A/N: I know I'm supposed to update my other stories, but I had to write this before I completely lose my muse and ideas for this. Whoops.

/crossposted at AO3/

Summary: Two people meet – one perfect, one incomplete. It changes the course that the universe had set out for them, by breaking each other's fates. (In a parallel of sorts, Gakuho's student is saved in the nick of time and everything changes.)

1. In and Out

It's been three years since he's been back in his home country and at nineteen years of age, Kuroko Tetsuya officially returns back to Japan.

When he had just entered middle school, he had refused his parents' ways and rejected their expectations of him following their footsteps. Even if his mother said that it would be a waste to become a normal person, especially with the blood that runs in his veins and the "talent" that he had inherited, he rebelled at every turn and step. He didn't want to become like them, due to the fact that he didn't want to hurt people for a living. It just wasn't him, even if he knew he could easily do it after some training and an "easy job" was not something that motivated him. What was the point of something easy to accomplish, but was hated to be done?

Before high school, however, that stubborn desire changed and there was something in him that became desperate. He had made a deal with them without looking back, that when he finished what needed to be done in his first year of high school and no more, he would do whatever they wished for five years.

After all, if his parents could kill with a single strike or even without touching their target at all – and he meant continents away, like killing someone in France while his parents were having their breakfast in America –, Kuroko had no doubt that they would do something drastic to persuade him to their side. So, he complied, but with his own terms and agreement. It was win-win for both sides, so why not?

Now, he doesn't mind as much as he used to in the past, because he had already accomplished what he wanted to do and he has no regrets that would tie him down to Japan.

Kuroko was satisfied with just seeing his friends healed and happy. It wasn't important if he wasn't part of the equation that was the Generation of Miracles and Seirin, no matter how many times his heart yearned for it and a part of him whispered selfish desires like a demon tempting a mortal. He still felt a bit of remorse knowing that he had disappeared out of the blue, a short text message to his friends as his only proof of existence, but it had to be done.

Professional assassins do not leave any traces behind, he remembered his father sternly saying and throughout the lecture, Kuroko did not let it show on his face that he did leave a scattered, tiny ones. He did have a natural talent of staying hidden, or to be accurate, be invisible. Even a slight scent could alert the hounds of your existence.

After that, he erased himself. He was no longer the normal high school student who played basketball, but the product of Bloodstreak and Opium's deadly genes. If he had promised his parents to become who they wanted, he would do it thoroughly, not, in the words of his mother, "half-assed".

Thus, as Bloodstreak's and Opium's only son and successor, he had taken all of their teachings to heart. In the span of eleven months and a half, he had become their perfect assassin, through vigorous training and plenty of experience that came in the form of jobs. He killed and killed and killed. It was what he had to do, so he did it without complaining.

If you wondered if he had a moral conscience or not, he did. His was just more hypocritical than the average person's and as twisted as a strangler's hold with rope. It's not like he killed mindlessly either. He had read mission details beforehand and of course, he avoided killing children, but men and women? They were free game, especially after he thoroughly investigated why they needed to die at his hands.

Now, at just the tender age of nineteen, though considered as the legal age in some countries or even past it, he has a metaphorical closet of skeletons – the number that was as large as the population of a small country –, wanted in some countries and considered as a myth in the underworld. With the nickname Mirage, given by an American hitman who had caught a slight glimpse of him, he became the ghost of the underworld, going in and out, unable to be found or even seen in action. There were many rumors surrounding him too, like how Mirage was actually a hitman that died of betrayal and now wanted revenge, how he was actually a ghost, Mirage was actually an organization instead of a person or Mirage was actually a shape-shifter, which by far was the most ridiculous.

But if there was one thing that the underworld was right about Mirage, is that he was always in and out.

Just like an actual ghost that did not belong in the land of living.

. . .

2. Reminder

It's funny how just as Kuroko thought that he would never see basketball again unless he purposely wandered into a school's or public basketball court, he sees the goddamn orange ball of his nightmares rolling to his feet, then colliding with his shoes with a thump. It's ridiculous with how he felt in the inside – heart-wrenching pain, guts twisting and everything just shut down – when he hasn't even touched or seen a basketball since leaving Japan.

Memories of the past never bothered him before, not as nightmares, not as waking dreams, not as déjà vu moments and certainly not as sentimentality. He never had problems like continuously seeing "it" when he tried to forget, because he knew that pretending or trying to forget would just make it worse. Kuroko knew better because he was someone – natural and trained – that could easily push aside his feelings for the sake of professionalism, locking his own heart within a steel cage and swallowing the key. The teal haired man was rather thankful he wasn't in Japan for a hit, otherwise he would've fucked up in the beginning if this happened in any other form.

