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It is after the closing ceremony of the Winter Cup ends and when the ringing of the music and cheering of the crowd is only just beginning to subside in their ears when a foreign news team assails Seirin on their way out.
They haven’t even recomposed themselves enough to muster a ‘who are you’ before a too-chirpy young woman with hair ten shades blonder than Kise’s, enough powder to coat a football field and a shirt that cuts far too low for anyone’s liking sticks a microphone into Kuroko’s face.
She asks him a reasonable enough question for news standard.
“The so-called ‘Generation of Miracles’ is making huge waves! How does it feel like having faced all your ex-teammates in this year’s Winter Cup?”
In English.
In March, evening is the best time to be out.
Spring is melting away the last remnants of winter just as quickly as the sakura trees are going into full blossom. Sunset is an oil pastel masterpiece of orange and pink, just as warm and joyful as the breeze toying with your hair.
It’s quietly serene, and you can feel the city passing you by.
Or at least, that’s how it should be.
“Why are we here,” Hyuuga says, and his question comes out more like a statement than anything because he doesn’t actually expect anyone to have an answer.
But of course, Kuroko, who is above many things a caring and responsible underclassman, dutifully replies, “Because the coach decided we need to expand our cultural horizons.”
“Let me rephrase that: why is Touou here as well,” Hyuuga tries again.
“Because Momoi-san caught wind of this,” Furihata answers brightly, sneaking a fry off Kawahara’s plate.
“Why are we at Maji’s Burgers,” Hyuuga says, because third time’s always the charm.
“Because there’s nowhere else big enough to fit all of us… senpai,” Kagami says.
Hyuuga is just short of cutting something with the cheap plastic knife on his tray when Riko stands straight up and joins Momoi at the head of the table. “Alright, everybody, thank you for being here today—”
“Oi, Satsuki! What the hell am I even doing here? You said we were going to buy a Mai-chan photobook!” Aomine half-yells.
“You wouldn’t have come any other way!”
“Damn straight, you old woman!”
Momoi scoffs, lost for words for a moment, but recomposed herself twice as quickly. “Who was the one who failed his last English test?”
“Sure as hell ain’t me.” Aomine looks suspiciously in the opposite direction and suddenly seems to find the big menu display is the most interesting thing in the whole wide world.
“You got a 12, Aomine-kun!”
“Then why the hell is he here?” Aomine points an accusing finger in Imayoshi’s (and Wakamatsu’s) general direction.
“Because he actually got an A! You know A? The first letter of your name in English?”
Riko clears her throat louder than was necessary and jumps in front of a fuming Momoi. “Yes, as I was just saying, thank you for being here today for English 101. We’re actually just waiting for the instructor to arrive, so yeah, make yourselves at home for a bit!”
Momoi sighs a grateful thank you to Riko before she returns to a ranting Aomine, and Riko is silently grateful she doesn’t have any of that to deal with.
“Yeah, yeah,” she says before getting any questions, sliding into her seat, “To everyone who’s wondering, Touou got interviewed by the same news team who pretty much got nothing because nobody there can string a sentence in English. We only barely got saved by Kagami-kun!”
It isn’t ten minutes later that the doors to the outlet slide open.
Their heads all snap up to look at the newcomers, and Hyuuga puts his face in his hands. “Why are they here. Why is everybody here,” he says, making a rather animalistic noise to make up for his lack of human words.
“Senpai, what happened to your punctuation?” Kuroko asks, taking a small bite of his burger.
“Leave me alone, Satsuki! Just because this guy,” a finger at Wakamatsu’s face, “got a B doesn’t mean anything! We didn’t even get through that interview!” Wakamatsu looks positively murderous.
“It’s a lot better than your F, Aomine-kun!” Momoi huffs.
“You know what’s a B? She’s a size B!” Aomine points at Riko.
Riko and Hyuuga silently make a note to ‘teach these freshmen brats how to fucking respect their senpai’ somewhere along English 101.
At the door, Kasamatsu raises a delicate eyebrow. “This is quite an interesting party, Kise.”
Kise only laughs sheepishly, and earns himself a whack over the head and an angry “so why am I here?” in the process.
“Why are you all here,” Hyuuga says, about to give up all hope on humanity and the supposed ability of fast food to bring people together, or so Riko says.
Kuroko is about to answer (and comment on his missing question marks), but shuts up when Hyuuga tells him darkly to zip it or die.
