A/N: ofhustlersandastronauts, thanks for the review!
Chapter 10
Sendoh and Rukawa played till their limbs ached. The blood-red sky was rapidly turning dark, and the hitherto warm breeze began feeling chilly through their damp clothes. Sendoh took a swig out of a bottle of PowerAde as they wrapped up their practice session, while Rukawa gathered his belongings into the basket on his bicycle.
"Tell me, Rukawa," Sendoh began. "I've been hearing rumors that you're looking to get out of Japan at the first opportunity. Is that true?"
Rukawa said nothing.
"I presume you want to play for the NBA?" Sendoh went on.
"That's the idea, yes," said Rukawa laconically. He had been through this at length with Coach Anzai, and did not need to be told a second time that he was being naïve. "After high school, if not sooner."
"I see." Sendoh's voice trailed off.
Rukawa gave him a quizzical look. Seeing that a clarifying response wasn't forthcoming, he decided to turn the question around on Sendoh.
"Knowing you, I expect that you want to play for the NBA, too?" he asked.
Sendoh ran his fingers through his hair.
"You know, I never really gave much thought to what I'd be doing after I graduated. I don't even know if I want to play basketball professionally."
"What do you mean?" said Rukawa sharply.
"I mean I'm not sure if I want to pursue a career with the NBA or settle down and do something mundane like everyone else." He laughed. "There's still plenty of time to make up my mind."
Rukawa was not amused. He did not like where this conversation was heading. If Sendoh so much as hinted that basketball was not his number-one passion, he risked turning violent. It would mean that his rivalry with Sendoh, which had comprised a major part of his goals over the past few months, was just a farce—a thing woven of lies and deceit—, and he would feel as if he had been thrown off a boat without a life jacket with which to get himself back on track. Everything he had ever held sacred would be shaken to the ground as in an earthquake.
Sendoh laughed sheepishly, seeing that Rukawa was turning sulky.
"This past year has been something of a roller coaster ride, and I don't know how much more of it I can take."
"You mean you're afraid you'll lose to Kainan." It was a statement—not a question.
"That's about the size of it."
Rukawa was relieved. For a moment he had thought Sendoh was going to confess that he played basketball just for the kicks, in which case Rukawa would have lost all respect for him instantly. Now he saw that that was not the case. The pressure of being captain was getting to him, and he was not, evidently, quite over Ryonan's crushing defeat in the spring tournament, much as he liked to feign insouciance whenever the subject came up.
"Captain Akagi didn't think we'd beat Shoyo," Rukawa said after a minute. "And yet, here we are."
He decided to mount his bicycle and ride away before the feeling that he had said something profound wore off.
Sendoh stood at the center of the basketball court for a few more minutes, allowing Rukawa's words to sink in. He was impressed. Rukawa was proof that wisdom could come from the most unexpected places. He didn't know what exactly Rukawa had intended to convey by his words, but they had had the effect of setting the gears of his mind into motion, which was the main thing. It was a moment of rediscovering himself—of letting past troubles and anxieties fade away as if they had only ever been illusory.
From where he stood, Sendoh could just make out the sea shimmering in the last light of the day over the tops of the trees that grew along the declivities of the seaboard. He realized that he could take inspiration from Shohoku's meteoric rise to prominence last season. No one had expected Shohoku to beat Shoyo or Ryonan, and yet they had gone on to do just that. They had failed to beat Kainan, of course; but on the other hand, they had ended up beating Sannoh, who had crushed Kainan the previous year. There was no reason to believe that Ryonan couldn't beat Kainan just because they hadn't done so yet. Ryonan had come as close to beating Kainan as anyone ever had last season. There was not a team in Kanagawa that had tied with Kainan in living memory before. It was time for round two in Ryonan's showdown with Kainan; and this time, it would be Kainan who would find themselves on the losing side.
The sound of a bicycle approaching reached Sendoh's ears, and he turned to behold Rukawa riding back up the path to the basketball court.
"I forgot," Rukawa mumbled, pulling out an envelope from the pocket of his hoodie. "Ayako-senpai asked me to give you this."
Sendoh had scarcely plucked the letter out of Rukawa's hand when Rukawa pedaled away whence he had come for the second time that evening. He tore open the envelope under a lamppost, heart racing, and ran his eyes over its contents.
