Chapter Text
Riko stirred her milkshake, gaze fixed on the foamy pink bubbles of strawberry bliss, and tried her damnedest not to meet the eyes of the boy sat across from her.
It was always like this with Izuki. They’d known each other for a while now, ever since the first year of middle school—long enough to be familiar with each other but never quite comfortable the way that friends were. The problem, she thought, was that Izuki’s gaze pierced. He saw everything like it had been laid out exclusively for his perusal, and though he had tact enough to wield that knowledge with immense care, he never forgot anything that he saw. And the delicacy with which he handled all that information was even more off-putting. It felt like she was being dissected, but it didn’t hurt. It only exposed her in a way she’d never asked for. All that understanding came just from looking into his eyes.
Which was why she was trying not to. She didn’t need the reminder. She didn’t need that awful certainty and the soft, empathetic sorrow that would no doubt be splashed across his face, while his mouth spewed platitudes that would’ve soothed anyone else but barely even reached her eardrums. She didn’t need for her hope to be crushed, even though at this point, it had already crumbled into pieces.
“Kiyoshi’s trying really hard,” Izuki said after the silence had gone on too long. He never could stay quiet for longer than five minutes. Silence seemed to disturb him, set him on edge. Then again, maybe it was just because it was Riko sat across from him. They’d only ever spoken in passing, making polite conversation and discussing their mutual friends, so she supposed it was only fair that he had little idea of how to navigate a silence with her. “To get him back.”
“That so?” Riko stirred her milkshake some more. She took a deep gulp so she wouldn’t have to talk. But Izuki was watching her, an expectant look on his face, like she had something of value to add. She’d known he was a little naïve, but this really took the cake, didn’t it? “You think it’ll work, then?”
“That depends.” Izuki reached for another napkin and began to fold it into a paper crane. It was his third one of the evening, and they’d been here just over six minutes. (Yes, she was counting. Izuki was surprisingly good with his hands.) He hadn’t bought anything for himself but had been nice enough to pay for her milkshake. The lady at the counter had brought it out with a wink and a smile, but the purpose of their meeting was too bleak for either of them to feel even a vague sense of embarrassment about being mistaken for a couple. Not that Riko was sure that that emotion was even in Izuki’s dictionary, with his sense of humour. “Is it alright if I’m honest with you?”
“Of course.” Riko’s hands tightened around her cup of milkshake. The cold numbed her fingers pleasantly. “Please, feel free.”
“I think…” Izuki hesitated for a moment. “Well, I think it’ll be a miracle if it works.”
God, Riko hated that word. Miracle. She grit her teeth and said flatly, “I don’t think miracles happen.”
“I don’t, either,” Izuki agreed after a second. Riko’s head shot up, and she met his eyes for the first time tonight, disbelieving. “Not with Hyuuga at any rate.”
As soon as she looked at him, she remembered why she’d been avoiding it. A smile spread across his face, small and sad and knowing. When Izuki opened his mouth, he didn’t say, That’s why you hate basketball, or, in true Izuki fashion, A miracle to cure what was done by a miracle. That was great! Somehow, it was worse that way.
He said instead, “If Kiyoshi gets him back, that’s well and good.” His fingers stilled on his fourth paper crane. “If not, that’s fine too. I’m in the basketball club because I want to play basketball. No other reason.”
“But you came to Seirin.” Riko took another gulp of milkshake. Sweet went bitter in her mouth. “It’s a new school. You must’ve known they didn’t have any clubs to begin with. If you wanted to play basketball, you could have gone to a lot of places. You’re not bad at all, you know. They’d have taken you.”
He didn’t answer. She grit her teeth. “You realise what that means. Hyuuga-kun wasn’t the only one that quit.”
“…No.” Izuki took one of his folded cranes and began unfolding it. It tore under the strain, frail tissue paper barely holding together under the first folding. Unfazed, he picked up another and did the same thing. “I guess he wasn’t.”
It poured out of Riko like hot lava. “Then you must’ve known that coming here was as good as stopping. At least Hyuuga has the guts to turn his back on basketball completely. You can’t even decide, can you? What makes you think you’re any better than he is?”
“What makes you think any of this has to do with Hyuuga?” Izuki said, pushing aside the pile of tissue. When he looked up at her again, there was a dark spark in his eyes that she had never seen before. “You’re right, it’s true that I ran away. I was scared, and I blamed myself. When it feels like you can’t go anywhere, all you want to do is get out of that box you’re stuck in. I thought maybe it would be better if I didn’t play. At least not like this.”
She waited. He said, “But I was still stuck even without basketball.”
“So, what? You want me to unstick you?”
“Not really.” Izuki flattened his hands on the table. “I’m mostly unstuck now, but I don’t think anyone else could’ve done it for me anyhow. That’s just how that works.”
“Then what?”
“It’s not as complicated as you think.” He met her eyes again. “I’m not going to make bold claims like, We’ll make it to the top, or We will be the best. But I just think if we aren’t going to try, what are we playing for?”
“What are you saying?” Slowly, the picture began to form.
“I think you know.” He smiled, a small and sharp thing. It made him look like a new person. Or maybe that was who he’d always been, and she had just never seen it. “But since you asked, why wouldn’t we want to be the best at something we love? Seems a little silly playing just to play. Might as well join the neighbourhood association if I only wanted to shoot hoops for fun, no?”
“Not good enough.” It killed Riko a little to say it. The anticipation was hot and heavy in her belly as she watched Izuki, his eyes hungry like a bird of prey.
But she didn’t want to give it away just yet. You didn’t feed starving eagles by hand; they had to learn how to hunt.
Izuki frowned. Riko rolled her eyes and reached over to take one of the paper crane corpses, rolling it into a ball and throwing it at his forehead. It hit him right between his furrowed eyebrows, and she smiled in satisfaction. “I’ve seen you play, dumbass. You’re always going for the kill. Kiyoshi too. It’s not the two of you I was worried about.”
“We’ve only got five guys.” Izuki grinned back, easy and good-natured, then threw the paper ball back at her. It hit her in the exact same spot. “It can’t be that hard to infect the other three.”
“It’s not a virus.” Riko slurped her milkshake. “But if you’re so sure, well, I’d like to see you try.”
“And if we do?” he challenged, voice bright and eager, fire come alive. It made Riko’s insides turn to jelly, her skin prickling with excitement. Here was a creature so starved for victory he was willing to pry out her very guts to get it. That was what she liked to see. “You’ll be our coach?”
She leaned back and smiled at him. “I haven’t said anything yet. Impress me.”
“You’re on.” Izuki picked up his bag and rose, stretching. “I have homework first, though. Coach you later. Well, hopefully the other way around. Kitakore!”
“…” Riko was stunned into speechlessness. Izuki grinned, sheepish and shy, and scratched the back of his neck.
“Yeah, not my best work. I’ll work on it. Kitakore!”
And he was gone before Riko could react.
“None of them are,” she said faintly to the air, hoping the wind would carry her message. But if she skipped home that night and spent most of dinnertime quizzing her dad about basketball, no one had to know.
There was one thing Riko used to be certain about. The stars might change, the sun could die out, but Izuki and Hyuuga would always have their eyes stuck on each other. She’d given up on them—both of them, not just Hyuuga or Izuki who she didn’t know that well to begin with. Hyuuga had some degree of selfishness, but when it came to Izuki, she’d almost accepted that he would always put Hyuuga first. Wasn’t that why he had gone to Seirin, too?
