Chapter Two

“Kunimitsu, dear, are you feeling alright?”

Tezuka opened his eyes looking direktly into the worried face of his mother. He supressed a yawn.

“I’m fine. What time is it?”

“Almost 9 pm.”

Staring at her in disbelieve for a second he got up swearing and rushed into the bathroom, hoping some cold water in his face would help his sleepy mind to awake.

“Mum, I’ll be out tonight.”

“What about dinner?”

“No need, I have to hurry.”

He hurried down the streets and was lucky to catch the bus in time.

Damn it. Why didn’t she wake me up earlier. Anyway, there’s no use in complaining now. I just hope, they’re not too mad at me for coming that late. Coming that late with bad news.

The bus ride only took him about 10 minutes, but he would have to walk another 4 or 5 minutes untill he’d reach the sushi restaurant his teammate’s father owned. When he turned around the last corner he saw Fuji turning away from Takashi and the restaurant walking down the street to the opposite site.

Syusuke?

“What happened?” Tezuka heard himself asking with his usual calm voice as soon as he reached Kawamura. But he didn’t feel calm at all. It felt more like the world he knew so far, the world, that was breaking piece by piece just got another crack at the sight of Fuji leaving.

“Tezuka? We were waiting for you.” Kawamura tried to smile.

“I’m sorry. – What happened?”

“Never mind it. He just wanted to take a little walk. Come on and get in, the others will be happy to see you.” And without waiting for an answer Kawamura dragged Tezuka into the house, where the others were obviously enjoying theirselves. After explaining that he had been sleeping and forgot to turn on his alarm clock, he had a small conversation with Oishi, who tried hard not to let Eiji have his full attention, Tezuka turned rather quit just observing the situation.

He felt rather sick in his stomach watching Eiji and Oishi flirting and kissing.

Why is that? Am I jealous? Jealous, ‘cause I’ll never have a chance to hold the one I love close? Because I don’t dare to tell him the truth? It’s not their fault, it’s mine and mine alone.

Trying to turn his attention on another part of the group he realized, that most of his teammates where much closer than he’d ever noticed. After half an hour he was sure, that Oishi and Eiji were not the only ones in love. So were Echizen and Momoshiro as well as Inui and Kaidoh.

It seems like I never really paid much attention to them except when they played tennis.

“Mind us taking a little walk?” Tezuka turned around, seeing Kawamura looking at him waiting for an answer. “Sounds good.”

They had walked about 10 minutes in silence and Tezuka enjoyed it. He had never liked crowded rooms full of chattering people. He prefared silence, it was gold after all, wasn’t it? Suddenly Kawamura stopped.

“Tezuka, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry?”

“You heard me. And don’t tell me it’s nothing. You have been acting kind of distracted for quite a while now. Fuji noticed, too. And in case we were the only ones noticing, it’s just beacuse the others are way to busy with themselves at the moment.”

Have I been acting that obvious? Looks like I have been too deep in my thoughts lately. But I have to tell them anyway, so I could as well start with Kawamura right here, wouldn’t I? In the end it might be even easier to tell him insead of Syusuke…

“Well, I assume you’re right. I was kind of distracted for some weeks now.”

Kawamura was a little surprised. He had not expected his captain to give in that easily.

“And I wanted to tell everone of you this evening anyway. At least, that’s what I planned…”

“And now you decided otherwise and want to keep it to yourselves? Making us worry on purpose. That’s not a fair thing to do.”

“You’re right. It’s not.”

“So, what is it? Or do you want us to go back, so that you’d have to tell only once?”

“I would have to tell it at least twice anyway. Fuji left, remember?”

“He’ll come back.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course –” – not. He didn’t know wherether Fuji would want to celebrate anymore this night, after he had seen how hard it was for him to stay in a room full of couples.

“Let’s go back then. Telling it twice is better than three times, isn’t it?”

So they made their way back to the shop. When they opened the door, Tezuka already regreted that he had chosen to tell them all at once. And he had a felling Kawamura wouldn’t let go until everybody knew his secret.

Even before Tezuka had made his way back to his seat, Kawamura raised his voice. “Sorry to interrupt, guys. But Tezuka has something he want to tell us.”

“Does he?” “Well, bring it on then.”

His teammates felt excited about whatever it was their captain was about to announce. It had to be important, if Kawamura insisted on doing it right away.

“Well, I don’t know what everybody of you has planned in detail for your the time coming now and so far I had not spend a lot of thoughts on that either.”

“So you finally made a decission?”

Oishi smiled at him. He was one of his friends who had told him not to wait untill the very last second to choose where to go.

