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After the championship, after the ashen taste of Teikou’s Miracles had risen in this throat, thick and cloying and choking all over again, Kazunari met Kuroko Tetsuya on the B train home.
He almost didn’t, too distracted by the cold ball of bitterness lodged in his chest. 111:11, what kind of shitty score was that? Were the Miracles really so amazing that they could afford to play games with their opponents? Did winning all the time mean turning into a giant asshole?
But a Teikou uniform all alone was too unusual for Kazunari’s eyes to completely pass over. Usually the blue and white moved around in flocks, handlers herding the players from bus to game and game to bus before anything could happen to basketball’s precious rising stars. The uniform was more noticeable than the guy wearing it, but when Kazunari stopped his gaze for a second look, the boy in the blue and white looked absolutely miserable. His face was drawn and pale, his brows scrunched together, and his eyes were red and bloodshot.
It was weird, right? Beyond weird, one of Teikou’s sitting by himself on the train, especially with his head bandaged – an injury serious enough to keep him from playing – but there he was, heading home alone.
At that moment, Kazunari didn’t yet know that the boy with his hands clenched on his bag was Kuroko Tetsuya. Kazunari just remembered him as an afterthought, a shadow behind Midorima and the other monsters of the Generation of Miracles. Kazunari didn’t know this was Kuroko Testuya, but he saw a boy sitting alone and noticed him.
Champions should look happier, he thought bitterly. Champions should be smiling when they won, but none of Teikou’s champions did.
The Teikou boy could sit there and be miserable for all Kazunari cared. Misery was all Teikou left behind for its opponents anyway, wasn’t it about time they got a taste?
And yet... He sighed. Curiosity, his mother liked to say, was going to be the end of him. And now possibly Kazunari’s future basketball career.
He sat down beside the boy. Teikou didn’t even notice, too lost in his own misery. Whatever, Kazunari wasn’t looking to make friends.
“You don’t look very happy for someone who just won a national title,” Kazunari said.
Teikou started, looking up at Kazunari with a flicker in his dull eyes. Almost like he couldn’t believe someone was speaking to him. The surprise tickled something in the back of Kazunari’s head, like he was forgetting something. Well, whatever. Too late to turn back now.
Kazunari slumped in his seat, settling in to make himself comfortable. He wasn’t going anywhere, even if the reigning champ didn’t want to talk to one of the plebs.
But to his surprise, the boy from Teikou slumped with him, curling in on himself like Kazunari’s words were stones dropped on his shoulders, weighing him down.
“I apologize,” the boy said stiffly, “but I would rather not talk about this.”
Ha. Fat chance that was happening, when Kazunari could still feel the burn of anger running through his veins, could still see the 111-11 on the scoreboard.
“That was a pretty nasty stunt you guys pulled for the final.” Beside him, the boy stiffened, his hands spasming and curling into white-knuckled fists.
“And that last basket?” The one in your own goal, Kazunari didn’t need to say. “Man, you Teikou guys are really pieces of work, aren’t you?”
It was stupid to be going on like this. To be antagonizing someone from a powerhouse school, but Kazunari couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to lash out, and there was a target sitting in front of him, waiting.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy, and this time, he actually sounded like he meant it. “The game should not have happened like that.” The boy paused and stared down at his lap. He was breathing hard, like he was worked up and trying not to show it, his voice shaking with repressed hurt. “It was cruel.”
There was something lurking behind the words, some rough edge in the boy’s tone that reminded Kazunari of the anger simmering beneath his own skin.
He looked at the boy again, really looked: scrawny, pale hair and pale skin, white bandage wrapped around his head, and all alone on a train home from what should have been the best day of his life.
“I saw you before,” Kazunari said slowly, the edges of memory drawing together, filling in a pale shadow beneath the glittering arc of Midorima Shintarou’s heartbreaking three-pointers. “When my school played Teikou, and at the tournament. You didn’t play in the final.”
“No,” the boy agreed, and touched a hand to the bandage on his head. “I had to sit out, so they played for me,” he added with an acridness that spoke of some deeply carried resentment.
Yeah, the anger was less simmering beneath the surface and more clawing its way out of the boy’s every pore, pouring off him like a rippling heatwave and scorching through the air. No need to ask who they were when everyone knew Teikou’s Miracles, and this boy hated them almost as much as Kazunari did.
Suddenly, Kazunari was feeling a lot more friendly toward him.
