Archive of Our Own

The Koganei family had a long history of good luck.

It wasn’t as cool as it sounded. For one thing, none of Koga’s relatives could agree about where this supposed luck came from. Koga had heard a million stories over the years, from various aunts and uncles and cousins. All of them had one thing in common: they all involved cats.

One of Koga’s uncles claimed they were descended from a cat spirit—Koga had no idea how that worked, but whatever—and cats were lucky, so that was why. His grandmother usually said that one of their ancestors had befriended a cat, who turned out to be a god in disguise, and the god had repaid this ancestor by giving him and his descendants good fortune. Then there was this great aunt of Koga’s whose house was overflowing with maneki neko figurines—it was a little freaky, to see all those cats lined up on her shelves, waving one paw—and she told one of the stories everybody already knew, about how the whole “lucky cat” thing came about.

“Long ago, one of our ancestors was walking through town in the rain, when he saw a cat beckoning to him with one paw. So he moved toward the cat, only to have lightning strike the place where he was standing before. And since that day, our family has always had good luck, especially in matters of chance and money.”

“But that’s just a story about maneki neko,” Koga said to her once, confused.

“Yes, that’s right. Because we’re all descended from that man.”

Which seemed unlikely, but at least it explained the cat figurine collection.

Supposedly, these stories also explained the famous Koganei family trait. “And ever since then, everyone in our family has resembled a cat,” was the usual conclusion from Koga’s relatives. So either they were related to cats, or one of their ancestors had befriended a supernatural cat, or something. Whatever the case, that was why they all had upturned mouths.

Koga wasn’t sure if he bought that. He once bragged about it to his elementary school friends, though, after they made fun of the way he looked. They all seemed pretty impressed. (He also bragged about it to his middle school friends, when they did the same thing… It was less successful that time. He didn’t mention it to anybody after that.)

Anyway, all things considered, Koga might have thought the whole “family luck” thing was cool. Weird, but cool. Except there was just one problem… Their luck didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Nobody in his family seemed very fortunate, not with money or business or anything. They lived ordinary, boring middle-class lives. None of them were rich. Sometimes they got what they wanted for their birthdays, and sometimes not. Sometimes his uncles’ businesses succeeded, other times they went under and they had to do something else.

“I don’t get it,” Koga said over and over, when he was a kid. “If we’re supposed to be lucky with money and stuff, then how come we’re not zillionaires?”

And every last one of his relatives told him the most bullshit thing he had ever heard.

“It used to be that way,” they all said. “But over the years, it’s changed. We’re still lucky. In a pinch, a Koganei will always find something he needs, when he needs it.”

Koga hated that answer. Where was the fun in only getting what you needed, and nothing more? But it got worse…

“Besides, our luck works better now if we use it for other people,” his relatives said. “If we keep it to ourselves, then our luck grows weaker over time. But if we give the rewards to someone else, our luck grows stronger, and we can give more and more away. That’s why we’ll never be rich. But we’ll be rich in friends.”

At which point, Koga had decided that the whole “family luck” thing was stupid, and probably something his relatives had made up. After all, adults were always making up dumb stuff, for who-knew-what reason.

Except… They kind of hadn’t.

It took Koga a while to notice, honestly. At first he didn’t think much of the way he was always finding spare change in the street, or how he would get the occasional extra drink from a vending machine. By the time he entered middle school, though, it had happened enough for him to wonder if it was the Koganei luck at work. It also happened enough for him to notice something else.

Most of the time, it only worked when it was for a friend.

It was seriously weird, the way it followed a pattern. Like, say a friend asked to borrow some change for the train fare. But Koga didn’t have any. Except one second later, he did, because he’d found the exact amount that his friend needed on the ground. Or maybe another one of his friends didn’t have enough allowance left to get ice cream. So Koga would offer to share whatever he was going to get. But then when he went up and ordered it, the workers would make a mistake and give him two, and when he tried to tell them what had happened, they would always tell him to keep the extra one on the house.

If Koga was the one who didn’t have enough money for ice cream, though… He usually had to go without any. Which seemed unfair. So when he was younger, Koga kind of resented the whole thing. He still gave his friends the stuff he found for them. The few times he went ahead and kept it for himself, he felt pretty lousy. (And maybe he was imagining it, but it always seemed like he had a really unlucky week afterward.)

