The Prince of Tennis Vol. 24 by Takeshi Konomi

Main Characters: The Seishun Academy tennis team
Location: Japan
Time period: Contemporary
Genre: YA Manga, Sports

The Kanto tournament continues, and things are not looking good for Seishun. Rikkai has dominated and looks to win the last three matches in record time.

The "golden pair," Eiji Kikumaru and Suichiro Oishi, are up. When one of the opposing players aims the ball at Eiji's head, he goes down and seems to lose consciousness for a brief time. He's carried off on a stretcher as we see a flashback to when he and Suichiro began playing together as children. Awww, how cute they both are! Eiji comes to, leaps off the stretcher, and gets back into the game. (Where is the team doctor? Surely someone should check him out first. And come to think about it, where is the umpire?) Eiji and Suichiro are playing better than ever, but it's still not enough. They lose their match.

In between matches, Ryoma is at the vending machines when he overhears an intriguing phone call. One of the Rikkai players is talking to their team leader, in the hospital and facing surgery.

The next match is a singles between Seishun's team leader, Sadaharu Inui, and Renji Yanagi. They used to play together as doubles partners years ago and are both data collectors. Now they know each other's games so well they can predict not only each other's plays, but finish each other's sentence. But it looks like Renji is going to force Sadaharu to give up his data game.