Sleep was a form of release in its shifting images and deep silences.

He couldn't explain the silence that resided in him, a vacuum that coiled itself deeper and deeper inside with the repetitive ticking of the clock on the night table. Through 24-hour cable broadcasts, a variety of sounds permeated through the flimsy wooden door all night. The silence in his mind came more frequently when noise closed in on him, almost tripping over itself in rousing waves of volume until it smashed against the shut walls of his bedroom and left him untouched. If there were no sounds of life in his apartment, his mind would grasp desperately at the ticking of the clock, memorising it, imitating it, repeating it until he wound up with a major headache the next day.

Within the silence, there was something important that he could listen out for. Perhaps it heralded the arrival of something else, but he didn't know what it was since he never remembered once he awoke. Even the memory of the sound faded within seconds of his awaking, leaving only faint traces behind. It was vague and indescribable, but he fancied that it sounded like the opening of a distant door, somewhere.

On that fateful day all those years ago, he hadn't even been concerned when he first found out that Fuji's seat had been empty all day. He wasn't even shocked when the news began spreading that Fuji hadn't returned home since the night before as well. He didn't think that he batted an eyelid when he ordered the rest of the team to stop gossiping and return to the tennis courts. No, it had taken him a much longer time before Fuji's absence hit him.

In the middle of a match, he raised his racket to deliver the final smash shot to seal the game.

In the silence of his mind, he heard the click of a camera.

A few months after Fuji's disappearance, the appearances had begun. When he least expected it, he caught a glimpse of Fuji sitting at his favourite spot on the swings, heard him speak to people despite the complete lack of response, felt the silhouette of his frame against the sun-burnt bricks.

Yet, no one was there when he turned around.

He had considered that the rest of the team suffered from the same delusions, until he realised that with the exception of Eiji and himself, as well as Echizen who remained strangely remote from the entire state of affairs, few of them even appeared to care that Fuji Syuusuke had vanished. When he enquired further, even Fuji's parents were starting to forget about their child. If he had remained in Japan, perhaps he would have wound up like them.

The paranoia lingered even when he moved to Germany, resulting in him being terrified of leaving the safety of his apartment for some time. Fear spiked in him each time he considered stepping outside and feeling the raw vitality of the throngs of people, rubbing against him, blending into him, becoming him. It made his skin crawl. He left the house only when it was strictly necessary, and then only to the deserted all-night convenience stores around 2-3am. He sometimes wondered when he had become so pathetic, but he had also become extremely competent at erasing those thoughts whenever they barged into his mind. Although there was one day where he had snapped, calmly collecting every trophy and medal in his house before tossing everything into the garbage. He hadn't really minded their loss, but it did leave his cupboards bare, apart from the forlorn photographs. That night where he had lost his mind, he remembered turning on the television so loud that even his long-suffering neighbours had come by to speak to him about it.

It still made him smile sometimes, remembering the horrified look on Atobe's face when he saw Tezuka's living quarters for the first time. All it took was one Atobe Keigo barging into his life, his haughtiness forcing Tezuka to return to what the diva had declared were "basic standards of civilisation".

He lay back on his bed, holding a coloured glass pyramid up to the light. It was a whimsical, pretty object that Atobe had bought as a souvenir on one of his many overseas trips. It reflected green-yellow when the light caught it at an angle, but with the craters inside seeped in a lush forest shade so dark that it gradually blended into black.

The silence was growing in him. The ineffectual grasping after an intangible presence that haunted his life, left him yearning for the touch that kissed him goodbye in the morning and said his name in a voice he couldn't quite remember. He could sense the dank, determined grip of the silence upon him and the yawning emptiness that opened consequently in his soul. He wanted to fight it, but his fingers closed around an emerald luminosity and he leapt into a different kind of oblivion.

"Ne, Tezuka...what are you doing?"

He turned to see Fuji settling himself comfortably beside him, resting his head against his shoulder.

"F-Fuji! What am I doing?"

He looked down at his hands and saw the opened journal.

"I never thought it was possible for someone like me to make friends, before I transferred to Seigaku. I had thought that it would be the same like my previous school, but surprisingly, I am not the one that is bullied from the start. One of the seniors had hurt Tezuka-kun earlier, and I couldn't forgive him for that. So I played with him a little, making him taste the sweet victory that lingered at his fingertips, before snatching it away and humiliating him in straight sets.

Actually I don't understand why I did that, seeing how Tezuka-kun is not even my friend. I tried talking to him before, but apart from tennis, he merely gives me this...look as though I am not worthy of his time. Even his responses are limited to noncommittal grunts of some sort.

The seniors cornered me, knowing that I was the last to leave, since I hadn't finished running the laps...

After that...Tezuka found me in the locker room. The expression in his eyes was something I never saw before. It was the spirit and soul of something indomitable, unchallenged, proud, caged in the apparent serenity of his eyes.

I had just never been close enough to see it before."

There was silence at he came to the end of the entry.

They had been juniors then, but their coach had been determined to nurture them as the future talents in Seigaku. Not that it had been obvious, but he had never let their training slacken, and they trained at the same pace as their seniors. Jealousy and petty rivalries were rife throughout the tennis club, but he could honestly say that he never once believed that the brunt of it fell upon him, as Fuji's entry seemed to imply. He wanted to tell the other that he was wrong, he wanted to shake him and hear something, anything spill from the crimson lips of the doll beside him. It was his dream and he could do anything he wanted, but the silence was already fraught with a sense of tension, and Tezuka had honed his senses acutely enough to realise that if he remained as agitated as he was, he would eventually snap out from this dream into reality again.

His breath escaped from him in a soft hiss. A cold, clammy sensation was clutching at his heart, and he knew without looking up that the scenery of the room would change to suit his every whim. The daylight outside his windows were darkening even as he attempted to force himself to stop thinking. If he reached out far enough, his hands felt as though they would take hold of the invisible membrane around them, swiping holes through the spider webbing of his dreamscape.

Here he could have everything that he wanted, as long as he believed. Tezuka breathed in the vanilla scent of his soft hair, feeling the warmth of the body leaning against him. He didn't want to wake up. He wanted to remain where he was, in a stationary snapshot in time with the person he loved.

He let himself dream, knowing that nothing would ever be as beautiful again.

Tezuka's eyes snapped open, startled as the phone vibrated in his hands, ringing insistently until his fingers jerked to answer the call.

"Tezuka here," he answered automatically.

He could hear the television set blaring outside of his room. One moment he had been reading through Fuji's – no, wait, he hadn't actually seen the contents. His memory was slowly returning. Yuuta had visited him last night and handed him the journal, but he had decided to leave it untouched until the next morning. Somehow he must have fallen asleep, but while sitting up in bed - ?

He had the strangest feeling that he had forgotten something important.

He just couldn't remember what it was.

"Be grateful that ore-sama has graced you with a call this morning, despite your callous treatment of him the night before. Whatever the reason was, it must have been of life-threatening importance, aan?"

"Does this call have a purpose?"

"Your lack of social graces is appalling, my dear. My chauffeur will be at your house in ten. Get ready."

END CHAPTER