But maybe the bird of prey had been looking elsewhere for some time now.
Kiyoshi was a strange one. It wasn’t that it was hard to get a read on him. It was just that they were so fundamentally incompatible that Izuki couldn’t understand him even though everything was laid out quite neatly. This was the sort of person who had steel behind a nice smile and would go to great lengths to get his way. Izuki wasn’t necessarily straightforward, but he didn’t get along with people like that very easily. Honestly, he knew Kiyoshi had only mentioned basketball in front of him because he’d already known that he played in middle school. What was unsettling was that he’d been able to predict that Izuki would take him up on it.
For all that Izuki would like to say it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision, he couldn’t lie to himself like that. Over the summer, he would go to the neighbourhood court every single day and shoot hoops until he was beat. Hyuuga came with him pretty often, but told him not to tell their other friends. He claimed it was just to kill time.
Izuki knew better, but he didn’t push. He never did with Hyuuga. After losing every match in middle school, Hyuuga had become touchier—easier to upset. Even Izuki, who always knew the right thing to say, seemed to step on a landmine with every word. It was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling.
At least they were still friends. Even if Hyuuga had given himself an unbelievably shit haircut and spent most of their walks home trying to convince Izuki to quit the team. The way he made it sound, it was like basketball was all Izuki talked about—even though, with his railing, it was actually quite hard to get in a word edgewise. Izuki wasn’t even sure if Hyuuga knew how many people there were on the team.
Hyuuga had never been easy—being his friend was like corralling a stallion with blinkers on—but it was so much worse when he tried to run away from it. If things kept going this way, in a year, Izuki wasn’t sure they would still be talking. They were in the same class for now, but Izuki highly doubted it would be the same after midterms anyway.
For now, though, Hyuuga went to the nearby arcade after classes and came back to travel home together after practice. It was a bit of extra effort he didn’t really need to make, but Izuki supposed he was just enough a part of the routine that Hyuuga wasn’t thinking about it much at the moment. Soon it would become clear to him that this was a waste of time. Soon they would stop going home together so often. Soon they would be waving at each other in the hallways, soon just a nod or a quick smile. Soon it would be, “How’s your sister doing?” instead of “Give this back to Aya-neesan,” and “See you around,” instead of “Are you coming for dinner?”. But for now, Hyuuga was still within reach, and Izuki would take what he could get.
He wasn’t the only one who thought that, though. As they rounded the corner, Hyuuga came into sight, reading a manga, his blond hair shading his face from view. When he saw that Izuki was accompanied by the rest of the team (Riko included since their conversation at Maji Burger), his face soured.
“Oh, look who it is!” Kiyoshi brightened. “Think he’s here to play? I bet he is!”
Before Izuki could say anything, he bounded over. Izuki didn’t bother to go check. He already knew how that conversation would go.
“Wanna play basketball?”
“No, go fuck yourself.”
“Come on, just one round!”
“I said go fuck yourself!”
And repeat. Hyuuga was in the middle of his third aggrieved curse when Izuki took him by the armpit and dragged him away.
“See you guys tomorrow,” he called over his shoulder. Kiyoshi pouted at him but waved anyway. Izuki rolled his eyes, a little fonder than he would like to admit, and quit frog-marching Hyuuga away. They walked in silence for a bit; Hyuuga didn’t seem to want to say anything, and Izuki wasn’t sure what he could say that wouldn’t send him flying off the handle, so he did what he had been doing more often lately and didn’t say anything at all.
“Want to get ices?” Hyuuga said suddenly as they passed a konbini. “My treat.”
“Uh…” Izuki glanced at him. “Sure.”
Before, he’d have poked him in the ribs and asked what he wanted out of him. Now, he didn’t know if it was the same Hyuuga. He didn’t know if Hyuuga wanted anything out of him at all. Maybe he just wanted to treat him to ices. Was it that Hyuuga changed too much, and Izuki didn’t know how to read him anymore? Was it that he was too used to who Hyuuga used to be, so even if new words were right there on the page, he was still reading from a text he memorised years ago? It was frustrating, and Izuki didn’t like it. He wasn’t accustomed to being frustrated by other people.
One girl came to mind, stubborn as the north wind, but he dispelled the thought of her posthaste.
“Look at that,” Hyuuga said as Izuki sucked down to the wood, the bitter dryness soring his tongue. “You won.”
“Huh?” Izuki turned his stick over, raising his eyebrows. Atari. Victory. “Oh.”
He didn’t like ices that much, and they lived a few stops away by train, so a new ice would melt by the time he brought it home. “You can have it if you want.”
“I’m not the winner,” Hyuuga said, and even someone who was blind and deaf could not have missed the bitterness in his face and voice. “Give me that.”
“I said you could have it…” Izuki murmured but gave it over anyway. With a cruel glint in his eye, Hyuuga snapped the stick and tossed the pieces into the dustbin against the far wall. By Izuki’s estimation—which was usually pretty accurate—it was about as far as the three-point line.
“You’ve still got it,” he commented. Hyuuga sneered, his lip curling.
“We’re not winners, Izuki. You should get it through your thick skull.”
He’d never been so direct. The hairs on the back of Izuki’s neck rose. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t you think you’re wasting your time?” Hyuuga was so close Izuki could slap him. His breath smelled like sugar and fake strawberry. His lips were flushed pink with sticky popsicle juice, but his cheeks were devoid of colour. “You’re not like the rest of these idiots. You’re—you’re different, don’t you get it?”
“Don’t I get what?” Izuki’s breath hitched. He took a step back, or tried to, but they had been leaning against the near wall outside the store. Hyuuga leaned impossibly closer.
“You’re better than everyone I know. A million times better than me.” He said it with a breaking ache in his voice. It was the stupidest thing Izuki had ever heard, and he’d heard Hyuuga say a lot of extremely stupid things, so this was kind of a momentous occasion. “But even then, you’re not like that. You can’t—”
His voice snapped. “Your hard work will be rewarded. What kind of idiot came up with that nonsense? An ordinary guy who works hard is just wasting his time!”
“By that logic,” Izuki pointed out, hating how close they were, “only people like Einstein should ever pick up a book.”
“That’s not how it works with basketball!” Hyuuga snapped. “It’s all talent—and if you were born a monster—and if you weren’t then good fucking luck going anywhere but the B-leagues.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Izuki said, finally starting to lose his temper, “that I can do what I want to do without it having to be about this ridiculous pity party you’ve been throwing for half a year now?”
Hyuuga looked like he’d been slapped. He drew back, and Izuki thanked his stars for it. “It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.” Izuki said it calmly, surprised at how easy it was. It felt like a dam had been opened, but at the same time, his head and heart were quiet. “Don’t you think you’re wasting your time with me then? I’m not about to change my mind. You’re working quite hard on me, but aren’t you just an ordinary man, too?”
Hyuuga scoffed, his eyes hardening. “You joined Seirin, too. There are tons of schools even in Tokyo that aren’t brand new and have a basketball team along with a good academic reputation. Don’t act like you didn’t quit.”
“I did quit.” Izuki was honestly shocked at how level his voice remained. “And then I decided to try again. I’m not forcing you to do anything. Why do you care so much about what I do?”
Something broke in the face Hyuuga was trying so hard to keep up. In a shaky voice, he said, “See if I care when you get your heart broken and come crying to me.”
