Disclaimer: Here's a random fact: Yagyuu is straight. Here's another random fact: I don't own Prince of Tennis, or any of the characters. :)

Rating: PG, probably?

Warnings: Um… I don't know. Non-lighthearted? It's not quite angst.

Summary: The thirtieth Rikkai Drabblething. Here at last are the never-seen-before deepest thoughts of the Trickster. Yes, the summary is awful... but I can't put anything else. You'll see.

Author's notes: Another Rikkai Drabblething. You don't have to have read the ones that come before this, but it might help a bit. The drabblething list goes:

Times of Stress

Passing the Time

How to ask out Marui Bunta

Four Days Later

October Ice

Because I Love You

Evil

Further Nonsense

Dear Diary

Kind of… the same

100 Word Challenges

Driver in a Hurry, Child in a Coma

Doctor, doctor!

The Woes of Solomon Grundy

I'm Not Going

The Little Things

I Had To

He WHAT?!

Operation: Christmas Party

Being Fukubuchou

Once Upon a Time

My Brother Bunta

Dear Diary: Living with Niou-senpai

A Morning at the Pool

This is Love

SFRR

And So It Begins

Most Unexpected

This Is March 5th

No Small Wonder

First off, a massive, massive thank you and hugs to the 23 people who reviewed 'This Is March 5th'! You're all fantasmical. That's the most I've gotten for a single Drabblething within five days. :o So, yep, thanks to Ahotep, KiriharaAkaya, Blufox, Risa-Chan, Britix, ImmortalTigeress, Hropkey, Kitsune Freak, Roey Cleine, Darkdemoncat, Old Fiat, AmnesiacDemon, Merissala, Simmy.xxx, Critic, Ryuu Amethyst, SupernaturalFreak1, my lovely Linc, May-Linn (Yeah, I've got it on my computer :) It's fantasmical, ne?), Toh Sock, Brosiscomplex, Roaming Phantom and Pikke Wood.

Here's the thirtieth in the Rikkai Drabblethings. :) Sorry for the slightly disjointed writing style; I'm experimenting again:o Thought you'd seen the last of it? Ha, ha. Think again. Xp

"Try not to make it too angsty", as requested by ImmortalTigeress. :D Hope the angst levels are alright for you, dahl.

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Niou Masaharu has a box.

It's not small, but it's not a big box either. It's just the right size to fit in, say, a rucksack or a tennis bag.

He mostly keeps banknotes in there, but there's a couple of other things in there too. There's a pair of ivory netsuke beads that he's pretty sure belonged to his grandparents on one of his parents' sides. There's a detailed mapbook of the Osaka region, annotated in Niou's small handwriting. And there's one of those little electronic puzzle masters, the ones that can set you up with about a million different puzzles one after the other.

Akaya found it by accident, about two weeks after he moved in. Being Akaya, he rooted through it and then asked Niou why he didn't just spend the money or put it into a bank account, why he didn't use the puzzle master, why he'd circled street motels and youth hostels in the mapbook. Niou called him a nosy, brainless bratling and rehid the box where Akaya wouldn't be able to find it.

Yagyuu said once that Niou was the most cynical person he knew. Which, considering his uncle used to work as a high-ranking judge, is saying a lot. Niou laughed it off and pretended not to hear the small spark of genuine concern in Yagyuu's voice. He didn't like it when people worried about him.

After Niou rehid the box from Akaya, the Rikkai ace seemed to forget about it. At least, he didn't mention it to any of the others. Niou's glad for that, because Yukimura or Yanagi might just put two and two together and run interference. Which would be both awkward and very pointless… they've got no reason to be worried. Not anymore.

Sometimes, Niou likes to lie awake and let sleep come to him rather than seek it out. On those nights, he listens to the slightly irregular breathing of his sleeping roommate and occasionally turns over onto his side to watch him twitch as he dreams.

Yeah, Akaya's a brat. Yeah, Niou constantly complains at him and about him. It's not surprising, because Niou isn't a people person, and Akaya is just that type of kid who'll grate on your nerves, and grate, and grate, and grate. Unless you happen to be either his boyfriend or his idol, of which Niou is most definitely neither thank you very much. Akaya doesn't act grateful for being taken in by Niou either. Not after the first week. He's tactless, and still carries the arrogance of someone who is very aware of how talented they are.

