Missing

Disclaimer: SlamDunk does not belong to me. (if only)

Warnings: Senru, very mild angst

Somehow, it just isn't the same anymore.

Strange, that the simple lack of something that wasn't even there until a couple of weeks ago would affect me so much.

I feel... strangely expectant. A nameless anticipation seems to pulse through my head, filling it with his eyes, passionately blue. A frisson of tension prickles down my back. Inexplicable. I know he isn't coming.

I wouldn't.

* * *

"First to twenty."

I wish he'd come.

"Is there anyone better than you? In Japan?"

Yes. You in a year.

"I'm leaving for Tokyo."

Are you ever coming back?

/Messy black hair. Intense stare. Him./

Ever?

* * *

I close my eyes, let the basketball I was bouncing come to rest smoothly in the grip of my hand. He's gone, 'ahou... why would he come back?

Gone. A knot of coldness grips me. Not precisely painful... it's more numbing than anything else. I manage to forget it in the day, cover it with laughter and chitchat and casualness.

But it doesn't ever leave.

And when I'm here, where you used to be... then I feel it tightening.

Are you ever coming back?

Kaede?

A/N: Short, I know, but how is it?