But as he got older, it bothered him less and less. It still would have been nice to be lucky all the time. But it was kind of cool, the way his friends’ faces would light up when he gave them whatever they were looking for.

Sometimes he wondered what it would feel like, to be lucky on his own. Like that Midorima guy, for example. Sure, it seemed like a huge pain in the ass to have to run around and find some weird lucky item every day. But it would have been awesome to be able to make all your shots like that.

Even in sports, though, Koga’s luck was weird. He had played tennis in middle school, and he wasn’t that great at it, especially in singles. But whenever he played doubles, all his partners usually played a really lucky game. Like they would get a lot of good line calls, or their net balls would land on the other side. Which was cool and all, but Koga still kind of sucked, so he quit. (Also, Japanese middle school tennis had been weirdly competitive at the time… The things some of those guys could do with a tennis ball were almost supernatural. He kind of thought basketball would be more normal, but uh… Yeah. That hadn’t really turned out to be the case.)

The same thing happened in basketball. Koga wasn’t a lucky shooter; he missed as many shots as he made. And he wasn’t that good at assisting, either. But every once in a while, something weird would happen.

Like in the championship game against Rakuzan. That one was just so typical of his luck, that whenever Koga thought about it, he had to laugh. He’d wanted so badly to do something, anything, to help Seirin win. He hadn’t even expected to play. But when he did, Koga gave it his all. And he prayed over and over inside his head, to the cat gods or his cat ancestors or he-didn’t-even-know-what…

Help, please. If I really am lucky, even a little, then please. Not for me, but for everybody else. Just help my teammates win!

But then what happened next? No, he didn’t block Mibuchi’s Void shot. As luck would have it, he was too short to do it himself. But he was able to lunge for it, when nobody else knew how. And that was enough to help Hyuuga, when he came back onto the court, to shut down all of Mibuchi’s shots.

So, no luck for Koga himself. Not really. But it was exactly what his friend needed.

That was what Koga liked to think, anyway. Maybe it was dumb, but it helped him feel better, about not being as much of an asset to the team as he would have liked. (Though he wasn’t dumb enough to think any of the things that happened afterward were luck… No, the rest of that game was something else. As in, one of those rainbow-magic, shadow-and-light, walking-on-the-stars miracles.)

Koga was thinking about all of this, one Sunday morning in late February. Mostly because he forgot to get his weekly allowance from his mom, so he had to walk all the way back to his house to get it. Because of course the money wasn’t going to just show up in the street, he thought with a sigh. He wasn’t running errands for a friend or anything, he was just going to screw around downtown and look at manga and maybe buy a new model kit.

While he was on the train, his phone buzzed. He took it out, only to see a new message accompanied by the name, “Mitobe.” He smiled without thinking, and flipped open his phone, only to see the following message:

( ーー;)

… That was it. Koga knew what it meant, though. Well, roughly speaking, anyways.

Aw, sorry. Anything I can help with? ヾ( ･ω･` ；)) ﾉ

There was a long pause. Koga waited, then bit down on the corner of his lip. He couldn’t tell for sure when he couldn’t see him in person, but he had a feeling Mitobe was hesitating for some reason. So he added a second message to the first one.

Seriously, anything you need! I’m down to help!!! ( ＾ω＾)

After a few more seconds, a reply popped up.

⊙﹏⊙

Koga sat straight up in his train seat. Because if Mitobe had used that emoticon, then this was serious business. He frantically typed out his reply.

Shit, dude, where are you?! ( ･᷄ὢ ･᷅)

The reply was just an address, obviously cut and pasted into the message field. Koga looked up at the station map, then leapt out of his seat just in time to get out at the next stop. He dashed through the station and up the crowded stairs, into the nearest shopping district. It was a little weird when he arrived at the location, only to find out that it was one of those super girly stores with pink all over the place, drowning in bows and lace and cutesy animal characters. But, hey, whatever. Koga barreled inside and looked around.

There was Mitobe, standing in a corner, rifling through his wallet. And Koga didn’t really know why, but when he saw him, his heart gave a weird leap, and his stomach quivered.

… Okay, well, he did know. But that was even weirder. Because the whole thing had come out of nowhere, pretty much. The two of them had been buddies all last year, getting closer and closer until they were practically inseparable, and that was awesome. And so much stuff had happened. There had been the craziness of the Interhigh qualifiers, the highs and the lows, and the total rush of the Winter Cup. And that championship game? Hell, the whole team had basked in the afterglow of that win for weeks. Koga still grinned about it sometimes.

