See the first chapter for story notes.


Part Three

Daiki found himself awake earlier than usual on the first day of the final league matches. Wasn't any good reason to be, except—Touou's first match was going to be against Seihou. Kagami had sworn several times that he would be better by the time the final league matches rolled around, and Satsuki had said he probably would be as long as he had behaved himself. Daiki lay in his bed, gazing at the ceiling and thinking about that and the sense of... that was anticipation, wasn't it? He'd forgotten, a little, what it was like to wake up before a match and want to see how it would go. Touou's matches to this point hadn't been bad, no one had given up in the middle of facing them, but... Seihou was one of the three kings. And he'd never seen what Kagami could do in a full game with other players to push him forward.

Excited. Yeah, he was a little excited.

Reaching for his phone was second nature by this point, and so was trying to find the right words to send to Tetsu. I'm looking forward to playing today, he typed. I think it's going to be fun. He studied the screen for a little while as the morning sunlight crept across his ceiling and down the wall. Then he added, I wish you were going to be there. I miss playing with you. Even that didn't feel quite like enough. Hell, how long had he been texting Tetsu now, trying to reach him? Well, it looked like talking face to face wasn't going to happen, so... I'm sorry that I fucked it up, he wrote, slowly. And for not listening to you. And for forgetting why basketball is fun. At least you were smart enough to listen to me, back then. I should have been smart and listened to you. Though that hadn't ever been his thing, except maybe on the court. And he'd fucked that up, too, in the end. And I'm sorry for the way we played at the end, too. We were all stupid.

He stared at the message for a while, wondering whether there was any better way of putting all that, but words weren't what he was good at. It'd have to do. He punched the send button and got up to start getting ready for the day, and tried not to think about it when his phone stayed silent.

Imayoshi-san found some reason to settle into step with Daiki during the walk from the bus into the stadium, which Daiki did not think was a good sign. There was no point in hoping that Satsuki would help him out; for some reason she thought Imayoshi-san was funny. Daiki braced himself, but all Imayoshi-san said was, "It's shaping up to be a good day for a match, isn't it?"

As comments went, it was fairly harmless even by Imayoshi-san's standards, but that didn't always mean anything. "It's not like the weather matters." Daiki glanced up at the cloudless sky and the stadium rising up before them. "Not once we're inside."

"The problem with today's youth is that they have no appreciation for a good metaphor." Imayoshi-san shook his head; all he was missing was a wagging grey beard to stroke. Satsuki, on Daiki's other shoulder, giggled.

"If you've got something to say, just say it." Metaphors were for literature classes and people like Tetsu, who thought that way by nature and inclination, not for him.

Imayoshi-san smiled, one of the faintly creepy ones that always made Daiki think of cats. "Well, my painfully literal young friend, are you ready to play today?"

Daiki eyed him—what kind of question was that supposed to be?—but Imayoshi-san ambled along, apparently willing to wait for his answer for as long as it took. "Of course I am." Upon reflection, remembering the glow of anticipation that had woken him up and that was still humming at the back of his mind, he added, "Should be some good games." All Satsuki's data pointed that way, and none of the teams that had made it to the final league of the Interhigh preliminaries were slouches. (And Seihou had beaten Shuutoku; Kagami had beaten Midorima.)

Imayoshi-san was watching him from the corner of his eye; Daiki couldn't tell whether he was pleased or not, because that faint, feline smile of his never wavered. "I reckon you're coming right along," he murmured as they came to the stadium's entrance. He caught the glass door when Wakamatsu held it for them and waved Satsuki in ahead of them. "Just don't you forget that we're here to win."

"I know that," Daiki told him, aggravated. "What's the point in playing, otherwise?"

Imayoshi-san's smile shifted slightly, and Daiki couldn't help feeling that the man was laughing at him. "What indeed," he said and gestured. "After you."

Daiki rolled his eyes at the ways of his captain and went inside.

The data set that Satsuki had put together for Seihou suggested that they wouldn't start the match with Kagami, given his recent injury. Iwamura and his coach were the conservative types and Seihou's philosophy was to win through skill rather than raw power. She'd projected that they would save Kagami for later in the match in order to conserve him for the second game of the day as much as possible. That was fine; Daiki ran his warm-ups with the rest of the team and kept half an eye on Seihou's half of the court. Kagami was warming up with the rest of Seihou, looking fiercely delighted to be doing it, and yeah. He'd be playing by the end of the match. Seihou wasn't going to have any choice about it.

Satsuki was also watching the warm-ups going on across the way, at least at first. Daiki turned to pass the ball off to Wakamatsu while that motor mouth Tsugawa let his mouth run away with him, just loud enough that it carried over to Touou's side—something about the Generation of Miracles not being so bad taken separately, and besides, wasn't Touou still pretty much an unknown team?

Wakamatsu scowled; when he passed the ball back to Daiki, it slapped into his hands hard enough to sting a little.

It wasn't like Daiki really cared much what some mouthy asshole from Seihou had to say, but since there wasn't anyone around to defend the Generation of Miracles' name but him, and the ball was in his hands, there was no point in letting it go by unremarked, either, was there? Besides, the hoop was right there, more or less. Launching himself at it and dunking the ball was as easy as thinking about it.