“Who says I’ll come to you?” Izuki retorted. Hyuuga’s breath hitched in an awful way, and suddenly—
The kiss tasted like strawberries. There was something warm and wet on Izuki’s lips that wasn’t Hyuuga’s lips. It was salty, ruining the cold stickiness of the popsicle. Izuki got his wits about him and pushed Hyuuga off, gasping for breath.
“Dude, what the—”
Hyuuga gaped at him, stricken, eyes wide and watering. Then he turned and ran.
They stopped going home together after that.
“What’s with you two? Usually he’d turn right around and bitch about me to you.” Kiyoshi tilted his head, giving Izuki a long, discerning glance. Izuki, who was an extremely private person on the best of days, didn’t feel much like telling a new acquaintance that his best friend had kissed him and run away and then stopped talking to him entirely, so he just shrugged.
“I tried to talk to him about maybe joining the team. Now he just thinks you’ve seduced me or something.”
Kiyoshi gave him a look that said, Don’t give me that, and Izuki gave him a look right back that he hoped said, I’ll give you whatever I damn want to. Finally, Kiyoshi sighed deeply and shrugged.
“Do you want me to stop asking him then?”
“What?” Izuki blinked. “Um…”
“I mean, if things are weird…” Kiyoshi chewed his lip. “You’ve already said yes, and you’re pretty good. Hyuuga being there would obviously be ideal, but I wouldn’t want to put you in a bad position…”
It was kind of a novel experience having his feelings considered. Usually people around him just did things and expected him to roll with it because that was what he did, so Izuki got deeper into the habit of rolling with it, which he supposed didn’t help matters. But he didn’t really care in this case and said as much.
“I’m not sure you’re going to be able to get him on board,” he added honestly. “But maybe you’ll be able to convince him.”
It wasn’t like things were going to change. If anything, after what had happened, Hyuuga would just dig his heels in even more. But if Kiyoshi managed to succeed, then Izuki would just act normal around him. He would take the kiss as a simple lapse in judgment and move on.
There was a part of him that wanted to replay that moment every second of every day. That part was growing smaller and quieter with each passing hour.
“I’ll do everything I can,” Kiyoshi vowed solemnly. Then his eyes sparkled. “Speaking of the club, though—tomorrow’s the assembly.”
“Is it now,” Izuki said, dread mounting in his stomach. He wasn’t so sure this was what Riko meant when she said to impress her. “Do we really have to… I mean, there must be another way.”
“What other way?” Kiyoshi looked so nonplussed it made Izuki want to choke him. A saner way! But, fine then.
He was pretty confident that screaming it from the rooftop was just a turn of phrase, but he’d thrown himself into the same boat as Kiyoshi Teppei, of all people. He was fooling himself if he hadn’t anticipated the crazy that came with that sort of thing.
“One-on-one?” Izuki couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you serious? You actually got him to play?”
Kiyoshi’s face was glum. “I can’t believe he got a basket past me. And he says he doesn’t even practice!”
“That’s what you’re focused on?!” Izuki nearly grabbed him by the collar and choked him out but refrained just in time. “Dude, what do you mean you’re giving up? You said you’d chase him to the end of the world if you had to. You got him to play! That’s more than I’ve ever done!”
“I promised him I’d leave him alone if he got just one basket,” Kiyoshi said a little desperately. “I was sure he wouldn’t. I guess that was arrogant of me. He’s amazing. But the way he played didn’t seem like someone who wanted to quit….”
Izuki bit his lip, inhaled sharply, then said, “That’s his problem then.”
“What?” Kiyoshi’s eyes widened. Izuki grit his teeth and balled his hands up into fists.
“You heard me. That’s his problem. If he wants to play or doesn’t want to play, that’s up to him. You can’t drag him kicking and screaming even if he’s the best shooting guard in the universe. We have five people and only a few minutes before the morning assembly. Do you want to play or not?”
“Yeah…” Kiyoshi stared at him, a little dumbstruck. Izuki glanced at the clock, holding his breath. The other three were already out on the terrace, but Kiyoshi had made him hang back, hemming and hawing until he spit it out. “Yeah, I want to play.”
“Okay,” Izuki said, and grabbed Kiyoshi’s wrist. “Then we’re going to need a coach.”
Together, they burst out onto the rooftop. Koganei was screwing around with the foghorn, which Izuki grabbed out of his hand and dumped to the side. “We’re going to get in trouble for that!”
To which Koganei rejoined, “We’re already in trouble,” and honestly, that was a pretty astute observation. Izuki elected not to come back to that one and gestured towards their centre stage.
“Go for it, Kiyoshi. You started this.”
“Uhhh… alright.” Kiyoshi scratched the back of his neck, then stepped up and yelled, “Kiyoshi Teppei, class 1-C!”
Izuki sighed. He didn’t put much stock into embarrassment as an emotion, but even he had a limit, and this was so far outside the boundaries of that limit that he didn’t have the bandwidth to feel anything about it. Stepping up, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Izuki Shun, class 1-C!”
“Koganei Shinji, class 1-B! And Mitobe Rinnosuke, class 1-B!”
“Tsuchida Satoshi, class 1-D!”
“We, the newly formed Seirin Basketball Club, swear to become the best in Japan!”
Satisfied, Izuki made to step back when Kiyoshi continued, “And if we fail—”
No. But everyone else was doing it, too….
Fuck it. Might as well. Izuki bit back the lethal flash of embarrassment and screamed with the rest, “We’ll strip naked and confess to the person we like!”
Dead silence. Then the crowd burst into an uproar.
Izuki wanted to die, but more than that, there was something he wanted to see. He scanned the masses of students below with an urgency he could not explain. There was so much giggling and shouting and general chaos at their ridiculous announcement that he could hardly find her—but he managed it in the end, just moments before the vice principal threw the door open to bust them.
She was bent over double, laughing so hard it must hurt, red in the face. When she caught him looking, he saw that her eyes were shining. She shot him two thumbs-up.
The vice principal gave them an earful, but Izuki was hardly listening. It was difficult to pay attention when that picture of Aida Riko was stuck in his head, so full of life she was larger than it. As the scolding wound down, he nodded contritely and apologised and took responsibility as the vice-captain of the team, claiming that he and Kiyoshi should be the ones to serve detention while the others got off scot-free. The principal hummed and hawed about it, clearly something of a soft touch (although Izuki did suspect it had something to do with both him and Koganei being scholarship students), and eventually let them go with a slap on the wrist—they would be in charge of preparing next week’s assembly to ‘recognise the hard work of everyone who planned it’.
As they assembled in the gym after school for their first practice with their new coach, a few other guys hovered around the door. Izuki recognised them at once—these were the guys that had been interested at first, but had ditched after hearing about their sky-high aspirations of not only being the best in Japan but also literally shouting that dream out from the rooftop. Tentatively, they slipped into the gym, dressed in basketball shorts and shoes.
Placing a hand on her hip, Riko cocked her head and stared at them. “Who the hell are you guys?”
Satou, the skinny guy in the middle, trembled before her. “U—um, we want to be on the team.”
“Submit an application then,” she said dismissively. Izuki eyed them up, then spoke.
“Hey, guys. Sure you wanna be part of this?”
“Y—yeah! I mean—this morning… everyone thinks you’re crazy, but they also think, well….”
“It was kinda cool,” said Hori, taller and more muscular than his friend. He had a lazy air about him and chewed gum as he spoke, two things that instantly annoyed Izuki. “Like, didn’t you guys hear from your classmates?”