Midorima seems equally mortified, a bright-eyed Takao on his left and Murasakibara noisily munching away on his right. Kasamatsu blatantly looks like he’s trying hard not to throttle Kise, who conveniently happens to have gotten quite the punch under his eye.
“I believe we are here to educate ourselves in English, are we not?” Akashi remarks, frighteningly calm.
Momoi seizes her window of opportunity – two seconds of silence. “Yes, that is precisely right, Akashi-kun! Most of us drew complete blanks for the interview with that foreign magazine that managed to get all our teams after the Winter Cup. Himuro-san has kindly agreed to teach us basic English tonight, and Kagami-kun will be helping him because they both lived in America once!”
(In truth, Momoi had personally took a train to Akita and bought a family pack of Murasakibara’s favourite snack to pacify him to pacify Himuro, but hey, nobody needs to know that.)
“So we’ll start off with basic greetings, yes? Hello everyone!” Himuro begins, and the chorus that greets him isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Maybe the enunciation of ‘everyone’ could be a bit better, but that could be easily remedied.
An hour later, he’s graded their Hello everyone a B+, given up on How are you doing? and It’s good to hear that, and is currently on Me too.
“Okay, let’s try it again, shall we? Me too,” Himuro drags the (two) syllables out slowly. A chorus of ‘meh tu’ reaches his ears and even Kagami can’t help but stifle a laugh.
“Guys, guys, it’s not ‘meh’ it’s ‘me’, meeeee,” he says, voice cracking a little with desperation.
By now, a grand total of six people in the room are actually trying, and the counter girls are giving him the strangest looks.
His meek attempt at “Taiga, help,” is drowned out by Takao scrambling to get Midorima back in his seat.
“You have wasted an hour of my time, Takao. I will be going to look for tomorrow’s lucky item,” Midorima says curtly, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
Takao crosses his arms. “Well then, you’re going to pull your own damn cart; I’m not going yet.”
“Takao.”
“Shin-chan.”
“Chickening out already, Midorima?” Kagami calls from where he and (a very frazzled) Himuro are standing. “Would’ve thought someone who looks brainy like you could do better.”
“How dare you imply—” Midorima seethes, appalled.
“You’ll have to win against me one-on-one before I’m letting you out of here!”
“This isn’t even about basketball!”
“Chickening out of a challenge too, now?”
Midorima looks almost strangled, as if he’s trying to make up for his loss of words by trying to recite the dictionary all at one go. In the end, Takao manages to get him back into his seat, while Kasamatsu struggles to get Moriyama back from flirting with the counter girls in everyone’s moment of distraction.
“This is becoming a Very Difficult Issue that I am not prepared to handle. This is True Culture Shock,” Himuro mutters under his breath to Kagami, on the verge of a small breakdown.
“Tatsuya, you can kinda stop, nobody’s really listening anyway—”
“I can’t do that! Momoi-san was nice enough to come all the way to Akita. I will not be remembered as The Teacher Who Couldn’t Teach English.”
“But it really could just be that they’re not ready to—” Kagami attempts to console him.
“Taiga, this is a Very Distressing Situation.”
“You look constipated. Do you kind of need the bathroom—”
Izuki raises his hand. “Yes, a question!” Himuro jumps, almost too delighted.
“Why are you talking like that?”
Kagami clears his throat. “Tatsuya tends to talk in Capital Letters when he gets Very Distressed.”
Kasamatsu buries his face in his hands. “I’m going, Kise,” he sighs, refraining from saying ‘this is very very pointless’ out of two parts politeness, one part sympathy for Himuro, who really did seem a decent enough person.
“Senpai, don’t go! You’re going to college soon; you never know when you’ll need English! What if you get a scholarship to America? What if you go pro-ball? What if I have a shoot in New York and nobody comes with me and you’re my last hope?” Kise almost wails.
Kasamatsu does sit down in the end, if only to stop the already-mortified five-year-old boy at the back from staring at them any longer.
“We should Make An Effort to Learn Together,” Kiyoshi chirps brightly through a mouthful of cheeseburger.
At the table next to him, Aomine chomps very unhappily on his own burger next to a nearly-shrieking Satsuki about how he really needs to pull up his grades – starting with English – or be off the regulars’ bench forever.
“I signed up for a Mai-chan photobook, Satsuki,” he chants repetitively.
