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New revelations are hard to come by now, when for years they've watched each other grow immense and terrifying into the names given to them when they were still teething. When standing across from each other they saw the world for how small it really was and even after they parted ways there was no longer anywhere for them to go where they couldn't be found. When they've shared a table, shared a uniform, shared defeat, shared this game they love more than anything else they will ever touch. When they know each other like a mirror.
It’s been a long time since Teikou. In a few months, Touou and Kaijou will be behind them too. In a few months, they will be all their own for the first time in all the time they’ve known each other, no numbers emblazoned on their backs, their chests bare of kanji. Daiki had lost track of the years, between tournaments and weekend pick-up games and this something with Kise that has been growing steadily underfoot despite distance like salted earth, this something that does not come as a revelation.
But now, in anticipation of spring, he finds there is still so much he didn't think he didn't know. Small revelations crouched behind questions like what they will be come March, when it no longer matters that they were Touou’s ace, Kaijou’s Kise, Teikou’s miracles. What shape they take off the court. If Kise will still follow. What Daiki has to do so Kise will.
That moment of suspension, of air hang before free fall, that follows questions like, "Where are you going?"
He bounces the basketball against the pavement, to ground himself. Kise doesn't look up from his phone.
"Didn't I tell Aominecchi," Kise says. His hoodie is only half zipped up, the trenches above his collarbones deep and dark.
"I never asked," Daiki says. Shouldn't have to, is what he means.
"Sorry," says Kise. "I must have forgotten."
The ball doesn't quite reach Daiki's hand on the next bounce, and he has to bend to scoop it back up. The thing is, anyone could tell you, Kise doesn't forget. Kise never forgoes an opportunity for attention if he can help it and even then, only after he's exhausted every avenue of communication. This seems the kind of thing Kise'd set into everyone's phone calendars, to remind them how desirable, bankable, untouchable he is and don't you wish you'd been nicer to him. But Daiki is only hearing about it now and Kise is not meeting his eyes. The light of Kise's phone screen illuminates the lines of his palm, and Daiki is trying to remember the last thing Kise mailed him, what it was about, did it hint to the oceans Daiki might now have to cross if he wants Kise to look at him again.
Daiki starts to dribble the ball again in earnest because otherwise he might throw it at Kise’s head. Satsuki is always telling him to learn how to use his words, but his hands are fluent where his tongue still isn’t. Kise slides his gaze to him, finally.
Kise can read him because Kise's taken the time to learn how. Kise can translate. After a moment, cold and long, Kise takes a breath.
Daiki cuts him off. "You can do whatever you want."
"I know that," says Kise, measured and slow, dismantling Daiki as if he has every right to what's inside.
Kise takes the last few steps to Daiki, who has stopped to wait under a street lamp, and doesn't say anything else. Instead, his thumbs resume their tracks over his phone. Daiki glances between the string of sparkling emoji on the screen and Kise’s expression, smoothed over now, and distant. Daiki tucks the basketball under his arm. They move from under the light.
“Aominecchi is going to be fine,” Kise says at last. He matches his steps effortlessly to Daiki's. A car drives by, headlights glaring, and their shadows blacken then fade.
Daiki's knuckles ache, a phantom bruise.
"Whatever," Daiki says, just to say something. He grabs Kise’s elbow, steers him around a square of wet cement. “Watch where you’re going, will you. Who’re you sending mail to that can’t wait until after we’ve got food?”
It smells like snow soon and neither of them are dressed warm enough. The sweat from their earlier game seems to have frozen on Daiki’s skin, like if he flexed his shoulders the sheet of ice would crack all down his spine.
Kise puts his phone away and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. Daiki’s knuckles are going red from cold around Kise’s elbow. He doesn't let go and Kise doesn't answer the question.
The next morning, he wakes up just as the seventeenth message from Kise in under an hour pings into his inbox, about feeling miserable and hideous and missing an interview today and how could Aominecchi let this happen. It looks to Daiki like the crying emojis will flood his phone and then his room, his life. But Daiki wonders what Kise's expression is now, behind his phone on the other end, if it would be smoothed over and distant, like it had been under the street lamp.
