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I.
“What are you doing when you graduate, Taiga?” Alex asks when his third year of high-school starts.
She looks uninterested, as if trying to distract him from the assessing gaze she’s giving him, the one that means Taiga won’t avoid the question in the long run, even if he somehow manages to change the subject now.
“Play basketball?” Taiga says cautiously, and he’s not sure if it’s the right or the wrong answer when Alex’s face become serious.
“Here?”
“Where else?”
“What about America?”
Taiga imagines greater opponents, basketball as a career, a challenge every day. He imagines getting used to a new place, meeting new people and not knowing who to call the rare times he cooks too much, or when he’s injured and needs someone to entertain him, or when he just wants some company. He thinks of basketball, mostly, and how it wouldn’t be the first time he leaves a country, how there’s Skype, and Facebook, and a hundred little things to make people seem closer.
“Think about it,” Alex says. “Tatsuya’s already there.”
The next day, Taiga starts looking into what he needs to do study in the USA. After a week, he gives up and asks Tatsuya to tell him how he’d done it.
II.
“You’ll leave us?” Kise says, putting a hand on his chest, mock-offended.
Taiga already feels weird telling everyone about his plans for the future, he doesn’t need Kise adding pressure, so he doesn’t welcome the theatrics.
“I’m not leaving anyone. I’m just going abroad.”
“Forever,” Kuroko says gravely. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Kagami-kun. I hope you will think about us sometimes.”
“Why are you talking like I’m abandoning you?!”
“We had such a bright future waiting for us,” Kuroko says, ignoring him completely, sounding almost wistful.
“It’s okay, Kurokocchi, I can be your new light,” Kise says. He tries to take one of Kuroko’s hands, but Kuroko moves away from him.
“Very funny,” Taiga mumbles, not looking at either of the jerks that seem to be his friends.
They change the topic after that, but when they’re about to part ways Kuroko looks up at Taiga and says, “Will you stay in touch?”
“Huh? What kind of question is that?”
“You know how America is, Kagamicchi,” Kise says, a note of seriousness under his teasing tone. “You might become part of the NBA, then you’ll be doing commercials for McDonald’s, and one day you’ll realize that the last time you contacted any of us was when you were about to sign your first contract for a professional team.”
“America doesn’t work like that, Kise.”
“Life does, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko says, matter-of-factly, like it’s a truth of the universe instead of a ridiculous sentence born from Kuroko’s penchant for drama (no matter how much he likes to pretend he’s serious).
“Of course I’ll stay in touch. You’re the ones who should be promising to contact me.” You’re the ones that are staying and continuing with their normal lives, Taiga thinks.
“Are you worried, Kagamicchi?” Kise says, smirking, and then hiding the gesture with a smile. “Don’t worry, it’ll be like you never left! Right, Kurokocchi?” He turns to look at Kuroko expectantly.
“Please don’t include me in your plans without asking, Kise-kun.”
Kise pouts, but doesn’t insist.
III.
Apparently, the best way for Taiga to become a professional is to join a college team, which means he has to go to college, which means studying.
Taiga’s still bad with books, and his first month of college in the USA is spent suffering over them. He’s come up with some weird mantra that says “No grades, no ball”, which according to Tatsuya is absolutely ridiculous and is probably poisoning his mind, but Taiga doesn’t understand very well what Tatsuya’s trying to tell him when he says Taiga should take a break.
Taiga barely understands what he’s doing, he goes to bed late every night after trying to understand the subjects, gets up early to run and train, and in the end his grades are terrible, he’s tired all the time, and he hasn’t been able to play.
One night, his eyes seem to close out of their own will and he opens them hours later to discover that he’d fallen asleep on his notes and drooled on them. He drags himself to the kitchen of the apartment he shares with Tatsuya to find him sitting at the table, munching on cereals, checking something on his phone and smiling in a way that can’t mean anything good.
“What?” Taiga says, reaching for the cereal box on top of the table.
“Your friends say you need to find a better place to sleep in,” Tatsuya informs him, handing Taiga his phone, where Taiga can see that Tatsuya has put a photo of his nap on Facebook.
The comments go from “Awwwwww, so cute” to varying expressions of disapproval, with some concerned questions about his health in between.
When Taiga logs into Facebook later, he finds a message from Kuroko asking him how he’s doing and asking Taiga to let him know if there’s anything he needs, a message from Momoi with study tips, and a message from Kise telling Taiga about how he fell asleep on a chair during a photoshoot a couple of weeks ago because he’d spent the previous night cramming for an exam. The weird thing is that the three of them finished their respective messages in the same way: telling Taiga to take a break.
So he does.
Taiga takes a ball, grabs Tatsuya by the arm on his way out of the apartment, and the both of them head to the nearest court for a one-on-one, which becomes two games, and three and four.
