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I.
Shouichi pretends to be affected when he graduates: he puts on a sad face (of the ‘I’m trying to be strong’ variety, for a better effect), manages to shed some tears, and says good things about the last three years of his life to everyone who approaches him.
Some classmates say they’ll stay in touch, some teachers wish him the best for the future and say they hope he’ll remember them, and Shouichi replies with sentences that sound like a promise until you bother to notice that they’re too vague to mean anything.
The basketball club sends Momoi to thank him for his dedication to the team. She smiles pleasantly, genuinely, doesn’t ask for anything and doesn’t offer anything either: no requests for him to visit them if he has time, no suggestions that he might want to receive news of the team’s progress. He’s out of Touou, and that cuts any links he might have with all of them.
The only thing Momoi says that matters is the “Please take care” she parts with, and only because her tone implies that she doesn’t think they’ll see each other again on purpose.
II.
Living next door to Imayoshi for years, Yoshinori can’t be blamed for taking his presence in his life for granted. It’s only natural, really, considering all the mornings they’d walk to school together and the walks back after practice, how much time they spent in each other’s rooms studying, and how many hours they spent training, playing against each other because there was no one else to play with.
College breaks the routine. They picked different schools and different careers, their schedules barely match, and the trains and buses they need to catch are rarely the same. They still play against each other sometimes, on Sundays when they can spare a few hours to breathe and remember what the world outside of the books looks like.
Every now and then Yoshinori thinks the walk to the bus stop is a bit lonely, or that not having anyone to talk to while waiting for the train is boring, so he texts Imayoshi and asks how he’s doing. The replies always arrive hours later, when Yoshinori has already found other people to miss or other things to worry about.
He visits the basketball club one day, laughs when he sees Aomine training as hard as everyone else, cringes inwardly whenever Sakurai apologizes more than three times, and afterwards he goes for a snack with Wakamatsu.
“How’s Imayoshi?” Wakamatsu asks after he’s done talking about the team’s current condition and let Yoshinori lament how college life is treating him.
“He’s fine.”
“Is he still playing?”
“He’s in a team with Kaijou’s Kasamatsu, and some people from other schools.”
“Really? I didn’t think they got along. How have they survived?”
“Imayoshi can’t be worse than Kise, and there’s no way Kasamatsu is worse than Aomine.”
Wakamatsu looks pensive for a moment. “No one’s worse than the Generation of Miracles,” he says, shaking his head and clenching the hand that isn’t holding his soda. “Is there some sort of support group for captains that dealt with them?”
“I think that’s how that team started. One of the members was in Shuutoku, and I think one’s from Yosen?”
“Maybe I can join them next year.”
The conversation leaves the topic of Imayoshi behind, but Yoshinori remembers him later and texts him to ask him if Kasamatsu has made any attempts on his life.
The reply arrives the next day, when the question has lost its relevance.
III.
Kise checks his phone, taps at it for a moment and smiles apologetically in Satsuki’s direction.
“Gotta go soon, Momocchi. I need to buy a present.”
“Is it someone’s birthday?”
“Yes, Nakamura-sen-” Kise bites his tongue and shakes his head. He’s a third year, but he still seems to forget about it and ends up calling his former teammates ‘senpai’. Daiki doesn’t think watching him mess up the honorifics will ever stop being funny. “It’s Nakamura’s birthday,” Kise says. “We’re celebrating it tonight.”
“Really? Who’s going?”
“Everyone! Hayakawa, Kobori…” Kise starts counting with his fingers, names all the starting members from his first and second years of high-school.
“You still talk to each other?” Daiki asks.
“Of course! It’s a bit difficult sometimes, but we make an effort.”
Daiki’s about to ask if the effort is made by everyone or if it’s just Kise texting everyone and pestering them to hang out, but Satsuki speaks before he can decide if saying that would be a good idea.
“We haven’t seen anyone since they graduated. Susa dropped by the club a couple of times on the first year, but he hasn’t returned. And Wakamatsu yelled he was finally free when he handed over the captaincy and never appeared in the gym again.”
“He still asks you how we’re doing,” Daiki points out.
“That’s not the same as talking. I just text him the results of our matches and let him know if you skip practice.”
