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Two weeks after new year's eve, when he's skipping class in favor of filched porno mags and convenience store bentoes, Haizaki's biggest nightmare shows up at his front door.
Haizaki's biggest nightmare is this shithead bastard a year older than him named Nijimura Shuuzo. Nijimura was Haizaki’s basketball captain in his middle school days, back when Haizaki was a dumb shit who actually focused on lame things like basketball instead of dealing drugs and forging IDs and showing the neighbourhood gangs who’s boss.
Haizaki has literally not seen Nijimura since his middle school graduation. Nijimura shouldn’t even be on the same continent as him right now, actually. In light of this, it seems reasonable that Haizaki’s first reaction at seeing Nijimura in Japan, in front of his house, is gape.
This is his first and last mistake. What Haizaki actually should have been doing was fleeing for the window at top speed, instead of standing there like a concussed goldfish.
"That was for Alex and Tatsuya, you little punk," Nijimura says, three minutes later, grinding his face into the welcome mat.
"I hate you. So much," Haizaki hisses. He tries to buck Nijimura's weight off where its pinning down his hips but all he manages is to bang his nose against the floor. "Ugh." He complains. "What the hell are you even doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in America right now? Who the ever loving fuck are Alex and Tatsuya ?"
Apparently, Alex and Tatsuya are American friends Nijimura made in America, also known as the hot blond chick and the useless looking pretty boy Haizaiki had roughed up a little during the Winter Cup. What the actual fuck. What kind of stupid luck was that? If Haizaki had known that picking on those wimps would set motherfucking Nijimura of all people onto him like a bloodhound from across the ocean he would have -- well, he would have at least worn a ski mask or something, to conceal his identity.
"Didja come back just to kick my ass?" Haizaki asks incredulously.
Nijimura rolls his eyes. "Don't be dumb. I'm here cuz my family's moving back.” He finally rolls off of Haizaki, in favor of hauling him up by the collar and shaking him like a dog, which is not an improvement. "Our mutual acquaintances told me you'd been up to no good again,, so I thought I'd come round and knock some nanners back into you. The hell do you think you're doing, huh? Picking dumb fights and skipping class. And you're supposed to be in school right now, don't even argue, I know when the holidays ended."
Haizaki doesn't give a crap about school or what Nijimura thinks, and he's not the weakling he was in middle school either --even if all his instincts (and his locked knees) -- disagree. He sneers. "The hell's it to you?"
Nijimura's eyebrows raise. He looks surprised and amused. "Huh. You really have forgotten to be afraid of me."
Then he grins with all his teeth flashing. Haizaki's middle school brain, the one that still retains its very painful crash course in cataloguing the expressions Nijimura wears pre-beatdown, remembers this one to mean: "I've been looking for a fight for a while, thanks for giving it to me," along with,"I'm monitoring all your exits, so don't you even think of running, you little shit."
Haizaki abruptly remembers that middle school Haizaki might have had some good ideas: like not purposefully pissing off Nijimura.
Nijimura drags him up the stairs to his room and Haizaki is possessed enough by middle school Haizaki to change into his school uniform with minimal arm twisting. He draws the line at actually going to school because Nijimura told him to though, digging his heels in just before he's hauled out the front door.
He has things like dignity! Fucking shit, he should not be harassed like this in his own house. "Yeah, no." He tells Nijimura, crossing his arms.
"Dont be a five year old."
"Yeaaaah. No."
Nijimura’s eye twitches. "So we're doing this the hard way, huh."
The scrape lasts all of thirty seconds. Afterwards Nijimura hauls Haizaiki all the way to the station and onto the train and to his goddamn highschool, how the fuck does he even know where it is. He drops Haizaki off at the front gates, pats his shoulder, and tells him real sweet that if he even thinks of ditching he'll know, and then they'll be having words.
What an asshole. Haizaki stares at his back incredulously as Nijimura hops the fence to leave. What an asshole. But, unfortunately, middle school Haizaki has apparently regained control of Haizaki's legs, because he trudges into the school building and to his second period class.
Seriously. Fuck Nijimura.
Unfortunately, this turns out to be the new nightmarish normal.
“Don’t you have anyone else to bother?” Haizaki demands, belligerent, on the fourth consecutive day Nijimura shows up at early ass o’clock like an omen in black to drag Haizaki kicking and screaming to school. Literally . “Look, go fucking wail on Daiki or Akashi or something— you don’t even wanna know what bullshit they got up to after you to scrammed to America. Red went full on fucking psycho and then everyone started skipping practice like it was for chums.”
