novelno Chapter 15 Hyotei suffers a crushing defeat, Shishido is removed from the starting lineup.
Chapter 15 Hyotei suffers a crushing defeat, Shishido is removed from the starting lineup.
Tachikawa Tennis Park.
The wind rustled the leaves against the tennis court's netting.
The Hyotei school's gray-blue support flag drooped listlessly. Girls in Hyotei uniforms stood in the corners, clutching their support towels. Their initial excitement had been replaced by astonishment, and even their whispered discussions were tinged with timidity. Watching the school's tennis team, they ultimately didn't dare to step forward.
In the rest area by the court, the members of the Hyotei Tennis Club's second team sat scattered about, no one speaking.
The coolness of the park benches seeped through his sweatpants and onto his body. Ryo Shishido slammed his racket hard onto the ground, leaving a white mark on the carbon black frame.
He lowered his head, his long hair covering his reddened eyes, the veins in his neck were taut, his shoulders rose and fell slightly, and his Adam's apple bobbed repeatedly, but he couldn't utter a single word.
0: 6.
He'd played tennis for so many years and had never lost so badly. It wasn't just losing by one or two points, or one or two games; he hadn't won a single point in the entire match.
Opposite him, Tachibana Yoshihira was so dominant that he didn't even have a chance to retaliate. Those moves that he practiced so thoroughly were nothing but empty gestures in the face of such an absolute difference in strength.
Every swing of the racket seemed to be telling him: You can't do it.
Is Ryo Shishido really that bad?
……
In the quarterfinals of the Metropolitan Tournament, Hyotei faced Fudomine, and everyone thought it would be a match with no suspense whatsoever.
Hyotei Tennis Club has always been a seeded team in the national tournament, and their opponent is a school they've never heard of before, a newly promoted team that didn't even make it out of the metropolitan tournament last year.
Hyotei sent out one of their regular members, Ryo Shishido, to hold the fort, while the rest were all decent members of the Second Army.
But no one expected that the newly formed Fudomine Tennis Club had a very strong doubles team, winning both doubles matches one and two in a row.
In the third singles match, the player representing the team was once again a former national-level player from Shishiraku Junior High School, one of the "Kyushu Twin Heroes"—Tachibana Yoshihira.
Kichihei Tachibana's tennis skills were formidable, and Ryo Shishido fought with all his might, but still suffered a crushing 6-0 defeat.
Hyotei ultimately lost to Fudomine by a score of 3-0, failing to qualify directly for the Kanto Tournament and now only able to hope for a comeback in the losers' bracket.
such a result.
The complete dominance, from technical skills to mentality, left these once proud teenagers unable to lift their heads.
-
Shishido doesn't remember how she got back to school.
For half an hour on the bus, he wore headphones with the volume turned up to the maximum. The drumbeats made his eardrums ache. He stared at the street scene outside the window for a long time, but couldn't absorb anything.
Upon arriving at the school, the cheering squad dispersed.
They left without making a sound.
The flags that usually read "Hyotei will be the winner" were put away, folded up, and held in their hands as they left the tennis club's perimeter net in twos and threes.
Someone looked back sadly, then turned back.
The locker room of the Hyotei Academy tennis club was unusually quiet.
At this time of day, the locker room is usually incredibly noisy... Jiro is catching up on sleep, Mukahi and Shinobu are discussing melodramatic plots from romance novels, Shishido is urging Ootori to hurry up and change, and Hiyoshi is quietly doing stretches by himself.
Today, however, no one spoke; there were only the rustling sounds of clothes and the occasional footsteps.
Shishido walked into the locker room without looking at the tennis club members. He simply put his tennis bag down at his feet, sat down on the bench without saying a word, and stared at his shoelaces with his head down.
There was some yellow dirt stuck to my shoelaces; it was from today's game.
A while later.
Yuushi Oshitari walked to his side, pushed up his glasses that had slipped down to the tip of his nose, and his eyes behind the lenses lost their usual nonchalance as he said, "It's my fault."
His voice wasn't loud, but everyone heard it.
"I didn't check Fudomine's information carefully."
Shishido remained silent, and neither did the others.
"I thought they were a new team, so there wasn't much to investigate," Shinobu continued, his tone unusually self-deprecating. "Turns out they have a national-level player, and I didn't even know that."
