I've been watching XXXHolic recently, and I was inspired to do some word play with Kagami's name. So, this fanfiction is like an XXXHolic parody, and pretty much nonshounen-ai. Enjoy! :D

MIRROR OF A TIGER

"Kagami, recently, aren't you eating too much?" Koganei asked, looking at the tower of his kouhai's burgers and hotdog sandwiches. "I know you like Majiba, but this is…"

"What are you talking about Koganei-kun? That amount is just normal!" Riko said, before sipping her cola. "Besides, it will be more unusual if he'll eat a burger less than that…"

"Yeah, yeah, don't sweat it, Koganei." Tsuchida replied, and the entire team could only nod. They believed that it would be even normal if Kagami were to eat a hundred burgers in one sitting.

However, the Koganei could not deny that he thought it was unusual for their sole first year regular to eat such amount, and with such haste, as if he never had eaten for the whole day. But since the team never noticed anything, and Riko was included in that, he thought that maybe he was just being paranoid.

After eating at Majiba, the Seirin Basketball team decided to go home and went on separate ways. Kagami, having no curfew and no people to wait for him at his apartment, decided to spend the entire night until ten to practice in the street court. He dribbled and dunked in the silent night, where the echoes of the sounds of ball making with the ground and with the ring were the only thing that he could hear.

Slowly and slowly, he felt in trance as he dribbled.

Until…there was a total blackness in his vision. He felt nothing, as if his subconscious mind resided elsewhere.

Then, he found himself inside a house.

"What…"

He blinked his eyes numerous times, and looked sideways.

He was sitting in a chair, in front of a table with extravagant dishes. He glanced around, and saw a traditional Japanese house style of ornaments. Everything looked brown and made of wood, and he felt as if he was back at those eras he would usually hear from their history textbooks.

And then, he smelled something nice from outside the sliding door. Something that smelled sweet, like a girl's perfume, but much more addicting.

He thought over and over if he would go out, or would escape from such a strange house, but his body could not stand. In fact, he could not move at all.

He heard the creak of wood against wood, the door opening, a pale hand at the edge.

Kagami saw the source of that nice smell.

Good thing he could not move, or else he might have been acting like a dog now, sniffing such a fragrance.

"Welcome in my store once again, Kagami Taiga-san." The boy in blue yukata bowed. He sat across Kagami, and they stared at each other.

The boy had blue hair and blue eyes that matched the color of his yukata, and he even looked more translucent due to the paleness of his skin.

What did the boy say again? The redhead had forgotten, entranced by the view and smell attacking all his senses.

"Please eat. I know you're hungry." The boy said nonchalantly.

The redhead tried moving his hands, and yes, they did. But he had no luck with his legs, or any part of his body, but his arms and hands. Giving up later on, he looked at the food, sniffed, and concluded that there was no poison-smelling substance in it.

Kagami dug in without further questions. Yes, he was really hungry. Despite the fifty burgers he just ate at Majiba just a while ago.

"Who're you?" he asked while munching on the beef steak. "And eat as well. Or maybe this is actually toxic?"

"Your trust for people you just apparently met baffles me." The bluehaired said, his tone insulting, but his expression failing to display it. "You seem to have forgotten me, Kagami-san. I am Kuroko Tetsuya."

"I never knew someone…like you." He replies. "And don't call me with –san! It's awkward…"

"Kagami-kun it will be then."

"I can just kinda know if a food's good and poisonous or not. I kinda sensed it's not bad, so I just eat it."

"I see."

Kagami saw that the other boy was just intently looking at him as he ate. He also saw Kuroko sipped white liquid from the glass, which, from the smell, a vanilla shake.

"Ahh…I'm full." He asked after finishing all the dishes in the table. "Then…why am I here? I know I'm playing basketball just a while ago."

"I believe you were brought here to buy something from me."

Kagami definitely heard that he was welcomed to a store. And that a store is a place where people buy things. But wherever he looked at it, the place looked more like a house than a store. There were not shelves with displayed collections, if ever it was an antique store. He erased the thought that the boy was selling drugs – he could not look like a yakuza or a jaded person from his perspective.