And through the whole thing, Seirin’s famous first-year duo had been front and center. Kagami, and Kuroko, and their epic partnership… Oh, yeah, and their painfully obvious romance. It got to the point where Koga couldn’t take it anymore, and he blurted out in the locker room one day after they were gone, “So are those two gonna get married or what?!” And his teammates all stared at him, but then there was this weird sigh like everyone had been holding their breath for a really long time, followed by a loud chorus of, “Right? Holy shit. It’s getting ridiculous.”

So, yeah. Everybody knew. Because it was obvious. (Even without the occasional awkward moment where Koga would go into the clubroom and Kagami was there, and that was whatever. Except he was sort of wiping his mouth and his face was red for no reason? Or at least, that was what Koga would think, until Kuroko would appear from behind him and say, “Hello, Koganei-senpai.” So yeah, they’d probably been making out again.)

But the thing was, that was them. Koga couldn’t relate. He had never fallen in love. He got crushes sometimes… On girls. Just ordinary girls, who were pretty, and that was all he knew about them, really.

And Mitobe? Mitobe was his bro, his good buddy, who hung out with him every Saturday night and listened to all his dumb stories, and sometimes they’d bake cookies or something, just for the hell of it. And sure, Mitobe was a lot more than that, too.... He was the person who encouraged Koga to keep playing basketball, who was there for Koga when he was bummed out about not being able to do more in the Rakuzan match, who even put his arm around him when they sat on the bench afterward, and stayed like that for most of the rest of the game.

But it wasn’t like that.

Or at least, that was what Koga figured, until one snowy night in January when they were screwing around in his room and playing board games. And Koga was babbling about something random, as usual, and also paying attention to everything Mitobe said. (Because yeah, Mitobe didn’t use words. But he still said stuff, no matter what everybody else thought.)

Anyway, at one point Koga won whatever game it was. So he threw up his arms and declared himself the king of all games, glorious champion, never to be defeated by mere mortals. And Mitobe raised his eyebrows in that way that totally meant something snarky. So Koga tackled him and they were roughhousing, and Mitobe was laughing, that silent laugh of his that didn’t make any noise but still made his chest shake.

And then came the weird part. Because Koga was so used to listening to all the things that Mitobe was saying, without using any words, that he just sort of took them in and reacted without thinking. And there was this quiet moment, where they were both trying to catch their breath, and Koga was crouched on top of Mitobe, and they looked at each other. Mitobe blinked, and his lips sort of parted. And for some reason, Koga could’ve sworn that Mitobe said, with his entire body, “Kiss me.” So Koga did. Right there, sprawled out across his bedroom floor, with his arms curled around Mitobe’s back and their legs all tangled together.

At which point Koga’s brain pretty much went what the fuck.

He jerked away, and Mitobe jerked away, and Koga could tell that he was saying, “What the hell, what was that about” too. So Koga wasn’t even sure if he had been right, about the whole “Kiss me” thing. (Though he’d never been wrong before…) And Mitobe went bright red, and Koga’s ears were burning, and they both kind of stopped looking at each other after that. They didn’t talk about it. They just played another game, and Koga talked really fast about whatever he could think of (as long as it wasn’t kissing), and then they went to bed.

And that was it. Or it should have been. Because yeah, Koga would be embarrassed about that screw-up for the rest of his life. But it was just some kind of mistake or freak incident or… Something? That’s what he told himself, anyway, whenever he thought about it over the next week and felt like running away to become a hermit in the mountains, where he couldn’t do any more embarrassing stuff.

But the problem was, that one kiss made everything weird. Not between him and Mitobe… They still hung out after that, and Mitobe was cool and never once said, “Hey dude, so what was that about.” (Though Koga did get the feeling from the way Mitobe was a little stiff and withdrawn that he was trying pretty hard not to let on to him about something.)

Nope, what was weird was Koga’s brain. Because seriously, after that kiss, it would not stop thinking the most bizarre crap. Like, “Hey, so isn’t Mitobe kind of good-looking, now that you think about it,” and “Hey, what about when he looks down at you and smiles, isn’t that sort of hot, how he’s so tall,” and “Hey, look at his hands, doesn’t he have the greatest hands, with those long fingers and they’re bigger than yours and don’t you kind of want to hold one,” and holy shit, it was so weird.

