Reworked version of From the Fifteen Year Old Me.

first hell

-1-

5:30 p.m.: too young for this

The scab on Aomine Daiki's chin was itching like crazy, but there was nothing he could do about it if he wanted to avoid a scar.

"Believe me; there is nothing more I'd like to do than pick you off and fling you away," he grumbled under his breath. He noticed an elderly woman staring at him and scratched the back of his head in exasperation. What fleeting embarrassment he felt was gone as quickly as a frightened deer; he had more important things to worry about than his apparent sanity. With an absent-minded scratch to his chin, Aomine Daiki turned in his spot (there goes the old lady with her staring again), searching the store.

His eyes lit up at the sight of his best friend waiting for him with open arms; he reached out and grabbed—

A can of soup.

With a jolly smile that could have sent any child whimpering back to the parent, Aomine Daiki loaded his shopping basket. Never mind that he might be living off clam chowder for the next few days. It was on sale, and boy oh boy was he getting a good deal.

Happiness could not last forever; his scab was beginning to kick up a fuss again. With a grumble, he headed to the checkout line, grabbing a box of band-aids and a can of salted peanuts on the way. A cooking magazine caught his eye; he reached for it, thinking looking at rich people making real food would somehow make him feel better…

"Ah, I'm so damn hungry… I'm too young for this…"

He pushed his cart to the cashier, barely registering the voice that greeted him with a robotic, "Good evening; did you find everything you need?"

-2-

5:38 p.m.: one-hit KO

Kagami Taiga didn't know what his past self was thinking when he applied for his job, but there was nothing more he'd like to do than go back a month in time and slap himself upside the head.

As if having to deal with people stupider than he was on a daily basis weren't enough, just about every five minutes, he had to repeat (and pleasantly, with a smile!) "Hi, did you find everything you need?" and "Have a wonderful day."

Have a wonderful fucking day.

His only joys were when he elicited the most uncomfortable of grunts from men buying lube by gracing them with a very small and very meaningful heh. Even that wasn't enough to mitigate the dullness of the job. Kagami Taiga was not built to stand around all day in one spot. He was meant to move. To do something. Not plaster on a smile that would make children cry and ground out a—

"Good evening; did you find everything you need?"

He grabbed the basket with venom and began scanning the items.

Peanuts. Bananas. Gum. Band-aids. Toilet paper. Soup. Soup. Soup. Soup. Soup. Soup. Soup.

"The hell?" Kagami couldn't help but mutter as he scanned in soup can after soup can. He took a glance at the customer and choked on his spit.

"Aomine!?"

"Wh—the hell? Kagami? What are you doing here?"

That's my line! Kagami would have crabbed in any other circumstance, but the sight of Aomine's face stopped the words in his throat. Deep bags under his eyes accentuated the hollowness of his cheeks, which, in turn, highlighted the thin, long scab decorating his chin. All thoughts of scanning soup lost, Kagami knitted his brows and tapped his own chin.

"Where'd that come from?"

Wow what Kagami Taiga is concerned for my well-being?! was all but painted across Aomine's face. Kagami gave him a withering look, and Aomine had the good grace to supply a sheepish grin.

"From work," he said, tapping his thumb against the police badge on his chest. And not without a bit of pride, Kagami noted. "Some crazy drunk I was trying to get into the car pulled a knife on me. I was stupid and didn't realize he had it on him."

"Ah," Kagami acknowledged faintly. His position behind the cash register had never felt so prominent. He wanted to sink into the floor and beat himself up. But as he picked up the next soup can in line, he did a double take.

"Wait what?"

"What?"

"You're going on patrol?"

"Yeah," Aomine said with a shrug.

"You're twenty. People don't go on patrols when they're twenty."

"Yeah, well," Aomine said as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "They said I had the guts and the 'talent'—whatever talent a police officer can have, at any rate. And then they told me that as long as I go to school for at least two years, I can follow people around a few hours a day."

"Talent…" Kagami muttered and for a few minutes fantasized that he was the best soup-can scanner in the world and was raking in the cash as people traveled all the way to Japan just to see his soup-scanning prowess. The barcode seemed to snicker at him. He scowled and chucked the can in a bag.

"Why are you buying all this soup? You got a canned-soup fetish or something?"

"Nah, I have the lady on the canned soup fetish," Aomine said, grinning. "She's gotta be at least a G."

