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Eiichiro gathered up the last few of his tennis balls and returned them to his bag. After laying his racket inside, he zipped up the bag and slung it onto his shoulders. Practice on this day was just like any other, that being by himself at one of the outside practice walls, only, he’d practiced much later into the night than he had realized. If not for the street lights scattered around the STC campus, he’d be walking around in complete darkness until he reached the main indoor courts. Although the doors were locked, the building’s outdoor lights stayed on to ward off would-be intruders. He set his bag down and opened one of the side pockets, shifting his hand around inside until he found his phone. When he tried turning it on, however, the battery was dead. “Aw jeez…” he muttered, “How am I supposed to call mom now?” He squatted down beside his bag and started fiddling around in the same pocket, “I know I have a charger… There’s no way I could have forgotten it…”
Due to the intensive practice, he’d put himself through during the day, his legs started to wobble and he fell backward into the building’s front door. “Ah!” As he fell, the door opened into the building and he found himself lying halfway inside and outside. Puzzled by the fact the door opened, he pulled himself up by grabbing onto the door’s handle and held it open while looking inside. Two of the overhead lights were one, specifically over Court A and the hallway with drink machines lined up near the exit. “That’s strange…” he muttered to himself, “STC is locked up after the coaches go home, right? I wonder if Coach Miura stayed late today then…”
Eiichiro pulled his bag inside and propped it up against the vending machine closest to the exit, sliding his phone back into the outside pocket after doing so and zipping it shut. He yelled out, “Coach it’s me, Maruo! I stayed a bit too late practicing and well… I missed the bus and I-” he was shocked by who he saw standing, seemingly staring off into space when he walked through the netting that separated the courts from the outer hallways. “T-Takuma?! What are you doing here?!”
Takuma stood roughly half a foot away from the net on Court A, barely gripping his racket by the end of the handle, so much so it looked like he was sleeping while standing there. It was clear he’d been practicing for far harder and longer than Eiichiro, which comes as no surprise since been competing in tournaments and matches with professionals for a few months by now. He could hear Eiichiro moving the netting to enter the courts and slowly turned to look in his direction. Though Takuma wouldn’t say it, his slow movement was due to overstraining his muscles.
Maruo stopped dead in his tracks when his eyes met with Takuma’s. “I... I.. I well umm you see…. I left around 10 pm to go train outside since buildings were being locked up for the night and I well… I um…” No matter how many times he’d spoken to, or even felt like he got along with Takuma, Eiichiro felt extremely nervous even being in the same room as him. That anxiety was only catapulted by the fact Takuma was now considered a professional and globally ranked player.
“The security guard…” Takuma muttered, slowly turning his body opposite Eiichiro’s direction and towards the faculty offices, “You opened the door, right? You fell.” Ordinarily, Takuma never worried much about the security guard. He loved tennis just as much as any of the players or coaches, and more often than not was preoccupied rewatching old matches rather than the cameras. On nights like this one, he always made sure to wrap up his intense practices before the security guard made it to the office to prevent himself from being heard.
“Ah! I well… My phone died and my legs gave out on me when I was looking for the charger. I didn’t expect the front door to open.” Eiichiro looked down toward the ground out of embarrassment, trying to hide the fact his cheeks turned a light shade of pink. It was embarrassing enough that he was caught on campus after hours when explicitly being told to not overstrain himself by his peers and Coach Aoi. The embarrassment was worsened by the fact he was caught after hours, fell from overworked legs, and by Takuma of all people.
Before Takuma could answer him, he noticed the security moving and shuffling around, causing him to take off and sprint to the front door faster than any service he’d ever performed. Eiichiro, confused, just looked at Takuma running and turned his head, “Did something scare him? Takuma? Scared?” Eiichiro looked over to where the security guard would be and saw a flashlight clicking on and off sporadically. His guesses were that the guard was having problems keeping it on, and took advantage of that to quickly follow in Takuma’s path while saying, “Shit! Shit!” repeatedly. He snatched up his carrying bag and ran out of the building to catch up with Takuma.
Sore as he was, Takuma kept running till he felt he was far enough away from the main STC building to stop and collect himself. His legs, arms, torso, lungs, everything was on fire and on the verge of breaking down on him. From where he was standing, he could see Eiichiro bolt from the front door. Before he could try and get away, however, Maruo ran over to him and was frantically asking questions.