Izuki, Koganei, Kiyoshi, Mitobe and Tsuchida all exchanged exhausted glances. They had, in fact, spent the entire day hearing from their classmates… and their teachers… and the vice-principal before he handed over the gym keys he had been about to confiscate… and the custodians and the lunch ladies and literally everyone else at this accursed school. Really, did this guy think they were deaf and blind?
“Besides,” added Kitazawa, a sleazy-looking creature with snot dripping from his nose, “doesn’t hurt that guys on the basketball team are popular with girls.”
“I think you’ll have better luck with baseball,” Riko said drily. There was a reason that most of the second- and third-year boys at this school played baseball and tennis; though they were brand new, Seirin was known for their elite baseball and tennis programs. As a sister branch of an American school, they’d brought on a famous coach and heavily scouted the most talented of the middle-school bunch. You’d think basketball would be similarly adored with its popularity in the U.S., but no such luck. Then again, the Japanese basketball circuit was currently dominated by a bunch of middle schoolers, so maybe it was no wonder that Seirin’s management didn’t want to dip their toes into that river of piranhas. “What, couldn’t you get onto the team?”
The three deflated simultaneously. Kitazawa said a little weakly, “I mean, guys don’t only play sports to get with girls….”
But you sure do, thought the entire team at once.
“Isn’t it a bit of a crazy dream, though?” Satou jumped back in. “Being the best in Japan. With the Generation of Miracles and all… there’s only this year, and it’s not like we have that many people….”
“Yeah, it’s a bit out of reach, innit?” Hori blew a bubble.
Kitazawa tittered, high-pitched and creaky. “Maybe you should set your sights a bit lower.”
And suddenly Izuki understood. They weren’t here to join the team. They were here to prove to themselves that this wouldn’t work—because then they got to laugh along with the rest and be thankful that they didn’t get caught up in this nonsense. Then they wouldn’t have to be the guys who quit the basketball team because they were too scared to even try and live up to a big dream.
He turned around and said curtly, “Sorry. We’re actually not accepting club applications for the rest of the year.”
“What?” Satou’s face paled. Then he frowned. “Hey, you’re not the captain. Kiyoshi, what do you think?”
Kiyoshi’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t been expected to be addressed. “Uh, I….” He glanced over at Izuki. “Um….”
“I’m the vice-captain, which is just as good as,” Izuki said firmly. “Now scram.”
“What the hell?” Kitazawa snarled. “This is why we left in the first place! Such an attitude just ‘cause you’ve played basketball for so long. Didn’t you lose every game you played when you were starting or something? You just don’t want us stealing your thunder when we end up having to bench you!”
“Bold words for a guy who isn’t even on the team,” Riko said lightly. Izuki’s head snapped to her. He hadn’t expected that she would defend him. “With those stats… yikes, how many jumping jacks can you do in a minute? I would bet not even fifteen.”
“I… I…” Satou flushed. “That’s not the point! How do you know that anyway?”
“If you can’t recognise Aida Kagetora’s daughter, then maybe we have a different problem,” Kiyoshi said lightly. “Also, I thought about it and Izuki’s right. We don’t have any more room.”
“You don’t have any benchwarmers,” Hori pointed out incredulously. “You’re going to be screwed when tourneys roll around.”
“That seems like our problem, don’t you think?” Kiyoshi replied, calm as the winter wind. “Our practice time is important for those tournaments, so we’d appreciate if you let us be.”
“What, we can’t stay and watch?” Hori snapped back. Izuki smiled at him hollowly.
“You’d make a great commentator, but our guys are just starting out. We wouldn’t want to be distracted, right?” He turned to his teammates, who all nodded. “See you later.”
Along with Kiyoshi, he frogmarched the three idiots to the door and bolted it. When he turned back, Koganei, Mitobe and Tsuchida began to clap.
“What?” Izuki’s cheeks warmed. “They weren’t serious. They just wanted to convince us we’ll fail. We should start warming up.” He turned to Riko. “Was it 25 laps you were saying?”
She had an amused smile on her lips. “Those idiots sure cut into our time. Why don’t you guys get started and I’ll debrief you on the training program as we go?”
Izuki nodded and started running at once just to avoid more conversation about Satou, Hori and Kitazawa. The rest followed.
“Whose idea was this whole rooftop thing anyway?” Riko said a little while later, watching them run laps with a critical eye. All of them stopped to point at Kiyoshi, who scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. Their coach huffed a breath through her nose. “Wow, you’re really crazy.”
“Is that a good thing?” Kiyoshi looked almost hopeful. Izuki bit back a groan and continued to run.
After the drills from hell, Riko addressed the group of dying boys on the floor. “Come on, it’s not even that bad. Stand up already.”
Izuki dragged himself to his feet somehow and was pleased to see that he was the first to it. Kiyoshi was a quick second, groaning as he did. The others pulled themselves up slowly but surely, moaning and bitching through it all. Riko just gave them a stern look and crossed her arms.
“First order of business, you need an actual captain.” She pointed at Kiyoshi. “You’re a great player. Full of initiative and drive. But there’s such a thing as being too impulsive.”
Kiyoshi put his hands up, a smile on his face. The bastard. How had he known this was coming? “Eh, I didn’t want to do it in the first place. Why did you guys pick me anyway?”
“Who else was going to be captain when you founded the club?” Izuki poked him in the ribs. “Those responsibilities are clubbed together, you know. Kitakore.”
That elicited a groan from everyone. Izuki stuck his tongue out at them. “One day my time will come and all of you will dearly miss my pun-ctuality.”
Muffled laughter rippled through the group. Only Riko remained deadpan, but Izuki caught the twitching of the corners of her mouth and basked in his victory.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” she said, putting on a brave face although her shoulders were trembling a little. “But he’s right, you should have expected that, Kiyoshi-kun.” She fixed Kiyoshi with a glare. “Either get serious or give it to someone else. I hardly think you want to do the first one.”
“Let’s give it to someone else,” Kiyoshi agreed all too happily, earning another glare. “I mean, there’s only really one other candidate.”
Everyone nodded vehemently. Izuki ran through the options in his head. Riko was the coach, not a player, so she was out. Koganei had no experience with basketball, and Mitobe didn’t talk, which was sort of an automatic fail. Maybe they could manage with Koga’s translations, but no one wanted to bet on that mid-game. So that left—
“Tsuchida,” he said at the same time everyone else said, “Izuki.”
At first Izuki wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Then he realised three things:
- Everyone else was staring at him expectantly;
- He was the only one on the team with the name Izuki; and
- Riko was poking him with the edge of her clipboard as if to wake him up.
“Um, excuse me?” he choked. “You’re not serious.”
“You have experience as a VC,” Kiyoshi pointed out, “and you’ve been corralling everyone all this time.”
“You took the fall up there on the rooftop, and you dealt with those three quite nicely just now. Very captainlike,” Tsuchida added with a snarky little grin that made Izuki want to punch him.
“And you’re kinda scary when you get annoyed, which is like a baseline requirement for being a captain,” Koganei said. Koganei and Izuki had very different ideas of what was a baseline requirement for being a captain. “Look, Rin agrees!”
“He’s nodding. I don’t think that needs a translation,” Izuki snipped back.
Koganei laughed brightly. “See? Scary!”
More enthusiastic nodding from Mitobe. Izuki slapped his own forehead in defeat. “Guys, think this through. If I’m the best option, we’re in pretty dire straits here.”
