*peers about*
Dec. 26th, 2005 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaOkay, you know that Prince of Tennis Subrosa challenge fic from this time last year? The Oshitari-centric Hyoutei Christmas thing? That I've been assiduously pretending doesn't exist?
I am so going to regret posting this tomorrow. >_>
20/20
His first day of junior high, Yuushi walks into Modern Lit to find Atobe sitting – lounging, insofar as it is possible to lounge on a flat wooden object that doesn't support one's back – on a desk at the exact centre of the classroom. Morning audience at court: there's Taki, there's Nanase, there's Ishimine from class two, there's that Ujimoto girl whose father owns a construction firm. There's Ogawa leaning over the next desk trying to listen in, there's Shishido sitting on a turned-around chair with his arms crossed over the back, pretending not to. But for a couple of old faces missing, the scene hasn't changed from the fifth grade. The peasantry accepted by examination from other schools hang around the window seats or the back of the room, polishing their tools or whispering to one another. Their gazes gravitate to the centre with ill-disguised curiosity or awe. It is only the first class of the day. By afternoon word will have spread, and the former will have turned to the latter.
Yuushi stands at the door, relaxed, and waits for Atobe to glance his way. Eventually blue eyes catch and hold his, and he smiles into them. Raises a hand.
"Yo," he says.
"There you are," Atobe says impatiently. "Get over here. Ogawa, clear out that desk. Class is going to start."
Ogawa pulls his elbows away with ill grace. Yuushi smiles a little wider and saunters over, ignoring the stares. Some of that populace may even learn, one day.
***
"Tennis club," Taki says, removing the end of his pencil from between his teeth. "Tennis club for sure."
"Not soccer? Or, I don't know, track..."
"Tennis. Hyoutei's team goes to the Nationals every year."
"Eight out of like two hundred members?"
"Atobe's going for tennis, though."
Atobe expects obeisance from his nominal peers, no more. He certainly doesn't consciously set them an example to follow: if asked he would have characterized the idea as "not worth his time". He bestows his favour like a wreath of laurels, as an acknowledgment of what the recipient already is.
It doesn't prevent people from changing themselves to suit him. Incites them, rather.
"I think Shishido should try out for tennis," Yuushi says. "He's good for a regular berth in any sport. Aren't you?" Shishido sniffs and bats his bangs away from his eyes. He's trying to grow his hair out, but it's still too short to stay tied back, and the bulk of it falls straight and dark around his face.
"Don't talk like it has nothing to do with you," he says. "How many under-12 championships have you won in Kansai again?"
"Precisely my point," Yuushi says. "I might pick up a different sport this time. For a change."
"Yeah, whatever."
"No, really. Kendo, maybe."
Of course he joins the tennis club in the end. All of them do.
***
Being shunted from school to school and Osaka to Tokyo never truly bothered Yuushi; not in the way it affected Miwa, in any case. Perhaps it's because he's younger. Or perhaps it's because he's not the type of boy to have trouble establishing social success anywhere he goes, nor to form truly strong attachments to his peers.
For that matter, Atobe is the same, and good at tennis besides. It makes him remarkably easy to get along with.
***
They're walking to tennis club practice a few days later when Atobe asks him point-blank, "Why do you wear those?"
Yuushi blinks. "You noticed."
"Of course." As if the difference were obvious. "Don't they distract you when you play?"
"I'm used to them now."
In truth they misdiagnosed him in the fifth grade, because he would sit in the back of the class and watch the teacher through his lashes. It softened the planes of her face, and made her look prettier. Younger, happier too. The kanji she chalked on the blackboard wavered like text in a dream, the kind where if you stared the words blurred into something entirely different. Poetry or prophecy, but always of the utmost importance, even (especially) if one forgot what it said come morning.
Squinting gave him a pass into an alternate world, one Yuushi liked better than the real, sharp-edged one. It also made him look as if he was having trouble seeing, which he didn't realise at first. Once he did he played along.
The charade didn't last: wearing correctives all day gave him migraines. But his mother was indulgent of their shared whimsical streak, and gave him the costume lenses he asked for as a birthday present.
He trails off, then, because Atobe has stopped short. After a moment he turns and says, "Take them off when you play me."
***
As the glasses were never in Yuushi's way to begin with, their removal makes little difference to the course of his practice matches with Atobe: three wins out of five, and an engaging fight. Within weeks they're drawing second- and third-year club members to the ranks of their spectators.