“I’m Takao Kazunari,” he said, and offered a grin.
The boy eyed him warily, but eventually he nodded, a polite little dip of his head.
“I’m Kuroko Tetsuya. Nice to meet you, Takao-kun.” Kuroko sounded less like it was nice to meet Kazunari and more like he hoped Kazunari would just go away. Well, too bad. A little unfriendliness wasn’t going to stop Kazunari, not when he had an idea.
After all, he remembered the shape of Kuroko Tetsuya, even if he hadn’t known his name. He remembered the space between a steal and Aomine Daiki’s lightning dunk. The absence before the ball was in Midorima’s hands and Midorima was awfully, inevitably shooting again.
Kuroko Tetsuya was the sharp flash of the ball from one Miracle to another, curving in impossible arcs. Kuroko Tetsuya was a player like him, passing, making connections on the court.
And Kuroko Tetsuya was like him in more ways than one.
“See,” he began, “if it were me coming from a game with those assholes on my team, I’d be thinking about quitting right now. Packing up and going home, giving basketball a big screw you if the best it has to offer are those guys.”
Kuroko flinched. Yeah, Kazunari was dead on.
“But then they win,” Kazunari continued. “And what are we left with? Three years of work that ends up at nothing. A game that sucks to play, and they’re still out there, acting like they own the whole world.”
Beside him, Kuroko was quiet. Waiting.
“I don’t know about you,” said Kazunari, “but like hell I’m giving up.”
Where their shoulders touched he could feel Kuroko’s inhale, his exhale, the breath a hard shudder that shook his frame. Gotcha, Kazunari thought.
“So? Wanna crush the Generation of Miracles with me?”
Kazunari held out his hand, curled into a fist. Kuroko stared at it for a moment, expression wiped blank, before he smiled, brittle and sharp.
“Takao-kun,” he said, “I would like that very much.”
Their fists touched.
-
He curled his fingers around the ball, feeling the bumps in the rubber, the way the dips gripped at his skin. The ball was warm, a living thing in his hands, his pulse echoing back from wrist to fingers to wrist again. Yeah, it would’ve sucked to give this up.
Kuroko made a dissatisfied noise beside him, where he was flat on the ground and gasping for air.
For the sixth time. If nothing else, Kazunari had to admire how, now that he’d committed, Kuroko didn’t seem to know the meaning of the words “give up.”
Kazunari waited politely until Kuroko looked less like he was going to throw up on himself, and shot an easy layup. The ball rolled to a stop at Kuroko’s side, and after a moment where Kazunari could see him clawing for the energy to move, Kuroko picked it up.
“I know you wanted to go somewhere—”
Kuroko shook his head and Kazunari stopped midsentence, raising a brow. Waited for Kuroko to stop panting long enough to get whatever it was out.
“It’s clear that with us both being supporting players, we can’t afford to count on luck to find us other players of suitable skill. You already had a school in mind, don’t you?” Kuroko sat up enough to give Kazunari an expectant look. His hands curled around the ball cradled on his lap just like Kazunari’s had.
Now that Kuroko wasn’t concussed and on the edge of tears, he was kind of annoyingly good at figuring out what was going on Kazunari’s head. At least he used his new mindreading power for good instead of making Kazunari’s life miserable. Mostly.
“I’ve been studying my ass off to make it into Shuutoku,” Kazunari said. He didn’t need to explain why. Any one of the Three Kings would have done, and Shuutoku had at least given him a reply when he’d sent an email about the basketball program. No free ride for either of them like the Miracles were sure to be getting, but Shuutoku was doable if they killed themselves to get in.
“There’re a couple others that looked pretty good, too. Touou’s not well known, but—”
“No,” Kuroko said flatly, cutting him off. “Not Touou.”
Kuroko’s sharp tone brooked no further questions, and Kazunari didn’t press. Shuutoku, then. A king to take down monsters. That was fitting enough.
-
He’d only met up with Kuroko over the summer holiday to practice and study until their brains came leaking out of their ears, and by necessity, they’d met up alone. He hadn’t really believed it before, but seeing Kuroko ducking his way through the crowd of new students, Kazunari realized that when Kuroko’d said he was usually hard for other people to notice, he meant really damn hard to notice.
Someone waved to a friend and almost elbowed Kuroko, and Kazunari winced in reflexive sympathy. Not that he’d needed to worry; Kuroko dodged around the arm and finally made it over to him to offer a polite nod.