Kagami almost rolled his eyes, but refrained upon realizing that he was being far more conversational than his job called for—his manager was staring at him like a rabid dog. He swallowed and dutifully scanned the soup cans.

"What are you doing here?" Aomine said, oblivious to Kagami's plight. "Last time I checked, you lived in an apartment by yourself."

"Yeah, well," Kagami mumbled. "Some stuff happened. And besides," he said with a half-resentful glare, "the last time you checked was—"

"Yeah, yeah," Aomine said hastily, as if he didn't want to be reminded about how he'd neglected all his friends over the past few years.

"But this soup… what is it for, really?"

"I dunno," Aomine said. "Eating?"

Kagami's eyebrow twitched.

"Well, duh, but where are the vegetables?"

"Inside?"

"Like, real vegetables!"

Aomine waved a hand. "Don't need 'em. Waste of refrigerator space. Not that I even have one."

"You're gonna die of malnutrition."

"Come to my funeral?"

"Nope," Kagami said briskly. "The last one was enough for a lifeti—"

He abruptly stopped, both words and action. The soup can was suspended in air, clasped tightly in his frozen hand. He only realized now what he had been about to say. Aomine's eyes had grown wide.

Kagami quickly swiped the soup can and was relieved to find that it had been the last.

"Eat better," he said gruffly as he dumped Aomine's bags onto the counter. "You look like shit that's been shit on."

"Y-Yeah," Aomine said, looking perturbed. "Later."

As if his expression wasn't enough to show how affected he'd been by Kagami's slip-of-the-mouth, Aomine let Kagami's unintentional insult slide.

After Aomine left, Kagami relaxed his stiff shoulders, wondering when he had grown so tense. A moment of intense internal struggle passed, and then, to the shock of the old lady who had been coming his way, Kagami violently punched himself in the face. As the disturbed woman scurried away, Kagami shook his head and slapped himself again.

"If you're quite done with the masochist act…" an ominous voice slithered into his ear. Kagami gulped and mechanically took the next customer's cart. His supervisor scoffed and stalked away.

"Good evening, did you find everything alright?" he muttered, barely registering that the next customers were a boy and his father.

"Daddy, why was he hitting himself?"

Despite the attempt at a whisper, Kagami heard every word of that question. His eyebrow twitched, but he maintained a calm demeanor.

"Ah, son, he was trying to give himself a dose of youth."

A dose of what?

"See, before you get out of school, you get naptime, right? And in this way, you regenerate your youth bar."

Youth bar? The fuck was that?

"But this man here, he doesn't get a naptime, so he must resort to other methods in order to keep his youth bar up."

Kagami stole a glance at the man whose sanity he questioned.

"Look dad, he's got scissors for eyebrows! That's so cool! He could be a superhero and his name would be Scissor-Brow-Man!"

The father of this rambunctious child threw Kagami not an apologetic glance, but rather one that said you had better be honored that my son deemed you cool and hip enough to be a superhero. Kagami fixed his eyes sternly upon the boy, whose youth was radiant. Black hair, like his father's, rosy, chubby cheeks, and bright blue eyes that—

Kagami's breath hitched in his throat, and the world all but stopped.

—that belonged on another face—

—unseeing eyes that wouldn't open again—

The celery in Kagami's hand fell, and he took a few shaky steps back, trying to control his breathing. The father moved forward, head tilted in inquisitively, saying, "You look like you've seen a ghost. Is everything alright?"

Under those bright blue eyes, Kagami gulped like a landed fish. He scooped up the celery and thrust it in the bags.

"Sorry," he mumbled lowly. The man hummed a little as if to say Not at all.

"Long day?" the man prompted as he cheerily lifted his son in the air. The boy made plane noises as he was whirled around.

"Something like that…"

Kagami's gaze gravitated towards the boy currently raining spit all over the cash register. The man abruptly clutched his son tightly to his chest and gave Kagami a suspicious look.

"My son is cute," he said imperiously. "But no stalking."

Kagami guffawed.

"St—me—what—"

The child wriggled in his father's arms and leaned forward.

"Daddy's only joking," he said in a confidential whisper, which was not very confidential at all given that his whisper was louder than a mooing cow. His whisper erupted into giggles as 'Daddy' attacked him with a tickle.

Something akin to a hot iron seared Kagami's insides as he watched those laughing blue eyes hungrily.

