Q: What makes you think Kaede is gay?
A: Kaede may or may not be gay, depending on how one perceived the official Slam Dunk episodes, movies and mangas. For those who believes Kaede is gay and are willing to read yaoi fictions such as this, then for entertainment sake, Kaede is gay.
Q: Is Rakeru mad at Hana-chan?
A: In chapter 15, Hana-chan had a terrible dream that Rakeru loathed him. After realizing it's only a dream, he's only fear is that Rakeru might discover what happened to Kaede and him after the party for Coach Anzai.
Q: What are the events that are part of the dream?
A: Beginning from chapter 14 until Hana-chan woke up in Chapter 15.
Q: Is this a KaedexHana jr. yaoi?
A: We will find out on the coming chapters but I will be open for your suggestions if Kaede and Hana-chan will end up together.
Q: Does Fujima likes Hanamichi Sr.?
A: No, he doesn't. He just finds it amazing that Hana-chan is a carbon copy of Hanamichi.
Q: Do Kaede and Hana-chan have the same birthdate? When is Hana-chan's birthday?
A: Yes they do, so Hana-chan's birthday, I suppose is January 1.
Q: If Hana-chan's a deliquent child, then why he seems so nice?
A: We have this stereotyping that deliquent child are evil, selfish and can never be polite. Delinquent child are just those who break the rules often, but it doesn't mean they are the meanest of all. It's ironic, that sometimes, those who follow rules so much, are the ones who wishes bad things for other people.
Hana-chan had a great time. Kenji brought Rakeru and he in the urban streets of Kanagawa and showed him the Shohoku High School that had crossed changes and renovations since Hanamichi's time.
There was nothing more to lift his soul than to see things that had a relation with his father. Kenji also talked about Hana-chan's mother and where she met Hanamichi.
When their stomachs demanded for foods, Kenji brought them to a Japanese restaurant. It was Ouzumi's first branch of his restaurant that expanded to the lands of Los Angeles in America.
Moreover, Hana-chan didn't fail to mention about his acquaintance with Ouzumi.
"Hey, that's a detective." Rakeru exclaimed and pointed to Hana-chan a man sitting in a table across them.
They saw a man in beige coat and gray hat... eating alone in the table.
"Nice." Hana-chan pretended that he was interested.
"You know, your mother had a long black hair and brown eyes." Kenji said, while munching a Maki roll inside his mouth. "A typical Japanese for me, though she's undoubtedly pretty."
Hana-chan smiled. A very weak smile.
"I envy people like you who saw my parents alive."
Rakeru kept in silence as the conversation hit the dramatic spot. Hana-chan was apparently serious and even if she's only twelve years old, she knows how to draw the line of her limits.
Swirling the steel fork around the bowl of Tuna Teriyaki, Hana-chan gloomily looked at Kenji.
"My dad talks about them so rare." Hana-chan muttered.
Kenji observed the sullen tanned face of the Japanese child, raised in the American culture. It wouldn't take a genius to lay assumptions about the truth behind Hana-chan's statement.
My dad talks about him so rare.
Even though he expected Kaede to love Hana-chan like his own child because he's Hanamichi's son, Kenji wouldn't be surprised if the opposite came in action in the real world.
Kaede was very frustrated when he left Japan fourteen eyars ago and it wouldn't take months for him to recover, but years.
However, Kenji's intelligent predicting abiltiy, that he used in coaching Basketball teams, failed him.
It took fourteen long and grueling years for Kaede Rukawa to recover. And until now, Hanamichi's death was still creeping inside his blood like an old insect that never say die.
If only Hanamichi is alive, this child won't be like this. Kenji thought to himself. In his five years of friendship with Akira Sendoh, there never was a day that Akira didn't speak of the name Hanamichi. He learned about Hanamichi's life from frequent stories of Akira, and he's very aware about Hanamichi's plan for his son.
Coach Anzai once told him that when Hanamichi was still alive, he talked to him. Hanamichi made him promise like it's a martial law, that when his son grew up; he would coach him in Basketball.
Hana-chan will be the best Basketball player in the whole world.
"Hana-chan." Kenji began with a bit of reluctance. "Do you play Basketball?"
Hana-chan remebered what a poor boy he could be when it comes to Basketball. "No."
It startled Kenji, though he didn't show it physically.
"No? Your father was a good Basketball player."
"I know. My dad too."
"Don't you want to learn?"
"Impossible."
"Sure you can. I'll teach you, and if you come back to America, Kaede will be there to continue our lessons."
Hana-chan sighed. "I doubt that. Dad is too cold to me."
Kenji received a pang of pity from what the child said, while Rakeru remained quiet in her seat beside her father while finishing her bowl of ramen.
"I wonder why." Hana-chan uttered. "If not for my nanny in America, I would never be able to know he's the one who adopted me."
Suddenly, like a thunder bolt that mingles in a cold rain, Rakeru rolled her eyes.
"Bee-cAs yO fadaH wAs dee On-ly mAn yO dAd evAH lAv."
"Rakeru." Kenji looked at his daughter with the authority to shut her mouth.
And Rakeru was plastered to remain stationed in her place and her mouth closed.
"What do you mean?" Hana-chan glanced at the young lady who in a sudden was strickened with silence.
"Don't mind that kid." Kenji hoped his smile was identical to Akira that could shape a conversation in his own way. "She's just too occupied with films and TV shows."
"My father was the only man my dad ever loved?" Hana-chan persisted in querying. "Definitely, they're best friends."
More than best friends. The father and daughter thought to themselves in unison.
"Yes of course." Kenji said. "Yes they were best friends."
There was no lie in that statement. Kaede and Hanamichi were indeed the best of friends.