"Show-off," Wakamatsu said in the sudden silence that fell over the court, but he was smiling a little when he caught the rebound.

Satsuki would have scolded him for showing off like that before the game even began, normally, but when Daiki looked around for her, she had her head bent close to Kantoku's and was talking through something that had their coach twisting his fingers through his hair absently. Daiki counted himself as having gotten off lightly and didn't think about it until Satsuki caught up with him in the last minutes before the match. "Be careful of Kagamin," she said then. "I wasn't sure until I saw him warming up with his team, but he's really begun to adapt to Seihou's style."

"What, really?" Daiki looked back across the court to where Seihou was standing around their coach, receiving their own last-minute instructions and advice. "That was faster than you expected."

"Kagamin." Satsuki shrugged like that explained everything. It sort of did, which was the sad part. "Just be careful with him."

Daiki grinned down at her and bumped his shoulder against hers. "It's still me, don't forget."

Satsuki looked over at Seihou and Kagami, who was currently sitting on the bench, taut with his eagerness to hit the court. "I know," she said. "But it's also him."

If he cared to press her to explain that, Daiki knew, she'd only say she had a bad feeling or something, so he didn't bother. He took the caution into the game with him instead and let it linger at the back of his mind during the tip-off and the first fast minutes of the quarter, getting used to Seihou's unusual turn of speed (martial arts training, according to Satsuki, and weird as hell for the first couple of minutes, judging by Sakurai's constant stream of apologies and the things Wakamatsu was muttering). Seihou had Tsugawa marking him—and the guy wasn't bad, Daiki could give him that much. "Listen to the mouth on this guy," Daiki said when Tsugawa screened him from a pass and said something about how even the Generation of Miracles couldn't break through a pressure defense. "Hey, asshole, who do you even think I am?"

Nanba run and pressure defense be damned; Daiki feinted left, feinted again, and when Tsugawa anticipated a third feint, he cut around the guy and let the ball roll off his fingers and into the net, the way it wanted to. (The thing that had always puzzled Daiki was how so few people could read how the ball wanted to move, but then, he'd stopped bringing that up ages ago, once he'd realized that he didn't play the same kind of basketball other people did. He wondered, sometimes, whether Kagami might understand what he meant if he asked.)

Tsugawa had shut up by the end of the first quarter, when Touou was up fifteen points and Daiki had demonstrated that he could blow through the guy's pressure defense any time he liked, and the rest of them had already begun adjusting to the peculiar speed and precision of Seihou's movements. Kantoku nodded his approval and left Imayoshi-san and Satsuki to work through their instructions during the break. "I don't suppose we need to be getting fancy just yet." Imayoshi-san paused to take a sip of water. "If we keep on as we have been, that should put a nice steady pressure on them."

Satsuki was the one who said, "They'll put Kagami in by the eight-minute mark. Iwamura-san and Matsumoto-san will want to turn the flow of the game before the quarter ends."

"I don't see how that's going to matter much," Wakamatsu said. "He can't possibly be more annoying than Aomine is." He leaned out of the way of Susa's elbow and protested. "Well, he can't. The universe isn't big enough for there to be two of them."

"Hey," Daiki said, not sure whether he wanted to be outraged or flattered.

"Kagamin has a great deal of potential," Satsuki told them, quick and precise. "Don't underestimate him. Someday he's going to match the Generation of Miracles."

Even Wakamatsu went quiet at that, not least because they'd all learned to trust Satsuki's data by this point. Then Daiki cracked his neck. "Someday, maybe," he said. "But not today."

"Sometimes I begin to think that there may be hope for you yet," Imayoshi-san remarked. And then it was time to start the second quarter.

Seihou seemed to have taken the break to regroup and came back into the game with set jaws and determined eyes, which Daiki could respect. Tsugawa hadn't been entirely quenched, either, which wasn't totally a bad thing, or something. He wasn't as mouthy, but he stuck by Daiki like a—not like a shadow, but close enough anyway. Didn't do him much good, but he still hadn't stopped trying when Seihou finally called for a substitution in the middle of the seventh minute, 53-39 in Touou's favor on the board, and he jogged off the court with his head high when Kagami came on.

Finally. Daiki felt his pulse beat faster as he smiled, coming alert in anticipation.

"Well, that's not creepy or anything," Imayoshi-san drawled as he loped past Daiki on his way back up the court to get into position for the next play. It was cryptic even by his standards, but Daiki shrugged it off. Wakamatsu gave him an odd look when Daiki went for the ball and knocked it out of Seihou #5's hands so he could drive for the basket instead—but Kagami was already there to block him from it, and yeah, Daiki was willing to admit it, that was a hell of a jump, even if it did look short of what it could be. He faded back from Kagami, falling into a move that he hadn't had any reason to show him before now. He made the shot with the overhead lights bright in his eyes and heard Kagami's indignant should over the swish of the ball landing in the basket: "You never said you could make shots like that!"

