Broken Little Things.
Ogiwara Shigehiro watched as Kuroko's eyes traveled on the backs of the running mob of males as they circle around the town for the third time. His eyes were blank, emotionless, and generally unfeeling, but the sheer fact that his eyes even lingered on them made a chill ran down Ogiwara's spine.
Kuroko had missed practice just as much as he did.
But none of them said anything as the slowest member of the mob, a skinny boy with brown hair tried to catch up to his teammates. The said teammates ran even faster ahead, but the boy showed no signs of giving up. It was almost like...
"Let's not give up until the end!"
He had naively said those words before, he had. Ogiwara noticed just how much of a fool he was before, and now he had to pay a price for that foolishness, along with his own cowardice.
Kuroko stood beside him, a vanilla milkshake in one hand and a book on the other, but his icy azure eyes were still deadpanned into the boys ahead of them. He had missed practice, even when he wasn't good at it, he had missed it.
Ogiwara wordlessly slipped his hand on Kuroko's own, trying to keep on walking. Kuroko followed him as they made their way into the same direction as the boys.
But then the boys had gone to the basketball court just ahead of them for practice, one ball happened to bounce its way into Ogiwara, who then scoffed at himself.
The sight of the orange ball had excite him, but at the same time, he cursed himself as Kuroko stared listlessly at the orange ball that connected them in the first place. He could never bear watching that icy azure eyes sparkling with hidden fire of longing and determination as it stared at the ball, but never tried to take it. Kuroko had quit basketball, all for his sake. Kuroko had consented into going to the same high school as him, all for his sake...
Ogiwara picked up the ball and stared at it for a long time. His heart pounded just a little as he recalled all those times he had taken up to dribble, pass, and shoot this little guy around. He smiled a faint smile before taking up a shooting position.
'Crap, I missed!' Outside shoots were never Ogiwara's forte, but he wasn't usually the baddest. And he almost wanted to curse himself for even failing such an important shot at such an important match. If the shoot had gone it, they would have gotten a solid double digits from the absolute Teikou. He even passed the Unstoppable Scorer of the said Generation of Miracles! Surely he could have done even-
"Oh...? Okay..." SLAM!
Ogiwara looked up from his ponder only to realized that the purple-haired center of Teikou slammed the ball into his own hoop. At first, Ogiwara had thought that Murasakibara (he remembered Kuroko mentioning about his current teammate in one of his texts) had gone to the hoop in order to take the rebound, but obviously, that wasn't the case.
He was utterly insulted by the act, but he was powerless to do anything. Teikou was simply... too strong...
They didn't even see him as an opponent. He was just a plaything to make the games more interesting. He was just-
"Aaaah, I wanted that shot to go in so they'd look good just for a bit. After all, it's rare that I let someone pass me that easily." Aomine Daiki (Kuroko's other best friend in Teikou, he recalled) groaned to Murasakibara, who then shrugged. It couldn't be...! So the fact that he just passed the Unstoppable Scorer was just... a fluke...?
Just... what was he doing the entire match?! Was he even playing?!
Or...
Was everything just a game Akashi Seijuurou played to show him how worthless his efforts were?
Ogiwara choked, suddenly finding himself unable to breathe.
Kuroko Tetsuya watched as Ogiwara-kun's body just froze in the shooting position for a solid five minutes.
Truth to be told, Kuroko didn't think that Ogiwara-kun would even want to touch the ball. After all, Ogiwara-kun had shut himself down after that match. Deep down, Kuroko knew that Ogiwara-kun missed the court just as much as he did, but...
But Kuroko found himself crushed with pain and misery whenever Ogiwara-kun shivered or faked a grin on his face whenever he was asked about his former favorite sport. In the most extreme cases, Ogiwara-kun would start to hyperventilate the moment he stepped onto the court. That was the very reason Kuroko had disappeared directly after the Nationals on that day.
He had been the one who walked the green-colored Ogiwara-kun into a park nearby the gym they had played on. He had been the one to wash off the tears and vomits off of Ogiwara-kun's face as he hugged himself and shiver from the severe emotional breakdown he was having...