Walking across the shining marbled floor and the magnificent Venetian carpets, Hana-chan wore a genuine smile he never had before.
Hearing things about his parents filled that big empty hole in his heart that seek for his origins. He felt incomplete without knowing about his parents.
He took the elevator until the fifth floor and approached his room door with a keycard on his palm.
Once the door opened, he entered and breathed for air.
He just had the time of his life. How blissful it could be to hear about your parents' lives while seeing a pretty Japanese young lady?
As he pressed the on-button for the chandelier light inside the room, a figure sitting near the coffee table welcomed him.
"Where had you been?" The figure spoke sternly and authoritatively.
"Somewhere." Hana-chan murmured as he slipped from his shoes and socks, and plunged himself down in the soft western bed.
"This is Kanagawa, not L.A."
"I'm fifteen." Hana-chan counter-attacked while snuggling with a huge cotton-soft pillow and reminscing about his beautiful day. "I can manage myself."
"Kanagawa is just like any place in world. You might endanger yourself."
"Hey, I grew up without you by my side. Don't tell me you're getting over-protected now that I'm fifteen?" The child's brows knitted.
"Don't raise your voice at me."
"And now you're becoming a father to me." Hana-chan rose to sit on the bed and faced Kaede like a man-to-man. "You're my dad, yet I feel like I'm the son of the famous Kaede Rukawa. Why? Is there a venom in becoming a popular sportsman that your heart is eaten out?"
In a quick motion, Kaede stood from the chair and approached the protesting child. He armed his right hand with all the might he could get and bat Hana-chan's youthful face with the back of his hand.
Hana-chan's head reacted initially from the force and his head almost collided with the bed. As the child realized that he was hit, he felt the wound vibrating against his cheek and increasing its pain. Like a light bulb that when you stick your eyes to, the longer you stare the brighter the light.
Touching his painful fresh bruise, Hana-chan glared at Kaede with all the resentment his heart had kept.
"I HATE YOU!"
Hana-chan readied himself, slipped on his Birkenstock sandals and walked away from the room, while Kaede stayed mute and watched him leave.
It was dark outside the Kanagawa Front Hotel. The moon and the stars beautified the evening full of lights, yet Hana-chan didn't know where to go.
The paths were clear, yet he didn't know what to take.
He went astray. He walked along the streets of Kanagawa from here to there... not remembering what he had passed. It didn't matter if he got lost. He had been lost all his life.
Finding a bay to share his loneliness and miseries with, Hana-chan decided to stay in the nearby waters. There's a wooden bridge people used when riding a boat, so the boat won't need to huddle itself in the soil ground of the shallow water.
Hana-chan walked silently across the bridge and stopped at the edge. He gazed at the wide bay that looked like a dark black water at night.
He had lived an irrational and insignificant life. In his childhood, he envied his playmates who went home happily and their parents, coming from their works, would have a bag of chips and candies for them.
As he grew older, as he seek for a masuline figure to show him the dos and donts of pleasing a girl, he seek to a nothing-land.
When he needed a mother to lean on at times when the world seemed unfair, he cuddled himself... alone in the dark.
Only Carla filled those emptiness, yet it wasn't completely filled.
It's not the first time he intended to end everything. He had thought of it hundreds of times but whenever he's about to do it, he sees the face of his father.
He didn't know how his father looks like, but the eyes of solemnity pushing towards him, made him feel it's his father.
Stopping Hana-chan to kill the life from him was born.
However, at this moment, when everything is crystal clear that his father and mother were dead and there's nothing more to await him in the coming future, he's fully confident to meet the end.
He lifted one foot and allowed it to float inches above the seemingly cold water. The blue waters will be his salvation. The one to solve all his grievances and bring him to a paradise where he could be with his beloved parents.
His foot became densed. It would fall in seconds... sooner and sooner...
"Don't." A masculine voice called and it stopped him to meet his doom.
Hana-chan didn't glance at the one who mingled in his entrance to paradise, but to the waters below.
"Leave me alone."
"Don't end your life, kid."
"You have no idea what life I have." Hana-chan's voice began to own a voice of self-pity.
The man inched nearer to him, slowly and prudently, assuring that the boy won't jump in the waters until he takes a grip on him.
"Whatever it is. Don't waste your life."
"It's a fucking waste already."
"I used to say that when I was your age." The man kept on lifting a foot nearer to the boy.
"I'm not you, asshole."
Finally, the man reached the edge of the bridge and stood beside the boy.
"This also used to be my breeding place. When I want to end my life, I would go here and intend to."
"Don't you meddle in my life. You don't know me, maddahfuckah!"
The man then spoke as if he didn't hear the boy talked.
"If you end it here, you wouldn't know what beauty there is to see."
"There's no beauty for me to see." Hana-chan responded stubbornly.
"Yes you do. Do you ever wonder what life you would have ten or twenty years from now? Who will be your wife? How many children would you have? And meet someone you've always dreamt to meet?"
Hana-chan's copper brown eyes became wet and his cheeks turned red against the moonlight.
"Everyone that I long to see is dead."
"Who do you want to meet, kid?"
Hana-chan sobbed... harder and harder as he remembers his parents that he haven't seen in the past that he could procure.
"What's your name?" The man murmured.
The boy tilted his head down while crying.
"Hanamichi Sakuragi." And he cried harder as he spoke the name of his father.
The man smiled a little.
"I guess we have the same name." The man said and Hana-chan automatically glanced at the man's face for the very first time. The boy stared at the man's copper brown eyes with scrutiny. Those eyes looked so familiar.
Suddenly, after staring with the boy's eyes too, the man took off his cloth hat and revealed his tan face with a brown beard and mustache and brown short messy hair.
"I guess I'm your father."
-to-be-continued-