The Child of Tennis - Yukimura

I...I won't be participating in the first half of the tennis season this year. Maybe longer. I'm sorry Tezuka, it looks like our showdown may have to be delayed for a while yet. And I'm sorry to you Echizen, Kazuya, since I won't be able to have any official rematches with you two either.

I suppose I owe an explanation for this. It seems auto-immune disorders run in the family. My little sister Minoru has Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis. I knew there was something wrong with her! I just knew it! And it turns out she wasn't telling me this at all. I had to find out the hard way when she just collapsed in the middle of the street. I took her to the hospital and she was already a regular patient and everyone knew her by name just like they knew me. Imagine my surprise when they told me it was getting worse by the day and she is very likely to not be able to walk soon.

My parents can't look after her; they weren't even able to tell that there was something wrong with her in the first place. They were barely around when I was a kid and in the hospital, what's going to guarantee they'll be around for a quasi-adult? She needs someone more reliable to be there for a while, somebody who'll always be there. Or else you just go....utterly mad in a hospital when you can't do anything. You really do.

And it was a difficult decision to make...but I'm no longer the kid from ten years ago, who valued tennis above people. My family comes first. So, I'm sorry. I'll be back in Tokyo earlier than I expected. Minoru'll be living with me now. And I won't be leaving Japan for tournaments for quite a while. Not until she feels more comfortable about living with it. Since there's no cure for it.

( I'm cutting out my ranting for those who don't want to read it. )
-Seiichi

[ooc: Strikes 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?