Daiki came up with the taste of air on his teeth from the way his grin was stretching across his face. "Didn't I mention that?" Susa already had the ball and got it to Sakurai before Seihou's center could whip around for it himself. Sakurai fired off one of his quick release shots and an apology while Kagami sputtered. "Better keep up, dumbass."

"Watch who you're calling a dumbass, idiot!" Kagami retorted as Iwamura got the ball and passed it to Seihou's #8, who got it to Kagami. He grinned fiercely and blurred into motion, son of a bitch, he really had gotten that crazy nanba run of theirs down, just like Satsuki had said.

Daiki sprinted after him, everything falling away but the awareness of this moment and the game against Kagami, like a one-on-one with a whole court to roam over and the background awareness of their respective teams to deal with whenever someone got the ball away from them, and the fact that Kagami was giving almost as good as he got. When the buzzer went for the end of the quarter, Seihou had closed the score to a mere nine-point gap.

Daiki only realized that his teammates were still giving him funny looks once they were inside the locker room and he was helping himself to Sakurai's honey lemons. He chomped his way through the mouthful and looked around at them. "What?"

"It's really strange to see you smiling," Sakurai said and immediately cringed. "Sorry!" But there were heads nodding all around the room.

Daiki flipped them all off and helped himself to some more of the lemons. "What, I can't enjoy a good game?"

Imayoshi-san plucked the container out of his hands and passed it on to Susa. "Momoi-chan, I've been meaning to ask you for some time now. Tell me. Was he actually raised by wolves?"

"Not exactly." Satsuki shrugged at him when Daiki protested. "Well, really, Dai-chan. You may as well have been."

"Fuck all of you," Daiki huffed and retreated to a corner so he could drum his fingers against his knee and will the clock to move faster so it could be time for the third quarter already. Kagami was faster now with that run, and it looked like he could jump just about as high as Daiki could these days—but it was raw, all of it, certainly not perfected yet. For the time being he still had the edge, but there were twenty minutes of play, real play, left and there was no telling what Kagami might pull out before the final buzzer went. No telling what he might do with all that between this game and the Interhigh itself, between now and the Winter Cup...

Imayoshi-san interrupted the excited circle of Daiki's thoughts by looming over him. Daiki couldn't make much out of his expression, but all Imayoshi-san wanted was—"Of course I'm going to be able to play after this game is over!" Geez, what did he look like, anyway?

"Forgive me for wanting to be sure that we'll still be able to count on you against Meisei." Imayoshi-san regarded him for a moment longer, then turned away. "Two minutes, people."

That was just enough time to get back into his gym bag and dash off a message to Tetsu. I was right, this game is great. And the hell with it, why not? I wish you were playing too. Then it would be perfect.

Not that Tetsu would believe that if he was still angry, but whatever. That didn't stop it from being true.

And then it was time for the third quarter to begin. Daiki put all his thoughts of Tetsu aside as best as he could. (Though it was difficult, because now that he was thinking about it, it was hard to shake the part of him that kept waiting for the pass that wasn't going to come, even though it would have been the perfect play to counter Kagami's stupidly fast nanba run.) The third quarter was even better than the end of the second had been, because Kagami hadn't cooled off during the break. If anything, he'd caught fire and was carrying his team along with him. Not that it mattered much to Touou; they'd already cracked the code of Seihou's movements, or rather Satsuki had. Had something to do with a game Seihou had played against some no-name school, Seirin or something like that. Even so, even when it was obvious that Touou knew exactly how to read each of Seihou's moves, they kept coming. Kagami kept coming. It almost didn't matter that they still weren't enough to push Daiki to the edge. None of them gave up, not until the very end of the game and Imayoshi-san's last buzzer-beating shot. (It almost didn't matter that Tetsu wasn't there to share just how good a game it had been.)

Kagami made a face at him after they'd lined up and exchanged handshakes. "Next time we're going to kick your asses," he promised.

Daiki laughed at him, feeling lighter than he had in a while. "You can try, I guess."

"We're definitely going to see you at the Interhigh finals," Kagami said, and looking at him and the set of his jaw, Daiki could believe that.

There was a two-hour break before the match against Meisei, which was boring to think about but couldn't be helped. Wasn't any telling what the next match was going to be like, either, a good game like the one they'd just had or something that would be a let-down in comparison, but it didn't much matter at the moment. Kantoku had boxed lunches to go around and damn, it had been a good game.

Daiki staked out his corner of the locker room again, meaning to settle in and luxuriate in the satisfaction of that—holding onto it for as long as possible was only common sense—and tore into his bento. He'd sort of expected Satsuki to join him there so they could talk the game over, but Imayoshi-san caught her and bent to murmur some request or another to her. Huh, he must have wanted her to go find out the dirt on how the Meisei-Senshinkan match had gone or something, because Satsuki nodded and went out, looking all preoccupied with manager business.

Daiki checked his phone, but there weren't any new messages waiting for him. Big surprise there, of course. He took a moment to send Midorima a message (Being able to jump high and move fast isn't enough to beat me. Are you sure you haven't gone soft on us?) and grin over the response (Please die).