“I don’t think so,” Riko said thoughtfully. Izuki’s head snapped towards her. “I’ve seen you play in matches before. You’re not the best under pressure, but you have experience, and you’re good when you can keep your head.” Everyone winced at that, but Izuki honestly wasn’t offended. She was just stating facts. “And point guard captains are common for good reason. The playmaker sets the stage, so it’s pretty effective role condensation.”
“Kiyoshi can play point guard too,” Izuki pointed out a bit helplessly. Koganei clicked his tongue.
“Izuki, didn’t you say that one person can only do one role? Kiyoshi’s already our, uhhh… middle.”
“Centre, it’s centre…” Why did he bother? “Don’t hold that against me. Basketball isn’t that rigid.”
“You definitely made it sound like it.” Koganei gave him a suspicious look. Izuki resisted the urge to slap his forehead again.
It made sense suddenly why Kiyoshi had wanted Hyuuga to play so badly. Hyuuga hadn’t been team captain in middle school—that position had gone to mild-mannered Shirasaki—but he had the grit and the verve for it. If he’d been here right now, Izuki could easily see him stepping up to the plate. Sure, it would take some time, and he would have been rough around the edges, but it would have worked out beautifully.
But Hyuuga wasn’t here, and if Izuki was being honest, he preferred it that way. It had been a long time since he’d gotten to play basketball just for himself. There had been a time when he wanted to quit, too; when he started to plateau and watched everyone get miles ahead of him; but he knew Hyuuga would throw a fit if he tried to quit. So he kept at it until his fingers were rubbed raw and his eyes went silver for the very first time.
“Izuki-kun.” Riko’s voice brought him back to planet Earth. Izuki blinked, looking at her. “We’re putting it to a to vote.”
“On…”
“On our new captain.” Riko said it with so much confidence that Izuki almost believed this was actually going to be a fair vote. “Who votes for Izuki?”
She raised her hand, along with everyone else. Izuki stared at them, refusing to lift his hand. Riko frowned. “You have to vote, too.”
“I vote against this then,” Izuki retorted. “I don’t vote for Izuki as captain.”
“Too bad, it’s five to one. You lose.” She stuck her tongue out. “Sucks to suck, captain.”
Kiyoshi clapped him on the back. “Captain!” Koganei, Mitobe and Tsuchida quickly followed his example, Mitobe more quietly than the other two. Wincing, Izuki rubbed his back.
“Really, are you guys not tired enough from practice, that was way too firm…” He groaned and stretched. “So are we not going to vote on everyone else?”
“There was a unanimous vote for this one really irritating guy who doesn’t want to do it at all,” Riko said. “Don’t you know how voting works? There’s no one left to vote for anyone else.”
“I’ll be the voice of the people,” Izuki begged a bit desperately. “Please.”
“Unfortunately, you are a mere peasant.” Riko somehow managed to look down her nose at him despite being the better part of a foot shorter.
“Yeah, you can’t speak for the masses,” Kiyoshi added, joining their coach. Looking down at someone from his height really wasn’t hard, so Izuki wouldn’t commend him for it.
“Actually, I get the final say,” he started, “because I’m the captain—” and then he clapped his hands over his mouth in horror, but the damage had already been done. Koganei whooped out loud and Kiyoshi crushed him under his arm. Izuki tried his best not to choke and failed a little bit.
They went out to dinner together, nothing fancy, just Maji Burger. Riko paid for everyone, “Since I joined last! Don’t get used to this.” As they laughed and chatted, Izuki spotted Hyuuga—hair still that awful shade of blond, walking alone down the road towards the station. What was he still doing at school so late? Maybe he was at the arcade. Izuki found that he didn’t have it in him to care.
After they ate, Kiyoshi split off from the group to walk home—he lived close enough that it was barely ten minutes to school and back. Izuki, who had a forty-minute train ride ahead of him, envied him just a bit. Koganei and Mitobe took a bus, and Tsuchida was going to his girlfriend’s place, which was also walking distance. So that left Izuki and Riko to walk to the station together—but that wasn’t too surprising. She’d pulled him aside earlier to ask if he would walk her back tonight, and even though he’d told her that that was probably how it would shake out anyway, she had made him promise.
They lived just a couple stops away from each other, and she wasn’t so familiar with the other guys on the team, so it made sense if she didn’t want to walk home alone at night. Izuki did find it a bit strange that she wouldn’t ask Hyuuga—it seemed like they were still friends—but he wasn’t one to turn down a request like this.
As they walked to the station, she said, “I know what happened.”
“What?” Izuki couldn’t help but tense. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Hyuuga-kun. You guys kissed, right? And then something went wrong.” She glanced at him through the corner of her eye. “Is that the reason that he won’t play on this team?”
At once, Izuki felt his hackles rise. This girl had a way of getting a rise out of him in a manner that not even Hyuuga could do. “If you must know,” he snapped, “he kissed me, and we haven’t talked to each other ever since. And besides, that was only two weeks ago.”
“Huh.” Riko sounded a little surprised. “So you weren’t dating all this time?”
Izuki choked on air. “No.”
“I see.” She exhaled, long and slow. “I guess he did tell me the truth, then.”
“Eh?” Izuki stopped in his tracks to stare at her. “I don’t know what you’re on, but this is getting really weird.”
“Let me explain.” Riko looked at him, then sat down on a nearby bench. She patted the seat next to her, so Izuki sat down too, a little nonplussed. For some reason, Riko had a strange magnetic pull about her that made him follow in her footsteps like a planet in orbit. “The other day he broke down crying and told me what happened. That you fought. That he kissed you and ran away afterwards. That you haven’t talked about it. That he thinks you must hate him.”
“It’s not like that,” Izuki muttered, then, the truth spilling out of him, “it’s just that… I thought he liked you.”
“Yeah?” Riko smiled. “I bet everyone did. It’s pretty easy to assume when a guy and a girl are friends. But you know what, Izuki-kun?”
“What?”
“He’s never honest about you to anyone. Not even me.”
Izuki felt a chill run down his spine. “What are you talking about?”
Riko kicked her legs out and stared up at the sky. A sakura petal floated down to sit on her nose. “He talked about you all the time. And he tried so hard to make it seem like it all came from you. But Izuki-kun, you stopped loving him a while back, didn’t you?”
Izuki stared at her, dumbfounded. “How….”
Riko just smiled. “You’re not the only one who watches people. But I only realised it recently now that I’ve been meeting you more often. The look in your eyes is different.”
“Different?”
“You used to chase Hyuuga-kun with your eyes back in middle school. He used to chase you too, don’t worry, but… these days, your eyes just chase the ball.”
“And is that a good thing?” Izuki asked, a bit tentatively. He wasn’t sure why he cared about her opinion so much, but he did, desperately, longingly.
Riko shrugged. “Want to be the best in Japan? Then yeah, I think so.”
Her eyes narrowed, smile widening devilishly. “But if you don’t make it to the top and you haven’t found someone else… I guess I know who your naked confession is going to.”
Izuki felt himself go red. “It’s not happening!”
“That’s the spirit.” Riko laughed at him. “I used to get so frustrated by you, you know? It’s like you were impossible to read. But really, you’re an open book.”
“Really,” Izuki said, deadpan. He didn’t exactly go to great lengths to conceal how he felt on any given occasion, but he wasn’t the flashy sort either. People found him hard to read because he was always reading everyone else, so he acted based on what he saw. For someone to call him an open book….
“Really.” She grinned. “You just have to know where to look.”
Getting to her feet, she tugged on his jacket. “Come on, I want a popsicle. I gave you life advice so you’re buying.”