"What's… his name?" Kagami said in his best pitch at a conversational tone.

Laughing a little, the man shrugged. "This little guy?"

Kagami nodded.

"His name is…"

After they had left, Kagami quietly closed his lane and signed out for the day. The wind had never tasted so sweet on his bike-ride home. It was sweet enough to make him vomit. The scent of pollen and freshly-bloomed flowers overwhelmed him, sending him toppling off his bike and into the grass. He lay eagle-spread, and for the first time in almost four years, he wanted to cry.

He passed a hand over his eyes.

"What kind of hell…"

Would give a kid with those blue eyes the name 'Shiroko Tetsuya'?

-3-

11:43 p.m.: the backwards poster boy

While Kagami was wasting his life away under a witheringly miserable sun, Aomine was working hard to finish his university homework before his next patrol began.

Yes, Aomine Daiki was working hard.

If only Momoi could see him now, she'd have a heart attack…

The pen halted in its scrawl. Aomine cocked his head and gave out an exasperated sigh-snarl. Why'd she come up all of a sudden? He hadn't seen her in over a year…

In any case, why was using your brain so damn hard? After doing nothing but living, breathing, and thinking basketball, it had been a rough transition to thinking about triangles and politics and public policy. Jesus, even hearing the word 'politics' gave Aomine a headache. Pitiful, he knew, but it was way better than whiling his life away by uprooting dandelions and watching their seeds dance in the wind. He grimaced at the memories of that part of his life—all for you, Tetsu—and scribbled out a half-assed answer to his public policy homework.

Enough was enough. Aomine pulled on a jacket over his uniform because, although it was already late spring, the weather got chilly at night. He locked his door and hopped outside, where he found a police car awaiting him.

Driving the patrol car was Officer Yu, a man in his early thirties who had a big smile and small hands. His hand size was the butt of the jokes in the workplace, but he took it in stride, often poking fun of them himself. He seemed to be too kind to be a police officer, but when it came to protecting civilians, he was more serious than anyone Aomine had ever met.

Aomine gruffly admitted that Officer Yu was a bit of an inspiration.

"Where are we going tonight?" Aomine asked, unable to squash the eager tone that won over his usual drawl.

Officer Yu replied, "Kaiyou University. I'm going to show you the party life here."

"Are we gonna arrest some people?"

"Not this time," Officer Yu said with a chuckle. He turned his cap to a slight angle, a habit of his, Aomine noticed, that arose whenever he was feeling on edge. "University kids get it easy. There are too many underage drinkers to contain, so we let them go so long as they don't do anything really stupid."

"So, what do we do?"

"Roam around the streets to make sure they're not doing anything really stupid. Prevent accidents. Take the really drunk ones somewhere safe. Small things like that. It's about time the club starts kicking kids out. That's the club over there."

As they pulled up to the curb, stream of students was beginning to straggle out of the building full of neon lights. The music was so loud Aomine could hear it from the curb. The stench of alcohol was poignant. People were stumbling over themselves, delirious, inebriated, high. Aomine could see some of them point at the patrol car, could hear them laugh. He bristled, but Officer Yu patted him on the shoulder.

"Of course they'll laugh at authority at times like these," he said breezily, but his hand was at his cap again. "Because they're out there defying law and there's nothing we can do about it. Oh, dear," he said suddenly. "Looks like one of them got a bit too drunk."

A blond—was he a foreigner?—doubled over and emptied out his entire stomach on the sidewalk. People were laughing again, but no one bothered to go over and check on the blond. His shirt was half unbuttoned, and bruises were visible even from Aomine's distance.

"Let's go," Officer Yu said, nudging Aomine.

"R-Right."

As he swung himself out of his seat, Aomine got an eerie feeling deep in the pits of his stomach, like some sense of foreboding was trying to crawl out of him—

"Oh, god, no," he muttered.

All of a sudden, the foreboding feeling exploded, peppering his insides with ice. That golden hair was too familiar for comfort, and the silver hoop dangling off one ear wasn't doing anything to make Aomine feel better.

Officer Yu took the blond under the armpits and heaved him to his feet.

"C'mon, kid, you got better places to sleep than in your own vomit," he huffed, trying to keep the blond steady. Aomine wanted to tell him give up and let's go home. The blond lurched suddenly, and Officer Yu took a nimble step back, neatly avoiding the next projectile of vomit launched into the air. Aomine's feet were not so lucky and were splattered at the edges. But he didn't even care.

