Deafening Silence ( prince of tennis) (#wattys2016)

12

So I notice there's a severe lack of tennis practice and tennis club antics going on. So that stuff will happen next chapter! But until then, read about how much Roko irritates Sanada, because we all love reading about that.

Class 3A - English

Roko often found it kind of funny how Sanada would refuse to even look at him during English. It seemed to him that Sanada would find a way to make tennis practice miserable for him, and then Roko would appear in his next class, which meant Sanada either forgot that he sat next to him in English or just didn't care, though it was probably the latter. It just generally made it awkward for the both of them, but Roko found it amusingly awkward rather than just awkward.

Today however, was especially awkward because on top of the fact that Sanada had snarled at Roko and kicked the regular clubhouse door down, the two of them had to do a group project - a project that was worth 50% of their grade this term. Though the 'project' was really more of a two-man essay than a project, where the partners were both given a different English transcript of a long conversation and they had to translate both of them together and correct the mistakes.

Roko mentally smirked at the paper when he read through it. It was a five-page conversation in small text about three teenagers talking about what they hoped to do in careers - it was a rather difficult transcript, involving different tenses, complex verbs and obscure adjectives, and the characters talked in great detail about what they wanted to do.

The point of this project was teamwork, for both people to come together and make sure that each other have translated and corrected their transcripts perfectly. Though skimming over it Roko was certain he could translate his with ease, and had to fight back an amused smirk as he noticed Sanada was scowling at his.

This project had a deadline of five days, and the teacher said that completing it with your partner after school is perfectly fine.

And so while other groups came together to start their work, Sanada looked in the opposite direction of Roko like he didn't exist. That was fine by him, he could easily complete this project anyway, and so he got out his notebook and began to translate the English into Japanese without consulting Sanada. He practically scowled at some of the obvious mistakes in the text, stuff like leaving out the 'ing' in a word, which made the sentence make no grammatical sense at all. Roko continued to write and write more Japanese out in his notebook, oblivious to the fact Sanada was watching him the whole time.

Class 3A - English

As much as he hated to admit it, Sanada was very impressed with this freshman's English skills. He had already completed the first page of translations and it had only been ten minutes, while Sanada scowled at his own transcript, unable to wrap his head around some of the words and verb structures. Sanada's English grades were good, but just good, he wasn't particularly talented or amazing at English, he was just average, and he found himself stuck on the third sentence after reading it through, and he couldn't copy the freshman's work either since his and Sanada's transcripts were different, so he had to ask the freshman for help.

He shuddered at the very thought. He could not deny that after he had kicked down the door things became extremely awkward, and even more so when he forgot again that the freshman would be sitting next to him next class anyway.

He was still angry with him. He hated that freshman, how he paraded around in a jersey he didn't deserve, how he abused his privilege as a regular to talk to Sanada like he was equal to him, and how he insinuated that Yukimura would not return.

He would. Sanada knew he would. Yukimura would never go down without a fight, and whatever kind of disease he had he would recover from it and be back to lead the team. Sanada refused to believe for a moment that Yukimura would not come back. He was the Child of God, the tennis prodigy of Rikkaidai and the true captain of the tennis team.