"I…have to buy something?"

The bluehead only stared at him. He felt being penetrated deep down by the blue orbs, and when he felt little hands in his hair, he could only flinch.

"I see you don't really remember anything." Kuroko had stood up from his seat, reaching out his hand to the redhead who was sitting on the floor. "But…I can tell."

Kuroko kept his eyes on the red ones, as if searching for answers he wanted to know. And after a while, he nodded.

"I see, you miss them?" the bluehaired continued. "I will take an equivalent compensation, is it okay?"

"Hey! Who are you talking to?! Who do I miss? What compensation?! I have to tell you I just used up all my money in the burgers a while ago! I'm penniless right now!"

"I see." Kuroko closed his eyes, a smile slightly gracing his lips. "I see to it that your wish is granted. Goodbye."

"HEY! I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO PAY FOR WHATEVER IT IS—" Kagami screamed, and opened his eyes, meeting the white ceiling he was very familiar with. "Shit…a dream?"

He only later realized a very noisy alarm clock in the table on the right side of his bed.

He lifted his right hand to push the button to stop the clock from being annoying, but…

"Huh?"

He put all his effort in moving his right hand, but for some reason, it would not budge at all.

"He-hey…this is a joke…right?"

And he tried using his left hand. It moved, naturally. He turned off the noise, and prepared for school.

He was not able to use his whole right arm.

He brushed it off being too tired from practicing too much the day ago, or that he slept in such a position that probably made his right arm numb.

He was not able to write anything… or if he did want to write the lesson, he couldn't. His dominant hand was his right, and he sucked at using left, even though he practiced it before for basketball.

"Shit…I cannot play basketball with this…"

He still went to the gym after school, and approached Riko.

"What? You cannot move your right arm?" their coach asked, as if doubting the redhead. But she knew how much of a basketball idiot their first year regular was, so maybe it was true.

"Right… last night I think I can still move it. But the whole day, I just cannot…"

"I see. After practice, we'll have it a check-up, okay?" she said, and tapped his shoulder. "For the meantime, you can practice with your left hand alone, okay?"

"Oh...yeah."

The old doctor could just frown in confusion, as he looked at the pile of papers showing the result of the various tests done to his patient. Kagami only looked intently, trying to see what was written in the white sheets, but he only saw technical terms and numbers that really did not make any sense.

"Um…sensei?" he called out. And the doctor jerked a little from the voice, apparently too focused on thinking. "How…is my arm?"

"This is puzzling. There's nothing wrong with your nerves, and other parts of your body react just fine. I was assuming you had a mild stroke in your case, but when I checked your test results, there was just this little thing that puzzles me. This is beyond my expertise. Your right arm's nerve cells apparently severed, or I cannot see them."

"I…should I be worried about that?" Kagami asked, not really understanding what was said.

"Of course! Nerves don't just disappear! What the hell have you done on your body?!" the doctor snapped, grasping on his shoulder so tight, but he could not feel anything with his right side. "I could probably rip off your right arm right now and you won't feel anything!"

The redhead was speechless, and seeing this, the doctor tried to recompose himself.

"I am losing my head on this. I apologize, but I cannot really do anything with your condition." The old man breathed deep as he sat.

"Kagami, how was it?" Riko was the first one to ask, and the whole team assembled in front of him in the hospital lobby.

"Eh…it seems that I lost my nerves in my right arm…? I cannot really understand what he was saying…" he said, hesitantly.

"HUH?! WHAT THE HECK WITH THAT?!" Their coach yelled. "Kagami, answer me seriously or else…"

"Why would I lie about this shit! I don't know! Ask the doctor!" the redhead also answered with a yell, loud enough that the entire lobby was staring in their team. "I'm outta here. This is getting out of hand!"

For some reason, his surroundings became that of an afternoon bright, and his feet unconsciously carried him to shrine-looking house, with torii gate in front.