But it got weirder. Because Koga never would’ve guessed they were going to kiss again. Not until a week later when they were cooking in Mitobe’s kitchen and Koga cut his finger. And of course Mitobe went all mother-hen on him, and insisted on being the one to bandage it up. Which was okay, except then while Mitobe was touching his hand, Koga’s heart started hammering inside his chest, for no damn reason.

The thing was, Mitobe noticed. Because as good as Koga was at hearing all the stuff that Mitobe said without words, Mitobe was good at hearing everything Koga said, words or not. Basically, he was the best listener in the world.

So this time, Koga was pretty sure it was his whole body that said, “Kiss me,” and Mitobe must have heard. Because he did kiss him, quick and soft on the mouth, and then he double-checked the bandage and went back to slicing carrots like nothing had happened.

After that… Koga didn’t even know. It just kept happening, over and over. Like one time when they were hanging out, and everything was normal, like before. Except for the part where they kissed a little, in between rounds of a video game. Then a few days later, they were both studying for a test, sitting under the kotatsu at Mitobe’s. And the kissing started again, first with a peck or two, then a longer one. But then neither of them stopped, so they ended up on the floor halfway under the heated blanket—until one of Mitobe’s brothers came barging in, and they had to act like they were looking for a pencil under there or something.

So… Yeah. Koga didn’t really know what was going on? But it was weird, and lately whenever he saw Mitobe—like right now, when he was standing in the corner of this girly pink store, with that worried look on his face that made Koga want to reach out and clasp his shoulder, and also why did he look so good in that dark gray coat anyway, it made him seem even taller somehow—his heart would start leaping between his ribs, like Coach had told it to go do wall taps (or maybe jump rope?). So Koga forced himself to take a breath, and told his stupid heart to chill out already.

Because seriously, it was just Mitobe.

“Hey!” he said, hurrying up to him. “What’s up? Are you okay?”

And he tried not to feel happy about the way Mitobe’s face lit up when he saw him. Because then Mitobe’s face fell again, and he shook his head a little, and held out his wallet. And Koga instantly translated in his head, all the things that Mitobe was saying. He wasn’t okay, he was pretty much out of money, which he needed for… Something? Mitobe tipped his head toward the opposite side of the shop.

A huge crowd of mothers and little girls were standing in a line. Koga took a closer look. They were all waiting to turn a big pink lottery wheel, which was surrounded by a bunch of signs, advertising some kind of shop-exclusive cat doll. A ridiculously frilly cat doll, with bows on its ears. “Super Kawaii Hairbow Kitty” or something. (Koga didn’t actually remember its name, but he had seen the character on girls’ cell phone charms at school.)

And now Koga understood.

“You’re trying to get that doll, right?” he said. “But it’s a lottery thing. Is it for your sisters?”

Mitobe nodded, and gave a sort of helpless look that said it was for his youngest sister, whose birthday was coming up, and the cat was her favorite character. And she had seen this doll advertised somewhere—TV, maybe?—and begged Mitobe’s mom for it, so Mitobe had been sent to get it. And Koga was pretty sure his mom hadn’t realized it was one of those evil “lottery only” exclusive collectibles.

So that sucked.

It took Koga exactly one second, though, to figure out what he had to do. Because here he was, with a friend who really needed something, and it was the kind of thing that all came down to luck. And Koga had won tons of prizes for his friends before, through lottery wheels and UFO catcher games and plenty of stuff like that. (He usually lost if it was for himself, of course.)

This would be easy.

“Don’t worry about it.” He smiled, and patting Mitobe on the shoulder. “I got this.”

He turned to one of the nearby shelves, and picked out a notebook with the cat character on it. (Because that was the thing about these lotteries… You usually had to buy something to get a ticket. Mitobe already had a whole bag of girly cat stuff resting by his foot, Koga noticed. Well, he could just give all that stuff to his sister—or maybe all of his sisters, for their birthdays, over the next four or five years.) He went up to the register, with Mitobe shadowing him, and dug out his wallet.

“No worries, it’s cool,” he said, in response to the look on Mitobe’s face. “You’re out of cash. Besides, I have to use my own money for this.”