What life advice? Izuki bought her the stupid popsicle anyway. You didn’t say no to Aida Riko unless you had a death wish. Plus, it was nice to see her eyes light up when he gave her his winner stick.
Two in a row and he didn’t even like ices. What were the odds?
“I won’t talk to him anymore,” Riko said as they approached the station. “Now that I know it’s true. That’s an awful thing to do to you.”
“I don’t really care,” Izuki said truthfully. “You don’t have to cut him off for that. It has to be hard for him too.”
I didn’t think we were that close, was what he wanted to say, but they weren’t even close enough for him to say that much.
“It’s only hard for him because he’s making it hard for himself.” Riko sighed. “But you know that, don’t you? It’s why you pushed him away.”
“I’m not what he needs,” Izuki found himself saying without any trace of resentment. Two years ago, his heart would have burst out of his chest. Now it stayed still without a flutter. “But that’s not why I stopped it.”
Riko squeezed his arm comfortingly. They got on the train and shared Izuki’s Walkman for a bit before she had to get off. When Izuki put the other earbud in, it was warmer than he expected. If he concentrated, he could still feel her hand on his arm, small but so strong.
“You’re nuts.” Izuki stared at the email chain. “There’s no way you pulled this off.”
Riko smirked at him. “Don’t you mean thank you? You’re lucky to have me.”
“If you remind me of that every day, is it still luck?” Izuki griped. But he couldn’t stay annoyed when his eyes drifted back to the emails.
A practice match with Tokushin. It was more than he could have hoped for. With no team history and only five players, it was becoming increasingly difficult to really play a game of basketball and test their synergy as a team.
And that was all when Izuki ignored the elephant in the room: Koganei’s lack of skill. He was talented—no doubt about it—and naturally athletic. When he focused, he could sink shots as well as any player who had been in the game for a few years, and he had a certain aptitude for three-pointers. But he had a terrible grasp of the rules, was easily distracted, and didn’t know how to budget his stamina. All of these were fixable issues over a period of months, and he was athletic enough to make up for it, but what he needed more than anyone else was experience.
You’re a genius, he thought but didn’t say to Riko. He figured she knew what he was thinking, anyway. She was probably the one person in the world that wasn’t his sister who could do that.
The club budget had covered little more than jerseys, two basketballs, the smallest gymnasium available on campus, and a single tiny hoop to practice with, so they threw together a quick design—a simple combination of red, white and black, something other schools in the Tokyo area weren’t using too heavily—and ordered five with shorts to match. Izuki would have liked two sets, but it couldn’t be helped. They’d nearly been in a position where they might have had to wear their own shorts, so he would be thankful for what they had gotten.
They had to take the train to Tokushin—the vice principal refused to allot them a bus for club activities, citing demonstrated lack of responsibility. Izuki honestly could not fault him for it. Still, walking in the sun right before a practice game was far from his favourite thing to do. He took a deep swig of water and turned to the team, cringing internally. They were all in school clothes, as the budget had not provided for tracksuits, but it just wasn’t a great look.
Stepping into the Tokushin gym, Izuki saw that it really wasn’t that much bigger than Seirin’s. They had two hoops and the full court had been cleared off to play. Honestly, Izuki would have expected them to clear just the half court, but he appreciated it. The Tokushin coach stood by the door with a clipboard, a warm smile on her face.
“Welcome! You must be Seirin!” Her smile dimmed a little as she saw they were in school uniforms. Or maybe it was because there were only five of them. Izuki didn’t feel like making bets on which one it was. “Was Miss Aida not able to make it?”
Riko flushed and stuck out her hand. “Sawayama-san, it’s wonderful to meet you. I’m Aida Riko—Seirin’s coach.”
Sawayama’s eyes widened. “You’re Aida Riko? I… I thought you’d be a little older. My apologies.” She cleared her throat. “So, are you a student?”
“First-year at Seirin High.” Riko smiled brightly. “Thank you so much for setting up this game. My players really needed this.”
Sawayama glanced over them with an expression that said she could tell, but she was polite enough not to say it. Still, she greeted them as warmly as she had Riko. “Hello, everyone. Whenever you’re ready, you can borrow our locker room to get changed and warmed up.”
With a flurry of bows and thanks, they went to get changed. Looking back over the team again, Izuki saw an entirely different view. Dressed in uniform red, white and black, all wearing basketball shoes and carrying water bottles, they looked like a real unit.
Now they had to put their gameplay to the test. Clearing his throat, he said, “It’s our first actual game. How do you guys feel?”
“Good to go!” Koganei jumped up and down a few times. Mitobe nodded as if to agree. Tsuchida grinned a bit nervously.
“I think it’ll get better once we get out there,” he said. Izuki laughed.
“Usually does. Kiyoshi?”
“I agree with Koga!” Kiyoshi’s smile was broad and beatific. “What are we waiting for?”
“Alright, alright. Basketball freak.” Izuki rolled his eyes. “Come on, let’s go play.”
As they stepped out, he caught sight of the opposing #4, and his breath caught in his chest. No fucking way. You’re kidding me.
“Manabe-senpai?” he called out. “Is that you?”
Manabe Wataru turned around, eyes widening at the sight of Izuki. “Whoa, if it isn’t the runt of the team!” Izuki winced at the nickname as his former captain pulled him into a bro hug. He used to be the shortest on the team until he shot up in his second year of middle school—after Manabe headed to high school—so no wonder the name had stuck for him. “No kidding, are you the captain?”
“Yeah…” Izuki rubbed the back of his neck. Manabe whistled.
“I came to see a couple of your games last year. I thought they made a good choice for VC with you, but… wow, captain is something else. Nice job, kid.”
Izuki flushed. “Thanks, senpai.” He wasn’t sure it was a compliment. Manabe had a way of dismissing anyone who wasn’t as loud and bold as he was. He was a decent SG, but his skill as captain really was about unifying the team under his singular will. Izuki wasn’t sure he wanted to be that sort of captain.
“Wow, Izuki, that’s your old captain?” Kiyoshi stage whispered. Izuki rolled his eyes.
“I’m pretty sure the wolves in Timbuctoo heard that conversation. You don’t need to be so quiet about it.”
Koganei whistled. “Dang, you still think we’ll be fine?”
“Just shut up and get ready.” Izuki sighed. “We’re going to do well.”
Manabe laughed. “Confident! I like it. But you guys are total greenhorns.” His eyes sparkled challengingly. “Don’t be too excited about winning already.”
It was good advice, which Izuki decided not to take solely because he wasn’t sure anyone on his team except for Kiyoshi thought that they could actually win this.
Tip-off came, and Kiyoshi won it easily by sole virtue of being taller than everyone else on the court. He ran the ball down to their end and scored with a dunk that looked effortless: 2 – 0.
“Nice!” Izuki called, high fiving him. Kiyoshi grinned, a pleased flush on his face.
The next attack was a three from Manabe that bounced around the rim before falling in. Mitobe’s defensive pressure had nearly done the damage, but a failed screen from Koganei had given Manabe the chance he needed to shoot. Izuki took note, but ultimately it was nothing to sweat too hard.
Tokushin was an interesting opponent. Their PG was, for lack of a better word, awful. Izuki didn’t like to talk down other players, but the Tokushin PG had clumsy handling, bad coordination and even worse placement. It made it all too easy to steal from him. The SG, Manabe, was good at his job and better at rallying his team. The center was practically a football linebacker with his bulging muscle, defending the hoop like he had erected an iron dome around it—so far, Seirin’s trick had been to use speed against him, and it worked quite nicely when he didn’t see it coming. The SF was their best scorer by a mile, quick and light on his feet with excellent ball handling. The PF was good, too, just a little worse than Mitobe was.