“Nice try,” Nijimura says, nonplussed. He’s bodily hauling Haizaki’s entire dead weight to the train station. “but I know those brats are at least sorting themselves out now. Can’t really say the same for you.”
Haizaki gives up. His bruises have bruises. At least he can at least sleep in class. Nijimura sure as hell isn't letting him doze off at home.
The most annoying thing is how Haizaki keeps losing these fights. It's not middle school anymore and he’s got a couple of inches and more bulk than Nijimura, who’s built along leaner lines and is wonderfully shorter than Haizaki now that he’s done with his growth spurt. He’s even got lessons in how to fight properly. After the basketball team Haizaki messed around with Judo and boxing out of sheer boredom-- and was great at them both, obviously. And yet. Not one fight goes even marginally in Haizaki’s direction.
On day five Haizaki puts on his uniform in the morning like a weird reflex in self-fucking defense, before realizing in horror that its the weekend and it only took Nijimura five days to get to him. He’s busy tearing off his mandatory slacks in absolute disgust when the doorbell dings thrice in fear-inducing succession, and he slowly stops, goes down the stairs, and warily peeks through the bolthole.
Nijimura is standing on his doorstep.
Are you kidding me, Haizaki thinks.
There is literally zero reason for Nijimura to come around today. Well, There is zero reason for NIjimura to come around any day, especially since he’s already gotten even, so maybe this is just the universe messing with Haizaki.
Scowling, Haizaki unlocks the door and affects a deliberately insouciant slouch. The effect is probably ruined by the fact that he has decided to wear his uniform this morning of all mornings, good fucking job, Shougo.
“Today ain’t a school day.”
“Yeah,” Nijimura agrees, “but you’re probably still up to no good.”
Haizaki had been planning on doing some ID-work today, so he’s not, you know, technically incorrect. Not that it’s anything of Nijimura’s buisness. He scowls. Nijimura jerks his head to the side, smiles with one corner of his mouth. “Come on, you little shit, let’s go to the park and play.”
Haizaki has not been winning any of his fights with Nijimura so far, or ever, so he grudgingly goes.
The snowfall from new years is starting to melt a little, and the streets are rough with slush. Haizaki stomps upstairs and changes into actual pants and puts on his coat and follows Nijimura to the basketball court that’s a block off from their old middle school. Its early morning and the sun is just beginning to warm the asphalt. The basketball hoops are significantly more dinged up than Haizaki remembers. Someone’s refreshed all the boundary lines though, so the chalk stands out colourful and sharp; it might have been Nijimura.
Nijimura dribbles the ball once, twice, cracks his neck. He grin at Haizaki, that same grin of promised violence, with all his teeth.
“Alright, punk, I hear you haven’t been practicing at all, so prepare to get murdered.”
He gets murdered.
That’s seriously unfair, considering Haizaki doesn’t think Nijimura had any time to practice either in the States, but somehow he’s gotten leagues better. There’s no special moves for Haizaki to steal and knock him off balance with either; Nijimura’s always been about straight up brute-forcing his way through the game, speed and reflex, stamina and power, and in the year and a half Haizaki’s not played him it's like he motherfucking levelled up.
“THis is why you have to practice ,” Nijimura says, at the end of the game, flicking him on the forehead. “Gap never would have gotten that big otherwise.”
“Oh shut up,” Haizaki scowls, sulking. He doesn’t know whether to be resentful or resentful. Maybe a little impressed. There is possibly a word that ecompasses both. Reminds him of those other freaks, with their ridiculous hair and ridiculous basketball.
Afterwards they go to the nearby combini, the one next to Teiko that they used to visit after practice a million times because it was closest and packed like a zillion energy drinks. Nijimura buys them both canned coffee and gatorade to cool off and replenish electrolytes with, and they go outside to the shade of a bench Haizaki hasn’t visited since middle school.
They talk. It surprisingly does not make Haizaki want to gag.
Well, mainly Haizaki talks, or complains— but Nijimura deserves to just sit there and take it after the bullshit of the past week. Mainly he talks about the clusterfuck that was the rest of their middle school basketball team. Haizaki enjoys trashing the so-called Generation of miracles. He is not at all jealous or resentful of their stupid progress and stupid titles, and he thinks to himself that it’s smugly ironic that Nijimura’s biggest basketball problem would be here, communicating to him the absolute fuck-ups that became of Nijimura’s golden underclassmen.