He thought about texting Tetsu again, but there wasn't anything else he could say aside from another iteration of all the things he'd already said. So instead he put his phone away and stole one of the octopus weiners out of Sakurai's bento since Imayoshi-san had wandered off and wasn't around to get snippy at him for it. "No drinks?" he asked, looking around. The only thing in the cooler was a bunch of water bottles because Kantoku disliked sodas. "Guess I'll be back." There would be vending machines somewhere in the building, surely.

"Don't go too far," Wakamatsu said, since he was the bossy one, but Daiki ignored him and went anyway.

He found Satsuki before he found any vending machines. He forgot all about his search for a soda when he did. She was leaning against a wall, her arms wrapped tightly around her and her shoulders hunched, and she looked so miserable that Daiki's first instinct was to go find whoever had put that look on her face and kill them. "Hey—" he began.

Satsuki's head snapped up and she reacted with a turn of speed that was shocking coming from someone who wasn't in regular training. She had her hand over his mouth before Daiki could get another syllable out and was shaking her head at him while Daiki was still trying to figure out what had just happened. Since it was Satsuki, he didn't say anything, or try to anyway. Then he heard the voices come floating around the corner of one of the little cross-halls that made the whole place into a maze, and understood why Satsuki had hushed him.

"I was told that someone wanted to talk to me?" That was Tetsu's voice, frosty as a winter morning. Daiki froze when he heard it. What the fuck was Tetsu doing here, of all places? If Satsuki hadn't been holding him, he might have ducked around the corner to demand an answer to that very question.

"So I did." That was Imayoshi-san's most congenial drawl, the one that he used whenever he was feeling particularly inclined to take someone apart. Daiki felt his eyes go wider; he looked down at Satsuki. She looked back, forehead wrinkled and guilty, and shrugged at him.

Daiki guessed it wasn't data on Meisei that Imayoshi-san had asked her to go fetch after all.

"Well?" Tetsu said when Imayoshi-san did not proceed. He sounded impatient. "What did you want?"

"Oh, right now I'd like a nice mocha latte and maybe the secret to cold fusion, but since those aren't really in the cards at the moment, I figure it's time you and I had a little talk about basketball." Daiki winced at the light, even tone of Imayoshi-san's voice, feeling like he should try to warn Tetsu or something. (But Tetsu was better at reading people, so maybe he wouldn't be as blind-sided by Imayoshi-san as he'd been?)

"I'm sorry, but I have no interest in basketball." Each word was measured out, precise. Satsuki flinched from them almost as much as Daiki did. "If you'll excuse me—"

"Now the thing I find funny about that is that we are having this conversation underneath a basketball court," Imayoshi-san said. "And we're having it here after you watched us play a nice little game against Seihou, and before we go off and play Meisei, and after you've come and watched us play every single one of our preliminary games. I call that funny, don't you?"

What—what? Tetsu had been watching all those games? Surely that wasn't possible. Tetsu had quit and didn't like basketball anymore. He'd said so himself.

But he didn't deny it, either. "I don't see what the way I spend my free time has to do with anything." Which meant that Tetsu had come to those games. What the fuck.

"Way I figure it, it has everything to do with this conversation." Imayoshi-san sounded almost pleased, as though he couldn't tell that Tetsu was already angry. Maybe he couldn't; Tetsu's anger was a cold, polite thing that only looked harmless. "You know, I'm pretty sure a man who hates basketball doesn't watch basketball games or walk by the gym where the team is practicing. For that matter, he doesn't accept the offer from the school that recruited him for basketball in the first place, does he? From where I'm standing, the best you can say about you and basketball is that you want to hate it, you're trying just as hard as you can to hate it, and you still can't bring yourself to it. Now what do you have to say to that?"

Daiki heard the drumbeat of his own heart pound in his ears three times before Tetsu said, cold and very calm, "I think that I am done with this conversation." So much for hoping, because of course Imayoshi-san was wrong, he had no way of knowing that once Tetsu had made up his mind to do something, he would do it.

"And that would be where you're wrong, of course." Imayoshi-san chuckled. "You're not done, Kuroko-kun. You're never going to be done with basketball. You know why, don't you?"

"I feel sure that you're going to tell me, no matter what I say."

Imayoshi-san laughed again, apparently not bothered by the chill in Tetsu's words. "It's because you want to win. You aren't the kind who knows how to give up. That's why you belong with Touou, you know. Why we looked at you play and decided we wanted you. You're hungry to win, just like the rest of us, and that's what we want on our team."

He seemed to have struck Tetsu into silence, because Tetsu didn't say anything—Daiki would have given almost anything to have been able to see what was on Tetsu's face just then.

After a moment, Imayoshi-san went on. "What's been confusing me all this time is why you're letting them win. Though I guess I can see it, can't I? Turning your back on them is a sort of poetic victory for you, isn't it?"

Satsuki closed her eyes at that. Daiki grimaced and put his arms around her, thinking once again that he was going to have to yell at Tetsu for having gotten her in the middle of this argument (or whatever the hell it was).

Tetsu finally answered Imayoshi-san. "I believe it's my decision to make." He sounded—tired, maybe, underneath all that cold. "It's my business how I handle my—former team."

