Prince Of Tennis Fan Fiction ❯ Results ❯ Chapter 1

"Results"

A _Price of Tennis_ Fanfiction

By Andrea Readwolf <andrea_readwolf @hotmail.com>

Chapter: 1/1

Rating: PG

Pairings: Inui (+Kaidoh)

Genre: drabble

Warnings: Post-Series. Characters are written in character according to author's interpretation.

Spoilers: Set after the boys enter college.

Summary: Inui comes home from school and is met with mixed greetings.

Disclaimer: Tennis no Ohjisama, characters and settings are the property of Konomi Takeshi.

Date Started: July 14, 2004

Status: complete

Revised: July 15, 2004

Word Count: 619

"Results" by Andrea Readwolf

Inui knew immediately when he walked in the door that there was a ninety-eight percent chance he would find something he wouldn't like. That percentage had steadily doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in the last three months. Ever since...

A lanky orange tabby cat jumped down from the window and curled itself around Inui's legs.

"Good evening, Miko," the serious young man greeted the feline, running his hand down its back in a sure, solid stroke that caused the animal to arch up into his palm. "And where is your brother?"

The orange tabby cat looked up at him, and then with a flick of its white tipped tail, disappeared.

Inui sighed and headed into the rest of the apartment to look for the second feline of the household.

Three months.

Three months, one week, and six days, to be exact.

Takashi had managed to coerce the old team together for one night--It was actually not an easy task considering everyone except for Echizen was a University student now, each attending different colleges, and in Inui's and Kaidoh's cases, separate universities, too. Plus, there had been the upcoming holiday season to contend with, but in the end, no one could successfully resist the temptation of Kawamura's Sushi.

When Kikumaru had started trying to convince Echizen to come over to his house and see the new litter of kittens, Inui hadn't really been interested--that was, until he noticed his roommate's expression and remembered. Ah, yes. Kaidoh had quite the soft spot for animals.

On the way home, he had casually suggested that they take up Kikumaru's invitation and go see the kittens that weekend. He hadn't considered the possibility that they would *leave* with a kitten, let alone two. But then, Tezuka would have warned him, if their old captain had known.

It wasn't even through Kaidoh's doing, either. No, his roommate had been quite content to play with the four fluff balls and then leave when Inui mentioned some work he needed to get done.

No. It was Eiji's sister and mother who had ganged up on them both and *insisted* that life was not complete without a pet, and the kittens were free, and it was obvious Kaidoh was quite taken with them, and they were definitely taken with him, and, after all, Christmas was right around the corner, and wouldn't a kitten make an excellent gift?

Inui had reviewed the incident many times in the past several months--and he was still rather uncertain how he had become the surrogate parent of one, let alone two, felines. Although he was often confused with the "how" of the matter, Inui could not deny the results. There was indeed something satisfying about having a purring creature curl up in your lap while you worked, or against your chest while you watched TV or your neck at night... being greeted at the door with a friendly meow and leg rub...

It almost made up fro the "other" stuff--like litter boxes and hairballs.

Or---

Inui sighed as he walked into the second bedroom that he and Kaidoh used as a study/workout room and found the black demon kitten stretched out and napping away contentedly.

Or when one of the creatures decided to ignore the perfectly good scratching posts set up in each of the three rooms and chose to use Inui's Data Notebooks, lined up perfectly on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, to dull his claws on instead.

Oh well. He'd been meaning to convert the data contained in those old notebooks into an electronic copy for several years now. Now he had a reason to hurry up and do it--before the black kitten managed to ruin his carefully gathered observations.

~~~The End~~~