The Child of Tennis - Yukimura

Thank you for your wellwishes! My presents from fans has filled my garden and house! It's rather humbling and overwhelming to behold. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. Minoru is appreciating the fact that she can eat all of my chocolate and I can't, so the fans made her happy too >>;

I got another huge surprise, this morning, however. My mother showed up on the doorstep of my house after nearly...four years of not really seeing her in person. To say I was surprised, would be something of an understatement. She looked okay, but as messy and unorganized as ever. I was sort of curious, as to why she'd remembered my birthday this year, but turns out she was only just replying to my message about Minoru's illness. Again, this mixed feeling between laughing and crying, considering I sent that message two and a half months ago. Why does she do this to me?

And she gets talkative when she's drunk, apparently. She started talking about why she had gotten so distant all of a sudden, when I was a kid. An explanation I would have liked a few years ago, frankly. And, it was perhaps a huge shock to discover that my father had been something of a womanizer and had been cheating on her behind her back with several women. In fact, he'd actually managed to have a kid with one of them, when I was two years old. Guess who's winning best parenting award? :D That's right, not this guy.

But I grew less impressed with her, if that's even possible, because when one of your partners is a shitty parent, you're not supposed to mimic his actions. You're supposed to pick up his slack or stay the same, not neglect the kids even more. I swear, if I ever have kids, the only way I'll drive them insane is over too much affection and trying to train them to take over the world.

Anyway, she knew the identity of our half-brother and figured out when I was seven...but didn't bother to mention this to me, yet again. Do I have to get her drunk every time I want important information? "Happy birthday, you have a half-sibling, who've you've actually been aware of for most of your life." Brilliant tact. But in any case, Dan-kun! We're half-siblings :) Hi~ I'm assuming you were as clueless as I was?

Not quite sure what to make of this, but I'm going to look on the bright side and hit my father so hard when I next see him that he's going to hit a wall :D That ought to cheer me up a bit.

-Faithfully yours, Seiichi

Stage one of finding a bodyguard is underway. I have actually quite a few people applying, but I have no idea how to narrow them down. My two options currently are run them through something similar to speed dating. They have three minutes to tell me why I should hire them. Or, I have each of them bodyguard me for a day and stage something to happen that they have to react to. Whoever reacts the best gets the spot.

On the one hand, the second option is more useful to see their efficiency, but it's expensive. The first one's cheap, but if they just talk big, I could be fooled over.

Min-min has plenty of ideas, but all of them are useless, so I've resorted to ignoring her. She finds this all too amusing. I still feel like yakuza or something.

I've been doing some bulk fanletter answering now since this winter break proves to be busy, as expected. And as per usual, I think the best letters come from the children. They're always so fun to read and not nearly as creepy at the middle-aged women and men who want me to marry them. I also like when they take pictures of them with tennis rackets and say they were inspired, because that's always heartwarming to read. Also, that means a new tennis generation is being made! :D

But one stood out to me, from a french child. In France and most of Europe, like Liliadent mentioned, there's a counterpart to Father Christmas. In France, he's called Father Whipping or Père Fouetteard. Not quite as creepy looking as Germany's Krampus and definitely not as scary. but instead of bad children getting bad presents, bad children in France are kidnapped by Père Foeuttard for one night and whipped. And because I am a bad, bad person, my mind went to the gutter the first time I heard about that.

Anyway, the actual letter said that since her parents said she was bad, she was scared of Pere Fouettard coming to get her. But she wondered whether I could come to France this Christmas and help her launch a tennis ball attack on Père Foeuttard and free all the other children who got caught by him. I couldn't help but laugh and think that this is exactly what I would have done as a child. Heck, I'd do it now. It makes me so proud to see a new generation of cute young children growing up!

-Seiichi
[ooc: Strikes NOT deleted]

Fuck. That was such a bad decision. I’m never visiting childrens’ wards again in public.

I shouldn’t have accepted that publicity event, but I didn’t want to refuse, especially when they said that all the children would really appreciate a celebrity visit. When I walked in, they’d made all made little posters or things for me and it was so touching. I spent a lot of the time talking with them about my experiences with Guillain Barre and how I dealt with it and how I got better and asking them about how they felt and what they wanted for birthdays and what they enjoyed in their lives.

A lot of the children were asking whether they’d get better like I did….and though the doctor had told me beforehand that a few of them might not survive, I lied and told them yes, because medicine and hope would always win against death. But there was this one little girl who called me out on it, because she said that there was no cure for muscle atrophy and she was going to die anyway.

I had to take a break then. Shit, I started crying. Still am. It’s...it’s just like how I felt back in middle school. It’s...it’s still raw. I genuinely thought I was going to die. I was writing wills and confessions before my operation for everybody. I had a list of things to see before I die....

I don’t know if I can go back into the room and pretend like everybody in the room is going to be okay and is going to survive, because that's unrealistic. I’m still crying now. This was a horrible idea...

Kura...is your phone on?

Somebody kill me now. I've been training from five in the morning to seven at night, while only stopping to eat lunch. What is wrong with me? *flops bonelessly onto bed*

In other words, Atobe, you'd better be ready for Kaminaga to place an order for a tonne of new plants. I went to go and see him yesterday and we managed to wrack up four sides of A4 sheets worth of improvements to be made in both England and your Japan estate. Good luck with that.

And I love my fans, I really do, but please, if you know anybody who is a rabid fan, can you ask them to not send me lingerie? It's mortifying, pretty disgusting if they've been used and I'm not going to keep them. I'd prefer a letter or an email.

~Yukimura