His left hand also automatically moved to open the door, and his feet also moved towards the living room.

There was no one inside, and he was surprised to himself he expected someone. His feet brought him to the opened veranda, and there he saw the same blue haired boy.

He heard the familiar noise of a basketball being dribbled, though it sounded softer, being bounced in a garden land, and not on a court.

"Hey, I'm here again…" he called out, and the dribbling stopped. Kuroko held the ball in his hand and put it at rest beside him.

"That means you have not yet received the full product yet." The bluehead said, looking at the red eyes. "Or you are probably –"

"You- you know, I'm really confused in all of this! I went here unconsciously, have my right hand broken, and you're always saying buying here and there and compensation! If you really needed money from me, don't go around in circles! Shit! Fuck!" Kagami said in one go, and breathed hard afterwards.

An awkward silence passed by, and the redhead decided to look at the blue boy.

Still expressionless, and then, he resumed dribbling the ball while sitting.

"If you're talking about your right arm, it was the compensation of what you bought to me the other day." Kuroko said.

"Huh? How the hell?! How! And wait, all that fucking time you were just talking to yourself! Is it the food?! I'll pay for all the food I've eaten, just heal my arm!" He was starting to scream, not caring if someone would hear him.

"Hush. This place is sacred."

Kagami felt a snap in his short temper. More of this and…

"I'll not go into details of how I do it, I can just do it." Kuroko continued. He stood up, stopped dribbling, and walked right in front of the basketball player. "Soon, you will know. How I made you like this and now that the expiration date is over, your memories should awaken."

"Expiration date? Memories? Huh, what the heck—"

"And you are brought here, by your instincts, and I could read your inner mind, your true being." He paused, and looked at the very confused boy. "I'd rather not tell it you, for you would probably not believe in me. In the next days, you will dream of your locked memories, as it was stated in the contract."

"Mou owari desu, Kagami Taiga, anata no ningen jinsei." *

Kagami knew he should be able to understand the last two sentences, but he could only make out of syllables and his name, but not the meaning.

He did not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He hated that blue-haired boy, for not telling him anything. He did not want to see whatever those memories were.

He knew there were clues to what was happening to him from the last words of the mysterious boy in yukata, but he could not recall what it was. He was not able to comprehend it at the time either. Shit.

"…-gami! Kagami!" called out Riko. He forgot they were eating yakiniku. He could smell the meat laid in his table untouched. "For now, forget about your arm. We will have opinions from other doctors after this. Right now, eat!"

"O-oh, yes."

Not thinking what he was doing, he started to pick up the raw meat and eat it. Not cooking it.

He did it for all the meat in his table, and all his teammates could only look in both disgust and awe.

"…Kagami, you do realize it's a raw meat right…?"

"How did he… "

"Shit…?"

The freshman trio, Fukuda, Kawahara and Furihata both said, their faces contorted like they wanted to puke.

Kagami just only realized it as well. Really, he did that?!

Recently, he also realized that when he got home late and got hungry he would just grab the frozen meat in his freezer and eat it straight like that.

"…I'm outta here…" he excused himself, and went to the bathroom.

"Sou dane, he was probably so hungry, and now he just wanted to throw up, right, coach?" Furihata said and looked at Riko.

"I…I hoped so…" the girl coach softly told herself.

He walked out of the store, and choked at the amount he ate. He did not feel anything bad in his taste buds after eating raw meat – in fact it was still delicious. The blood, the juices that were extracted, and the tenderness of the meat … he was drooling, and he in fact wanted to eat more.

He smelled meat. The smelled something nice. Meat. Meat. Meat. He was hungry. He was very hungry. The smell. The smell.

His feet were brought to a place near the high rise buildings, down to a place visible to others only as barren land in between the skyscrapers. But to Kagami, it was the store he had been going into (or forced to go) these days.

He was brought inside unconsciously, his two legs being dragged because of the smell he wanted to devour. As if his sense of sight were not working, he blindly went inside.