“And you don't wanna know what they did to Meiko during Nationals in third year,” he sneers. “Although honestly, it was a work of fucking art— who knew those goody-two-shoes could be so fucking brutal, huh? Makes me really wanna level up my own game in the mind-fuckery depart— fuck! Stop punching me, dammit!”
He clutches his shoulder. Nijimura rolls his eyes. “Then stop trying to piss me off on purpose.”
“Oh shut the fuck up, I’m only filling you in on what you missed.”
“You’re being a little shit, is what you are.”
“If you think I’m being a shit, you really should hear what those other guys are doing.”
Nijimura snorts. “I actually am making an effort to get caught up,” he says. “But I’m trying to get an unbiased point of view of what happened.”
“Are you calling me biased?”Haizaki says, offended.
“Are you saying you’re not?”
“You’re not gonna get anything like roses and rainbows outta the others either. It actually was that messed up.”
“I know.” Nijimura makes a face, and then sighs. “ I’ve been talking to people.”
“Like who?”
“Apart from you? Murasakibara. Midorima. Momoi texted me out of the blue yesterday. Something something Aomine becoming you 2.0 and Akashi having issues—except none of them can seem to put into words what those issues actually are. ” He cracks his neck. “At this point I’m thinking of going to Akashi’s place myself just to see what the hell is up.”
Haizaki thinks about telling him about the winter cup preliminaries, about Akashi nearly taking Kagami Taiga’s eye out, just to rub it in, but he’s pretty sure he’s already mentioned it and Nijimura had only rolled his eyes and ignored him. Best to let him see for himself. Nijimura’s always been kind of blind when it came to Akashi Seijuuro. It might even be fun.
He props his foot on his knee.
“Nothing about Tetsuya or Ryouta?”
Nijimura shrugs. “Momoi said they’re doing alright, unlike the rest of you chucklefucks. Anyways,” he adds, “they weren’t mine, not really. Akashi was the one that found them and fed them and indoctrinated them into the joys of basketball and stuff.”
“Like ducklings, huh.”
“You should have seen yourself at thirteen, duckling.”
“I was never a duckling,”
“No, no, you were definitely the ugly one.”
“I was not.”
Nijimura laughs, suddenly. “You definitely were. You should have seen it from my side, kid. The five of you, with your ridiculous hair and ridiculous basketball, walking into Teiko’s court at tryouts like you owned it.”
Haizaki doesn't say anything. He doesn’t really care about Teiko’s stupid basketball club anymore, obviously, but it’s still weirdly nice to hear someone acknowledge it. That he had been a part of the generation of miracles, one of Teiko’s exalted first strings, before Ryouta had butted his perfect golden face in.
"Anyways," Nijimura continues, " I finally got my paperwork sorted out, so I'll be starting classes again come monday."
Haizaki's ears perk. "What, you finally got better things to do than wail on me?"
"Someone needs to keep you in line."
So that's that , Haizaki thinks, when he leaves the park. Not even Nijimura can keep hounding him with full time school of his own unless he's decided to go delinquant himself.
Good riddance.
Except, on Monday, Nijimura shows up on Haizaki doorstep again, and he’s wearing Fukuda Shogo’s uniform.
Haizaki opens the door. Haizaki closes the door.
Haizaki would love to pretend this isn't happening and just leave the door closed, but last time he did that was in middle school and Nijimura had just kicked the damn thing open.
And if he breaks the lock Haizaki's gonna have to explain to his mother why the door is broken, whereupon she'll probably find out that Nijimura's back in town and in Haizaki's business again. For reasons that completely escape Haizaki, she likes NIjimura. She would probably give him a house key.
He opens the door again.
“You’re going to my school? " Holy shit, forget the last week, this is his actual nightmare come to life: being in the same academic institution again as Nijimura Shuuzou. “Why? Why would you do this to me, asshole? Why would you do this to yourself, holy shit.”
Haizaki is like, 95 percent sure Nijimura does not actually enjoy dragging his ass places, which is why it has always been mystifying why he makes it his job to.
“Stop making like you're so fucking special, this was just the closest non shitty sports school to my house."
The fact that Fukuda Sogo was close enough that Haizaki could skip home at any time of day within fifteen minutes had majorly contributed to Haizaki's decision to attend. Haizaki and Nijimura live in the same neighbourhood. Fuck. Fuck . Obviously, what contributed to Nijimura's decision to hop home at short notice was significantly different from Haizaki's, probably something sentimental like helping his family in the case of an emergency or something, but the end result is still the same.