This particular weakness made him feel inadequate, like a naive rookie who only had a few kills under his belt. Too gullible and too unmalleable to live in a terrible world.

Being an assassin could change someone, because it started out as a necessity – to survive in any way possible – and gradually, it would turn into a job like any other, nothing more. It was like that for Kuroko, because he killed perfectly to survive from his parents, who would've killed him without a second thought had he proved himself to be a liability in their line of work and it then became routine to him just as he adjusted it to become his way of life. Due to it becoming his life, he did his best to maintain it flawlessly, because one mistake could prove to be fatal.

Thus, he had no other choice but to be the perfect assassin.

Yet, this orange ball – so beloved, so hated – caused a crack in his mask, no matter how tiny it was. The exterior that he thought was unbreakable and unshakable, because it was his fortress made of his experience and coldness. But maybe it was actually as brittle as bones, because a Lilliputian distant memory had lodged itself in his defenses and it would eventually tear him apart if he didn't act quickly, do something fast.

If he was felled by a reminder of all things, Bloodstreak and Opium would be so disappointed. His little apprentice would be disappointed too, that silly boy.

But because he wasn't here for a job, he put his professionalism aside and picked up the ball.

His rather shocking reminder was ignored because Kuroko was much more curious to who would have a splotch of blood on their basketball.

Fixing his defenses and getting rid of the reminder – this time not locking it away, but burning it with the fires of hell – could come later.

. . .

3. Denial

There was no denying it.

He was drowning, suffocating in water, inhaling water, making his watery grave – he couldn't think of any other synonym to associate with how he was about to die. Sensei would be very disappointed that his Japanese was still terrible. It wasn't his fault though, because he already said in the very beginning that he preferred sports, like basketball.

But then the very sports he loved betrayed him. His hopes, his dreams and his expectations, dashed off just like a member from the track team at school. He fucked up by joining his high school's basketball team and he fucked up by letting his upperclassmen pushing him around like some disposable ragdoll. He fucked up by not standing up to them, fucked up by being afraid, fucked up just by being himself.

His entire life was a gigantic clusterfuck of being fucked up. There was no other way to explain his crap life, other than by being crude.

Hah, sensei, Mori and Nagai would be so scandalized by his use of language. He was slowly drifting off – from the water or the memories, he couldn't tell –, remembering the good times he had. Remembering the greatest things that have ever happened to him, smiling all the while. The time when he discovered basketball, he, Mori and Nagai became friends, when sensei became their sensei, when sensei believed in him, when his mom supported his dreams, when –

Then, it hit him. The cold, hard, cruel realization crashed in like a truck into a house.

He was about to die.

He was going to die.

He was dying.

He couldn't tell if he was crying or not, being in water. But he felt the lump forming in his throat and he clenched his eyes tightly, thinking if what he was doing was the right thing to be done. It seemed like the right choice, at the beginning of the month when he was pondering and after he bade him goodbyes, to sensei when he called the man last week and to his family when he left for school this morning.

He would not be able to do good things in this world, he knew as he sunk further to what would be his grave. Would not graduate from high school, would not grow up, would not achieve his dreams, would not be the person his parents wanted him to be. Would not be able to meet up with Mori and Nagai to chat up about the "old times", because there would never be any. Would not be able to meet up with sensei again to thank him for what the man has done for him, the boy who couldn't even believe in himself, because there was nothing to thank for when all the time sensei invested in him proved to be useless.

More water entered his lungs and he started choking and gasping, but it was futile. Humans were not made to breathe in water bodies and he would be just like any other person who entered the water with the intention of dying.

He would drown and that would be the end.

I'm a coward, he thought bitterly. A stupid coward who's now scared to die.

Yet, he became resigned to the fate that he brought upon himself, despite the fear that was wrapping him up. There was no going back, not when he was already nearing the end and he had no more strength to swim towards land.

But just as his mind was about to fade, someone pulled him up and his end became scrapped.

Not drowning anymore, he thought groggily as he was forcibly made to spit out water and his vision, no longer of water but filled with the blueness of the sky, faded away.

The uncertain future awaited him but all he could think of was how he never appreciated being able to see something as beautiful as the sky.

He was alive and he couldn't be happier to deny the fact that he was supposed to die, before he fell unconscious.