"Kagami-san?" he heard the familiar voice, and that was when he suddenly became aware of his surroundings.

"Kagami-san?" the pale boy asked again, and Kagami had to wipe his drools and compose himself in front of the boy.

Shit, I'm inside this person's place again. What now?

"You were the one entering my store, don't blame me." Kuroko said, and he went back to the drama he was watching in the TV in his living room. He was currently eating his dinner in a round wooden table, and in front a LCD TV was showing a family drama where the child wanted to live on his own, leaving his parents alone.

"Hey." Kagami called. Kuroko continued sipping his milkshake as he watched the TV where the child argued to his mother why he wanted to separate from them.

"Hey, you." the redhead repeated. And he blocked the TV screen with his body.

"What is it?" Kuroko asked, his voice a little bit husky and deeper than usual.

"Tell me what I bought from you. You could at least spare me of that." He said as he sat in the tatami. The owner of the store clicked the turn off button in the remote, and silence enveloped the two of them. "Recently, many weird things have been happening to me. You and this arm, as well as many other things. Usually about my eating and stuff."

"Then, is that something you'd want to buy?" Kuroko asked, and Kagami visibly twitched.

"Huh?! Hell no! Enough of my right hand. I still want to feel the grasp of my other hand. Shit, I'm outta here. Just don't let me see your face again!"

Kagami stood up, and turned back to the boy staring off in the distance, out to the garden, to the evening sky.

"Cook me dinner, Kagami-kun. And blend me vanilla milkshake. " The bluehead said. The basketball player then stopped on his way to the door, and went back inside the living room. "That is an enough compensation for the information you want. Will you buy it then?"

"Just cook you something huh? Then, I'll take it!" Kagami's face showed interest at the offer, and went immediately in the kitchen.

He served simple grilled fish, miso soup and a bowl of rice to the store owner, as per request, and later a glass of vanilla milkshake. Kagami waited until Kuroko finished eating, very very slowly, but he remained patient. They engaged to simple talk about the world, and the redhead merely listened to him not understanding the profound statements being said. Then, as Kuroko offered his thanks for the meal, his eyes became focused to the Kagami, and the latter also sensed that it was time for business.

"Now then, Kagami-kun. Listen carefully." Kuroko started.

They were on the opposite sides of the circular table, and red eyes stared to the blue eyes and vice versa.

"Right now, and even years and days before this, you were just hallucinating." He continued.

Mist gathered around them.

And Kagami felt himself floating, though he stayed rooted in his place.

He was in trance.

Kuroko continued speaking, as if it resounded in his head.

Don't you know why Kagami Taiga is your name?

Kagami is mirror. Taiga is tiger.

That's not how it is written**, but you wished to conceal your identity in the play of words.

Mirror tiger.

Does that sound a bell?

You're a mirror of a tiger.

From a circus, you were once a tiger cub and you saw someone playing basketball.

"If I were a human, I can play that! Not playing with fires, or being whipped. Or seeing my parents in pain."

As if on cue, there was a sudden headache in Kagami's head, as a memory of him, before the metal bars, with a company of another adult tiger inside him, a little boy dribbling a ball came into view.

You have entered my store once. I could read your mind, and wished to become a human.

You paid the guilt of eating everyone in the circus, and freeing all the animals.

And you became a human. With false memories. With a father you don't know. Living in an apartment you don't own. Eating a lot to compensate your hunger for raw meat.

And only living for the sake of your wish.

But you can never deny your origin.

You wish for the wilderness.

You wish to be free of that cell you once lived in.

The headache continued, and worsened, and Kagami saw more and more of his memories as he did bathed himself in the blood of people that caged him. He saw himself in beast form, semi-tiger and semi-human, and even his parents feared him. All the animals ran off, and all the people near the place also escaped somewhere.

You wish to meet your true parents you once saw inside the cage.

Unconsciously, your inner animal instincts are like that.

Eating a lot is not enough.

And then you once enter my store.

Your eyes wishes for extension.