Even if so, there must be dark circles under his eyes as deep as Daiki’s. The slant of his mouth still devastating. It's reassuring to think this.
Satsuki flips his blinds open and the sun stripes across Daiki's bed.
"Is that Ki-chan," she says. "What does he want so early in the day?"
His phone goes off again, as if on cue. Daiki scowls and shoves it under his pillow.
“You’re going to summon him,” he says, closing his eyes against the great injustices of life. “And he doesn't like you calling him that.”
He hears her huff. He cracks an eye open to see her with her hands on her hips, trying not to laugh.
“We’re manly men," he explains. "So stop with the -chan."
She does laugh then, unapologetically. He wishes Tetsu would emerge from the shadows right now, somehow, so she would show some shame.
“Go away,” he grumbles, "if you're just going to be annoying."
She takes up her backpack, promises to come by again later after cram school and dinner with a friend whose name is unfamiliar to Daiki. She tells him not to mope, try to do something productive, you'll be an adult soon.
Soon but not for a few months yet. She's been ready all her life, he knows. By necessity more than anything else, having to look after him, wiping away his snot when they were younger, chasing him down from school rooftops, making sure he at least makes a perfunctory effort with his homework. She didn't argue when he told her he wasn't taking any entrance exams and had turned down every recruiter that showed up at Touou and hung up on those who somehow found his number. She understood that he had come full circle, back to where he has always been happiest, asphalt courts and chain-link fences and hoops missing their nets, none of that slick and shine. Daiki takes this as a sign that he is making the right choice. She would take it a personal affront to her honor if he were to sabotage himself now, after all her hard work.
But last week he had asked her, "What do I do now?" and she had said, "You'll always have me. But other than stopping you from inadvertently killing yourself, I'm not going to tell you what to do anymore."
He takes that to heart. He has been unfair to her for far too long, still goes to her empty-handed and expects her to prop him back up. Now, more than anyone else, she makes him want to be good, if only so she could stop having to split her energies between him and the universes of possibilities that have been waiting patiently for years at her heel.
Still, it's been difficult. These days, he's rediscovering how susceptible he is to loneliness. He hears the key turning in the lock downstairs and then it’s quiet except the distant humming of the fridge that needs replacing. He holds out for another seven minutes before sending the mail.
“Aominecchi is horrible."
“Stop whining. You don’t even look that bad." He pulls Kise in, and Kise comes with the cold wrapped around him like an aura, so that the hairs on Daiki's arm rise.
In response, Kise coughs long and wracking into his scarf and something strange like guilt spiders into Daiki's chest.
“Well you don’t look it,” Daiki says defensively. He releases Kise's elbow and holds out his hand.
Kise gives him the bag of Maji burgers, like he’s paying a toll. The look he gives Daiki would be withering if his eyes weren't watering so much. He shuffles past Daiki into the living room to topple over onto the couch, his booted feet sticking out over the armrest, his face squishing against the cover of a Mai-chan mag on one of the cushions. His gym bag drops to the floor with a defeated thump.
Something in Daiki recoils. “What makes you think we're playing basketball today,” he says. It comes out sounding accusatory, though he knows it's an unfair question.
Kise knows it too. Kise rolls over to look at him. “Because." He stops.
“We don't always just play basketball. We do other things too. And you're sick, idiot."
Kise watches him, but Daiki keeps his hands still. After a moment, Kise shrugs and the Mai-chan mag crumples under his shoulder.
“We do,” says Kise, "always play basketball."
“We don't."
“I like playing basketball,” Kise insists, and Daiki catches the exasperation sharpening his voice. “Why is Aominecchi suddenly getting so worried? I never said basketball wasn't enough. It is.”
“I'm not worried," Daiki lies, because he's pretty sure Kise is lying too.
“Ok, Aominecchi."