“Good to see you made it,” Kazunari said, and grinned.
“It’s good to see you, too, Takao-kun,” Kuroko said, and offered the tiny curve of his lips that was his smile. Not even Kuroko could fail to be excited when they’d actually made it, all the late night cram sessions and days of running until they’d puked worth it when they were here wearing Shuutoku’s uniform, standing together where all their chances for revenge would begin.
This was going to be a good year. Kazunari could feel it. They were both going to make the team, Shuutoku was strong, a king. They’d overcome Teikou’s Miracles one after another, make them see there was more to basketball than just pure, sickening talent.
When club started and Midorima Shintarou walked into Shuutoku’s gym, green head sticking out from the milling crowd of first years like a sprout from the common dirt, Kazunari took one look, grabbed Kuroko by the wrist, and dragged him over to a corner where they could stare without being any more noticeable than the rest of the potential new club members.
Kazunari wasn’t the first to notice Midorima’s entrance, but he was one of them, and he had a perfect vantage point as one by one, heads began to turn and everyone’s stares focused on Midorima, standing alone at the sidelines as though he was one of the common rabble, had to work for a place on the court like the rest of them. What a joke. Almost as much of a joke as the roll of tape he was holding like it was precious and fragile, seriously, what was with that?
Already whispers of Generation of Miracles were filtering through the gym, soft but growing louder as more and more of the students stopped what they were doing to stare. Kazunari would have rolled his eyes, but he remembered Midorima’s shots, seared into his memory, too perfectly parabolic to be quite human, as above them all as everything else about Midorima Shintarou’s life.
Beside him, Kuroko was staring, his eyes wide and his mouth agape in an unattractive, fish-out-of-water gasp for air.
“What is he doing here?” Kazunari hissed. Not that he expected an answer, but if he didn’t say something, Kuroko might just stay like that all day, looking even more shocked than he was feeling. They didn’t have time for too much panicking. Midorima Shintarou was the enemy, and the enemy was here.
Finally, Kuroko gathered himself enough to turn away from the sideshow that was going on at the bench as Midorima set his tape down and began to – was he seriously unwrapping tape from his fingers? He was, just like Kazunari remembered from that game, and he felt hatred burning at him all over again.
Kuroko looked up at Kazunari and shook his head, helpless, looking as off balance as Kazunari’d ever seen him before.
“I apologize, I don’t know why Midorima-kun is here. When I left Teikou’s basketball club, he hadn’t yet chosen a school to attend.” Kuroko looked back at Midorima, head bent as he spoke with the coach, and took a shuddery breath. “I never imagined he would enroll here.”
Or I wouldn’t have agreed to come, echoed unsaid.
Kazunari clenched his fists and glared over Kuroko’s head. Midorima was now speaking with a dark-haired third year. Ootsubo-san, the captain. Midorima nodded at whatever Ootsubo-san had just said. Ootsubo-san was tall. Midorima was nearly as tall, and almost matched him in height.
Someone should cut him off at the knees, like a tree, Kazunari thought meanly, and didn’t feel bad at all.
A second later and Midorima was turning to glower at some poor sap who’d gotten too close to his stupid roll of tape’s place of honor on the bench. Midorima didn’t raise his voice, but he spent a good minute lecturing the kid, looming over him, brows drawn together in a scowl. All over an office supply, Kazunari thought, watching in disbelief.
This was Midorima Shintarou of the Generation of Miracles. This was who he was going to be playing basketball with for the next three years.
All his hopes, dashed against Midorima’s shots again, he thought bitterly. All the work he’d killed himself with, the endless days of practice, skipping out on hanging out with his friends, chasing the shadow of victory over Midorima Shintarou, and he would never get the chance.
Kazunari had to put his head down and laugh and laugh and laugh because otherwise, he was pretty sure he was going to cry.
“First year, get your ass over here!” someone yelled at him, and Kazunari choked back his laughter, waved a hand. Even if all his careful plans for his high school basketball career were ruined, he still had to make it on the team.
At least he was being noticed. Kuroko’s shock had faded to a sour sort of blankness, and he shrugged when Kazunari glanced over at him, rueful and resigned.
“You heard him, first year,” Kazunari said dryly, and jogged over to where the rest of the hopefuls were gathering for shooting drills to get in line.