After all, Kuroko himself knew just how hard it was to push yourself into the point of vomiting, he knew how hard it was to have all your efforts unrecognized. But he didn't know just how hard it was to have your hard work ridiculed and deemed worthless.
Ogiwara-kun refused to speak to him, or to anyone else for that matter. They went back to Kuroko's house, despite the fact that it was small. His family were all worried sick for their former neighbor's energetic son who came down to their house as pale as sheet itself.
Three days. That had been the days Kuroko spent enduring Ogiwara-kun's silence. That been the days Kuroko felt guilt coming down onto him in rolling waves. It was torture in its truest sense. And so he disappeared from Teikou, coming only to finish his exams. Ogiwara-kun also went back to Meikou. And although he was somehow normal again, Kuroko knew that his friend won't be touching the basketball he used to love so much just because how it had thoroughly crushed him to the point that he hyperventilated just by stepping onto the court.
Kuroko couldn't remember the last time he had spoken. He just couldn't, not after the days he had spent talking to the shivering Ogiwara-kun for hours straight. He couldn't comfort his best friend, he couldn't do anything, and he had indirectly broke Ogiwara-kun into a shivering mess. Kuroko couldn't find his voice, not anymore. It seemed to have left him the very night Ogiwara-kun became frightened with his own favorite sport.
Suddenly, Ogiwara-kun coughed. It sounded as if he just couldn't breathe. Kuroko gasped, but then he hugged Ogiwara-kun and tried to soothe him down. The orange-colored ball rolled back to its owner, who paid no attention to the boys hugging just by their court's sidelines.
Ogiwara-kun was starting to heal as Kuroko stroke his back times and times again. He took a deep breath and eventually started to calm down under Kuroko's soothing touches and whispers of nothing. He knew that Ogiwara-kun spent each and every waking moment of his life thinking that it was his fault that Kuroko couldn't find his voice anymore, or couldn't take a basketball anymore. He thought that it was his fault...
Just as much Kuroko thought that it was his fault that Ogiwara-kun couldn't step on the court which used to be his home without hyperventilating. It was tormenting to say at the least.
But then Ogiwara-kun pulled him into his embrace with a sad smile across his face. "I'm sorry, Kuroko..." he whispered breathily, his voice shaking. "I'm sorry, but I'm fine now, okay? I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry..."
'You don't have to keep on apologizing, Ogiwara-kun...' he wanted to say, but he couldn't find his voice anywhere...
None of them wanted to have this conversation, but neither of them could say anything.
"Are you sure about this, Kuroko?" The future student council president of Rakuzan high school could hear them as clear as the day as he watched the freshmen filling over the school. The redheaded boy sat down underneath the cherry blossom tree as he directed his gaze towards two familiar faces.
They were holding each other's hands like their lives depended on it, and he thought it was weak and yet completely adorable. He watched as his former phantom sixth man nodded with his usual blank and expressionless look across his face, not speaking any word at all.
Akashi Seijuurou watched as the utterly broken Ogiwara Shigehiro and Kuroko Tetsuya entered the Rakuzan High School's building, their eyes lingering on the gyms lined up nicely behind the main building, yet they steered clear out of it. Broken little things they were, but broken things could always be fixed and used again if you glued it strong enough...
In all actuality, he had seen the entirety of the future. He had foresaw a pair of sun and moon winning under his absolute orders, he had seen them. Now, he just needed them to be his.
After all, Akashi was the one who broke them. Wasn't it obvious that they were his broken little things?
I can finally get this out of my head... after reading 226... I just... I dunno...
But I guess I really like OgiKuroAka that I always manage to just slip some of it here XD
In case it wasn't clear enough, how Kuroko found out about Ogiwara's trauma was because they were supposed to return to receive the trophy for the first and second place in tournament, but the moment Ogiwara stepped into the court, he started to swoon and turned sickly pale. He excused himself, but then he found an extremely worried Kuroko who then took him out of the gym and took care of him in the park.
In short, Broken Little Things has an Ogiwara who would go into a panic/anxiety-attack whenever he stepped into a basketball court/or just play basketball in general and a Kuroko who turned mute because of his shock towards Ogiwara's trauma ^^
Please review?