“It’s still more than what Imayoshi’s done. When’s the last time we saw him? After the Jabberwock thing?”
“Really?” Kise asks, eyes widening. “How did he take it? Kasamatsu-senpai was…” Kise pauses, tightens his jaw and swallows before speaking again, his voice bitter even though he looks nonchalant. “Anyway, he swore he’d improve.”
“No idea how he took it,” Daiki says, shrugging. He looks at Satsuki. “You know, don’t you?”
“We don’t talk,” she says, shaking her head a couple of times.
“But you still know.”
She smiles and doesn’t reply.
“So you mean I know more about how your former captain is doing than you do?” Kise says, pointing at Daiki.
“Why would you know?” Daiki frowns.
“He’s on the same team as Kasamatsu-senpai. Sometimes I see him.”
“And how is he?” Satsuki asks, taking Daiki’s chance to ask why Kise kept calling Kasamatsu ‘senpai’ but not the others.
“Imayoshi? He’s fine. We don’t really talk, though.”
Neither Daiki nor Momoi ask more questions about Imayoshi. They haven’t seen Kise in a while, busy preparing themselves for the last tournament of their high-school careers, thinking about the future, and that gives them a thousand topics more interesting to talk about than their former captain.
IV.
“I can’t imagine you raising a kid,” Yukio says, looking Imayoshi up and down.
“Me neither,” Imayoshi replies, shrugging.
They haven’t been able to play in a while, their third year of college leaving them with less free time than usual, and when they finally find some hours, Imayoshi says he can’t stay for long because he has to go to the doctor with some girl.
“Is she getting an abortion or is this the normal kind of doctor’s appointment?”
“She’s having it, says she doesn’t care if I help her or not.”
“And you’ve decided to try being a dad.”
“What kind of person do you take me for?” Imayoshi smiles without showing his teeth, unsettling in the confidence it implies.
Yukio shakes his head, thinks about how fucked up the kid might end up being with Imayoshi as their father. They’ll be a spoiled brat or an evil overlord, maybe even both. “I really can’t picture you with a kid,” he says for what must be the fifth time in ten minutes.
“At least now we know that that brand of condoms isn’t reliable.” Imayoshi looks pensive for a moment. “Not that you have to worry about unwanted pregnancies,” he adds, innocently, and chuckles at Yukio’s flushed face.
Yukio makes a mental note to send a present when the kid’s born, because he’s sure he won’t be forgiven if he doesn’t.
V.
They’re shopping for baby clothes. Momoi and Aomine are shopping for baby clothes, and Momoi’s holding a pair of tiny socks and Aomine looks like his pride’s dying a slow and painful death just for being there, and she’s pointing at a pacifier and Kousuke can’t stop staring.
He’d been sure that those two weren’t like that, that they’d never be like that, because Momoi was a smart girl with at least some good taste. A smart girl that should be enjoying her second year of university, not shopping for baby clothes with Aomine.
Speaking of Aomine, he turns and sees Kousuke, and then approaches him quickly.
“Get me out of here. Satsuki wants my opinion about sock colors.”
“What did you do?” Kousuke asks. “Since when are you two…?” He can’t say it, so he just points at Aomine and Momoi.
Aomine’s eyes widen in horror. “Not us! It’s for Imayoshi!”
“Imayoshi’s the father?”
“No!” Aomine looks so disgusted by the mere idea of Imayoshi and Momoi that Kousuke doesn’t doubt that he’s telling the truth. “Okay, he is, but Satsuki isn’t the mother.”
“What?”
“Hello, Wakamatsu!” Momoi says, appearing out of nowhere, holding three pairs of baby socks.
Momoi is better at explaining things than Aomine. The summary is that Imayoshi and some girl decided to have some fun one night, the condom broke, the girl had gotten pregnant and she’d kept it. Aomine and Momoi had heard from another one of those Generation of Miracles freaks that the baby had been born like three months ago. Curiosity was killing them, so - in order to see how the whole fatherhood thing was going for Imayoshi - they were buying a present to justify showing up for a visit after years of limited contact.
“And what was it?”
“A girl,” Momoi says, finally picking some white socks.