“I needed that,” Taiga says, sitting on the floor. Tatsuya’s still standing, rolling the ball in his hands.
“Yes, you did,” Tatsuya says, smiling softly, before shooting. It’s perfect and beautiful and it goes in, of course it does, and Taiga gives himself a moment to be amazed and proud before standing up and making his way back home, because he still has reading to do.
His head’s clearer when he sits down at his desk, and he decides to apply Momoi’s tips. It still takes him a huge effort to understand, but when he goes to bed he feels like he actually learned what he’d been reading, so he replies to her Facebook message with a ‘thank you’ and makes a mental note to send her some cooking tips in the morning.
IV.
Every day, Taiga has to deal with a flood of Facebook and Twitter notifications, because Kise tags him in everything, even when there aren’t any reasons to. Kise goes to a new restaurant? He tags Taiga to ask him if he can prepare what was served there. Kise buys a new shirt? Tags Taiga to tell him that that color might look good on him. Kise tweets about having seen an American movie? Mentions Taiga because ‘my friend lives there’.
The result is that a large percentage of Kise’s fangirls have started following Taiga on Twitter, even though he barely writes anything, and when he does, a bunch of girls mention Kise in their own tweets to let him know that his American friend is alive.
Things become absolutely ridiculous during Taiga’s third month in the USA, when Kise gets a cat (bright orange, angry looking) that he names ‘Kagami Taiga’. He takes like a dozen pictures of the cat every day and he tags the real, human, original Kagami Taiga in every single one of them.
Then there’s a day when Midorima’s lucky item is a cat and he carries Kagami Taiga (the cat) around everywhere, something that Takao decided to record in pictures, all of which were put on Facebook and in which he, of course, tagged Taiga.
The peak comes when some magazine decides to have a photoshoot of Kise and his cat. Everyone gets a copy of the pictures, puts it on Facebook, and tags Taiga. Everyone. Yes, even Aomine. Even Midorima. For a whole week, Taiga gets notifications that he’s been tagged on a picture, and when he clicks he finds goddamn Kise holding his goddamn cat, smiling at the camera as if he knows exactly what kind of mess he’s bringing into Taiga’s life.
When Taiga finally makes the effort to discover the origins of Kagami Taiga (the cat), he finds Kuroko at the beginning.
“Its eyes were very similar to Kagami-kun’s,” Kuroko says over Skype, looking too pleased with himself for Taiga’s liking.
“And why did you give it to Kise?” Taiga asks exasperatedly.
“I already have Nigou to take care of. I can’t have a cat. And I felt sure that Kise-kun would provide a safe home.”
Taiga points an accusing finger at Kuroko.
“You knew he’d tag the cat with my name, didn’t you?”
“I can’t see the future, Kagami-kun. Akashi-kun is better at that,” Kuroko says, the hint of a smile on his face meaning ‘Yes, I knew it would happen and I thought it’d be funny’.
On his sixth month in the USA, Taiga’s used to dealing with all the notifications. Kise’s still relentless in his effort to mention Taiga every chance he gets, but at least he’s taking less pictures of Kagami Taiga (the cat), so Taiga only has to see about five pictures of it every day.
“You know you don’t really have to look at all those pictures, right?” Tatsuya asks when he finds Taiga holding his head in his hands after seeing all the fun everyone was having commenting a picture of Kagami Taiga (the cat) asleep on Kise’s bed. “I think you’re the only one who’s seen all of them.”
“It’s my name, and… I think I know what he’s trying to do? So I should see the pictures.”
“You think you know what he’s trying to do?” Tatsuya blinks in confusion a couple of times.
“He said he’d stay in touch and it’d be like I’d never left. I think this is his way to do that. Although the cat’s name is Kuroko’s fault…”
“He does look like you, you know?” Tatsuya says, leaning over Taiga’s shoulder to get a better look at the screen. “We were talking about it with Alex the other day.”
“You’re not helping me.”
Tatsuya shakes his head and laughs.
V.
When Taiga finally gets to play in a match with the college team, he’s so excited he puts all the videos and pictures he can find on Facebook.
Aomine mocks him for taking so long to get put into a game (all because he’s been playing in a real team for a while already), but Momoi says he’s actually very proud and happy for Taiga. Aomine replies to that and a long part of Taiga’s Facebook wall ends up occupied by their bickering.
Kise uses so many exclamation marks and emoticons to congratulate him that Taiga thinks he’ll go blind. Somehow that publication brings Kasamatsu to Taiga’s wall, and even he congratulates Taiga.
Kuroko talks to Taiga over Skype. He looks like a proud parent, smiling and wishing him the best, saying he’ll be rooting for Taiga from home.
