"Ha... you... you owe me... three plates... of pork curry..." Kageyama panted. "The kind... with the egg on top..."
"D... damn it..." Hinata groaned, catching his breath with his hands on his knees.
Thanks to Suga checking the location of the nearest Maji Burger with his phone before Kageyama and Hinata could get lost again, they'd managed to arrive with ten minutes to spare.
The restaurant was surprisingly full during brunch period. Suga gestured in the direction of the booths. "Find us some seats; I'll order for us to save time. Three double cheeseburgers for Hinata and the chicken set for Kageyama, right?"
"Yes, sir!"
"You've got to pay me back later, mind you!" Suga shouted as the two rushed towards the sitting area, probably competing over who could find seats the fastest.
"Ha, there's an empty booth over there! I spotted it first! I win!" Hinata pointed at four seats by the window, beaming triumphantly.
"Damn it." Kageyama stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked in the direction of the booth.
They settled down next to each other on the couch on one side as they waited for their senpai's return. "God, I'm so hungry..."
"Let's talk about something else to get our minds off the hunger," Kageyama suggested. "Do you feel up to using our quick against Fukurodani?"
"Eh? Of course I feel up to it! Just saying though, shutting Bokuto-san down would be the true problem..."
"Um, excuse me... those seats are taken."
"Huh?" The Karasuno duo blinked. A blank-faced bluenette suddenly appeared in the seat across from theirs.
"G-g-ghost! There's a ghost in front of me!" Kageyama and Hinata screamed in unison.
"I'm not a ghost." Seirin's phantom, Kuroko Tetsuya, stated calmly. He did get that a lot, after all.
"See? I told you we shouldn't have left Kuroko to save our seats for us."
Seirin basketball club's captain, Hyuuga Junpei, appeared behind Kuroko with a tray of food. Balancing it on one hand, the bespectacled sophomore smacked the back of Kagami Taiga's head.
"Ouch! But Captain, he only orders a vanilla milkshake every time! And it's meaningless to have him line up and get food, since the guy at the counter ignores him all the time!" The redheaded ace retorted, creasing his split eyebrows.
"Just let it go, Hyuuga-kun. I think Koganei-kun and Mitobe-kun found a bigger booth; we'll just sit there instead." Aida Riko, Seirin's second-year coach, turned on her heel in another direction.
"Uh, wait! You guys... know this ghost over here?" Kageyama stabbed his finger at Kuroko.
"I'm not a ghost," Kuroko repeated, feeling slightly annoyed despite his expressionless face.
"They're the twenty-ninth and thirtieth strangers you've scared today, Kuroko," Kagami recorded.
"Wow, you counted properly for once, Bakagami-kun. That's impressive, considering the fact that you got a single-digit score on your math paper."
"What did you just say?!" Kagami snarled, grabbing Kuroko's head in his large palm.
"It was a compliment, Kagami-kun. Please let go."
"How are you guys talking to this ghost so casually?!" Hinata asked incredulously.
"Like I said, I'm not a ghost," Kuroko stared at Hinata.
"Despite what he looks like, he's actually our teammate. We're the Seirin High basketball club, by the way."
Hinata cringed, suddenly having the urge to stand up for the bluenette with a similarly tiny stature. They were both players with rather small physiques for the sports they play, and their abilities were often doubted at first.
Kuroko simply replied with, "what I do doesn't require height and bulk."
Hinata looked at the bluenette as if he was seeing him in a new light. Daaaaaamn, isn't he angry that someone indirectly teased him about his height? If I were him, I would've exploded... that guy's self-control is exceptional!
His eyes widened in recognition as the name of Kuroko's school clicked in his head. "Oh! Seirin... that Akashi guy mentioned you! Said he and the Generation of Miracles were gonna play against you by the end of next month..."
Kuroko's ears perked up. "Akashi-kun? You know him?"
"Just met him today, actually. He said he wanted us to play for them -" Kageyama's fist collided with Hinata's head. "Hey! What was that for?!"
"He said we were supposed to be their secret weapons, dumbass. You just revealed that 'secret' to our fricking opponents."
"Oh. Right. Wait, 'our' opponents? So you agree to play with them?"
Kageyama froze. "Uh, no, not yet, I don't know, uh, I mean -"
"Our opponents, huh? Akashi's a really smart guy - I've gathered that much just from our game against Rakuzan during the WC. He must've picked you two for a reason. I'm Hyuuga Junpei, the second-year captain of Seirin High basketball club. This is Kagami Taiga, our ace, Kuroko Tetsuya, our phantom player and Kagami's partner, and Aida Riko, our coach -"
"Eh? You're the coach?" Hinata blurted, staring at the brunette with wide eyes.
Riko held her nose up high. "Yeah, I am. Do you have a problem with that?"
"It's pretty awesome that you have a cute girl as your coach, Hyuuga-san!"
Riko blushed, beaming. "Aw, you're flattering me!"
"Just wait till you see how she's like at practice. Our training regimen will change your mind," Hyuuga whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
"What was that, Hyuuga-kun~?" Riko smiled innocently all the while menacingly cracking her knuckles.
Hyuuga's eyes widened. "E-eh? No, I didn't say anything."
"This dumbass and I are first-years from Karasuno High volleyball club; I'm Kageyama Tobio, and this shrimp is Hinata Shouyou."
"Huh. I thought Akashi would get some third-years to play for them or something."