"Jesus motherfucking son of a bitch," he says, appalled that his own logic has turned on him like this.
Nijimura cuffs him over the back of his head. "Swear to god, you need to rinse your mouth out with soap. "
" You telling me not to swear, asshole?"
Nijimura rolls his eyes. They go to the station, bustling at this hour, and he catches the canned coffee and melon bread Nijimura tugs from a vending machine and tosses to him.
"Right," Nijimura says, after they've reached the school gates. "Ill see you at basketball practice."
"Er," Haizaki says.
"I know you haven't been going to practise, but i thought i'd be taking things one step at a time," Nijimura continues, squinting at what looks like his new schedule. Haizaki glances at it over his shoulder; his first class is Japanese history. Haizaki thinks about leading him on a wild goose chase to the opposite end of the school, but the retribution probably isn’t worth it.
He is determined not to be helpful however, and it doesn't seem Nijimura expects him to be; he wanders off to the school office and leaves Haizaki to his own fucking classes.
Math. Japanese Literature. English. Fourth period comes and goes.
Haizaki contemplates forging himself a new identity and pissing off to America in lieu of basketball practice, but with the way his life is going, Nijimura might genuinely go and track him down there.
So he goes to basketball practice.
Fukuda Sogo’s basketball captain is this tall dull guy named Hideki Ishida. He’s quiet and serious and ox-like, ridiculously boring, but the look on his face when Haizaki actually show up at the gym in uniform marginally makes up for Haizaki’s sheer humiliation.
Nijimura is already there, talking to the coach, which is some guy whose name Haizaki has not even deigned to remember. He stomps over with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and demands brusquely, “alright you asshole, now what?”
“Now you go and run drills with the rest of your fucking teammates, you little shit,” Nijimura says without missing beat, or in fact even turning around to look at Haizaki.
Haizaki contemplates getting beaten up in front of the loser basketball team versus slinking off and following Nijimura’s orders like he’s Nijimura’s bitch.
His bruises twinge. One of these options, they remind him, involves not being beat up again .
In the end he picks up a basketball and goes to practise layups on the other side of the gym, where the rest of the first-stringers warily clear way for him. At least some people still know who’s boss around here.
Ten minutes later, Nijimura wanders over. Boring captain Ishida is with him, although his gaze is mostly trained on Haizaki like he's still not quite believing his eyes.
“You’re his captain right?" Nijimura says. " Look, if he steps outta line or tries to pick a fight just knock him a hard one. He's a lot more bark than bite."
"Excuse you," Haizaki snaps.
Nijimura cuffs him over the head. Haizaki scowls belligerently and goes mum.
"I'm going to tryouts now, so actually listen to your betters for once and get a training schedule sorted.”
Haizaki squints at him. "You're doing what now?"
"Tryouts?"
" Why ?"
"To show off my skills so I can join this basketball team, swear to god I did not hit you that hard." Nijimura-- former captain of Teiko middle school basketball team and best power forward of his generation--says, as if that isn't enough to get him playing on any first string team in the country, and leaves for the opposite court.
And then he sails off, asshole, leaving Haizaki with Ishida fucking Hideki.
Ishida eyes Haizaki. Haizaki eyes Ishida back with hostility.
Haizaki only listens to Nijinura because Nijimura’ll beat the shit out of him otherwise. Ishida can't beat the shit outta Haizaki if he wanted to, and he sure as hell isn't better than Haizaki at basketball.
“You’re not actually going to listen to me,” Ishida notes, in his deep dumb voice.
Haizaki smiles, a baring of teeth. “Yeah, no. I’ll come up with my own training, thanks.”
Fukuda Sougo and Haizaki have an agreement. Haizaki does whatever he wants, provided he comes to official matches and helps score victory. That had… not worked out as hoped last season, because Haizaki’s former teammates are actually clinically insane for basketball. Whatever. It’s possible the coach and captain have regrets, settling for Haizaki, but good luck even getting to the Winter Cup without him, let alone matching one of those Teiko freak shows on the court. Oh wait .
Haizaki goes to watch Nijimura cream whatever suckers they’ve set him against in tryouts.
Of course, he passes with flying colours.
What this exactly means for Haizaki doesn’t fully occur to him until six o’clock in the morning of the following day, at which point it slams home like a sack full of bricks.
