Chapter Text
She hadn’t been able to help herself. Against her better judgment, she had kept track of the trajectory of his career. Every magazine article, every radio announcement, she had paid attention to, whether unconsciously, in passing, or deliberately.
“Aomine Daiki, of the former basketball stalwarts Generation of Miracles, recruited by the BJ League!”
“NBA hopeful Aomine Daiki now in BJ League — how will he be tested in his first match?”
As her eyes absently landed on B-ball Monthly, Momoi felt the familiar pang of recognition, towards the name of the person she had not seen in years. And the bitter tinge that came with it. Jerking her gaze irritably away, she threw the coins for her lunchtime onigiri harder than expected towards the startled convenience store cashier.
Momoi hated the way she unconsciously ricocheted back to the sad, weak, little girl who always followed Aomine Daiki. The weak girl who had depended on Aomine to lead her in life.
It was not Aomine’s fault, although it could have been easy to blame her dependency on him. He had always been the type of person that drew people towards him, like planets to a blazing sun. People like Tetsu-kun, Kise-kun, all the people who still gave Momoi a confusing pang of nostalgia, bitterness, affection and wistfulness, whenever she thought about them.
Momoi hated that she was already in her twenties, yet she was still haunted by the spectres of her teenage years. Momoi hated that she was still affected by people she had not seen in years. Momoi hated that she had given up basketball, the one thing she had used to always constantly loved, that she was between jobs, and that she was a failure.
Momoi hated that she still felt lost, despite having supposed to have grown up.
***
“Hey, Satsuki.” To Momoi, the phrase had used to mean the trek up the stairs to Teikou’s, and then Touou’s, rooftop. It had meant long hours to the night, with the light of Aomine’s study lamp as their only other companion, as she revised conjunctive verbs and Edo period history with him.
It had meant rushing to the convenience store, every month when B-Ball Monthly came out. It had meant cafe trips, and pouncing on the long length of a lazy body in the dim light of dawn to get him up in time for school.
It had meant the past — except it was happening to her, right then, right now.
She watched his achingly familiar movement of rubbing the back of his head, and there it was again — the pull of constantly wanting to take care of him, the pull of following him.
But she was no longer sixteen years old. Momoi knew better than to chase after her idiotic childhood friend.
“Sorry, I’m busy.” She made to close the door to her apartment. But then Aomine stepped inside. Momoi’s mouth fell open despite herself, and a surge of rage pierced hot and bright through her.
Of course he would ignore her and do what he wanted — she had almost two decades of experiencing him ignoring her needs, and only wanting his own.
“Satsuki.” The leadenness in his voice stopped the swearing that had arose in her throat in her fury. His eyes were hooded, and his head hung with the weight of shame, and the dependency on someone else other than himself — a foreign feeling for him. “Long time no see.”
***
Momoi could still remember when people used to tease her and Dai-chan. It had happened whenever he slung an arm around her, so casual and unthinking. It had happened whenever they walked home together, every single day after school.
She had always accepted it as woven intrinsically into the very fabric of their friendship. The strength of their bond was in the unconsciousness of their dependency on one another, the constancy of being around each other’s presence. It had always been the two of them against the world.
She also remembered when it used to bother her, people talking. She wondered why it had even mattered at the time. After all, none of it mattered now.
Watching him slump on her couch, she wondered how she had gone through puberty without feeling anything for him. Even now her skin tingled and crawled, having him near after so many years.
He was a boy. The realization sank into Momoi many years too late, and the thought made Momoi recoil in disgust, and rage. There was no fucking way she was going to start being attracted to him now, even as the absence of that very attraction during her puberty years resonated like a hole between them.
Not after the way he had treated her all those years. Not with the way he was still treating her now. His indifference and apathy, and constant expectation that she would follow him no matter where he went.
“Have you gotten any better at cooking?” His unexpected kindness, when he would be gruffly compassionate, even as he covered his affection with barbs and nonchalance.