In the meantime a not-entirely unexpected shift occurs. The "court" segregates into those who took up tennis in Atobe's wake, and those who did not or could not. Even among the former the criterion for gaining entrance into the inner circle soon becomes clear. Some make the benchmark; some, like Nanase or Ishimine, simply don't.
Yuushi did not follow Atobe into the sport, strictly speaking, but the fact is soon forgotten.
***
Two months of this and Atobe asks Yuushi out of the blue, "Do you want to play a game now?"
"As opposed to?"
"Practice."
He makes it sound as if he has Yuushi's compiled tournament statistics at his fingertips. Yuushi smiles, thinking it must not have taken him much effort.
"Are we just going to skip?" But Atobe need only make the request to be exempt; construction has already started on the new clubhouse funded by the Atobe conglomerate's donation. Yuushi knows he's within the circle of immunity, at least for a day.
"All right," he says. "Why not."
It is a one-set match, played on Atobe's own private court between the croquet lawn and the peony beds, with Kabaji as referee and sole gallery (they find him completing math exercise sheets in Atobe's second-best parlor). Yuushi knows it is a duel; he thinks he might have seen it coming.
It is not until the first serve that he understands the import of the word.
They are close in control and power, but Atobe does not present him with his more usual baseline game. Instead he attacks, forcing shots to advance, caution seemingly thrown to the wind. Yuushi tries to disrupt his pace, varying his returns with lobs. It gives him a game.
Atobe does not retreat with the next serve. Instead he defends from the forecourt, and soon enough recovers the advantage with his hard cross-court smashes. There must be a counter, Yuushi thinks, but has no leisure for further analysis. He withdraws, but Atobe only presses forward. Yuushi harries him and waits for faults to appear in his play, but there are none. Instead it is Yuushi who is forced into error.
Eventually he has to fight for every point, because it feels as if Atobe never relinquishes control: if Yuushi breaks his serve he simply breaks back, aiming at gaps and overreach with a laser-like unerringness. It is chilling, nothing cerebral. At times Yuushi feels those blue eyes fixed on a target a little beyond him, or perhaps within him, and watch an unfamiliar smile curve Atobe's lips before disappearing. Then would come the smash, the unreturnable serve.
He loses 6-4, with Atobe taking the last two games in straight points. Afterward he stands near the service line, breathing hard and more shaken than he can remember being in a long time.
Atobe watches him, the eerie intensity still in his eyes. Yuushi never pretended to really know him – to what purpose? – but suddenly it is hard not to see a stranger.
"You're too soft on your opponents," Atobe says. "You have to finish them off."
***
Halfway through June Yuushi takes notice of one particular clump of his fellow freshmen, who are given to shooting speculative glances his way as they talk on the court sidelines. It is a matter of time, and he is not surprised when the gangleader accosts him one evening after practice.
"Coach says you're a natural prodigy," he says, meshing his fingers together and extending his arms in front of him in a lazy stretch. He is not one of the boys Yuushi remembers from the lower form, but this means little. He's smiling, and the light in his eyes is unfriendly.
"That's as may be," he says mildly. The other boy's eyes narrow. He's slight for his age, and the closer he comes the further he has to crane his neck back to meet Yuushi's gaze. This does not seem to improve his mood.
"So what would Coach call someone who can kick a natural prodigy's ass?"
"Ask him," Yuushi said. "I'd be interested in finding out."
That clinches his schedule for the next twenty minutes.
Afterward he expects the boy to throw his racket down or kick something and storm off, but he merely points a finger at Yuushi and snarls, "Don't expect to get off so easily next time," as if Yuushi were the one sweating and out of breath and not he. Strands of his bobbed hair are plastered to his forehead and flushed cheeks. The effect strikes Yuushi suddenly as cute.
"Certainly not," he says, adjusting the strings of his racket with calculated insouciance. He's a little impressed. The other boy may as well be made of india rubber, for the way that he bounced from one end of the court to the other and practically flew after returns. "Where's the point in getting off easy?"
Actually there's plenty of point in getting off easy. The mistake is in thinking it's bound to happen.
***
Around that time Coach sets him and Atobe to play their seniors during most practices, in lieu of first-year peers or even each other. Yuushi maintains an impressive win percentage. Against Atobe, however, he backslides: two losses out of three games, then seven losses out of ten.
