Secrets, Socials, and Seigaku

Chapter 5

The next morning my dad called and said he would be home in the afternoon and that I was allowed to walk around town. I decided I would skateboard around the park and see the scenery, maybe even take a nap? I grabbed the plain black skateboard and went outside as I tried to find my way to the park. ten minutes and a couple turns later I was hell bent on finding the park because it was going to be hell trying to get back. Ahead I saw the tops of lights that I instantly recognized to be used for tennis courts late a night. 

I remembered my dad telling me that the park was by the tennis courts, but i didn't see it anywhere. I figured if I could cut across the tennis courts I could get to the park faster. I sped up on my skateboard and jumped the curb. I sped up again and easily jumped the small set of stairs with my skateboard, but as I landed at the top of them I landed on a racket, which caused me to fall off. I laid there on my arms for a moment wondering if I should even attempt to look down at myself I tried moving an arm. ”Ow." I groaned. My eyes soon landed on what caused the problem. "Tch, what idiot leaves a tennis racket at the top of the stairs?” I asked myself angrily. 

I slowy got upand ignored my aches and pains for a moment. I picked the racket up and looked it over for any damage. I instantly recognized it. I’d only seen this racket before in magazines. This wasn’t just any racket this was the DNX 7. I knew everything about this racket. It weighs 295 grams, and it is 27 inches long, it has a head size of 645 cm2, and it’s string pattern was 16 x 18. It was somewhere around $203 in America, so here in Japan it was around 17,417 yen. Wow, that was a lot of money! 

The question now is what idiot left it on the top of the stairs. If I actually ended up finding whose racket this was I was going to let him have a piece of my mind.

I reluctantly felt a stinging sensation flair from my arm. I looked to find my forearm bleeding, not to badly, but enough so that a trail of blood dripped down my arm . It didn’t really hurt though, it just kind of stung, which didn’t bother me as much as it should have. I usually have a very high tolerance for pain. And to top it all off I was more concerned about who left the racket out here then myself. God just listen to me, I think a racket is more important than my own safety, but I mean seriously I would be less angry if it was a piece of crap racket instead of this expensive thing. This isn’t even out in stores yet!

I  decided to take the racket along with me and set it down by the tennis courts so maybe the owner would find it. As i made my way up to the courts I hopped off my board and opted to walk instead. I was going to stop and get water when I saw a group of guys doing stretches together. They all had the same uniform on and held rackets except for one of them. I happened to over hear their conversation as they finished up stretching. “What do you mean you don’t know where it is?” 

One of them yelled. I looked over at the boy who yelled. He had short brown hair with a blue cap to cover it up and a band-aid vertically over the end of his left eyebrow. He was yelling at another boy who had hair like Victoria beckham’s except it was red. He started yelling back. “I’ve looked for it everywhere! I don’t know where I dropped it! it’s not my fault!” The voice screamed.

“What do you mean it’s not your fault?" The other guy yelled back. "You’re the one who brought it with you and put it down somewhere and forgot it. Wasn’t that a new racket too?”

A tan boy with glasses and long blue hair spoke.”If I recall, it was the new DNX 7 right?” He asked calmly.

The red head spoke again.”It doesn’t matter what it was! I can always buy another one tonight.” He said with a huff. 

Then what seemed like the leader of the group approached him. I could tell he was the leader because he had the same aura as Tezuka. He had grey hair and a beauty mark under his right eye. Just from looking at him you could tell he was full of confidence. Simply put he looked like he had a big ego. He started to talk. ”You're right you can always buy a new one, but the point is you don’t have a racket now. And nobody brought their spares with them, so you can run laps the whole time while ore-sama and the team practices.”