The joke came weak and forced, awkward through the stiffness of his posture. Momoi felt an irrational surge of rage again. That he could casually bring up the past as though they had not drifted apart all those years, with every basketball game she missed and every phone call she did not make.
Once Momoi stopped following him, Aomine had stopped leading her. He had never been the one to work at their friendship — it had always been Momoi.
“What do you want, Dai — Aomine?” Fuck, Momoi thought viciously, furious at herself. She was not the person to affectionately give nicknames anymore. Some people never deserved it, and some people lost the right to have them.
Aomine raised his hands in defense, and quirked his lips. Even after so many years, Momoi knew the lines of his face well. He was supremely uncomfortable, she could tell.
“I was just wondering what had happened to you,” he said, every word carefully stated, like neat stitches on an embroidery pattern. With a gentleness Momoi had never recognized as being a trait of Aomine Daiki. “I stopped hearing from you after we graduated Touou.”
Momoi stiffened, the guarded and tense. Right then, she hated feeling cornered, like a wild animal. “Why now?”
Aomine’s smile was still slightly forced, but then he sighed. Momoi watched the dejection wash over him. Even through the rage and hurt she herself was still recovering from, she could see that he was sorting through some damage on his own.
He did not answer. She could see he was lost, as well. She wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted to be the one to lead him out of it when she was lost herself.
***
The lines of his basketball was still beautiful. Watching him, Momoi felt the ache of familiarity, and affection. She had always loved watching him play.
And she had always loved basketball. Watching it again, and the person who had first gotten her into it, after all those years of having given it up, Momoi felt both pain and regret. The pain of having given it up for the bigger things in life, and the longing once more for a time when everything was simpler, and basketball had seemed to be able to solve all hurt, and pain, and broken friendships.
“You’re here!” Aomine’s smile was the most natural he had given her, since he had dropped unceremoniously into her life once again. His skin gleamed with the sheen of sweat, and he reached an arm out towards her. He had always been like that, slinging his sweaty arm around her during Touou’s practice, despite her screams and protestations.
Momoi’s mouth suddenly felt dry as she watched him flick a tongue out and taste the bead of sweat rolling down the contours of his face.
“Stay at least five paces away from me,” Momoi ordered. She was not letting Aomine freaking Daiki come near her while she was still sorting out whether she wanted him back in her life or not. While she was still trying not to feel any attraction for the boy she never used to have any attraction for. It was frustrating, that seeing him again after so many years could do that to her.
Aomine backed off. They were both like wary animals, still sizing one another up. His smile wavered as he peered cautiously at her.
“You know I can’t help you, right?” Momoi demanded. She was unemployed— well, she preferred the term ‘between jobs’. But it was better to let him know that she could not do anything for him. She did not want his issues on top of her own to deal with. That Momoi Satsuki, the one who used to take on Aomine’s problems like it was her own, she had left behind a long time ago.
Aomine quirked his eyebrows. “Who said I needed your help?” The ball spun in his hands — graceful and beautiful, hypnotic. Momoi could not help gazing at the way he handled it, at him. She had missed basketball. She had missed his basketball.
Momoi wrenched her gaze away from the ball, irritated. “You show up suddenly after years of being wrapped up in your own blazing career. What happened to the Aomine who used to demand for what he wanted?” Stop playing games. She knew he would know what she didn’t say— he always had been the best at that.
She watched him analytically. His eyes, snapping to the corner, avoiding her gaze. His posture, shifting from foot to foot. Tongue flicking out, dampening his lips. He was getting ready to change the topic. Or lie. Either way, he was hiding something.
They were both years older, but Momoi was still always the best at knowing what Aomine didn’t say, too.
In the end, he forced a smile. “Want to go for teriyaki burgers? My treat.”
Momoi glared at him warily. So he had chosen to evade. It was not like Aomine Daiki to run away. And to do that using the same trick he had always used to do to make her feel better — it made Momoi furious, despite herself.