The crack ass of dawn is way too early for anyone to be awake, especially when they only hit the hay at midnight. Haizaki jerks fuzzily into cognizance at something that sounds like his doorbell going off incessantly in the distance, rolls over, and shoves his pillow over his head to block out the noise. A few seconds later, he realizes there’s only one lunatic who could possibly be ringing his stupid door at stupid o’clock and fuck fuck fuck its too early his mother is still in the house ! He dresses so fast its possible his shirt is hanging off backwards and skids down the stairs in absolute horror but it's too fucking late, she’s standing in front of the open door in a dressing gown and Nijimura is on the porch in front of her, looking like he got printed right out of a sports magazine.
“Hnnngrrrr,” Haizaki says.
“Good morning to you too,” Nijimura says.
“Shougo!” his mother says. “You should have told me Shuuzo-kun and his family moved back into the neighbourhood. And he says he’s on the same basketball team as you again, just like in middle school, isn’t that nice? You should bring your teammates home sometimes and introduce them, you know. You haven’t done so in ages. I keep worrying you’re not making any friends.”
“Mrrgh,” Haizaki says.
She looks him up and down and taps her tiny fist into her palm thoughtfully. “Ah, you must have early practice again, right? Don't let me keep you waiting.” She wanders into the kitchen to rummage for breakfast, leaving Haizaki to recover from his near faceplant down the stairs and glare daggers at Nijimura.
“You asshole,” he wheezes.
“Sometimes I really wonder how you two are related,” Nijimura remarks.
Haizaki rolls his eyes. Haizaki’s mother is a tiny porcelain faced and extremely absentminded woman named Yoko, who thinks delinquency is one of those character building phases that most children go through. She swears like a sailor in her sweet hummingbird voice and burns anything that can be possibly burnt in a kitchen and was probably in a gang when she was younger, which explains most things about both Haizaki and his sister.
Leaving all that aside, Haizaki’s mother, for reasons that completely escape Haizaki, really likes Nijimura. In middle school there were times they used to team up on him and if he could never go back to those days it would be too fucking soon, swear to god.
And yet. It seems those days have returned.
“You really have nothing better to do?”
“I live ten minutes away and your house is on my way to the station,” Nijimura says.
“Not what I meant!”
“Oh?”
Haizaki entertains fervent thoughts about punching Nijimura in his smug smirking face. He also entertains fervent thoughts about stomping back to his room and slamming the door shut and going back to sleep pretending this entire clusterfuck was just a really bad dream.
No such luck. His mother wanders back out with juice boxes and an anpan bun that she deposits into Haizaki’s hands, along with his backpack. She pats him on the shoulder with an expectant look. “Well then, off you go!”
And then promptly locks him out of the house, with only the brief addendum of: “and don’t be a stranger, Shuuzo-kun, tell your mother she’s welcome to visit!”
Haizaki looks at the retreating figure of his mother through the closed door of his own house, and then at the quiet street in front of him, piled with snow at its sides and so dark the deep blue-black of sky blends in with the colour of the asphalt. Only a few of his really masochistic neighbours have their lights already on, warm against the winter cold, with watery streetlamps picking up their slack and picking out the telephone lines crisscrossing overhead.
The scene is actually really familiar. Abruptly, he remembers the long days at Teiko, Nijimura coming around to drag him awake for early morning practice when the sun hadn't even bothered to rise yet, practice from six o'clock at dawn to six o'clock in the evening after classes had ended, six days a week and motherfuck was basketball a goddamn timesink of a sport if you were being gang pressed to actually take it seriously.
Visions of every stray minute of his free time being swallowed up by hoops and suicide runs reel past Haizaki's eyes.
When he whirls on Nijimura again, this time its in sheer bloody self-defense.
"No! No you asshole, we aren't doing this."
"What, morning practice?"
"Yes!" Haizaki explodes. "And afternoon practice! And weekend practice! And summer training camps and all those other training camps and all that other bullshit! Me and the school had a deal, I win matches for them and they didn't bother me with this extra bullcrap!"
Nijimura raises his eyebrows . "You lost against Kise in the Winter Cup. How were you planning to win any matches without practice?"
"I have things to do with my life that's not basketball," he hisses, "unlike you freaks ."
The only response that gets is a dismissive: "Whatever hokey you're playing on the side doesn't count, Haizaki."
Haizaki makes a noise of inarticulate rage, and lunges at him.
Unfortunately, that fight ends the same way all of Haizaki’s fights with Nijimura usually end. But Haizaki is furious enough —who does Nijimura think he is , deciding he can just waltz back into Haizakis life and start bossing him around and making all his life choices for him after he'd left— that he gets a few solid punches in before he’s summarily flattened into the bruisingly cold snow.
