kirihara akaya VS fuji syusuke
I luff my two favourite tenipurisu. this entire series of encounters between them is based on events that occur in the Genius manga. it's entirely Fuji's fault for choosing to say to himself: 'and the one we most need to watch out for.. second year ace Kirihara Akaya'.
Intermission in a match already full of interruptions, Yagyuu and Niou stunning Seigaku's Golden Pair in more ways than Seigaku would like: tension hangs so heavy in the air, a foul condensation of sweat and fear and the insides of sports bags, Fuji swears he can taste it in his mouth even through the shut lips of his Mona Lisa smile. He slips away from his teammates to the drink fountain. Nobody's there; everyone is riveted to the match, more than enough drama to satisfy a citiful of housewives. Fuji is interested too, but he is also thirsty, and he has his own battle to fight, later.
He dips his mouth to the foaming water and, at exactly that moment, feels the fall of a long shadow across the ground more than he can see it from this angle. A shimmer in the air, like the heat-daze dancing across burning tarmac on a sleepy summer day; danger approaches from the blind zone, and he's so vulnerable, bowing over the drink fountain for a mouthful of water -
"Sei-ga-ku," the dark-haired boy reads from Fuji's jacket. He meets Fuji's ice-blue stare with a pair of eyes hard and cold as bullets, almost lost behind a tangle of dense curls; he has the fair, fine-featured face of an angel, but there's a madness in it that makes Fuji wake up, take notice, even as he settles into Harmless Looking Sweetly Smiling Fuji (TM) mode.
"And you're Ri-k-ka-i," Fuji replies. "But we've met before.. haven't we?" He rattles through a string of long, formal greetings, impossibly boring and detailed; watches as the boy's dark eyes change focus and expression. What do these changes mean?
"I dunno," the boy says, "maybe you were watching the last match, or something. I might have been making a lot of noise. Jackal says I always make too much noise." He shrugs his shoulders, rubs the bridge of a fine and sharp nose, then looks up with a grin, so much shadow cast across his face: "Hey, Seigaku! You're being very entertaining today. I'm happy, there's something to watch. But it's taking too much time, I don't know if it's worth hanging around for. You couldn't hurry it up, could you?"
"Sorry, your side seems to be slowing us down a bit," Fuji says with tremendous politeness and a little formal bow. The boy isn't expecting this; Fuji watches his confusion, amused. A tilt of his head, a shift in weight, the way he holds his mouth is suddenly different; such small changes switch the boy from something almost like a monster to an overgrown child. Fuji remembers something he'd overhead, earlier: "Rikkai.. I can feel a tremendous will from them, this year." But that's just somebody else's opinion; everything Fuji knows about this boy has been filtered through someone else. What has he learnt for himself? Shifting his attention back fully to the oversized imp in front of him now, he puts away all past memories and observations. The tv-lined image of Rikkai's terrifying rookie fades into the plasma land of bad commercial dreams, is replaced by sunlight glimmering in hotspots off real flesh, warm puffs of breath into the air, a faint sheen of sweat across pale cheeks..
Impatient, the Rikkai boy blows out a puff of air, and his curls bounce off his forehead; his face is clear for a moment, lips puckered and large eyes angled upward, Fuji almost laughs out loud at the sight. In that instant, Fuji says to himself, eeeh, he's still only a baby! and then he is struck by how much that fact means. No matter how tall or strong or menacing this monster is, there are times and spaces when he wears another face. Fuji wonders, of course, how he can twist this to his own use on the tennis courts, but he finds his mind wandering further. He's never given up any kind of opportunity to amuse himself; why stop now?
"My name is Kirihara Akaya," the boy says. "But you know that, Seigaku; eh?"
"Of course.. Maybe I'll even see you on the courts later."
"And how will you see me? Through which net?"
Kirihara's words are so childishly chosen, so mockingly spoken; it's an unsettling combination, and it takes Fuji a while to realise what he means - will I be playing you with the net between us, or will you only be watching from behind the wire-mesh of the fence? For a moment, there is a glimmer of blue between dark eyelashes as Fuji's happy smile-squint straightens. Does Kirihara even know how rarely this happens, when Fuji Syusuke changes faces? But the smile returns, Kirihara yawns.
"Maybe over the top of the net," Fuji says. "I'M not a midget."
It takes Kirihara a while to realise what Fuji means, and when he does he giggles uncontrollably, a rich bubbling of glee snickering out through his nose and mouth and tumbling his dark cherub-curls all about his face. Fuji thinks about Tachibana in hospital, the state of Ryoma's knee, the final freeze-frame of the Rikkai tape: he remembers the cold wind, passing by, a feeling as of dark wings beating across Kirihara's triumphant face. Hard to believe that's the same boy he's facing now. Kirihara looks up in between his impish snickering, and, impulsively, Fuji reaches out to ruffle the mess of black curls on his head. The giggling switches off abruptly, Kirihara looks up, Fuji peeks down and smiles about four inches away, his hand still leaning on Kirihara's head, a pressure as gentle and deadly as the tennis he plays.
It takes Kirihara a moment to sort out what to do next, which is about as long as Fuji has predicted; so when Kirihara steps back, a two-time split step out of sheer habit, Fuji retracts his hand and bends out of the way. He smiles serenely in return to the scandalized look Kirihara hurls at him.
"Well, wouldn't you know!" Fuji says. "You're actually quite cute when you're not being a monster."
Kirihara spits out the rudest words he can think of, but Fuji only laughs; he's already won, he can tell by the other boy's suddenly defensive stance, legs braced and head lowered, shoulders squared aggressively. Someone is walking over, Fuji realises; a dark head and shoulders are approaching, drawn by the scent of Kirihara's temper. "Kuwahara-kun," Fuji says in greeting, "good match. How's the second doubles going? Have they continued?"
"They're about to," Kuwahara says. Light glares off his smooth-shaven head, still shiny from the sweat of the first doubles, and he has to wipe his eyes every few minutes on the sleeve of his shirt. That's why he's not quite sure if he wants to believe what he's seeing; this Seigaku boy facing off with an angry Kirihara, but with the ball so clearly in the Seigaku court. "That's what I came to tell you, Akaya. Thought you wanted to see."
"Thanks," Kirihara says. He leaves without a backward glance. Fuji and Kuwahara stare at his retreating back for a while; how he slouches along, high-shouldered and glowering, some unseen smokestack flaring over his head. Kuwahara sighs.
"He likes to think he's a gangster," he says, his face turned away from Fuji, "and Sanada's not around to slap sense into him all the time. I apologize if he tried to pick a fight-"
"Actually, this time I did," Fuji says, and the tip of his nose turns pink, lips curving upward even more; eyes disappear entirely into a double wink, which he presents to Kuwahara while saying: "I should be the one apologizing, ne!"
A mini-bow, and Fuji is gone, walking back to the Seigaku bench. Kuwahara exhales, wipes his eyes again. He returns to the Rikkai bench in time to hear Sanada say to Kirihara, irritably: "Stop kicking the bench, what's wrong with you?" Kirihara stops, he always listens to his vice-captain, but he turns his face away, sulks in a different direction. From the other side of the bench Kuwahara sees Bunta looking at him over a perfectly round sphere of pink bubblegum, and he shrugs. Bunta's hand comes up, two fingers, he nods at their opponents opposite the court; his fingers form a circle, and he looks at Kirihara's grumpy back, raises his eyebrows. Kuwahara sighs and bops the baby of the Rikkai team gently on the head with the bottom of his fist. "Silly Aka-chan,"* he says. "Don't go looking for trouble."
He gets a distant growl in reply.
*'aka-chan' is what you call a baby.