And he has absolutely no idea that he's Niou's savior.

It's a strong word, savior. Maybe it's the wrong word to use, but Niou can never think of anything better suited.

Inside Niou's box, there is a total of three hundred and nineteen thousand yen, meticulously saved over the last year and a half. That's one thousand three hundred and ninety-six UK pounds, or two thousand six hundred and ninety-seven US dollars, or three thousand four hundred and fifty-four Australian dollars. It's a lot of money. It's enough to take the train and then two buses to the middle of Kobe, get a room somewhere (there's a lot of choices, Niou found) and stay there for a week, maybe two, until he finds a job.

Niou had the whole thing worked out. Has had it worked out since he started saving up halfway through his first year at junior high.

The time between then and now has made him wiser, considerably more mature, but that only served to make his plans even more detailed, make him even more sure of what he was doing. What he was going to do.

On December 10th, Niou booked the train ticket. The Nationals were well over. Rikkai's tennis team didn't need him any more, and Marui… well, he'd get over Niou's disappearance. As for finishing the last three months of junior high, he really couldn't care less.

On December 11th, Niou saw a fourteen year old's, a child's, unsteady bids for happiness shatter. And it made his heart hurt like it never had before.

He didn't visit Akaya to try and console him as all the others did. After a furiously upset Marui told him about the arranged move to Hokkaido, Niou switched his mobile phone off and sat in the tree that grew just outside his bedroom window for the whole day.

Niou had never particularly liked Akaya, to be perfectly honest. He definitely didn't dislike him – the kid was alright – it was just that, as previously said, he found him extremely annoying in large doses. But, on the other hand… Niou could identify with him. Neither of them held any particular affection for their families; Niou far less so than Akaya, but still. They both used the adrenaline high from high-paced tennis to distract them from life. They were both strangely drawn to Yukimura's unique brand of charisma. Etc.

The main difference was that Akaya was still very much a child, despite being fourteen. Whereas Niou hadn't been a child in years. And that… that kind of hurt. In a bittersweet, almost nostalgic-like way. Niou felt hope for Akaya. He felt that Akaya could amount to something in life, especially if he stuck by Marui and Yukimura's sides. Niou feels that he'll never amount to anything. He's resigned himself to that, and he's made his peace with it.

But then Akaya's mother threatened to take all that away from her son. And Niou was torn.

He nearly didn't do it. He nearly left regardless, figuring that he was very, very unlikely to ever see Akaya again anyway if he just went to Kobe as planned.

But in the end Niou realised something, sitting in the top of that tree. He realised that his life was pretty much spoken for. He was born to parents who didn't want him, brought up by an aunt and uncle that didn't care about him, lived in a world that didn't care about anyone. He was going to spend his life in some low-waged, unimportant little job and then die alone, married to the bottle and late-night tv.

He realised that he didn't want that kind of nothingness for the closest thing he had to a best friend's boyfriend.

It was midnight by the time Niou finally made himself do the first selfless thing he'd done in a very long time.

They say that goes around comes around. Karma, and all that. Three days after he took Akaya in, Niou found something worth staying for. And suddenly he could see all the small things in life that made it better.

Akaya saved him. Just by being alive, he saved him from himself. Niou has taken it upon himself to be Akaya's guardian, to help him grow up in a way that Niou would have liked to grow up. And scaring/irritating the hell out of Akaya is also a convenient form of stress relief.

He is not going to tell anyone about all the things he's thought in the deepest parts of his mind. But to him, the existance of a boy called Kirihara Akaya is no small wonder.

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Netsuke beads: Tiny little carved beads that you thread a string through to tie onto your belt. It'll take a while to explain… look it up on Wikipedia if you're curious. n.n

Kobe: A lovely city in the Osaka region, in the southern half of Honshu. It's also where I'm from, incidentally.

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Sandy: I just realised that the vast majority of my reflectivy stuff is in the present tense; or at least semi-present. o.0 I wonder why? I'll make the next one past tense, just to see if I can do it…

Special note for Juz-a-reviewer: Do you have another email address? Because my hotmail's absolutely evil and won't let me reply to your mail. n.n;;