Summary:
Tetsuya just needs to beat them, and show them that their basketball was wrong, then maybe, maybe. Everything will turn out okay, and they can all play basketball like before again.
The dangers that his new guardians were wary of slowly rears their head into Tetsuya's daily life, and he slowly learns to live with a strange, new cautiousness.
Meanwhile, Tetsuya's past traumas continues to haunt him, and he makes a decision.
Life changing information tends to also shift your schedule a little.
With a something new that's he's unsure of how to approach yet just added to his worldview, Tetsuya finds grief... not easier to manage, but easier to breath with. He doesn't cry anymore, though nightmares still happen every now and then. Screeching tires and the crunch of glass which his mind seemed determined to cook up as a reminder. His sleep schedule is still messed up, but his habit of consistent exercising keeps it in check.
He also slowly begins to realise exactly why his new guardians were hesitant in bringing him into the secret, when they stopped hiding as much around him. Of course, his lack of presence also means he accidentally walks into a number of work discussions, most of them late at night- such is the night when he actually catches his aunt without glamour.
She's standing by the dining table, dressed for work but without the jacket, which is hanging from a chair by his side, and doesn't seem to have noticed him, there's a box on it, and she's currently dabbing a picece of cotton onto a gash on her arm, there is a very faint smell of iron in the air, next to her is a katana, stained with something black and clearly not from a human, set over a towel on the tabletop. Halfway through, she sets the cotton down and walks around the table, turns with her back facing him and Tetsuya sucks in a breath so violently he could choke.
His aunt's entire back, outside of the tattooed wings, is covered entirely with scars. A large gash that runs from her shoulder to lower back, a multitude of something small and circular on her shoulder a large lightened and rough patch that seemed to hug her side and stretched with her movements. A lot of them doesn't look like they came from humans, but those that do aren't small in number either. And Tetsuya doesn't know which ones he should be more worried about.
He takes a step forwards, not making a single sound, but aunt Hotaru notices him, and whirls around, hand shooting right towards the weapon on the table, before she catches sight of him and slumps. Her hand leaving the weapon to clasp over the wound on her forearm.
"Tetsuya," she greets, "sorry, I'm a little on edge. Just got back from a case." She turns around and , and Tetsuya tentatively walks into the living area, eyes still on the gash on his aunt's arm. She seems to realise what he's looking at, and shifts a little. "Do you mind fetching the black powder from the drawer?" She gestures a shelf across the room, "third row, it should be in a red bottle."
He doesn't reply, but gets her what she needs anyways. She takes it with a nod in gratitude, before applying an even coat over the wound. It sizzles a little, and her brows twists with discomfort, before she swipes a finger over a few of the tattooed lines on her forearm, which glows white and the wound begins to stitch itself together. His aunt sighs and slumps into a chair, setting the bottle of powder down with a small clink.
"Are you okay?" Tetsuya decides to ask, and she glances up. "It looked deep."
"I've had much worse." She shakes her head as she begins to pack away the tools she was using, and Tetsuya couldn;t help glancing at the scars, only to see that they're gone. Her glamour is back up. "This just didn't heal because the cleaning wasn't done right. Ghoul claws stop any forms of healing, natural or otherwise. I didn't notice until I got back."
"You have a lot of scars." He states. Hoping for an answer.
There is a beat of silence. "We have a dangerous job." She finally says. "Don't go looking for ghosts."
Tetsuya takes her advice.
But one finds him anyways, after a visit to his grandmother, and he knows it's a ghost the moment he saw it.
The man curled up in the corner of the alleyway is bloodied and broken in a way he couldn't describe. He's opaque, his clothes are those of a normal, everyday person, the kind you'd expect to see on the streets after school, but the shirt is ripped in places and bloodied in others. His hair is matted with something dark and damp, one side caved in and something white seems to move inside of it, and his shoulders does not rise and fall with breaths. He is entirely still and unmoving as he stared straight up at a certain window, a mantra of something streaming from his mouth that Tetsuya couldn't catch.
Something red and white falls out of his head and spatters against the pavement. Tetsuya turns away and speed walks the rest of the way home he tells his uncle about the ghost over dinner, and he calls aunt Hotaru to deal with it. The ghost is gone the next time he passes the area.
(He doesn't realise that he just called the apartment home.)
Tetsuya keeps playing basketball, the court near the apartment complex becomes a place he frequents. His therapist says its good for him, and he thinks he agrees. He's not finding the same joy that he used to, playing alone, but its fun again, and the touch of the ball doesn't make his stomach turn anymore. His guardians still play with him, on their days off, and they seem quite impressed with his passing ability.
"That takes a lot of strength, doesn't it?" His aunt comments as she weighs the ball in her hand, it slips out all too easily, and she scrambles to catch it before it falls. "And grip." She adds.
"You just have small hands." Tetsuya replies.
"She ripped a head off with those small hands yesterday." Uncle Mafuyu comments, and Tetsuya sends aunt Hotaru an incredulous look. She coughs and looks away.