“That would be a lie.”

Tezuka could see the confusion in the faces of his friends. Well, he probably would be confused himself, if it was not for him to tell the story.

“Due to my fathers job, my parents will leave for Germany and they want me to come with them.”

Silence.

“Germany? Why? When?”

Oishi heard Momoshiro say. He didn’t want to believe what he had just heard.

“The company my father works for wants him to move. We’ll leave in about two weeks.”

“Two weeks? Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

Oishi was now standing on his feet, staring at Tezuka in disbelieve.

“I – don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“By the way: Where did Fuji go? Does he already know?”

Eiji just realized one of his best friends was missing. He definitely should start to learn to be with Oishi and pay attention to what was going on around him.

“He doesn’t.” Tezuka simply answered. There was nothing else to say, was there?

“Well, you better go find him. He has a right to know. More than –”

“Eiji!”

Yes, Syusuke does have a right to know, more than anybody else of you does. But why do you care? Unless…

Without a further comment Tezuka stood up and left.

Where the hell am I going to find this boy now? He could be anywhere!

— — —

After walking aimlessly through the streets for what seemed like an eternity to him, Fuji found himself standing at the tennis courts of Seigaku Junior High.

What a joke. Thinking about Kunimitsu my feet just brought me where everything started. I had a great time hear, and I never thanked you for being one of those making it so special. You were the one taking me serious when I assured everybody else I was fine by just smiling. You were the one urging me to aim higher, to try my best no matter what. You were the one giving me the strength to always be true to myself. I’m afraid you never realized it yourselves, but you where the one making me feel I could achieve anything I wanted to. You’re the one I need to go on this way.

“Here you are.”

Fuji jerked. Turning around he found Tezuka standing right by his side.

“Hi. You scared me.”

“Sorry for that. –”

They stood in silence staring at the courts.

“– and sorry I didn’t make it in time.”

“Didn’t make it in time? Don’t make me laugh. You were late for 2 hours.”

“I – overslept.”

Fuji turned around to look at Tezuka. At the sight of his embarrassment Fuji couldn’t help but laugh.

“I never knew you took a nap in the afternoon.”

“I usually don’t, and I didn’t plan to.”

“But you fell asleep anyway. Well, I think I can forgive you for that.”

He gave him a smile.

Never mad at me, are you? I appreciate it. That’s not something anybody would do, Fuji Syusuke. I’m going to miss that. No. I’m going to miss you.

“We – need to talk.”

“We already do, don’t we?”

“I’m serious. This –”

“You’re always serious, Tezuka.”

“Will you please at least listen to me?”

Fuji looked at him in confusion. There it was again. This weird feeling. Tezuka acting strange. He was afraid of what was going to come.

“Sorry, I didn’t meant to be rude.”

“It’s ok, don’t mind it. Well –”

“Well?”

“I – My parents are going to move to Germany.”

“– Sorry?”

“We’re moving. To Europe.”

“What kind of joke is this?”

Tezuka smirked at Fuji’s words.

I wished it was, but it’s not. I don’t like this either, Syusuke, so please don’t give me a hard time telling you.

Instead of speaking out load what he thought, he merely shook his head. They kept silent for a while.

This can’t be true. It has to be some sort of bad dream, tell me that it is Kunimitsu. Tell me, that everything’s going to be fine as soon as I wake up. Here we are, standing at the very place we met th first time, and you’re telling me you’re going to leave now? Leave everything behin? I can’t believe that, I won’t.

“The moon is so bright. Too bad we didn’t bring our rackets, we could have tried a match.”

“We’d hardly see the ball anyway.”

“Yea, probably. But it would have been fun trying, wouldn’t it.”

“Fuji you’re changing the topic.”

“… Well, it was worth a try.”

“This is serious, Fuji. I don’t like it either, but nevertheless I have to face the reality, and so should you.”

“Mh… When will you be leaving?”

“In about two weeks.”

Tezuka could see the horror in Fuji’s wide opened blue eyes.

“Two weeks. And you didn’t come up with it earlier?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You better be.” Speaking more to himself Fuji added: “Two weeks, that’s – that’s nothing.”

Again none of them spoke for a while. Everything was completely quite.

“I wish we had brought our rackets.”

“Two weeks ought to be enough to have a match, don’t you think?”

“Or two.”

“Or two. – Wanna go back to the others, now? Eiji already asked why you left.”

“Did he?”

Without further conversation they made their way back to the sushi shop. When they entered everybody seemed to stop for a second. There was a strange tension, as if nobody knew how to act considering the latest news.