That year Hyoutei's tennis team goes to the Nationals, and is eliminated in the best-of-sixteen round. Two weeks later Atobe provokes one of the third-year reservists into a match, as if he's been waiting for the opportunity, and wins handily.
Unlike other schools, and despite its glut of members, Hyoutei does not have standardized intramural rankings. But the message is clear enough.
***
The Challenge goes from a one-off to a monthly event. Yuushi accepts the situation with good humour, though he's reminded of one of those American cartoons that feature giant sledgehammers and characters overendowed with optimism. No one targets Atobe in the same fashion, insofar as he knows, but then Yuushi has never thought of himself as other than merely mortal.
Besides, his self-styled rival is cute. In a Clara Bow but skinnier and not a girl sort of way.
Besides – he realises by November – the other boy is improving.
He's also getting quieter, though, in direct proportion to the speed of his footwork. After the game ends he doesn't even say anything, just turns on his heel and stalks off the court. Yuushi retrieves his jacket from the bench, and a towel with which to mop his face. Then he stands and thinks for a while.
He finds the other boy standing in front of the gymnasium building vending machines, head down and shoulders hunched. At the deliberately loud scrape of the locker room door he straightens and turns, hastily. Yuushi saunters over and leans against the drinks machine.
"May I borrow some change, Mukahi-kun?" he says. The other boy stares up at him incredulously.
"What is this, a joke?"
"No, I'd just really like a plum tea." Yuushi smiles the most disarming smile he can manage. "I'm terribly dehydrated."
"It annoys me, that's all," Gakuto says later, when they've both gotten drinks (Gakuto's a strawberry Calpis) and are sitting side by side on a nearby bench with their legs sticking out and their backs against the wall. "You annoy me. Stalking about on those legs of yours like some giant crane – what the hell is so funny?"
Yuushi is coughing rather than laughing, having choked on his plum tea. "I apologize for any inadvertent offense my legs may have given," he gasps when he's recovered somewhat. Gakuto sniffs, staring down the neck of his soda bottle.
"Coach doesn't pay us freshmen any attention," he says. "Atobe, you, and maybe Shishido. The rest of us are just supposed to slug it out after swing practice. Well, I'm not having it. I'm better than that. I'll be better than you, too, sooner or later. Don't you forget it."
"At this point it's unlikely I will," Yuushi says. "But have you considered?"
"What?"
"The more you play me, the better you know me. The more you play me, the easier it is for you to predict my next move. The more you play me, the better you get." Yuushi lets his glasses slide a little down his nose so he can meet Gakuto's eyes – the glass has gotten smudged. "There's no reason to keep it to once a month, is there?"
***
Three weeks later Yuushi arrives at practice to find a crowd already gathered around court five. So many tennis club members are gawking and whispering that he can't make out who's playing for a second.
Once he does he elbows his way to the front, barely apologising along the way.
"Mukahi's really done it this time," someone says to his left. Yuushi ignores the comment, keeps his hands relaxed and in his pockets. What he wants to do is curl his fingers around the fencing and yell dammit what are you doing at both the players, but the impulse itself brings him up short in astonishment.
In any case he knows the match won't last very long.
At the cry of "Match to Atobe Keigo, six games to two!" an expectant hush descends over the spectators. Gakuto has fallen to one knee, panting. Atobe walks unhurriedly up to the net, then around it, so he can offer the other boy a hand up.
"You're quite good," he says, projecting his voice for the benefit of the cheap seats. "I'm having a little get-together at my home, over Christmas; we'll be playing tennis. You should come."
If Gakuto answers, it's too low for Yuushi to hear over the sudden din of speculation from all sides. He reaches the court door just as Atobe's exiting.
"What on earth did that prove?"
It comes out sharper than he intended. Atobe gives him a long look he can't parse.
"Make sure he shows up," he says, "I'm already sending the limo for Akutagawa from class three." He's gone before Yuushi can answer.
***
TBC
...Yeah, I'm walking into the Fiona Apple trap of Everyone Will Think The Demos Are Better.
