Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and its characters belongs to Konomi Takeshi
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The culinary clique (Eiji, Marui, Jirou) insisted that the team needed go on a training retreat to get to know each other better. They emphasized that in doubles, finding a connection with your partner is one of the key aspects of winning. Yukimura wholeheartedly agreed that they should have a training camp to beef up before the University division Kanto tournament. There would be lots of seeded schools there with top players from across Japan, and this was The Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Culinary Arts' first year attending, so they needed to be at their best.
The problem with a weekend retreat was Sanada and Shishido practically had choir class everyday, even Saturday! Shishido might have been willing to miss his class a couple of times for the retreat, but Sanada most definitely wouldn't.
Therefore, a compromise was made. Instead of going to hike up some forlorn mountain in the middle of nowhere, the team would stay over at Jirou's house, conveniently located near the Tokyo University of Fine Arts [remember, it's near Hyotei?]. Jirou commuted from his parent's home, because his parents wanted to make sure he got enough rest every night in a proper bed, not a stinky dirty dorm bed. Jirou didn't mind, he loved his big fluffy bed!
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The retreat would be held Friday morning through Monday night, giving them 4 whole days to bond…err…train…before the tournament.
Early Friday morning everyone arrived at Jirou's house, only to find he was still asleep. They invited themselves into the house anyway and made themselves comfortable in Jirou's large living room. Fuji walked in first and placed his little potted Echinocactus [1], Ansel, on the living room's large coffee table.
"Fuji, you brought your cactus? You couldn't bother to leave it in the dorm for 4 days, huh?" Kikumaru snickered.
"I don't trust my roommate around little Ansel, he's always trying to water him." Fuji answered.
"I completely understand, I couldn't bear to leave my dear Aimee alone in the dorms either." Yukimura nodded as he set a giant pot of pure white gardenias down on the coffee table.
"Maybe, Ansel and Aimee will make friends on our retreat!" Kikumaru smiled. Yes, Bonding!
"Eww. You two are getting dirt and grime all over the living room." Mizuki scolded. "Move those things over, I need a place for my travel antique tea set." Mizuki pulled out some rubber gloves from his book bag and attempted to dust off some non-existent dirt. After cleaning the table to his satisfaction, Mizuki placed a gorgeous early 1900's English travel tea set in the center of the table.
It was one of the most beautiful antiques Fuji had ever seen. Every cup had been delicately painted with a peach colored rose and had shiny golden trim on the handle. Fuji was torn between feeling jealous of Mizuki for getting his hands on such a good find, and feeling extreme admiration for Mizuki for having such amazing taste.
Suddenly everyone heard a bunch of loud clanking against the coffee table and looked down to see Marui dumping out his backpack full of candy. "I also brought all this candy, if you guys are nice, maybe you can have one or two." Marui informed.
"Watch it! You're candy is banging against my precious travel antique!" Mizuki shrieked. Rubber gloves still on, he desperately tried to repel the pieces flying at the tea set.
"I thought I specified there was to be no sweets of any sort on this excursion!" Sanada huffed.
"Awww. Come on! Live a little!" Marui laughed.
Because they would be away from home for a while, it seemed everyone had decided to bring along some kind of little memento so they wouldn't get homesick. Even Sanada brought his important family rock. But, he didn't trust Aimee and Ansel around his rock, so he left it in his book bag.
Naturally, Kikumaru brought Daigorou. But it wasn't the giant Daigorou everyone remembered. He got a new keychain one named Daigorou Jr. He was 18 now, which meant he was an adult and had to start doing adult things, like carrying around a keychain teddy bear instead of the real thing.
Shishido didn't think it was fair that everyone got to bring their pets and special items. If he could have, Shishido would have brought his dog. Instead, he just had the pictures of his dog in his wallet.
Just at that moment, Jirou moseyed on downstairs, still dressed in his pajamas.
"Oh, you guys are already here! Yaaaaay! I'm so excited for the sleepover!" Jirou beamed, jumping into the air excitedly.
"Training retreat." Sanada corrected.
"My house is pretty big, and there's enough beds for everyone since my older sister moved out. But…I thought it would be more fun to have our sleepover commoner style and sleep on the floor!" Jirou explained eagerly.
"Commoner style? You've been talking too much with Atobe…" Shishido remarked.
"I refuse, I need my own bed." Mizuki frowned, arms crossed like a small child.
"Right now, sleeping arrangements are not important. It's already almost 6:00am we need to begin our training, hurry and get dressed Akutagawa." Yukimura directed.