"Akashi-kun is smart, Kagami-kun. So smart that it's scary. He has to be up to something."
Kagami shrugged. "Or maybe he's just mocking us by getting two newbies, thinking that he and the Miracles are so high and mighty that they don't need additional power at all. Who knows, he's probably planning on keeping those two on the bench for the entire game."
Kageyama stood, craning his neck to glare at the redhead who towered 10cm over him. "Are you looking down on us?" he hissed.
Kagami narrowed his eyes. "So what if I am?"
The two looked away from each other as their clenched fists were grabbed by their respective partners. "You jinx yourself by underestimating your opponents, Kagami-kun," Kuroko chided. "Akashi-kun must have seen talent in them that's worth cultivating. Oh, by the way, 'cultivating' means to develop -"
"I know what that means, Kuroko! Don't fucking make fun of me!"
"Your Japanese still sucks, though."
"Oi!" Kageyama barked, prying his hand from Hinata's grip. "We're not done here, big guy!"
"Calm your freaking tits, Kageyama-kun. That face of yours literally looked like a dictator about to give orders to have a guy executed. You'll lose if you fight this dude anyway - you can't punch properly when you're hungry. That one you threw at my head didn't even hurt."
"That's what you're worried about?!" Kageyama exclaimed.
"Oh, I've been wanting to ask you this, Kuroko-kun. How did you just, like, appear out of thin air just now?" Hinata asked without blinking, afraid that he might lose sight of the bluenette if he did.
"I didn't appear out of thin air; I've been here all along. You just didn't notice me, that's all."
"But - is it even possible to miss a guy sitting in a booth?! Hinata, you were the one who said this booth was empty!" Kageyama snapped accusingly.
"E-eh?! But it was empty! You saw that, didn't you?!" Hinata protested.
"Hinata-kun isn't to blame - my lack of presence is why you didn't notice me," Kuroko explained. "It's useful on the court too. Particularly when I'm making plays with Kagami-kun."
"Eh? What, you appear and disappear in front of your opponents' eyes during games?"
"Precisely."
"... wow." Kageyama blinked. "How does that work?"
For the first time since the Karasuno freshmen had met him, Kuroko let a small smile creep onto his face as he positioned a finger over his lips. "A magician never reveals the trick behind the magic. You never reveal your hand to your opponents during a poker game. So... you're just going to have to see for yourself what Seirin's light and shadow are capable of during our game."
"Light... and shadow. That Akashi person said that he wanted us to be the new light-and-shadow duo to face off against yours..."
"Ah. Does this concept exist in volleyball as well? A shadow assisting the light in scoring points through making passes and combination plays?"
"Oh. So that's what he meant..." Kageyama nodded. "That emperor dude wants me to send you tosses - uh, passes - and be your shadow, dumbass."
Hinata stroked his chin in thought. "You send me tosses, I spike them over... isn't that what we do in volleyball too?"
"Shouldn't really be a challenge, then. We've just gotta learn how to play basketball properly, and we're good. Fine, I'm in," Kageyama decided.
"Knew it! You wouldn't skip an opportunity to hang out with other sports prodigies!" Hinata whooped. "This is gonna be exciting!"
"Don't act like you know me well, dumbass," Kageyama flicked the back of Hinata's head.
"I won't say no if you're offering a chance for me to get to know you more. I mean, we are gonna be partners until we graduate from high school, right?"
Kageyama shrugged. "Yeah. I suppose."
Hinata grinned goofily. "Hey, I'm here to make sure you don't slip back into old habits and get yourself kicked off the court for being a demanding tyrant. As long as we're there together, we're invincible, remember?"
Kageyama smiled in spite of himself. "Yeah. We'll be the last ones standing on the court. Not saying that I won't leave you behind if you can't keep up with me, but I guess I'll try and make you, the light, the best in Japan."
"Damn, that déjà vu's hittin' me like a brick," Kagami sighed dramatically. "Dude, were you listening in the bushes when Kuroko said the exact same thing to me?" he reached over the table and punched Kageyama in the shoulder.
"Eh? I'm from Miyagi prefecture..."
Kagami glanced at Kuroko, noticing that he was fidgeting with his fingers. "Oh, come on. I'll never leave you behind. Wherever the shadow is, there has to be a light with him, right?" Kagami ruffled the bluenette's hair. "If I go forward because I get stronger, it has to be because you got stronger too."
"Kagami-kun..."
Hyuuga faux-gagged and ushered Riko away from their table. "Let's get out of here, Riko. These four look like they're on a double date already."
"You guys should kiss," Riko called jokingly to the freshmen before joining the other Seirin second-years at the table Koganei found, where everyone was busy trying to ignore Izuki's horrible French fry puns until Hyuuga shoved half a packet of fries into the shorter male's mouth to shut him up with a roar of 'if you love fries so much, why don't you eat them all?!'
Five minutes later, Hinata and Kageyama were shoveling chicken nuggets into their mouths. Suga was tasked with squatting between them, holding a cheeseburger in his left hand and a chicken burger in his right as the freshmen turned their heads and bit into their burgers every twenty seconds.
"That's an... interesting way of eating...?" Kuroko remarked.
"This looks like a mom feeding her kids to me," Kagami said bluntly.
"Uh... we're in a hurry...?" Suga said awkwardly as Kageyama chomped on his burger with his mouth already full of chicken.