But she was, at least currently, jobless. She would take all the free food she could get. Not without putting him through some work, though.
“Show me a dunk, first,” Momoi demanded. Despite the low thrumming animosity she still felt whenever she looked at him, she could not quite help the small quirk to her lips as she challenged him.
The grin that cracked Aomine’s face reminded Momoi of car rides spent singing at the top of their voices in his mum’s car, adding the word ‘basketball’ to every song chorus they could think of. It reminded her of childish chalk drawings of basketball strategy on sidewalks, and the cold sweetness of popsicles on her tongue, on hot summer days spent watching basketball.
It made her heart ache not entirely unpleasantly. And when she watched his dunk, glorious and effortless and so very him, she could not quite help the grin that spread across her face, as well.
Basketball, his basketball, always had the ability to make her feel better.
***
Momoi could not quite help humming happily as she smelt the teriyaki burgers coming her way. As Aomine bounded up with the tray to sit opposite her, however, she scowled pointedly at him.
He raised his eyebrows quizzically. She gestured at the seat across the aisle, beside her. Heaving a resigned sigh, he sat. She nodded approvingly.
The aisle between them provided the gap Momoi still needed between them. The gap, however, was not enough to prevent yet another pang of nostalgia as Aomine opened his burger and immediately reached for hers. His arm stretched across the aisle, reaching her burger easily.
“I eat raw onions now!” Momoi said quickly, grabbing her burger away from him. There was no way she was letting him cross all the boundaries she used to let him ignore all those years. Even now she was still surprised that her teenage self had never protested all those times they used to share food so casually. No wonder they had used to be so dependent on one another — it had been ingrained in them to treat each other so.
Aomine started, surprised. “You like spicy things now?” He took a huge bite out of his burger. “That’s weird — doesn’t seem like you.”
He laughed cheekily. “Remember when I gave you kimchi and said it was stew and you ate —” his voice died off as he saw the distinctly unamused look on Momoi’s face. He quickly turned back to his burger.
Momoi stifled the urge to tell Aomine off for talking with his mouth full. She refused to take care of him. And she refused to act the way he was choosing to do — as though one of them had not left the other behind.
But more urgently — she now had a chockful of raw onions in her burger that she decidedly did not want to eat. She really did not like spicy things, damnit.
Momoi discreetly opened the top bun, then quickly put it back as Aomine’s gaze flickered back to her.
“Have you been watching the NBA Playoffs?”
Momoi knew he had asked that because his knowledge of her was based completely on a Momoi Satsuki who had used to be crazily in love with basketball. She knew she should probably not be this angry with him when he had asked that question out of hope to have a normal conversation with her.
But she had given up basketball because he had left her far behind in his pursuit in it. And even though Momoi had never been an angry person, she had somehow become one. Momoi thought she should have been exhausted of finding reasons to be angry with Aomine Daiki. But even now, she still felt the throb of fury thrum in her heart, like a slowly festering wound.
Momoi stood up abruptly. Her burger, loathsome raw onions and all, remained untouched.
“I need to go,” she said, and walked out without sparing a glance at Aomine.
“What happened? Was it something I said?” he followed her out. Momoi’s eyebrow twitched with irritation as she realized he had carried his burger out and was still eating it as he chased her easily, long strides catching up to hers.
The delicious smell wafted and made her stomach feel hollower. Now she was angry and starving.
“I think you should find someone else to bother. Try Tet—Kuroko, or Kise,” she turned suddenly to face him. He recoiled from her fierce glare.
Momoi felt the sharp sting of irritation stab her heart as her eyes met his. Aomine looked so dumb, burger in hand and gaping at her. And the hurt in his eyes — she did not want to deal with it.
“Why so suddenly?” Aomine looked so oblivious. And he was still talking with his mouth full.
