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Rukawa thought that one could even become friends with Sendoh.
A good guy, social but not too much, able to allow people their space and pace, a smile that, in case he failed his basketball dream, would grant him a big career in the world of toothpaste advertising, and a generosity that would make him share the richness coming from that career.
But Sendoh had a flaw. A gigantic one.
An apocalyptic addiction to Disney movies.
And the worst part? At the national juniores team summer camp, no one seemed to have anything against the idea of spending one night a week rewatching all Disney classics.
At least, this time it's not Cinderella , Rukawa though trying to hide a yawn. Mulan could still be tolerated, if it wasn't that Rukawa had already been annoyed beyond rage by a marathon of fucking Disney princesses and by a night he had spent hallucinating Peter Pan for some reasons.
Rukawa looked at the time. They were probably getting closer to the end of the movie, and glory to the gods. He looked up just in time to see Lì Shang telling Mulan: "You… fight well."
A weird bell rang into Rukawa's brain, and he barely frowned, but his teammates' laughter at the funny line from Mulan's grandma made vain Rukawa's effort in trying to understand exactly which mental issue had just been awakened by the good ol' Walt Disney.
It was only hours later, after a merciful supervisor had sent everybody to their rooms, cutting short the umpteenth replay of "I'll Make a Man Out Of You", that Rukawa finally connected the dots.
*****
The smell of sweaty bodies, of popcorn and wood detergent for the playground.
The flashes of lightning outside the sports palace, the dark of the storm that was crashing upon them, red shirts soaked with sweat and white t-shirts and black trousers, a huge dress shirt and white hair.
Pats on his shoulders, someone giving him a bottle of Pocari, someone else putting a towel around his neck, his elbow sinking into a soft, warm hip.
The sound of the crowd that had stopped cheering on the Sannoh to start calling the Shohoku, and in the choir some voices, known and by now dear, recognisable like your own front door.
Then, other sensory inputs: sweat that's more sour than the one from someone who just made a physical effort, sweat of someone who's suffering.
Red, again, a Shohoku jersey, soaked with that sweat, the towel a white stain around his neck, and a mane of short hair that was more orange than red.
A warm hand, so warm, almost feverish, calloused in the same places where Rukawa's own hands were, sweaty, closing around his wrist.
Chestnut eyes grabbing his, hairy eyebrows frowned in an almost desperate expression, and a tiny strain of broken voice: "You… play basketball well."
Then, nothing else.
Sakuragi had surrendered to his pain, he had fainted and his hand had fallen back beside his emergency bed, and a gentle paramedic had put it on his chest so it didn't strain.
The lights of the ambulance being turned on, the thud of the back door closing, then every other sound was annulled by the desperate chant of the siren.
Anzai, letting himself sit heavily on a bench, his hands up to cover his face.
Mitsu, rushing towards the coach along with Akagi, both ready to help if needed.
Ayako and Kogure, holding each other and crying.
The rest of the team, just there, in silence, everyone looking like they didn't know exactly what to do with their body, with their mind, with the time of doubt until the hospital would call and update them about Sakuragi's conditions.
Haruko, standing in the rain, watching the turn behind which the ambulance had disappeared, her friends a few steps behind here, uncertain.
Mito and the other boys, ridiculous in that peculiar way that makes you feel like your heart could break, made little like children in their everyday clothes, still holding the magazines and bottles that they had used to make noise during the match.
Hotta, absentmindedly rolling up his sign for Mitsui: this was no time to celebrate.
Shohoku had defeated Sannoh, but at what cost?
And he, Rukawa, how much was responsible?
Wasn't it him who had invited Sakuragi to "follow him with his life"?
What a fucking sentence.
Fuck, what a fucking stupid sentence!
Maybe, Sakuragi was right to wonder who the fuck did Rukawa think he was.
A hand on Rukawa's shoulder, Miyagi: "He'll make it," he was saying, before trying to joke, "It's gonna take much more than this to get rid of him!"
"Nh," the only answer that Rukawa could find.
The Aiwa had then destroyed them with the ease they could use slipping into a pair of slippers.
Sakuragi would have talked of an unfair victory, and maybe it was, somehow: the hospital had called, stating that Sakuragi would have to undergo surgery and then be recovered for at least a month into a rehabilitation centre.