I am so going to regret posting this tomorrow. >_>
20/20
His first day of junior high, Yuushi walks into Modern Lit to find Atobe sitting – lounging, insofar as it is possible to lounge on a flat wooden object that doesn't support one's back – on a desk at the exact centre of the classroom. Morning audience at court: there's Taki, there's Nanase, there's Ishimine from class two, there's that Ujimoto girl whose father owns a construction firm. There's Ogawa leaning over the next desk trying to listen in, there's Shishido sitting on a turned-around chair with his arms crossed over the back, pretending not to. But for a couple of old faces missing, the scene hasn't changed from the fifth grade. The peasantry accepted by examination from other schools hang around the window seats or the back of the room, polishing their tools or whispering to one another. Their gazes gravitate to the centre with ill-disguised curiosity or awe. It is only the first class of the day. By afternoon word will have spread, and the former will have turned to the latter.
Yuushi stands at the door, relaxed, and waits for Atobe to glance his way. Eventually blue eyes catch and hold his, and he smiles into them. Raises a hand.
"Yo," he says.
"There you are," Atobe says impatiently. "Get over here. Ogawa, clear out that desk. Class is going to start."
Ogawa pulls his elbows away with ill grace. Yuushi smiles a little wider and saunters over, ignoring the stares. Some of that populace may even learn, one day.
***
"Tennis club," Taki says, removing the end of his pencil from between his teeth. "Tennis club for sure."
"Not soccer? Or, I don't know, track..."
"Tennis. Hyoutei's team goes to the Nationals every year."
"Eight out of like two hundred members?"
"Atobe's going for tennis, though."
Atobe expects obeisance from his nominal peers, no more. He certainly doesn't consciously set them an example to follow: if asked he would have characterized the idea as "not worth his time". He bestows his favour like a wreath of laurels, as an acknowledgment of what the recipient already is.
It doesn't prevent people from changing themselves to suit him. Incites them, rather.
"I think Shishido should try out for tennis," Yuushi says. "He's good for a regular berth in any sport. Aren't you?" Shishido sniffs and bats his bangs away from his eyes. He's trying to grow his hair out, but it's still too short to stay tied back, and the bulk of it falls straight and dark around his face.
"Don't talk like it has nothing to do with you," he says. "How many under-12 championships have you won in Kansai again?"
"Precisely my point," Yuushi says. "I might pick up a different sport this time. For a change."
"Yeah, whatever."
"No, really. Kendo, maybe."
Of course he joins the tennis club in the end. All of them do.
***
Being shunted from school to school and Osaka to Tokyo never truly bothered Yuushi; not in the way it affected Miwa, in any case. Perhaps it's because he's younger. Or perhaps it's because he's not the type of boy to have trouble establishing social success anywhere he goes, nor to form truly strong attachments to his peers.
For that matter, Atobe is the same, and good at tennis besides. It makes him remarkably easy to get along with.
***
They're walking to tennis club practice a few days later when Atobe asks him point-blank, "Why do you wear those?"
Yuushi blinks. "You noticed."
"Of course." As if the difference were obvious. "Don't they distract you when you play?"
"I'm used to them now."
In truth they misdiagnosed him in the fifth grade, because he would sit in the back of the class and watch the teacher through his lashes. It softened the planes of her face, and made her look prettier. Younger, happier too. The kanji she chalked on the blackboard wavered like text in a dream, the kind where if you stared the words blurred into something entirely different. Poetry or prophecy, but always of the utmost importance, even (especially) if one forgot what it said come morning.
Squinting gave him a pass into an alternate world, one Yuushi liked better than the real, sharp-edged one. It also made him look as if he was having trouble seeing, which he didn't realise at first. Once he did he played along.
The charade didn't last: wearing correctives all day gave him migraines. But his mother was indulgent of their shared whimsical streak, and gave him the costume lenses he asked for as a birthday present.
He trails off, then, because Atobe has stopped short. After a moment he turns and says, "Take them off when you play me."
***
As the glasses were never in Yuushi's way to begin with, their removal makes little difference to the course of his practice matches with Atobe: three wins out of five, and an engaging fight. Within weeks they're drawing second- and third-year club members to the ranks of their spectators.
In the meantime a not-entirely unexpected shift occurs. The "court" segregates into those who took up tennis in Atobe's wake, and those who did not or could not. Even among the former the criterion for gaining entrance into the inner circle soon becomes clear. Some make the benchmark; some, like Nanase or Ishimine, simply don't.
Yuushi did not follow Atobe into the sport, strictly speaking, but the fact is soon forgotten.
***
Two months of this and Atobe asks Yuushi out of the blue, "Do you want to play a game now?"
