Height: 151 cm
DOB: 12/24
Weight: 50 kg
Dominant hand: Left
Play style: All-rounder
Two hours slowly ticked by as the pages filled with scrawling blue ink. Graphs, calculations, analyses—
"Tennis has no data."
What nonsense, I thought to myself.
That arrogant little first year might have scraped a win this time, but it's far from over. After playing him, I now had essentially all the data I needed for future matches...there's no great loss without some small gain.
I punched some numbers into my calculator and recorded them meticulously into a graph I had made.
"To hit to that angle he must reduce his speed by 29.6502%, which means that gives me 1.0064 seconds before I must reach the ball…" I muttered to myself. Already, I had drawn up a personal workout schedule to increase my speed and stamina. Next time, I must not have weaknesses.
Thirty one days until the next interschool ranking matches.
Entering in a final figure in my graph, I leaned back to stretch my legs—noticing movement outside on the balcony. On closer inspection, it was a little brown sparrow, taking careful hops here and there and occasionally pecking at the ground for nonexistent crumbs.
Suddenly, a loud car horn rudely blasted through the quiet streets, and the sparrow froze in place. Its feet were placed roughly 2.5 cm apart, and it swiveled its 3 cm head to the left.
"Chance of going left, 96%," I muttered confidently.
To my utter surprise, the sparrow hopped to face the other direction and flew away into the gold colored sky. A flaming red sun was low in the horizon.
Approximately 10.36 minutes until sunset, I couldn't help but thinking, before straightening up in my chair and trying to shake off the disgruntled feeling. My little miscalculation dropped like a bar of lead into my stomach...
"Data tennis…"
His hazel eyes flashed sharply in my mind.
"How annoying."
I slammed my notebook shut as the afternoon replayed itself in fast motion.
Twist serve…cross-court lob…volley…fault…ace…winner…forehand…forehand…data…calculate…think Sadaharu think think think THINK…
"7 games to 5, Echizen!"
Slowly, I stood up and walked to the side of my bed, staring down at the—
I really hadn't meant to bring it back with me. It was one of those unsaid rules in the Seigaku tennis club that everyone followed with mutual compliance. But somehow, my hands had perfunctorily slipped it into my bag like always, somehow deciding on their own that they didn't want to break the drilled-in routine.
I reached down and smoothed the surface of the fabric, a solid white except for three words printed crisply in block letters.
S E I G A K U
TENNIS CLUB
A hard lump jumped up in my throat, corking in a rising flood of emotions coming straight from the center of my chest. I tried to press them down, knowing that I could not—must not—let emotions get in my way. They made things complicated and irrational and unpredictable. All goals are an equation: how much effort and how much you sacrifice is how much you will receive in the end. That was the way it should be. So at a time like this, I couldn't afford to have emotions added into the mix, with their exceptions and asymptotes and shifting phases. All I had to do was keep in focus and work hard. That was what I had always told myself.
But after that match, it took so much more repeating before I saw the sense in it.
Brrring…brrring.
The screen of my cellphone lit up as it played my ringtone. I set the jacket carefully back on my bed and picked up the cell.
New call from Oishi, it read. My insides curled a little…I already had a vague sense of how the conversation was going to go. I considered not picking up—but that would imply to everyone that I had let that one little loss get to me. I couldn't have them thinking that.
So I inhaled deeply, composed myself, and put the phone to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Inui!" A hyper, very familiar voice called out my name.
"…Eiji?" I asked, trying not to sound confused. "Are you using Oi—"
"Hi, Inui." Now it was Oishi's voice. "We're very sorry to bother you, but Eiji and I were talking, and we decided to put you on three-way to—"
"—make sure you're OK!" Eiji interrupted.
What is this feeling…
"Don't worry about me," I said, my voice a little choppy. "I'm fine. Really."
This warmth…
There was a three second silence, very uncharacteristic of the Eiji I knew.
"You're still part of the team, Inui, no matter what." It was finally Oishi who spoke. "You always will be, maybe just not wearing a jersey for a little while until the next interschool matches—"
"And Oishi and Tezuka came up with this great idea!" Eiji interjected loudly. "Tell him Oishi!"
"Well, Tezuka and I were thinking…if we really want to improve this year, we're going to need lots of special training…and considering the fact that everyone on our team is different, we'll need—"
"—Data." I was thanking my lucky stars they couldn't see me right now, standing in the middle of my room and grinning stupidly from ear to ear.
"Exactly!" Eiji cried enthusiastically. "And no one's spied—I mean, uh, no one knows more about us than you!"
And at that moment, I saw it so vividly it was like having a vision:
Standing in the stadium, surrounded by a whole world of roaring applause and flashing lights.
Suspended in the cocoon of time and the cries of my teammates.
"We won!"
"We won!"
"WE WON NATIONALS!"
The giant silver cup that was now ours.
"Inui?" Oishi's voice snapped me back to my own bedroom, a universe away.
"Oh, um—what?" Eiji huffed a sigh.
"Were you listening at all? We need your data to get us to Nationals!"
How paradoxical it was, to have the mention of data bring the chocking emotion back into my throat.
"So will you be our team manager, Inui?" Oishi asked, but I knew that he already knew my answer.
We are teammates, after all.
"Of course I will."
"Yes!" Eiji whooped. "Nothing's gonna stop us this year! On three—one…"
I breathed out slowly, drinking in the presence of my friends, letting the sensation wash over me, just this one time.
"…two…"
It felt good.
"…three!"
"SEIGAKU!"