Yuushi Oshitari leaned against the wardrobe, his face full of guilt.
Today he was training with Atobe and the others at the school's tennis club and didn't go to the match to watch it, but he was in charge of collecting information on the opposing team before the match.
He had indeed collected information on Fudomine and watched a few of their matches from the year before last. Fudomine wasn't very strong back then. Later, he heard that a violent incident had occurred at their school, and all the previous regular players had left the club, leaving only freshmen in the tennis club.
I stopped paying attention to it.
When he handed the information to Atobe, he thought to himself, "This kind of unknown team is nothing to be afraid of."
And the result?!
Hidden within the opposing team is a national-level player, Tachibana Yoshihira.
One of the former doubles ace players at Shishiraku Junior High School, and a well-known violent tennis player in the Kyushu region.
When did this person transfer to Fudomine? Why haven't we heard anything about it?
Renji thought that if he hadn't been so careless and had put in more effort and investigated through more channels, he might have known in advance and this crushing defeat wouldn't have happened.
But he didn't.
Because at the time I felt it was unnecessary.
Looking back on those words now, I find them laughable.
Feng stood at the door, wanting to comfort Shishido but not knowing how to start; Hiyoshi leaned against the wall, arms crossed, jawline taut, saying nothing; Jiro sat in the corner, unusually not asleep, just quietly looking at his racket.
Xiang Ri muttered under his breath, "Who would have thought? They hadn't even heard of him last year..."
"It's not a matter of whether we thought about it or not." Shinobu interrupted him with a frown, his voice much harsher than usual. "It's that we didn't even think about it."
Everyone remained silent, offering no further rebuttal.
Atobe Keigo stood at the front, listening to their conversation. His icy blue eyes were as dark as if they were frozen, and the low pressure around him almost swallowed people whole.
He took out his phone, swiped his finger across the screen, and dialed Sakaki Taro's number. His voice was flat, yet carried an unyielding coldness. There was no explanation, only a calm, indifferent tone:
"Coach, at the Tachikawa stadium, we lost 3-0. Our second team was completely wiped out, Shishido Ryo... lost 6-0 to Tachibana Kichihei."
"We underestimated our enemy."
After hanging up the phone, Atobe glanced at everyone, his gaze landing on Shishido Ryo. Without the slightest hesitation, his tone was as cold as the winter wind, "Shishido Ryo, from today onwards, you are kicked out of the regular team and sent back to the second team for retraining."
Shishido's eyes were bloodshot, his clenched hands tightened even more, his nails digging into his flesh, his face filled with resentment and shame. His Adam's apple bobbed a few times, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he could only grit his teeth and utter a single word: "Fine."
He was outmatched and suffered a crushing defeat, not even having the right to refute.
Shishido picked up his tennis bag, said "I'm leaving now," and walked out without looking back, his back view revealing a stubbornness in his disheveled state.
Without a second thought, Feng chased after him, calling out, "Shishido-senpai..."
"Don't follow."
Feng stopped at the door of the changing room, watching Shishido's figure disappear around the corner. She was filled with self-reproach, and her eyes reddened.
Shinobu came out of the locker room and patted Ootori on the shoulder.
"Let him be by himself for a while."
He pushed up his glasses again, stood aside and looked at Shishido, his eyes filled with heaviness and his heart filled with regret.
Hyotei's glory, like a thick cocoon, enveloped everyone in the tennis club, making them forget that there are never absolute winners or losers on the tennis court, and forget that those seemingly insignificant teams may also hide the power to start a prairie fire.
The others watched Shishido's retreating figure, each with their own mixed feelings.
Mukahi Gakuto clenched his fists, both angry and anxious; Hiyoshi Wakashi remained silent with a cold face, but he could not hide the surprise in his eyes, and his "subordinate overthrowing superior" spirit seemed to have subsided a bit.
The once invincible Hyotei tennis club suffered such a crushing defeat for the first time, and the entire team was shrouded in gloom.
Atobe received a text message from Sakaki Taro asking him to come to the office.
He glanced at the demoralized crowd, then indifferently got up and walked out of the locker room. He stopped at the entrance of the tennis department and looked at the tennis department's sign.
That sign had been hanging there for many years, its gilded lettering reflecting a dazzling light in the setting sun.
He stared for a while, then turned and walked toward his office, though his steps were heavier than usual.