But the edge they had over Seirin was simple—they’d played together longer as a team. Koga was still figuring out how to settle in, and Izuki wasn’t completely used to passing to Kiyoshi or Koganei yet. He’d focused on working with Mitobe and Tsuchida in team-ups so far, wanting to have the more experienced players split up, so they’d mostly played two- or three-on-two. While Izuki was figuring out his team’s rhythm, Tokushin already had it down pat.
Still, their team was quite well-balanced. Izuki esteemed himself as a rather decent PG; Kiyoshi made a brilliant centre, although as one of the Uncrowned Kings, Izuki really hadn’t expected anything else; Mitobe was a amazing defender; and Tsuchida had a special touch with rebounds. Once Koga got up to speed, Izuki thought he’d make a solid SG. As halftime approached, the score a rather decent 21 – 27 in Tokushin’s favour, they started to find their groove.
“Let’s run a man-to-man zone defence for the second half.” Riko tapped her whiteboard. “Their strength is their team play. We’re not there yet, so let’s try and split them off. Go by positions, but Koganei, you get the PG, and Izuki, you get the SF.”
It was a good strategy on paper, and Izuki was pleased with the results in practice. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Koganei was starting to hold his own against the PG. Good, and Izuki would give him credit where it was due—sure, he had better instincts than the player he was stacked up against, and it wasn’t really hard to beat out such a lacklustre guy, but more importantly, he was actually trying to defend and not just go by what felt right.
His own mark was no cakewalk, though. Guarding the SF proved harder than Izuki had expected—even if he could predict his movements with Eagle Eye, the guy was quick and annoyingly slippery. Still, Izuki’s turnover rate was low for good reason, and he managed to thwart the SF’s attempts at stealing the ball on every occasion.
This isn’t survival, he thought, glancing at the scoreboard: 36 - 34. Koganei had managed to sink a three just now, pulling them ahead of the other team for the first time. We can actually win.
He stole a look around at his teammates. All their eyes were locked on the ball, but not with the same nerves as earlier. Koganei seemed at home on the court for the very first time; Mitobe was calm and focused, none of the trembling energy that had followed him onto the floor. The tension in Tsuchida’s body was all but gone, replaced with coiled power waiting to strike. Even Kiyoshi had loosened up just a fraction, just noticeable enough that it made Izuki realise he had been nervous, too.
As for Izuki himself, well… he never really got tense before a game. It was the same with exams. You went in, did what you had to do, and came out of it with a decent estimation of your performance. His trouble under pressure had to do with something else entirely. Still, when his teammates were calmer, it made his job as a playmaker that much easier.
This was a crucial moment in the game—halfway through the third quarter, and they had taken the lead for the first time since zero. They needed to capitalise here.
Let’s do this. As the SF tried to drive past him, he stole and passed to Kiyoshi.
With Kiyoshi’s overwhelming talent and Izuki’s years of experience, they made something of a lethal tag team. Mitobe’s defence and Tsuchida’s rebounding skills buffered it further, giving them room to relax just a little. That made all the difference, bringing the final score to a glorious 47 – 44 in Seirin’s favour. It was a closer match than Izuki would have liked, but he knew his teammates were better than good, and they had won their first ever practice match as complete newbies. Now that was something to celebrate.
“Thank you so much!” they chorused together. Manabe seemed bewildered as Izuki shook his hand.
“I really never thought you’d be… you know.”
“Yeah?” Izuki grinned at him, a little too happy to really be offended. Manabe didn’t mean badly anyways. “I think it’s working out pretty well for us.”
“Oh, no!” Manabe’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just surprised a first-year made captain. But why did you just bring your first string? If you brought the other guys, you could have had a game with our second and third strings too.”
“Ah… no, we didn’t have a choice.” Izuki felt his face flush. “Seirin is a new school. The team is kind of small right now, and we’re all first-years. We’re the founding members.”
Manabe studied him for a long minute. Then he said, “Why do you think I would doubt you? There’s a reason Kusakabe picked you as VC after he graduated. Didn’t you end up as team captain in third year?”
Izuki winced. The second-years back then hadn’t liked that a first-year was selected for leadership, so they’d made sure he got bricked out of the captaincy in his third year. It would have been outright abuse of power to name someone else as VC when he wasn’t graduating with them, so he had kept that position, but he hadn’t really been unhappy about it. It wasn’t like he’d gotten much experience with leadership in his second year anyway, not with the senpais trying to haze him into giving it up and the captain outright benching him for every game. So he had only really done anything as VC after becoming a senior himself, and when half the third-years retired before the winter tournament… well, there wasn’t much of the team left to lead at all.
You couldn’t bully and harass someone generally well-liked by the student populace and maintain a good reputation afterwards. A lot of the new first-years had quit for other sports after watching Izuki get thrown to the floor ‘by accident’ and seeing Hyuuga earn a slap to the face for trying to defend him.
But Izuki didn’t see the need to explain to Manabe. It would just break his heart, and it wouldn’t help matters. It wasn’t like things could be changed now. So he just said, “No, it was Shirasaki. He really lived up to it in second year. I was still VC though.”
Shirasaki was the quietest person Izuki had ever met. Izuki wasn’t sure they’d exchanged more than a few hundred words even after working together as captain and vice for an entire year. He had stayed until the winter tournament, but Izuki never got the sense that he wanted to be there.
Manabe’s mouth hardened a little. Then he said, “Tell me something, Izuki, are you and Hyuuga not playing together anymore? He wasn’t in the lineup today. Is he sick or something?”
“Oh.” Izuki felt his smile dim. Of course Manabe thought he and Hyuuga would have gone to school together. Of course that was a fair assumption for anyone who they used to play with, or who knew them at all in any capacity. “Um, he quit basketball. We kept losing in third year, so… he didn’t want to put himself in that position anymore. I guess I can understand it. Well, a lot of guys quit after middle school, you know? It’s just the natural course of things.”
“Did you?” Manabe asked. Izuki sucked in a breath.
“Kind of. I mean, I knew Seirin didn’t have a basketball club.”
Manabe studied him for a long moment. Izuki added, “It was harder not to play.”
After a second, a smile bloomed on his senpai’s face. “I like that answer. See you around, Seirin’s captain.”
“Let’s play in the Inter-High,” Izuki told him cheerfully. “See you!”
The moment they got off the premises, Izuki’s ears were assaulted by five voices all screeching at him. Wincing, he took multiple steps back. “Guys, one person at a time! What’s going on?”
“You said you wanted to play the Inter-High!” Kiyoshi exclaimed. His eyes were sparkling. “We hadn’t talked about it at all, so I assumed we were just going to wait until next year.”
“Are you kidding?” Izuki said. “All the other big tourneys require us to place in the Inter-High. We can’t just skip it.”
But the rest of the team just shared glances, shuffling from foot to foot.
“I mean… I’m not that good...” Koganei ventured.
“You’ll get better,” Kiyoshi said encouragingly.
“I think we need more team practice,” Tsuchida suggested.
“We’ll get guys from the neighbourhood association to play with us. Or something. We can find a way.” Izuki didn’t know where all this confidence was coming from, but he wasn’t faking it. He wasn’t the sort that could put up a brave front like that.
“Rin says we don’t have enough players!” Koganei chirped. Mitobe nodded.