Kise dashes over faster to the Touou table than Kagami’s drive at full speed. “You can have mine instead then!”
Kiyoshi’s “Do you just happen to carry around a copy of that everywhere you go or is that magic?” is drowned out by Aomine’s loud “I don’t want anything with your face on it, you idiot! You aren’t half as pretty!”.
Akashi only nods attentively. “Capital Letters, yes. This is most interesting. I will make it An Important Point to bring up in the next team meeting.”
Himuro decides a fresh new start would be best for everybody. “Can we move on to grammar, everyone? How about introductions? I am from Japan.” Kagami gives Himuro bonus points for still hanging in there.
Akashi speaks, and everyone falls dead silent because it’s the most coherent – most incorrect – thing anyone’s said in the past hour. “I believe you are incorrect. It is not I, but me.”
Himuro blinks once. “No, me shouldn’t be used to start a sentence, Akashi-kun. They both mean the same thing, but are used differently.”
“Are you telling me I am mistaken?” Akashi narrows his eyes dangerously. Takao scoots further away from him.
Kagami isn’t sure if Himuro made the right decision by saying, “Yeah, because you are.”
“I read this in the textbook yesterday. I cannot be wrong.”
“W-Well, you are this time, Akashi-kun,” Himuro replies rather hotly.
“I always win. Therefore,” Akashi patiently sips his milkshake and takes a polite bite of a fry, “I am never wrong.”
Himuro gives in and gives up.
Murasakibara shuffles over to the Seirin table and tugs Himuro’s sleeve. “Muro-chin, your hair’s all standing up straight,” he says bluntly.
(Aomine and Momoi stop bickering for a moment. “How much do you think Akashi-kun scored for his English tests?” she whispers to him.
“I don’t think you should ask him.”
“Yeah, probably not.”)
Himuro makes one final attempt at bowing out gracefully. “You should all know that English is a very important part of your working life and is a necessary skill for the future! Especially since more and more international magazines are being interested in our high school basketball, which is really why we’re here in the first place and so yes, there are lots of benefits learning English—”
Moriyama raises his hand.
“Like getting hot girls in university?”
Kagami thinks Tatsuya looks just about ready to cry.
“It really would take a miracle to teach them all,” Himuro sighs, slinking back into his seat, more exhausted than he’d be after five straight hours of practice.
“Can’t help it, it’s like us trying to learn traditional Japanese, I guess,” Kagami answers, offering his shake to Himuro.
“Taiga, is it like this every day?” Himuro asks, genuinely curious, to which Kagami replies, “Yeah, kinda. Don’t bother, man, they aren’t going to listen, at least not tonight.”
The two of them nod in agreement only to realise pretty much everyone is staring at them. “What?” Kagami shoots indignantly.
“What are the two of them saying?” Takao murmurs, voice laced with wonder.
“It’s like an advanced alien language,” Kise agrees.
“Eh~~~ Muro-chin is an alien?” Murasakibara sounds genuinely surprised.
“If you guys were actually listening earlier, you might have an idea!” Himuro cries exasperatedly.
Murasakibara pats him on the head. “Don’t worry, Muro-chin, maybe they’re all still hungry from basketball and won’t listen. Want some candy?”
Himuro notices Kuroko sitting silently alone, finishing the last of his second vanilla milkshake, and moves to sit closer to him while Kagami and Midorima duke it out in a verbal battle. “Kuroko-kun, right? Thank you for taking care of Taiga,” he smiles sincerely.
“Likewise,” Kuroko answers politely, then almost as an afterthought, adds, “It’s okay, Himuro-kun. Each school has its own dysfunctions. Don’t be upset.”
Himuro gestures in the general direction of Seirin. “It must be nice, huh, being in Seirin? Can’t be that bad with Taiga there.”
Kuroko turns to follow his gaze.
“Get out of my face, Kiyoshi, I saw that last burger first!” Hyuuga snaps.
“You’re so mean, Hyuuga, you can’t even split that with me?” Kiyoshi wails sadly.
“Like hell I would!”
“Cut it out, both of you!” Riko reprimands.
“Hey, Hyuuga, how do celebrities stay cool? They have many fans!” Izuki says.
“Izuki, I never want to see you again.”
“Hey, Hyuuga, why can’t a man go hungry in a desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there.”
“Izuki, die.”
Kuroko can only cough uneasily. “That is a matter of perspective, I think, Himuro-kun.”