Deafening Silence ( prince of tennis) (#wattys2016)

7

Finally I have more than 1 review! Thank you guys for your comments, since I didn't think the story was that interesting it was a nice change to have such comments :) Keep giving me more comments like this please!

And if you haven't guessed already, some of the names in this chapter were made with a Japanese name generator :P

Rikkaidai Fuzoku School Library

It had been one week since the new year began, and Sanada was hunched over examining lists and lists of names of tennis club members, in a sea of printed papers. Papers were spread all across the desk, each with an applicant's name, grades and personal statement.

Normally, choosing players for the regulars ranking tournament would be a breeze, but unfortunately, there could only be 16 people in the tournament including the regulars, so there could only be 8 applicants.

25 people had applied, and because of this, Yukimura had Sanada personally select who would play. Normally, Sanada would select people for their skill, but Yukimura also wanted to make sure there would not be any weirdos in their team - since they had enough of them already - so he asked Sanada to also look over the personal statements they had written when applying for this school, and on top of the fact that a regular's grades must be above average to stay one. This only made the job even more tedious.

Sanada had two piles next to him - a pile of possible players in the tournament, and a pile of definite time-wasters. So far, nearly all of the applicants were - in Sanada's opinion - too weak to play in the ranking tournament, and so he had a large pile of applicants on one side.

The problem was that Yukimura wanted 8 players, and Sanada had only managed to find 5 people who would be worthy of his time.

And so, he had 5 applicants on one pile, and 19 on the other, with one last applicant in front of him.

Mainly because Sanada had no clue what to do with the last man, he put the paper aside for a moment, and went through the list of failures again. He could feel a migraine coming on as he read them, all of them saying the same thing. Just lines and lines of rambling on about how great they were at school and listening and sports, Sanada could see the lies in the black ink as if it was clear as day. He wanted to shred all of these wastes of paper and just pick the most experienced players, but Sanada knew the huge difference between skill and talent, because while the third-years were skilled, they were utterly talentless and their grades were poor.

So Sanada chose two more third-years with the best skill, ignoring everything else, and looked at the final piece of paper he had pushed away, picking it up and looking at the name, grades, and personal statement.

His grades were above average in every subject, though his skill in tennis was unexplored, and his personal statement was devoid of the lies and half-hearted truths that others had used.

'My name is Echizen Roko. I won't lie to you, I'm not an open person, I don't have a happy personality and I'm certainly not a good talker. But I am a good listener, probably because I can't interrupt someone in a conversation, and I have grades which I hope you're satisfied with. I don't like attention, I hate it when people approach me to 'get to know me' and I especially hate it when people ask unnecessary questions. And if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm mute, so I can't answer your questions even if you ask me. But I hope that you allow me to enter this school because Rikkaidai Fuzoku has the best academic standards and achievements of any other school in the region. That's all.'

Sanada actually chuckled slightly at his statement. Niou hadn't been exaggerating when he said this freshman was the only kid with guts. He didn't use lies or deceit to cover up his failures; he just told you what to expect, and to deal with it. Sanada wondered how the principal reacted when he read this.