Momoi grabbed the burger from him. “Stop talking while you eat!” She took a bite from his burger and spat some raw onions out savagely. She didn’t care anymore, even as she watched his eyes widen.
“I don’t know why you suddenly decided to become friends again,” she said bitterly even as the amazing taste of the burger was already easing the uncomfortable knot within her. She was starting to feel embarrassed for acting like that.
It only made her more irritable, and lash out more. She looked away from him, not wanting to feel anything more. Instead, she concentrated on a pair of birds in the distance. They were circling around each other, slow and calm, forming a pattern in their flight. Unconsciously forming beauty, even in their dependency on one another.
“I don’t want anything to do with basketball anymore,” Momoi’s voice did not sound like her own as she said the words. The burger was still in her hand as she lowered it.
She turned and walked away, burger in hand. She thought, somewhat viciously, that a burger was the least of a parting gift he could have given her. After all, she had already given him so much of her life over the years.
***
“I haven’t talked to anyone else since graduation,” Momoi jumped as she heard a voice she distinctly had not wanted to hear, close to her ear. The hairs in the back of her neck tingled, and she felt a warmth pool in her stomach.
Aomine was leaning against the magazine stand. Momoi hoped he had not seen what she had been idly thumbing through — she discreetly tucked B-Ball Monthly back into the shelf.
As she watched him watch her, she felt the irritation again. Why did he feel the need to swagger all the time? It was making her feel all hot and bothered.
“Tetsu, Kise, Kagami, the rest of the Miracles...I’ve heard things about them while I was in the BJ League, but I haven’t talked to any of them since we graduated high school,” Aomine mumbled. His head was ducked, and she could not see his eyes.
He took another step towards her, but Momoi raised her hand. “Five paces away, remember?” she reminded him critically.
But he just slung his arm around her, and started leading her out of the convenience store. “Stop trying to push me away,” he drawled. She could hear the tentativeness under the forced confidence in his voice.
His action, and arm around her, was so familiar it sent the ache straight to Momoi’s heart once more.
“I could report you for stalking. How the hell do you find me,” Momoi said as she tried to squirm out of his grasp. His arm felt too warm, and she was already starting to feel the flush rise at the back of her neck.
“My manager helped me,” pressed close to him, Momoi could feel every word vibrating through his torso. And he was warm, so very warm. She could not see his face, but his tone was wry as he said, “He’s an okay manager, although he’s not as good as someone else I know.”
***
“What the hell are we doing here,” Momoi frowned. The bitter ache shot through her heart as she registered the outdoor basketball courts.
“Come on, Satsuki,” Aomine said. “I’ll do another dunk for you if you stay and talk to me.”
Momoi rolled her eyes. “I’m not some little kid to bribe and impress.” They were sitting on the bleachers, and she gingerly scooted away from him. Being near him made her tingle in all the ways she distinctly did not want to feel, for Aomine Daiki of all people.
“You always knew me best, right?” The question was unexpected, and Momoi felt slightly thrown as she turned to see him look right at her. Come to think of it, it was one of the first times he was actually looking at her in the eye.
“In basketball, and everything else,” he continued. He turned to gaze at the empty court. His hands around a basketball (as they always did as far as Momoi could remember, from when they were both 9) idly traced the patterns on it.
Thoughtful and serious were words she would never describe Aomine with, but she found herself captivated by his unexpected behaviour as she looked at him. She shook herself, irritated. There she was, acting like some airheaded teenager in love again. Momoi was better than that.
He sighed, and the weariness emanating from it reminded Momoi of all the times she would have gone running to him the moment she thought he needed her. It was laughable, thinking about herself back then. She had been dependent on him needing her just as much as he had been dependent on her.
“Would you have predicted that I would be a failure in basketball?” His sudden question made Momoi feel a little like the rug had been pulled from under her feet.
“A failure? Aren’t you one of the BJ League’s top stars?” A career in basketball that was meteorically rising— out of all the things Momoi had known about Aomine (which were many), success in basketball had always been a certainty.