Kousuke tries to picture Imayoshi holding a baby and making it sleep, and finds himself unable to create the image in his head: it’s too soft and honest to fit with what he remembers of Imayoshi.
VI.
In a poorly thought attempt to get over his anxiety issues, Ryou decided to start drawing in public. Every Sunday, he takes a chair and a sketchbook, sits in a park to draw anything that comes to his mind, and when he finishes something he holds the sketchbook in front of him for five minutes, letting any passersby see his work. He’s gotten a couple of offers to buy one of his drawings, but he never expected to be approached by Imayoshi one day and asked how much he’d charge for decorating a baby’s room.
“She’s a bit over one year old, but her mother insists she needs a pretty place,” Imayoshi says, shrugging.
Ryou had heard about Imayoshi having a daughter, but some part of him had thought it was all a bad joke. He offers to paint the room for free, mostly because he really wants to see the (in)famous daughter and because he’s curious about what kind of woman is the mother, although a small part of him also likes the idea of a whole room to be painted in whichever way he likes, the biggest canvas he might have access to in his whole life.
When he finishes the job, having painted aliens and galaxies and planets that probably don’t exist, Imayoshi looks over everything with a neutral expression that has Ryou apologizing, but then the baby laughs and tries to reach for one of the creatures on her wall, giving her mother a hard time trying to keep her in her arms, and Ryou thinks he sees Imayoshi smiling sincerely.
VII.
Makoto runs into Imayoshi at the supermarket. The guy looks tired and not as fit as he used to be, but his smile’s the same and the look he gives Makoto is sharper and meaner than any of the words he’d ever said.
He’s carrying a girl in his arms. She can’t be older than three years old, and she has wide eyes, black hair, and a round face, the picture of innocence. She pouts when she sees Makoto and hides her face in Imayoshi’s neck, muttering something from which Makoto only deciphers the word ‘Dad’. Imayoshi doesn’t tighten his hold on her, doesn’t change his posture, but he narrows his eyes slightly at Makoto, who smiles at the girl. That only makes Imayoshi press his lips into a thin line.
Then the girl raises her head, turns towards Makoto and says, “You look like a frog.”
Imayoshi smirks and scolds her lightly, without feeling, before apologizing to Makoto.
“You know how kids are, they don’t have a filter,” he says, patting his daughter’s back, and then he offers to buy Makoto an ice-cream.
Makoto accepts, just for the delight of seeing Imayoshi's reaction whenever Makoto just looks in the girl's direction.
VIII.
Satsuki, for reasons she doesn’t understand, makes a point to see Imayoshi at least twice a year. She hadn’t planned on it after he’d graduated - she’d said her goodbyes and had felt sure that that was it, that she wouldn’t see him again, and she’d thought he wouldn’t want to see any of them again either, judging by how he never participated in group chats and how it took him hours or days to reply to texts and e-mails, when he bothered to reply. They’d dropped out of each other’s lives, as it usually happens with people you shared some time with, but never befriended.
Then one day, shortly after ‘The Jabberwock Incident’, he’d called to ask her something trivial he could have easily looked up online, and from then on he fell into her life again, in a way that made it easy for both of them to pretend they weren’t really part of each other’s lives. She’d ask what college was like, he’d ask her if she had information about his current teammates, and then they wouldn’t talk for months, until a holiday or a birthday arrived.
It’s not a friendship, it’s barely a bit more than an acquaintanceship, so she never mentions it, pretends she doesn’t know anything about him, pretends she hadn’t yelled at him when he called to ask her if she knew a good gynecologist because he might have gotten into a little problem, pretends she hadn’t called him to ask him to pick her up at a party that one time Dai-chan wasn’t in the city and some guys were making insinuations.
They meet for coffee near their old high-school, buy two cups to go and walk around the area, catching up. Satsuki’s going to study abroad soon; Imayoshi’s work is tiresome but he likes it. Adulthood is a weird experience, and neither of them is very clear on how it’s supposed to work, so they just talk, don’t say anything that matters, and later they go to their respective homes and forget about each other until they need a reminder of simpler times, when basketball was the most important thing in their lives.
Somehow, these talks make Satsuki feel like they’ve got life figured out.