Prince Of Tennis Fan Fiction ❯ Welcome to Tennis Club ❯ Welcome to Tennis Club ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

People are always asking me, did I know Kunimitsu Tezuka.

Buchou, I think to myself. Tezuka-buchou and I have a long history for such a short period of time. A very strange one, too.

I remember the first time I met Tezuka-buchou. I was on my way home from my Tuesday night support group for testicular cancer. No, I don't have testicular cancer, no, I'm not a survivor, but I go to all sorts of support groups that I really shouldn't go to cuz I'm not the right kind of sufferer, all so I can sleep at night.

That's how desperate I was to cure my insomnia; I surrounded myself with those bogged down with affliction, in the hopes that I could feel. Because insomnia distances you from everything in triplicate. There were only two things I gave a damn about: being able to sleep, and playing tennis.

I am Ryoma's complete lack of interest in anything that cannot somehow be related to tennis.

This isn't to say my name is Ryoma. I use a different name for each support group, each one as false as my afflictions. Ryoma is just my testicular cancer name. I'm so distanced from myself it doesn't matter what my real name is. But let's just use Ryoma for convenience here.

One day at the testicular cancer group this woman, calm and shy and blowing smoke rings at me, showed up for the first time. A faker just like me. I couldn't break down and feel with this other faker present. My insomnia came back full swing. She didn't belong there. She didn't show up in my other ones, one each night, but with the annoying way she was constantly on my mind she might as well have followed me to each and every one of them.

Two years of going to these nightly support groups and she had completely unraveled me in the space of a week.

I am Ryoma's utter flaming suspicion.

Unable to get my daily inner breakdown, I starting going by the street tennis courts each night. I'd carry my bag containing three rackets over my shoulder with me. It didn't matter that the courts were always deserted by the time I got there, and deserted by the time I left as well.

I'd just play against the wall, from sunset to sunrise.

Two months of this, and I still couldn't sleep. At least it was a way to pass the time. The hours would blur away like pages being turned, and before long it would always be morning.

Around this time, though, at about two in the morning I felt like I was being watched. I finished off my next serve and turned. Somewhere deep in the shadows on the other side of the court, backlit by the streetlamp behind him to the point where his silhouette glowed, was who would soon become my best friend, my biggest rival, and my future goal. The one for me to surpass.

Kunimitsu Tezuka.

Tezuka-buchou.

That was at least a year ago, and my memory of that night is sketchy. I don't remember how we got started talking. But I do remember when we stood across from each other, one on either side of the net, and he said to me, I want you to hit me as hard as you can.

I couldn't really get what he meant at first, thought maybe he was one of those s&m freaks trying to hit on me but he said, c'mon, your twist serve. Try to best me with it, he said. He musta been watching me for a while, because I hadn't used my twist serve for at least a week.

How long you been watching me, I asked. A long time, he said. Longer'in I can imagine.

Hnn? I smirked then.

I am Ryoma's curiosity fully ignited.

I directed him to my bag where he took out one of my spare rackets, and we played an exhausting match. I hadn't played with anyone but myself since before my insomnia started, so it was a refreshing change of pace. My twist serve only hit his face the first time I served, knocking his glasses clear across the court. After that, Tezuka-buchou was far too smart.

By the time the match ended more than two hours (or was it ten minutes?) later, I was on my knees, dripping with sweat, grinning like a madman at having lost, and so exhausted I almost passed out right there on the court.

Tezuka looked down at me from across the net, shifted his grip on the foreign racket like his palms were too sweaty, then used two fingers of his right hand to push his glasses farther up his nose. He said, I need you to become the Pillar of Seigaku.

At first I thought he was nuts. Then I later found out that Seigaku was just this old abandoned tennis club in the lesser ghetto parts of Toxitown. Seigaku was where he lived.

This is how I met Tezuka.

We went to his place that night, fucked like a couple of horny teenagers, and I quit my job and moved in the next day.

The place was a dump, but most of Toxitown is. The 'lesser ghetto' is far secluded, with empty buildings and very few squatters for at least half a mile. Tezuka-buchou wasn't the only one living in the small flats above the main building of the abandoned tennis club. I wasn't the only one he'd taken in, either.

Kawamura, who specialised in sushi, was our resident cook. Inui, who made all natural juice and soap for a living, was in charge of our income. A most unreadable man with the creepiest smiles and no doubt multiple hidden agendas up his sleeves, Fuji did general upkeep of everything, from registration of potential Seigaku members to enforcing rules to acting as resident nurse to keeping the fuzz off our backs.

And then just about everyone else was a member, like me. Or like I was at first. I rose very quickly through the ranks.

It was one big massive underground tennis club of sorts. And not only were there no faker women blowing smoke rings at me and batting their eyelashes at me shyly, nullifying both my hard-on and my ability to sleep at night, but there were only eight rules.

The first rule of Tennis Club is, you do not talk about Tennis Club.

The second rule of Tennis Club is, you do not talk about Tennis Club.

Every single night there, Tezuka would recite the rules as if to brand them into our brains.

Two, three, or four men to a fight. You could play singles, doubles, or singles against doubles. Tezuka-buchou was always going on and on about this. Let's not get careless, he'd say.

Only one match at a time. Never any shirts, but always shoes. The matches would not end until one side forfeits, passes out indefinitely, or loses the match.