Daiki had to suck in a breath at the edge of bitterness in that.

"And I can just about respect that, sure." Imayoshi-san was probably even nodding, all friendly and understanding and stuff. "Except for one little thing. I don't care. I want your basketball on my team. I've seen you play, and there are things you ought to be able to do with those skills of yours that'd make it a damn sight easier to get through the tournaments. I've been about as patient as I can stand to be, but if you and Aomine-kun don't care to kiss and make up, we'll just have to work around that. Won't be the first time I've had to deal with a bunch of kouhai at one another's throats. My luck, it probably won't be the last, either."

Satsuki opened her eyes again and squeaked, softly, as though something had just become clear to her. Daiki wished that she could share with him, because of course Imayoshi-san would want Tetsu on the team. Who wouldn't? But it sounded like there were some other things going on there that he wasn't quite getting.

Tetsu was quiet for a while before he said, calm, "Touou's play style does not require a supporting player of the type I used to be."

"Of course it doesn't. If we'd been after a supporting player, then we'd have recruited one. Tch." Exasperation had crept into Imayoshi-san's voice. "I'm recruiting you, brat. You're a play-maker, or you could be with some work and some time. When I retire at the end of the year, Touou is going to need someone who can step up and make proper use of all that lovely data Momoi-chan puts together for us, and someone is going to have to point Aomine-kun in the right direction and make sure Sakurai-kun doesn't get himself lost in the shuffle and Wakamatsu-kun doesn't give himself an ulcer. We don't need support players, Kuroko-kun. We need players who know how to work with and around one another because they trust their teammates to pull their own weight."

Tetsu's silence this time wasn't as long, but his response came out slower and quieter, enough so that Daiki had to strain to hear him. "If that's the case, then I believe that you are still recruiting the wrong person. If you've seen me play, then you know that's not the kind of player I am. It was made very clear in our games."

If Satsuki minded the way Daiki clutched at her, nausea churning in his gut at how resigned and bitter Tetsu sounded, she didn't show it.

Imayoshi-san clicked his tongue against his teeth again. "That's as big a load of shit as I've ever heard," he said, blunt as a hammer. "And I think you know it, too, or you wouldn't still be here. If you're still that miserable over what happened to you back then, you have two choices. You can either forget it, forgive them if you can, and stop moping over the whole thing as you move on with your life. Or you can pick yourself up and show them that they were wrong to write you off. And I think you know which one of those choices is going to be the more satisfying one, don't you?"

Daiki hardly dared to breathe and didn't think Satsuki did, either, while the seconds ticked past and Tetsu's silence stretched out. Then Tetsu said, slowly, "You aren't a very nice person, are you?" For the first time, there was the faintest hint of something thawed out in his voice, something rueful or maybe even amused.

"It seems to me that I may have heard that hurtful accusation from time to time." Imayoshi-san was back to sounding cheerful again. "Club applications should be submitted either to the coach or the team captain, or the manager in a pinch. If you feel like you absolutely must keep up with the literature club, I reckon we can accommodate that."

"I haven't said that I'm joining the basketball club," Tetsu pointed out, which put another twist in the pit of Daiki's stomach just as he was starting to hope again.

"They win if you don't." Imayoshi-san was as matter-of-fact as a weather report. "They win and that way of playing wins, and you lose. And you don't have the eyes of someone who likes to lose without a fight. We'll expect you Monday afternoon." A few moments later he strolled out of the little side hall, whistling tunelessly. He raised expressive eyebrows at Daiki and Satsuki and went on his way without pausing. Just as well, maybe, because Daiki didn't know whether he wanted to shake the guy's hand or punch him. Maybe he could do both—that was feasible, wasn't it?

Thank goodness for Satsuki, anyway, who was better at reacting to things on her feet. She stared after Imayoshi-san for a split second, then stepped out of Daiki's arms and tilted her head in the direction of the hall where Tetsu was, meaningful. Daiki looked at it and then back to her—what, now, really?

Satsuki sighed and grabbed his sleeve, hauling on it, so yeah, she really did mean for him to go and talk to Tetsu right then and there, assuming Tetsu hadn't made his escape while the getting was good—

No. He hadn't.

The side halls weren't lit as well as the main ones, probably because of some energy-saving initiative or something. Every other overhead light was turned off, which meant that stretches of shadow alternated with stretches of light for the length of the hallway. Tetsu was standing in one of the shadowed areas, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped back like there was something interesting on the ceiling. Or like he was waiting. He didn't look down until Daiki had shuffled over to him, feeling weirdly like he was trying to wade through water to get to Tetsu (but when he pinched himself, he didn't wake up, so yeah, that was weird). Then Tetsu looked down, his face pale and calm enough that Daiki didn't know how to read it. "I think that if you were to put that guy and Akashi-kun in a room together, you would want to sell tickets."

Daiki wasn't entirely sure that it was a joke, but he laughed a little anyway. "Yeah, probably." Then what that comment meant sank in for him. "So you were getting them after all. My messages." Had read them, or at least one of them, and hadn't—had just—damn. Damn, he'd thought knowing one way or another would have been a relief, not a disappointment.