“I’ve been on the bench for a while,” the words sounded forced out. It was just like Aomine, to be so reluctant to admit he was weak, or losing.
“On the bench doesn’t mean—” Momoi began, but Aomine interrupted her.
“It is a failure when NBA scouts come to watch every match and you’re fucking useless because you can’t even get on court,” Momoi watched Aomine’s knuckles whiten as he tightened his hand around the basketball.
Momoi leaned back and let her head hang. She watched the sky, icy blue in its beauty. There was only one solitary bird flying, and no beautiful patterns today.
“What do you want me to say, Aomine?” she said, dully. “I don’t know why they don’t put you on court. I don’t know how you would get to the NBA.” She wasn’t the genius basketball analyst, not anymore.
The slam of the basketball thrown on the court illustrated all the bitterness, and frustration, that Momoi still felt. Except Aomine was the one feeling it, too.
“Fuck!” the swear word was crass and rough, but Momoi felt it was the most raw, natural, and sincere word Aomine had said throughout their conversation. He never had been one to talk about feelings.
The mumble that came next was forced through a cracked voice. “I just wanted someone to believe in me again.” Momoi’s heart almost broke along with his voice.
She stood up, and watched her feet take each step forward, towards the basketball that lay innocently on the court.
She picked it up, and stared at it. Examining the contours, and patterns. Noting the its worn condition. Aomine had worked hard.
She turned to look at him, but Aomine was not looking at her. Instead, he was staring towards the side, not seeing anything in particular.
She saw the loneliness in his posture. His shoulders hunched, and fists clenched. The forced nonchalance and relaxation of his legs stretched across the bleachers. The lines of his face, that she knew so well, stiff in their attempt to hide his anguish.
But he had done it to himself. In his renewed love for basketball, he had left behind everyone, including her, to chase a dream he was only now realizing could be out of his grasp. And he was now all alone, trying to cope with failure where he had never failed before. A nobody in basketball, where he had always been somebody.
She aimed, and threw the basketball towards him. It missed him, widely. Momoi felt the flush rise red and hot on her face. Rushing quickly back towards the bleachers, she turned towards him indignantly, a defense ready on her lips (she hadn’t touched a basketball in years!) when she saw his shoulders shaking.
Aomine was laughing. As Momoi watched the little boy she had grown up with appear on his face with his laughter, she felt the giggles bubble within her as well. She stomped down on it as embarrassment bloomed.
“Stop laughing!” But he only continued, his laugh boyish and carefree, the same one that reminded her of excited stories on success catching crayfish. Of failed portraits of Tetsu-kun, and disastrous cooking accidents. “Dai-chan!”
Her eyes went wide as the childhood nickname slipped out.
Aomine abruptly stopped laughing as he heard her say his name. He stood up, and with two steps had reached her.
Momoi looked at his arm as it reached around her. She felt as though she was watching herself from very far away.
His arm, warm and comforting, descended around her shoulders, and brought her close. He still smelled the same — his aftershave still the same one she had bought him the day he had excitedly told her he was ‘growing a beard.’
His forehead felt warm as it pressed against hers, and his breath ghosted on her lips.
Momoi could not hear anything but ringing silence as his lips pressed, firm and gentle, on hers.
***
Momoi kept her steps quick and furious, even as she heard Aomine catching up easily behind her.
“I’m sorry, Satsuki!” Momoi felt grim satisfaction at the desperation in his voice. He deserved to grovel and beg after what he had dared to do.
Momoi’s eyebrow twitched as he moved easily in front of her to block her path. As his hands reached out to land on her shoulders, she shot him a dark, piercing glare. He stopped his movements abruptly.
“I can’t believe your fucking nerve,” Momoi spat at him. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“I’m sorry!” Aomine’s voice trailed off as Momoi venomously shoved him aside and continued walking.