Kise's nose is red and his lips are cracked, but when he blinks up at Daiki, it's calculating in that way Daiki has come to recognize, like Kise is deciding if he's worth the effort after all, just short of a condemnation. Off the court, it seems more and more like the only way Kise ever looks at him. It's not unwarranted; Daiki can't think what else he has to offer either that isn't a good game.
But that doesn't mean he isn't pissed off at Kise for concluding the same. Again there is that old ache in his knuckles. Daiki remembers the bruise from Haizaki’s jaw and how Kise had looked at Haizaki exactly like this too before he let Haizaki walk, before Daiki had to take Haizaki down so he'd stop coming back, thinking he could still be worth Kise's time.
Last night with their shadows puddled at their feet, Daiki doesn't know what Kise found when he dismantled him, measured and slow, but he had let Daiki take his elbow, had paid for their meal, begged to play again soon, wouldn't stop waving until Daiki’s train pulled out of the station. But after all these years, Daiki's learned to read Kise too. Knows Kise has looked at him and thought about putting him to rest. Knows Kise continues to let him walk instead, expecting him to come back with something more to offer.
"You look so stupid," Daiki fires. The guilt in his chest goes out. "All those layers. You look fat."
“Aominecchi is mean," Kise sighs, sounding weary, which Daiki doesn't know how to respond to. "I'm cold. Treat your guests better."
The anger staggers and Daiki tosses the burgers onto the coffee table. When he stomps back in with a blanket, Kise has the mags stacked by the foot of the couch and his boots lined neatly in the hall next to his gym bag. Kise doesn't seem too concerned to have Daiki towering over him again.
Daiki snaps the blanket so that it billows out full and flat, and lets it settle over Kise's head. Kise pulls at it and reemerges with his hair alive with static.
The couch is barely big enough for the both of them once they stretch out and get comfortable, and Tokyo's winter still clings to the fibers of Kise's coat. But then Kise shucks his layers onto the floor and wraps the blanket around his shoulders and there is extra warmth from their limbs overlapping. Daiki shoves a burger into Kise’s hands, already cooling.
“But these are for Aominecchi.“
“Eat what you what,” Daiki snaps, but the anger doesn't quite crest the way he wants it to and he feels clumsy instead. He wrung from himself all these things he wanted to say, to prove, but didn't know how, and now they lay mangled everywhere for him to stumble over.
"You're not fat," he tries.
Kise rolls his eyes, which makes Daiki feel a little better, but Kise puts the burger down anyway and reaches for the remote.
Next to him, Kise flips silently through the channels and Daiki thinks of Kise standing before the counter at Maji with his oversized scarf and woolen mittens, of Kise remembering, ah, Aominecchi hates pickles in his burgers, of Kise thinking of him and how he will probably want to play basketball and it was good that Kise had brought his change of clothes and his own shampoo because the kind Aominecchi uses is too chemical, and of Kise wondering if maybe today he will win, if maybe today he will be good enough, and of Kise shouldering his bag and walking the long, dark distance to Daiki's house with this grease-soaked bag of burgers and fries he's not allowed to have but brought anyway because Daiki wanted him to, came through winter's early dark because Daiki wanted him to, will do everything Daiki wants, it seems, except stay.
"You didn't have to come just because I said," Daiki says over the crinkling of his wrapper, laying down an awkward truce. "You always do."
"Not because I'm nice or anything." Kise shrugs. "I just want to make sure Aominecchi will miss me."
"You really going to leave?"
Kise stops on a commercial for a new BB cream. The girl on the TV is framed by flowers, pink and white, and she's smiling soft, her hands a V cradling her face.
“She was part of my agency," Kise says. He puts the remote down. “That's a big brand. She’s doing really well, huh?”
“You want to be in commercials?”
“I don’t know." Then, as an afterthought, “Sorry, Aominecchi."
“You’re not sorry,” says Daiki. He thinks about it. “But you shouldn't be sorry, anyway.”
“No, I shouldn't,” Kise agrees. His shoulder is bony against Daiki’s. “But I'm sick and I don’t want to talk about it now.”