Tetsu watched him, still calm. Remote. "I did. Though none of them mentioned that you were planning on having your captain do the talking for you."

"What? Huh?" Why would he have done that—he hadn't even realized that Imayoshi-san was still interested in the mess he'd made of things with Tetsu, so why would he have mentioned—oh. Oh, fuck. "No, I didn't know he was—I didn't know, Tetsu."

Tetsu narrowed his eyes a bit, the doubt clear enough to read in that. Satsuki cleared her throat, drawing his attention to where she was standing just a little way down the hall from them. "He really didn't know, Tetsu-kun. He wasn't even supposed to be here. Why are you here, Dai-chan?"

"I wanted something to drink, and Kantoku only brought water." Daiki chanced a glance from Tetsu to look at her; she had her arms wrapped around herself again. "What do you mean, I wasn't supposed to know?" He stared at her, understanding dawning. "Satsuki!"

She winced and lifted her chin anyway. "It was for the team, Dai-chan." Her tone was steady enough, but she was holding onto her elbows so tightly that Daiki could see that her knuckles were white, even at this distance. "We have the long-term good of the team to think about."

"And you didn't think I'd be interested in that?" Daiki demanded, indignant—he couldn't believe it, Satsuki had been working behind his back with Imayoshi-san to—to—

Satsuki lifted her chin a little higher. "You generally aren't," she said, calm. "Right now you're only mad because it's about Tetsu-kun and you weren't involved." She tilted her head to the side when Daiki opened his mouth to argue with that. "Are you really going to tell me that I'm wrong?"

Damn it. "I do care about the team," he muttered, dark. "Can't play without one." And Touou wasn't bad to play with, either.

"But not enough to make a fuss for anyone but Tetsu-kun. I know." Satsuki sighed. "He really didn't know, Tetsu-kun. I swear he didn't. He just gets into everything, you know that."

Daiki protested. "Satsuki—"

But Tetsu was looking back and forth between them, the corners of his mouth tucked down. "You really didn't ask me here for Aomine-kun?" His voice was tense, Daiki thought. Tense like the shape of his shoulders and the flex and curl of his hands.

"You said you didn't want to talk to him anymore," Satsuki said, almost steady. "You said you were done talking to us. As far as I knew, you hadn't changed your mind on that." She sniffed and looked aside. "And I told you that I would respect that."

Aw, damn it. "Fuck, Tetsu, I know you're pissed at the rest of us, but what did Satsuki ever do to you?" Daiki glared at Tetsu and made a move towards Satsuki, but stopped when she waved him off. He watched her wipe her cheeks and had to look away, frustrated.

Tetsu was watching them both, still wearing that tiny, puzzled frown. That was disconcerting; Tetsu wasn't ever the one who was confused. Daiki might have enjoyed the novelty of it, before. Now that Satsuki was doing everything she could to pretend this wasn't tearing her up, it just pissed him off. "What the hell is going on with you, anyway? You said you hated basketball, but you came to all our games?"

Tetsu frowned harder, and yeah, he looked more confused now. Great. "You didn't know that, either?"

How would he have known that? "You said you were done with basketball!" Daiki scrubbed his hands through his hair, because it was that or start pacing. "Why would I have known you were going to games? Or watching us practice? Or—talking to Imayoshi-san or anything else you've been doing? I didn't even know whether your phone number was still the same until I asked Satsuki, and then I just figured you were ignoring me." Fuck, the more he thought about it, the madder it was making him. "What the fuck is going on inside your head, anyway?"

"At the moment, I'm not entirely sure," Tetsu said, his voice distant. He straightened up from the wall. "Excuse me, I need to—I need to—" He made as if he thought he was just going to walk away again, and the hell with that.

"Oh, come on." It was one long stride to get to Tetsu, whose shoulder didn't feel quite as bony as it should have if Tetsu had stopped training, maybe that was a good sign. "You can't just walk away on us again—"

Tetsu stopped and looked at him. "Please let go of me." His tone was perfectly level, but that was more of a warning sign than not.

Daiki knew that and held on anyway. "Seriously, Tetsu—"

In retrospect, all the time he'd spent teaching Tetsu how to throw a punch the summer they'd first met clearly hadn't gone to waste. Or something like that. When Tetsu turned, fist already cocked, it was too late to do anything more than roll with it when Tetsu slugged him in the jaw. He let go of Tetsu, swearing and startled, and came very close to returning the favor, had his hand curled into a fist too before Satsuki intervened, voice sharp. "Dai-chan!"

Tetsu stared up at him, jaw set like he was braced for it if Daiki decided to ignore her and go for it anyway. Then he said, "I need to think." He turned and left, walking fast like he was afraid that Daiki would try to stop him again. Daiki watched him until he turned the corner; he didn't look back.

"He punched me, Satsuki," he said after a moment of staring after Tetsu (like Tetsu was going to turn around and come back—yeah, right). "Tetsu punched me."

"I noticed, yes." Satsuki came to him and drew him into one of the better-lit portions of the hall and tilted his jaw to look at it. "He's probably wanted to for a while."

