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Kentarou hasn’t talked to anyone from the basketball club since he graduated high-school five years ago, and he doubts the others have stayed in touch with each other - there are certain things you can’t bring into your adult life, and people that followed a sadistic genius with a penchant for crushing hopes and dreams are definitely one of those things, which means that every time he accidentally meets one of them, the reactions vary: Yamazaki had laughed awkwardly and introduced Kentarou to the girl that accompanied him as “An acquaintance from high-school” before quickly saying goodbye; Matsumoto had made some polite conversation as they waited in line at the bank; Furuhashi had replied with “I’m sorry, who are you?” when Kentarou had said hi in the music store.
Today he finds Hara walking out of a game center, wearing a suit but carrying an old, tattered backpack. He greets Kentarou like an old friend and takes him to a pub, orders beers for both of them even though it’s not even midday yet.
“It’s still better than that time I brought whisky to school,” Hara says when Kentarou tells him the time, sitting back and blowing a balloon with his bubble gum.
“True.”
They talk about the weather while waiting for their drinks. Hara doesn’t look directly at Kentarou, just glances at him every few sentences and then his gaze wanders over everything that surrounds them, like he’s memorizing it while searching for threats or weak points. His fringe is shorter now, Kentarou can watch the way his eyes move and he tries to remember if Hara had always been like that, or if it’s something recent, if he doesn’t look at anything for too long because he’s not used to people knowing what he’s looking at and he doesn’t want them to know what’s holding his attention. Trying to remember is useless, though; eye-contact was rare between them in the past, and Kentarou never paid more attention to Hara than what was necessary to know where he was during a match.
A waitress brings their beers, and Hara’s eyes finally fix themselves on something: her legs, when she walks away.
Kentarou waits.
Hara spits his bubble gum into the ashtray and looks at him, smiling in a way that can only be described as satisfied.
“Have you seen anyone from the old team?” Hara asks.
“I ran into Furuhashi last year.”
Hara wrinkles his nose. “Let me guess, he acted like he didn’t know you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Did the same to me, so I put an arm around his shoulder and mentioned a lot of things that happened during high-school and that he probably didn’t want anyone to know about. The guys who were with him didn’t look too amused by the stories.” He takes a sip of his beer. “Then I called him by the wrong name so he could pretend it was all a misunderstanding. I felt a bit bad for him.” Another sip. “He’s a productive member of society now, you know? Wears a suit and everything.”
“You’re wearing one too,” Kentarou says, pointing at Hara, who looks down at himself like he’s just realized he’s wearing a tie and a jacket.
“I haven’t graduated yet.” Hara shrugs. “What about you, Seto? Are you a productive member of society?”
“Not yet. I took a sabbatical.”
“Oh, nice. What did you do?”
“Sleep, mostly. Recover from high-school.”
“Lucky. Wish I could have done that.” He takes a gulp of his beer. “Have you heard anything about Hanamiya?”
“Nothing at all. Is he still alive?”
“He must be; he uploaded something to his Instagram the other day.”
“He's on Instagram?”
“I made it for him as a joke, and he kept it. He used it to put pictures of things I disliked.”
Kentarou nods and examines the beer’s label. He hasn’t taken even a sip yet, and he intends to leave the bottle’s contents intact.
“Aren’t you going to ask anything?” Hara says, leaning forward, putting his right elbow on the table and letting his face rest on his palm, head tilted to the side.
“Like what?”
“How Hanamiya’s doing, for example.”
“I thought you were going to tell me.”
Hara smirks and straightens.
“I don’t know how he’s doing,” he says, shrugging. “Last thing I knew was that he was going to college, and since then it’s all been rumors.”
“Really?”
“Kind of? Everyone I talk to has their own theory about what he’s doing. I’m sort of collecting them now.”
“So this is why you brought me here? You want my theory?”
“Yes.” Hara nods a couple of times, grinning, his teeth looking threatening despite there not being any animosity between them, as far as Kentarou remembers.
“Can’t you just find him on Facebook and ask him?”
“He doesn’t have a Facebook. And Google didn’t tell me anything.” He makes a face and continues. “I guess that means he’s not leading his own criminal empire yet.”
“Maybe he is? We wouldn’t hear about it unless he got caught.” Kentarou frowns and tries to picture Hanamiya getting caught. It’s surprisingly hard: he can imagine him caught, held at gunpoint, being shot or thrown into the river, but he can’t imagine a sequence of events that would lead to that outcome.
“Hm.” Hara purses his lips and looks to the ceiling.
Kentarou crosses his arms, and asks, “What’s your favorite theory?”
“What?”
“You said you’re collecting theories. What’s your favorite one?”