They wake up to the smell of something burning. There’s a crick in Daiki’s neck and his leg is pin-prickly from Kise’s knee pressing into a nerve. He limps into the kitchen to find Satsuki reheating soup. Kise knocks into him from behind.
Even as she’s scolding them for being stupid and irresponsible, she sounds fond instead of angry. Kise looking miserable has that effect on people, Daiki learns. She’s going to let them off easy.
"I can't believe you were going to play basketball," she says. "In this weather. When Ki-chan is sick.”
"We weren't," Daiki says.
"I saw Ki-chan's gym bag in the hall."
“That’s his overnight stuff. He’s staying over.”
Satsuki stares at him, her you offend me if you think I’m going to buy that face. Kise discreetly empties his bowl of soup into the sink. He does not deign to do the same for Daiki’s.
“My parents are away,” Daiki reminds her. “So it’s fine. And your parents are fine with it too, right?”
Kise tucks his hair behind his ears. “They don’t say no to me,” he offers.
“There,” Daiki decides.
Satsuki covers her eyes with a hand and sighs. She doesn't try to dissuade them, which at the least means she doesn't expect Daiki and Kise to kill each other, and that's good enough for Daiki.
Satsuki might be wrong for once in her life, because the next morning Daiki comes out of the bathroom shivering and murderous after Kise used up all the hot water for his shower. Daiki goes to strangle him only to find him at the kitchen table smearing something on his face using his phone camera as a mirror.
“Do you mind,” he grouses. “I eat there.”
“Aominecchi could use some of this too,” Kise says evenly, blending out whatever paste is under his eyes. “Though Momoicchi doesn’t have anything in here for your skin tone.”
“Where is she? I don’t smell any burning.”
“She dropped this off for me and went to cram school. She left some more homemade soup, but I poured it out.”
“She still has way too much time on her hands,” Daiki mutters.
“I guess because she doesn’t have to drag you to practice anymore,” says Kise, zipping up Satsuki’s pink cosmetics bag.
The bags under his eyes and the splotchy red of his cheeks are miraculously gone. Daiki still probably looks like shit. Kise smiles at him anyway. “Has Aominecchi been lonely without Momoicchi around?”
Daiki scoffs.
“Let's go eat something,” Kise says. “I’m starving.”
"Ok," says Daiki. “Leave your bag here.”
"I'm coming back?"
"Where else do you have to be?"
It's past a reasonable hour for breakfast, so Kise shells out for shabu shabu and they kick at each other's feet under the table as they order enough food for a party of five. Halfway through the meal, Kise gives up battling Daiki for the meat, after his chopsticks fall into the boiling broth for the third time, and settles for just enoki with his rice, until Daiki gives in to the internal nagging that's borrowed Satsuki's voice and spends the rest of the time fishing out slices of beef to place in Kise's bowl. Through the steam rising from the pot, Kise gives him an unreadable look that Daiki chooses to ignore.
They're waiting for the bill and Kise's tapping away on his phone again when Daiki remembers all the questions he has left to ask. Sated and warm, Daiki finds the room to be reckless.
"Why do you hang around so much if you don't even like me?"
"What do you mean." Kise looks up, surprised. "I like Aominecchi. Why do you think I don't? I'm here, aren't I?"
"Because I made you." Or worse, "Or because you feel sorry for me."
"I wouldn't waste my time like that," Kise counters smoothly, direct. His mouth curves easily. “I like you. The thing I like most about you is that you like me."
“Do you even hear yourself,” Daiki says. "And what about my basketball?"
“I guess that’s second.”
"How do you get away with being such a self-centered brat?"
"Because Aominecchi doesn't mind."
"How long will you be away?"
"So many questions," Kise says. He takes the bill when it comes. The owner is relieved to see them go.
Outside, Kise turns to him expectantly, as if to ask, what now?