Daiki hissed when she poked his jaw; that was probably going to mean a bruise later. "I just wanted to talk to him." Or something. Make his apology in person, or yell at him for hurting Satsuki, or something. He made a face at her, careful with it. "If he thought he was coming here to talk to me, why didn't he want to talk?"

Satsuki bit her lip and stepped back, turning her attention to adjusting the fall of her jacket. "I don't know that I can answer that."

"Satsuki—" His jaw ached, he was confused and annoyed, and didn't want to be put off by her talent for talking around things.

She looked up and shook her head. "I don't know. I don't think I know anything anymore, not about Tetsu-kun."

He couldn't be annoyed with her when she looked that miserable. Geez. "Yeah, well, you're not the only one." Daiki hooked an arm around her shoulder. "I just wanna fix this."

"I know." She leaned against him for a brief moment and pulled away again. "Come on, I need to go wash my face. And you should put something on your jaw before it starts to bruise."

Daiki sighed and fell in with her. Before they hit the main hall again, he asked, "Can we fix this?"

Satsuki bit her lip again and said, "I hope so." Which was not the reassuring answer he'd been hoping for, not by a long shot.

Imayoshi-san didn't say anything when they finally got back to the locker room, Satsuki with a freshly washed face that didn't show any of the damage and Daiki with a soda fresh from the vending machine to hold against his jaw. Daiki got the definite feeling that it wasn't because their captain didn't have anything to say, either. He let them be, and Daiki retreated to his chosen corner again, this time with Satsuki, and stayed there until it was just about time to loosen up for the match against Meisei. Satsuki didn't have anything to say either, at least nothing that they could talk about in front of the rest of the team, and Daiki didn't much feel like talking himself. Couldn't really think, either, not when his jaw still felt tender and he had the relentless memory of how angry and bitter Tetsu had been still running through his head. Tetsu had gone away so he could think, but what did that even mean? What had Tetsu spent all this time doing if he hadn't already been thinking?

He was relieved when the close of the interval approached and Imayoshi-san called the team to order and sent them up to the court to get warmed up again. "Except for you," he said to Daiki, stopping him before he could follow the rest of the guys out. "I need a word with you first."

Daiki frowned, not that it seemed to impress Imayoshi-san in the slightest when he did that. (Did anything ever impress Imayoshi-san?) He folded his arms across his chest when Imayoshi-san waved Satsuki out, too—"You go on ahead, Momoi-chan, we won't be but a minute"—until the room was empty. Imayoshi-san stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and looked Daiki over. "Was going to talk with you before this game anyway, of course, but it seems a little more pressing now." He rocked on his heels, watching Daiki and smiling. "This game is important. Do you know why?"

If they won it, it would pretty much guarantee their spot in the Interhigh, but Daiki was pretty sure that wasn't what Imayoshi-san was thinking about. He was also pretty sure that Imayoshi-san wouldn't care for it if he went and pulled out the sarcasm like Tetsu had done, or didn't at least try to figure it out himself. Maybe that was the answer, though. "I need to show Tetsu that I don't play like that anymore."

It wasn't the right answer, or at least not the answer that Imayoshi-san was looking for, because he gave Daiki a disappointed look. "Not quite."

Daiki watched him rock himself back and forth, back and forth, and realized that this time, Imayoshi-san was leaving him all on his own. Not quite, he'd said, so—part of his answer was right. The part about Tetsu? But Imayoshi-san had said he wanted to have a talk before this match anyway. It was pretty clear that he wasn't supposed to have been a part of that meeting with Tetsu, too. "I need to show that I don't play that way anymore?"

Imayoshi-san nodded. "Getting warmer." When Daiki frowned at him, he added, "Don't take too long. We don't want to miss tip-off."

Daiki wracked his brain to figure out who else would even care how he played now compared to back then. "You?" That just made Imayoshi-san roll his eyes. "The team." They'd been sort of weird during the break in the Seihou game—man, that felt like it had happened a century ago—but that answer just made Imayoshi-san sigh. Who else was there, Satsuki? But she knew his game better than he knew it himself—no way. "You're joking. You've got to be joking." What did Imayoshi-san think this was, therapy?

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Imayoshi-san reached over and flicked Daiki right in the middle of his forehead, hard enough to sting. "Before you can prove it to anyone else, you've got to prove it to yourself. Games like the one you just played don't happen all the time. You need to decide whether it's worth it to play the other ones in between or not. Whether you care about all your opponents or just the ones who can keep you busy on the court. What kind of player are you going to be? It's time you figured that out. For yourself. Let all the rest follow after that."

Daiki thought of a lot of things he could have said then, some of them sarcastic and some of them serious, but when he opened his mouth, something else came out instead. "Why are you bothering with all this?"

He might have honestly managed to surprise the guy; Imayoshi-san blinked like that hadn't been anywhere on the list of things he'd expected Daiki to say. He pursed his lips and then shrugged. "Someone needs to, and I'm probably the only one who can. You genius types, you all get yourselves turned around in your heads too easily and forget how to deal with the rest of us lesser mortals."