“What happens now? Did the guard see us? I didn’t even know rules about hours existed! I know I practiced late but... Oh jeez, what if the guard tells Coach Aoi! I’ll get chewed out for sure and he might not let me compete! I have to compe-” Eiichiro’s panicked questioning was cut by Takuma slapping him hard enough to make him stop talking and instead, realize his cheek was hurting as if it were on fire.
Takuma apologized for smacking him, “I’m sorry, but when you go into hyper-mode like that, I can’t think of any other way to stop you.”
Rubbing his cheek, Eiichiro frowned and said, “Well… at least it wasn’t a tennis ball this time. Thank you, Takuma. But still,” he looked back at the STC’s main building and then back at Takuma, “What are we going to do now? Neither of us has a car…”
As the two of them were trying to think of how to escape without having to hoof it all the way home, especially since they lived in opposite directions of each other. Though Kanagawa was a relatively safe prefecture, walking around in the dead of night wasn’t exactly high on the list of things either of them wanted to do. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t have the time to think about it anyway.
Takuma saw a flashlight glaring through the glass of the building’s front door and without hesitation, grabbed Eiichiro hand and started pulling him along, running away from the campus and toward the main road. “Just keep up Maruo!” he yelled as he kept a tight grip. Eiichiro did his best to keep up with Takuma, occasionally feeling one of his feet hit against the other and almost causing him to trip, though he kept his breathing steady and never fell into an irregular breathing pattern. As they ran and ran through the city, crossing this and that crosswalk, Takuma began feeling his legs starting to cramp on him and decided they needed to find somewhere to rest, but wasn’t sure where they could so he kept the idea to himself.
Eiichiro, also feeling the strain from the sudden running after his long day, and night, of practice, begged Takuma, “Can we please stop? I don’t think we’d be followed all the way to town.” He could feel his legs trying to give out on him, barely strong enough to keep him standing.
Takuma, though he kept going forward only at a slower pace than before, agreed and said, “Yeah. I guess,” he sighed, “The last thing I need is to be getting in trouble right before the tournament.” Glancing behind him at a visibly exhausted, barely trudging along Eiichiro, Takuma decided to come to a halt near a bus shed’s bench. He leaned against the side of and told Eiichiro, “Side down before you pass out. I don’t want to have to carry you home.”
Eiichiro shuffled over to the bench and plopped down, “The seat’s cold,” he muttered but didn’t budge. His body was far too sore and tired to react to the temperature. Not having enough energy to even hold himself up, he laid his head against the side of the shed and closed his eyes.
Looking around in front of him, Takuma started to worry. He didn’t recognize any of the buildings or street names, nor did he recognize any of the routes posted on the side of the shed he was leaned against. “Uh….” he rubbed his eyes, thinking he just wasn’t seeing clearly because of exhaustion. Upon closer inspection of the map, he still didn’t recognize any of the routes and smacked himself in the face. “How could I be this dumb!”
Hearing Takuma’s hand hit his face made Eiichiro jolt up, unaware of what had happened. He forced himself to stand up and shuffled around the side of the shed, “W-What happened?”
“We’re lost,” Takuma stated, disappointed in himself for running into the middle of nowhere during the dead of night. “Don’t have a damn clue where we’re at.”
Eiichiro, tired and fed up with the situation reached into Takuma’s bag and took his phone out, “I want to go home and sleep. I’m calling Ike, he’s in the country right?”
Takuma didn’t stop Eiichiro from getting into his bag, partially because he was shocked someone like Eiichiro would even do something like that and partially because he knew they wouldn’t get anywhere just by standing there. He didn’t want to call Ike, not right before a tournament. He knew Ike would be preparing too, on top of the fact he didn’t visit the country often and was probably spending time with his family. He shoved his hands into his pockets and pouted, “Yeah… he’s in the country…”
For the first time of the night, Eiichiro smiled after hearing Ike answer the phone. After explaining what their surroundings looked like, he hung the phone up and told Takuma, “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes. We can finally go home!”
Shortly thereafter, Ike showed up in a rental car to pick the pair up. Takuma insisted Eiichiro sit up front, to which Eiichiro didn’t bother putting up a fight. Takuma sat behind Eiichiro and no sooner than they pulled out onto the road, Eiichiro was fast asleep.
“You know you didn’t have to leave STC right…?” Ike was confused about the entire situation, occasionally looking at a scowling Takuma through the car’s rearview mirror.
“Yeah but… I just didn’t want to get chewed out for practicing too much,” he grumbled.