point?) and he knew that it was only a matter of time until the ticking time bombs he'd lived with as injuries for almost all of his tennis career exploded. Figuring out whether he wanted to risk something that could leave him in constant pain for the rest of his life (not to mention dropping out of high school when the chances of him lasting past the age of twenty were sketchy) was one of the most mind-tearing decision he made his entire life.

10. He never regretted it.

Even when his shoulder, elbow, and wrist crapped out at age 21, Tezuka never regretted taking the offer. It was a bit different from the normal high school and university experience, that was for sure, but the thrill of being out on a tennis court – the thrill of playing against truly good, truly exhilarating opponents – was one he would never forget. Even now on a hot day he could step outside, close his eyes, and hear the sound of the courts – of the ball pinging back and fourth – and smell the summer breeze and the sweat, and his adrenaline levels would spike as the entire experience of a match came flooding back to him. Every time this happened, he knew it had been worth it, regardless of what anyone else said.