“I don’t have many. I haven’t run into that many people willing to talk to me about Hanamiya.” He snorts. “I actually haven’t found many people willing to talk to me. You must be the fifth one.”
“So you don’t have many stories.”
“I don’t have any stories, just the same opinion with different words. Everyone thinks he’s on his way to become a corrupt businessman, or a corrupt lawyer, or a doctor for the yakuza.”
“He wouldn’t be a doctor, he’d have to obey someone else. Same as a lawyer.”
“He could cause a lot of pain in both jobs.”
“That wouldn't make up for not being in charge.”
“So you think he’ll become a corrupt businessman.”
“Probably. But that’s a boring story for your collection.”
Hara shrugs. “Do you have anything better?”
“Give me a second to come up with something.”
Kentarou presses his lips tightly, watches a drop of water slide down his beer bottle and thinks of Hanamiya trying to conquer the world.
“I know!” he says, smiling triumphantly. “Aliens.”
“Aliens? You won’t even bother trying to make it realistic?”
“What for? You already have a realistic theory. Mine’s better.”
“And what is it?”
“He was kidnapped by aliens after graduation, and they told him he’d be the ruler of Earth if he helped them conquer it. Now he’s working to infiltrate the government. He’ll launch a political campaign in ten years.”
“That’s the best you can come up with?”
“Let me finish. He’ll launch a campaign, prepare everything for the aliens’ arrival, and when they’re here he’ll betray them and present himself as humanity’s savior, which will get him everyone’s gratitude and more power than he’s ever had.”
“Too many plot holes,” Hara says, shaking his head and looking kind of disgusted.
“Then tell me a better story.” Kentarou’s voice is challenging.
“Sure. Let’s see…” Hara moves his bottle, watches the contents swirl. “He finally accepted he’s had a boner for Kiyoshi Teppei for years and decided to reform and become worthy of him.”
Kentarou bursts out laughing, and can’t help to add a bit to that idea. “Now he’s taking cooking classes and bringing him food every day, hoping that will help him reach his heart.”
Hara starts laughing too, making it hard to understand his words. “Yeah, he decorates it with hearts and stars and puts it in cute boxes and everything, but the guy’s so dense he doesn’t realize he’s being courted.”
“Then he invites Hanamiya to help with kids or something like that.” Kentarou can barely speak as he laughs. “Imagine him trying to look non-threatening for the kids.”
He’s nearly hysterical, and he accidentally hits his bottle and spills the beer over the table.
“Oh, shit,” Hara says, pushing his chair back to avoid getting wet, but still laughing.
Kentarou grabs a wad of napkins to dry the table. Hara drinks as he cleans, already recovered from the laughing fit, but Kentarou still has trouble breathing when he’s done cleaning.
“You’re forgetting his boner for that Imayoshi guy,” Kentarou says when Hara brings his chair close to the table again.
“Nah, he wouldn’t want him now that he’s a dad,” Hara replies, putting his arms on the table.
“Imayoshi has a kid?”
“Saw him with a kid on his arms one day, I’m guessing it’s his.”
“But you don’t know.”
“Come on, it’s funnier that way. And it explains why Hanamiya hasn’t tried to jump his bones yet. He doesn’t want to deal with the kid.”
Hara finishes his beer and leaves the bottle on the table. They don’t really have anything to talk about; Kentarou doesn’t want to tell him anything personal, and he doesn’t think Hara wants to share either.
“What if he has actually become a respected member of society?” Kentarou asks.
“Hanamiya?” Kentarou nods and Hara pretends to shudder. “He wouldn’t be able to stand it.”
“How do you know? You said Furuhashi did it.”
“We don’t know. Those guys who were with him when I saw him looked kind of evil. Maybe he’s the one that joined the yakuza and we’ve been wrong about Hanamiya all along.”
“But if he’s not in the yakuza, then what’s Hanamiya doing?”
“Working to become an evil businessman, like everyone thinks.”
Kentarou thinks for a moment, tries to picture what Hanamiya might actually be doing. “He was always good at chemistry. Maybe he’s making and selling drugs now.”
“Sell? He’d give them away for free just to see the chaos.”
“And how does he afford food?”
“Gambling? Okay, not gambling, that would mean leaving things to chance. More like cheating at every single casino in the country.”
“He could do that.”
“Yeah, he could.”
Another silence ensues. Kentarou gestures for the waitress to bring the check, and Hara doesn’t even offer to pay for Kentarou’s beer, even though he’d ordered it without asking and it hadn’t been drank.
They leave the pub and say goodbye, neither of them saying lies like ‘It was nice to see you’ or ‘I hope we meet again’.
Once at home, Kentarou looks up Hanamiya’s name online, but all the results are about their years at Kirisaki Daiichi.
He’s not sure whether that’s a relief or not.