If everything went fine, maybe he would be able to go back to basketball, but not before the end of the year.
Maybe.
The Shohoku team had gone on the playground with less doubts than the day before, but with an extra worry: the best case scenario, Sakuragi that had to be tied up to the bench after finding out that he had just strained a couple of muscles, was definitely eliminated. The worst case scenario, instead, was still hanging there in a corner of the scene, just like the Greek choir in a tragedy; and while Akagi jumped to gain possession of the ball, maybe a blade was already cutting Sakuragi's skin.
The Aiwa had just shot at the ambulance, almost literally.
*****
Rukawa sat up on his futon; in the room's other bed, someone whose name Rukawa didn't bother to learn was slightly snoring, but everything else was silent. Maybe, listening carefully Rukawa would hear the faraway first chirps of the morning birds, but his focus wasn't on the present.
"You… play basketball well."
It was stupid.
Very stupid.
Not that Sakuragi has ever been an intellectual , an ironic voice muttered from the back of Rukawa's mind.
But what if it was also true?
The world is full of stupid things, after all.
First of all, wasn't it stupid that Sakuragi had found himself with three herniated discs to fix just when he was becoming a faithful teammate?
Wasn't it stupid that the Shohoku had been forced to play a game instead of being at the hospital, disturbing the whole place?
Wasn't it stupid that...
"Oh, screw this," Rukawa muttered, throwing at one side the sheer he had kept on all night just because it notoriously keeps monsters and serial killers at bay (and if someone was taking notes, please let’s add this too to the list of stupid things that still work).
He grabbed a pair of shorts and a sleeveless shirt from his closet, he put on his socks and shoes and ran outside, towards the beach.
Towards the rehabilitation centre where he had already seen Sakuragi a few times.
When he arrived, Sakuragi was slowly walking on the shore, wearing a pair of trousers that had been rolled up to his knees and a t-shirt that seemed to fall weirdly on his torso; Rukawa abruptly slowed down, realising that probably Sakuragi had to wear a bust.
"Hi, Fox, did you come back to show me once again how cool you are?" Sakuragi asked, without even turning. His voice sounded so off and depressed that Rukawa had to take a few deep breaths before he could speak steadily.
"Actually, I came here to see how you are doing. But if you have to be an asshole, I'm going back."
Sakuragi huffed a laugh: "Are you for real?"
"Nh."
"Well."
"So?" Rukawa asked.
"So what?"
"How are you?" Sakuragi stopped and turned with caution to look at Rukawa. He seemed to put him under scrutiny to decide if there was something strange, then he moved his hand as if to say, comme çi comme ça .
"The surgery went well. The physiotherapy is going fine. I could be back to play in September, if I keep being a good boy and if I don't play the whole game."
"So, what's with that face?"
"What face?"
"Yours."
"What's wrong with my face, huh?"
"Why do you look like someone who's had bad news?"
"Well, I mean…"
"What?"
"Shit, Rukawa, have you been stung by the bee of impatience or what?" Rukawa walked faster to stop Sakuragi and grabbed him by his shoulders. He consciously decided to ignore his confused stare and asked: "What's the problem?"
Sakuragi hesitated for a hot minute, then whispered: "I don't know if I can."
"Idiot. Why wouldn't you?"
Finally, a spark of the old, annoying and polemic Sakuragi emerged: "Because fuck, come on, look at me! I always do stuff carelessly, I always did, I imitate people because I'm too stupid to sit down and study, and don't deny it! I know it for a fact, because there's nothing to do here so I tried to read a basketball handbook and I understood so little that I almost unlearned how to hold the ball! But, with six nails in your back it appears that you have to stop doing stuff carelessly, you have to think before you move, and would you please care to explain to me how the fuck would I be supposed to do that?"
"Idiot."
"Nice answer, Rukawa, shit, sometimes your eloquence just leaves me astonished." Rukawa stopped and side-eyed him: "Have you been reading books?"
"Yes, with and without pictures, why?"
"Because you don't express yourself like a monkey."
