A/N: This is my first KuroBasu fic. I haven't written in a while, so I would very much appreciate feedback!
Disclaimer: Fujimaki Tadatoshi owns Kuroko no Basuke.
When Kiyoshi first met Hyuuga, he didn't know what was up with the bespectacled blonde. It was obvious he was trying to look like a delinquent when he really wasn't one, and even when he said he already quit basketball, the towering boy did not believe him. There was no way someone who put a picture of Ray Allen in their phone's wallpaper would hate basketball, no matter how much Hyuuga tried to make it sound like that.
Kiyoshi had a hunch what the other boy was going through. He once heard the voice of the devil, after all, and could recognize those who listened and nursed the ill whispers in their hearts.
There is no point in playing basketball anymore, because only those truly blessed with sheer talent get to stand at the top.
And he was right – Riko and Izuki confirmed it for him. Hyuuga had been caught up in the curse of Teikou's genius, just like how he once had been. So he challenged him to a one-on-one match, offered him a handicap to taunt him, just so he could see the real him: the Hyuuga who would never give up and could never give up the basketball he loved so much, even in the face of defeat.
The agitated Hyuuga played recklessly. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, cursing his long blonde hair that kept getting in the way of his vision. Yet Kiyoshi saw it clearly: in his eyes, there was the desire to play and play better than him.
This was the Hyuuga he had been looking for all along.
Kiyoshi thought his plan backfired, when Hyuuga did not show up on the rooftop the next day. He destroyed him the night before, and no matter how sincerely he said that talent does not matter, he had practically shoved to his face the difference in their skill.
But he did show up – with his long blonde hair gone and a declaration of a rekindled dream.
He declared that he hated him, too, but Kiyoshi could put up with that, glad that Hyuuga successfully banished the devil's lair nestled in his heart.
When Kiyoshi first met Kuroko, he knew exactly what was up with the invisible boy. Riko had kept him updated – the freshman used to be Teikou's rumoured phantom sixth man thanks to his superb passing, despite sucking at all the other aspects of basketball. She had told him about the little presence he had and his misdirection, and how he had saved them countless of times wielding that sole weapon of his.
Kiyoshi had come to see it for himself. Wearing his school uniform and indoor shoes, the boy looked at the basket with a ball in his hand. Moments later, he attempted a jump shot, and any other spectator would say that indeed, other than his passes, Kuroko was no good at all.
The ball missed and bounced off the hoop. But Iron Heart could see leagues beyond the surface – beyond the boy's unpolished form, there was good aim and excellent hand-eye coordination.
Kiyoshi knew this, eons ago. Any player who excelled in passing had these two core skills essential in basketball, and Kuroko was no exception. It's a shame that he wasn't aware of it one bit.
The boy was in an obvious slump after their heartbreaking defeat to Touou. That game cost him something much more than victory – it rejected the very way he had chosen to play basketball, shattered everything that made him who he was. It told him that in the face of overwhelming talent, he was helpless and he couldn't do a thing at all.
Kuroko was a damaged potential. The voice of the devil had long ingrained itself within him, and much worse than what it did to Hyuuga, whom it had almost driven away from basketball completely, instead slowly ate him up from the inside like a parasite, allowing him to fight back but never really letting him win.
Kiyoshi made his presence known, and encouraged the boy in that roundabout way of his. "The one deciding if that's your limit is you," he told him, but just like with Hyuuga, he would have to show it to Kuroko more concretely.
And so he devised that all-freshman line-up for their practice match. Koganei got it all wrong, but he just laughed it off – Kiyoshi knew that they would win, mostly because of Kagami, and he had wanted to show Kuroko the limits of his current basketball. He understood where Kuroko was coming from: basketball is a team sport, but he couldn't keep relying on others, just as they would reach the point that they wouldn't need to rely on him.
Kuroko had been caught up in Teikou's curse, too, and it's a hole deeper than what Hyuuga had found himself in. The captain gave up on basketball; the phantom refused to do so. Instead, he gave up on himself, on what he could be.
At least, that was how Kiyoshi saw the way things were. He told Riko that Kuroko needed to abandon his style to scale the wall in front of him, but perhaps it was too much to expect from a seventeen-year-old coach whose hands were already full with dealing with a generation of miracles for an opponent.
He found it unfair for the boy, who was left to fend for himself while everyone else continued to grow to their full potentials. But so far, he was doing fine on his own – the vanishing drive and the phantom shot were still within his style, but he was definitely headed in the right direction.
"We're still high schoolers. Believe in yourself more," Kiyoshi told Kuroko, and he was glad his kouhai trusted him.
It would take a while before Kuroko could defeat the voice of the devil in him, but in time, just like Hyuuga, he would be redeemed.