Hello everyone! I'm back with another chapter of this story! I'm actually kinda surprised about how some of you readers liked this story!

Like I said, I will try and get as many chapters out as I can, but I can't promise another chapter will come out each week. I have a terrible uploading schedule and wonder whether I should quit or not, and I am also back to school. This meaning more homework, test reviews and assignment due dates and the more frequent part of my life now; though, now that I think about it I am weirdly horrible with social interaction, even with my classmate and friends.

Anyway's, hope you enjoy this chapter! (I worked really hard on it!)

Warning : Cringe? And that I do NOT own Kuroko's Basketball (if I did, Kuroko would 'probably' be a female).

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"Doubt kills more dreams then failure ever will."

- Karim Seddiki

Previously, on '5 Lights, 1 Shadow'

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Kise was shocked (for like, the fifth time today) and slowly said, "Y-you're- . . " Stuttering and stopping before he could finish. Kuroko was shocked as well, never before knowing the feeling of a bond snapping into place, but she recovered from her shock first, yanking her wrist from Kise's slackened grip, quickly turned around, and ran, clutching her wrist with her other hand at the same time.

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Chapter 3

To Doubt Oneself

Kuroko was running. She doesn't know where she was going, but as long as it was far enough away from Kise, she was okay with it. When she first registered that she formed a bond with the golden-haired teenager, she immediately blocked off her side, not making the risk of letting Kise find out about her fears and used it against her.

A few minutes later, her terrible stamina caught up to her and she collapsed in front of a large cherry blossom in the park where she usually goes to calm down after a long day. Panting and dragging herself over to lean on the tree's roots for support, she started pondering about the bond that now, unfortunately, connected herself to the blonde. The feeling it gave off was like a sunshine on a humid summer day and was beckoning her to step into the light, but could so easily cause burning pain.

All her life, she has never felt such warmth from her relationships, not very often from her mother and definitely not from her father. She knew it was against the strict code Inferiors such as herself have to follow, that she wanted to enter that light and be able to speak her mind freely and smile whenever she wanted. She knows that there was a very slim chance she could, it has never happened to anyone else so it could never happen to someone like her. There is nobody out there that would accept her for who she is, it will never happen. All because she was branded what public onlookers like to call an "Inferior".

But aren't we all the same? Aren't we all human?

Tetsuki learned, in the short time that they talked, that Kise Ryouta is a pure being with such an amazing life ahead of him that she couldn't help but feel the salty taste of bitterness crawling it's way up her throat. She has to avoid him-notagoodidea - as much that she was capable of at the moment, then he can forget that she ever existed.

Besides, she would only taint his light and popularity with the caged darkness in her own frozen, shattered heart.

Ryouta was frozen in place. Just standing right where that beautiful cerulean-eyed girl ran off, and was staring at nothing in particular. He didn't realize that his shock travelled through to his bonded, and he never registered the concern and worry echoing off from his other bondmates. He didn't respond back long enough that they got to this point. They came looking for him personally.

"-uta!...ou..hear...e?!"

That faint voice travelling through his ears steadily grew louder.

"-youta!.."

"Ryouta!"

The commanding tone of voice knocked him out of his stupor and he came face-to-face with four of his five-- now six-- bondmates, all of them staring at him with concern evident on most on their faces, though it was mostly Daiki and Seijuro since Shintarou was off to the side shuffling through his small black medic bag he carried around with him everyday and Atsushi was busy chewing on a strawberry pocky. Though if you really knew him and looked close enough, you could see a minuscule crease between his eyebrows and the almost invisible twitch of his lips downward.

"Sei-...Seijuro-chi.." The golden-haired teenager managed to mutter out between his lips, the cold numbness in his body lessening to the point where he could feel the sparks of heat emitting from the tips of his fingers to his forearms. "I-" Ryouta coughed and paused for a moment before continuing, "I saw her. I talked with her.. our last bondmate."

This garnered an instant reaction out of the rest of them. Seijuro's hands twitched, Shintarou's grip on his porcelain doll-- his lucky item for the day-- tightened, Atsushi dropped the bag of chips he was just about to tear open, and Daiki's head whipped back to face him so fast Ryouta got whiplash just from watching. He could totally make a bet that Taiga would react the exact same as Daiki. The small alcove in the garden went silent, and if it weren't for the other students chatting behind the bushes or the birds chirping along with each other like a choir, you would probably be able to hear the wind whistling through the grass.

