3. Pride

BASH! BUMP! Sakuragi felt the pain of a fist hammering onto his head. It had been a long while since he had such a feeling. Last year it had been an almost daily occurence when he did or said something to upset Akagi. Holding his head where a painful red bump was already emerging, he looked up to see his ex-captain glaring down up him with angry red eyes and quickly skipped out of the way before Akagi could land the other fist on his head. Two blows! Gori must be really mad, he thought, but what did I do wrong?

By now the members of the Shohoku basketball team were horrified as they stopped training to stare at their ex-captain flexing his immense muscles at a cowering Sakuragi. They didn't know what to do. At that moment, their captain Ryota was having a meeting with their manager Ayako outside the gym. Unanimously, they decided to quietly trooped out of the gym.

"Wwwhat's going on, Gori? Why are you mad at me"
"YOU DARE TO LIE TO ME, FOOL"
"When did the tensai lie to you?"
"It's a good thing I didn't tell Haruko about Rukawa and Sawakita. Because they are NOT, have NOT and will NOT be living together. I am disappointed in you, Sakuragi. How can you think of such atrocious lies?"

"Bbbbut ... I don't understand. Are you sure? What about that email Rukawa send to me"
"Of course I am sure. I spoke to Haruko a few days ago and she said that Rukawa does not have a roommate and certainly not one by the name of Sawakita. So I made some enquries and found out that Sawakita has enrolled in another university. As for the email, sure you didn't forge it"
"Of course not, I don't even know how to forge emails"
"That email was real."

Both of them turned to look at the speaker who had entered the gym quietly. It was Kogare and behind him was Ayako looking pale and distraught.
"What's happening here, Kogare-sempai?" asked a very flustered Sakuragi.
"I have been making some enquiries of my own too," said Kogare pushing at the bridge of his glasses which was a sign that he was being very serious.
"When Takenori told me that you said Rukawa had visited when you were in rehab, my curiosity was already piqued. Reason being I knew that the All Japan Junior training camp was situated a fair distance from your hospital. So for Rukawa to visit you, he had to travel at least two hours to and fro."

"WHAT!?! Why did he visit me then? He must had been more lonely than I thought"
"Not only that but I found out that his frequent absence from training virtually ruined any chances of Rukawa being selected for the national junior team"
"Was that why he wasn't selected? I was surprised myself," said Akagi.
"I don't understand at all," moaned a perplexed Sakuragi when SPLAT! -- a large paper fan landed on his head.
"Ayako! Can't you see my head already has a bump? Are you trying to make it bigger"
"Ayako, restrain yourself," murmured Kogare affectionately.
"Huh?" Sakuragi's head twitched from Ayako to Kogare and back a few times.

"That cos you are a bigger idiot than I thought, Sakuragi Hanamichi," chided an extremely upset Ayako. "Call yourself a tensai and you can't even understand when somebody made so many sacrifices for you"
"Sacrifices? For me"
"Why else would anyone make such a great effort to visit such an obnoxious person as yourself? And then to top it all, let go of the opportunity to be selected into the national team. Why would anyone give up so much pride and honour? I always thought I understood Rukawa very well and that he is too proud a person to make any kind of sacrifice for anyone. But I was wrong, so wrong. I never would have believed that he will do so much out of love. And now he even ..." Ayako couldn't finished her speech as she was so overcome by grief. Kogare handed her a clean, white handerchief for her to sob into.

"I emailed Rukawa when I got his address off your printout," Kogare told Sakuragi earnestly. "I wanted to know why he never confessed his love to you but instead said that he had fallen for Sawakita. He told me via email that he knows that you have too much pride to admit anything that might make you a figure of fun. Even though he is sure that you have similiar feelings for him, he dare not confess. He felt that you will just distance yourself from him. So in desperation, he tried to make you jealous by pretending to be in love with Sawakita. When even that didn't work, he--"

"I honestly don't know what you guys are on about," Sakuragi interrupted nervously. "How can the tensai be in love with Rukawa? That some kinda lame joke, nahahahahahahahahaha! Don't you remember we were always fighting. We are rivals, how can we love each other?"
"Don't be such a fool, Sakuragi," growled Akagi. "Even I wondered why Rukawa ignored my beautiful sister but tried so many ways to get your attention"
"GORI"
"TAKENORI"
"AKAGI-SEMPAI!"

Akagi folded his arms and looked at Kogare sternly, "Do you really think I am such an insensitive idiot, Kogare? That I never knew about you and Ayako too. All those weekend meetings about the basketball club, how I was not needed to attend and just concentrate on training? Even a child could see through your flimsy excuses"
Kogare had the grace to look shamefaced, "Well, we had to hide the truth from Ryota somehow"
Ayako sobbed even harder into Kogare's handerchief.

"Please stop, Ayako," complained Sakuragi, "you are hurting the tensai's ears. Why are you crying anyway?"

"Well, you see," Kogare explained nervously, "she just got a phonecall from Haruko. Rukawa had been rushed to hospital a few hours ago. They found him unconscious in his room. He took an overdose of sleeping pills. Actually I had been worried cos in his last email to me, he sounded extremely depressed and said he has given up ... ugh ... STOP ... IT!"