"As opposed to?"
"Practice."
He makes it sound as if he has Yuushi's compiled tournament statistics at his fingertips. Yuushi smiles, thinking it must not have taken him much effort.
"Are we just going to skip?" But Atobe need only make the request to be exempt; construction has already started on the new clubhouse funded by the Atobe conglomerate's donation. Yuushi knows he's within the circle of immunity, at least for a day.
"All right," he says. "Why not."
It is a one-set match, played on Atobe's own private court between the croquet lawn and the peony beds, with Kabaji as referee and sole gallery (they find him completing math exercise sheets in Atobe's second-best parlor). Yuushi knows it is a duel; he thinks he might have seen it coming.
It is not until the first serve that he understands the import of the word.
They are close in control and power, but Atobe does not present him with his more usual baseline game. Instead he attacks, forcing shots to advance, caution seemingly thrown to the wind. Yuushi tries to disrupt his pace, varying his returns with lobs. It gives him a game.
Atobe does not retreat with the next serve. Instead he defends from the forecourt, and soon enough recovers the advantage with his hard cross-court smashes. There must be a counter, Yuushi thinks, but has no leisure for further analysis. He withdraws, but Atobe only presses forward. Yuushi harries him and waits for faults to appear in his play, but there are none. Instead it is Yuushi who is forced into error.
Eventually he has to fight for every point, because it feels as if Atobe never relinquishes control: if Yuushi breaks his serve he simply breaks back, aiming at gaps and overreach with a laser-like unerringness. It is chilling, nothing cerebral. At times Yuushi feels those blue eyes fixed on a target a little beyond him, or perhaps within him, and watch an unfamiliar smile curve Atobe's lips before disappearing. Then would come the smash, the unreturnable serve.
He loses 6-4, with Atobe taking the last two games in straight points. Afterward he stands near the service line, breathing hard and more shaken than he can remember being in a long time.
Atobe watches him, the eerie intensity still in his eyes. Yuushi never pretended to really know him – to what purpose? – but suddenly it is hard not to see a stranger.
"You're too soft on your opponents," Atobe says. "You have to finish them off."
***
Halfway through June Yuushi takes notice of one particular clump of his fellow freshmen, who are given to shooting speculative glances his way as they talk on the court sidelines. It is a matter of time, and he is not surprised when the gangleader accosts him one evening after practice.
"Coach says you're a natural prodigy," he says, meshing his fingers together and extending his arms in front of him in a lazy stretch. He is not one of the boys Yuushi remembers from the lower form, but this means little. He's smiling, and the light in his eyes is unfriendly.
"That's as may be," he says mildly. The other boy's eyes narrow. He's slight for his age, and the closer he comes the further he has to crane his neck back to meet Yuushi's gaze. This does not seem to improve his mood.
"So what would Coach call someone who can kick a natural prodigy's ass?"
"Ask him," Yuushi said. "I'd be interested in finding out."
That clinches his schedule for the next twenty minutes.
Afterward he expects the boy to throw his racket down or kick something and storm off, but he merely points a finger at Yuushi and snarls, "Don't expect to get off so easily next time," as if Yuushi were the one sweating and out of breath and not he. Strands of his bobbed hair are plastered to his forehead and flushed cheeks. The effect strikes Yuushi suddenly as cute.
"Certainly not," he says, adjusting the strings of his racket with calculated insouciance. He's a little impressed. The other boy may as well be made of india rubber, for the way that he bounced from one end of the court to the other and practically flew after returns. "Where's the point in getting off easy?"
Actually there's plenty of point in getting off easy. The mistake is in thinking it's bound to happen.
***
Around that time Coach sets him and Atobe to play their seniors during most practices, in lieu of first-year peers or even each other. Yuushi maintains an impressive win percentage. Against Atobe, however, he backslides: two losses out of three games, then seven losses out of ten.
That year Hyoutei's tennis team goes to the Nationals, and is eliminated in the best-of-sixteen round. Two weeks later Atobe provokes one of the third-year reservists into a match, as if he's been waiting for the opportunity, and wins handily.
Unlike other schools, and despite its glut of members, Hyoutei does not have standardized intramural rankings. But the message is clear enough.
***
The Challenge goes from a one-off to a monthly event. Yuushi accepts the situation with good humour, though he's reminded of one of those American cartoons that feature giant sledgehammers and characters overendowed with optimism. No one targets Atobe in the same fashion, insofar as he knows, but then Yuushi has never thought of himself as other than merely mortal.