Going hand in hand with that was the seventh rule of Tennis Club: matches would go on as long as they had to.

This last one sometimes drove matches to beyond human capacity. Blood spill was not uncommon, nor were strains and sprains and every tennis injury imaginable.

Once I cut my eyelid with a broken racket that was flying toward me. With a temporary bandage over my eye for the rest of the match, I finished off my opponent in less than ten minutes.

The final, eighth rule of Tennis Club, of course: if this is your first night at Tennis Club, you have to play.

Six months of Tennis Club at the abandoned Seigaku Tennis Club in the secluded Toxitown ghetto passed quickly, and then one day when in town helping Inui sell off his homemade bars of soap (made from human fat, among other things), I ran into that no name woman from the testicular cancer support group.

She'd thought I had bit the big one, not knowing I was as big a faker as she was. Wouldn't leave me alone, pestered me till I agreed to exchange numbers with her (her name was... Sakuno Ryuzaki? I think), though Inui didn't do much to help stave her off. I wasn't into women, and I slept in the bunks with Tezuka-buchou every night so I wasn't looking for a bed partner anyway. But it was the only way to get her to leave me alone.

Again, I am Ryoma's complete lack of interest in anything that isn't somehow related to tennis. This includes Sakuno Ryuzaki.

I'd thought I'd never see her again, hoped I wouldn't, and then one night Sakuno called. I told her to hold on, then left the phone off the hook, laid it on the counter and left the kitchen to go back to the room Tezuka and I shared.

He wasn't there. I went off, down to the courts, and had a grueling match with Fuji that never seemed to end - Fuji does enforce the rules, and though every match I play with him can almost reduce me to the state I was in that night I met Tezuka, Fuji is too unrelentingly taunting to let me drop out. I can never win or lose against him. Tonight was different.

I passed out on the court that night. When I woke up, it was morning and I was already emptying last night's sushi into the toilet. I didn't know if Fuji carried me back into the dormitory-like building where the resident members stayed, but as suddenly as the thought came, it vanished. Floating in the bowl, mixed in with the upheaved, half-digested rice and fish, was a used condom.

In the cafeteria I found Sakuno Ryuzaki, dressed only in a light yukata tied tightly with a sash, talking to Kawamura the cook, asking him to make her a salad, blowing smoke rings at him with her morning cigarette as she hummed and asked him about Buchou. I left immediately.

I am Ryoma's raging anger.

Upstairs I found Tezuka-buchou in his room, naked, covered in scratches, welts and bite marks. As he calmly readjusted his glasses even as I stood there and raged at him over having brought her here, there were only a few things he would say to me. Don't talk to Sakuno Ryuzaki about him, and don't ever leave the phone off the hook. You never know who might pick up.

After that episode Tezuka slept in separate quarters from me each night. Their violent, mindblowing sex brought my insomnia back twofold, bringing me back onto the shadowy courts of Toxitown's failed tennis club to play against Fuji until exhaustion hit me and I was out like a light.

Kunimitsu Tezuka, the man who brought forth another self from within me whenever we played tennis, whenever we fucked... the man who wanted me to become Seigaku's Pillar of Support.

People are always asking me, do I know Kunimitsu Tezuka. I wonder. Mada mada dane.

One night when playing against Fuji, somewhere behind me I felt the invasive prickle of eyes make the hairs on the back of my neck rise; my skin crawled. Fuji must have noticed the change in me, because he smiled, blue eyes flashing, then sent me a lob and said, pay attention, it's only Sakuno Ryuzaki watching us.

This was some number of months ago now. With all my blackouts and collapsing on the court, don't expect me to remember everything. But somehow things went from that to me asking her why she was always here every night, fucking Tezuka-buchou.

First she took away my support groups and my cure for insomnia. Now she was taking Tezuka-buchou away from me.

She was a faker, and as long as she was around I couldn't get to sleep at night.

Tezuka-who, she said, a bit stupified.

People are always asking me, do I know Kunimitsu Tezuka. Well, I thought I did.

I am Ryoma's complete and utter surprise.

The next morning there were no traces that Tezuka had ever been at Seigaku Tennis Club.

At the next Tennis Club gathering, in my match against Kirihara I left him half-conscious and collapsed onto his knees and sobbing-scrambling to get away from me because someone was finally playing just as dirty against him as he usually played against others. He'd destroyed a number of potential Seigaku members, scaring them away before the match had even ended. Then I destroyed Atobe, especially his face. As I walked away from the courts, Fuji's face turned concerned and he asked, what had gotten into me.

I told him, I wanted to destroy something beautiful. Everyone else was mada mada dane.

Fuji never made a response, though we continued to play tennis (or fuck) each night until we collapsed.

Only later on did I realise that when he'd addressed me, he'd called me Buchou.

Everyone here at Seigaku, in the lesser ghetto of Toxitown, is here for a reason. My reason?

I am Ryoma no longer. It was never my real name in the first place.

Remember, you are not a beautiful and unique tennis star. You come from the same failed tennis school as everyone else.

I'm the new Buchou, and I have taken over Tezuka's role.

People used to always ask me, do I know Kunimitsu Tezuka. It doesn't happen anymore, though. I've replaced him and now it's as if he never existed.