His world was caving in, and for all he knew, he was looking through a fish-hole centered on the woozy blond. Bruises everywhere. Red marks lining him from the neck down.

It's not supposed to be happening this way.

Tangled hair. Vomit. The stench of alcohol. A whiff of smoke.

I should be the most messed up out of our entire group. Not him.

Not him!

Everything was backwards now. Out of all of them, Aomine should have been the one without a job, without an education, getting drunk and drugged up and laid every night, because he was as lazy as hell and stupid to boot—but this kid—not this kid—

Before he knew it, he was seeing red, and as those hazy, fogged-up golden eyes met his, he felt his fist swing wildly and make contact with clammy skin.

"The hell do you think you're doing?!" he heard himself shouting. Those groggy yellow eyes tried to focus on him, tried to pin his identity down, but Aomine could tell that they were out of commission. It was only because Officer Yu was yelling at him to calm down that he kept himself from knocking the living shit out of that kid.

"The hell are you doing?" he demanded. "The hell are you doing?"

He couldn't even bring himself to spit out the blond's name, because this wasn't the boy he used to know; this mess wasn't anything close to the boy he knew. His knees must have given way from the shock, because he was kneeling, hands scrabbling for a hold on the other boy's shoulders. He shook him hard.

"Why?" he demanded. His voice was like sandpaper. "I don't understand. Why?!"

"Calm down, Aomine!" Officer Yu said sharply. "He can't hear you—he just lost it." His tone lost its harsh edge as he inquired, "Do you… know him?"

Aomine's words were lost in the knot in his throat. Anger and sadness twisted his innards into knots, competing for a place in his emotions. He tried to shut it down, but the sight of that boy slumped in Officer Yu's arms sent him into a seething mess.

"I don't know what sort of relationship you have with this kid, but remember what I always tell you," Officer Yu said, adopting a slow, steady tone. "The number one thing is to remain calm. Get a hold of yourself, Aomine."

Aomine closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. All he could see was the blinding smile belonging to a boy with gold hair. And when he opened his eyes again, all he could see was the wilted remains of that breathless image.

He stood and brushed the dirt off his knees.

"His name is Kise Ryouta," he said in a voice so flat that it reminded him of Kuroko. His stomach lurched again. He tasted blood in his mouth. He'd bitten his own lip. He wiped the blood off with his thumb and turned sharply on his heel. The wrangled smile that rose to his face split the wound further, and the blood that welled up, he spat out bitterly.

"I don't know him."

-4-

2:03 a.m.: master of laziness

Murasakibara Atsushi had always thought everything to be troublesome, still thought everything was troublesome, and was pretty positive that he was going to continue to believe that everything was too troublesome. As such, he devised a master plan that allowed him to enjoy chips without requiring his hand to ever move too far from his mouth.

His hoodie was on backwards and the bag of chips rested in the hood, inches away from his mouth.

After a particularly enormous yawn, Murasakibara decided that it was about time for bed. The chips were deposited unceremoniously on his messy desk full of unread newspapers and snack wrappers, arousing no concern that they had scattered all over the surface.

He lumbered over to his deplorably unkempt bed and fell over. Before the clock read 2:04, Murasakibara Atsushi was asleep.

-5-

2:57 a.m.: driven by weeping storm clouds

A peaceful night such as this held the perfect conditions for late-night studying. Outside wept a storm, full of bitter rain and hollow winds. Any sound from inside or out was muted. Midorima, had he the time, would have smiled in satisfaction. But he had neither the time nor, he was soon to learn, the occasion, for through the sound of the downpour cut his roommate's voice:

"Yo, Midorima. Why don't you get some sleep?"

Without giving his roommate the slightest hint of recognition, Midorima flipped the page to his organic chemistry textbook and scribbled onwards.

"Yo, man, it's three. I want to sleep. And you know I can't sleep with the lights on."

"Purchase a sleeping mask," Midorima said. "I have told you many times that it is your lucky item of the year, but you fail to take heed of my suggestions. You have only yourself to blame."

"Come on—"

"Tanaka Tarou," Midorima said, slapping his pencil onto the desk. "While you may be as average as your name, I am not. I am planning to graduate from university in three years and from medical school in three. Allow me peace in my studies."