“Read your damn gravure magazines if you’re feeling that lonely,” Momoi felt another stab of fury as she remembered all those Horikata Mai-chan photobooks she used to find as she helped him clean his room, and helped him hide from his mother. He had always been so infuriating. He still was.
“I’m not lonely — not in that way,” now Aomine was being petulant. Momoi could not deal with him right then.
She heard his footsteps stop behind her, and quickened her pace. Maybe now she could finally leave him behind.
“Didn’t you ever wonder, though?” Aomine’s question stopped Momoi in her tracks. She did not turn around, but she could still hear him loud and clear. “We used to always go everywhere together.” Didn’t you think it would happen eventually? Another question everyone had always asked them, whenever people talked.
Momoi contemplated whacking him very hard on the head. Then she remembered that to do that, she had to tiptoe to the very highest point on her toes. Oblivious as Aomine was, he was not worth the physical effort. So she continued walking.
“We were never like that. We were childhood friends.” Emphasis on were, Momoi thought viciously.
Momoi needed to be alone, to think. And she could not do that with him following after her, his voice even now still making her heart flutter as she remembered the kiss.
Thinking about it now, it almost felt like a memory that belonged to someone else. Her mind had moved almost instinctually to deny that a kiss could ever have happened between Aomine and herself.
But the flashes of memory were vivid and real — the cool blackness of her shut eyes contrasting with the warmth, comfortable familiarity of Aomine’s presence, pressed against her. The ringing silence in her ears that blocked every other sound but the sound of his breathing, soft and gentle, mingling with her own. Momoi almost had not been able to feel his lips on hers through the hammering of her heart in her chest.
Momoi growled as she walked even quicker. She could not hear him behind her anymore.
***
Growing up, Momoi always had a plan. She would have called herself a dreamer, but she had always been a planner. So she did not think of her dreams as dreams — to her, they were just realities waiting to happen, as long as she had enough planning and dedication.
She had started her plan in elementary school. With every basketball game she watched, she noted defenses, and potential signature strategies. A basketball life that began with the wide grin of a boy she had always followed, and scoldings about ruined dresses and bruised knees.
In middle school, she charted the trajectory of a meteoric basketball career that had the same certainty of success as one of Midorin’s shots. Her plan had featured beautifully drawn charts on six different basketball careers, with a shared route and eventual intersection at the top. Tetsu-kun had drifted in at some point, then drifted out along the way, as softly and subtly as a shadow.
By the time she got to high school, her plan had become extensive and elaborate. It had begun with handwritten handouts on the napping routine of Touou’s ace, and ended with a step by step plan on how to get to the NBA.
Every draft of her plan had always featured two constants — Aomine Daiki, and basketball.
Momoi Satsuki had never envisioned her life to turn out like this — being unemployed, angry, lashing out at the world, and the absence of both basketball and the one person she had always been certain she would be with.
She had never planned to struggle with trying to understand what she felt about someone she had always thought just was a childhood friend, but had in reality was so much more complex than that.
***
Momoi buried her scream of frustration into the pile of crumpled papers she had already conjured up in just a few short hours. Her two-dimensional analysis on her relationship with Aomine was causing her a whole world of irritation and pain.
She had drawn out one dimension. Looking at the list under that dimension gave her the same sweet ache that came whenever she remembered written messages on a basketball, rolled towards one another behind the teacher’s back, in elementary school. The pang of nostalgia that came whenever she remembered days spent lolling on a broad, comfortingly familiar back as she gave advice to someone who trusted her, and who she trusted completely in turn. Leaning onto him and being leaned onto in turn.
The other dimension was one whole mess of frustration and feelings too complex to frame into lists. There was the weight of years spent in near constant proximity to one another, juxtaposed with the gaping hole of the past few years. The pressure from anger and frustration that had built up, impossible to extricate from the loneliness, and abandonment, she still felt. The burden of the attraction that had suddenly sprung up, after so many years.