Dear Sendoh-kun, the note read,
Good luck in your game against Kainan. We are rooting for you guys.
-Shohoku
Sendoh was slightly disappointed that Ayako hadn't addressed the note to him herself, but he was nevertheless pleased at the gesture. It felt good knowing that Shohoku would be standing by them when they took on Kainan in two weeks' time.
"Class, I want you to pay close attention now," said the math teacher, Watanabe-sensei, as he got to the most exciting part of the day's lesson. "Notice that this function is discontinuous at x=0. What does that tell us about the derivative at that point? Anyone?"
He cast his eyes around the class eagerly. Watanabe-sensei's dry academic voice had always had a soporific effect on his class—a fact to which he was perfectly oblivious—, and not least because it was the last class of the day.
"Anyone?" he repeated.
Everyone knew that Watanabe-sensei was only stalling for effect before he called on one of the trembling pairs of shoes seated before him to answer the question. When his eyes fell on Sendoh in the last row, however, he reeled.
"Sendoh-kun!" He dropped the chalk he had been holding. "What are you doing back there?"
Sendoh looked up from his notebook. He had been working out formations and strategies to use against Kainan on the last page, which had become a palimpsest for hastily drawn and erased sketches of basketball courts. So far inspiration had eluded him—not to mention artistic skill.
"Yes, Sensei?"
"Is something the matter?" Watanabe-sensei was solicitous. "Are you unwell? Do you need to visit the nurse's office?"
"No, Sensei," said Sendoh, rising from his seat. "Nothing of the sort."
Contrary to popular belief, Sendoh was not a poor student—a fact that made him an object of envy and opprobrium among students in other athletic clubs. Watanabe-sensei and other teachers would point to Sendoh as an example if anyone tried using his athletic obligations as an excuse for poor grades or for not turning in homework.
Sendoh, for the nonce, looked down at his shoes in contrition.
A glint appeared in Watanabe-sensei's eye.
"I see now," he said. "This is about your upcoming game against Kainan, isn't it?"
"Y-yes," Sendoh admitted sheepishly.
"Taoka-sensei told me all about it," Watanabe-sensei went on. "I'm sure I speak for the whole school when I say we need to beat those bastards."
The colorful language elicited some gasps, but Sendoh's classmates were of the same mind on this. They turned around in their seats to offer him their good wishes and other words of encouragement.
"Do your best, Sendoh."
"You show them!"
"We're rooting for you, Sendoh-kun."
"Kainan is nothing!"
Sendoh acknowledged them graciously.
"Sendoh-kun." Watanabe-sensei fixed Sendoh with a solemn look—like a civilian greeting a soldier heading into battle. "You may leave early and join your team. Don't let me stand between you and your training."
"Seriously?"
Watanabe-sensei nodded gravely.
"Thank you, Sensei." Sendoh gave Watanabe-sensei a quick bow and began gathering his things as quickly as he could.
"Eh?" Ando, the captain of the soccer team and its ace player, rose in indignation. "We've got a game coming up as well. Does this mean I can leave early, too?"
Sendoh dashed out of the classroom, but not before he caught Watanabe-sensei's final words to Ando.
"Sit down, Ando-kun. You failed the last two exams. Now, are you going to answer my question or not?"
Sendoh did not stop to hear Ando's attempt at an answer. He blew like a gale down the corridor toward the basketball court. When he reached, he found Coach Taoka yelling at someone over the phone. He decided to wait patiently in the doorway.
Coach Taoka was pacing back and forth at the center of the court, hurling animadversions at his interlocutor and waving his free arm around animatedly.
"Don't try me." The gym trembled with Coach Taoka's words. "I'll have you know I have the Commissioner on speed dial. Yes, the Commissioner of the Winter Games. So don't try anything funny."
He snapped the flip phone shut in his clenched fist and turned to behold Sendoh standing in the doorway, unsure whether to come in.
"Ah, Sendoh," said Coach Taoka. "That was Coach Takato just then. He wanted to postpone the game until his leg healed."
"Can you do that?"
"You can advance a case for postponement if both coaches agree to it. Coach Takato happens to have more than his fair share of clout with the Commission... The point is, I'm not going to let that happen."
"What did you tell him?"
