"Across the Courts"
06. Art
On and off the courts, Niou Masaharu was known and feared as the Trickster.
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With his flowing silver hair and gleaming teal eyes, he could be easily spotted strutting casually down the hall, his tie loose at the neck and his shirt tails fluttering in the wake of his excursion. Girls would scamper away from him in whispered twitters and hastily muffled squeaks, and his fellow male peers always avoided his gaze uneasily.
"Niou-senpai, you're too scary sometimes," Kirihara often chided with a grin. "That's why all the girls and even guys run away from you."
The second year would have continued his teasing, but a glare from Sanada three courts down would snap shut Kirihara's mouth, causing the poor boy to scurry off with his tennis racket in hand before the stern fukubuchou could bark out laps for him to run. Niou would smirk while Yanagi cocked his head (inevitably gathering data) and Yukimura smiled his usual kindly smile.
Scary? Peering at himself briefly in the mirror before he left for school one morning, Niou thought otherwise. There was nothing scary, really, about his bleached hair and smug, cocky look. Even Yagyuu, the Gentleman of all people, could pull off a Niou attitude and a Niou glare if he wished to, as he had proven many times while they impersonated each other.
What many people failed to understand was that his trickery was a sort of art that naturally melded and molded into his own tennis style. It took skills and wits and insight and calmness to be able to manipulate all five senses of his opponent into the realms of an illusion—slowly, slowly ensnaring the foe into a drifting nightmare until he struck and they would wake but remain enraptured in the folds of the dark dream—slowly, slowly edging the one on the other side of the net into an unpleasant shock, fallen off, clinging onto the last wisps of sanity with desperation. Even if they acknowledged his artistry, they still whispered and fearfully called him the swindler, a most troublesome player on the courts, the frightening petenshi who excelled in the subtle secrets of trickery.
Then again, he was but a humble artist.
"Puri."
FIN
A/N: Petenshi = tricker/swindler. I love Niou :]
Disclaimer: Konomi Takeshi owns Prince of Tennis.
.moose