-
“Food?” Kazunari offered. An balm for how annoyed Kuroko still looked after an hour of listening to the entire club gossiping about how great their chances were at Inter High now that they had one of the Generation of Miracles. It’d been bad enough for him, having to pretend like he didn’t want to grind his teeth – or send a pass straight into the back of Midorima’s snottily uptilted head.
But Kuroko… Well, they’d both known Kuroko was going to have a hard time making the team when his skills were so specialized, but they’d had a plan for that. A plan that had promptly gone up in flames the moment Midorima had caught sight of Kuroko, looking very nearly like he’d seen an actual ghost.
Kazunari would have laughed if he wasn’t still wishing a rain of death upon Midorima’s head.
Then Midorima’d marched over to the coach and demanded that Kuroko be made a regular member of the team. And the coach, for some totally, completely inexplicable reason, had agreed. It must be nice, Kazunari’d thought, to be so good that you could make selfish demands like that and not have them laughed back into your face.
Kuroko’d been pretty much vibrating with anger through the entire practice, after that, but none of his protests had mattered. Midorima Shintarou wanted it, and that was that.
All things considered, Kazunari was kind of amazed Midorima hadn’t spontaneously combusted from the heat of Kuroko’s killer glare. Sure, Kuroko looked the same as ever, deadpan and unfailingly polite, but Kazunari could tell. They had a bond of hating Midorima Shintarou. He knew that beneath the surface, Kuroko was right there with him in wishing a freak meteor shower would dump an asteroid on Midorima’s head.
Kuroko hesitated, but finally nodded.
“Yes,” he said quietly, stiff in a way he hadn’t been with Kazunari since that first time on the train. Ouch, he was really, really pissed. “Food would be good.”
The local Maji Burger wasn’t exactly on the way for either of them, but it had one thing going for it that no other restaurant in the upscale area did: His Prissiness Midorima Shintarou would rather choke on his own stupid roll of tape than step foot inside.
Kazunari left Kuroko to grab them a table, spared a brief hope that no one would sit down with him and make Kuroko’s bad mood even worse, and went to grab food. A burger and fries for him, a vanilla shake for Kuroko to drown his hatred in.
“So you’ve really got no idea why Midorima’s at Shuutoku?” Kazunari asked as he slid the tray onto the table – luckily without any accidental extra guests – and sat down opposite Kuroko and his nearly palpable aura of brooding.
Kuroko gave him a wounded glare, and Kazunari hastily lifted his hands.
“Sorry, sorry. I know, but you’ve gotta admit it’s weird.”
Weird was an understatement. What were the chances, out of all the schools in Japan, that Midorima would decide to go to the one they’d chosen as the breeding ground for their revenge? Even if he factored in the schools that had strong basketball programs and the ones that already had a Miracle of their own, there were more than enough that Midorima’s presence was unlikely, at best.
“The only possibility I can think of,” Kuroko said slowly, mouth twisting like the words were sour on his tongue, “is that fate told him to come here.”
Kazunari stared. Squinted. But no, even after a moment, the words still didn’t make any sense.
“Midorima-kun is very superstitious. He listens to a morning program that predicts how someone’s day will go based on their astrological sign. That’s why he carries around lucky items, to ward off any possible ill fortune.”
Okay, so that explained the tape. Kind of.
“The program,” Kuroko continued, “has a school selection index for its listeners based on a number of factors. Zodiac sign, blood type, the confluence of positive energy at different times of the year, that sort of thing.”
Kazunari could almost see where this was going, but… surely no one actually took that kind of thing that seriously. Right?
As he tried to force the world into some new shape where people actually let horoscope forecast programs tell them where to go to school, Kuroko sipped glumly at his shake.
“It’s possible the program told him to come to Shuutoku,” Kuroko said. “I can think of no other explanation but that he chose our school according to fate.”
Great. So he could blame the derailment of his next three years on some program for preteen girls. That Midorima apparently let rule his life. Wonderful. Kazunari sighed and slumped down, elbows on the table and only narrowly missing a faceful of fries.
Three whole years of Midorima Shintarou ahead, and nothing to be done about it.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Kazunari said doubtfully. “Maybe he changed over the summer.”
The silence from Kuroko took on an incredulous air.
“One time,” Kuroko said with great irritation, “we were three hours late leaving for a training camp. Because Midorima-kun was unable to find a suitable left-handed waving fortune cat statue. Three hours.”