He sort of mumbled the last part. He’d never actually explained the whole “family luck” thing to any of his teammates. Not even Mitobe, who’d known him the longest. Not that he thought Mitobe would make fun of him or anything… It was just kind of hard to explain?

Anyway, Koga bought the notebook, got a ticket for the lottery, and got in line. It took a little while, but pretty soon he was up at the front. A shop employee in a frilly pink uniform (with cat ears, because yeah, it was that kind of store) took his ticket, and he spun the wheel. And a white ball popped out. Instead of a pink one, for the doll.

So he lost, basically.

“That’s weird.” He frowned, confused. It must have been a pretty rare prize, for him not to get it on his first try. (Which was probably true… He hadn’t seen anyone else win a doll yet.) But whatever, he would just try again. He pocketed the consolation prize (a package of pink tissues, which there was no way in hell he’d ever use). And he asked Mitobe if there was anything else his sister might want from the store, so he could buy another ticket.

And he got another ticket, and waited in line, and spun the wheel. And he lost again.

Which, okay, whatever. Koga could do it three times. Three was a lucky number. He almost always got the rare prizes on his third try.

Except on his third try, he lost again.

And now Koga was starting to worry that something was wrong. Because one of the girls in line before him had won a doll, and so did a mom a few places in line behind him. So clearly, it wasn’t impossible to get one. Which might mean his luck wasn’t working… But that didn’t make sense, he told himself. The doll wasn’t for him. And he sighed, because he knew where this was going.

Sometimes, luck was kind of an asshole, and made you work for it a little.

So he bought more frilly cat stuff, and more tickets. And lost some more. Sometime in between the fifth and sixth attempt, Mitobe tapped him on the shoulder and told him he didn’t have to do this, that it was nice of him to try, but he didn’t want Koga to spend all his money on it. Koga just smiled up at him.

“I know I don’t have to,” he said. “But I said I’d help you out. And I’m pretty sure I can get one.”

He didn’t tell Mitobe it would probably take his whole week’s allowance to do it. Sure enough, it didn’t take long before Koga was down to his last few coins. So he bought a pink eraser, got a ticket, and got back in line. A little girl was standing in front of him, wearing the biggest hair bow he’d ever seen. She peered at the shopping bag he was now holding, which was full of cat stuff.

“Wow,” she said, wide-eyed. “You must really want that doll.”

“Uh, yeah…” Koga scratched the back of his head. “Something like that?”

She stared up at him. “You kinda look like a cat, too.”

“Yup,” Koga said with a laugh. He was used to hearing that one. The girl talked to him most of the way through the line, about her new pet kitten, and the difference between various shades of pink, and the vital importance of cats with bows on their ears. (Koga did his best to keep up with her, though admittedly, he was no expert.)

Eventually, the girl’s turn at the wheel came. She lost and got a pack of tissues. She turned to Koga and nodded, in a solemn sort of way. “Good luck, Mister Cat.”

“Thanks,” he said, cheerfully. And he turned the wheel, and lost.

It was at this point that the panic started to set in. Because seriously, what was Koga doing wrong? It didn’t make any sense. The doll wasn’t for him, it was all up to luck, and he had spent his whole allowance to get it, except for a few coins that weren’t enough to buy another ticket. So he turned to Mitobe and handed him the shopping bag.

“Hang on,” he said, and darted outside the shop.

He hurried up and down the sidewalk, looking frantically around his feet. No loose change, anywhere. So he paced outside the shop, and waited. Sometimes when his luck really kicked in, random people would come up to him and ask for a favor—like directions, for example—and afterward, they would insist on giving him something for his trouble. Or maybe a person would have an extra of something, that they were looking to give away. (Why anyone would have “extra money” they didn’t want was something Koga was trying not to think too hard about.)

Except minute after minute passed, and no one came up to him. So now Koga was seriously worried.

He could tell that getting the doll would mean a lot to Mitobe. And he really, really wanted to help his friend out. Koga always wanted to help out his friends, if he could. Though, if he was being totally one-hundred-percent honest here, he wanted it even more than usual this time. Because it was for Mitobe, who was always there for him. Who was his best friend in the world. And the idea of having to leave that shop with Mitobe frowning, and worrying about what to tell his mom and his little sister, who wouldn’t get the doll she wanted for her birthday…

Well, it sort of made Koga feel like someone had punched him in the stomach.