Daiki doesn’t know, only that there are these questions that Kise won't answer and the clock is running down fast. Touou never did get to play Kaijou again in the tournaments after their first year, and Daiki wonders if that has something to do with this reluctant standstill, because Daiki never got the chance to explain things to Kise in the only context that seemed suitable, never got another chance to offer his hand, could only bluster and throw basketballs at Kise's head and demand Kise buy him food and take Kise home on the weekends.
"What do you want to do," he offers instead.
“We do always just play basketball,” Kise says after a while staring silent at the slow-scrolling wisps of grey cloud. His breath goes up in smoke. Then he seems to take pity on Daiki and amends, “Like I said, that’s enough, Aominecchi.”
“It’s not,” says Daiki, understanding now that it never would have been enough, despite Kise letting him believe for so long that it was.
So Daiki pays for their movie tickets and thinks he’s being very gallant. He even lets Kise pick the movie. He ignores the smile Kise gives him, because it’s more bemused than Daiki would have liked.
“Thank you,” Kise says, in English. He’s been practicing his th sound; it's no longer so sibilant. Maybe he’s been taking lessons from Kagami.
America, then, Daiki thinks, or Europe somewhere. An ocean or a continent away.
Daiki grunts. “You’re paying for your own snacks.”
“Stingy,” Kise whines, but it's token.
Kise gets the extra-large tub of popcorn, and only takes a handful before handing it off to Daiki as they sit down.
“If not commercials, maybe you want to be in movies,” Daiki thinks out loud, as the lights dim and the previews come on. The theater is empty except for them and two guys with mohawks three rows in front.
“I would look good up there, wouldn't I,” says Kise, musing. He pulls his scarf loose, now that he doesn't have to hide his face. "Admit it.”
“There’s nothing to admit,” Daiki says. “Didn't I just suggest it?”
“Well, if Aominecchi thinks so, I’ll have to consider it," Kise says, his voice lilting, more sly than genuinely pleased.
"Your English is still atrocious though, so you better stick to Japanese movies."
Lime-Mohawk yells at them to shut the fuck up.
“Aominecchi,” Kise whispers, sinking lower into his seat. “Don’t.”
The popcorn is already sailing its perfect trajectory before Daiki registers it left his hand. It lands on the guy's mohawk, where it stays perched like a crunchy, well-trained pet. The guy doesn't notice.
“Wait, wait,” says Kise, reaching for the tub in Daiki's lap. “I want to try.”
Between the two of them, there’s a total of six pieces of popcorn perched regally atop Lime-Mohawk's 'do before he realizes, and only because Kise overshot and the last piece tumbled into his lap.
Daiki shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth as he watches Magenta try to keep Lime from vaulting over three rows of seats in a single leap that would put Kagami to shame. The movie screen back-lights the two so that they are nothing more than flailing silhouettes, a double-headed eldritch horror that would probably net a sweet amount of EXP if this were a boss fight. Kise covers his face with his scarf.
"Let's go," Kise hisses. Daiki can barely hear him over the movie's opening score, which seems to be one continuous crescendo, and Lime hollering abuse at them.
"What, you don't think we can take him?"
"I don't want to take him."
"But I want to watch the movie," Daiki says, but Kise jabs him viciously in the side before standing and jostling Daiki out of his seat.
Daiki doesn't get to hear what Lime has planned after the curb-stomping because an onscreen explosion obliterates the rest of his sworn vendetta and then the door swings shut behind them, the silence dropping like a wall. Daiki takes Kise's wrist and hustles them down the hall and around the corner.
“There was still one clinging to his hair,” Kise says when they've made it to the relative safety of the lobby with its many eyewitnesses. He's obviously fighting to keep the corners of his mouth from turning up. He coughs instead.
"You need to work on your aim," Daiki says, distracted.
The column in front of the concession stand is plated with mirrors. This is what they look like off the court. Come March, without their uniforms, they will be just this. Too tall for civilian life, like they've overgrown. Crumpled jeans on Daiki and the tail of Kise's belt peeking out from under his hoodie. Even just standing, they are unable to keep still, Kise swinging his arm absently, with Daiki's fingers still around his wrist, and Daiki's arm swings too. Kise's lips look rough, starting to get chapped again, and Daiki has absurd hat hair that's only made worse when he runs his other hand through it. They don't look like they could fit together. They don't look like they know any better.
