This growing up thing is complicated. Ryoma doesn't get it at all; it's like trying to play a match in the middle of an earthquake, or underwater. Everything has changed, is changing constantly, and no one has given him a map. Even his own body betrays him; his voice cracks and jumps pitch, his limbs feel too long and his shirts too tight across the shoulders. Tennis becomes complicated by the need to readjust his stroke to his growing body, and Momo-senpai laughs at him.
His father seems complicit in the whole thing. He laughs, too, when Ryoma stumbles over his own feet or hits out by accident, and talks about girls in an annoyingly suggestive tone of voice. Ryoma feels like smacking a tennis ball into the old man's face, which is a stupid thing to be comfortable about even if it is familiar. When he stomps out of the court in frustration his father smirks and offers to lend him magazines for 'stress relief.'
Ryoma isn't stupid; he knows what Nanjiroh means. His dreams have become increasingly explicit and intense, although he rarely remembers much, and morning embarrassment is now a matter of course. His mother never mentions the extra laundry loads, but his father grins at him over the breakfast table and makes sure to ask whether he slept well.
Girls huddle in the school hallways, giggling and looking at him from the corners of their eyes. Ryoma finds this just as incomprehensible as everything else girls do, and just as easy to ignore. Bewilderingly, the other boys in his class seem to talk of nothing else. It's as though they're all turning into his dad, as though everyone is waiting for him to stop yawning his way out of uninteresting conversations about Keiko-chan in 2-5 and become another miniature Nanjiroh.
It's all too weird for Ryoma. He takes refuge on the tennis court, but even there things are no longer as simple as they used to be. It's too easy, now, to be distracted by the push and jostle of bodies in the locker room, the stretch and flex of muscles in practice and games. Ryoma feels as though he has only half the puzzle, as though he is playing with an invisible ball against an opponent he cannot see. Even his senpai are different now, teasing him about his growth and about the girls who crowd up against the fences at tournaments and shriek when he scores a point.
Saturday afternoon, Ryoma ducks out of practice early and trudges across the residential neighbourhood to loiter outside the high school gates. He tugs his cap down to cover his face, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his pockets and trying to pretend he isn't eager. High school students wander past in noisy groups, chattering and laughing about incomprehensible things. Ryoma shoves his shoulders into the brickwork and stares at his feet, feeling stupidly out of place.
He never has to wait long. Maybe Ryuuzaki-sensei telephones or something, because Tezuka-buchou never seems surprised to find Ryoma waiting for him at the gate. He's not buchou any more, really; Ryoma thinks that maybe he's supposed to call him Tezuka-senpai or something, but it's hard to remember and when he tries it feels wrong. The world could be turned on it's head, and Tezuka-buchou would still be calm and authoritative and reassuring.
They walk down the street to the park courts in silence. Ryoma feels tension seeping out of his shoulders at the proximity; Tezuka-buchou at least is the same as always. Somehow, that makes all the confusing new thoughts less overwhelming, and Ryoma can ignore the clasped hands of the couples they pass by concentrating on the warm feeling of buchou walking beside him. Absently, he wonders what it might feel like to reach out and take hold of Tezuka-buchou's hand. Then he wonders whether he will be able to break the Zone today, and which of them will win.