But no can do. You have nothing more to pay.

And so, your human body starts to decline.

Slowly and slowly.

But, don't worry. You won't start eating your friends.

You will simply die… looking like how you were before.

So it will be better for you to go away.

Do you believe me now?

Do these things ring a bell?

Kuroko snapped his fingers, and the mist was lifted in the place. Kagami became aware of himself and his surroundings, but still felt afloat with the returned memories.

"Kaga-" The bluehead started, but the redhead already ran off somewhere.

NO THIS IS A DREAM. I'M NOT A FUCKING TIGER. I KNOW IT WAS A RUNNING JOKE WITHIN MY TEAMMATES BUT I'M NOT A GODDAMN TIGER. I'M NOT LITERALLY A TIGER. SHIT SHIT SHIT.

NO NO NO NO NO . I'M NOT A TIGER. I'M NOT.

Kagami continued running down the quiet streets, across the road, without turning into any cross sections. He ran and ran for as long as his breath took him, without knowing the time, without knowing the consequences. He just wanted to escape the reality.

"I'M NOT A TIGER!" He shouted to the unknown place, where he stopped. And then, that's when he noticed the neighborhood did not look similar to a modern Tokyo, with the place he was now standing was made of cobblestones.

And when he looked around, the men were clad with expensive suits and tall dark hats. The women they accompany, on the other hand, were wearing tight fitting dresses he only saw in the television.

Also, from his behind, a type of car he never saw was being driven.

All people talked of language he was mysteriously familiar with, despite not being Japanese or English.

"Papa! Can we go to the circus?" asked the boy who was holding his father's hand.

"Yes, yes, but it is not open yet. We will go there later."

Circus…

"From a circus, you are a cub…" He recalled Kuroko had said.

He dashed towards the circus, following the smell he was very very aware of. It was similar to his own smell, and he never smelled anything like that before.

The area around the circus tent was still deserted, for the show would start two hours later. Kagami ignored this and went around, searching for the quarters of the performers.

And then he heard something hitting metal. He saw a big rectangular cage, opened, a big tiger outside. And before the said tiger, a male was hitting the tiger with his whip, incessantly, angrily. The tiger could only cry in despair.

"OYAJI!" Kagami instinctively called out, and the male suddenly stopped what he was doing. The redhead ran beside his father tiger, hugged him, before he realized that his hands had became small paws.

For some reason, he welcomed the idea.

He scratched the male until he let go of the whip, and continued doing so until he had wounded the whole body. The male only lay in the ground unconscious.

He whimpered as he saw his father bloody and wounded. They rested beside the cage, side by side. No one seemed to notice the earlier screams for help of the male, and so their entire world was quiet.

His father roared lightly, and he immediately understood what it meant.

With his small paws, he caressed his father's head before they fall asleep.

And then. There was the basketball, bouncing lightly in their direction.

And then, there was a little boy running to get his ball.

Basketbal…

In a split second, the little boy, who held the orange ball, suddenly transformed the ball into an orange sword, and…

KSHICK!

…cut through him.

In the world of living, Kagami was deemed missing. Their coach tried contacting his parents, but no avail. They also tried asking the landlord of the apartment he was living, and said that he did not know anyone like that.

What came more of a surprise was the fact that Alex Garcia and Himuro Tatsuya apparently never knew anyone like Kagami, and barely had memories of their life for ten years.

Slowly, everyone had forgotten him. To the point that they asked who was that person they were searching.

Kuroko confirmed this as he asked the entire Seirin basketball team. They did not know anyone whose name was Kagami Taiga. They never had such an ace. They never knew someone with that appetite.

They never knew that Kagami Taiga was someone who once existed, who was once their teammate, who was once their team's ace.

OWARI.

*"Your life as a human is already over, Kagami Taiga."

**Kagami's name is actually written in 火神大我 not 鏡タイガ. The former Kagami is fiery spirit and Taiga is big ego, while the latter is Kagami as mirror and Taiga as for tiger.