The red-head was the first to move, slowly making his way over to Ryouta and grabbing his wrist. Unlatching the loosely bound golden cuff, Seijuro dropped it to the ground and his fingers ghosted over what used to be clear skin under all of their names, but now engraved in small cursive black letters was a name he was unfamiliar with, for the moment anyway.

'Kuroko Tetsuki'

Before he could get a word in however, Ryouta spoke up first. Stating in a small voice that was much unlike his usual demeanour, the words that made the rest of them freeze up in shock.

"I don't think... she- uhh..wants it.."

When she realized the time, she rushed back to her house (she refused to call it "home"). Slowly cracking open the door, she didn't see her mother's or father's shoes on the rack so she breathed out a sigh of relief and quickly shut the door behind her, twisting the lock.

I guess Father is still out getting drunk at a bar.. and Mother is still working. Lucky me- Tetsuki thought ruefully, slipping out of her school shoes and trudged up the stairs. Leaving her shoes and bag at the end of her makeshift bed in the attic, the teal-haired girl made her way to the kitchen. Body moving on auto-pilot, she moved around to gather the ingredients needed for a small hotpot when she heard the tinkling of keys in the lock on the door. Tetsuki froze midway of pulling some vegetables out from the fridge and her head whipped over to stare at the entrance to the kitchen.

The door opened and closed quietly, then light footsteps echoed loudly in her ears. It was her Mother.

Tetsuki's Mother, Yuka, was probably a beautiful woman when she was younger, but her government job took its toll on her. What used to be smooth black curls of hair that trailed down to her mid-back became dry, choppy and only a few millimetres pass her bone-thin shoulders. Her face which used to be covered in small amounts of baby-fat and bright cerulean pupils became sunken with age and stress, as well as dark bags under her now dull eyes. Tetsuki's Mother was now basically just skin and bone, though her eyes lit up in the slightest when she spotted her daughter standing behind the counter with a handful of vegetables.

Yuka walked over to stand beside the tealnette while gently taking the vegetables out of her hands and placing them on the countertop before turning to face the teenager. "Go and do your homework, I'll take care of dinner tonight." The black-haired woman lightly pushed her daughter towards the stairs and turned around to grab a pot from the cabinet. Tetsuki just stared in shock and suspicion. She's never like this, especially not to me.. what happened? and while contemplating what could have changed your Mother's personality in such a short amount of time since they last spoke to each other, the teal-head entered her mostly empty room and plopped onto the floor with a wince. Guess her injuries from the last beating haven't healed completely yet...

Losing track of time wasn't something she did very often, nor something she liked doing.

The front door of the house opened quite roughly and slammed shut with a jarring thud. She snapped out of her stupor, realized she was so immersed in the light novel she keeps in the small hideaway under her bed that she forgot about her Father coming home. Looking outside her tiny window to check to see how much time has passed, she noticed the sun has already set below the horizon and the moon took it's place, colouring half the world a soothing shade of black and darkened navy blue. Stars speckled across the sky in countless webs of constellations, but so small they looked like specks of glitter sprinkled across a black canvas. The teenager sighed in contempt, (un?)surprisingly, nighttime was her favourite part of the day, the sky in the evening was always beautiful in ways Tetsuki could not understand.

Right.. the universe is much bigger then me or any of my problems and it's not complaining, nobody need to worry about me. Now I should head downstairs- Tetsuki was halfway to the kitchen when a harsh '' SLAP '' echoed into the stairwell and made the teal-head pause in confusion before it dawned on her. Yes, her Father was more drunk then normal, and adding to the fact that he would probably dare to lay a finger on his wife, not only his failure-of-a-daughter. Picking up her speed, Tetsuki nearly went rolling down the stairs like some sort of tumbleweed in the desert.

Here we go again.

Finally the third chapter is out after almost year! I'm sorry I never updated earlier, I've just lost my writing passion for a little while and then had school to deal with, but I'm now back with a vengeance! I promise to try and update more regularly, like maybe every few weeks or so. Life hits hard doesn't it? I'm still updating my other stories, just not as regularly as I should be. I mean, I finished this chapter at 2:30 in the morning, so... anyway, that's all I have to say for now! Have an amazing day/night!

Oh yeah real quickly, I've been thinking about so much and can't seem to get an answer out of myself, so I'll ask you, my readers!

Should Kagami be apart of the bond? Why or why not?

Previous Chapter : First Bond

Next Chapter : Stranger-Danger!.. Or Not?

~ MissAnimeWizard15 ~