"See? You're an asshole! Now I want to beat you to a pulp, but they told me no beatings until October at least. Confess, you came to try and sabotage the Genius!" Rukawa couldn't stop the huff of the laugh that escaped his lips.
"Oh shit, now he's even human!" Sakuragi yelled.
"Never," Rukawa answered, and for a moment it was just the two of them and the rising sun, together sharing a smile that belongs to no one but them.
A small yet powerful moment, like the low five that they had exchanged after the match against the Sannoh.
They finally resumed some kind of walking along the shore, far from each other because Sakuragi was walking barefoot in the water and Rukawa was still wearing his shoes.
Rukawa licked his lips countless times, trying to find a way to initiate the discussion, but that metre between them seemed to freeze the words into his throat.
Finally, he made a decision: he took off his shoes and socks, held them in his hand and went closer to Sakuragi. So they walked together, this time close enough for their hand to sometimes barely brush against each other, for a couple of minutes.
Then, Rukawa said: "You don't need to study the theory. The rules, of course, but you don't need a fucking book to play basketball."
"Rukawa, I have just told you that…"
"I have a better idea." Sakuragi sighed: "Let's hear this wonderful idea."
"There's this player, Dennis Rodman. He plays as a pivot for the Bulls. Your style reminds me of him quite a lot, and he's one of the best pivots in all the NBA."
"Okay, you have my attention."
"I like the Bulls a lot."
"I don't know how, but I suspected it."
"This means that I happen to have a lot of videos of them on tape."
"Are you saying…"
"If you learn by imitation, you could come to my place to watch some videos with Rodman. Learn from him."
"Rukawa, I…"
"But." Rukawa had tried to use one of those words that sound suspended, like when the hosts of some talk show introduces a guest who's going to make the audience cheers, but the tension suffocated the ending part of his word.
Sakuragi stopped and turned to look at Rukawa, who stared back trying to force himself not to show the tiniest bit of emotion. He felt both powerful and vulnerable, there feeling the sand slipping through his toes and the sea water caressing his ankles; both on top of the world and in front of a target.
"If you come to see a video of the Bulls, I think that I… I think that I'll be asking you if you want to stay for dinner." Sakuragi's eyes got wider. His pupils dilated even in the now already intense light of day, while his cheeks blushed pink.
Rukawa understood that he had gotten the right clue, so he went on with a whisper: "Or maybe forever."
"Don't you have a grandma to ask that for you?" Sakuragi asked. His voice was trembling, and almost inaudible in the sound of the sea.
"I do, but she's got dementia, she would forget her line."
"Oh, I see…"
"So?" Rukawa asked.
Sakuragi stepped closer. They had never been so close without the excuse of beating each other up, and to Rukawa it was the last straw.
When Sakuragi lifted a hand to touch his arm, Rukawa stepped forward and kissed him aggressively.
It took only a little while for Sakuragi to recover from the surprise: and his kiss was just like him, inexperienced but passionate, aggressive, firm to show that he could do it too, and even better than a lot of other assholes, thank you very much.
Rukawa hugged Sakuragi's waist, passing his hands under his arms, while his tongue made way between his lips.
They kissed while standing, with Rukawa's shoes hanging from his tingling fingers and gently touching Sakuragi's butt, and Sakuragi's warm but this time dry hands on Rukawa's face, cupping it and keeping it, to prevent him from going away; the quiet desperation of his touch, almost as if he was sure that this was nothing more than a dream that would fade a little more with every step further from the bed, was palpable in the slight tremor of his whole body.
Sakuragi always shivered and trembled when he was dying to do something, and Rukawa felt like a part of him always knew; for a second he was scared, understanding how much that noisy, annoying boy had crawled under his skin, then he let go and just sank into the kiss.
A seagull screeched, somewhere over them, and Sakuragi and Rukawa jumped back.
"Fuck! Shitty trash-eating stupid bird! DIE, YOU BASTARD!" Sakuragi yelled.
Rukawa looked at his watch and said: "Shit."
"Do you have to go back?"
"I had to go back twenty minutes ago, actually."
"Well, I'm always here."
"I'll be back."
"I'm counting on it. On it all." Rukawa kissed him goodbye one last time, then made a step towards the direction where they had come from.
He stopped, he turned back again and called: "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"You play basketball well, too."