The glaring dullness of Tezuka's words, the simple way he let them leave his lips; everything felt wrong.
The clubroom had become too silent; the tennis clubroom was never meant to be this silent. It was like someone had pressed the mute button on a TV remote control; like someone pressed the pause button on a DVD player control even though eyes were moving, chests were heaving up and down from the intensity of today's tennis practice.
Horio started laughing, as if the whole thing was a joke. No one else joined in, and his laughing ceased after a few moments. Awkward silence encased the team, some trying to convince themselves that this was just a nightmare, and others trying to process this new information in their minds.
Horio spoke up, not getting Tezuka's meaning. "That kid is probably going to come back for a few days. He's not really resigning, not until he beats my two years of tennis experience!"
"Echizen Ryoma will not be coming back to the tennis club anymore," Tezuka stated, a sense of finality driving his words through everyone's minds. The tennis club suddenly came back to life, and waves of conversation were coming from all sides.
"He's not coming back? What the hell?!" one member said. "What do you mean he's not coming back?"
"He is not a part of this tennis team anymore," Tezuka said firmly. "He resigned yesterday."
A loud noise, paper sheets being ruffled and dropped, and all heads turned to Inui.
Something finally had gone completely opposite from Inui's data. The boy was trembling, and his pen clattered to the ground.
His green notebook lay silently on the floor, facing down.
Quietly, Tezuka withdrew a battered scrap of paper from his pocket, the messy, almost careless scrawl on it proclaiming Echizen's intentions.
"We should have done something," Kikumaru whispered brokenly. "Ochibi...something's wrong with him. Really wrong." The regulars couldn't really say anything about that, because it was true. The signs had been there, roiling with tension among the team member for the past month, but none of them had taken any action to appease Echizen, or even find out what was wrong with him.
Bit by bit pieces began to fall together. That horrid photo Fuji had taken, the stark grayness of it, the seemingly emptiness of it, as if it was a old photograph taken during World War II. That cloud of nothingness, something unexplainable, surrounding their kouhai. The cloud that enveloped him only seemed to get larger and larger, pushing people away without them even knowing it.
They understood now. They understood why tennis practices felt different, why there was so much tension in the boy.
He's the only boy, the first and probably last person, to have defied Inui's data so perfectly, as if it were on purpose.
--cerebello--
Momo decides to confront Echizen. He decides that he can't take any more of this, decides that he just has to get some answers out of the younger boy.
He's there, waiting, after school with his bike in front of Echizen's house, and when Echizen finally arrives home, with his tennis bag in hand, he looks up at Momo and just stares. He stares, with such empty eyes, that Momo takes a step back and stares right back at him, right into those depthless eyes that show no emotion.
He forgets for a moment, forgets why he's there, in the dark, standing in front of his friend's house, waiting. He forgets as he stares into those eyes, the gold gleaming. Then it's all over; Echizen breaks the eye contact and shifts his cap lower, jerking his head down and climbing up the steps to his house.
Momo speaks up, finally. "At least give us a answer."
Echizen doesn't turn around, his back facing his senpai.
"You can't just resign in the middle of nowhere and not expect us to ask questions. You can't expect that you can just leave randomly and do whatever your please, abandoning the team, Echizen."
"I don't give a damn about the team anymore," Echizen mutters.
Momo grabs at him when these words come out. He grabs at him, and his hand hits the tennis bag, and he expects to fell rackets hitting back, but all he can feel is cloth.
The tennis bag Echizen is carrying is empty.
--cerebello--
"Here is the cart of books that need to be shelved for today, Echizen-kun," the librarian says, smiling sweetly at him. Echizen gives a quick nod and takes the cart away from her, walking amongst the aisles and aisles of books, shelving.
He thinks that shelving books might be a way to keep his mind off tennis. He shelves these books, comes across books about tennis, and hopes that nothing more from this library will remind him of that sport, the sport that he's been denying himself of these past two days.
It's for his own good, he decides. It's for his own good, and yet he can't stop thinking about the sport. He stares at the green carpet for a few seconds, wondering if it will help him as he takes a break from his shelving duties.
He stares at that dark green carpet, stares at it, and he can feel the blood pounding in his head for some reason, his breathing going at a faster rhythm. He can hear the thunk of the ball, the imaginary little green ball that he can't see, and yet he can hear it bouncing up and down on the ground. The dark green swirls around in his vision, and he feels plastic in his hand, rubber, a familiar sense. He's holding something, he can't see what it is but he can feel it, he's holding something and there's the thunk of the ball again, and the dark green burns into his eyes, into his vision, and-
"Echizen-kun?" the library says, looking worriedly into his eyes.
And then it's all over. He's back in the library again, looking at those brown shelves filled with books.
It's all over.