Kuroko picked up his shake and sipped at it violently, cheeks hollowing with the force of the suction. Kazunari could practically see him imagining he was slurping up Midorima’s miniaturized head and squeezing it between the unforgiving plastic walls of his straw.
Right. This season was going to be lots of fun.
-
“We’re all just his accessories,” Kazunari griped to Kuroko as they cleaned the gym. He shoved his mop along, imagining every speck of dirt he ran the cloth over was Midorima’s face crushed into the ground.
Kuroko nodded, his own annoyance given away by the tight grip he had on his own mop and the jerky way he was pushing it along the floor.
“All of them became like that,” Kuroko said. Kazunari looked over sharply. That was more than Kuroko had said about the rest of the Generation of Miracles in the last two months combined.
“I’m not surprised that Midorima-kun still believes he is the best person to have the ball at all times. I have never seen him miss a shot.”
Well, that was perfect. Kazunari’d known, of course, but hearing it from Kuroko, who’d spent two years on the same team, say that they might as well all be exactly what Midorima deemed them to be, made him grind his teeth.
“He’s not gonna have as easy a time of it this year,” Kazunari grumbled, thinking of all the rest of the Miracles out there waiting to be fought against, and stalked off to put away the cart of balls.
The next day at practice was worse.
Cleaning duty had him running late, and he walked in on Kuroko and Midorima engaged in what was the most polite argument he’d ever heard. If he didn’t think Kuroko was a step away from actually hitting Midorima, Kazunari would have laughed at the mismatched pair they made.
“I do not appreciate you using something like a selfish request to get me on the team,” Kuroko said, head tipped back so he could glare up (and up and up) at Midorima.
Midorima scoffed and pushed his glasses up.
“You don’t have the luxury of Akashi’s help here. Did you want to sit on the bench all season?”
Wow, that was not going to go over well, and even with Kuroko’s lack of presence, Midorima by himself was more than enough to draw a crowd. He could see the seniors starting to notice and Coach Nakatani was looking their way.
If Kuroko got himself suspended from the team because he punched Midorima and left Kazunari to handle Midorima all by himself, Kazunari would never forgive him.
Kazunari stepped forward and slung his arm around Kuroko’s neck, grinning like an idiot, hard enough to hurt his face.
“Come on guys, what’s done is done, right?” He lowered his voice. “Miyaji-senpai’s coming, do you want to run extra laps?”
Kuroko looked mutinous for a second but finally relented.
“Don’t do it again, Midorima-kun,” he said shortly, and let Kazunari pull him away.
From there, it became obvious that Kuroko wasn’t going to be keeping the peace. Kazunari was tempted to join him, to let the club turn into a very small, contained cold war between them and Midorima, but… He didn’t have any middle school teammates around to demand he be kept on the team.
Even if it clearly grated, Kuroko was lucky that Midorima’d done that for him, and they both knew it.
Kazunari, on the other hand, was going to have to fight his own way up the club’s ranks tooth and claw. He was pretty sure he couldn’t do that and have it out for their new ace, not if he wanted to actually see some play time.
Midorima wasn’t as terrible as he’d thought he’d be, at least. Not after a while. Yeah, the selfish requests were unbelievable, and the way he looked down his nose at them all like they were bugs waiting to be swatted made Kazunari dearly wish he was the type to go for a swift punch.
But Midorima was also hilarious. Annoying and utterly bizarre, yes, made Kazunari want to dropkick him into the stratosphere sometimes, but hilarious. While Kuroko stood and silently judged every one of Midorima’s selfish requests, clearly itching beneath the deadpan to shake the coach and demand to know why he was letting Midorima get away with it, Kazunari took it as a sign that the gods were making up for his miserable last year of middle school by giving him his own personal entertainment for the next three years.
Midorima showed up at practice, and Kazunari could count down the minutes to Miyaji-senpai’s eye starting to twitch, to his fingers clenching and unclenching with the urge to chuck something at Midorima’s head, as Midorima demanded a full court for himself for shooting drills. It was great. Kazunari would laugh except then he’d be running extra laps until he was old and dead.
Kazunari didn’t even mind how the third years unilaterally decided he and Kuroko were going to be Midorima’s minders. Anyone else and they might just murder Shuutoku’s new ace, he figured. Kuroko got lumped in by virtue of being Midorima’s old teammate, and even he could barely regard Midorima without the urge to jab him on the best days.
