.standard deviation.
Akashi taught Kuroko his basketball.
"You're coming along nicely," he remarked pleasantly. "I'm surprised. You've absorbed everything I taught you so quickly."
From behind the orange sheen of the basketball, a small, pale and rather nondescript face smiled wanly.
"You don't mind if I call you Tetsuya?" Akashi went on, looking at him directly.
Kuroko responded that he did not, he supposed. To that, Akashi smiled and outstretched his hand.
"Well, then, Tetsuya, I expect to see you here tomorrow. You can practise with the regulars."
Kuroko let the ball drop so that he could clasp the hand that was held out before him.
.
With Akashi, Kuroko soon found that he could experience how it felt to play among equals and to be useful, to be needed. Practice was no longer a solitary affair accompanied by the knowledge of futility. Akashi knew that in Kuroko's eyes, he had done him a great favour.
"You don't need to thank me," Akashi told Kuroko, when the other boy brought his head down low in gratitude. "I merely brought out your potential."
Later that night, Akashi played shogi by himself; twirling the pawn in the palm of his hand, he set it down on the board and marvelled at its plainness.
.
When Kuroko asked if Akashi would ever teach him to shoot, Akashi merely shook his head.
"Now, now, Tetsuya." (His voice was velvety and smooth, like the covers over the dark pane of a ceiling window.) "You're a specialist. You have a very specific function to play on the team. Everyone has a very distinct purpose. I trust you knew that, yes?"
Kuroko said that he did.
"Good," said Akashi, pleased. "I wouldn't have expected any less of you. Now show me some more of your passes."
.
It went on like that, for a while. Kuroko's talent was useful, and on a team lit by the sigil of genius, his shadow lengthened further, stretching out thin and never touching anything.
Under Akashi's leadership, win followed win after win.
Kuroko never said anything, but he came to despise basketball and Akashi could feel it, resonating deeply within the shadow of his misdirection.
Akashi was a master of strategy games. He played shogi and won that too.
.
One day, when Kuroko announced that he would quit the team, Akashi's lips curled up into a smile that never reached his eyes.
"Your basketball will never win," he said.
His words were simple, and they were suffocating.
fin