Momoi wondered if they really could go back to something as simple as a friendship again. Then she screamed as a basketball flew in through her window, scattering her beautifully made lists.
The scrawl on the basketball could not have been read by anyone else but Momoi, with the experience of years reading Aomine’s intelligible scribble. Air Jordan’s or Nike’s? New designs tomorrow!
Momoi felt a vein throb in her forehead, but was surprised to feel the corners of her lips quirk up, even through her mild irritation. Vindinctively, she chucked the basketball to the corner of the room. The idiot did not deserve a written reply.
She slammed her window loudly, pointedly, and drew the curtains shut.
But Momoi knew Aomine would understand what she didn’t say, and where to find her tomorrow. After all, he needed to collect the basketball.
***
“Five paces away,” Momoi ordered as she opened her door the next morning to find Aomine hanging over her as he leaned on her doorframe, in that infuriatingly lazy way he had. She heard his gentle breathing float on her face, and could see the pinpricks of light in his dark eyes as he peered at her. Too close. She jerked backwards as her stomach flipped over uncomfortably.
He obediently backed away, and quirked a grin she could see held a new layer of awkwardness. She didn’t give a damn — he had created that new awkwardness between them himself.
“I brought the catalogues!” he waved them excitedly. Momoi forced the smile out of her face. She had used to be always the one to bring them, whenever they went on their shopping trips. It was only fitting that he had only started taking care of his damn self after he realized no one would do it for him.
“Get Air Jordans. I may not have been keeping up with this, but Air Jordan is generally more consistent in quality than Nike,” Momoi stepped around him gingerly and continued walking.
Then she whirled on him suddenly. Aomine stopped abruptly, keeping his distance obediently. She reached out a hand, palm open demandingly. “Now I want payment for my consultation services.”
Aomine blinked at her. The grin that bloomed on his face looked more natural, this time. “Want me to treat you again? There’s a new cafe—” he trailed off as he noted the expression on Momoi’s face. Forced seriousness, hiding something else she was trying to not to feel.
Momoi levelled a gaze at him. “I want you to leave me alone, and stop ever trying to find me again.”
The words echoed between them, floating gently across the short distance, feathers in a breeze. Momoi expected to feel calmer, and more at peace, after she said the words.
Instead, her stomach coiled into a tighter knot. Her throat felt like it was closing, and Momoi almost choked on, what she was shocked to find, were sobs.
Aomine looked so thrown it was like the hurt had not caught up to the rest of the shock that marked his face.
“We can’t be friends again, Aomine. We can’t go back to how we used to be as childhood friends,” Momoi wanted to say more, but the choking sensation was overwhelming her.
Momoi was angry at herself. She had written out a whole script the night before, but it seemed all she could say were stupid, cliched words that sounded awkward, and clumsy, in her attempts to explain this thing they had that prevented anything else from happening between them.
The confusing attraction she still felt for him, and her firm belief that it was wrong to feel that way, because they had been friends, and then, not friends. Her need to grow beyond the girl that always went back to Aomine Daiki, just because she was drawn to the need to depend on him, and his irresistible magnetism.
“I said I’m sorry for kissing—” Aomine’s words sounded frantic, like he hadn’t had the chance to think through before saying them in that characteristically nonchalant style he normally had.
“It’s not the kiss,” Momoi interrupted him abruptly. “It’s everything else.” The kiss was anything but the momentous occasion everyone had always predicted would be between them. It was only one notch in a series of destructive slashes on the post of their friendship.
“Good luck, Aomine,” Momoi refused to look at him as she continued walking. She concentrated on the pavement. Dimly, she heard the whistling of the old man who lived opposite her, and the harmonized humming of his wife. It was a song that was both melancholic and happy, wistful and beautiful.
The end of a friendship was surprisingly dramatic, Momoi thought wrily. She had always used to loved drama in her life, and in the shojo manga she used to devour. But now she found she hated it.