If they couldn’t beat Midorima Shintarou, then they might as well join him. There was nothing to be done. They had to get along for the next three years, and Kazunari didn’t feel like holding onto a grudge. Why actively make himself miserable when Midorima wasn’t going to be denied his demand to practice in a separate gym because it was a bad day for Cancers, let alone be miraculously thrown out of the club?
At least carting Midorima around in the rickshaw was giving Kazunari awesome legs. He was pretty sure he could feel his stamina increasing with every bit of burning in his muscles, and when the going got tough, he could just think longingly of Miyaji-senpai actually running Midorima down with Kimura-senpai’s truck.
The funniest thing was seeing Kuroko and Midorima together in practice. Sure, no one noticed Kuroko at least eighty percent of the time, but everyone wanted to kick Midorima in the head one hundred percent of the time.
(“Kuroko sneaks up on us and I still don’t want to throw a pineapple at his head!” Miyaji-senpai yelled.
Shin-chan quailed as much as he ever quailed, pushed up his glasses and set his shoulders in his stubborn “I find incredibly terrifying but I’m going to pretend I’m not showing it” stance, and Kazunari had to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep from snickering at the visible shiver he could see running through Midorima’s body as Miyaji-senpai advanced.)
Besides, it was hard to hate Midorima when he was at every practice, weird and awkward but a constant fixture of the club. Kazunari honestly felt a little bad for him sometimes. Midorima was just so bad at anything resembling normal human interaction.
Sometimes Kazunari went out of his way to poke his head in and crack a joke, to ease the way when Midorima was being particularly dense with some of the girls who tittered at him, or with some of the guys on the team who attempted (without success) to be his friend.
Kazunari got used to the sight of Midorima’s lonely back, shooting three-pointer after three-pointer, a distant, isolated figure amidst the buzz of practice, tucked away by himself on his court at the far end of the gym. It was reassuring, somehow, to look over during drills and still see Midorima there, fingers un-taped, and to know that he’d made every shot before the one he was lining up. That he’d make this shot and every shot after.
It was like how you got used to an annoying pet. One day you woke up and looked at it and felt fond. Then the next day, you realized you’d miss it if it wasn’t there.
(Kazunari didn’t really register when Midorima became Shin-chan. It just slipped out, a ridiculous nickname to match Shin-chan’s ridiculous demands.
Shin-chan looked surprised for a second before he turned away, clearly flustered and trying to hide it, and from then on, Kazunari wasn’t going to call him anything else.)
Sure, it stung a little that Shin-chan looked at Kuroko and didn’t sneer like he did with Kazunari. Didn’t think it was strange that Kuroko stayed late to practice like Kazunari did, just took it as a matter of course.
Okay, it stung more than a little. Kuroko’d been at Teikou with Shin-chan, could do those amazing passes, but he was the same type of player as Kazunari was, in the end. If Kazunari’d gone to Teikou, if he’d shrunk himself down and bottled himself up until there was almost nothing left of him– no. There wasn’t any point in thinking about what-ifs and might-have-beens.
No point in thinking about how when Shin-chan looked at Kuroko, he didn’t see an annoyance like he did when he looked at Kazunari, but someone who could stand on the same court as him and be worth his respect.
Kuroko wasn’t the one chosen to be Shuutoku’s starting point guard. Kuroko couldn’t even last through an entire game despite the extra stamina training the coach had given him. Besides, he and Kazunari were friends, and Kazunari really didn’t want to be jealous of him.
That was what Kazunari told himself, but he couldn’t quite smother the little spark of annoyance whenever he looked over and saw Shin-chan talking to Kuroko, head bent like he was actually listening to whatever Kuroko said. Shin-chan listened to Kazunari, sure, and then called him a fool and rolled his eyes. He never nodded like that, like it mattered what Kazunari said.
What was the point of playing on the same team as Midorima Shinarou, on abandoning his revenge and teaming up with one of the Generation of Miracles, if he was just part of the rabble, good for nothing but passes and carting Shin-chan around like a slave?
Kazunari threw himself into practicing. He’d make Shin-chan acknowledge him.
He’d do whatever it took, and if it made it seem like he was competing with Shin-chan, well, maybe he was. He was competing with Kuroko, too, and with everyone else in the club.
Kazunari might laugh at a lot of things, but this he was deadly serious about. He hadn’t stuck it out through the Generation of Miracles’ reign just to be passed over for them in high school and end up on the bench.
