Tennis no Ojou-sama: A Prince of Tennis Fan Fiction

Chapter 146: Face It, He's Special To Her

The others agreed with him and finally, the group decided for Ren, Hibiki and Umino to follow Ryoma and eavesdrop on his conversation with the mystery girl.

Little did they know that they would be able to hear such interesting things.

~~~

The air was chilly and so was the silence enveloping the two kimono-clad teenagers standing at the back of a well-decorated shrine. The noises of the people standing in line for prayer offerings, the sounds of coins dropping to the offertory box and the ringing of the hanging bell seemed to replete the empty silence but was unable to fill the gap between the two adolescents.

Ryuzaki Sakuno fiddled with the bean bag she used as a pink coin purse, twisting it repeatedly between her hands to somehow remedy her anxiety. She was starting to regret calling out to Ryoma and asking him to talk privately when she absolutely had no idea how to start the conversation.

"Why am I always like this? I haven't grown up at all," she thought to herself sadly.

"So... What is it that you want to talk about?" Ryoma asked, offering to start the conversation himself. "I have a guess about what it is, but in case I'm wrong, then I'd rather not bring it up..." he added.

Sakuno was a bit startled at Ryoma's tone. He sounded cold and distant, or rather trying his best to sound cold and distant.

Clenching her fist to keep her hand from shaking, she started to speak. "I must have caused you an inconvenience with what I did on the day before the Christmas party... I'm sorry if I put you on the spot..."

"Yes, I have to say it did give me an inconvenience," Ryoma answered simply with a nod.

Sakuno's heart sank at his straight-forward words. She just said that to start off with her side of the conversation but she didn't expect him to agree with it. It hurt her to hear such words from him.

However, Ryoma was not finished yet.

"Honestly, I don't know why you had those kind of feelings for me. From the words you told me, it was more than admiration; it wasn't out of respect or awe either. I'm not sure about how these things work for others, but from my perspective, one must have some sort of trigger to back up those kinds of feelings, something like a gesture that led you on or made you assume that we had something special between us..." he remarked before maneuvering from his position and facing her squarely.

"I want to clarify that I didn't do anything of that sort. What happened in the storage warehouse during cultural festival was an accident out of pure coincidence; and the few times I kept you company and personally taught you tennis was not of my own will but because of your grandmother's requests towards my father. It was nothing more than that... If those incidents made you assume things, I don't have anything to be apologetic about since I never led you on... My answer that night was ruthless, but I think you needed that manner of rejection. You can just hate me for it if it would make it easier for you to move on," Ryoma said, finally feeling light-hearted now that he had properly rejected her.

"I'm sorry since it would come out like I'm telling you what to do and what to feel, but I really want you to move on from those kind of feelings for me. To me, you're just a fellow schoolmate," he added straight-forwardly without faltering in his words nor eye contact.

Sakuno seemed to have been frozen on the spot and it took a few seconds for her to react.

"Ohh..." she said, lowering her head and blinking her eyes a lot. "I did think I was rejected with that text message... But I still wanted to make sure, whether I understood your message properly..." she added, almost crushing her bean bag purse to somehow stay calm and refrain from bursting in tears.