Besides, his self-styled rival is cute. In a Clara Bow but skinnier and not a girl sort of way.
Besides – he realises by November – the other boy is improving.
He's also getting quieter, though, in direct proportion to the speed of his footwork. After the game ends he doesn't even say anything, just turns on his heel and stalks off the court. Yuushi retrieves his jacket from the bench, and a towel with which to mop his face. Then he stands and thinks for a while.
He finds the other boy standing in front of the gymnasium building vending machines, head down and shoulders hunched. At the deliberately loud scrape of the locker room door he straightens and turns, hastily. Yuushi saunters over and leans against the drinks machine.
"May I borrow some change, Mukahi-kun?" he says. The other boy stares up at him incredulously.
"What is this, a joke?"
"No, I'd just really like a plum tea." Yuushi smiles the most disarming smile he can manage. "I'm terribly dehydrated."
"It annoys me, that's all," Gakuto says later, when they've both gotten drinks (Gakuto's a strawberry Calpis) and are sitting side by side on a nearby bench with their legs sticking out and their backs against the wall. "You annoy me. Stalking about on those legs of yours like some giant crane – what the hell is so funny?"
Yuushi is coughing rather than laughing, having choked on his plum tea. "I apologize for any inadvertent offense my legs may have given," he gasps when he's recovered somewhat. Gakuto sniffs, staring down the neck of his soda bottle.
"Coach doesn't pay us freshmen any attention," he says. "Atobe, you, and maybe Shishido. The rest of us are just supposed to slug it out after swing practice. Well, I'm not having it. I'm better than that. I'll be better than you, too, sooner or later. Don't you forget it."
"At this point it's unlikely I will," Yuushi says. "But have you considered?"
"What?"
"The more you play me, the better you know me. The more you play me, the easier it is for you to predict my next move. The more you play me, the better you get." Yuushi lets his glasses slide a little down his nose so he can meet Gakuto's eyes – the glass has gotten smudged. "There's no reason to keep it to once a month, is there?"
***
Three weeks later Yuushi arrives at practice to find a crowd already gathered around court five. So many tennis club members are gawking and whispering that he can't make out who's playing for a second.
Once he does he elbows his way to the front, barely apologising along the way.
"Mukahi's really done it this time," someone says to his left. Yuushi ignores the comment, keeps his hands relaxed and in his pockets. What he wants to do is curl his fingers around the fencing and yell dammit what are you doing at both the players, but the impulse itself brings him up short in astonishment.
In any case he knows the match won't last very long.
At the cry of "Match to Atobe Keigo, six games to two!" an expectant hush descends over the spectators. Gakuto has fallen to one knee, panting. Atobe walks unhurriedly up to the net, then around it, so he can offer the other boy a hand up.
"You're quite good," he says, projecting his voice for the benefit of the cheap seats. "I'm having a little get-together at my home, over Christmas; we'll be playing tennis. You should come."
If Gakuto answers, it's too low for Yuushi to hear over the sudden din of speculation from all sides. He reaches the court door just as Atobe's exiting.
"What on earth did that prove?"
It comes out sharper than he intended. Atobe gives him a long look he can't parse.
"Make sure he shows up," he says, "I'm already sending the limo for Akutagawa from class three." He's gone before Yuushi can answer.
***
TBC
...Yeah, I'm walking into the Fiona Apple trap of Everyone Will Think The Demos Are Better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 09:09 am (UTC)I remember this one from 2004, and while I know you weren't thrilled with the way you wrapped it up I still adore the original (and the new version) to bits. Your Atobe make me want to SQUEE! He may be a Drama Queen, but you know, he is one with Style, and a Basis for his self-appointment of God-hood. The bit about Yuushi's glasses is still my favourite scene, though I can honestly say I don't remember the match between Atobe and he to be so intense.
In short; more?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 10:21 pm (UTC)I can't tell who "he" is here.
I'm afraid I can never pull your stories apart enough, still as if the camera is at a difficult angle or everyone acting while draped n fabric and obscured. It really limits the quality of my response, it's never stoppped me from enjoying th story.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:42 am (UTC)This fic must be especially oblique and tortuous, or at least that's how it comes across to me - for some reason writing this is like gauging a gap blindfolded. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 12:54 am (UTC)