Maybe Shin-chan would never recognize him. Whatever. It wasn’t like he was doing this for any kind of pat on the back. He hadn’t clawed his way back through the choking despair of that loss in middle school – kept on playing, approached Kuroko Tetsuya on that train – just to have Midorima Shintarou refuse to acknowledge him.
He wasn’t going to lose to Shin-chan or to Kuroko. He’d stay late as many days as it took, practice more than either of them, whatever he had to do until he wouldn’t have to count on either of them to prop him up for anything.
But when Kuroko showed up to his extra weekend practices, didn’t say a word, just stepped under the basket to pass him the ball after his shots, Kazunari had to admit he felt something warm unfurling in his chest.
-
They weren’t in a hard bracket, but it wasn’t particularly easy, either. None of the other Kings were lined up against them, and the first two days, they won their way through Kinka and Ginbo with ease.
They were scheduled against Seirin the next day, and Touou the day after that. As the coach called out the name, Kazunari couldn’t help but remember when they’d been choosing schools, Kuroko’s flat refusal to even consider Touou for them.
All things were revealed with time, and now Kazunari knew: Aomine Daiki was at Touou, and they were going to face him in two days’ time.
“Touou won’t be like this,” Kuroko said to him after Kinka, a quiet aside in the cheering from the rest of the team.
Behind Kuroko, Shin-chan abandoned his attempts to look like wasn’t listening in, expression turning somber, even for him.
Kazunari could see the shadow of Aomine Daiki looming in their stony faces, drawing nearer and nearer with every win.
Seirin gave them the most trouble with their run-and-gun and a first year rookie who almost managed to tip Shin-chan’s shots, but he was one player, burning too fast, and the rest were outmatched. Kazunari got to have a little fun going up against their point guard’s Eagle Eye, testing his skills against Izuki-san and feeling all the extra practice pay off when he managed enough steals to have even Coach Nakatani nodding approvingly.
Nakatani subbed Kuroko in halfway through the game to conserve Shin-chan, and Kazunari did his very best not to feel too smug when Izuki-san couldn’t keep up with the invisible passes, got left stranded as Kazunari and Kuroko tag teamed to make steal after steal and send the third years a flurry of perfectly timed balls.
Kazunari had to admit, it was a completely different view, the luxury of having the monster on his side. Pretty nice.
And then they ran up against Touou, like a ship dashed to pieces in a storm.
Kazunari got subbed out, and it didn’t make a difference. Nothing did, not Kuroko’s passes, not Shin-chan’s desperate efforts on defense.
Aomine Daiki sneered at them all and found them wanting, batted Shin-chan’s shots out of the air like a cat playing with a ball of string. The worst kind of player for Shin-chan to go up against.
Maybe even worse, it was like Aomine could see where Kuroko’s passes were going to be, reached out and plucked them from the air like picking fruit from a tree.
Coach switched Kuroko out, and as Kazunari stepped onto the court, he saw Aomine’s head bend toward Kuroko, saw Aomine’s lips move, but couldn’t hear what Aomine said.
Kuroko flinched, went sickly pale. He looked just like he’d looked on that train the first time they’d met.
At that moment, Kazunari wanted more than anything else to grind Aomine’s head beneath his heel for making Kuroko look like that.
It didn’t matter. None of it did, not Kazunari’s desperation, not the pass he sent flying into Shin-chan’s hands – the best pass he’d ever made in his life and still, Aomine was there, jeering at Shin-chan as he snatched it away, faked left, faked right— scored again, the buzzer screaming in Kazunari’s ears.
He could feel his lungs burning as he caught the throw in, as he raced down the court looking for an opening, and Aomine swept toward him. Bile rose in Kazunari’s throat. Aomine was between him and Shin-chan, looming nearer with every breath, cutting off all his pass routes.
What could he do against a monster like that?
Try, something whispered, a voice in the back of his head. The same voice that had kept him going after losing to Shin-chan in middle school, the same voice that wouldn’t let him be content just to be another face in the crowd. Try, nothing to do but that.
At the sidelines, someone yelled his name, “Takao-kun!” A desperate shout, Kuroko up on his feet and staring at him, and Kazunari couldn’t read his expression at all. Try, he thought again, and gritted his teeth.
He dribbled, feinted, saw the pass course opening before him as Aomine started the wrong way, following the fake— Aomine twisted and swiped away the ball.
