Chapter Text
Kuroko didn’t understand.
Kuroko would never understand.
He was always the one who couldn’t comprehend the feeling of the burning inferno raging with passion throughout your body, suddenly disappearing. The burning sensation of excitement flooding your senses when you get a basket, or when the constant praises from everyone around you continues to fuel your desire to play basketball, washing away in the dark abyss. Like a bonfire being washed out.
The fire that once ignited you and your every being had disintegrated, and the warmth it radiated had disintegrated along with it. All that was left was the never-ending cold. Every basket had no life, the praise didn’t feel like anything to you anymore, the exhilaration when you dribbled the ball had been replaced with numbness and deprivation.
It was like a blizzard. Your feet trying to push through the heavy snow, your hands clutching your clothes tighter at a desperate attempt to feel an ounce of warmth you solely yearn for, your eyes blinded by the sickeningly white snow, the raging wind that made you forget what warmth felt like and continued to penetrate you further into the snow as if you aren’t already drowning.
Kuroko had seen this happen to Aomine. He had seen how he had lost the sparkle in his eyes, and how his smile and laughter was an absence he never knew could disappear. The guy who hadn’t given up on him, who made him love playing basketball, was gone. Just like that. Instead, he became a shell of who he once was, hollow and empty with no known existence of the fire that once fueled him
“I understand how you feel, but-”
“Really now? What is it you understand? Enlighten me! How exactly could a powerless wimp like you understand anything about how I’m feeling?”
The words that Aomine had said to Kuroko that day still lingers in the back of his mind, the phrase echoing constantly.
What was it that he didn’t understand?
Was it the ability to play without having to rely on your teammates? Was it the capability of scoring on your own instead of depending on your passes to earn what it takes to win?
Or… what if he wasn’t able to understand what Aomine meant because Kuroko knew that he was falling behind everyone else?
Before Kuroko developed his phantom shot, he always had to rely on his passes and the others to score points during his years in Teiko, but when the team dynamic slowly started to fall apart due to his teammates scoring by themselves, Kuroko’s style of basketball that revolved around teamwork and dependability was rendered useless.
After Kuroko quit the Teiko basketball team, He fell into a deep hole, one filled with eternal darkness that consumed him because there wasn’t a light to shine and fill the void for him anymore. How can he call himself a shadow when he doesn’t have a light to support?
Maybe Akashi was right.
Perhaps it was because the light beamed so bright that it absorbed everything in its path, leaving the shadow to be devoured by its blinding radiance. Maybe that is the reason he can’t call himself a shadow, let alone a part of the Generation of Miracles. Aomine was able to demolish teams by himself, Akashi was revolving himself around victory and leaves no exception for defeat, Midorima and Kise slowly drift away from the team dynamic as they adapt to the team’s new policy, and Murasakibara is following into Aomine’s footsteps by skipping practice.
Everyone had removed teamwork from their vocabulary, and slowly, removed themselves from their sacred bond as each of their individual unique talents blossomed during their independent plays on the court. And as for Kuroko, he too also felt himself slowly drift away from them, as their talents continued to outshine him, leaving him behind to rot in his own self despair.
Worthlessness and loneliness ate Kuroko alive. He would gaze longingly when he would walk past the basketball court on his way home, he would mourn the curve of the basketball, he would have flashbacks when he would watch others give a pat on their teammates back when they scored a point.
At some point, he couldn’t take it anymore.
One cold summer night, Kuroko suddenly found himself leaning against a pole near the basketball court on his way home. Hot wet tears burned his eyes as they streamed down his pale face. The pounding ache in his chest was too overwhelming to handle, and his mind couldn’t stop torturing him with the pain of losing not only what he had with his closest friends, but also slowly losing his love for the sport that made the best of his middle school years no matter how desperately hard he grasped onto it.
It was dark out already, and god knows how late it is. Kuroko pushed himself off of the pole, a mark left on his forehead. He faced towards the bustling view of city lights that illuminated the entirety of the city.
The moon shone unexpectedly very bright tonight, its pale complexion stood out perfectly as it glimmered among the dark indigo night sky despite the city’s overwhelming city lights, producing a good amount of light pollution.
It's strange how the moon can be so luminescent and radiant even though its recognition and comparison towards being the “shadow” of the sun, who’s known for its intense brightness.
Still, the only reason the moon was able to radiate such light was because of the sun, whose own radiance is bouncing off of the moon. While the moon cannot produce its own light, it continues to shine thanks to the sun, causing the moon to be recognized by its beauty and complexion. Perhaps maybe the sun was helping the moon shine and be acknowledged too.
But in the end, the sun continued to emit light, so much light that the moon was outshined, but the moon too could not handle its blinding and overwhelming luminosity.
Maybe the moon wasn’t meant to shine at all. It wasn’t a star like the sun, and it can’t produce light on its own. The moon was just a large rock, not a raging and burning body of scorching plasma like the sun.
Perhaps that’s why the moon and the sun will never understand each other's complications. The moon will never know how to create their own light and how to understand what it’s like to generate endless radiation, while the sun continues to exhaust themselves from producing so much radiation, never knowing when to stop.
Just like how Kuroko will never understand Aomine’s words that day due to their distinct levels and plays in basketballs, because just like the sun and the moon, Aomine will continue to shine and leave Kuroko behind.
Which is why Kuroko will never understand.