"Throwing popcorn at punks doesn't count as basketball, right," says Daiki.
Kise beams at Daiki's reflection. “Aominecchi tried. Let's go back now.”
Daiki's grandma once told him about the specter of rain haunting her bones, making them ache, how she could look up at a beautiful, blue sky and know not to trust it. Kise is like that, is his own storm. Kise stretches, languorous, and Daiki's knuckles start to throb again; he's learned to read it like a premonition.
Kise ruins everything. It's just what he does. He's as good at it as he is at everything else.
"You don't need to go to university to become a police officer," Kise says. He's lying on his front, phone retrieved, taking up most of the bed and scrolling through the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department website. "They have an exam for high school graduates. You'll just have to go through extra training."
Daiki covers his face with the pillow. "Do we have to talk about this now," he groans.
"Aominecchi should think about it. I'll come see you in your police box all the time."
"Liar," says Daiki, muffled. "You won't be here."
"I'll visit."
"Don't treat me like a child."
"Maybe if Aominecchi stops acting like one. I said I'll visit, so I will." Measured and slow, but electric now too.
They fight like this all the time, explosive in a way that's contained, so that it reverberates inside them for days. Too large not to get in each other's way and too stubborn and selfish to cede ground.
Kise should have said no to him and stayed home yesterday. Daiki shouldn't have been so stupid. It's been a long time since Teikou but what's he meant to do with all those years if Kise's just going to leave and not tell Daiki where he's going, trying to go where he can't be found.
"You know what, why don't you just punch me in the face already so I know to stop trying." Something to tell him to give up instead of letting Kise have first shower, filling Kise's bowl at lunch, paying for a movie they didn't even get to watch, not playing basketball all day.
"Aominecchi is not listening."
"Forget it." Daiki throws the pillow at the light switch. "Sleep."
Daiki refuses to open his eyes to see the expression on Kise's face. Kise doesn't move for a long while, but when he finally does, the relief blooms quick and expansive through Daiki's throat.
The basketball court has long been too small to hold them both, but Daiki’s bed has always been just big enough, even if he’s shoved against the wall and Kise’s at risk of tumbling right off. But in the past year they've done this enough to know how to fit their still stretching limbs together without knocking out any teeth or boxing any ears or kneeing each other in the groin.
“You’re definitely going to snore and keep me up all night,” Kise whispers, after they've successfully negotiated space.
It's a new moon tonight and there are never stars this close to the city. Through the blinds, the light from the street lamp outside Daiki's window flickers every few minutes. Kise smells like toothpaste and nothing else.
“You snore too," he says, so that Kise will look at him.
“I do not!” Kise squawks. He coughs and it shakes the whole bed.
“Uh huh,” says Daiki before the silence resettles.
"Aominecchi's too warm, it's so uncomfortable. Go sleep on the couch."
"Go to hell, Kise."
"Mean."
Fingers curl around the hem of Daiki's shirt and Daiki falls asleep listening to the creak of Kise's eyelids as Kise blinks up at the ceiling. In the morning, Kise has a shoot. He will be gone before Daiki wakes.
Spring comes anyway.
It's chillier than the last; Daiki remembers because this time last year, Kaijou had won their first Winter Cup against Shuutoku with Kise benched in the fourth quarter, his leg finally giving out after Rakuzan had run him into the ground the day before, and for months after, because it was already warm enough, Kise would take his free weekends at Daiki's street court in Daiki's t-shirts and do nothing but watch Daiki shoot hoops. Daiki had thought Kise was going to cry for not making the winning basket or something, but at 00:00, Kise had never looked so content in his life.
Satsuki's still wearing her cardigan under her blazer at their graduation ceremony and has to keep holding her skirt down to keep it from flying up every time a remnant of winter wind snakes through Touou's courtyard. Ryou's just finished prostrating himself for burdening Daiki with a farewell/congratulatory/apology bento the size of Daiki's head when Satsuki nudges him and tells him his phone is buzzing in his bag.