"You heard that part." Coach Taoka exhaled deeply. "All right, Moichi, you need to think of a way to make the most of this situation."
"I don't think the absence of their coach is going to affect them all that much," said Sendoh. "It didn't affect Shohoku."
Coach Taoka shuddered.
"Don't remind me."
"Why do you think it's going to be different this time?"
Coach Taoka smirked.
"You haven't known Maki as long as I have," he said. "I tried recruiting him for Ryonan long before Coach Takato got to him. No doubt he used one of his dirty tricks to lure him over."
This didn't surprise Sendoh. Coach Taoka's career was strewn with players he had failed to recruit for Ryonan.
"Do you know why Maki and Fujima are such bitter rivals?" said Coach Taoka.
"They're both the best point guards in Kanagawa?"
"Because there was once a time when Fujima was ever-so-slightly better than Maki."
Sendoh could not conceal his surprise.
"Maki was always the more athletically talented of them," Coach Taoka went on; "but Fujima was more cunning. He used his brains a lot more in a game, and there were times when Maki found himself completely undermined by one of Fujima's elaborate schemes. That's the thing about Fujima. You don't realize you're playing right into his hands until it's too late to do anything about it. That's one of the reasons he's been so successful as Shoyo's coach. If he and Maki switched places, we might never have heard of Shoyo."
"So you're saying Maki's not going to be able to play the part of a coach?"
Coach Taoka nodded.
"Shohoku beat us out of sheer willpower. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain from going all out. Kainan's not like that. They're—shall we say—accustomed to victory. Not only will Maki have to assume the role of a player-coach, but he's also got to live up to the Kainan legacy—a legacy for winning that's almost as old as Maki himself—which is to say, old. That's a huge responsibility for a mere high-school student, and not even Maki could hope to be immune from it.
"What's more—" Coach Taoka thumped his chest. "You've got me. I'm going to be uncovering all of Kainan's weaknesses during the game, and they won't be able to mount an effective counterattack without their Coach there to actively think of a solution for them."
Sendoh took all this in quietly.
"So how are we going to direct our attack?"
"We're going to hit them at their weakest point. Confuse them right at the outset. Leave them with little chance to regroup and come up with a new plan."
"Are we using Hikoichi again?"
"We might. But more importantly…" He trailed off.
"I'm playing point guard again," Sendoh guessed.
Coach Taoka nodded.
"And what about our center? What do we do about him?"
"I'll let you figure that out." There was a twinkle in Coach Taoka's eye. "It wouldn't do for me to tell you how to do everything, now, would it? As the captain, you need to start making some decisions yourself."
Sendoh had known the day would come. The game against Kainan was as much a chance for Ryonan to upset the prevailing order as it was for Sendoh to prove himself a worthy captain for his team.
"I'll figure it out."
Coach Taoka nodded.
"Oh, and Sendoh," he said when the school bell rang and footsteps began to be heard outside the gym. "I don't want you repeating the thing about Coach Takato to the team just yet. They need to believe that Kainan, even without their coach, is the toughest team they'll face in this tournament—and they are. If they get cozy too early, we run the risk of letting our guard down, which is precisely what cost us our game against Shohoku in the spring."
"Understood," said Sendoh.
By and by the rest of the team assembled in the gym.
"Listen up," said Coach Taoka. "We've got just over a week before we face Kainan." He turned to Sendoh. "How's Sugadaira's progress been?"
Sendoh scratched the back of his head.
"Couldn't be better," he said with a nervous laugh. "His rebound percentage has improved." Slightly. "He's more confident defending against bigger opponents." A little. Fukuda's impression of Uozumi that time had been nothing short of inspired. "I think we're in decent shape, Coach."
"Good enough." Coach Taoka nodded approvingly at Sugadaira.
Sugadaira swelled with pride. That was the highest compliment he had ever received. He was now ready to take on Kainan.
"All right." Coach Taoka clapped his hands, marking the official start of practice. "Let's go."
tbc.
A/N: I suspect my writing has been going downhill for a while now. Inspiration is so hard to come by these days. I'm hoping to get somewhere with the SenAya in the near future. And for the record, I haven't yet decided what the outcome of the game against Kainan is going to be. I suppose now is as good a time as any to confess that I only wrote it into the last chapter because I needed to heighten the drama. I'm a sellout, I know.