Izuki shrugged. “Okay, so where are we going to find a sixth man now? The Inter-High prelims are in three weeks.”
He turned to face them. “Guys, we can’t just wait around to get better. The only way to improve at basketball is to play basketball.”
“Your captain’s right,” Riko said suddenly. Izuki hated it when she added her two cents like that after being all quiet. It startled the living daylights out of him when she spoke up out of nowhere. But seeing as she was agreeing with him, he wasn’t about to criticise. “You have to play real games with real stakes. Plus, an actual match teaches you a lot more than even a practice game can.”
“The weight of the ball is different,” Kiyoshi said. “You’re going to sweat more. The court conditions will be different. The other team will be different. It might be colder or warmer than you like. The pressure’s totally crazy, too. Nothing’s set in stone.”
That was actually surprisingly good advice. Izuki nodded and let it sink in.
“You guys, we’ll be fine, okay?” he said reassuringly, catching the worried looks on Koganei and Mitobe’s faces. “We said we wanted to be the best. We can’t run away from that promise. Right, Coach?”
“I’ll drag you to the finish line kicking and screaming if I have to,” Riko said, which was basically a yes.
Koganei and Mitobe still looked a little apprehensive, but the doubt was starting to clear. Izuki smiled and clapped his hands.
“We did great today. Now we just need to match these standards—kitakore!—and work on exceeding them for the Inter-High. I bet Coach already has itemised lists for each one of us, so let’s get started early tomorrow. Sound good?”
“Sounds great, Cap.” Kiyoshi grinned and squeezed his shoulder. Behind them, Riko was mumbling sourly about how they weren’t itemised lists, they were action plans.
Days turned to weeks and before they knew it, they were staring down their first opponent in the Inter-High, Okuhara Senior Secondary. By now the Seirin team was something of a well-oiled machine; even Koganei had begun to find his place as something of a hybrid player, half an SF and half an SG. He was still easing into the role of a proper shooter—most consistent three-point sinkers in the high school league have played for at least four years, and it was a role that comes with a lot of heavy lifting, so Izuki was actually beyond impressed with his progress.
At first, he thought Koganei was the sort to quit when things got hard. But he kept showing up, day after day even when he didn’t get a single basket in during practice, staying as late as Izuki in the gym to work on technique and form. Izuki had been concerned about it at first, if he was being honest. Koganei’s readiness to throw in the towel when the going got tough was almost too evident. But for some reason, he was still here. And now that he was getting used to the growing pains, he was a real diamond in the rough.
“Cool, call that a n-ice shot!” Izuki cheered as Koganei nailed his latest layup. He was on fire right out the gate, and well into the third quarter, he had actually gotten the second most points so far—Kiyoshi topping the list by a mile, obviously. Koganei rolled his eyes fondly but grinned, blushing a little.
“I’ll keep ‘em coming!” he called back. Izuki shot him a thumbs-up and tossed the ball to Okuhara’s PG for their possession.
“62 – 56, Seirin High wins!”
“That’s the fourth game in a row!” Kiyoshi exclaimed. “We’re on fire!”
“Seirin, fight!” they cheered together. Izuki had always had a special hatred for team cheers, but this one had started to grow on him. Grinning, he said, “Know what that means?”
“What?” Koganei asked, eyes wide and sparkling with interest. Izuki gave him a conspiratorial wink.
“It means that if we win one more game, we’re in the semis. Win that and we go to the finals. After the finals, we play the winners of the other three blocks in a round-robin. And after that… is the real Inter-High.”
Koganei’s face, which had brightened at first, began to dim. “That’s a lot of games we gotta win…”
“That’s right!” Izuki clapped his back. What he wasn’t saying was that the top eight teams from Tokyo automatically made it into the Winter Cup prelims. Letting that information slip might make the team think it was alright to falter here. But Izuki could already see it in his mind’s eye; the national Inter-High stage, top three easily.
Maybe it was crazy to think they could compete on that level as a newly formed team with no real shooter, but hey, Izuki was on a team with Kiyoshi Teppei. Everyone had better get used to some degree of crazy when that man was involved.
Two more games down. Two more victories under their belt. Today, they were staring down the finals.
“They’re calling you the dark horses of men’s high school basketball,” Aya informed her brother as he was getting ready for school. “I’ll give it to them, they’re right about the horse part.”
Izuki threw a sock at his sister, knowing full well she had cut out the article and put it up on the fridge.
Today’s opponent was a tough one. Kirisaki Daiichi was a veteran team and difficult to beat on a good day, but lately, they had garnered a reputation for rough play—any team that went up against them came out looking like they’d gotten into it with a gang. Izuki honestly had no idea how the refs weren’t doing anything. To make matters worse, the rough play only began when Hanamiya Makoto—a first-year PG just like Izuki, and one of the Uncrowned Kings to boot—came onto the court. Aside from his proclivity to damage other players, he was a brilliant playmaker who easily entrapped his opponents in their own minds. Just watching his setups had given Izuki the creeps.
He was more nervous than he wanted to admit. Analysis paralysis was kind of the name of the game when it came to him. It was something Riko kept telling him to think about, but didn’t that sort of defeat the purpose? How did you even get out of a spiderweb situation like that?
The thoughts kept swimming in his head. As everyone changed and got ready, he slipped out of the locker room and went to find a bench outside. The sun was warm and welcoming on his skin, but did nothing to calm the prickling in his stomach. Izuki swallowed and looked up, trying to focus on his breathing.
“Izuki, it’s going to be okay.” A large hand on his shoulder nearly shook Izuki out of his own skin. He turned to see Kiyoshi, smiling reassuringly.
“God! Don’t come out of nowhere like that.”
“Come out of nowhere?” Kiyoshi raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been here for five minutes. You were pretty lost in thought.”
Izuki flushed. “I’m just….”
“I know it’s nerve-wracking. Makoto isn’t going to be an easy opponent.” Kiyoshi sat down next to him and offered him his water bottle. Izuki took a drink to calm his nerves and was pleasantly surprised to find Pocari Sweat inside. “But I have faith in us.”
“I believe in the team,” Izuki said slowly. “We have a great coach and great players. Even if it’s just five of us. I just….”
Kiyoshi laughed and shook his head. “Not what I meant. Our team’s amazing. But what I was trying to say is that you and I make a pretty great duo.”
Izuki looked at him with some surprise. Kiyoshi grinned. “I’m the ace, right? And the ace relies on his PG to get the ball at all. So I think I’m very lucky to have one that’s so good at understanding me.”
“Oh.” Izuki scratched the back of his neck. “It’s not hard. You’re pretty easy to read, it’s like you’re always screaming Give me the ball!”
Kiyoshi laughed out loud. “See? You get it!”
His guilelessness was so contagious that Izuki couldn’t help laughing with him. In the fit of giggles, his nerves started to melt away.
So they were going up against rough play and a tough opponent. So what? All they had to do was play basketball. They’d already made it to top eight in Tokyo Prefecture, so it was an automatic Winter Cup placement. Not that he was taking it easy, but they’d come pretty damn far—not just for greenhorns but as a basketball team, point blank period. In the light of that, facing Kirisaki Daiichi didn’t seem so hard.
“Okay.” He stood and cracked his knuckles. “Sucks to be Kirisaki today when Seirin is going to be first. Kitakore!”
Kiyoshi sighed but indulged him with a smile. Izuki grinned and started to make his way back inside, followed by his vice-captain.
It was a beautiful day for victory.