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

CHAPTER 140: Stupid Older Brother

"And basically, that's it," said the tall, handsome new arrival with the uncannily similar features as the pair of Echizen father and son.

"Ohhh," Ryouko, Nanako and Ichidou replied in unison, eyes slightly wide from the spectacular revelations they just heard. The three of them were seated alongside each other on the sofa of the living room.

After the said newcomer showed up with Ichidou at the rooftop, what came next was a very warm reunion between Ryoga and Rinko, the latter surprised but otherwise perfectly delighted at the person who decided to show up for the holidays. Nanjiro was also obviously ecstatic but otherwise masked his happiness rather clumsily.

Months prior, Rinko apprently mentioned to Ryoga who was regularly in contact with her through e-mail about visiting Japan during the holidays but Ryoga said that he was busy. However, Ryoga found himself going to Japan to take care of some business, thus, without telling Rinko or his father, he went to surprise them.

Amidst the hugging and the greetings, Ryouko could only look at Ryoma, asking with her eyes what the heck was going on. He only shrugged and whispered to her that she'll eventually have an answer to her questions.

After taking a quick scan around the unfamiliar faces around him, Ryoga noticed the confusion thus, to enlighten everyone who doesn't know him, he proposed moving the parade inside the house wherein he introduced himself properly. It eventually led to him telling stories of his whole childhood.

At the moment, Ryouko, Ichidou and Nanako just finished listening to Echizen Ryoga's narration about his own birth, explaining how it is that the supposedly only son Ryoma was able to have an 'older' brother.

On the other hand, Ryoma and Rinko are in the kitchen getting dinner ready, listening in to the conversations from the living room. Nanjiro and Licht are setting up in the rooftop to have their meal there as originally planned. They also had to take heaters to keep everybody warm as well as an extra chair for Ryoga.

"Hmmm..." Ryouko hummed under her breath and stared at Echizen Ryoga, marvelling at how similar he is to Ryoma, from the hair to the eye shape and everything. She was surprised to hear that Ryoma has a brother four years older than him but after learning the backstory from Ryoga, it kind of made a lot of sense. After all, Ryouko had heard about Echizen Nanjiro being a notorious womanizer at the time of his youth from her mother's random chatter.

Apparently, Ryoga's mother became acquainted with Echizen Nanjiro just before he met Rinko. She was one of his many ex-girlfriends and was the last one he broke up with before dating Rinko.

According to Ryoga, his mother was a drop-dead gorgeous woman of half-Japanese, half-American descent with flowing dark hair and gray eyes, a couple of years older than Nanjiro. His mother rarely talked about his father and only mentioned that he played tennis very well, the apparent reason why she had a crush on him. Ryoga also started tennis during a young age because of this one hint about his father. He and his mother lived quite comfortably in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a house with an improvised tennis court out front, constructed out of little Ryoga's persistent begging.

Because his Mom doesn't like talking about the matter very much, everything that Ryoga knew about the love story of his parents were second-hand knowledge from his mother's besfriend whom Ryoga called Ran-oneechan, and he was only able to learn his father's name on his mother's deathbed when he was about nine.

According to Ran-oneechan's stories, after his mother and Nanjiro broke up, she found out months later that she was pregnant. However, she had no plans of contacting Nanjiro about the baby since she was content on the idea of raising the child on her own. She never expected that her life would end so soon, losing to a severe case of pneumonia. After she died, Ryoga was taken care of by a Ran, telling him that they still have to figure out who would take care of him in the long run.