Who am I?
PrologueI'm a girl, and my name is Fuji Syuusuke.
Yes, you heard it right. It's a fact, so you can build a bridge and get over it. I'd show you, if it weren't exceedingly immodest.
Shock! Horror! The tennis tensai Fuji Syuusuke is a girl! The media will have a field day!
Well, they'd only find out if you broadcast it to the rest of the world. Allow me to inform you that if you do choose to do that, you will live to regret it every day for the rest of your life. Which won't be long, I can tell you now. I haven't come so far to get caught.
So why, you ask, why did I choose to make a name for myself as a male? I could easily have risen to the top as a female. Why did I pretend and lie so long that even I was almost convinced? Why did I cut my hair and close my eyes, making the transformation from a beautiful girl to a pretty boy, a bishounen? Why did I close myself within a protective shell of lies instead of flying free?
Even I do not really know the reason.
Maybe, I was curious. I wanted to know why boys seemed to be more important to society than girls. I wanted to understand why boys were thought to be superior to girls in all aspects. Perhaps, I wanted to prove that a girl could as much as a boy could – no, that a girl could be better.
Six years old, and already something to prove. Six years old, and already aware of the suppressed but still present gender discrimination. My formless plans and unproven theories took shape slowly; tennis was the catalyst. When my coach of that time jokingly suggested I register as a male to participate in the boys' competition because I was almost certainly on par with the best boys she had taught, I jumped at the chance. In an effort to humor me, she registered me in a regional competition, and was stunned speechless upon sight of my trophy. From then on, I always registered in boys' competitions, and since I didn't want to be found out, I had to be a boy the rest of the time too. Thus my masquerade began.
Naturally, I never tried to… shall we say, look at my male friends. What kind of pervert do you think I am? I always waited for the showers to be empty before entering; if the shower was not especially necessary, I would forgo it entirely. In other aspects I tried to emulate my teammates' behavior; as much as possible, I tried to avoid attracting attention to the feminine characteristics I possessed – well, I wasn't about to actually go for a sex change, which meant I retained most female attributes, making an almost too-perfect bishounen.
By now, I've spent two-thirds of my life as a boy. Even my own family is accustomed to referring to me as a son and brother; Yuuta always calls me his Aniki, even when there are no other people around. This act, this deception – I think I'm grateful to it. So many of the close friends I have made since I started – Saeki, Eiji – if I were just a girl, they would have been unreachable, untouchable; immensely popular, I would have been crushed by their fan clubs had I even tried to get to know them. But as a boy, nobody minded that I was their friend. Why, even I had a fan club; girls do seem to like bishounen for some reason.
Sometimes I wonder how that extensive fan club of mine would react if they received information that their beloved 'Fuji-sama' was a girl. Probably a drastic decline in the amount of Valentine's Day chocolate, love letters and confessions. I do like the chocolate, but the love letters and confessions were just too awkward, so that would be an improvement. The downside is that I'm likely to get fanboys instead, which isn't the most appealing thought either.
Now that you know who, why and what I am, let the story begin.