Nijimura’s fingers dig painfully into Haizaki’s cornrows, his weight settled so that no matter how hard Haizaki trashes, he’s not getting the leverage necessary to buck him off.
“I hate you,” Haizaki wheezes, “so much.”
And then, because he knows how to pick his battles, announces:
“I quit.”
“No you won't,” Nijimura says automatically.
“Yes I will,” Haizaki snaps.
“So what, you’re just giving up?”
“Yes!”
“You think I’m just going to let you? ”
Haizaki’s voice hits a register that he will, in the future, forever deny accessing. “You did before! Or was it different because I was kicked out huh, that what it is? Fuck Seijuro and Ryouta anyways!”
The pressure on his head briefly intensifies. Haizaki tries to crane his head, with no success, as Nijimura leans forwards, breath hot against Haizaki’s ear.
“Listen, to stupid brat,” he says lowly, a tracework of fury sparking up his voice. “I had a zillion things on my plate then, and I’m not going to apologise for putting my family first over hauling your delinquant-ass around when I had zero energy for it. That was then and this is now. If you think you can get rid of me that easily, you are are even dumber than your new haircut looks.”
“Why would you even bother ,” Haizaki bursts out, and Nijimura makes a noise that’s almost exasperated .
“Because you have more talent in your pinky finger than most athletes have in their entire bodies!" He says, irritated, like it was obvious . " You could make so much of yourself if you only fucking tried . And unlike you I don't plan to give up. There's one season left and I don't care what kind of monster teams they have, I'm not planning to lose to my former underclassmen without a fight.” He shakes Haizaki by the collar. “And neither should you.”
Haizaki stares dumbly, head lolling back and forth to Nijimura's furious diatribe. Nijimura's teeth are bared, a crescent of white, and his eyes are narrowed with the same completely manic glitter for victory that Haizaki's become accustomed to seeing in ex-Teiko lunatics.
“Well? ” Nijimura demands. “Do you plan to just give up, you snot-nosed punk?”
You have more talent in your pinky finger than most athletes have in their entire bodies
Haizaiki knows this, obviously. Haizaki is one talented motherfucker. Haizaki can pick up a new skill by glancing at it once; Haizaki can make sure his opponent never uses that move again in the same match. Haizaki is the boss; his coaches know it, his school knows it, his teammates know it, he knows it. He's just never heard it from Nijimura before, that's all.
You could make so much of yourself if you only fucking tried.
Maybe Haizaki's been smacked around in the head one too many times, because it sounds kinda different, coming from Nijimura.
Haizaki’s head spins and his mouth tastes of cold loose snow and gritty black asphalt. Nijimura hoists him up by the collar, the pre-dawn light making him look like some black-cloaked wraith of basketball vengeance past or whatever stupid metaphor Haizaki can’t quite come up with at this moment.
Haizaki decides to punch Nijimura square in the face.
Nijimura twists so that the blow glances off his cheekbone instead of breaking his nose. Haizaki uses the momentary distraction to twist out of his deathgrip, scrabbling away and then rolling to his feet. Do you plan to give up do you plan to GIve UP repeats in his head like the world’s stupidest playback reel. He bares his teeth right back at Nijimura. He knows what Nijimura’s doing, reverse psychology at its finest. But if the fucking asshole wants to play it that way: never let it be said that Haizaki’s ever run away from somebody’s double dare.
“Fine!” he snarls, scrubbing away the blood from his nose. “Fine! I’ll go to practice. But you better not weigh me down when I kick Ryouta and everyone else’s asses in, shithead.”
Nijimura snorts. “You can say that to me when you actually beat me in a one-on-one for once.”
At the train station Nijimura gets him iced coffee from the vending machine for his bruises, and Haizaki swears all the way to Fukudo Sougo as the train jostles every damn bump. Nijimura tells him to stop being such a big baby; Haizaki contemplates pouring soured milk into his locker. He doesn’t say anything about the absurd and ridiculous little glow he feels in his belly; about the flush of tingly pride of being acknowledged by Teiko’s goldenboy forward. If Nijimura really wants Haizaki’s help in beating his old underclassmen into the floor, who is Haizaki to deny him delicious, amazing, victory?
He’s going to enjoy the look on Ryouta and Akashi’s faces, that’s for certain.
Haizaki smiles.
“You’re thinking something stupid again, aren’t you,” Nijimura remarks.
“Oh shut up,” Haizaki grumbles.