And then, an awful thought occurred to Koga. A seriously awful thought, which made him jerk to a stop and stand there, rooted to the pavement. Because it was ridiculous, and he knew it, but, well… One time when he was a kid, Koga had asked if the family luck thing was real, then how come his dad couldn’t get rich by using his luck to get anything his mom wanted? Because if it wasn’t actually for him, it should work, right? And his dad just laughed at the question, and said that his mom was a Koganei now, so she couldn’t get stuff from the family luck either.

“Okay, but why didn’t you try to do it when you guys were dating or something?”

Koga’s father laughed again. “Actually, my luck didn’t work that often when we were dating. I guess I must’ve liked your mom too much. Really, anything I got for her would have been for me, because I wanted to impress her. So that’s probably why.”

But that was just crazy, Koga told himself. That couldn’t possibly be why his luck wasn’t working… Could it?

He shook his head, flushed. Mitobe was his best friend. And yeah, he liked him a lot. But he didn’t like him that way… He thought. Maybe? Because sure, they had kissed a few times, but they hadn’t even talked about it, at all. And it was just this weird thing that was happening, for no real reason. Right?

Wrong, said that stupid voice inside his head that thought it knew everything. (The one that wouldn’t shut up about how Mitobe was good-looking and stuff.) You like him. A lot. And it is like that.

Well, okay, fine. So maybe Koga needed to just admit it. Maybe he did like Mitobe that way. And maybe they didn’t count as just friends anymore, and that was why his luck wouldn’t work.

But no, that didn’t make any sense. He and Mitobe weren’t actually dating, or a couple. They weren’t like Kagami and Kuroko, with their epic basketball romance. And so what if Koga really wanted to help Mitobe? After all, Koga liked all his friends, and wanted to do stuff for them, and impress them if he could. And his luck still worked on them. So at what point did liking a person become too much, and too selfish for it to work? The whole thing was ridiculous, he told himself again, firmly. That wasn’t what was going on at all. Anyway, this wasn’t even really for Mitobe, it was for his little sister.

This was something of the desperate train of thought whirling around in his brain, when Koga finally saw an object glimmering in the cracks of the sidewalk. He dove for it, and scooped it up. But it was only a five yen piece, not nearly enough to buy another ticket.

At which point Koga hung his head, and succumbed to defeat. He was just going to have to tell Mitobe that he couldn’t do it. That he was really sorry, and he should have been able to get the doll for his sister, but apparently he just wanted too badly to help him. (Which was the most bullshit concept in the history of ever, but hey, his family’s luck was kind of like that.) So he trudged back to the shop, and reached to open the door…

And it almost smacked him in the face, as the little girl in the bow came out.

“Oh hey, Mister Cat,” she said. She reached into her coat pocket, and took out something. “You dropped this earlier.”

She held out a five-hundred yen piece, that shone in the winter sunlight.

Koga stared at it.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that isn’t mine,” he said, even though it made his heart sink to admit it. Because it was impossible that he could have dropped a whole five-hundred yen piece and not notice. Plus he was counting out his allowance the whole time, and he knew he had spent it all. So this coin definitely wasn’t his.

“No, I know I saw you,” the girl said, looking offended that he would argue with her.

“But I couldn’t have—”

“Take it, Mister Cat,” the girl said, insistently. And at this point, Koga had no idea if he had somehow dropped it for real, or if it belonged to someone else, or if the girl had just noticed how much he wanted that stupid doll and was taking pity on him. (Although what sort of little girl had a five-hundred yen piece to just give away, he had no idea.)

But he took the coin, and asked the girl to hang on a second. He ran inside to grab the shopping bag from Mitobe, and took it back out, and told the girl to pick out a few of the extra things from the bag. Which seemed to make her happy, so Koga felt a little less guilty, about going up and buying enough pink cat stuff for one last ticket.

And Koga tried to ignore the fluttery nervous feeling in his stomach while he waited in line for the wheel, one more time. And he smiled at Mitobe, who was eyeing him in a way that said that he was really starting to worry—not about the doll but about Koga, because he was acting kind of nuts. Which was, you know, valid.

“I’m fine,” Koga said, waving him off. “Totally fine. Just hang on a sec.”