When the last buzzer sounded, all Kazunari could taste was the bitter tang of ash.
-
Practice for the next few days was about as fun as Kazunari imagined drinking dish water would be.
The loss to Touou hung heavily over all of them. The seniors yelled louder, had shorter tempers, drove them even harder than in the run up to the Inter-High.
Kuroko barely said a word even when Kazunari elbowed him, made some crack about the stick up Miyaji-senpai’s ass that he thought for sure would earn the look of disapproval that meant Kuroko was trying very hard to disagree.
Shin-chan used up his selfish requests in quick succession and sequestered himself on his personal court for the entire week, shooting three-pointers until Kazunari could see his arms trembling when he lifted the ball.
Even for monsters, losing sucked. Kazunari couldn’t blame him. If he could get away with curling up somewhere for a while to lick his wounds, he would’ve taken the chance and never looked back.
Kazunari wasn’t a monster, though. He was just going to have to keep going like he always did, get knocked down and pick himself up again without anyone’s help. He’d given himself the week to mope, and that was enough of that.
-
Kazunari put on a burst of speed to catch up to Shin-chan and the rest of the regulars, conveniently out of Miyaji-senpai’s warpath, and swallowed down a laugh. Nice to see that Miyaji-senpai, at least, was his usual kind and caring self.
Kazunari was pretty proud that he hadn’t puked once despite the triple menu of suicide runs they’d been assigned. Kuroko hadn’t been so lucky, bent over in the corner like he hadn’t been since the first week of school all over again.
Even if he had puked, Kazunari wouldn’t have cared. Running until the breath burned in his lungs was better than standing still and giving up.
He could still remember the impossible angles of Aomine’s shots and the lightning flicker of his fast breaks. It was like standing and watching the trajectory of Midorima’s ball all over again, the same feeling of helpless inevitability rising up over him.
He hadn’t remembered before, blinded by his need for revenge, but the rest of the Generation of Miracles were just as terrifying as Shin-chan.
Something slapped into his chest and stopped him midstride. Kazunari looked up and blinked.
“Takao. Takao,” Shin-chan said, and was that— Kazunari had to be imagining it. He was just overheated; that couldn’t possibly be concern on Shin-chan’s face. Shin-chan didn’t know how to look like that.
“Yeah?” Kazunari said, panting. Whew, Coach really was determined to kill them. Not a bad plan. If he brought them back from the dead as zombies, they’d probably never run out of stamina.
“You’ve run your laps,” Shin-chan said, and that was definitely a frown.
“Oh,” Kazunari said dumbly. He put a hand to the back of his head and laughed. “Guess I didn’t notice, sorry. I was thinking about something.”
Shin-chan eyed him like he’d just said he was growing an extra set of hands, and Kazunari grinned.
“Don’t get distracted again,” Shin-chan said, but there was still that odd look lingering around his mouth, the corners of his eyes.
Maybe Kazunari would skip extra practice today. Looked like he could use the extra hours of sleep instead.
Shin-chan hesitated, like he was about to say something else. Kazunari waited patiently, but eventually, Shin-chan just shook his head. His mouth twisted, like he’d bitten something sour, and then–
Kazunari stumbled a step. That had definitely been Shin-chan’s hand on his shoulder, for just a brief second, there and gone. He was sure of it, even though Shin-chan was walking away from him, back ramrod straight as usual, and heading for the court left empty for him.
Not to the court, though. He stopped at the bench where Kuroko was sitting with his head bent, a wet towel draped over his hair, where the rest of the regulars were gathered and waiting to see if Kuroko needed to be carried to the nurse this time.
Everyone stared at Shin-chan in surprise, their lonely ace come out from self-imposed exile. Kazunari jogged over, sure that whatever was happening, it was something he didn’t want to miss.
Shin-chan cleared his throat.
“We lost to Touou, but we will face them again,” he said. “In the next game, I will use myself as a decoy and pass.”
Sound erupted, disbelieving mutters and cries of surprise, as loud as the shock written on Miyaji-senpai, Ootsubo-senpai, Kimura-senpai, even Coach Nakatani’s faces. Kazunari stared wordlessly, head reeling like all the rest.
Shin-chan turned to him, standing as straight and proud as ever, and inclined his head.
“Takao, I’ll be counting on you,” he said.
Beneath the towel, Kazunari could see Kuroko’s lips tilting up into a smile.