"Get dressed? Oh yeah! That reminds me! Our uniforms are here guys, they just arrived yesterday! We can wear them on the retreat and be all matchy matchy!" Jirou cheered, gesturing to a large brown box near the front door.
"Oh…yay…" Shishido feigned excitement.
With that everyone put on the lilac uniforms with a beige stripe. Much to his surprise, Yukimura felt the new color really went well with his dark blue hair. Having such an unusual hair color like blue was such a burden sometimes for coordinating outfits. The lilac didn't match super well with people like Marui or Kikumaru's bright red hair, but that was their loss. Neither Marui nor Kikumaru had ever seemed that interested in looking fashionable anyway. People with black hair, like Sanada, are so lucky. They can wear whatever color they want without worrying about their hair. But, for some reason Sanada still always chooses to wear really boring colors like black.
Yes, everyone unanimously agreed the uniforms were very nice. There was just one problem...
"Why does it only say 'Art University'? I don't go to Art school I go to cooking school!" Kikumaru pointed out.
"Umm…well…the thing is…It was much cheaper to have them print 'Art University' on the back of the uniform rather than 'Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Culinary Arts" Jirou explained.
"Why does it say PROPERTY OF ATOBE on the back?!" Marui asked in mild aggravation.
"Yes, the Atobe logo is larger than our school's." Sanada noted.
"Hyotei students and alumni get a good deal on uniforms from the Atobe Corporation!" Jirou enthused.
Yukimura sighed. "It can't be helped. The important thing is that we look coordinated."
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Besides playing tennis all day long, Yukimura decided they needed to buildup their muscles. Their school didn't have a big fancy gym with weight equipment like the other schools and they were all too poor to afford a gym membership. Even Jirou had used all of his allowance to buy them new uniforms. Shishido, who also went to Hyotei, swore he didn't have any money either, but everyone knew he was a penny-pinching liar. Yukimura decided the best course of action would be to take everyone to the local park.
"Woo! The park! The park!" Eiji cheered.
"Why are we going to the park, Yukimura?" Sanada asked stoically.
"This" Yukimura said, gesturing to the exercise equipment around the park.
In the mornings, the park is the local hangout for the elderly. Elderly people always manage to get up insanely early and do some fast walking and other types of exercisy things to jumpstart the day. Now, because of this many parks have set up exercise machines for the elderly, in order to make the park a fun, welcoming environment for their health [2].
"I think this exercise equipment is for old people." Marui pointed out.
"Not old people Marui, the elderly." Sanada chided. Kids these days are so rude.
"Whatever!" Marui rolled his eyes.
"It doesn't matter, there's no rule that says we can't use it. It's fair game." Yukimura stated.
"There's no way I'm touching that exercise equipment that has been outside!" Mizuki said in disgust.
Ignoring Mizuki's comment, Yukimura went on to give the instructions. "Okay, I have split us up into teams of two. Marui and Jirou will be on one team starting with the elliptical. Shishido and Eiji are starting with the chest press. Fuji and Mizuki are starting with the bench sit-ups. Sanada and I will start with the rower. Work for 20 minutes on each machine before rotating in a clock-wise direction. If there is someone occupying the machine, which you need to use, please kindly explain to them how our upcoming tournament is more important than their daily workout. Now, let's begin, meet back in two hours."
"Wait wait wait! You can't seriously intend to put Mizuki and Fuji on the same team. That's just a disaster waiting to happen!" Kikumaru said, exasperatedly flailing his arms in the air.
"Yeah, I see how you made the teams. It's just the doubles teams and then you wanted Sanada to be your partner. Fuji and Mizuki were the odd ones out so…" Marui trailed off.
"I believe you're mistaken. The teams were arbitrarily decided by height. The person with the height closest to yours is your partner. It has nothing to do with the doubles teams whatsoever." Yukimura informed.
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At the Chest Press:
The last thing anyone probably expected was for the Kikumaru-Shishido team, A.K.A. the Gilver pair, to be the hardest working of the bunch (save Yukimura and Sanada). Kikumaru fervently cheered on his partner, telling him what a good job they were doing. Every 5 minutes the pair broke to do a power high-five. Kikumaru and Shishido definitely knew the meaning of teamwork.
The same level of enthusiasm could not be said for the other teams…
At the Elliptical:
Jirou needed to take his pre-training nap before anything could happen, so Marui was left to do the elliptical exercise by himself. Marui fished around in the pocket of his uniform for some of the candy he snuck in there earlier. Sanada and Yukimura were all the way on the other side of the park, so there was no way he would get caught. Plus, now that Jirou was asleep he didn't have to share. Perfect.