Tanaka Tarou shrugged and pulled the covers around his head. "I was going to say that it's not good for your health. I've been your roommate since freshman year, and you don't look the same as you did back then."

"My health is my own business," Midorima shot back. "And I'll have you know that your concern for me goes unappreciated. So, stop."

"Jeez, alright. Just remember to thank me when I call the ambulances to save you from becoming some husk of yourself."

Midorima was already back to his textbook. How presumptuous of his roommate to think that Midorima's health had deteriorated to the point where it needed concern. He ate his meals regularly, twice a day. He washed his hands routinely. He went to bed by four and woke up at seven. Everything about his schedule was completely, meticulously regulated, and there was no way he, Midorima Shintarou, would have to worry about something so trivial as his health.

"Listen," Tanaka said. Midorima heaved a sigh. The stupid baboon would do better to just bury his head in his blankets and suffocate. "No, really, listen. I talked to one of your friends from high school the other day. One Kazunari Takao. Ring a bell?"

There was a pause in Midorima's pencil scratching. After a moment, he resumed.

"Not really."

Tanaka Tarou sighed, like he knew Midorima was playing dumb. "He didn't give me the details, but he thinks you're blaming yourself for something that happened when you guys were finishing up your first year of high school."

There was a snap; Midorima couldn't help it. He had broken his pencil in two. Tanaka Tarou had emerged from his cave of blankets and was studying Midorima with an eye that was too un-average to fit his name. "This is what it's all about, isn't it? All this work is to keep you busy so that you don't have any time to think about things."

"Unlike you, my head is filled with many things," Midorima said through gritted teeth. He wanted to tell Tanaka Tarou that he knew nothing, to shut up. It infuriated him that an outsider was trying to patronize him.

"And maybe even your aspirations for medical school were influenced by that, too. I don't know what you think you did back then," Tanaka Tarou said. He was finally retreating back into his blankets. "But killing yourself isn't going to redeem you. Take better care of yourself."

Moments later, the air was filled with only the sound of Tanaka Tarou's snores. And a minute after that, the sound of a fresh pencil scratching away at paper smothered his snores out.

-6-

3:00 a.m.: too big and too insignificant

The mahogany desk at which he sat seemed a little oversized for him, yet his presence was still commanding and put to rest any doubt that he was unfit for a position behind that desk. A large stack of papers sat to his left—finished—and a smaller pile was to his right—unfinished. The spacious room was lit by only the smallest of desk-lamps—and he preferred this quiet light to the harshness of the overhead bulbs.

With a sigh, he rose from his chair and strode to the window. On nights like these, his office, situated on the topmost, twenty-seventh floor, provided him the greatest of views. Rainwater was sliding down the glass panels, bending the city lights such that they reminded him of rings of fairies dancing in a circle.

He blinked. To be imagining fairies in a circle, he must be very tired indeed.

Before he retired for the night, he set his desk in order. His name plaque, reading Akashi Seijuuro, was slightly off-center. With an expression that indicated nothing, he put it straight.

Balancing a university degree and partial management of his father's company was no easy feat, but of course, it was well within the capabilities of a member of the Akashi household. Akashi had no objections, and he excelled in both areas. He was being hailed as Japan's youngest leader and was maintaining top of his class. He was lauded for his serene, sincere personality, cool, quick judgment, and stunning charisma. They credited his father for his excellent upbringing, but the one they should be applauding was a boy who could no longer be found anywhere on the face of the earth. The boy who, though was thought to be nothing but a shadow, changed Akashi for the better.

But, it seemed that no matter how famous or rich or charismatic one was, one could never have what one desired most. No matter how famous or rich or charismatic he was, he could not convince Death to send back over the river the life of one Kuroko Tetsuya.

He was often busy, so he had installed a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen—essentially an entire flat on the floor of his office. He was often busy because he could not turn to anyone for help. Such a thing would undermine his position as the esteemed leader of the Akashi Corporation and give reason to the rumors he knew floated even on the floors of his own building.

With a click, the humble light popped out of existence. For a while, Akashi stood at the window, simply looking over the cityscape. And when he had finally had his fill of the world that was too big for him and his position at the top of the building that was too insignificant, he retreated quietly to his bedroom and shut the door tight.

This is a haiku
New project to rewrite this
Hopefully better