"You keep saying things like that." Daiki looked at the way Imayoshi-san had planted himself, steady like he was facing down an opponent, and the way he was smiling with his mouth but not with his eyes. "You've had to deal with that many geniuses in your time?"

"Maybe one or two." Imayoshi-san's smile didn't waver. "But that's off the subject, so let's forget about that. Do you see why this game is important now?"

Didn't take a genius to figure out that Imayoshi-san was done talking about that whatever it was making him do all this, had decided all that was over and done with, so Daiki set it aside to think about later. For now there was Imayoshi-san's question and his intent gaze, and—maybe it did make sense. Just a little. "I guess."

Imayoshi-san studied him for a moment longer and then smiled, reverting back to his normal affable mood. "That's good. Let's go get warmed up and show Meisei what we can do." He clapped Daiki on the shoulder and breezed out, taking any hope Daiki might have had about asking what the hell he thought he was doing with Tetsu with him.

Daiki followed after him anyway and joined the rest of the team on the court, settling into the familiar rhythm of warming up and looking across the way to where Meisei was doing the same. Satsuki had made it clear that they were a solid team that had climbed through their prelim block without any dramatics. They looked steady, no loudmouths on their team to make claims that were a little beyond what they could actually do. This wasn't the game he'd woken up anticipating; even in the strategy sessions they'd had, Satsuki had seemed confident that Touou would be able to take Meisei.

Daiki looked up at the stands, but the place was too big and there were too many people to tell whether Tetsu was up there somewhere, assuming Tetsu was even in the mood to let himself be seen. He caught a pass from Sakurai and bounced it over to Susa, loped down their half court and caught the next pass from Wakamatsu, and dribbled back down the court to the hoop, letting the familiar beat of his sneakers against polished laminate and the rhythm of the ball take over.

That time, Tetsu had said that he'd want Daiki to go all out against him, no matter what. He hadn't believed Tetsu then, not really, but Tetsu had been right about the other thing, that there would be players who could challenge him. Daiki made the lay-up, caught the ball on the bounce, and took a deep breath. Even if he was pissed with the way Tetsu had broken ties with Satsuki, he was going to have to take him at his word. The people who could deal with his game—they'd show up like Kagami had, or he'd find them, or something—and the rest... there was the game itself, which was still good. The ones who gave up, they'd just have to be obstacles to play around, or something. He'd figure it out. Yeah. Because whatever else happened, he wanted to still have basketball. He wasn't going to give that up again.

Wakamatsu yelled at him then for hogging the ball, so Daiki turned and passed it back to him, and got ready to play.


"Hey, Satsuki," Daiki said later, once they were off the train and ambling down the familiar streets of their neighborhood. She made an enquiring sound. "Imayoshi-san. Who has he worked with before?"

The nice thing about Satsuki (or the scary one, depending on who was talking) was that he didn't need to be any more specific than that. She straightened up and hummed. "In middle school, he was on the same team as Hanamiya Makoto. One of the Uncrowned Generals. You remember him?"

Daiki thought back on it—the Uncrowned Generals, those guys. Annoying, as he recalled, each of them in his own special way. But Hanamiya... yeah. He remembered that guy. "The mean fucker, wasn't he?" Sarcastic, but not like Imayoshi-san tended to be. Vicious, just like his game had been vicious. That had been in their second year, before Kise, back when they'd still been finding their feet. That hadn't been a good game.

"That would be the one." Satsuki's tone was dark, as though she didn't remember him any more fondly than Daiki did. "Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering." Him and Hanamiya, huh? Well, that was unflattering as fuck. And Imayoshi-san was still sticking his nose in like he thought it was his duty. Huh.

Satsuki glanced up at him, looking like she wanted more of an answer than that, but left it alone and changed the subject. "You played pretty hard today. Make sure you get a good night's sleep tonight so you'll be ready to do it again tomorrow."

It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that Touou's spot in the Interhigh was a done deal. They'd defeated Meisei and Seihou had defeated Senshinkan, which put Touou up at two wins and Senshinkan down with the two losses. The only thing tomorrow's matches would decide would be the final standings of their block, unless something bizarre happened. But he closed his mouth on that comment—old habit, and he wasn't doing that anymore, right? "Yeah, sure. I will."

Satsuki hummed again, thoughtful, and they walked on. "Meisei played pretty well, didn't they?"

Daiki thought about it, but—"Yeah." They'd fought to the very end, after all. "Yeah, I guess they did."

He thought about it some more later, turning his phone in his hands and wondering whether he should try to text Tetsu or not. Whether Tetsu would read it or ignore it or maybe respond this time. Wondered what it was Tetsu was thinking about and whether he would show up for practice Monday, whether Imayoshi-san's scheming was going to work or not.

He could think of one thing to tell Tetsu. Well, two. So he typed them out slowly, thumb careful on the keys. Satsuki doesn't deserve to be cut off. I wish you'd talk to her, even if you're not talking to me, he wrote. Then, more slowly, he added, I meant every message I sent. In case you were wondering. There was no telling what Tetsu was thinking any more, so a little reinforcement couldn't hurt, right?

He told himself that it didn't matter much that his phone stayed quiet, and watched it until he fell asleep.