The word ‘home’ breaks something inside Taiga, forcing him to end the call quickly. For months he hasn’t really thought of Japan, busy studying and training and playing, but the game has brought a pause in the routine and given him time to remember how far away he is from everyone.
For a moment he wishes he could take a plane and fly to Japan to play against the others and with them, but everyone has lives and studies and personal goals now, and there’s no way to drag everyone back to how things used to be (there’s no way he’d ever try to go back to how things used to be, not when he knows where he’s going, not when he’s already started working for it and there are days when he can see himself reaching it).
He’d settle for a one-on-one against any of them, though.
Aomine would definitely accept.
VI.
College doesn’t get any easier with time, but it gets more interesting. He’s friends with his teammates, and with some of his classmates. He approaches a study-group and bribes them with cupcakes into letting him join, and as a result his grades improve and he gains three new friends that give him all their study tips and cheer for him on matches.
They ask about Japan and he tells them school anecdotes, nothing about the Generation of Miracles or becoming Best in Japan. They ask him why there are hundreds of pictures of a cat tagged with his name, and he tells them his friends are little shits.
VII.
On Taiga’s eight month on the USA, the rate of pictures of Kagami Taiga (the cat) has lowered to about 3 per week.
Taiga debates with himself over whether or not to ask Kise about it, but his pride is hurt by the idea of having been forgotten, so he sends him a message one night.
The next day, there are twenty selfies of Kise with the goddamn cat, and a reply to his message (‘i thought it annoyed you kagamicchi!!!!!! i’ll make up for it asap’).
Taiga looks at the pictures, and it’s around the fifteenth one that he notices that Kise’s earring is gone. He zooms into the photo to get a better look at Kise’s ear, and yes, the little hoop isn’t there anymore.
He goes through Kise’s pictures, trying to find the moment he stopped wearing it, trying to figure out if it’s a permanent thing or if he forgot to put it on for the day. It takes him hours, because Kise takes pictures of everyone he hangs out with, and he also uploads every picture of himself that appears on magazines, but he rarely takes selfies (which must be one of the weirdest things about Kise), so there aren’t many pictures where his ears are visible.
The conclusion is that Kise took off his earring permanently around the time he announced he’d signed a contract for a big campaign that would put his face on billboards everywhere, which happened around the time Taiga got to play in an official match.
Again, the need to get on a plane to Japan drains Taiga’s energy. This time he doesn’t want to play basketball, though, he wants to ask everyone what else has changed without him noticing, what little things have been going on that he doesn’t know about because no one deemed them important enough to tell him about them, what in-jokes have been born, what anecdotes are shared when they hang out.
He suddenly misses everyone, even Hanamiya, despite the fact that he still hates the guy’s guts and hasn’t known anything about him since the last time they played against each other, on Taiga’s second year of high-school.
VIII.
Mario, one of Taiga’s classmates, runs up to him one day in the hallway and asks Taiga if he’s one of the guys that played against Jabberwock in Japan a couple of years ago.
“Yeah, why?”
“Dios,” Mario says, eyes widening and pure admiration reflecting on his face. “That match was amazing.”
“Waitwaitwait,” Roxanne, says, waving her hand like she’s trying to shoo away a fly. She’s Taiga’s classmate too, and also part of his study group. “What are you talking about?”
So Mario tells her about Jabberwock, and ‘those Japanese guys that totally beat them’.
“Did you make that up?” Roxanne asks when he’s done, looking at him with distrust.
“It’s true!” Mario says, taking up his phone to show her videos of the match on Youtube.
Roxanne whistles in appreciation and turns to look at Taiga.
“Damn, no wonder you can jump so high. You had to if you wanted to play as equals with these guys, right?”
“Yeah. They were good.”
“You’re better, anyway,” she says, patting his arm and smiling proudly. She’s thirty centimeters shorter than him, so she insists on wearing platform shoes and high heels to feel less short next to him. Taiga fears she’ll twist an ankle one of these days, and he also fears that when he returns to Japan in who knows how many years (he’d like to go back someday, after he’s retired) he’ll miss her and the way she takes his arm when they walk because she’s afraid of falling, just like how he misses Kuroko and his habit of appearing out of nowhere and surprising everyone.
“You were all so good,” Mario says, still watching videos of the match on his phone. “What are they doing now?”
So Taiga tells him about Aomine’s basketball career, and Kise’s face on billboards, and Midorima trying to take his lucky items to class (which makes him go on a tangent about Midorima’s relationship with Oha Asa’s horoscope), and soon he’s telling them the whole story of his first year of high-school.
They don’t seem to believe what he tells them, so he promises to get them proof.
That night, he sends messages to everyone asking for videos and, while he’s at it, he asks for detailed news of what’s going on in their lives.
It doesn’t compare to catching up over food after playing against each other, but Taiga will take what he can get.