Ever since he developed sight, the couple is a lot more careful with letting him out alone. They don't exactly give him a curfew, but they do ask him to text if the area he's headed for is far enough to warrant public transport, or to at least let them know when to expect him home. They go with him, sometimes, aunt Hotaru would offer to drive him with her motorbike, though if he asked to be alone they give him the space.
They got him clothes from their workplace for his safety. It's an outdated uniform, but has enough protections on it that it keeps him safe. He doesn't think much of it until a ghost comes running out of an alleyway and tries to grab him by the collar, screaming nonsense with half a jaw and charred uneven fingers. It gets blasted right back where it came from the moment its finger grazes his shirt, and Tetsuya runs away, shaking as he calls his aunt, who drops out of a fire escape and walks him home to her husband before personally dealing with the ghost.
He keeps at least one of those on his person after that, and when aunt Hotaru asks if he wants to learn a protective charm or two, he doesn't hesitate before agreeing.
Thoughts of his parents haunt him at the most random times, sometimes.
It could be the middle of the night, or just while going to the groceries. Sometimes a large enough truck drives past and he stares for a few moments longer than he should, and his mind attempts to conjure images of his parents dead bodies, now that he knows how dead bodies look like. His reactions varies too, sometimes it glides off like rain on a wind blocker, but sometimes it soaks in like cotton. Others send his mood into a pit the rest of the day, and he doesn't talk to anyone at all.
His therapist suggests he find friends to talk to, outside of his aunt and uncle. He spends the rest of the day staring at his pinned contacts, the generation of miracles, thumb hovering over the screen as thoughts waged war in his mind.
A knock, and Tetsuya startles out of his thoughts. "Tetsu-kun?" Aunt Hotaru's voice drifts in faintly though the door. "Dinner is ready, you want to come downstairs?"
"Ah, hai!" He tucks his phone away. And tries his best to take his mind away from his friends.
When he head downstairs, there are several sports magazines on the coffee table. Some of them open, others still in the packaging. His heart sinks when he spots the distinct brilliant yellow of Kise-kun's hair peeking out in the 'read' stack of magazines.
It's a Wednesday night, so both his aunt and uncle are dressed for work aunt Hotaru having just returned from it, and uncle Mafuyu with a patrol soon. His aunt's long jacket and gloves tossed over the back of the couch, his uncle is reading some information on his tablet, "don't work at meal times," his aunt reminds from the kitchen, and his uncle puts the tablet away, she looks up, and catches him descending the stairs, "ah, Tetsu-kun." She smiles. After almost three months, his lack of presence is starting to wear off on them. "I got you a vanilla shake from the place you like on the way back- then I saw some basketball magazines and since you've been playing a lot more lately, I got some." She nods toward the coffee table, "hope you don't mind."
He does mind, just a little, but he also knows she means well, so he doesn't say anything. "Thank you," he walks into the kitchen and takes the milkshake from his aunt, "what's for dinner?"
"Karaage and gyoza," she replies as she hands him a plate to bring to the table, the air smells a little greasy, in a good way, "I baked some vegetables, too. Get your uncle his coffee, will you? He's got a long night ahead."
Tetsuya nods and helps with setting the table, and they dig in almost immediately after. The food is as usual, amazing, but there's a tension in him that just refused to leave, dreading the inevitable question.
"I read some of the magazines," his aunt starts. Here it comes, "its quite amazing, to be compared with NBA players as middle school students. The Generation of Miracles? They called them?" Tetsuya doesn't look up from his meal, "you said you did play in games as a starter. What were they like?"
"They're prodigies, without a doubt." He answers, he knows she wants him to talk more about his time with them, and how they are as friends, but he doesn't feel like talking about it. "None of us are going to the same school, though. So we'll be competing against eachother in highschool."
"Oh," his aunt blinks, "wouldn't that be strange? Or hard? To play against your former teammates."
He thinks about it for a moment, "no," and the answer comes out easier than he thought. Akashi-kun already made them promise not to go to the same school before, so they all knew they would be competing, but now that he really thinks about it, an idea surfaces in his mind. "No, I'm going to beat them."
His aunt seems to sense that something seems off with the mood, and closes the topic without another word about basketball.
Tetsuya just needs to beat them, and show them that their basketball was wrong, then maybe, maybe. Everything will turn out okay, and they can all play basketball like before again.
School starts next chapter.
I don't plan on making the trauma the whole point of the story, but it's going to follow through as a part of his life. I too enjoy a good bucketload of angst, but for this particular story, I want a more... balanced feel. So Kuroko is going to be pretty much how he is in canon, albeit with a little more secrets.
As you can already guess, with the new status quo, Kuroko's guardians are going to get some screen time in various places. I'm re watching the series right now and I never noticed how many scenes takes place so late at night. The magical secret agents are not letting the soft boi out alone at night when there are ghosts crawling around the city that can squish him like a blueberry.
Karaage is fried chicken. Gyoza is Japanese pan fried dumplings. Both are absolutely delicious. And if you're wondering why there's no rice, there is. When you're in an East Asian household rice is basically default. No one says 'rice' they just says what they're having with the rice.