And he wanted to tell Mitobe that he would definitely get the doll this time, but he didn’t want to jinx it, either. Finally, it was his turn at the wheel again. He took a breath, and closed his eyes for a second. Just like at the Winter Cup, he prayed, to all his cat relatives or cat power or wherever in the hell his luck came from: Please, help. It’s not for me, so please. Because yeah, I do really like Mitobe, but this is for his sister, and anyway I don’t want him to worry and stuff, so please.

Koga spun the crank, and… It wasn’t a pink ball.

It was a shiny gold one.

The shop erupted with noise, as all the employees started shouting congratulations in shrill voices, and one of them even had some kind of pink noisemaker she was banging. Because apparently this gold ball was for some sort of super special grand prize. (Because of course it was.) And the whole thing was way embarrassing, and Koga didn’t really know whether he wanted to laugh, or sink down into the floor and vanish. As he looked over at Mitobe, though, he made up his mind.

Because Mitobe was smiling, from ear to ear. And Koga didn’t care how embarrassing something was, if it made him smile like that.

So he laughed. A lot.

Twenty minutes later, Koga and Mitobe started on the long walk home. (Because, you know, no train or bus fare.) Koga didn’t really mind walking. It was kind of a challenge, though, when he was carrying so many shopping bags. All of them were pink, and covered in smiley cat characters. Which meant a lot of people were giving them weird looks, but whatever. Most of the bags contained a bunch of identical dolls.

“I can’t believe they gave us ten of those things,” Koga said to Mitobe. “What are you going to do with all of them?”

Mitobe shrugged, in a way that said he would probably give one to each his sisters? After that he didn’t know.

“Hmm. We should give one to Coach.” Koga snorted. “She’d hate that.”

Mitobe chuckled too, in his silent way. Koga wished he could’ve given one of the dolls to the girl with the bow. But after he won, he hadn’t been able to find her again.

Mitobe gestured with his hand, in a way that got Koga’s attention. And Koga listened, to the question in his dark eyes.

“Oh, the grand prize? Heh. I’m not sure.” Koga grinned sort of sheepishly. “You should probably take it. I know it’s just two tickets, but maybe your sister could go with your mom? Like, for her birthday or whatever.”

As it turned out, the grand prize Koga had won included a pair of tickets to a local amusement park. Which had a whole section featuring the frilly cat character. It was exactly the sort of over-the-top cutesy place that was either for little kids or couples.

Mitobe frowned at him. A telltale line formed between his thick brows.

Koga shrugged. “Nah, dude, I can’t keep them myself. It’s a luck thing.”

Mitobe gave him a weird look, to which Koga just said, “Uh, I’ll explain later. Anyway, you can have them. Seriously. I don’t mind.”

There was a pause. At last Mitobe nodded, giving his agreement.

“Okay, cool. I’m glad you’ll—” Koga did a double-take. “Wait, what?”

Because he could have sworn Mitobe said he would take the tickets to the park… “If you’ll go with me.”

Koga gaped at him. Mitobe blushed a little, and nodded a second time, saying the same thing again. Except this time it was more like a question, like he was asking if Koga would go with him. So now Koga was getting all flushed too, and he couldn’t quite look at his best friend, and he fiddled with the handles on the shopping bags.

“Um, are you really sure you want to?” he mumbled. “I mean, uh… going to a place like that… Isn’t that kind of like, um…?”

And Koga didn’t even know how he was going to finish that question, whether he meant “like a date” or “like we’re a couple” or what. And they were both red at this point, like bright strawberry red, and Koga was pretty sure steam was escaping from his ears. Mitobe shifted around the bags he was carrying, so that he had one of his hands free. Then he held it out to Koga, and nodded, shyly.

Koga’s heart skipped about a mile a minute. And he shifted the bags he was carrying too, and he took Mitobe’s hand. But Mitobe’s was bigger than his, so it didn’t take long before their hands had changed positions. Until Mitobe’s fingers were clasped all the way around Koga’s, warm and gentle and strong.

And this time, Koga was positive that he actually would melt into the pavement. But it wasn’t from embarrassment… More like a giddy, floating sensation that swelled up inside his chest, just like the day they won the Winter Cup. (And like when he kissed Mitobe that first time, and every single time after that.)

So Koga decided that just this once, it would be okay to accept part of the rewards of his luck for himself, and go to the amusement park. On a date. With his best friend.

Because yeah, he and Mitobe weren’t Kagami and Kuroko or anything…

But maybe there was a little bit of magic between them too.