***
“Aomine Daiki, NBA hopeful, is on the bench again in today’s BJ League match.”
“Was the bench too much for his ego? Aomine Daiki, former Generation of Miracles, quits BJ League.”
Momoi lolled on her bed listlessly, listening to the radio only half-heartedly. She was supposed to be poring over job listings, but had lost all motivation when she had come across a job posting for sports team manager. Nowadays, all it took was a gentle nudge for her to make the association to basketball, and him. She had decided to take a nap instead.
Trying hard to not pay attention to someone’s career was more difficult than actually following and analyzing it, Momoi found. Everywhere she went, it seemed as though Aomine Daiki’s name was plastered.
Well, after that last announcement, his name had been everywhere.
Momoi could not even bring herself to feel disappointed in him. All she had felt when she had heard the news of him quitting professional basketball was the dull throb in her heart about the wistfulness of a basketball career that could have been.
She had her own career to worry, and think about. She had nothing to do with the boy she used to take care of anymore.
***
When Momoi thought back to her time in Teikou, and her graduation at Touou, she felt like smacking the naive girl that had dreamed big, even with all her plans.
That girl had happily told Tetsu-kun of her hopes that all of them would always be together, Aomine-kun, Tetsu-kun, Midorin, Akashi-kun, Mukkun and Ki-chan. That girl had graduated Touou with Aomine’s arm firmly around her as he yelled gleefully that he was finally free from “fucking English lessons” to play basketball forever.
That girl had not realized that life always got in the way of dreams. That girl had not realized that life ruined plans. That girl had not realized that life broke friendships, when apathy sinisterly crept in and forgetfulness became absence.
Life made a girl think about a boy in a way she had never thought of before, then broke them apart with a million little issues she could not get past.
Momoi did not avoid basketball anymore. The outdoor courts near her house, where Aomine and her had first stepped towards the uncharted territories of their relationship, became her place of contemplation.
Momoi did not ever see the people who had used to give her equal amounts of joy and pain, and had made the past few years a haze of frustration, bitterness, and sadness. The Tetsu-kuns, Ki-chans, Akashi-kuns, Mukkuns, Midorins were all part of a past she had moved on from. The Aomine-kuns as well.
Life got in the way of potential reunions, and reconnections. Momoi thought it was better that way, to avoid the pain and frustration, and having to deal with the complexities of sorting out relationships that were a world of confusion and awkwardness.
***
Life also took its time. Momoi was amused when she thought about how far she had come, from that time Aomine had dropped back into her life. She had thought she needed him, and all the people that used to mean so much to her, to move on in her life. She had thought she needed all of them to finally be at peace with herself, and calm the tight knot of rage that had been in her since high school.
Instead, she had begun to find it by herself. She had begun to find closure, through tentative watching of the streetball matches near her house, and smiling at little boys as they scuffled over basketball. At the children drawing on the sidewalks, and at a little girl and boy arguing in the convenience store over whose turn it was to buy popsicles for the other.
But life also throws curveballs just when Momoi was beginning to truly be at peace at her place in the world.
“Hey, Satsuki.” Despite the swagger that was Aomine Daiki’s trademark, his hand still rubbed the back of his head. The awkwardness was still in the lines of the forced stillness of his feet as he tried not to shuffle uncomfortably. Still looking at her with the same gaze, dark eyes piercing through her, that Momoi knew so well. “Let’s go for teriyaki burgers?”
Then, with a quirk of the lips, more natural than it had been all this time, absent of the weight and loneliness Momoi had always felt the urge to fix, along with the accompanying ache in her heart. “You can have all the raw onions you want.”
Momoi felt his smile draw a smile of her own back at him. He always had that effect on her — he would step forward, and she would feel compelled to follow. Dependent as always on one another for both to move, forward and ahead.
“Only if it’s your treat, Dai-chan.” They had a lot to catch up on.