Recovered
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Haizaki Shougo steals everything, styles and movements and shots and passes and blocks, and makes them his own. He cannot give them back—well, perhaps he can, but that's irrelevant because he won't give them back. He's stolen so many it's impossible to peel back the layers of stolen, reappropriated things to find what original style he had-but what would be the point of doing that anyway? Stealing them back would do no one any good at this point, really.
The thing is, it's easy to say he steals moves like the way he steals coins out of your pocket or small things from the convenience store, lighters and packs of gum and condoms and rubber bands all fit inside baggy sweatshirt sleeves with room to spare. But really, is that what he's stealing, the trivial things? After all, if he takes someone's move they can rely on their teammates more (they have to), they can go through a trial by fire and re-learn basketball (they don't have to, but they want to) and they come out stronger. Haizaki leaves the essential parts of them unchanged even as he shakes them and their perceptions to the core.
Ishida Hideki doesn't have much in the way of exceptional moves or basketball power. He's got decent fundamentals but a strong sense of justice and a deep appreciation and love for the game in its purest form, skill against skill, no tricks, no malicious intent. A desire to win, but not at all costs. It's a natural progression, really, from being a kid who wanted to be a samurai warrior (he can't help but cringe at the thought) to being a basketball player who puts honor first, a strong and dependable captain.
Of course, then Haizaki Shougo shows up, the antithesis of Ishida, unreliable and operating on no moral code whatsoever (Ishida tries to talk with him and Haizaki turns around and tugs on the end of one of his cornrows and grins and says, "I don't see the world as good and bad. A simple-minded person like you would never see all the shades of gray.") and though he talks big he backs it up with nothing. Sometimes he shows up to practice and sleeps in the middle of the court; sometimes he shows up and works hard; sometimes he doesn't show up at all. IT doesn't follow a pattern or a schedule and it's frustrating to work with. Ishida talks with his vice-captain and with the coach about this guy, but they can't reach a consensus. What do we do about him? Do we just tell him to show up more often? Do we cut him loose? Neither seems to be the appropriate option. Then Haizaki shows up to school completely wasted and ends up in a fight with the captain of the girls' judo club and tears a gash in her leg with one of his nails and they call in the school authorities. No one can prove it was him; the judo club girl isn't talking (she's too proud to admit defeat and pretends her leg is fine, which seems to be very difficult for her. Ishida is both impressed and completely unnerved.) The principal recommends kicking him off or at least putting him on probation but that it's ultimately the team's decision since there's nothing concrete and the girl pretends to have no complaints. Ishida's about to suggest point-blank his removal, but something in his coach's and vice captain's eyes silences him before he even begins to speak.
Haizaki is a winner. Sure, he doesn't win every fight, but he's the ace this team has been looking for for so long, the guy who can pull them through, who has dragged them into the Winter Cup discussion somehow, who is more agile and athletic and a quicker thinker than Ishida will ever be, the guy the coach will pin his hopes on after toiling away years and years at a shitty school that never recruits anyone in the top hundred and loses lopsidedly to mediocre teams. This guy can be everyone's hope, as shifty and untrustworthy as he is, as much of a douchebag thug-Haizaki Shougo is a winner. In the scheme of things, Ishida has no right to impose his preachy morals on others.
They lose anyway, to Haizaki's middle school arch nemesis and Kaijou, and even though it's the closest score they've had against a team of that caliber in years and it's the farthes thtey've made it in the Winter Cup tournament in decades, Ishida cannot smile. He doesn't ever want to see a basketball again. Hearing the squeak of sneakers on freshly-waxed wood outside only makes him nauseous; he pukes his guts out in the locker room toilet long after everyone else has left. This, this is the last game he'll ever play, this dirty (he's never seen anyone play as dirty as Haizaki did in this game; perhaps he's naive but he hopes he's not) farce of a game. He turns in his uniform in a bag in the coach's school mailbox the next morning, burns his shoes in the incinerator, smells the rubber melting as his stomach is still churning.
Haizaki has stolen his love of basketball. Certainly, he sees him around in school more often, although it's usually when he's lighting a joint in the bathroom or sleeping in the hallway, but he's apparently showing up for practice three times a week and not just screwing around. He's still being a dick and not making friends with everyone, still getting into fights after school and on the weekends, still sleeping around and being the other man in every relationship—but there's more of a method to his hostile madness now. And Ishida hates basketball, feels only emptiness inside himself where there was once strength. It's the easy way out, to blame someone else—but how else can he explain it? It's not like he has any integrity or moral high ground or anything like that anymore.
Ishida studies for entrance exams, but it's really all a blur, tainted with the poison of this horrible sensation. Previous off-seasons have been spent watching basketball highlights and training and thinking about the sport, but now all he can think of is resentment, how much he hates basketball. He wants to punch the air out of every stupid orange ball in existence, and even that probably wouldn't make him feel better. It's petty, he knows. Somehow, he gets into a well-reputed college, which is all well and good. He'll be studying engineering, which is what he's convinced himself he wants to do. Somewhere along the line, perhaps he'll be able to shake off this weight from his back that's bogging him down and making his shoulders and knees crack with its force.
He's seen Iwamura Tsutomu before, knows he would not forget those enormous, broad shoulders that seem to almost burst out of his blazer and that face that looks as if it was carved out of a rock by a skilled artist with the wrong tools, handsome in its way but with something somehow…off about it. They're in the same economics class, learning the same graphs and theories that are totally irrelevant to both of their majors (Iwamura is studying mathematics, something he tells Ishida on the way to lunch, to which he appears to have invited himself along). Ishida's been trying to avoid people because he's sure they will only tire of him and his bullshit, but Iwamura is forceful, not in an overly-aggressive manner, but still forceful. He has simply decided that he and Ishida are going to be friends and that's that.
Two months of eating lunch together after class every day, and Ishida still can't place him. By now it's too awkward to ask. It's something Iwamura doesn't really need to talk about, at any rate—and maybe Iwamura doesn't remember him. He's a pretty average guy other than his hair and his height, and Iwamura's so much taller than him that he probably doesn't even notice the latter trait.
Summer stretches on; Ishida's never gone this long without playing basketball since before he can remember. He begins to feel the itch again, from deep inside of himself. He still goes running, but it's not the same when your feet are pounding a pavement and going in one direction without reversing and there are no situations he can direct, no other players. It's so damn lonely.
Iwamura shows up one day in August, basketball in his hand. It all starts coming together.
"A guy like you shouldn't let his talent go to waste," Iwamura says softly, tossing him the ball.
Even now, when he's gone months without even seeing a game, his muscles remember the jumps and spins and momentum, the right angle to shoot and how to blaze past his opponent, even a defensively-sound guy like Iwamura. He's a bit rusty, but it's not as much as he'd expect.
He almost forgets that he ever resented basketball or ever had any conflicting feelings toward this game that's so goddamn beautiful.
Haizaki didn't steal his love for basketball or his ability to play. He twisted his own feelings and just needed them to settle. At least, he'll tell himself that, but then he'll remind himself that all of that doesn't really matter. In the end, there is a fair game that he can come back to; there are strong opponents who will forgive him his momentary lapses in judgment.
Iwamura asks him to join the basketball team but does not force him, lets him know he has time to make up his mind. But when it's like this, he doesn't need time. He's wasted too much time denying himself the chance to play.