"Oh, Aominecchi. I'm surprised. You never pick up."
Daiki shrugs and trusts Kise to hear the gesture somehow.
"Congratulations," Kise prompts dutifully.
"Yeah, congratulations," Daiki parrots. "Have all your buttons been torn off by girls yet?"
"Aominecchi thinks highly of me."
“Yeah, well." He clears his throat. "Forget them and go out with me."
“No." Kise laughs right into Daiki's ear. "If I had a girlfriend like you, I'd go broke just trying to keep you from going hungry!"
It's been months since he's seen Kise. Daiki grins despite himself.
"I'm going to have a going away party," Kise says, smiling volumes. "Well, a get-together. Sometime next month. I'll mail you the details. I haven't told everyone yet, that I'm leaving. Do you think they'll be angry? Well, I'm sure Akashicchi already knows, and he's the scariest, so it'll probably be ok. If you're listening right now, I'm sorry, Akashicchi." There is a pause in which Daiki can only assume Kise is bowing to Akashi's omnipresence. "Anyway, you should come tell me how much you'll miss me. And you should buy me something nice."
"You never told me where you're going."
"That's because I want you to keep looking for me, obviously."
Obviously. Daiki feels the shift, their standstill crumbling to an end, all in the way Kise says "you," how Kise sounds closer than he had in months, reaching across salted earth to offer a hand.
"If the get-together's not the day before my police exam, I'll come."
"Oh," says Kise.
"What?"
"No. Nothing. That's good that you're taking it. Really."
Kise pauses, holds his breath. Daiki waits for the exhale. It comes in a rush.
"You know, Aominecchi, I was really conflicted! I thought about staying. I thought maybe I wanted to stay. Those last two days I spent with you I was looking for a reason and when you didn't have one to give me, I was so angry. That was unfair, and I'm sorry. But even today, I still can't think of a single reason why I should stay. Not for Kurokocchi or my Kaijou juniors, not even to see you become a police officer. Are you mad?"
"No," and it's the truth. In the months living with Kise's absence and grappling with his own pride that kept him from reaching out, Daiki had taken the fact that Kise was no longer going to follow, and sanded it down until it was dull and bruising instead of cutting sharp, until it was small enough to contend with and live with and finally make routine as his own name.
Behind him, Satsuki is trying unsuccessfully to get the underclassmen on the team to stop weeping. Promises them Daiki will be back to yell at them all the time, and she will too, if she can find time between classes at Todai and smashing glass ceilings. "Don't leave us," they wail anyway.
"I was a little bit ashamed," Kise admits softly, and Daiki has to cover his other ear to hear him properly. "Because everyone knows I don't care too much about modelling. Except Midorimacchi, who thinks I really get off on seeing my face in magazine spreads or something--"
"Don't you?"
"All right, a little," Kise concedes. "But going abroad for something I don't really care about, that makes me seem aimless-- or like not a serious person. Right? That's not good. I don't know. I don't know why I won't just stay."
"Go," Daiki tells him. "When you get bored of modelling, go find something else you've never done that you also happen to be infuriatingly good at and do that for a while. You can do whatever you want, asshole. It's going to be fine. What else do you want me to say?"
"Are you really ok with not going pro?"
"I'll play whenever I want. Don't worry, I'm still going to beat you every time."
Kise goes quiet, and Daiki can hear the echo of distant conversation on Kise's end. He imagines Kise slumped over a desk in an empty classroom, his phone pressed hot to his ear, his too long legs stretched out, feet hooked on the legs of the chair in front of him. He'll be wearing his outdoor shoes because he has a face that'll let him get away with anything and no overbearing senpai around to scold him anymore.
Then Kise is saying, "I know why I'll come back," and he sounds like he hit upon a revelation, and Daiki groans, "Ok, don't make a big thing out of it," and Kise laughs again, says, bright and boundless, the way Daiki knows him best, "See you soon, Aominecchi."