At the Bench Sit-ups:
A few stations over, Mizuki was standing with his arms crossed muttering something about the park equipment being 'infested with germs.' Of course, since this is Mizuki, he was also deep in thought trying to plot a way to escape the cruel torture of 'outdoor park exercise.'
From a distance, it looked like Fuji was following the instructions to a T, but in reality Fuji was just laying down on the bench (for 'bench sit-ups) taking photos (of what?).
Unfortunately for them, Yukimura has eyes in the back of his head. He is The Child of God. He sees ALL.
Back at The Elliptical
At Yukimura's direction, Sanada marched up to the sleeping Jirou and the sweets eating Marui.
"Yukimura has instructed me to assign the two of you 100 laps around the playground." Sanada informed.
Marui jumped of the elliptical to begin his laps, but Sanada put a hand up to stop him.
"First spit out that candy and hand me the remaining sweets in your pockets." Sanada demanded.
"Darn it!" Marui said, but did as instructed. He only kept a couple sticks of gum in his back pocket for an 'extreme sugar emergency' [which was always, but that's besides the point]
Sanada noticed Jirou was not making any movement to wake up and heed Captain Yukimura's orders. This annoyed him greatly.
"You know, the only way to wake up Jirou-kun is to tickle him!" Marui said seriously, trying not to crack a grin.
Sanada wasn't one to tickle people. However, out of everyone there, except Shishido [who was busy actually doing the assigned training] Marui seemed to know Akutagawa the best, so perhaps there was some truth to the tickle thing.
It was for the team. For Yukimura's team.
Sanada tickled Jirou.
Jirou's face slowly broke into a wide grin, after a couple more seconds Jirou began making small giggling sounds, despite still being asleep.
Sanada felt slightly stupid as he sensed the eyes of several passersby upon him. But then, Jirou's eyes finally opened, and Sanada felt a wash of relief overcome him. The tickling trick had worked! He would have to remember this next time he was trying to wake-up his nephew Sasuke for school.
Marui couldn't hold it in anymore. He broke into a fit of raucous laughter, nearly choking on the gum he was attempting to hide in his mouth. He couldn't believe Sanada had actually gone through with it.
"Ahahaha! You…actually…hahaha" Marui wheezed.
"200 laps around the playground, Marui! Akutagawa, 100 laps! Now!" Sanada yelled furiously. That Marui had made him lose face in front of Tokyo's entire elderly population (and Yukimura!) for some cheap prank. The nerve!
Back at the Bench sit ups
"Excuse me, Fuji, Mizuki!" Yukimura approached the pair, with his now lilac jacket draped over his shoulders. "Mizuki! Why are you just standing there instead of completing the exercise properly? And, Fuji, I thought you told me before didn't take pictures of people because you were a 'landscape photographer' or something. So tell me, why are you laying there taking pictures of Mizuki's face?!" Yukimura asked sternly, but politely.
"You've been taking pictures of me this entire time?!" Mizuki shouted in surprise. He'd been so focused on plotting a way out of outdoors exercise time, that he was unaware of the maybe dozens of photos Fuji had taken of him.
Completely ignoring Mizuki's comment, Fuji sat up and turned towards Yukimura. "The theme this week for my photography class is 'juxtaposition.' When I sat down, I immediately saw the ugliness of Mizuki's angry face juxtaposed with the beauty of the rising sun! I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity to capture it on film."
"My FACE isn't UGLY!" Mizuki yelled.
"Both of you, please do 100 laps around the playground, and then complete the assigned training regime. " Yukimura commanded. "And try to remember this is a team exercise."
Fuji walked off a little too gleefully towards the playground, camera still in hand. Before Mizuki was able to follow, Yukimura handed him a pocket-sized bottle of hand sanitizer in hopes he would be able to properly complete the exercise upon his return. Mizuki silently thanked his new captain, clutching the cherry scented hand sanitizer as he made his way towards the playground. Smiling, he thought Yukimura wasn't such a bad guy.
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[1] Echinocactus is a rounded type of cactus
[2] The gym equipment in the park is a real thing. I think it's free gym equipment to encourage people to exercise more?
[3] The part about their heights is true too. Fuji and Mizuki are just about the same height [167cm and 166cm]. Shishido and Kikumaru are also 172cm and 171cm respectively. I always thought of Shishido as being a shorter guy, but that must be because he's always standing next to Ootori.